Mobile technology as a whole is becoming more and more complex; allowing users to receive rich media content on devices such as mobile phones and PDA’s. Content is king right now in the Internet age and it is what drives people to use digital media to send and receive information.

Right now we are seeing a large push from software companies, like Macromedia, to get a standard for mobile devices to be able to deploy fast, eye catching content and to be able to develop such content rapidly and cheaply.

Macromedias solution is FlashLite, which is at version 2 right now. Details about the SDK and its uses can be found at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashlite/. It is based on Flash Player 7 and can be used to create beautiful custom UI’s, games, and has the ability to dispense dynamic media such as images, video and sound.

Before Macromedias push there was only one, Java’s J2ME http://java.sun.com/j2me/, which was the defacto standard for any mobile content. J2ME uses SVG and Java to create a vector based presentation. The problem with J2ME is that it does not yet have a user-friendly authoring environment, like flash, and that increases development times.

At this point Java is still in the lead, but it looks like in 2006 will be the year FlashLite starts making some competition out of the mobile development sector.

The reason for such competition is fully enabled mobile devices are going to be commonplace in our society within the next few years. The number of applications for such devices is increasing every year, whether it be web browsing, text messaging, share photos, playing games, email, etc. The list goes on and on.

There is however some problems with mobile right now. Ex Palm developer Ted Ladd wrote a very interesting and sceptical article about how mobile content has no real “value” right now, and proposes his thoughts on why, and where mobile content is going. You can find the article at http://www.brighthand.com/article/Failure_and_Future_of_Mobile_Content.

With all this said, it is still fun and interesting to think of the possibilities of what developers and designers can do with a mobile media. In enough time we may all be surfing the net while riding the bus, or watching a streaming telecast of Survivor on the train ride home from work.

Here are a few links to look at to see the latest in mobile devices and content.

http://www.mobileworld.org/

http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/

http://www.content-village.org/articles.asp?id=32

Web 2.0 is the transition from useless fluff on the web to useful and robust web applications that are poised to take over many desktop apps. Looks like the only problem with “Web 2.0″, and I do mean the saying, is that pretenders are going to latch on the soon to be popular and phrase and brand themselves as being Web 2.0, without knowing what it means.

In my opinion, one of the more interesting aspects of the Web 2.0 model is users control their own data. Blogs are the most prevalent example of personal data ownership, with millions of people sharing their ideas to tens of millions of people. Other examples of data ownership are wiki’s; which are basically websites that let users add and edit content, great for collaborative writing.

But really the question I want to know is that with the web recovering from the bust in 2000, will everyone jump on the Web 2.0 boat and sink it like just like Web 1.0?

Wikipedia says “Podcasting is a term coined in 2004 when the use of RSS syndication technologies became popular for distributing audio content for listening on mobile devices and personal computers. A podcast is a web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet for anyone to subscribe to.” more at Wikipedia

Podcasting is just the latest advancement in online communities, interaction and free speech. Podcasting allows anyone with one computer and a microphone to blast their personal expression all over the internet. All you as a content creator have to do is post a download to the audio/video file on the net, in the least. Podcasting is its best though when programmed into an RSS feed. RSS feeds allow audiences to subscribe to your podcast with an aggregator (an RSS aware program) that will automatically download the latest podcast that you release.

You can find podcasts all over the net, www.podcast.net is a good place start, with a massive directory of podcast entries; or hell, just grab the latest iTunes at http://www.apple.com/itunes/ which is an aggregator and browser. Pick it up and start listening.

Just so you know, this blog will be used to post assignments for my IMM course, and maybe I’ll rant a little aswell.

Anyway, lets see how this is all goes.