The Kindle Fire could be the first truly successful Android tablet. It touts a very reasonable $200 price tag, a well-curated app store, easy access to Amazon’s cloud-based services, brand trust and recognition.
One of the reasons why I guess it can be a success is because the failing point of many existing 7-inch tablets as that they thought of the iPad as their competition the Kindle Fire instead has embraced a different way.

The device is an Android device and it supports Gingerbread, rather than Honeycomb, Android’s tablet-specific build.

The main features of this new devices are

• Stunning Color Touchscreen
• Magazines in Rich Color
• 100,000 Movies and TV Shows
• Fast Dual-Core Processor
• Ultra-fast web browsing – Amazon Silk (Yet another browser!)
• Children’s Books
• Free Cloud Storage

As you can see the Kindle Fire is a device created for content consumption, not creation — for reading, listening to music and watching video and even more it doesn’t need to have big storage capabilities due to the fact that is uses the Amazon Clouds.
The expectations are that this device will finally give developers a reason to develop tablet apps for Android due to the audience (i.e. the Amazon’s users) that is so big and to the device that is pretty.

Amazon has several advantages over other tablet manufacturers that have tried to compete with Apple. It has an established, built-in audience of loyal customers, whether of the Kindle, its e-books or the wide range of retail goods it sells. All of these give Amazon better brand recognition and loyalty than any comparable manufacturer except perhaps Apple, at least in the United States.
Amazon also deals in a wide range of other media perfectly suited for tablets, including video, magazines, games and apps. It’s customizing Android and its Appstore specifically for its own tablet hardware, potentially solving the fragmentation problem that’s plagued Android on smartphones and tablets.
Finally, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color showed that customers do want smaller tablets if they can deliver quality media at a low price. Even Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad death-and-resurrection debacle shows that there’s pent-up demand for a multi-function tablet that’s much less expensive than the iPad.

As soon as the first devices will be shipped the users reaction will make the fortune or the ruin of this device, I strongly believe it can be the first valid alternative to the iPad.

Adobe is launching today Adobe Mobile Challenge, a competition that gives you and your members a chance to win a ticket to MAX.

What’s it all about:
1.  Develop a mobile AIR application using a pure AS3 project or the Flex framework. It can be a game, a productivity application, a lifestyle app, an artistic experience… any kind of engaging application.
2.  package and publish your applications on the three leading marketplaces before the 1st of September: the Android marketplace, the Apple Store, the BlackBerry AppWorld.
3.  Register for the competition and win a trip to MAX.

In order to start in the right way the Adobe Mobile Challenge web site contains a list of tutorials from which you can start to build you mobile application.

The official rules are available here , the deadline for all the submissions is the 1st of September 2011.

More details on the competition here: http://www.adobemobilechallenge.com/

The Nook Color is a color version of the Nook e-reader device by Barnes & Noble. It is a 7-inch tablet with full-color multitouch touchscreen input.The device is designed for full-color viewing of books, newspapers, magazines, and children’s picture books. A limited number of the children’s books available for the Nook Color include interactive animations and the option to have a professional voice actor read the story. It was announced on 26 October 2010 and shipped on 16 November 2010.

One of the most popular games today, Angry Birds, made its way on to the NOOK Color in April when the tab received the awesome 1.2 firmware upgrade. Angry Birds gets even better now with the “Magic Places” concept that unlocks new content (for free) in the game based on players’ location. Barnes & Noble’s Android device is the first to bring this feature to customers via its WiFi network in-store.

Barnes and Noble has a dedicated NOOK Developer Program where Android, Adobe Flash and AIR developers can go for information on how to create applications for the product. In addition the program has a NOOK Software Development Kit (SDK) for helping in the building of applications for the NOOK Color.
Developers can create Android applications compatible with Froyo Release (2.2) API 8 and also Adobe Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.6 content as the latest release (v1.2) supports these features.

Nearly 2 million apps have been downloaded by NOOK Color customers in the weeks following the launch of NOOK Apps and they’re asking for more.
A very interesting event has been published today the NOOK APPS TECHNICAL WORKSHOP FOR ADOBE AIR, it will take place Thursday, July 14 at San Francisco, more info available here.

Today delivered an update to Adobe® Flash® Builder® 4.5 and Flex 4.5 software to enable developers to build applications for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook. Support for Android devices was released in April 2011. Developers now have a single platform for building highly expressive mobile applications that can be distributed via the Android Market, Apple App Store and BlackBerry App World. Offered standalone or as part of Creative Suite® 5.5 Web Premium and Master Collection, Flash Builder 4.5 enables the creation of applications that work seamlessly across leading mobile device platforms.

To download or trial Flash Builder 4.5, please go to www.adobe.com/products/flash-builder.html. Street price is US$249 for Flash Builder 4.5 Standard, US$699 for Flash Builder 4.5 Premium. Flash Builder 4.5 Premium is also available as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium and Master Collection. Upgrade pricing for Flash Builder 4.5 is $49 and volume licensing is available. Flex 4.5 is available as a free open source framework. Also, Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP today supports mobile application development for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS.

Some useful links

Hello World and mobile applications
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash-builder/articles/hello-world.html

Build iOS applications with Flash Builder 4.5
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/build-ios-applications-using-flex-and-flash-builder-45/

MuniTracker app for Android and iOS
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/munitracker-app-for-android-and-ios-built-with-flash-builder/

Mobile mapping app with the ARCGis API
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash-builder/articles/mobile-mapping-app-arcgis.html

In the past days the mobile developers community got the announcement about a new partnership between Nokia and Microsoft that would use their complementary strengths and expertise to create a new global mobile ecosystem.
The main aspects of this strategic partnership from a developer point of view are that Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as its principal smartphone strategy and that Nokia would help drive the future of Windows Phone contributing
to it with its expertise on hardware design, language support, etc. On the other side Microsoft will bring a consistent expertise about Operating Systems and a good toolbox full of development tools.

