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.

Nexus One: Where is Android at?

ruadhan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:02:30 +0000

With the announcement of the new GooglePhone, which promises to be the best Android device yet and by all early reports at least comparable with the iPhone 3GS, it seems appropriate to stop to take a look around to see where Android is at.

We start with the breakdown of Android Platform distribution, based on access to the Android Market.

Android versions (Source: http://developer.android.com)

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.

DeviceAtlas - Now with C++ & Apache Module

daniel.hunt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:22:17 +0000

Here at dotMobi we're paying attention to what you, our users, customers and loyal followers want.
And something we've noticed about your comments and emails, is that one of the most important things about device detection is performance.

Well, in answer to the floods of emails from our regulars, we're delighted to announce the release of an official C++ API implementation, and an Apache Module!

Free iPhone Programming PDF

ruadhan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:11:28 +0000

Hopefully you've been enjoying our series of iPhone articles over previous weeks.The topics recently covered in this series have looked at both developing native apps with Xcode, and developing webapps with Dashcode. Xcode and Dashcode are two IDEs supplied with the iPhone SDK.

Now you can get a PDF download that covers both of these approaches to programming for iPhone in one handy document. The content has been arranged (by Wei-Meng Lee) into two practical 'Labs', and is ideal if you are just starting out and want a chance to dip your toe into both approaches. And did I mention it's FREE...?

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.

The Beauty of Mobile Device Data

ronan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:13:52 +0000

Recently at dotMobi we have been investigating how to make our DeviceAtlas device detection even better, while at the same time trying to keep the size of the distributable database as compact as possible. As some of you may know, DeviceAtlas uses a tree of data stored in a very compact JSON file to distribute our device data knowledge. The actual format of this JSON file is a Patricia tree organised around the user-agent strings of the devices that we have data about.

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.