Mobile programming: Cloud Application Development

Cloud computing is a general form for any sort of programming that involves delivering hosted services over the internet. This article is informative from the mobile application development beginner’s point of view.

Getting inside the cloud management portal in mobile applications development, we have two types of areas to host the initial cloud application:

Staging and Production.

Explained as:

Staging is a pre-production; like customer acceptance testing zone. Once any user has signed off, staging app can be easily shifted to the production zone by clicking a single button. Staging URLs in themselves are some self-generated numbers, where as the production version is meaningful and a complete URL.

Hope this is interesting thread to know for the mobile application developers in India, that the cloud and its programming concepts along with the service core ideas, instead of the traditional code level implementation.

At SPEC INDIA, our trained team of Mobile Application Development professionals are capable of handling any simple to complex set of requirements. Feel free to email us at lead@spec-india.com, and our Business Development will surely assist you within 24-48 hours.

Happy Cloud Programming!

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Cross Platform Mobile Apps development: Introduction & Tools

Currently, there are different mobile apps development platforms available including iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile for all the mobile application developers as well as Users. Everyone prefers different kinds of mobile devices built using different mobile operating systems, and their requirements. The two popular mobile operating system are iOS and Android, since these two contain the majority of the market share.

They are certainly followed by Windows Phone and Blackberry OS. If you are a Mobile App developer, you must be wandering from where to start with, because all these platforms are equally promising as per their needs and the requirements of the Customer. As a developer, you need to choose a platform which reaches to more people or devices hence they develop applications in one common language and deploy them to all the popular platforms. This is cross platform mobile development.

The common language is HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. You can develop applications using HTML5 standard and deliver as native app to all mobile platforms using tools and frameworks.

But clearly, HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript – this formula works for cross platform development.

Here are some of the most popular and useful tools for the same:
> Phonegap
> Appcelerator
> Appmobi
> Rho mobile
> MoSync
> Sencha
> Corona
  etc.

At SPEC INDIA, we have a trained team of 175+ professionals and mobile apps development on all the platforms. This technical areas has always been our core strength, since their evolution in the market. You can send us any query or requirement at our email id lead@spec-india.com and our Business Development Executive will definitely get back to you with 100% satisfactory answer.

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Xcode in iPhone development

The suit or collection of tools developed by Apple for developing software for Mac OS X and iOS – is called as Xcode. The latest stable release is version 4.2.1, which is available at the Mac App Store free of charge for iPhone developers. The Xcode suite includes a modified version of Complier collection and supports the programming platforms such as C, C++, Java, Python, RoR, Objective C, Objective C++, etc. The Xcode suit uses the GNU Debugger as the back-end for its debugger.

The features of the Xcode suite is the technology to distribute the building of source code over multiple computers. The more recent versions of the Xcode added a second system for iPhone programmers, known as Dedicated Network Builds, which scales better to larger and high-end configurations. Xcode also includes Apple’s WebObjects tools and frameworks for building Java web applications and web services.

With this, the Xcode also includes a very unique framework called as DTrace, a dynamic tracing framework created by Sun and released as a part of OpenSolaris.

At SPEC INDIA, we have a trained team of 175+ professionals and mobile apps development has always been our core strength, since its evolution. You can send us any query or requirement at our email id lead@spec-india.com and our Business Development Executive will definitely get back to you with 100% satisfactory answer.

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Tips for Mobile Game Development

We have been narrating our experience with mobile applications development by our articles on the blog. If you are a beginner, sometimes we are lost to find a perfect direction and flow of steps to decide on the correct path for the mobile game development.

Here are some tips and tricks for the beginners of the mobile game development:

Start..  with J2ME is the most recommended one, and look at the other resources you need to flourish
Decide on which language..  if you are going to write a platform or basic game, try Layer, Sprite, etc. & If you are going to write a 3D game, then try with platforms like JSR184.
Learn and know yourself as a mobile game developer, and don’t give up!
Starting a new game.. plan the things, plan the architecture for the game engine class (logic)
Decide the software.. and download the latest or appropriate version of the SDKit
Decide the basic game design.. i.e. come up with the basic idea and logic
Develop the story line.. and establish the play modes
Get into the actual code.. expand the API given.. understand the devices for support, and build the skeleton program, and deciding with the coding structure for the classes, sub-classes, etc.
Testing the game application built, and then going for the final release.

At SPEC INDIA, we have already developed some logical games for iPhone and iPad devices. you can have a look at the description of the same from our website. If you have any requirement or queries, feel free to write us at our email id lead@spec-india.com, our Business Development Executive will be happy to help you.

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Dynamically controlling your iPhone app from the Web

It is possible to control your iPhone from a remote location via web. It ranges from sending push messages to all of your users, some cross promotion activities, enabling/disabling the features at a particular time, sending picture messages, etc. All of this can be easily done with a little JSON and some web interface coding.

http://www.iphonequalityapplications.com/

Practically, here is what the code structure will look like:

{

    "nag": true,

    "message": "Check out Smart Lockscreen Creator!",

    "url": "http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/smart-lockscreen-creator/id419890996?mt=8"

}

Here, there would be one simple ‘nag’ popup that will nag the User to download the latest application. After you set the remote flag to continue, all the users will see the popup every time they launch the application. This popup will also display a dynamic message from the web and link to a location specified in the JSON.

