Interesting Tips From a Seasoned App Developer

A self-taught programmer has been producing apps for over 10 years.  He has been successful writing apps and has shared some tips to help app developers.

Satisfy your own needs

My most popular apps are ones that I’ve developed for myself to satisfy my own needs with devices that excite me. If you want a capability on your device, chances are there are other people thinking the same thing. Having a problem you want to solve for yourself means that you are more committed to it and actually understand it. It’s also a lot more fun.

Take feedback and act on it

Without exception it has been feedback from highly engaged users which has allowed my apps to keep developing over the years, to improve and stay fresh. I respond to most customer emails myself and aim to do so quickly. This seems to have a lasting halo effect as customers recommend my apps to their friends. Many people are surprised and very pleased to get an email from the real developer rather than a support minion.

Keep it simple – but not too simple

You’ll typically get most feedback from the highly technical users who want lots of complicated features and options. These guys are great, they have some killer ideas, but they are not the majority of your users. In order to keep the broader base happy, you need to keep things simple. Palm OS used to talk about ‘the zen of Palm.’ They obsessed about letting users act in as few taps as possible. Apple has embraced this desire for simplicity — though, with Apple, making things beautiful can sometimes get in the way of achieving the goal.

Looks matter

When I started developing, apps were called applications, and we cared more about what they did than how they looked. Times have changed. For your app to be a success, it needs to look good. Spend that bit of extra time (and maybe money, if graphic skills aren’t your thing) to give it a bit of polish.

You can’t predict success

Apps are like pop songs. You write the app, you polish it and you release it. You don’t know whether it will be a hit or flop. That is true even after your first successful app. Most pop bands are one-hit-wonders, and most developers will struggle to follow initial success. I had low expectations for the app that would become my most successful project, and others that I was super-excited about disappeared without a trace. You do your best, release your app, then move on if you need to.

Small is good

I have been accused of lacking ambition, but I like my small, low-risk approach. I don’t have employees, I have never spent more than a few thousand pounds to develop, design, and launch an app. Many developers are working towards a big launch on borrowed money, hiring an expensive team of rock star developers and publicists, hoping and hanging on for that ever elusive venture capital or big tech buy-out. I look at most of those app ideas and wonder why they didn’t just build their app in the evenings, launch it, and see what happens. Most will disappear without a trace, but a good idea that fulfills a need will gradually find a market. And probably has as much chance of hitting it big as any other decent app, with a lot less risk.

 http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/18/insights-from-an-app-developer-veteran-think-simple-low-risk/

Check Out the Lastest News on SILO for Web Application Security

                                               authenic8.com

In this age of security leaks and hackers businesses are always looking for promising systems that can protect data and employee devices.

A new company, Authenic8 , has developed the product "Silo". This Silo app has a highly secure containment.  Silo stands out because mobile employees it is valuable when using personal devices over insecure networks.

Authentic8 stated the following their launch of Silo.  "Each time they launch Silo, users get a freshly built browsing environment with SSO links to provisioned apps. All web code is contained within Silo, meaning apps are insulated from exploits, and business data is kept separate from personal browsing. Users interact with a benign display of the web app, keeping all web code off the device. And at session end Silo is destroyed along with all transient browsing data, leaving the device and server stateless. With Silo, your web apps live beyond the reach of network, client-side or web borne exploits."

Ken Hess for Consumerization asked the team of  Authentic8 the following question.:
"What happens if the user hits a site that's been compromised? Can it have any negative affect on the user's device?"
The team answered:
The answer is, "No". And the reason is that your web application isn't running on your device. It runs in the cloud, in a sandboxed environment. Your device is not directly attached to the web service in any way. So, imagine the worst, most devious virus or malware possible that's infected a site that you have setup to access in Silo.

 Watch a video demonstration of Authenic8's Silo in action.

http://www.zdnet.com/authentic8s-silo-the-ultimate-security-solution-7000023271/

Which Mobile Hybrid App is Better For You?

                                             wiki.developerforce.com

Not every app will fit cleanly into a single pattern, they serve as models for understanding the wide range of what’s possible.

Pure Pattern: So-called “pure” hybrid apps consist of a single webview that occupies the entire screen. All the content and navigation controls are implemented in HTML5, and a thin native wrapper exposes native APIs (like Address Book access) to the HTML5 code. PhoneGap (Cordova) apps use this model. Because of the heavy reliance on HTML5, these apps typically have the most code reuse between mobile platforms and require the least level of native programming experience.

