Mobile Marketing Blog by Punchkick Interactive

Punchkick Interactive has officially been approved by Apple to become part of the Apple iPhone Developer Program, and we are curious as to the number of other developers who were also approved—so, we decided to start a tally.

If you have been approved by Apple to participate in the iPhone Developer Program, then leave a comment. We will update the tally here daily.

1 developer has been approved.

As a bit of background, U.S. applicants rejected received an e-mail stating: “Dear Registered iPhone Developer, Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. Thank you for applying.”

Applicants outside the United States received an e-mail stating: “Dear Registered iPhone Developer, Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. At this time, the iPhone Developer Program is only available in the US and will expand to other countries during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. Thank you for applying.”

Learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s iPhone software development capabilities.

We are excited to announce that Mobile Ocean, a Flash Lite screensaver that we designed and developed, has been selected for the launch of Adobe’s new Flash Mobile Gallery within Adobe.com.

Hopefully, it will be the first of many featured items for Punchkick Interactive on Adobe.com. The Punchkick Interactive Mobile Ocean screensaver can be viewed within our company Web site on our Flash Lite Screensavers and Wallpapers page or purchased from Handango.com.

Learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s mobile screensaver design capabilities.

Ryan and I had the chance to visit Chicago on business last week, and decided to make a long weekend out of it. I love the city of Chicago—there’s plenty of great restaurants, first-class shopping, and friendly people. Ryan’s favorite part of the trip? It wasn’t Shedd Aquarium, the largest indoor aquarium in the world. Nor was it the Brazilian churrascaria Fogo De Chao, where a waitstaff hovers around carrying skewers of perfectly grilled meat, serving all-you-can-eat portions until you are nearly-comatose. It wasn’t even the Water Tower, which could fit all of Northeast Ohio’s retail locations within it.

No folks, it was the Nokia store. That’s right, the Nokia store. Normally calm-and-subdued-Ryan became what I can only describe as “frantic.” There’s nothing quite like sitting in the Nokia store for an hour while a geek runs from phone to phone with a crazed look on his face.

Note: The device in Ryan’s hand is the Nokia N810. When he realized he could pull up the Punchkick Interactive site on it, a wave of joy overtook him. You know you are in trouble when electronics sales-associates look at you funny.

I don’t know if I should be upset, or flattered. I think that my cease and desist letters solve that mystery. Some of the sites I found show hundreds of downloads of our Mobile Ocean Screensaver—that’s a bit upsetting.

I am also amazed that there are 1,350 pages in google search for “mobile ocean punchkick.” This basically means that when people post illegal downloads, they don’t even pay attention to scrubbing out the company name! At they very least I expect them to have setup keyword driven links back to our site. Did they? Nope.

Other copyright violations pertaining to Flash Lite software.

I am not 100% sure on this one, but I think that Google may have updated it’s PageRank Algorithm. Today I noticed that our site’s PageRank was lowered, so I started to check some other sites. After some digging it seems to be somewhat across the board. Our sites root, http://www.punchkickinteractive.com, dropped from a PR6 to a PR3. http://www.punchkickinteractive.com/blog/ dropped from a PR7 to a PR4. http://www.wikipedia.org/ dropped from a PR9 to a PR8. http://www.google.com and http://www.adobe.com/, however, are still PR10.

If anyone else is has noticed a similar PageRank pattern, please post a comment about it.

Bill Perry (Mobile evangelist for Adobe) has just posted the Flash Lite install base forecasts for 2008 from the Strategy Analytics Flash-Enabled Handset Forecast from January 4, 2008. The forecast includes the installed base of Flash Lite devices by Region, Country and Version. Bill’s PDF highlighting the 91% Global Growth of Flash Lite in 2007 can be downloaded here.

Worldwide, the totals for 2008 add up to: 461,733,000 mobile devices with Flash Lite pre-installed.

