adobe

Playyoo, the mobile games community where mobile game players and game creators meet to freely exchange mobile games, is seeking to hire a Web/Flex/Flash Engineer for the development of its social mobile games platform (m.playyoo.com and www.playyoo.com).
In a young and dynamic environment, the successful candidate will work on a highly creative and challenging project where her/his contribution can influence the overall company’s success.
The candidate must have a proven track experience working as Web/Flex/Flash engineer on complex Internet solutions in multitier and/or mobile architectures.

Job description
As a Web/Flex/Flash Engineer you will work in a team to develop and provide technically advanced (mobile) Internet solutions at the cutting edge of technology.
Qualification
·         Knowledge Flash (8 and CS3), Flash Lite, Flex and Actionscript (2 and 3)
·         Strong HTML design & coding, JavaScript, XHTML, XML, AJAX, CSS (JSP, Facelets, JSF, Struts 2.0 are a plus)
·         Experience with Flash XML and Flash Remoting, SWF 2 Image, Flasm and SWF Tools
·         Extensive experience with integration with back-end servers
·         Working knowledge of creative media tools such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator
We appreciate
·         Experience in rich internet applications based on J2EE technology (Java Beans technology)
·         Knowledge of the Granite and Flagstone software libraries
·         Experience in using the Glassfish application server
·         Experience in using the PostgreSQL ORDBMS
·         Experience in using ImageMagick library
·         Experience in developing with the NetBeans IDE
Other skills
·         Ability to work in heterogeneous teams
·         Expertise to take initiatives and decisions and to shoulder the responsibility

Playyoo SA is based in the city of Lugano, in the Italian speaking canton of Ticino, in Switzerland. The location offers an excellent quality of life, less than an hour away both from the Swiss Alps and the city of Milan.
For the successful candidate Playyoo SA will manage all the local requirements for the issuing of the required work permits as well as assist with relocation requirements.
For further information on this position or to submit applications please contact ivan.stefanini@playyoo.com.

As Mark Doherty mentions on his blog, nominations for the Adobe MAX Awards 2008 are now open.

I’m not trying to canvas for support or anything, but if you happened to want to nominate your favorite Adobe Flash Lite and Flex-powered mobile games community site, well, I wouldn’t stand in your way

Playyoo members Carlos “Naz” Nazareno and Joseph Cunanana, collectively known as Zen Graffiti Studios, have recently uploaded their game “iPhone Mania” to Playyoo. Taking its cue from the labyrinthine and, initially at least, hopelessly unsuccessful in-store iPhone activation process, iPhone Mania puts you in the role of an Apple Store clerk with a queue of irate customers and only a minute and a half until closing time.

If nothing else, ironically iPhone Mania is a pretty good test for the usability of phone keypads!

I’ll let Naz explain some of his thinking and frustrations about the iPhone:

It seems that everything that Steve Jobs touches turns to gold these days. With his Midas touch and the legions of loyal fans from the cult of Steve, the iPhone 3G has been selling faster than pancakes.

Despite the lack of basic features such as copying and pasting, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and video recording, people have still been flocking to the iPhone in droves.

What’s also curious is that despite the iPhone’s miniscule 10million units per year sales as compared to Nokia’s sales of 1.34million units per day, tech news and developer buzz has never been so high. This becomes even more strange considering that Apple has been actively making it hard for developers to create apps for the iPhone by becoming such a finicky gatekeeper.

Still, the big question on everyone’s mind is:

Why doesn’t the iPhone support Flash?

Please allow Adobe to put Flash on the iPhone, Steve! You know that everyone wants it, and allowing it on the iPhone certainly won’t hurt sales.

Browsing Flash websites aside, how can people play such wonderful Flash games as these on the iPhone if the iPhone doesn’t support Flash? Give us our games, Steve!

Flash on the iPhone 3G: we want it, and we want it now!

We’re certainly neither anti-iPhone nor anti-Apple here at Playyoo, although personally I find the iPhone 3G too big to be a practical mobile phone. But certainly I share Naz’s disappointment that such an attractive piece of hardware is effectively crippled by an unimaginative and over-restrictive application policy. It certainly is the case that an unrestricted platform is potentially at risk from misbehaving or malevolent 3rd party applications, and I would also agree that it is necessary to be extra vigilant in the mobile world. But come on - how many reports are there of, say, Nokia S60 phones, being bricked by bad applications ? And for that matter, how often does the “inherent security” of Mac OS X get rammed down our throats ?

It is difficult to see that the iPhone Application Store policy is about anything other than money really. And over-pricing always has been Steve Jobs’ Achilles heel.

Adobe has announced its “Open Screen Project” aimed at ensuring a consistent rich internet experience across a broad range of digital screens including mobile devices. Part of this announcement reveals that licensing fees for Flash will be removed in the next major releases. Adobe expects this to cut a year off it’s previous forecasts to get Flash Lite penetration to one billion devices, now by 2009 instead of 2010.

According to my calendar 2009 is next year……

Adobe has announced the alignment of the company’s operations for personal computers (PCs), mobile handsets and consumer devices. In support of this strategy, the Mobile and Devices Business Unit (MDBU) is joining Adobe’s Experience and Technology group. This can only be a good thing for Flash Lite.

Meanwhile, in the continuing story of iPhone Flash (non)support the WSJ has reported on a conference call between investors and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen in which Narayen said his company is finally working on a media player for Apple’s iPhone. Adobe has been working on Apple’s software developer tools since they were released last month. The tools will let Adobe build a Flash player for the iPhone, then distribute it through Apple’s iTunes online store.