Blended Pattern: Blended apps use native components for the main navigation UI (such as the tab bar) but web views for the formatted content. These apps often use multiple web views with native-powered animations between screens. Apple’s App Store app and Google’s Gmail for iOS use this pattern on some screens.

Mullet Pattern: These apps are fully native for early parts of a user flow, such as product browsing, and web-based for later areas like checkout. This is a very common pattern for mobile commerce apps where APIs supporting native screens typically exist for product data but not for the hard to integrate features like checkout and payments. Walmart and Yelp apps for iOS both use this pattern.

Fallback Pattern: In this pattern, the app is mostly native but uses hybrid web views as a fallback for little used or frequently changing content. Facebook’s current app falls under this pattern
.
API Pattern: Not all hybrid apps simply render HTML from a server. API-driven hybrid apps get their data from the server in JSON or XML and instantiate that data into HTML within the app.

A good resource is a free e-book on native, HTML5, and hybrid apps that may help with the different approaches to mobile in the enterprise. The staff at Kinvey wrote the book.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/13/the-5-hybrid-apps-you-meet-in-heaven-hhhhhh-mobile/

Oracle Seeks Java Performance Boost

                                          businessweek.com

Oracle, which has already been working with HSA Foundation on projects, finally becomes a member!

Oracle has joined the industry consortium HSA Foundation, which is developing standards to make it easier for programmers to take advantage of GPUs and other processor types for faster code execution.

The Heterogeneous System Architecture Foundation is developing a set of open-source programming tools that will make it easier for programmers to harness the joint power of CPUs, graphics processing units (GPUs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and digital signal processors for better system performance.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Surprise! Java is fastest for server-side Web apps. | Learn how to work smarter, not harder with InfoWorld's roundup of all the tips and trends programmers need to know in the Developers' Survival Guide. Download the PDF today! | Keep up with the latest developer news with InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. ]

Oracle wants to bring those "heterogeneous compute" capabilities to Java developers, too
"Our work with the HSA Foundation will help provide Java developers with the ability to quickly leverage GPU acceleration, and explore how the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), as well as the Java language and APIs, might be enhanced to allow applications to take advantage of heterogeneous compute," said Nandini Ramani, vice president of development for Oracle's Java Platform, in a statement. Oracle acquired the Java platform when it bought Sun Microsystems.

The not-for-profit foundation was started last year by Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm, ARM Holdings and other companies. AMD has collaborated with Oracle on an OpenJDK project called "Project Sumatra," which will bring parallel acceleration to JVMs with Java 8, which will become available in March next year. Sumatra repurposes multi-core Java 8 APIs (application programming interfaces) called Stream or Lambda to enable processing on CPUs and GPUs, but it will need extra layers of code for parallel execution.

Ultimately, JVMs will get native support for parallel acceleration, which will reduce the need for extra layers of code. Native support for HSA's specifications in JVMs is expected with Java 9 in 2015, and Oracle is working with the HSA Foundation to reduce the overlays needed for Java to tap into GPUs and other co-processors.

HSA has released some specifications that pool memory resources and lower the overhead required in dispatching jobs to hardware for execution. HSA also is looking to create industry-standard parallel programming tools on top of existing standards like OpenCL.

Other new members include networking firm Huawei and Linaro, which develops ARM-based software for Linux distributions. U.S. government labs Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have also joined the consortium.

Intel and Nvidia, which offer their own parallel programming tools, are not members of HSA Foundation.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's email address is agam_shah@idg.com

http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/oracle-seeks-java-performance-boost-joins-hsa-foundation-230712

How Google Hummingbird is Revolutionizing Content Development in the Legal Industry

Google Hummingbird was released in September 2013. For those who have not yet heard of this new way of interacting with users.


Google claims that its Hummingbird algorithm offers a more natural way to use its search engines. In the past month Hummingbird was quietly deployed before any announcement was made. Google senior vice president Amit Singhal said that this is the largest algorithm update in three years, the last update was three years before the "caffeine plan."

