Hasta La Gadget!

The BlackBerry PlayBook, which launched April 19, supports Adobe Flash. (Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

It’s no secret: Adobe wants to see Flash everywhere. The company wants everyone to write programs with Flash, and for all customers to rely on Flash for their software needs.

With a set of new tools launched this week, the company continues to make an aggressive push in that direction — though it may have a tough time convincing developers to buy into its vision of a Flash utopia.

Monday’s release of two software tools for mobile developers, Adobe Flash Builder and Adobe Flex 4.5, creates a single platform programmers can use to make applications that work across three major mobile platforms: Android, iOS and the BlackBerry PlayBook.

Both of these tools allow a developer to write software in Adobe Flash, then automatically recompile their creations into native apps that can be sold on three major mobile platforms.

According to Matthew Fabb, senior mobile developer at StickerYou.com, cross-platform tools like Adobe’s, and another popular one called PhoneGap, serve a need.

“Companies want to reduce their costs in creating mobile apps across platforms, rather than making them all natively,” Fabb says. “I know some companies have outsourced a lot of their mobile development,” he says, as a result of needing external talent to handle code with which in-house developers may not be as familiar.

But such tools come with their own set of problems. Some critics say using tools like these result in decreased performance, compatibility problems and generally mediocre software. So, as convenient as the idea of “write once, run anywhere” sounds, it’s just not that simple.

Poor performance is the most often-cited problem with cross-platform development tools.

When you create an application using code that’s not native to the device you’re targeting, the authoring software you’re using sometimes needs to tack on an additional layer of code called a runtime. The runtime enables the device to interact with your non-native code, but a common side-effect is a more sluggish app.

“Generally, the additional runtime is a performance hit, and it’s another layer to worry about,” says Mike Novak, Android engineer for Group.me. “I prefer native environments for the lack of a middle man.”

Also, cross-platform tools may miss some of the intricacies of each mobile OS, says mobile developer James Eberhardt.

“The biggest complaint that I have with third-party tools like these is that they’re focused on lowest common denominator features,” Eberhardt says. “The iOS SDK has a feature that allows in-app purchases, while some of the third-party tools don’t support that.”

Problems with performance and compatibility aside, Adobe has been pushing to get its software on all mobile platforms, especially the iPhone. In 2010, Adobe added the ability to create Flash apps for iOS in its Creative Suite 5 Professional software.

The company trumpets the fact that its software helps developers get their creations into multiple app marketplaces more quickly.

“If you’re deploying a mobile app, you want to reach every one of your customers on whatever device they’re on,” Greg DeMichillie, director of product management for Flash Platform tools at Adobe, tells Wired.com. For companies building everything in native code, that can take “up to three times longer to bring the apps to market,” according to DeMichillie.

Flash, along with the companion technology AIR, has long been Adobe’s flagship cross-platform environment for application development, but Adobe has struggled to implement the software consistently across different computing platforms. Most famously, Apple CEO Steve Jobs blamed Flash for frequent crashing and battery drain on Macs, and he says similar limitations have kept Apple from supporting Flash on its iOS platform entirely. On other smartphones and tablets, Adobe continues to face challenges in getting the technology to work consistently across different devices, including Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet, which runs QNX and the Motorola Xoom tablet, which runs Android.

There’s also an entirely different snag that’s tied to device compatibility: Each class of devices has its own app store.

Unlike the centralized marketplaces like Apple’s App Store and the Android Market, there isn’t an efficient app distribution channel for applications built in Flash or AIR.

“For small guys peddling smaller web apps or services it’s a lot harder,” says Phillip Ryu, developer of the best-selling iOS game The Heist. “And there aren’t many turnkey monetization services or effective sales channels to just tap into.”

This is the problem Adobe’s new tools are effectively trying to solve, by giving Flash developers an easier way to get their creations into the multiple app marketplaces rather than rely on ad hoc distribution.

Another issue: Adobe may not be able to keep up with continuous feature updates from the different mobile platforms. Android, for instance, currently maintains a six-month release cycle, on average. Just like hardware manufacturers struggling to keep up with the platform developers, Adobe may not be able to keep its tools updated at the same pace.

