Ground Control: a simple iOS library to control your remote for control

The needs to control your application from remote is becoming more and more important. Talking about iOS application you might want to hide or control some features during the Apple validation process or after the application has been launched.

Or maybe you'd like to show a specific message to the user under certain conditions that you can verify on server side.

Ground Control is an iOS library built on top of AFNetworking that makes easy to accomplish this task.

GroundControl asynchronously downloads and reads a remote plist file. This could be a static file or generated dynamically, like in the following examples

Few lines of code and you are ready to go. Discover more on GitHub

An Android photo camera from Nikon

The Nikon s800C is a photocamera based on Android. A normal camera in the front with a big touch screen in the back with the navigation buttons.

Some features:

• Optic zoom 12X
• Display: 3.5"
• Wifi
• Android 2.3
• GPS
• Web browser

There isn't a slot for the SIM card so the connectivity is possible only using the WIFI, The price has not been announced yet.

Otto library for the communication inside an Android application

When an Android application become complex, the communication between the different parts of your code become difficult and in this complexity the risk of introducing bugs grows.

A tiny library called Otto and developped by Jack Warthon, helps to simplify your code and to update easily different parts of your application following an event produced by an action.

In fact you might need to update the status of several acitvities after a change in the settings. A deep explication of the communication problem and the example using Otto are published on the Square blog while the library is downloadable from GitHub and there you will find also a complete tutorial

Viadeo 2.0 for Windows Phone is now available!

Viadeo has published the version 2.0 of its application for Windows Phone devices: see it on Marketplace. The application is now fast and fluid with its interface Metro and with a lot of improvements and bugfixing compared to the previous release.

Below, the list of features taken directly from the description of the Marketplace. With the new application you can:

• Develop your network: add new contacts quickly and easily
• Keep in constant touch with your network
• Read and reply to your messages
• View the profiles of millions of other professionals
• Keep up to date with and share the latest news from your industry

Install it and give your feedback!!



For some design inspirations

For many developers (me included :) ) it's always difficult to build an application with a slick design. It is then useful to have a list of good examples of design from which take inspirations.

The following are some sites that show screenshots (especially taken from iPhone) of applications with nice designs, great UI pattern and different ideas from which a developer might be inspired to build or at least improve his application:

• http://pttrns.com
• http://www.lovelyui.com
• http://www.androidpatterns.com
• http://mobile-patterns.com



 

Browse your Android SQLLite database from Eclipse

I think this is very useful tool for any Android developers. Sometimes you need to check what you store in your application database or SharedPreferences. Ok, you can always write a good test for it, but in some case you just need a quick check to verify the integrity of your stored data or the structure of your tables.

Since a lot of Android developers uses Eclipse to implement their application, it would be great to have a tool inside our IDE to explore our application Database.

SQLite & XML Browser is the tool that allow that. You can download it clicking here

After that you have downloaded the plugin you can:

• Put the file in your Eclipse plugins folder (e.g. /usr/lib/eclipse/plugins)
• Restart Eclipse
• Start up an Android Emulator w/ Debugging in Eclipse
• Switch to the DDMS Perspective in Eclipse
• Go to the 'File Explorer' tab to locate your device's database file
• Navigate to: e.g. 'data -> data -> com.myapplicationpackage -> databases -> myapplication
• Click on the little Database icon at right top
• Switch to the 'Questoid SQLite Browser' tab that appears
• Switch to the 'Browse Data' sub tab
• Select your table from the drop down menu
• Browse data

 Here you are a video that show how it works:

Soccer Scores Pro: all the soccer scores on your phone

Soccer Score Pro is a free application that provide many informations about the most important soccer tournaments all around the world.
Live scores, notifications when the results change, matches' statistic data, league tables and schedules and rich news section.
A nice user interface completes this very good products.
The list of leagues includes:

• Premier League;
• Championship;
• Ligue 1;
• Ligue 2;
• Eredivisie;
• Serie A;
• Serie B;
• La Liga;
• MLS;
• Europa League;
• Champions League;
• Euro 2012;
• World cup;
• Mexican League;
• Scottish League;
• ....

The application is available for iPhone and Android 

 

A research unveils when we use mobile applications on Android

The results of a research done by the German firm DFKI (“Falling asleep with Angry Birds and Facebook and Kindle”) and presented at the Mobile HCI 2011 unveils which mobile applications are used and when.

The research has been done using AppSensor that is able to record which applications run, the time (start and stop) and the place in which they are used. The library has been installed on 4100 Android phones and the data have been collected in anonymous way.

