Appdots

Code Break!

brett — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:36:43 +0000

I should have made this post a few weeks ago. Justin and I are still around, but we have some projects that we are currently working on. When we are done, we will be sharing a lot more information.

For the project that I am working on, I will just throw out some words and let me know if anything sounds interesting:

webOS
GTD
Evernote

I expect this to be a crazy month, but we will try to keep the site updated with any milestones in our projects.

Has anyone seen my Red Bull?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Adult Education

justin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:06:02 +0000

Not everything these days is about having that little piece of paper to put on the wall (college degree). A lot of times it’s what you know, and who you know that will help you gain meaningful employment. Some of the best universities are offering their lectures free to the public for viewing and a lot of the course material as well.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Free Adobe Flex Builder 3

justin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:36:18 +0000

Adobe is offering a Free copy of their Flex Builder 3 application for any unemployed developer or student.

https://freeriatools.adobe.com/learnflex/

Another great offer comes from Safari Books Online. 60 days free.

https://ssl.safaribooksonline.com/tryitfree

Microsoft Becomes Slightly More Developer-Friendly It seems that everyone is talking app stores these...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Is The Original Always The Best?

brett — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:00:22 +0000

In the great debate between Apple hardware and Hackintosh’d systems, I would have to say yes. I have been going round and round trying to get OSX 10.5.6 loaded on my Dell XPS M1330 lately and it is just not fun. I got OSX 10.5.5 installed and working with my wireless network, but I could not properly shutdown, sleep, or reboot the machine. I also didn’t seem to have sound.

Finally after trying to get it running again to start playing around with a new SDK for an upcoming mobile platform, I gave up.

So…

today, I picked up one of the new aluminum Macbooks. I have had a couple of Mac systems in the past, but they never seemed to have the performance to keep up with everything I was doing, including gaming. I have not tried gaming yet, but I do have to say the new Macbooks are a joy to use. The multi-touch trackpad is simply awesome and I think we will see PC makers try to rip it off soon. It is so nice to be able to change applications and more without taking your hand off of the trackpad. This is the first laptop that I will probably use without an external mouse unless I am gaming.

For development, I think it is safer to go with the original instead of the fake. I can now load up VMWare Fusion or just dual-boot into Windows using Bootcamp if I need any of my Windows tools. It comes at a higher price, but it is nice to be able to have a dependable OSX system that can still run Windows and Linux programs like a champ.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ya know what? Why settle for one.

justin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:00:28 +0000

Some of my favorite desktop apps are open source or web based. GIMP, Pidgin, x-chat all get used on a daily basis. Why should we settle for all these different proprietary SDK models that require us to have a certain operating system to develop on. These last couple weeks I’ve explored getting started with the iPhone SDK, and the .NET SDK for developing for Windows Mobile. Honestly . . . Apple and Microsoft have missed the bus.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with this java thing, but HTML and JavaScript are well established programming standards. The fine folks over at PhoneGap have put together another tool using HTML and Java to develop apps not just for the iPhone, but for the Android, Blackberry, and most definitely coming soon Pre.

Java Anyone? J2ME Polish is a toolkit that allows you to “develop,...
The Celebrity Effect When you think about celebrities and mobile devices, what...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Java Anyone?

justin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:00:49 +0000

J2ME Polish is a toolkit that allows you to “develop, design, and build your applications on the platform of your choice: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux or any other Java enabled operating system”

This one caught me off guard a bit because you can 1: program in Java, and port your app to Blackberry, Palm, DoJa and WIPI devices. Not only that but Winmo, iPhone and Android platforms are natively supported.

Ya know what? Why settle for one. Some of my favorite desktop apps are open source...
The 2008 Smartphone Market The current smartphone market consists of 6 major platforms: Palm...
The Celebrity Effect When you think about celebrities and mobile devices, what...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tweet With Us

brett — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:00:29 +0000

Twitter seems like it is becoming more and more popular these days. Many site now have their own Twitter accounts that let you follow them and get notified when they update the site. We are currently doing that and you can follow the Appdots site at http://www.twitter.com/appdots.

In addition to the site Twitter account, Justin and I can both be found on Twitter with our personal accounts. You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/brettq. I will let Justin share his Twitter account later. The reason we run both personal and site Twitter accounts is because a lot of people do not like their Twitter feeds to look just like a RSS news feed. There are a lot of accounts out in the twitterverse that do nothing but put out notifications when a new article is posted. This is what our Appdots account is currently doing on Twitter. On the other hand, I use my personal account for a wide variety of things and I also usually retweet notices from Appdots. We will be using the Appdots site for more content in the future and for possible contests, so it is worth it to keep it on follow just in case!