That’s a non-issue for native coders. “If you go right to the source you’ll always have the option to be cutting edge,” says Group.me’s Mike Novak.

Developer James Eberhardt echoes this sentiment.

“It doesn’t matter how good the technology is,” he says. “If it doesn’t support some of these important features, it’s dead in the water.”

See Also:

Despite being able to write level, I still manage to run out of space at the end of the line

Wacom, the graphics tablet company, has launched a drawing and note-taking app for the iPad. Called Bamboo Paper after its Bamboo line of styluses, the app is both simple and good.

Bamboo Paper follows the excellent Penultimate in its simple approach. You get little more than a sheet of virtual paper on which to scrawl your doodles and letters. Ink choice is limited to six colors, nib thicknesses to just three. You also get an eraser, undo and redo and a bookmark function. This last appears to do little more than put a marker in the corner of the page.

And that’s about it. You only get one notebook, and–compared to Penultimate– the range of paper styles is very limited. But Bamboo Paper has it where it counts: the handwriting engine.

Few apps come close to Penultimate’s ink engine (NoteShelf is one notable exception). But Wacom’s might actually be better. The feel of the “ink” appearing under your stylus tip as you write is very natural, and if you flick the tip (or your finger) quickly, the line feathers to nothing, just as it would with a felt-tip pen or a brush.

Wacom also seems to have cracked the problem of the wayward wrist. The iPad’s multi-touch screen is great until it mistakes your wrist, or at least the meat of your little finger and hand, as a writing device.

The usual way around this is for an app to provide a “wrist-guard” which you pull up to electronically mask off an area of the screen. Bamboo Paper doesn’t do this, but it doesn’t get confused, either. This is particularly ironic as my actual Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet fails so completely in this regard that I can’t use it.

Two other features that Penultimate lacks are pinch-to-zoom (and the related drag with two fingers to pan), and a long press to bring up the pen controls under your finger.

You’ll have to decide which is best for you. I have moved onto NoteShelf for its close-up abilities, but Bamboo Paper might be a candidate to replace it.

Bamboo Paper [iTunes]

See Also:

• Wacom Stylus for iPad Is Not What You're Hoping For
• Wacom Bamboo Tablet To Make Mincemeat of Mice?
• PenMoto Magnetic Ring Makes Pens, Styluses Way More Useful …
• Fingers-On With The Chunky Alupen iPad Stylus

Desire owners who believed HTC’s promise to bring Gingerbread to the handset can stop waiting now

[UPDATE: HTC has now changed its mind again. A new Facebook post reads “Contrary to what we said earlier, we are going to bring Gingerbread to HTC Desire.” ]

Those who bought the HTC Desire because of a promised future upgrade to Android 2.3 Gingerbread can put there heads in their hands and begin to softly weep. HTC has announced — via Facebook — that it has officially given up on the project. The problem? The phone doesn’t have enough memory for both Gingerbread and HTC’s own Sense user interface. To save you entering the seething morass of Facebook, here’s the announcement in full.

Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones.

However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring Gingerbread and keep the HTC Sense experience on the HTC Desire. We’re sincerely sorry for the disappointment that this news may bring to some of you

This isn’t really a surprise. We got our first look at the Desire at the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, in February 2010. But as recently as this year’s MWC HTC was promising that the upgrade was on its way.

What this news really highlights is the way Android works. Instead of being a single OS that can be sent out to users, it’s more of a platform that is taken by phone makers and bent to their will before being passed on to you. And it seems that now we can’t even trust the manufacturers to tell us the truth.

Desire and Gingerbread Update [Facebook via ★]

See Also:

• Hands-On With HTC Desire, Legend, HD Mini
• HTC Desire
• What You Need to Know About Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Researchers spotted a number of malicious applications on the Android Market. (Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com)

Google recently removed at least 10 applications from the Android Market, all of which contained malicious code disguised as add-ons to one of the most popular apps of all time.

Each of the removed apps posed as a cheat or an add-on to Angry Birds, the much-lauded mobile application created by Finnish game development studio Rovio.

A number of the apps in question contained a spyware program called Plankton, which connects to a remote server and uploads phone information like the IMEI number, browser bookmarks and browsing history.

