my litl adventures

Over on the litl devblog, there’s an example of how to attain a user’s location based on their configuration details.

Although the litl webbook does not have a built in GPS, it does provide support for a simple API that can query a user’s zipcode from their user profile. This gives a rough (or what I call “coarse”) location on their webbook location.

More often than not, this location is where the webbook “lives” (aka a residence). It can be queried and used in application channel development. This article shows exactly how.

Although Flash 10.1 does have a Geolocation API … I do believe it’s mostly meant for SmartPhones and other devices which have a GPS unit which can return lat, long, altitude, heading and other notable properties. This does raise the question or whether or not the Geolocation could include a simple zipcode or proximity parameter for developers to use in their apps. My guess is that this is best left in external APIs from 10.1 since it may require external net connections for lookup, etc.

litl posted a demo of animated Papervision sphere controlled by the litl remote.

The 3-D interaction is sent from the litl via the HDMI out to a large display.

One of the obvious areas litl may play a significant part in the future once the litl media box is deployed is (casual) gaming. What better tool for this, then Flash.

litl papervision3D example from developer.litl.com on Vimeo.

According to the litl developer blog there’s a couple of events happening this week where litl will be talking about there new Flash-based SDK.

To get our developer community acquainted with our Flash-based SDK, we’re happy to offer a special live video session with code examples and giveaways! We’ll be walking through one of our sample web-apps, or “channels”, and answering questions about the litl SDK’s custom controls.

As a special, litl is giving away a free pass to FITC San Francisco (August 17-19) to one lucky participant in our SDK webinar. All you have to do is sign up for the SDK and register for one of the webinars (below), and you’re entered in the drawing.

Speaking of FITC San Francisco, we’re excited to announce that we be there as a silver sponsor! Our own Kevin Suttle will be presenting a session, “It’s All About Context,” on building applications for different screens. Read all about it on Kevin’s blog.

Webinar Details:

WHEN
Thursday July 15th @ 3:00PM EST
Register now!

Friday July 16th @ 10:00AM EST
Register now!

The meeting URL and dial-in information will be emailed to users upon registration.

FITC Ticket Drawing
The winner will be contacted following the Friday event. All users who
a) Are currently registered as a developer at developer.litl.com and
b) Attend webinar are able to participate in the drawing

Good Luck!

A bit old, but Kevin Hoyt (Adobe) received his litl. It’s a good first impression of the device.

I noticed litl will be demoing at the Flash Mobile event in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks

Looks like the litl team has a new video covering a 5 minute quickstart to developing for the litl.

Ryan Canulla has posted a quick and super easy video showing how simple it is to get started building a litl channel with FlashBuilder. With all the tools and sample channels litl provides, Ryan demonstrates how you can be coding and even testing the channel in our Simulator in less than 5 minutes.

I wanted to gauge the performance of the litl with a very processor intensive HYPE piece so I ran it on the MBP (intel) and then on the litl (atom) to see the barrier is.

Despite the lag, the response is not as bad as I thought it would be … there is a lot going on, alpha transitioning, vibration of the objects, and the mouse follow, plus more stuff I crammed into the experiment by tweaking some of the HYPE presets.

This is unoptimized, and an early version I had without the effects ran pretty nicely. I just wanted to push the processor limit on the litl … I didn’t kill the litl which is a good thing.

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

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.