There are a lot of developers that believe this step is a very desperate move to stay in business and admitting that Nokia isn’t in any way capable of creating an attractive smartphone eco-system, moreover there is a general
sense of frustration between the ones that has invested a lot of time and money following the Nokia strategies and created products for the Nokia platform.
The feeling we have about this partnership are different, we believe the decision was not because of today, was because of Nokia in the next years. What we see right now on the market is that Blackberry is consolidating a partnership
with Adobe for the new playbook, google is working in the same direction to improve even more their app market place and the Apple is quite solid and is trying to became a mobile operator.
Create a strong relationship with a company like Microsoft doesn’t seem a bad solution also because Nokia demonstrated more than once to trust and support the developer community so it’s still possible to have a Qt porting (I don´t
know what Microsoft thinks about it) and to force Microsoft to include some of the Nokia-related tools up to today (Flash Player at least).

Some years ago the Flash Platform developers community have had the same feeling about Adobe and Macromedia. Adobe did one great marketing effort to demonstrate it was a marriage, right now most of the developers are happy about the marriage
but not all of them.
It’s too early to get the right feeling, again it’s something that is up to the high level management, the important is that there is the need for clarity about tools and developers program like Forum Nokia, after we got some clarifications we will be able to follow up and state if it’s a funeral or a marriage.

Research In Motion® have just released an updated version of the BlackBerry® Tablet OS simulator, which embeds the full BlackBerry Browser. With this updated simulator, the web development community can now start testing their web applications and Adobe Flash applications to ensure that they fully support the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet at launch.

As a web developer, there are a couple of items you should know about the BlackBerry Browser running on the BlackBerry Tablet OS:

1) The User Agent will continue to match the current User Agent pattern that we use with our smartphone products.

2) The browser builds on the existing support for web standards such as HTML5 for BlackBerry by adding support for HTML5 Video and Audio, based on the power and flexibility of the underlying BlackBerry Tablet OS. The simulator does not support all codecs and some audio/video testing will require hardware to fully test. The browser supports Adobe Flash 10.1, and Adobe Flash developers will be able to test the Adobe Flash player in the simulator.

It really seems that this new upcoming device will be strictly related to Flash because RIM officially said “We will continue to work closely with Adobe to enhance Adobe Flash implementation as we lead up to launch, and we appreciate feedback from the community on your experiences with the Adobe Flash player and browsing experience overall“. A device like this one can be really a competitor of the iPad especially because people will be free to get the amazing content and application built upon the Flash Platform.

You can download the simulator here.

Hewlett-Packard is expected to soon introduce a tablet running WebOS. WebOS was HP’s “strategic reason” for its $1.2 billion purchase of smartphone maker Palm in mid-2010.
One of the advantages of WebOS that is briefly highlighted in the training is the platform’s ability to run on multiple devices that can easily communicate with each other over the Internet.
Few days ago HP announced that the 9th of February the new Tablet running over WebOS will be presented, there is a lot of interest and buzz around this event especially because
the new tablet’s picture seems very similar to the iPad.
There’s a set of speakers, front-facing camera, and a micro-USB port, which will no doubt handle the charging and file transfer duties.
But the one place where this tablet sets itself apart is where it counts most: The OS.

Let’s see which other news will reach us in the next days.

Jailbreaking your iPhone or other mobile device will no longer violate federal copyright law, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled Monday.

The decision, part of a process that takes place every three years, said that bypassing a manufacturer’s protection mechanisms to allow “handsets to execute software applications” is permissible. The Copyright Office also allowed bypassing the anticopying technology used in DVDs, but only for “documentary filmmaking,” noncommercial videos, and educational uses–a ruling that stopped short of allowing Americans to legally make a backup copy for their own use, in case the original DVD gets damaged. It also doesn’t apply to making backup copies of video game discs or Blu-ray discs. Now it’s the time to wait and see what will happen in the future also to the Packager for iPhone created by Adobe because this “decision” probably will change something also at Apple and some restrictions can start to be removed.

Here is a good article for those that havn’t seen it from which you can get the point of view of Adobe http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/…Apple-or-the-iPad.html.

Nokia continues to invite developers to apply to the Open Screen Project Fund to get money to create mobile apps and distribute them in more than 190 countries worldwide via Nokia’s Ovi Store.

For more information, or if you know someone that should submit an idea for an app, please visit:http://www.openscreenproject.org/developers/get_started.html

Nokia just announced the top 10 finalists for the Ovi app wizard prize category in the Calling All Innovator 2010 competition. All submissions were reviewed based on the following judging criteria: Innovativeness of the apps, Cumulative number of downloads on July 15th, Quality of your marketing materials.

Here the top 10 finalists for the Ovi app wizard prize category:

• Alessandro Pace: FlashLite4Nokia
• Dale Rankine: Toy Tragic
• Hany Gohary: GoNintendo
• Chintan Umraliya: MobApps.org
• Steve Litchfield: The Phones Show
• Oscar Iñiguez de la Torre Bernabeu: PickUp Lines
• Nur Nachman Eytan: Purple Cookie
• Jussi Soro: DJ Jussi Soro Application
• David Adhira: What Miami
• Jean-Francois Barsoum: Skeptical Science

A big congrats to all the finalists! …and GOOD LUCK!