Singhal said that the algorithm can make use of more complex search requests and has a better understanding of the concept of human language, rather than a few scattered words. This new algorithm is a big step forward in the Internet history as searches will be more "human friendly" than ever. The algorithm is designed for conversational or semantic search. Google uses its knowledge graph to answer questions users type as a query For example, a query like "how tall is Mount Everest" would return the search result: 29,029' (8,848 m) Mount Everest, Elevation. Although the knowledge graph is a big part of the hummingbird update, it is not the only thing affected. The hummingbird algorithm is estimated to impact 90% of all searches, impacting billions of pages on the web. This means that sites that are more likely to answer the users questions might be favored. With a growing number of mobile users, the hummingbird algorithm had voice search in mind. Hummingbird was designed to understand the users intent and provide the best possible results.

 A recent article speaks how Google Hummingbird can change a content developers writing.

How Does This Lead To Revolution?

Content development has been growing as a marketing tool for the last few years and marketers have learned on how to optimize content for search-engine crawlers. SEO experts have focused on building authority and sharability through link building in guest blogs and social media. These methods will still play a vital part in the future of SEO but one thing is changing dramatically: how Google reads a query and decides what the best result is.

Hummingbird changes from a focus on keywords to a focus on the overall meaning behind the query (the semantic meaning) and then finds the content that best answers the question or inquiry. Therefore, content isn’t about fitting a certain keyword schema and a certain amount of backlinks to get your rank and authority up anymore. Now search engine optimization is about how well your content functions as an answer to the user’s query. If you are developing content for a business, it should be designated towards a specific market. Therefore, you have to find out the wants and needs of the market you are writing for.

Hummingbird means your content has to be original, functional, specific, and well written. These qualities in writing will lead to sharability and, therefore, backlinks. Good content, therefore, is content that works for the user not for Google (although by writing for the user you are also writing content that works for Google). What makes this revolutionized algorithm so great is that it changes what has been the normal marketing strategy in content development : building authority, good keywords, sharability, and backlinks in order to create “good content”. Instead, good content should be good writing that helps a user or client and serves a purpose other than appeasing the omnipotent Google.

How This Will Change Content Developer’s Writing

Since Google is focusing on the semantic meaning of queries, this means content will have to be better at answering the semantic meanings of queries. For content to get indexed and reach high rankings, content developers have to write in a way that will be a helpful experience. Meaning an article that is well organized, informative or useful, and creative.

Google’s updates continue to force the content developer to revolutionize their way of writing from businesses to clients. Instead of getting lost in the technology of page indexing and keyword research, now it’s about finding out which pages generate traffic and give your market the best user experience. So, content development is about creating experience. This means more and more, content development is turning into pure art.

http://www.dailydealmedia.com/google-hummingbird-how-its545-revolutionizing-content-development-in-the-legal-industry/

How Much Do You Know About Web Development With Grails 2.3?

                                           Grails Software



What is Grails?

Grails is an Open Source, full stack, web application framework for the JVM. It takes advantage of the Groovy programming language and convention over configuration to provide a productive and stream-lined development experience.

 It is intended to be a high-productivity framework by following the "coding by convention" paradigm, providing a stand-alone development environment and hiding much of the configuration detail from the developer.

Grails was previously known as 'Groovy on Rails'; in March 2006 that name was dropped in response to a request by David Heinemeier Hansson, founder of the Ruby on Rails framework. Work began in July 2005, with the 0.1 release on March 29, 2006 and the 1.0 release announced on February 18, 2008.

G2One - The Groovy Grails Company - was acquired by SpringSource in November, 2008, and it was later acquired by VMware.

Installing Grails 2.3.x on OS x




www.grail.org
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/web-app-grails-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grails_(framework)

Crummy Passwords is the Reason that Adobe was HACKED!

                                           news.mindprocessors.com 

This following article should be a wake-up call to computer users in selecting their passwords. Knowing that persons use the same password for every login that they use is opening the door for security breaches and hackers getting your personal information. 




Despite the endless warnings, despite all the advice, despite the plethora of useful articles on the matter, it seems computer users everywhere just can’t help creating really crummy passwords.

Analysis of user passwords gathered from the recent Adobe attack reveal a Top 20 list full of easy-to-remember but equally easy-to-guess passwords, with “123456” topping the chart.

The Adobe hack affected 38 million accounts, though this figure relates only to active users. The security breach actually hit more than 150 million accounts, though most are no longer used.

Adobe has changed passwords on affected accounts and contacted users to let them know how to reset their account with a personally chosen password. It also instructed users to change their passwords on any other website where they may have used the same user ID and password as their Adobe account.

Some of the stolen data has started to show up across the Web, with Internet security researcher Jeremi Gosney uncovering a mass of passwords, despite the U.S. software giant saying they were protected by encryption. However, an Adobe spokesperson said last week that up to now there have been no reports of suspicious activity on user accounts affected by the security breach.

