Adobe focusing on HTML5, ending mobile Flash Player dev
Posted Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 7:20 am by Jason Cartwright
Adobe announced overnight a major shift in direction for their mobile division.
Danny Winokur, Vice President & General Manager, Interactive Development at Adobe says:
Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices.
However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.
I find the timing of this change to be quite puzzling. Our mobile devices are now more powerful than ever, with dual core processors. This change seems more like a cost cutting method, rather than one built on solid technical grounds.
Given that there’s not a 1 to 1 replacement of features from Flash Mobile to HTML5, the decision is bizarre. While the majority of mobile Flash Player usage may have been as a video wrapper, which is solved by HTML5’s <video> tag, there’s a lot that isn’t. Developers will now need to develop Adobe AIR or compile to native apps for each platform. It seems premature in my mind, what do you think ?
The comments on the post have now been closed, it seems this decision is fairly controversial.
More @ Adobe
Why I switched to Telstra after 10 years on Optus
Posted Friday, October 21, 2011 at 5:53 pm by Jason Cartwright
The image above is a graphic illustration of mobile speeds available on Optus (left) vs Telstra (right) in Wodonga. I have complained repeatedly that Optus needs to fix their network here, with no result. After the network fell off a cliff around 12 months ago, I spoke to Optus only to be told the towers here were ‘congested’.
Naturally I enquired about when a new tower / new capacity would be added to remedy the problem. Optus were unable to commit to a date for the new mobile tower, explaining that naming a date would only result in disappointment should circumstances result in a delay.
After 12 months of discussing the issue with Optus I had enough and moved to Telstra’s superior NextG network with the iPhone 4S. After the issues experienced by Vodafone customers, I certainly wasn’t alone in the switch to Australia’s largest telco.
Speed tests had progressively gotten worse as congestion increased and business traffic was prioritised over consumers. The net result was that Optus’ network was so bad that upload speeds were so bad that posting a picture to Facebook often failed. To exacerbate the situation, I actually had to go outside my house to make a phone call – ridiculous in 2011.
The breaking point was this weeks Tech Knowledge segment on 105.7 The River that I do each week at 7:10am on Wednesdays. Despite being outside, the presenters Kev Poulton and Luisa Pelizzari couldn’t even hear me, which is completely unacceptable !
Optus, fix your damn network! Your new customer guarantees are cute, but if you were actually proud of your network investment and capacity, then you’d open the offer to existing customers as well.
The image above indicates the Speed Test results for West Wodonga on Optus vs Telstra. Optus managed 98ms Ping, 0.60 Mbps, Upload 0.27 Mbps, while Telstra slaughtered it with a slightly higher 204ms Ping but 3.59Mbps download and 2.19 Mbps Upload. Flawless Victory !
Goodbye Optus, nice to know you, but your horrible service has caused me to move to Telstra.
Australia’s first 4G network goes live today ! Telstra 4G LTE.
Posted Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 8:06 am by Jason Cartwright
Australia’s first 4G services go live to consumers today ! Australia’s largest mobile network provider Telstra aren’t happy just leading the speed game with Next G, instead taking Australians to the next generation of wireless technology. Hey 4G is one more than 3G, so it must be better right ?
Last week we reported that Telstra was bringing out internet celebrity Rebecca Black, turns out it was for the launch of 4G. Black isn’t the only internet celeb to get the invite, Dancing Matt and the guy behind Evolution of Dance are also on the list. If your confused about the association, it’s all to do with the speeds and applications possible on 4G. With the increased mobile data speeds, even a HD YouTube video is no problem. The ‘stars’ are performing in Sydney today.
Download speeds available on Telstra’s 4G network will be up to 40 Mbps.
Uploads is where it gets even more interesting. 4G allows uploading up to three times faster. Telstra say you can upload a 10mb PowerPoint presentation in under 15 seconds. After struggling to even upload a single photo to Facebook on Optus, I can’t wait till 4G is available in Albury Wodonga.
4G coverage is initially available in all capital CBD’s, associated airports and selected regional locations with our new 4G USB.
Telstra 4G LTE services won’t be available Australia-wide at launch, so to check if you get the ultra-fast speed on the go, check out the coverage checker – http://telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/coverage/broadband.html
While you may not have a 4G mobile yet, you can pickup a 4G USB dongle
More information @ http://www.telstra.com.au/latest_offers/4gfun/
WP7 finally gets a good Australian TV Guide app – QTV
Posted Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 11:24 am by Jason Cartwright
While Microsoft may have 11,500 apps, one of the stark differences WP7 and iOS is the ability to find apps for the common experiences we expect. Competition in this space is very limited, so its great to see TV buffs finally get a great TV Guide app for WP7 called QTV. After installing the app, setup is a breeze, simply select the ‘Package’ or location and the channels available in your area are pre-selected. Naturally you can customise this list to only show your favourites.
