Tag Archive for 'mobile'

iPhone - Emerging Frameworks

Published
by
dshanley
on May 10, 2009
in iPhone
. 0 Comments

This coming Saturday, May 16th, I’ll be discussing the new tools, code, and frameworks that are coming out of developing iPhone community. I’ll be focusing on some of the tools that the team at Nixwire has started actively using such as:

The talk will center around what this means for developers - how it can speed development, what each framework offers, challenges in keeping up with such a evolving space, and how all of us can contribute and participate.

Afterward, we’ll have an active Q&A session, and if it’s still going after a bit, maybe we’ll hit a pub nearby to continue the fun.

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The Future of Enterprise Software

Published
by
dshanley
on February 19, 2009
in Enterprise Mobility
. 0 Comments

We’ve arrived at another inflection point for enterprise software, and the future is bright (and mobile).

Looking back at the past, a period of significant growth followed game-changing developments adopted by the corporate community.  Against the backdrop of the worst economic downturn in modern history, this is the case beginning effectively now.

A buzzword soup of terms — SOA, SaaS, WS — is materializing into a tangible offering — cloud computing.  Startups get it.  Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Google get it.  Big business is getting it.

Enterprise Software Turning Points

IBM announced further developments in their Blue Cloud initiative here and here.  Oracle’s portal demonstrates that they are aggressively pursuing cloud computing via both the storage and software models.

The drivers of moving to the cloud are:

  • Increased outsourcing and specialization leading to an overall reduction in-house IT spending
  • Explosion of data-intensive applications and the increasing demand for metrics and business intelligence (BI)
  • Increased enterprise comfort-level with outside vendors and data services
  • Advancement and adoption of grid computing, web services / SOA, virtualization
  • Increasing demand for the mobile enterprise

Corporate IT has already embraced outsourcing and virtualization, so it makes sense to take the next logical step towards specialization — cloud computing.  Free yourself of managing zero value-add IT infrastructure and focus on your core business by leveraging services like AWS/EC2 to achieve pure business goals.  Worrying about server requisitioning, provisioning, configuring software, and bandwidth is simply a complex and unnecessary distraction.

Moving to the cloud enables quick ramp-up and ramp-down utilization of what would typically take significant man-hours to do internally.  Quick provisioning of servers, web servers, applications, application servers; pay for what you use during the lifetime of a project; no capitalized infrastructure; shut it all down when the project runs it’s useful lifespan is what it is and will be all about.

Enterprise adoption tends to trend at about a 2-3 year lag from introduction, so we’re starting to see the first wave of real cloud computing adoption, and expect to see full adoption beginning in 2010 through 2011.

What does this mean for mobility?

With the adoption of both public and private clouds by the enterprise, this will free up capital for enterprise mobility projects and also enable them by easing data access outside the four walls.  As IT infrastructure costs decrease by efficient use and specialization — cloudsourcing — of applications, this money can be plowed into mobility projects to really take advantage of distributed data access, further reducing the cost of doing business.

Mobilizing your field workers and freeing your desk workers delivers increased business transaction economy from sales, manufacturing, and delivery to billing, maintenance, and reporting.  Total integration to the enterprise via mobile devices and applications — far beyond the current contacts, email, phone applications of today will further drive enterprise cloud adoption (which will in turn fuel more mobile adoption).

The exciting enterprise inflection point we’re living through today signals a fundamental change to the way business will be conducted.  The rise of cloud computing and mobility will match the internal and external expectations of your staff and customers.

I’ll be laying out the best practices here to identify your key applications to mobilize and strategies to ensure successful rollout and adoption.

More Than Just Guidelines

Published
by
dshanley
on January 13, 2009
in iPhone
. 0 Comments

The iPhone Human Interface Guidelines are more than just that — it is essential for you to understand them in order to ensure that your app will be approved for sale in the App Store.

From Apple:
“Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.5.”

Consider this important guideline in the Table Views, Text Views, and Web Views section of the iHIG:

“Table views provide feedback when users select list items. Specifically, when an item can be selected, the row containing the item highlights briefly when a user selects it to show that the selection has been received. Then, an immediate action occurs: Either a new view is revealed or the row displays a checkmark to indicate that the item has been selected. The row never remains highlighted, because table views do not display persistent selected state.”



The easy part to miss when implementing your own View Controller is “The row never remains highlighted”.

In your own custom UIViewController subclasses, you’ll want to address this within the

- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated UIViewController delegate method.

Given a UITableView member property, theTableView, you can make sure the selected row gets deselected after popping the previous View Controller:

- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
 
//deselect any selected rows
NSIndexPath *selectedRowPath = [theTableView indexPathForSelectedRow];
[theTableView deselectRowAtIndexPath:selectedRowPath animated:YES];
...
}



Treat the guidelines as the law of the land, and you and your users will attain App Store nirvana.

Solid, Comprehensive iPhone State-of-the-Market Overview

Published
by
dshanley
on January 13, 2009
in iPhone
. 0 Comments

From the Amazing iPhone site, the team over there has put together a very thorough review of the iPhone market including history, opportunity, and developer requirements current through the end of 2008. Worth a read, especially for developers interested in understanding the emerging smartphone marketplace.

The Amazing iPhone Report