Now that you know “123456” topped the list of 1.9 million passwords, perhaps you can guess what came in at number 2…..“123456789.” Number 3 will be enough to make any Web security advisor consider giving up the day job in despair: “password.”

Crummy passwords

Here are the rest of the top 20 most popular passwords gathered from the Adobe hack: adobe123 / 12345678 / qwerty / 1234567 / 111111 / photoshop / 123123 / 1234567890 / 000000 / abc123 / 1234 / adobe1 / macromedia / azerty / iloveyou / aaaaaa / 654321

The thing is, if someone uses a number like “123456” for their password on one site, it’s a safe bet they use the same number on all the websites for which they have accounts, as you’d only get confused if you had a different number for each site – unless, of course, you keep all your passwords in a big red notebook with “MY PASSWORDS” written on the front. And those who have “adobe123″ as their password no doubt also use “facebook123”, “twitter123”… you get the idea.

Gosney said he’s currently unable to verify the passwords he uncovered, though he’s “fairly confident” of the list’s accuracy. To find out more about how he collected the data, and to see the top 100 passwords as selected by Adobe users, click here.

Meanwhile, if, after looking through the list above, a bead of sweat has formed on your brow as you start to realize how ridiculously simple your passwords are (or should we say “password is”?), then check out this article to find out how to create something a little more secure. Or get an app to help you.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/11/06/123456-adobe-hack-highlights-crummy-passwords/ 

Need Some Advice for Cost-Effective App Production?

We love to share tips from other developers that we deem helpful . Share this article with others so they can benefit from the information in this article.



When selecting content delivery channels, a digital-first publisher can’t ignore the mobile app. Today’s digital-savvy readers expect a market leading publication to have a mobile app. Moreover, advertisers expect to be able reach the most loyal subscribers via the publisher’s app.

This said, as mentioned in an earlier post, the ROI on a mobile app should be carefully evaluated. The key challenges with apps are discoverability and the higher expenses related to building and maintaining the app. While apps are generally superior reading experiences for subscribers, app discoverability is difficult due to the sheer size, fragmentation, and limited search functionality of app stores. As a result, launching a new publication app today requires significant marketing expense to grow an audience. Similarly, building and maintaining an app can be quite expensive, and native apps by definition are not cross-platform solutions, so you’ll need to build separate apps for each operating system that you want to support (iOS, Android, Windows 8, etc.).



Third-Party Provider

First, consider working with a third-party mobile platform provider that is willing to build and host a mobile app for you on a revenue share basis. These platform vendors typically have template solutions that you can leverage to get to market quickly for little cost. Their offerings normally include the key features that you’ll want already built in (e.g., push notifications, sharing functionality, and rich-media advertising). Additionally, these providers will ensure that your apps continually work even on the latest operating system releases, leveraging their scale to quickly update their platform and app environment. The main downside of these solution providers is that their templates may limit your creativity. Additionally, supporting a different CMS can create editorial challenges.

The 'Native Wrapper'

Another approach to building an app in a cost-effective way would be to consider rebuilding your website in HTML5 and then placing it in a “native wrapper” rather than building a pure native app. Some consider this approach the equivalent of “having your cake and eating it too.” Three key benefits of HTML5 are that it is operating system agnostic (e.g., code works for Android and iOS), it offers offline reading capabilities, and, depending upon how it is architected, you can make updates without app releases. HTML5 code in a native wrapper allows you to access native features such as push notifications, in-app purchasing, and native sharing capabilities. You could also consider building this “app” using a responsive/native HTML5 design which could reduce future development costs. That said, I would caution that this approach is not necessarily the panacea some purport it to be in that it’s challenging to build an HTML5 mobile site and there are a lot of nuances that will require an experienced programmer (which are hard to come by). If it’s done wrong, users will see a degradation of app experience in terms of speed and functionality.


Pick One OS

The third cost-effective approach would be to build a native app for only one operating system (e.g., iOS) using your CMS and internal platforms. The value of this approach will depend upon both the concentration of your user base (i.e. is the majority of your readers using one platform over another) and your access to skilled developers, either in-house or contracted).

In the next article, I’ll address some best-in-class approaches to driving app revenue as well as provide some stats on ALM’s app performance.

http://www.foliomag.com/2013/3-tips-cost-effective-app-production#.Unk1Ovlwrmc