Shonzilla, a pattern-seeking animal

Wed Apr 1

Rhodes framework

Here’s another open-source cross-platform mobile application framework I’ve discovered. It’s called Rhodes framework. This one is both very interesting and special because it does not use web browser as run-time environment but it rather creates native applications.

Cross-platform mobile applications are written in Ruby programming language using MVC architectural. This is definitely good news for all Rails developers out there and perhaps an additional push for everyone else considering finally learning the Ruby language and Rails framework as well.

The version 1.0 release a week ago, on March 24th, supports mobile platforms such as iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlueBerry, and last but not least, Android.

Rhodes framework includes the first Ruby implementation for all the mentioned platforms except Symbian which already had one. Cross-platform mobile Ruby code gets translated into natively optimized mobile apps. One of the main components is client-side component called RhoSync which allows integration with web services and, consequently, integration with almost any back-end system or application. Some integrations already available with Rhodes framework are SugarCRM integration and Ligthouse integration.

How does it work? Nice people from Rhomobile explain it themselves:
“In general, developer productivity is much higher in Rhodes than writing to diverse native device operating systems and APIs since most of your UI customization can be done in HTML templates (ERB files). Rhodes also provides access to native device capabilities such as GPS and PIM data via an extended set of tags (e.g. <geolocation/>).”

Has Rhodes framework intrigued you? If so, have a look at Rhodes tutorial.

[via googletechtalks]

Wed Mar 25

What is PhoneGap? The Movie

Last week, in my blog post iFart Economy, I wrote about simple mobile application that can help you earn a lot of money if you’re creative and use universal language.

Many people may feel reluctant to even try programming for the mobile devices. Since there’s orders of magnitude more web developers (ahem, those who know well and use regularly JavaScript, HTML and CSS) than mobile developers, the barrier of entry has been high. An open-source development tool called PhoneGap might help. This development tool allows you to create mobile applications quickly using JavaScript by offering a number of JavaScript libraries that abstract mobile device hardware and make it available through JavaScript.

What’s nice about this dev tool is that, in theory (i.e. I have yet to try it out), allows you to write once and run on many mobile platforms: iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

Here’s a quote from André Charland, CEO of Nitobi, the creators of PhoneGap:

We’ve been fielding the question “What is PhoneGap?” more and more these past couple months. So we put together this short video to help explain it:)

Get the code and more at PhoneGap

[via

andrecharland]

Thu Mar 19

iFart economy

Q: What is iFart economy?
A: It’s the impact that a simple product, regardless how bizarre, can provoke in your immediate environment. Thanks to viral effects of humor everyone understands this effect expands to a wider audience and, consequently, creates its own market niche.

Watch the the commercial for the application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. One has to admit it’s fun as hell regardless of your educational background, ethicity, zodiac sign or your favorite brand of mobile phone. The reason why I’m writing about it is that it is sold through iTunes Store for $1. Joel Comm, the iFart developer, has revealed that it is downloaded over 10.000 times a day. Yes, that’s over ten thousand times every day, give or take. During last Christmas it was particularly popular and was sold nearly 40.000 times. Knowing 30% is sliced off by Apple – do the math and draw your own conclusions…

Perhaps more people should be making mobile applications, developing for the popular mobile platforms like the upcoming iPhone 3.0, Android, Symbian, WebOS (on still anticipated Palm Pre)…? Maybe developers should less enterprise applications and more fun ones that can be used and enjoyed by anyone?

You can tell that this cheap mobile app is viral with a potential to inspire some priceless moments. You don’t believe me? Watch what happens when a kid uses iFart during City Council meeting.

[via ifartmobile]

Wed Feb 11

Google Sync for your mobile phone(s)

“Google Mobile Sync will push and pull any changes to contacts or calendars over the air. On the iPhone these occupy the regular calendar and address book applications, meaning that things will work just as they normally do. It’s all done via an Exchange server at Google’s end, which means that things should actually function properly.”

[via Wired]

Sun Oct 26

Apple iPhone sales predictions vs. information overflow and filtering

We’re in second half of October and Apple Inc. has already surpassed the goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008. Impressive!

Get your laughs at various analysts predicting a lame future for iPhone and Apple a while ago.

Here’s another failed prediction from January 2007:
“2. Jobs raised Wall Street expectations too high

Jobs made the mistake of specifying Apple’s target of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. The goal sounded modest when Jobs said the goal represents just 1 percent of the global handset market”“.

As ever, analysts will give you predictions either way, pro et contra, buy vs. sell, good vs. bad, fame vs. lame. I’d say we’re all better off using our “trusted” sources and gut feeling when making decisions.