In 4 months, around 22000 applications have been monitored with around 5 million of recorded sessions.

Some of the main achieved results:

• The average execution time is 71 seconds and the total time of usage of mobile applications is 1 hour per day;
• The "Alarm" application has a peak of executions between 6am and 8am: I would say that this is not a surprise at all!!!
• During the day the communication applications are the most used. The games win in the interval between 6am and 9am and around midnight. During the morning the news applications are the most popular;
• The social network applications seems to be used a lot at the end of the day: for example Facebook is used a lot between 8pm and 11pm with a peak around 10pm. Twitter has a constant usage with peaks around the lunch and dinner time. 

RIM says bye bye to Java

One of the major subject at Blackberry Developer Conference in Amsterdam was the introduction to the new Blackberry OS 10. Well...there won't be Java in Blackberry 10.

There will be two main possibility to build applications on the new Blackberry OS versions:

• Use the new Cascade UI framework with QT libraries to build application with the new Native SDK;
• Use Webworks to build application using HTML 5 (having access to native features tough);

There is no clear reason about the decision that lead RIM to cut off Java from the next generation platforms, the speakers didn't give any valid feedback about that.

The funny thing is that Blacberry 10 will integrate an Android player to run Android application but there won't be any player for Blackberry OS 5, 6 or 7 applications.....

Which is the best application store for my Android application?

Yes, when a developer completed the implementation of an applicaation or of a game, that is just the beginning of the work.
Now, he needs to publish his app and make it known to the market. First step: the application stores on which he will publish his work.

There are plenty of choices outside. Talking about Android we can say that the number of application stores is growing fast and it's easy receive emails informing you that a new amazing store is going to launch and that it want to publish your super applications.

Of course, the Android Market is almost a forced choice....But it worths spending time on all of them? Not always...

For that reason, the article published by Simon Judge might give help to choose the most suitable solutions for the developer expectations. He refers to some stats coming from Ziggy’s Games and the number of downloads of their free mobile application BusJumper.
From their data, we can see the impressive result for the Amazon Market and that SlideME, Appia, Mobango and AppChina (if your app is also available in Chinese) are other actors to keep in mind when we are going to publish the applications.

Strange the position of GetJar, well known application repository but that seems to be not the main source of downloads for the Ziggy Game's solution.
Another step after having published the application is trying some kind of marketing activities in the store as well: banners, space in the newsletters, get our application featured and so on....



Play Subbuteo on smartphones....coming soon!

Only few big fans continue to play Subbuteo, a game forgotten, nowdays, in favour of the videogames.
But this is the age of smartphone with touch screens on which you can swipe your fingers...so, why don't use it to allow Subbuteo player to play on the train...

Of course, nothing will be like having your real green table but the idea has its cool side. Peter Rook of Paul Lamond Game announced the development of a version of Subbuteo for tablets and smartphones during the London Toy Fare. Unfortunately there is no image of the app yet.

An online multiplayer option would be cool...who knows if they will implement it?
Warm up your fingers!



The Blackberry Appworld guide

Any application store has a different way to manage application, versions, supported device and so on...This fragmentation might become a nightmare for people in charge of managing delivery and maintenance of multiple applications across different platform.
For that reason it is really useful to have always in hand a document that help in discovering all the different aspects of the application stores and how to manage them

Often Blackberry is not the best and friendly platform for developers and product managers that want to deliver a state-of-art application but at least they don't forget to provide a document to drive people inside their application store.

Check this out: Click for AppWorld administration guide

The new website to design super Android application

Image from http://developer.android.com/design/index.html

The Android Developer Website launch a new section very full of best practices and tips to build Android applications at the top level, not only in terms of features but also in terms of user interface. The website Android Design is well organized and any developer gets a very complete overview of what is good and what is not in terms of graphic interface.

It worths a lot a look at the suggestion to design and build the resources for your applications and how to build an application that supports both smartphone and tablet with the minimum effort!

Very nice the pages where a lot of best practices about how to communicate with the user are given. An award is deserved by the page where it is suggested a "Pure Android" (underlining the differences with iOS and Windows Phone)







New MobileAndSoccer

Hi,
my old blog j2mesoccer.splinder.com has moved to its new house: http://mobileandsoccer.blogspot.com Unfortunately during the transfer the dates of the old posts get lost and now the timeline is totally messed-up. Sorry for the problem...adding the new posts the problem will get fixed!

Welcome!