Tag: mobile phone

Open Source

Is Skype bucking the Open trend?

This open stuff is really taking off!

Google announced Android, their open source mobile phone platform, OpenID 2.0 has been launched and even AT&T are announcing that they are Opening their networks!

Against that backdrop I was surprised to hear today that Skype have decided to eviscerate their Skype Developer Program (SDP). The SDP is responsible for Skype’s APIs.

Paul Amery, the director, Lester Madden, Product manager, Romain Bertrand and others from marketing were all reportedly axed today. In one fell swoop Skype appears to have culled half of the developer program.

This would appear to be related to the Niklas’ departure. The new management obviously want to send out a message to developers that “We are not interested in Open dev”

Obviously Skype know something about the folly of building extensible platforms that eludes the rest of us!

UPDATE: – I see Andy Abramson has picked up on this story too.

mobile

Flash competition

Fellow BlogTalk 2008 organiser Thomas Burg is running a pre-launch games contest over on his new Playoo site.

The competition is to create flash lite games for mobile phones and there is a top prize of $10,000 and a total prize fund of $25,000!

Mobile phone gaming is going to be a huge area and Flash Lite would seem to be an ideal delivery mechanism.

Adobe have a page on their site listing the mobile handsets which support Flash Lite.

Good luck to all the participants