The score card for 2008 reads:
1. APAC - 154,761,000
2. Western Europe - 107,832,000
3. Japan - 77,603,000
4. Americas - 64,561,000
5. CALA - 32,024,000
6. Central Europe - 24,952,000

What are the biggest surprises?
I truly did not expect the Flash Lite 2.x numbers to be so high. Adobe is forecasting that in 2008 the Americas and Western Europe will have higher Flash Lite 2.0 or 2.1 adoption than 1.1! Despite this, Flash Lite 1.1 will still most likely stay the obvious standard.

I am very excited to see that the Americas are so close in numbers to Japan. Additionally, they have more than double the numbers of Central America, Latin America, and Central Europe. It’s no surprise that Western Europe and APAC still top the charts.

What does this all mean?
As companies like Verizon continue to grow with Flash Lite, consumer adoption rates will no doubt go up as well. As a full service mobile marketing firm that is passionate about mobile and pushing the medium forward, we can continue to pursue Flash Lite development with our clients—knowing that one day in the near future it will become the mobile standard of third party development.

We have been working commercially with Flash Lite for some time. Our projects have ranged from oem user interface development, to consumer content such as custom applications and games. We couldn’t be happier about the news.

Cameron Moll has just finished and released his book, Mobile Web Design.

Much has been written about mobile devices. Plenty has been written about developing websites for the so-called “standards era” of the web. However, little has been written about the two colliding. This resource aims to fill that void.

As a reviewer of the book, and more specifically the Flash Lite section, I have had a chance to read through the entire book and it is really a great piece of writing. It is certainly not written for the mobile Web expert, but rather, it speaks perfectly to anyone in a position to develop for, manage, or give advice regarding your organizations foray into a web strategy for mobile devices.

PDF copies can be purchased for $19. Well worth it for anyone interested in the mobile space. You can also download a preview sample.

These are just fun to look at (although it hurts your eyes after a while). Keep in mind that these are NOT animated. The movement that you see is simply your peripheral vision playing tricks on you.

Rotating snakes

Rollers

Rotations

Vibrations

Checkered heat waves

Pay per post (PPP) is a beta service that is meant to drive blog traffic by essentially placing ads on blogs. With this service you can either sign up as a blogger or as an advertiser. The basic idea is that advertisers pay bloggers to spread a particular message. I really have not experimented with this other than signing up.

It seems like a good marketing tool (assuming that there is transparency). Ideally, each blog entry for this service should clearly say that it is an advertisement. With a disclaimer intact, a blog advertisement should (in theory) be no more invasive than AdWords.

fiercedeveloper.com wrote a short article about Flash Lite’s role in the BREW ecosystem citing the October 2006 deal between Verizon Wireless and Adobe. The article from fiercedeveloper.com can be seen as a sign that Flash Lite may be gaining more acceptance from the media, and that it may soon be seen as the standard for wireless development in the US and abroad.

“Verizon’s expanding selection of handsets, and Adobe’s support of Flash Lite for BREW, is a strong signal for developers considering Flash Lite.”

At the BREW 2007 conference, we expect Adobe and Verizon Wireless to be talking about Flash Lite’s impact on some 37.5 million Americans. Verizon Wireless was the first US operator to adopt Flash Lite to it’s network, and the first operator worldwide to offer Flash Lite for BREW.

If you have interest in developing Flash Lite for BREW for Verizon Wireless, you may want to read our Adobe.com article, Developing Flash Lite for BREW applications for Verizon Wireless

Punchkick Interactive has authored it’s first article for Adobe.com. Zak Dabbas and myself (Ryan Unger) co-authored Developing Flash Lite for BREW applications for Verizon Wireless. This article covers not only the technical side of developing applications for BREW for Verizon Wireless, but also the marketing aspects of distributing content directly to Verizon Wireless or to a content catalog partner such as Atom Entertainment, FunMobility, or Smashing Ideas.

