Yes, it's a man in a suit. On a surfboard. Wearing a chefs hat. On the phone.

Did we learn nothing from the Silver Surfer BT Cellnet ads???

So, I'm wandering around Symbian expo. There's a good atmosphere here; lots of the usual faces (Voda, Sendo, etc.) and a few new ones: games providers, blogging-type software vendors, etc.

I wandered in on Macromedia and asked about when we'll start seeing the Flash player. Apparently there will be some announcements "really soon" (which is the status quo really) but these will include details of a portal of Flash content to be launched in Europe, a similar thing for European I-mode users, and an online marketplace for Flash content (which presumably will be put onto operator portals too, if it's to enjoy any success).

One weird mention though: the Flash player will either be bundled with handsets (for those handset vendors they're doing deals with: Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and others)... or be sold directly to consumers for IRO "10 dollars". This sounded weird to me: if they get a significant number of handset vendors on board, then presumably they'll make money either from licensing the player to them and/or getting involved in creaming off the cost of content creation (either through cuts taken in the marketplace thing or by selling dev tools) - in which case do they really need to sell the player elsewhere? Alternatively, if they don't get it bundled with handsets, I can't see end-users paying for Flash players...

I've not seen much of them, but so far it's "blah blah blah this mobile thing is going to be big blah blah blah new phase blah blah blah personal anecdote about child blah blah".

I mean, I don't expect much from The Big Presentations at these sort of events, but the little that I've seen today (wandering past the screens where they're being displayed) was pretty bland and preach-to-the-choir-ish...

Nice atmosphere at the event though. You can see lots of grizzled folks who've been bashing away at this stuff for years finally smelling their chance of success.