As for Twitter on the go, I am currently using a Palm Treo Pro as my daily driver device and am using PockeTwit as my Twitter client. I also use Tweetie on my iPhone, which I think is still the best Twitter application on any platform, including PC/OSX. There is a lot of room for polished Twitter applications on pretty much every platform, so if social networking is your thing, why not start coding the next great Twitter app?

[Image via PockeTwit]

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

10 skills developers will need

justin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:00:43 +0000

I ran across an article on Tech Republic listing the top 10 skills that developers will need over the next 5 years. Lets break it down and focus on only the mobile.

The weakened job market, and the poor economy leave a lot of us looking for quick skill sets to hold us over for the next great job. The list on tech republic, and my breakdown of the related skills for mobile programmers will not only ensure that you’re in for the high demand jobs, but you’ll have the skills for the next 5 years.

1: One of the “Big Three” (.NET, Jave, PHP)

For our purposes replace PHP with objective C, C++. Learning Java is going to give you the biggest bang for the buck of the 3 programming languages for this reason; You’ll be able to write apps for Symbian, Blackberry, WebOS, and Android.

2: Rich Internet Applications

Yes, absolute must. HTML 5 as stated in the post is going to incorporate all sorts of RIA functionality. Learn it love it live it.

3: Web Development

Every platform has its own webkit, this should be a duh moment for anyone reading this. Web Development is a basic skill set you are going to need.

4: Web Services

In the manipulated words of Floyd, how can you have development if you haven’t learned your services!? IF you don’t learn your services you can’t have any development!

5: Soft Skills

Working on your own or with a small team of developers for mobile apps you really don’t need soft skills. Sit in your basement and eat cheetohs for all I care, but if you’re working for a company to program something for internal use these might be kind of sort of useful. Consider these optional, you’re fine just the way you are.

6: Dynamic and/or functional programming language

Optional at best for right now, but as these mobile operating systems become more and more like full blown desktop systems expect to need at least one dynamic language by your side. Going back to the top where I said java was the best bang for the buck. Ruby is hot Hot HOT!

7: Agile Methodologies

Honestly, I had to look this one up on wikipedia. This still seems like a business buzzword to me, so in reality the best words of advice I can give you is to use common sense.

8: Domain Knowledge

Know thy enemy . . . or customer. Know what they want, accept feedback, look at usage numbers and figure out how to improve your product based on that feedback.

9: Development “hygiene”

Even if you’re working alone this is still helpful. Utilize one of those open source systems out there to organize your projects and keep revision logs on exactly what’s changed. You may need to revert to a previous piece of code, or at least look at some of that stuff for inspiration. Organization is a good thing, and these tools just made it easier.

Finally!

10: Mobile Development

Hell Yea!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Palm OS On WebOS – Take 2

brett — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:00:40 +0000

Justin joked about the Palm OS being the ultimate undying mobile OS. In many ways this is true. For a while now, a company called StyleTap has created a Palm OS emulator that runs on Windows Mobile or Symbian. I was actually very surprised at Palm’s announcement that it was a company other than StyleTap that would be developing the Classic app for WebOS. At the same time, I am glad. I have never had much luck with applications that use large database files on StyleTap. But, this means that now Palm OS applications can be run on Symbian, Windows Mobile (Pro, Classic, and Standard), and now WebOS. That sure is a lot of market availability for a dying OS!

I really think that an application like this is going to be a huge hit (if it is implemented properly), especially since Palm has said that they plan on making tools that will transfer data over from a Palm OS device to the Pre running Classic. There are a ton of medical databases that were made for the Palm OS that are still being supported. This will allow these programs to be available to use on the Pre as soon as it is released.

Is this a long term solution? Of course not. But it will make a lot of users very happy that they can use some of the Palm apps that they have been using for years (and years and years and years…) until their favorite developers start making native applications for WebOS.

And honestly, one of the most played games on my Nintendo Wii is Mario Kart 64. Some things just never get old.

Do You Like The Underdog? If you do, then you might be using a...
The 2008 Smartphone Market The current smartphone market consists of 6 major platforms: Palm...
Good News for the Lonely It’s been a rusty nail hanging on the coffin...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

What are you feeding your mind?

justin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:30:51 +0000

Do you sit down and hit the books, studying every aspect of the project at hand? Do you find some good blog posts that give you a rough outline of what you want to do? Do you learn more from trial and error?

Post some comments about what tools you use to learn and stay competitive.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.