An AIR app designed for Mobile Devices (UMPC)
Over the last year, I have had many conversations about Adobe AIR and it’s viability as a platform for developing applications for mobile devices. It has always been stated in the AIR FAQ, that this is in the roadmap for AIR.
At Adobe MAX 2007, Gabor Vida and myself did 2 presentations focused on the concept of the “Circle of Engagement”. These presentations were focused on developing applications for a web service, that are available to end-users on as many platforms as possible, crossing the desktop, the web browser, mobile devices, the living room,etc.
We spoke to some people from Intel at MAX that were very interested in the concept. They are working with UMPCs (mini handheld computers), and wanted us to put together a cool AIR app, that would be particularly compelling on these devices.
So we set off to build a sample application that we call Teknision Media Junction. Currently it is comprised of a music app and a video app and it is designed for touch screen input.
The music app is another implementation of the Finetune Player, and the video app is a modification of the Media Widget we designed for Adobe, in the Flex sample apps.
The app turned out great, and looks awesome on the devices. Intel is showing this in their booth at the CES tradeshow over the next week.
If you would like to play with Media Junction, you can download it here (it runs on Adobe AIR, you will need to install it if you do not yet have it installed):
Download Teknision Media Junction
Very cool. Thanks for sharing. By the way were there any difficulties in developing the AIR app for the UMPC or was it pretty straightforward?
Best,
Bill
Well, true to the AIR creed, it was exactly like creating any other AIR app. However, the is an obvious difference in form factor, as the screen is smaller and accepts touch screen input.
The good coversation to have next is the form factor one. AIR is a great runtime to target to develop cross-platform apps, but it does not provide any mechanism to help that application be universally usable across platform when it comes to form factor. This challenge could potentially be the big next issue for Adobe to tackle with Fex and AIR.
Nice. Now I don’t have to be teased by your twitters.
Wow thats sweet man!! Whats the performance like on the device? Can we see a little video?
Well done.
[...] Tony tells us about some of the applications they were involved with at CES. They worked on an application with Intel on ultra mobile computers (UMPCs). Tony said a lot of these UMPCs run Windows or Linux, so they’re meant to be full blown operating systems. Intel approached Teknision to create an application that would be intuitive and fun on those small form factors. They took Finetune and the AIR runtime to create a UMPC application on the new Intel devices. [...]