Launching the app loads the current list of shows across all channels, giving you a single list view of everything. A quick swipe up and you’ll see what’s coming up for the rest of the day. Each entry provides the name of the program, channel, time and duration, pretty much everything you need.
The app also features the ability to set Reminders for your favourite shows. Just find your show, either in the list or by searching, then press Get Reminder. These come in the form of a push Notification as your the show is about to begin so you don’t miss a thing. Also in QTV’s bag o’tricks is the ability to find shows (use the in-app search) via category, cast member or an A-Z list of program names.
Another use for the app is to find out every time your favourite show is on. To get to the showings screen, find your favourite show, then swipe to the left twice. The first time will show you which categories your show is in, Arts and Living, Family, Comedy etc, the second swipe will get you to the showings page.
Over all its a fantastic TV guide, certainly the best I’ve seen on WP7 and even better than a lot of iOS options. Unlike some other WP7 applications, this one performs really well with load and resume times and that’s pre-NoDo.
The app is available in the WP7 Marketplace now for free and supports both Free-To-Air and Pay TV.
More info @ http://www.quidsmobile.com/qtv/
How long is an acceptable wait to get connected?
Posted Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 11:23 am by Jack Cola
We all have a mobile phones, we all use the internet, whether it being wireless or fixed line and most of have a landline phone; but getting these services connected can sometimes be a little bit of a hassle.
Almost one and a half years ago, I moved interstate, which means, I need to get the landline and internet connected. Because where I previously lived, Bigpond was pretty much the only option, I now had access to a wide variety of ISP’s. So I narrowed it down to two ISP – Optus and iiNet. My main criteria where cheap/free phone calls, and a reasonable amount of internet quota.
Optus offered me $129/month, free landline & mobile calls with 30GB internet and iiNet offered $70/month with Naked DSL, free landline calls and 50GB quota. I originally chose Optus, thinking they where offering a traditional landline (not VOIP) so I could use a fax machine (and plus there number was cool it had six 8’s in it). So I went online to order to get their 3 months free access. However, they couldn’t find my house, and I was to call them. Anyway, I put the order through, a few days later; they called me up (was a nice bloke) saying you have to pay $300 to put a line to my house. I said to them, there is an Optus line going to my house – I can see it. They said, sorry, there isn’t one. So I went to iiNet, put through the order and they rang me up, and they too said, you have to pay $300 to put a phone line to your house. I said the same thing. There is a power line, a Telstra line and an Optus Cable line. So both of us did some investigation and troubleshooting to see what the problem is.
A couple of days later, one of our friends said, “you know the suburb you live in was originally called this, not that”. “Oh”. I rang up iiNet, gave them the suburb other suburb name; and look, they can see a line to the house.
So, the order went through, I got Naked DSL with iiNet and the BoB modem. 10 days later I got connected, but didn’t receive my modem. BoB came a little later on, but didn’t come with a handset. In the end, it took at least 2 months to get the internet connected after going through both Optus and iiNet.
This week, I signed my mum up to a post-paid plan with Virgin Mobile. I ordered online to get the 3 months free access on Thursday. Put the order through, and got the phone on Tuesday. However, I cannot activate because Virgin Mobile is coincidently updating their systems and they’re offline – 24 hours over their original ETA it’s still offline, so therefore, I cannot activate the service. As I mentioned in my Blog, I went down to All Phone, purchased a phone there and then and it worked within a few hours, not 6+ days I have been waiting because I ordered it online.
So my question is to everyone, how long do you think an acceptable time frame to get connected? Is 2 months to long for internet; is 6 days to long for a mobile? Let me know.
Image Credit: Freeview & Virgin Mobile
Telstra revamp consumer data caps, massive increases
Posted Monday, November 22, 2010 at 8:54 pm by Jason Cartwright
Today Telstra continued its march into competitiveness with a revamp of its mobile data caps. These changes only affect consumer plans, but are available to new and existing customers. Some deals seen the download cap increase by 500%, making for a very competitive offering. No longer are Telstra going for the ‘premium price on a premium network’ model, but rather great prices to get as many customers as they can. After strong competition in this space, the choice to change tact was inevitable if Telstra wanted to stop customers form jumping ship.
While the headline of the blog post announcing the new caps was related to using more social networking, the fact is that more data can be used in any way you like. As commenters point out, its still important to make sure you don’t use more than your allocated amount to avoid overage fees.
Pay as you go
Cap plans
As you can see from the tables above, the entry level changes increase data limits from 200MB to 1GB, that’s a 5x increase. This also means the pay as you go plan be reduced to $10 per GB.
More @ Telstra
