Flash to Iphone, head from Iphone via Ipad ....and straight on to Android...

We entered a brave new world when heard about the new Adobe CS5 beta programme. We thought "yeah...that would work for us"...so we applied, cut through the mountains of red tape, ticked the boxes and we were now among the privileged few, seeing, testing, and working with the fantastic new Flash offering from Adobe, on their beta programme just before they pulled it to accelerate the release of CS5 final version.

We have been hammering Flash CS5, road testing for Adobe and have managed to build our first Flash based iPhone app...we're pleased to introduce you to SpeechBubble's first fully developed iPhone App as approved by Apple on the 12th Feb 2010.

So...here are the gory details...Using prerelease Flash CS5 Build 414 and Adobe's very cool iPhone packager, we built our first SpeechBubble app entitled "First Aid." It's based on content from our celebrated Safety Talks series, which we sell to trainers in the construction industry, and provided handy...well..more like handheld, first aid advice for construction workers.

*The prerelease and product teams were delighted with the SpeechBubble First Aid app being approved into the App store....one of only a handful from CS5 beta testers....thanks for watching, Adobe!

*The journey continued on from there, perfecting the craft smoothing the interface, integrating swipe, adding more content and setting our sights on getting an appearance on the much anticipated iPad device, using Apple SDK 3.2.

*Our iPad debut on the 10th April 2010 was with InventorAid, as part of the US iPad Launch Store. InventorAid is a walkthrough helping inventors understand the complicated and often misunderstood patent process. Thanks to our customer, PatentNav for walking the walk with us!

*We had a team working on launching the full complement of our Safety Talks series onto iPad but right in the middle of that, Adobe sent us an invite to their private beta for publishing to Android and showing the world by the 21st of April....and well..we couldn't really refuse..(more work for an already "both ends candle burning" team....thanks Adobe !)

*So the plan was to show the ported app on an HTC Hero device, but the Android release on the Hero was 1.5 and the 2.1 update we needed was not due until May (AAAAGGGHH!!!)...so we had to content ourselves with an emulator for the big push...

As part of the deal, we are awaiting a shiny new Google Nexus One phone to demo and show on...however thanks to a volcano in Iceland and a rather large ash cloud, deliveries of goods to Ireland and UK are affected, so we won't have it for the 21st deadline....so our video demo will be on the Android 2.1 emulator.

Our ported Android app was written in Flash CS5, prerelease Build 485 and integrated with Air for Android 2.5 SDK....unfortunately there is no slick packager just yet and we had to create the package manually in command line!...(packager coming soon we've no doubt!)

We were amazed at the ease at which the Adobe product set can port from device to device...in these days of demand for open development platforms...Adobe are really setting the pace in this environment. We in SpeechBubble are particularly fond of Flash and Flex products for their leading class language rendering, an area which is critical to the success of our platform and applications.

Below is a short video demo of the application as published for Android for the Adobe Prerelease Beta programme.

Hello from SpeechBubble

So I guess this is a hello post....the one where we say hi, and tell you who we are and what we do.

SpeechBubble are a closely knit team from (nearly always!) rainy Belfast, Northern Ireland, who came up with the idea of improving global communications....OK....so we know that sounds a bit grand, but let me explain.

Once upon a time in a desert far, far away (Dubai actually), some of our guys met with some of the world’s biggest construction companies, who have huge teams of workers on site to manage and train, with up to 19 languages and dialects present. So, our contacts asked....no, actually PLEADED for a solution to help them communicate worker health and safety to the workers.

And so....some brainstorming and a lot of coffee later, the bare bones of SpeechBubble were formed. The SpeechBubble platform is a multilingual user interface which allows a user to flick between languages dynamically whilst making a presentation, making sure the message is fully understood by everyone is his or her native language.

Since then the system has been used for training, in healthcare, on touch screens, and can publish content in nearly 20 languages. We've taken the system down lots of roads including its most recent foray into the mobile world, ....and that's what this blog is about.

If you want to see more about our journey to here.

....see for yourself in our website news section....