Alcatel-Lucent has acquired OpenPlug.

“This acquisition extends Alcatel-Lucent’s push into Applications territory and complements its Developer Platform, Open API Service and Programmable Web offerings with ELIPS Studio – our tool that allows to develop cross-platform native mobile apps in Flex for iPhone, iPad, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices (+ more in the future).

The move also brings new opportunities for ELIPS Suite – our software platform for feature phones  – opening the world of apps and APIs to the masses.”

Still scratching my head why Adobe didn’t buy these folks “back in the day”, but oh well, it’s a moot point now with the spoiled iPhone Packager plans earlier this year … still I remain optimistic if consumers want Flash on devices, Android is one of the cards Adobe can play at moment in terms of devices, and it’s not that bad of card in the hand to play out.

Yugo showed a new project he apparently has in the works called “Frame” at FITC San Francisco, which basically is an (interactive) media display on the wall. Minimal specs: Touch Panel Display, Full HD Resolution, LED Backlight, WiFi, Camera, Wireless Audio, and “Sensors”.

It’s pretty clear from what he’s shown thus far that the project (see below) is very early (no pricing and lots of mockup videos), however, it does look intriguing.

Basically he wants to turn what essentially Bill Gates has had in his living for several years and turn it into a commercial product that the average consumer might have access to. I like the idea of artists (looks like it might support Processing and other generative art from the supposed product demos in the video) and ecospace (aka an “appstore” for art) for their works. He might be onto something in the “wallframe” space, here.

My major question is price … a 30″ might be approachable, but 60″+ or more might be pushing into several thousand dollars for a nice display. It’d be like owning a second TV display. Not sure how they’d fly here in the States, but elsewhere I’m sure people will buy into it (e.g. perhaps, Japan for instance).

Anyways, the user experience, quality of display, and overall price will determine the success of this idea. I think 2 out of 3 are attainable between now and 2011.

It could be a huge success or he could be looking at many of the challenges other smaller photoframes have faced, including chumby, and now perhaps even litl. Either way, I’m sure the team he has working on it are having a lot of fun.

Found this, Flash for Mobile Game Development deck over on slideshare.

OpenPlug posted their slides from FITC.

There’s a DROID event hosted by Motorola and Adobe coming up in September if you’re in the San Francisco area (601 Townsend is the old Macromedia building, BTW). It’s on Thursday, September 16th, 2010 from 6:00pm to 8:30pm.

Apparently Adobe (Flash) evangelists and MOTODEV experts will be there.

Adobe® Flash® Player is here on DROID smartphones by Motorola.  Learn how you can get started creating and optimizing content for a great mobile Flash experience.

Join MOTODEV & Adobe experts for an evening of networking, pizza, beer and frozen yogurt.

Anyone from the curious to the hardcore developers is welcome to participate.

Twitter hashtag: #ddflash
 
Agenda:
6:00pm – 6:30pm Arrival & Registrations
6:30 – 9:00pm Presentations and networking with MOTODEV & Adobe experts

Questions about the event?  Tweet @motodev with the hashtag #ddflash

P.S. I just noticed FROYO will be served in addition to pizza and beer. Nice to see the idea spreading.

Chris posted an experiment of Box 2D leveraged with Adobe AIR for Android on a Google Nexus one.

Demo of the Box2D physics engine running on the Android OS packaged as a native application using Adobe AIR. The accelerometer is used to determine the direction of gravity. You’ll notice the frame rate is about 20 fps which is pretty good considering the number of computations required for this simulation. Many configuration options in Box2d could be adjusted to improve performance even more. This is just one example of how Adobe AIR can be used on mobile devices.

The DROID2 packaging promotes Adobe Flash.

Not the 1st time “Flash” has been on a package, but in the case of Flash Player 10.1 and US market, this may be absolutely true. In any case, nice for Verizon to accommodate Adobe on that … or vice versa.

One of the exciting things about AIR for Android is that it makes creating applications easier than ever … well, for Flash Professionals that is.

Here’s magic 8-ball app I created in less than 15 minutes. You know, the token app where you shake and the device picks up accelerometer input and translates the axis data for use in apps, games, etc? Ah, thought you did.

It’s one of a few simple examples I’ve be walking through in my Android for Flash Professionals workshop next week (i.e. tapping into Accelerometer API via AIR for Android).

Not that creating an app like this will land you in the millionaire zone these days, but it is justification that using Flash can save you valuable time in projects (the one’s that last weeks, or even months!).

Although you could make this natively in the perhaps same time (assuming you know Java and the Android development platform), having alternatives to get projects done is always preferable to developers. Plus there are other pros and cons.

In particular, there are a hundred ways I could animate or otherwise pretty this app up. Animation is one of Flash’s legacy strengths and it should not be ignored on mobile and devices!

–

BTW: I asked it if people would enjoy my Android for Flash Professionals workshop at FITC and it can back with “It is certain”. I hope it’s not a magic 8-ball that fibs! … but you could program it that way in the workshop if you’re so inclined to have it reply “Yes” to all your dreams and wishes.

For those that can’t attend the workshop, I’ll be sharing code soon, as soon as Adobe let’s prerelease folks share some of their experiments and endeavors.

Those interested in having me give a workshop on how to develop AIR for Android applications, please contact me.

So … DROID 2 is reported to have Flash 10.1 PREINSTALLED when it ships later this week. Here’s a video:

Diana Helander of Adobe demos the full web on the new DROID 2 by Motorola running Flash Player 10.1. DROID 2 is the first smartphone to ship out of the box with Flash Player 10.1 and benefit from HW decoding of all H.264 video profiles in Flash Player.

Comments:

“it is the first time, out-of-the-box, that Adobe Flash Player is on a mobile device.”

So, you’re essentially saying millions of Flash Enabled devices did not come with Flash? Also, N900 was not a device that came with Flash installed? (ok, 9.4, but still a flash player). There are other cases. Lots of OEMs aren’t going to like that. Hope OEMs are moving to 10.1 as best as possible.

Also, it’s great Android is the 1st platform to get attention, but one platform does not make OSP a success. More partners need to come to fruition this year, or multiscreen Flash on devices becomes somewhat of a moot point.

This is the year to change people’s minds about Flash, especially multiscreen, so give it everything you got, Adobe.

In this video, KONGREGATE talks about how they are leveraging Flash on Mobile:

Adobe TV episode: KONGREGATE goes Mobile

Where were these guys in the Flash Lite era?