We’re living in the world of Web 2.0 littered with information sources but also technologies (feed readers, micro-blogging communities, podcasts, and the alphabet soup - RSS, APP, XMPP, ESP, etc.) Twitter that help us stay on top of the resulting information overflow. The whole idea of managing information overflow is perfecting our filters so that we are left with more time using our gut feeling,

Thu Sep 18

Hack that Phone - OpenSSH installation

A hacking interlude… this is something I would like to have handy when I start developing for iPhone and/or iPod touch.

Mon Jul 21

Carling iPint - iphone application - virtual pint

Talk about a good game to “play” and pass around when there’s no real beer around, or at least enought of it.

Mon Jun 9

The new, 2nd gen Apple iPhone with 3G and GPS is finally here

Today at the WWDC 2008 at San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has responded to many woes as far as the iPhone software and hardware are concerned. Talk about timing in response to growing ~~excitement~~ hype.

Here’s the check list:

3G network support
Enterprise support
Third party application support
More countries
More affordable

Apart from 3G which allows almost triple the speed over EDGE networks, and it approaches WiFi speeds regardless of any accessible WiFi around you. Apple’s measurements indicate it’s 36% faster then competitor mobile phones Nokia N95 and Treo 750. The 2nd gen iPhone comes with GPS, or more precisely A-GPS which uses cell tower location info to improve precision while consuming less battery juice. GPS functionality has been nicely integrated into Google Maps where you can see where you are with an overlayed pulsating dot. That might make your childhood wet dreams related to action movies finally come true.

Enterprise support will be available out of the box (as a part of the upcoming iPhone 2.0 ~~firmware~~ software) and it will include push (instead of the usual information pull model) of email, contacts, calendars, auto-discovery, global address book, remote wipe. These push features will come as a part of MobileMe service. Enterprises will be able to distribute apps selectively within the enterprise, i.e. to their employees’ iPhones only. They authorize iPhones within their enterprise and then create applications that just run on those phones. The apps can be distributed just through their intranet.

Third party application support will be made though iPhone SDK. It has the following parts: Cocoa Touch, Media, Core Services, and Core OS. Core OS makes use of the same kernel as Mac OS X. Nice! Tapping core functionality of existing Mac OS X applications. Core Services includes everything from a complete database layer to core location, for easily building location-based functionality into applications. Also a very fast implementation of OpenGL. 3rd party application development will be possible using development tools like xCode, Interface Builder, the iPhone simulator, and Instruments. Some of the APIs that will be available are: Address Book API to access contacts, as the Core Location API for implementing location-based apps. Applications developed by 3rd party developer will be available to iPhone users via App Store, and Apple will take 30% off any purchase, where the rest will go to original developers.

The iPhone 3G will be available July 11th in 22 countries. Over the coming months, iPhone will be made available in 70 countries. Apple has responded to the viral expansion of iPhones beyond the countries where it was originally made available under 2-year contracts.

2nd gen iPhone 8GB

Lastly, new iPhone will be more affordable. It will come in two basic versions: 8GB and 16GB. They will cost $199 USD and $299 US, respectively, and that will be the maximum prices around the world.

When Apple products are concerned something needs to be said about design. The new iPhone is 1mm thicker and wider then the 1st generation iPhone, it has black plastic back, solid metal buttons, same display, camera, flush headphone jack. It will be also available in white color. Functionality-wse, audio has been dramatically improved and now it’s possible to record sounds (virtual piano, drums, 12-bar blues “instrument”, and a bass) that can be played on iPhone itself. BTW, a SIM ejector comes in the box too.

The new iPhone is a really nice device and it’s definitely something I will consider buying in the coming months. That is, unless some ~~appealing~~ sexy mobile phone based on Google Android hits the market in 3Q 2008.

Here’s the first ad for 2nd gen iPhone.

Thu Feb 28

Meet the masters of hype, Apple Inc.

This is how it should be done. This is how hype should be created. This is how you get faithful followers.

First, it (called SDK) was announced by Steve Jobs for February 2008. Ever since, it has been widely and wildly anticipated by religious hordes of Appleists.

Usually, Feburary has 29 days in a leap year. Year 2008 will be special because it will have 35 days because of the “Apple event confirmed for March 6th for the “iPhone software roadmap”. [via Engadget]

iPhone software roadmap

I can see fingerprints of Steve’s RDF (reality distortion field for the unitiated) all over this. Why call SDK n SDK when it can be a step in a “software roadmap” which I guess will be presented as a wonderful long-term opportunity for the Appleists to continue their habit, no addiction. What addiction? Apple products addiction and, now - finally, addiction to product derivatives or 3rd party products.

Dealers rejoice! :-)

I am happy because this increases competition in the mobile software market where I see a lot of fun coming in 2008.