I had the pleasure of taking James' Introduction to Flash last summer at the Rich Media Institute . It was a great class, only ten three hour sessions but it gave me an excellent grounding in the basics of ActionScript programming and an astute student would complete the program with an excellent set of tools. The key to success in Action Script being, I think, the same as the key to learning any language - "speak it every day." Well, I was lucky enough to land a job as a project manager where I worked from about 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. every day. I don't think I could have learned Pig Latin but, somehow, I absorbed something from James' class by osmosis.
James is something of a Renaissance man. That is, if it's cutting edge and it's interactive, he's doing it. Founding partner of Echo Media and formerly with Marble Media as well as a member of the board of Flashinto and a speaker on mobile technology at all sorts of places around the world. You get the idea. James is there.
James spoke to us about QR codes, a technology that's popular in Japan but more or less non-existent here. QR codes are a nice way to read URLs with your phone but the current cost of mobile internet in Canada makes this - and many other mobile technologies - irrelevant to our domestic market.
The iPhone is changing that.
James is currently programming the iPhone.
iPhones come with data plans that make connecting to the internet while away from your laptop and home computer more or less affordable. And fun. I don't have an iPhone but my friend, Tom Rasky, does. We walked down the the street the other day, his iPhone in hand and our eyes cast downward to its screen instead of looking around at the lovely evening that surrounded us. No problem, though. We watched the little point of light on his iPhone move along Google Maps as we walked down the street. We knew exactly where were were.
Tom is writing for the iPhone too.
Anyone can get the SDK for the iPhone and it has two parts - a GUI and a code interface. The language, "Objective C," gives the developer access to all of the phone's hardware - camera, internet, mail, movement, gps and more. It's not ECMA based which means that its syntax is different from Flash or Java. When asked what it is like to use, James said that it has kept him up for more than a few nights.
To actually sell applications your work must be approved by Apple and they must approve your app. Then you can only sell it on iTunes. Apple takes a big cut.
Here's what interested me most, though James mentioned it only as a aside.
James mentioned an application that might just be in a conceptual phase. To use it, walk down the street, holding your iPhone camera at the passing scene. As the phone scans the images, it looks for logos and when it finds a logo that it recognizes a bubble pops up with info on that brand.
While I can do without the advertising, I love the idea of a mobile device that can pick things out of the real world and expand on them. There is an existing iPhone ap that works like that with music. It's called Shazam. You can find it at the iTunes store (D'oh!). Here's how it works: You hear music. You let your iPhone hear it. Then just like magic your iPhone tells you what it is. You can buy the music from Apple.
I love the idea of being able to point my phone at things and find out more about them.
Getting back to James' presentation. QR codes have been pasted in interesting places. You point your phone at the QR code and, Shazam!, your phone tells you about it. Great for a walking tour of New York.
a QR code:
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