Adobe have announced Adobe AIR is now ready to support mobile platforms such as BlackBerry. AIR leverages specific features of Flash Player 10.1, and is optimized for mobile screens. Also part of the announcement is that Adobe Flash 10.1 was made available to content providers and mobile developers worldwide, with general availability expected in the first half of 2010.
AIR supports all the necessary features for developers to make great applications. AIR includes specific functionality for features such as multitouch, gesture inputs, accelerometer, geolocation and screen orientation. Adobe hopes this will allow developers to create a single app using AIR which will be able to run on multiple platforms. While the announcement has some large implications for mobile and BlackBerry, we may not see the first apps until later this year.
The BOLT browser has been updated to version 1.7 and it now features widgets, keyboard shortcuts, Twitter integration, Russian and Spanish language support as well an enhanced download manager and increased support for streaming video.
Although BOLT can run web-based apps that use Ajax and Javascript, such as the Facebook game Mafia Wars, widgets allow the browser to run self-contained Web apps that run directly from within BOLT. These web apps load and execute faster than website-based applications. BOLT users can discover, select and install specific Web apps through a BOLT Widget Gallery. BOLT’s widgets are written as standard W3C widgets, a standard with broad industry support.
7Digital have announced that their app is now fully integrated with Last.fm. Users can now link their Last.fm account to 7digital’s BlackBerry App, allowing them to scrobble played tracks from their mobile. The ‘Now Playing’ status is also updated on a user’s Last.fm profile. Also part of the news, 7Digital is now available in the Netherlands and across 15 new European countries.
Other and more specific updates include:
Enhanced 7digital store artist search
Support for the BlackBerry Curve 8350i smartphone
Netherlands store support and localisation with local artist tracks and albums
Additional country access for 15 European countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia.
Media card encryption support.
Improved My Locker refresh performance.
Download greater volumes of data through improved carrier network support.
The above video is a quick demonstration of Celio’s Redfly smartphone dock and a BlackBerry. The dock replicates your smartphone screen on a monitor, allowing you to use it as a desktop. I’ve heard these units sell really well in the military, where smartphones are often used in lieu of laptops.
Got a Blackberry, but can’t get your Buzz on? Well there is a work-around. The trick is to not use the native Blackberry browser. Instead, use either Opera Mini (I’m using v5 beta 2) or the latest Bolt release as they both handle the javascript correctly. Previously, when you attempted to open the site from a non-supported platform, Google would simply notify and there was nothing more that could be done. At the bottom of the alert, Google now offers an option to ‘Continue on an unsupported device.’ Try it from the native browser and you won’t see much as it can’t handle the javascript and rendering properly. However, use Opera or Bolt and you’re good to go. Assuming you have either of those (2) browsers installed, here are the steps:
1. Navigate to https://m.google.com/app/buzz
2. Click on ‘Continue on an unsupported device’
3. Click on ‘Menu’ in upper left corner.
4. Login using normal Google credentials
5. Follow me on Buzz to test it out.
True, location features will not be working until we get a native Blackberry app, but I suspect we’ll see one soon enough.
