If you missed the news yesterday, Verizon Wireless launched their Dashboard? service this past weekend (not to be confused with Apple’s Dashboards widgets).

What is Verizon Wireless Dashboard?

Dashboard creates an ecosystem for consuming, promoting and merchandising VZW’s multimedia content and services.

Dashboard was built on Adobe’s Flash Cast™ platform and leverages their leadership in providing best-in-class content authoring tools (i.e. Flash) and user interface design.

Dashboard is a platform designed to drive additional data for Verizon and our partners by improving the customer experience and content discoverability.

Here are some preliminary pictures of the Dashboard User Interface from Bill Perry (Adobe):

A long time coming; Dashboard is the first public instance of Flash Cast in US with a major carrier; with other major Flash Cast services previously rolled out in Japan (i-Channel via DoCoMo) and Taiwan (Channel Me via Chunghwa Telecom).

According to the recent news, Dashboard is pre-installed on a newer LG Chocolate 3 device, that is hitting stores as we speak (UPDATE 7/15/2008: It’s in many Verizon Wireless stores right now).

I’ve had the opportunity to see Dashboard running “up close”, and it’s a pretty cool experience. The user interface is pretty intuitive, and the potentials are there for some interesting use cases …

In terms of currently available Dashboard content, default channels currently include: Mobile Web 2.0, Search, Get Channels, VZW Showcase.

Other user-subscribed channels include: News, Business, Comedy Central, Community, Entertainment, ESPN, Fox Sports, Games, IGN Network, MTV News, Music, Sports, Weather.

This channel content is essentially Flash Lite 1.1 (with some additional custom APIs and commands custom to Flash Cast and Dashboard).

Apps can be created using Adobe Mobile AppBuilder; an IDE that allows you to develop & test your Flash Cast channel content:

Mobile AppBuilder is is the new PC-based tool created to streamline the workflow for channel development.

Use Flash CS3 Professional, together with Mobile AppBuilder, to create, assemble, test, and preview channels locally on your desktop.

Mobile AppBuilder includes a Flash Cast client emulator that runs on your desktop as well as Flash Cast device profiles.

If you are interested in knowing more about Flash Cast, you can check out Adobe’s site, and also the Verizon Wireless Developer Center called “The Zon”, or leave a comment on flashdevices.net.

P.S. Congrats to both Adobe and Verizon on finally getting Dashboard out there.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Adobe, Adobe CS3, Adobe Mobile AppBuilder, Adobe Mobile Client, Announcements, Chunghwa Telecom, Flash, Flash Cast, Flash Cast Channel, Flash Lite, Flash Lite 1.1, Flash Lite Framework, Flash Lite UI, Flash Lite application, Flash Mobile, Flash Mobile Developer, FlashCast, Handsets, Japan, MTV Networks, Mobile, Mobile Application, Mobile Content Distribution, Mobile Developer, Mobile Device, Mobile Push, Mobile User Interfaces, Mobile Web, Mobile Web 2.0, NTT DoCoMo, US, Verizon, Verizon Dashboard, Verizon Wireless, flashdevices.net, flashlite, i-Channel, user experience, www.flashdevices.net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.