“Market descriptions for these apps included the statement ‘brought to you free sponsored by Choopcheec Platform,’” Lookout Security spokesperson Alicia diVittorio told Wired.com. “[They include] a link to an EULA that does seem to accurately describe the behavior observed to date. We do not see these as desirable behaviors and classify it as Spyware.”

Xuxian Jiang, an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University, initially discovered the malicious applications last week, and reported them to Google on June 5. Google suspended the questionable applications the same day, “pending further investigation.”

Jiang found malicious programs other than Plankton in his research. YZHCSMS, for example, is a Trojan horse virus that jacks up your phone bill by sending large amounts of SMS messages to premium numbers. Jiang says apps containing the virus were available on the Android Market for at least three months before Google pulled them.

Jiang found a similar application, DroidKungFu, circulating Chinese application markets before YZHCSMS made its way to the Android Market. “DroidKungFu can collect various information about the infected phone, including the IMEI number, phone model and Android OS version,” according to a Lookout Security blog post.

For many app developers, the Android Market offers a freedom not found in other application retail outlets. Unlike Apple’s strict application review process, apps submitted to the Android Market are published almost instantaneously. Many appreciate the freedom given to push programs out to the public at such a speed.

However, the Android Market’s app submission process comes at a cost. Google’s lack of vetting applications lends the Market to security vulnerabilities like these. Google mostly relies on a self-policing community — including researchers like Jiang — to spot offending apps, which means malware can sit in the market for months before someone spots it.

With a relatively open submission process like Android’s, this obviously isn’t Google’s first run-in with malicious app removals. Google pulled nearly two dozen malware-infected applications in early March, but not before close to 200,000 downloads occurred.

Going outside of the official Android Market for apps can be even riskier. Because users are able to download applications from alternative app markets — a feature unavailable to iPhone users — many have popped up over the past two years. Without Google’s moderation capabilities in these outside markets, users are more susceptible to downloading malicious apps. A Trojan with “botnet-like capabilities” popped up in early April, for example, highlighting the risk in going to alternative markets for applications.

The Downcast podcast catcher does what the iPhone (and iPad) should do already

ICloud SchmiCloud. Apple’s new non-syncing sync service might already let us iOS users get new apps and books and — in the future music — pushed to our devices, but it still doesn’t push podcasts. As these are likely the most often updated things on our iPhones and iPads, it’s an annoying oversight.

There are several iOS apps that will grab podcasts directly to your device, but Downcast is the first I have found that has a great interface, and works on both the iPad and the iPhone.

To use the app, you first have to tell it which podcasts to watch out for. This can be done from a built-in directory, or by importing an OPML file. If you already use iTunes for podcasts, you can export this file (right click “Podcasts” in the left-hand source list, choose export and pick “OPML” as the format), put it in your Dropbox public folder and then point Downcast to that file.

In use, Downcast has almost every feature from my previous favorite, Podcaster, but without the annoyances. First, the interface is way, way cleaner and easier to use. Second, it doesn’t refuse to download episodes of the excellent VFX Show. And third, it doesn’t have tiny play/pause buttons that cause you to skip a track instead of just pausing it.

What it does have is automatic downloading (suck it, Instacast), the ability to not have the next episode auto play, a sleep timer, AirPlay support for both video and audio and — here’s the big one — gestures.

Gestures let you control playback without having to hunt down a tiny on-screen button. To play/pause, you double-tap with one finger. Swipe left or right with two fingers to skip 30 seconds back and forward, and swipe up and down to mark a podcast as listened or unlistened.

I’d ask for just one thing: the ability to sync my playback position between devices. At home I use my iPad more, but when I go out I grab my iPod Touch. Not having to find my place would be great, although I understand syncing is a tricky and expensive thing to set up.

But the best part is the price. Downcast is just $2.

Downcast product page [App Store]

See Also:

• App Store is a Goldmine: Indie Developer Makes $250000 in Two …
• Direct Podcast Downloads Coming to iPhone?
• Autocue Turns You Into a Podcasting Pro
• CastGrabber: Standalone Podcast Downloader