A mobile application helps the Azzurri in the road to Brazil

Mobile application starts to enter the world of national teams coaches. As the delegation chief Demetrio Albertini claims, the technical staff will use an application helping studying and preparing the matches thanks to the data exchanges between coaches and players: data concerning tactics, training sessions, etc.

All the information will be stored in a microchip card allowing to build a players database.

My Team Manager: new version 2.5 is available

My Team Manager new version is available on Google Play, Blackberry App World and Nokia Store.

What's new in 2.5? Here you are:

• Whatsapp integration (to send callsup, matches, messages to your contacts)

• Massive import of players from your phonebook

• Use of Gmail account to prefill the email field in login and signup page (only for device with Google service)

• Several bugfix and improvements

Download it and let us know what you think.

Follow us on

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

How new Google Play policy impacts mobile advertising

An interesting post on AppsFire blog explains how the new Google Play policy impact mobile advertising, mainly the trendy "Native Ads".

What Google wants to achieve is clearer advertisement messages for the user. Today there are many applications hiding them in the application using a look and feel well mixed with the rest of the interface deceiving the user who can't distinguish between what it is an application content and what it is an advertising content.

This is what new Google Play policy claims:

Apps published on Google Play may not directly or indirectly engage in or benefit from the following behavior

• Promotion via deceptive ads on websites, apps or other properties, including simulated system, service, or app notifications or alerts.

• Promotion or install tactics which cause redirection to Google Play or the download of the app without informed user action.

• Unsolicited promotion via SMS services.

It is your responsibility to ensure that no ad network or affiliate uses such methods to direct users to pages tat make your app available for download.

Developers must be assure that the adv networks they use comply the rules above.

The new policy hits both native and interstitial advertising where it is now required to be very clear (place a native ads in your app feed needs a clear way to inform user that it's an ad),  to be dismissible, explain what is promoted (no more interstitial message "Download app of the day") and who is running the campaign and with a clear "call to action" button.

Need to analyze your competitor's mobile applications results?

Distimo has released a new version of his analytics service AppTrends, now allowing you to search for a full month of data for any application. The service is free and available for all the major platforms such as iOS, Android, Blackberry, Amazon, Windows Phone.

You will be able to track:

• daily download;
• revenues;
• ranking trend;

App Trends also provides an auto-complete search function, a sort by country filter, a mobile-optimized site, actual ranking figures and more

@synthetize vs @dynamic in ObjectiveC

Since it's the second or third time that I find myself looking for a response to this question on Internet, I'd like to note it here and share with everyone who needs an explication of the difference between the to directives @dynamic and @syntethize in Objective C.

The response is posted by Alex Rozanski in a Stackoverflow thread

Some accessors are created dynamically at runtime, such as certain ones used in CoreData's NSManagedObject class. If you want to declare and use properties for these cases, but want to avoid warnings about methods missing at compile time, you can use the @dynamic directive instead of @synthesize.

...

Using the @dynamic directive essentially tells the compiler "don't worry about it, a method is on the way."

The @synthesize directive, on the other hand, generates the accessor methods for you at compile time (although as noted in the "Mixing Synthesized and Custom Accessors" section it is flexible and does not generate methods for you if either are implemented).

ObjectiveC: Create a thread safe singleton

If you need to create a singleton keeping it thread-safe, Apple recommends to use the dispatch_once paradigm.

Below an example taken from a Stackoverflow thread (where a user mention this method is 2 times faster than using the classic synchronized paradigm):

+ (MyClass *)sharedInstance
{
    //  Static local predicate must be initialized to 0
    static MyClass *sharedInstance = nil;
    static dispatch_once_t onceToken = 0;
    dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
        sharedInstance = [[MyClass alloc] init];
        // Do any other initialisation stuff here
    });
    return sharedInstance;
}

A true Android OS for wearable device is coming

Google executive Sundar Pichai announced Sunday, during the Southwest conference, a release of an Android SDK for wearable devices in two weeks.

The first Google smartwatch should be on the market thanks to LG electronics and the idea to push developers towards this new line of development is to give the OS for free to the device manufacturers following a plan similar to the one deployed for smartphones and tablets.

With releasing the development kit before the products hit the market, Google wants to collect a lot of feedbacks from the developers to improve it first and to make a possible a smooth evolution for many wearable devices (why not, a sensor equipped jacket).

The challenge for the developers will be find the best integration between all these connected devices to create application with appeal for the users.

See more on Wall Street Journal