The article has three main sections:
1. Understanding the Flash Lite for BREW marketplace
2. Becoming an authorized Qualcomm BREW developer
3. Testing content on a Verizon Wireless handset

Read the full article on Adobe.com

Introduction
At the October 2006 Adobe MAX conference, Adobe and Verizon Wireless announced a partnership that would make Flash Lite content available to over 37.5 million Verizon Wireless subscribers. Flash Lite developers were understandably excited about the announcement, and teaching developers how to create content for Verizon Wireless became a central focus of the MAX conference.

This article will teach you how to develop Flash Lite for BREW content directly for Verizon Wireless. It will detail the process of becoming an authorized Qualcomm BREW developer, testing your Flash Lite for BREW content on a Verizon Wireless handset, and selling your content through Verizon Wireless.

In addition to understanding the technical specifics of creating Flash Lite for BREW content, this article will also discuss the pros and cons of using the direct model for developing and distributing Flash Lite for BREW content—including the real costs and anticipated returns on your development investment. It will also briefly cover the process of selling content through an content catalog partner, and the pros and cons associated with doing so.

Also, we would like to thank Phil Pastore for helping out with the headshots.

Learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s Flash Lite development capabilities.

Cleveland, OH June 1, 2007 - The Web Marketing Association is pleased to announce that Punchkick Interactive co-founder Ryan Unger has been selected as a judge of the 11th annual international WebAward competition for Web site development.

The WebAwards is the standards-defining internet awards competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful Web site. It recognizes the individual and team achievements of Web professionals who create and maintain outstanding Web sites.

“Unlike other awards, the WebAwards is not a beauty pageant where only the design and name recognition is important,” said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association. “For the past decade, the WebAwards has used a quantitative judging formula based on seven criteria to evaluate, benchmark and set industry standards for Web site development. Unger will play a critical role in setting the standard for Internet excellence by applying his expertise to each site he adjudicates.”

“I am privileged to have been selected as a respected member of the WebAwards panel of judges,” said Punchkick Interactive’s Unger. “It is an honor to judge domestic and international sites that meet the Web Marketing Association’s standards of high quality and excellence.”

Ryan Unger is the co-founder and creative director for Punchkick Interactive. He has over five years of experience with Flash software and is an Adobe Certified Flash Lite 1.1 developer, Adobe Certified Flash 8 designer, and Qualcomm BREW authorized developer. Ryan has authored articles on Adobe.com and has received a number of design and marketing awards from organizations including the American Advertising Federation, the Public Relations Society of America, the Web Marketing Association, and the West Virginia Flash Animation Festival. Additionally, he will serve as a judge for the 2007 Web Marketing Association’s WebAward competition. Ryan is heavily involved in the Flash Lite community, both in Flash Lite-focused Web forums and his company’s mobile marketing blog (http://www.punchkickinteractive.com/blog/).

The 2007 WebAward judges consist of a select group of Internet professionals who have direct experience designing and managing Web sites - including members of the media, interactive creative directors, corporate marketing managers, site designers, content providers and webmasters - with an in-depth understanding of the current state-of-the-art in Web site development and technology. Judging for this year’s website awards will take place in July and August, with winners announced in September.

About Punchkick Interactive
Punchkick Interactive ™ is a full service mobile marketing firm that develops Flash Lite enabled games and screensavers, custom mobile applications, text-message campaigns, mobile media distribution systems, branded mobile software and mobile Web sites. For more information visit http://www.punchkickinteractive.com or call (800) 549-4104.

About the WebAwards
The 11th annual international WebAwards competition sets the standard of excellence in 96 industry categories by evaluating Web sites and defining benchmarks based on the seven essential criteria of successful Web site development. The goal of the Web Marketing Association, sponsor of the WebAwards, is to provide a forum to recognize the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective Web sites on the Internet today. Entrants benefit from a Web site assessment by a professional judging panel and the marketing opportunities presented to an award-winning Web site. For more information or to enter, visit www.07webaward.org.

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