my litl adventures

Chuck Freedman of litl gave a recent podcast on the Flex Show:

Fernando Colaco interviews Chuck Freedman about the litl at Flash and the City 2010 NYC.

litl interview at FATC 2010

Some of the Flash team at litl has posted their slides and materials from FATC (flash and the city) 2010

“a litl SDK for Flash and Flex” slides have been posted by @KROTONDO.

For more info about the workshop at FATC which hosted litl, you can check out this post.

Last week at the Flash and the City conference, litl unveiled their plans for both support of Flash 10.1 in their upcoming SDK, as well as some new hardware they are working on; a settop box and paired touchscreen remote.

There are not many details about this new hardware, other than it’s going to run the litl OS (which is Linux based). Based on my experience with litl, you can bet that this new set of products will be very simple and intuitive to use. Based on their existing webbook, x86 based architecture would make the most sense, and apparently it’ll have HDMI and composite out for HDTV hookup, plus wifi and ethernet connection support.

Here are more pics of the device (from engadget):

With Google’s recent announcement of “web apps” at i/o and also Google TV, things are heating up in the connected “Web TV” space. There are lots of players in this arena (i.e. “digital home”).

This isn’t the 1st time we’ve had the promise of “Web TV”, but I’m pretty confident that things are at a point where the adoption of it will be significantly higher than it was in previous years and with previous products. 2011 will be the year of the “digital home”.

Currently, the litl in-browser Flash Player reports : LNX 10,0,45,2 in the user agent. Just making a note of it here.

This will change within next few months (or earlier), however, as litl seeks to deliver on Flash Player 10.1 for Linux.

Check your litl’s player version.

Look for litl to unveil some great new things at FATC this week:

• New developer site launches at http://developer.litl.com.
• litl will have an SDK for Flash developers to take existing content or build new content specifically for litl users: families and those looking for a more simple computing experience with our litl webbook and custom litl OS.
• litl call them channels, and this is the form of application users can download from litl dynamic channel catalog.
• The existing channel catalog will become a store and bring a much needed and very true ecosystem to the Flash developer community.
• While developers’ existing content is fully supported in litl browser, adding our SDK to Flash applications will allow developers to create channels and hook into the special controls and ‘views’ the litl webbook features.
• In addition to a laptop mode, the litl flips over itself into ‘easel’ mode, where a unique experience is controlled with a scrollwheel and button found on the device hinge. Device controls are replicated with litl remote.
• Essentially, including litl SDK in a Flash or Flex project will let developers ‘target’ litl device and offer their content ultimately, for free or fee, through litl store to the litl device owners and users.
• The SDK will ship with a Simulator so that those without a litl in hand can develop and test their apps, plus asdocs, guides, tutorials, a custom UI control set (for both Flash and Flex), and sample channels to help developers kick start their channel project.

Apparently litl has hired a Flash SDK Support agent. Pretty cool. It’s also pretty obvious what that means … that they seriously want to build their Flash content catalog (for one thing).

As I had guessed back in early 2010, litl is apparently working on a new product to add to their litl webbook.

Since the litl is a digital home laptop, it would make perfect sense to tie it to some sort of TV, DVR, or hybrid multi-media product for home use. After all, 2010 is turning into the the year of easily attainable large screen displays, smarter home appliances, and next generation home entertainment (e.g. 3D TV’s, game consoles, media players, etc).

Chuck Freedman (litl) recently had a blog posting where he gave a few very high level hints on what they are working on these days.

“… Flash-Based “Web-Connected TV” device on the market, running litl OS as well as ALL channels built with our new SDK.”

Also, you can tell something obvious from this ‘hint’ (I won’t spell it out, though):

keynote audience will be the very first to see what we have in ’store’ for the Flash community.

What’s more, you can kind of gauge what type of hardware will be enabled in the new 10.1 SDK:

In the coming months, our SDK will be expanded to include “accelerometer movement, video chat, trackpad gestures, and microphone input” that will allow open development of “gaming, communication, entertainment and other experiences”.

Chuck ends the post with this, which makes it clear that litl will be sticking to Flash for the foreseeable future:

“We believe that our platform’s use of Flash will be the best and easiest way for developers to deliver great content and applications to the TV!”.

Having seen some of the capabilities of early HTML5, it’s pretty clear that if litl were to adopt that now, they wouldn’t be able to attain a lot of the cool stuff it’s device can do with Flash, right now. Maybe in 2-3 years they will adopt though. They do have a built in browser that supports the latest webkit, I believe. So, who knows what this device’s future holds in terms of Flash and the like.

Read Chuck’s post here.

The developer blog over at litl has a posting covering the various target screen dimensions for various views that can be found on the litl when in various modes of the device.

Card View
{310px by 166px}

“Think of Card View as the minimized, mini-app version of the channel. Living as a ‘card’ on the litl OS home screen, users can glance at updated sports scores, see latest video/episodes available and even scroll through images respective to whatever content/service the Channel is built around. For games, Card View can display top scores or inform of other users online looking to play.”

It’s kind of like cardview when you’re viewing content on a webOS mobile device, like the Palm Pre. Albeit, it’s not touch. You have cards and arrange those cards. It’s very intuitive. I just wish it was touch to boot.

Focus View
{1280px by 730px}

“When the litl is in laptop mode and the card has been opened, the Channel displays in Focus View. This is where the user can interact with the Channel content using the webbook’s keyboard and trackpad. The size of this View is basically a full screen instance of the Channel, with the litl OS Taskbar on top. The Options panel is something that can be invoked from within this View, so the user can adjust settings/properties of the Channel.”

This is the mode you’d typically expect widget content to run like. It’s like browser mode without the browser. It’s the standalone mode for Flash content on the litl.

Channel View
{1280px by 800px}

“When the litl is in easel mode and a Channel is open or selected, the Channel displays in Channel View. Designed to be more of a passive experience, only the GoButton and Wheel controls (also accessible with the optional webbook remote) can control the Channel. This View is ideal for sitting back, watching video or seeing the latest headlines, tweets and status scroll through the screen. As with the Bakespace Recipes Channel, this View is also great for simplifying content display and interaction, where the user can page up and down or browse easily through information.

When building a Channel, you can use the ViewChanged event to adapt your Channel to whicever view the device calls for. Using pre-built containers, like mx:ViewStack in Flex, it is simple to setup layouts in your application that correspond to each View in the Channel.”

It’s reminiscent of the Front Row mode on a macbook, but it’s cooler and it holds all your customized channel content so you can pick and select from the carousel of content. The scroll wheel comes in really handy here.

The litl has a pretty awesome LED display. I recommend developers pick one up and check out the UI. Although the Views are not touch enabled right now, they may be in the future. Despite that, the interaction between the UI and user is pretty easy with the GO Button, scroll wheel,trackpad, and keyboard.

Looks like litl hosted a Developer SDK Preview event a while back in their offices (I was apparently away in San Jose attending a mobile development conference). You read all about it here.

Here are some of the early adopters (a lot of familiar faces there).

Will be nice when litl moves to 10.1 later this year.