Goodbye Flash Player For Mobile

Adobe has announced that it will be discontinuing support of Flash Player for mobile.

In a statement posted on the official Adobe Blog by Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of interactive development, Adobe conceded that HTML5 is "the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms."


Goodbye Flash Player For Mobile, for a while you were an extra competitive advantage of some mobile platforms (QNX, Android, WebOS, etc.) over others (Apple's iOS).


Feel free to leave comments and/or questions.

Bing For Android [Not Reviewed], Fail!

I was going to review Bing for Android, Microsoft's search engine's app for Android. I can't do the review and this post will explain why.

I would love to install the Bing app on one of my many devices...

I tried searching for the Bing application on my current main Android device (a ZTE Skate also known as the BAP) and it would not appear on the Android Market. Having had no luck finding it, I swapped phone and used my Samsung Galaxy Pro. No luck with that device either. Thinking all this was very strange, I then picked up my Archos 80 G9 Honeycomb tablet and searched for Bing in the Android Market. I was relieved to fing "Bing - Microsoft Corporation" but when in the Android Market description page was faced with this:

"This item is not available with your operator."

I was quite annoyed by this. I logged onto market.android.com on my laptop and found the Bing application. When trying to select a device to install the application to I was faced by a list of 11 devices the application is not compatible with.

"This app is incompatible with all of your devices." Bing Fail!

So that's how what was going to be my review of the Bing app for Android turned into another blog post about Microsoft failure. I hope this is covered in the Linux Outlaws' Microwatch segment next week because it is really worthy of it in my opinion.

Microsoft have seen some sense (HTC pun not intended) and decided to get their search engine onto the fastest growing and soon to be dominant smartphone/tablet platform (mostly open source too!). They are not doing too well if their app is not compatible on my 11 devices which range from low-end low-res screens to high-res tablets.

I look forward to Microsoft sorting this out and being able to review the Bing app for Android at some point in the future...

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

The New Google Android Market

I've just updated the Android Market on my HTC Desire (running CyanogenMod 7.1 RC).

 The new Market application has a very Metro UI (Windows Phone 7) similar interface. I am already a fan of the Metro UI interface (you can get Launcher 7 for Android from the Market for free), so this update is well received on my phone.

Could this be an indicator of UI changes still to come in Android? Let the rumour excitement and speculation begin.

As usual, feel free to leave comments/questions at the end and Google +1 this post.

What Google Announced On February 2nd 2011 [Android]

On February 2nd 2011 Google held their Android Honeycomb preview event in Mountain View, California. 

There were a few important points announced that I think I should summarise:

• In Honeycomb (3.0), Google have revamped the Android user interface to be optimised for tablet computers

• Android's native widgets will be more scrollable and interactive
• Hardware acceleration of applications will be easy to implement for developers (one line of code)
• Media capabilities of Android have been improved (new camera application user interface, new media player integration, video calling capabiliteies in GTalk)
• Android Market website revamped with the possibility to install applications from your computer without needing to plug your phone in (wireless syncing through Google services)

• Android applications will enable in app purchases

You can view the full presentation here if you have a spare hour or so.

Well, here's to a bright, video cally and tablety future...