The numbers of ways at which this can be implemented practically vary as:

Ø  Loading some application or a part of the application

Ø  Daily cross promotion activities

Ø  Daily content – like news, jokes, thoughts, etc.

and so on..

Happy iPhone programming!

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Siri: Intellegent Software in iPhone 4S

Apple never specified what ‘S’ stands for in iPhone ‘4S.’ I wander it may be for ‘Siri’ !!!

http://www.iphonequalityapplications.com/

To let you know, Siri is the most innovative voice-recognition software that comes with iPhone 4S. this enhanced and wonderful voice tool is an iteration on Apple’s previous Voice Control feature that debuted in the iPhone 3GS in 2009, but it allowed only voice-powered dialing and music selection.

To give you an idea about what Siri is, it takes about 2.5 to 3 seconds to create a reminder with a voice command, as opposed to 10 seconds to manually type an event in a to-do list or calendar entry.

Some of the exciting features are:

Ø  It acts as you personal assistant and uses voice to send messages, schedule meetings

Ø  It is mostly used better to control the iPhone’s default apps, such as creating reminders, setting the alarm clock and composing an e-mail or text message.

Ø  Directly update Facebook and Twitter updates

Ø  Integrated with Wikipedia, Wolfram Aplha &  Yelp

Ø  It can be used to pay your credit card bill through the Chase app, or to order your Chinese delivery through GrubHub, or to book your flight through the Kayak app.

Ø  Compute calculations on a voice command

Ø  By default, if you hold the iPhone up to your ear, Siri is activated, so it looks like you’re talking to someone on the phone rather than talking to the phone itself. Clever? Indeed.

and so on…

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iPhone Simulator: Installation & Usage

SPEC INDIA iPhone Simulator: Installation & Usage

iPhone Simulator: Installation & Usage

iPhone simulator is a very known device for all the iPhone developers. The iPhone developer, just need to launch the iPhone simulator. It takes some time to load, and once it is running you have a genuine iPhone simulator on your Mac. The only applications installed on this simulated iPhone are photos, Contacts and Safari browser. Launch the Safari web browser, and one can start checking out the apps and the websites.

Using an iPhone simulator:

Ø  Rotate your simulated iPhone; choose Hardware > Rotate Left, or Hardware > Rotate Right from the menu. iPhone’s Safariweb browser will automatically rotate the website you are viewing

Ø  Pinch-to-zoom gestures; hold down the Option key while clicking and dragging with your mouse. This will display a pair that represents your fingertips.

Ø  Double-Tap gestures; One can double-tap any part of a webpage to zoom in on that section. A useful detail to watch for if iPhoneusers are using their phones at that time.

At SPEC INDIA, our QA team thoroughly tests all the iPhone applications and projects on simulators as well as all the available live versions of the iPhones.

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Apple Push Notification Service

Apple Push Notification Service

As the name suggests, the Apple Push Notification Service is created by Apple Inc. and it was introduced for the first time as a part of iOS 3.0. The APNS is the centerpiece of the push notifications feature. It is definitely highly effective service for propagating information to devices such as iPhone,iPad and iPod touch devices.

Technically, it uses push technology through a constantly-open IP connection to forward notifications from the servers of 3^rd party applications to the Apple devices. the notifications include badges, sounds as well as any custom text messages.

The service providers here originate the notifications in their server software. The provider connects with APNS through a secure channel while monitoring incoming data intended for their Client applications. Whenever some new data for the application arrives, the provider prepares and sends a notification through the channel to APNS, which pushes the notification to the target device. In addition to being a simple transport device, the APNS include a default quality-of-service component that provides store-and-forward capabilities.

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Mobile Apps Testing: Tools & Challenges

Mobile Apps Testing: Tools & Challenges

Every mobile platform has almost the separate tools for testing purpose. Here is the brief list of the same:

Ø  FoneMonkey: for iPhone applications. This is a free tool

Ø  Robotium: automation tool for Android Mobile Application

Ø  Sikuli: Visual technology to test graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images

Ø  Deviceanywhere: test tool for Mobile Apps across all the platforms

Ø  MITE: A Mobile content testing and validation tool for Mobile Web applications

Challenges:

Ø  Possibility of field failures

Testing of mobile apps on emulators and live phones are altogether different. The apps which run on the emulators might not run successful due on the live mobile phones. In technical terms, this is called as Field failures.

Ø  Emerging Mobile Technologies

In this category, the different screen sizes, image resolutions, etc. come into picture. The input methods too vary as QWERTY, Touch, Touch n type, etc. So, naturally the testing professionals have to cope up with the every emerging trend.

Ø  Automation is difficult

In case of mobile applications, even the normal tasks for testing will take a lot of time due to constraints of hardware like less memory and poor processing power on which these apps execute.

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