Adobe or Apple?

It's inevitable that our production team has divided opinions on the Adobe and Apple issue over Flash and its legitimacy in mobile browsing. The Flash developers are sided with Adobe -- mainly because Flash is their livelihood -- while Javascript developers are sided with Apple since we don't rely on Flash. Both Adobe and Apple are claiming their platforms are "more open" than the other but I will try to make my argument based on personal experience.

After working with the Nintendo Wii and experiencing first hand the difficulties in developing for such a platform, I was utterly frustrated by the lack of support provided by both Nintendo and Adobe; there is NO support. Does Flash work on the Nintendo Wii? Yes. Does it work well? No. Were there a lot of problems? YES. Did Adobe fix those problems? Some, but only YEARS after Flash was available for the Wii. Are there still problems? Yes, absolutely.

Both parties are claiming how their platforms "should be considered" as open; which really isn't "open" at all. The goals of open standards are not the same as those for profit-generating businesses. It is currently not in Adobe's best profit-generating interests to fix their issues on the Nintendo Wii so the platform has been left broken. As a result, the developers are left to find web solutions for clients who have been assured by Nintendo and Apple that "Flash works on the Wii"; which it doesn't.

Do I want a similar fate for other mobile devices? Absolutely not.

Real-life gaming

In reference to my previous post about FourSquare and gaming, the presentation by Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, is an amazing explanation of what he sees in store for our future. It’s scary. It’s plausible. It’s eminent.

When advertisers watched the Spielberg movie “Minority Report”, everyone seemed to agree that the future is about over-advertising. I don’t agree. In the future, people will become so immune to ads that there is no value in producing passive advertisements which people will ultimately ignore.

The future is interactive ads where people are encouraged to "play"; Schell has got it scarily right.