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!