mobiForge Articles Feed - Section: Developing

Location in iPhone Web Apps

weimenglee — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:40:49 +0000

One of the key limitations of developing Web applications for iPhone is that you are not allowed to access the hardware on the device via the Web browser. For example, you cannot access the camera on the iPhone; neither can you access the accelerometer. This seriously limits the kinds of applications you can develop on the iPhone. One notable exception, however, is the support for tracking the location of devices, through a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular triangulation.

Programming Apple Push Notification Services

weimenglee — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:56:55 +0000

One of the key limitations of the iPhone is its constraint on running applications in the background. Because of this, applications cannot keep running in the background when the user switches to another application. So, applications that require a constant state of connectivity (such as social networking applications) will not be able to receive timely updates.

Sending SMS with SMPP, Kannel and Java

senthadev@gmail.com — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:30:28 +0000

There are many technologies and protocols that can be used to send and receive SMS from an application. This article focuses on sending SMS via a Short Message Service Center (SMSC), with the help of the Kannel SMS gateway.

In order for an application to send a SMS, it generally has to communicate with a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) over the Internet. To understand in more detail consider the following example.

A Media service provider wants to send a program timetable as an SMS to its end customers. The application is running on a Linux based java application server.

A minimal mobile-aware web app with Python & cloud-based device detection

ronan — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:44:05 +0000

In this article we'll look at a how to make a minimal device-aware web application. The point of this article is not to demonstrate a useful application but rather to show just how little code is required to make an app that is fully device aware, and that can change its presentation entirely depending on the nature of the device accessing it.

Build Web Apps for iPhone using Dashcode

weimenglee — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:44:00 +0000

So far, much mobile developer attention has been fixated on the iPhone SDK released by Apple to build native iPhone applications. This is understandable, since with the SDK you can write native iPhone apps that take full advantage of the capabilities provided by the device, such as accessing the accelerometer, the camera, as well as obtain geographical locations using Core Location.

Getting Started with Java ME

Soma Ghosh — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:30:36 +0000

As the world gets connected, we see the emergence of a wide variety of sophisticated and personalized mobile devices. Although the number-crunching power of the higher-end devices is very respectable, there is still a need to build applications that use minimal resources, and that are portable.

Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), formerly known as J2ME, with Java’s inherent ‘Build once, run everywhere’ concept has been adapted to build resource constraint applications for these myriad devices.

iPhone Programming Fundamentals - Outlets and Actions

weimenglee — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:06:28 +0000

An understanding of outlets and actions is one of the first things you will need for iPhone programming. For someone coming from the .NET background, this is a concept that requires some time to get used to - the concepts are similar, but it is a different way of doing things.

And so, in this article, I am going to show you what outlets and actions are. At the end of this article, you will have a solid understanding of how to create outlets and actions, and be on your way to creating great iPhone apps.

Lastminute.com Labs presents the DeviceAtlas Rails Plugin

mathias.dahlstrom — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:51:35 +0000

Last year at lastminute.com labs we started developing mobile web services in Rails. The first service we launched is called fonefood. It is a restaurant booking site you can use from your phone. We've got restaurants across lots of countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. You can read more about it at: http://labs.lastminute.com/fonefood/

Device Detection in the Cloud: DeviceAtlas Personal

ruadhan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:26:50 +0000

After a brief mention of DeviceAtlas Personal in our June newsletter, we're now following up with a full tutorial on how to use the preview release of the service. So what is DA Personal?

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 1: Layouts

weimenglee — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:13:47 +0000

So far in my previous few articles on Android I have focused on showing you how to get things done in Android without really spending too much time discussing the visual aspect of Android application development - User Interface design. In this article, and the next, I will walk you through the various elements that make up the UI of an Android application. In this first part of the article, I will discuss the various layouts available in Android to position the various widgets on your screen.