Mobile – Page 3 – ɔimoɈɒ

Steal the Future; Change the World

My friends Rory and Anita at The Creativity Hub are pretty much the nicest people I know. That’s not entirely surprising considering the work they do in creativity and conflict resolution. I know Rory from a few years ago when he was working in the rehabilitation of prisoners (from our unique political ‘situation’) and I … Continue reading “Steal the Future; Change the World”

My friends Rory and Anita at The Creativity Hub are pretty much the nicest people I know. That’s not entirely surprising considering the work they do in creativity and conflict resolution. I know Rory from a few years ago when he was working in the rehabilitation of prisoners (from our unique political ‘situation’) and I was very glad to re-acquaint myself with him not long after the start of this job – both for work and socially.

Rory introduced me to the concept of “Advanced Civilisation” (which he said is also available on the Internet as Beachhead). It’s something I had used for my creative writing but I had not really considered using it for work-related purposes. I do find now that I use it a lot – that imagination figures heavily in how I want to enact change in the world around me. The secret to achieving things lies in the discovery of great people, not in the funding programmes that are available.

This weekend we will complete the proposal document for StartVI year two and we will be looking for 6 great start-up ideas. We have a much more cohesive programme planned for the 2011 intake, more mentors and a better idea of what can be achieved now that we’ve shown it can work.

I’m also proposing the founding of a new co-working, research based technology centre in Belfast. And a solution to improving the quality of software engineering in Northern Ireland – comprising of a industry-tailored education programme and a community focused technology freeschool. Of course I alone am not qualified to do all of this. That’s why I’ve been looking for great people to help change the world; to steal the future; to get there earlier.

All of this to create a hub of 21st Century Enlightenment.

NOKIA just became SGI. But it’s not all bad.

Today Microsoft and Nokia announced their strategic partnership which will put the Windows Phone 7 operating system onto NOKIA devices. I’ve been waiting for this for a while now – NOKIA has had multiple chances to fix things in-house (renovating Symbian, Maemo, Meego, adopting Android like virtually every other OEM) but this deal needed to … Continue reading “NOKIA just became SGI. But it’s not all bad.”

We didn’t see similar fanfare from other WP7 licensees (Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm) but then this is more than just a new OS licensee, this is the death-by-attrition of both Symbian (now accurately described as legacy) and Meego (formerly Maemo and Intel Moblin – and I wonder how Intel feels about this). In theory, this is a return to the norm, before Nokia decided to dabble in operating system licensing itself.

So, Nokia becomes “just another Windows Phone 7 licensee”. Microsoft were very careful to note that this was a non-exclusive license for Nokia and that they would continue to supply operating systems to other mobile device manufacturers.

In other words, NOKIA just became SGI.

And I get to be the Armchair CEO for one of the most successful mobile companies in the world.

NOKIA had a legacy of great hardware. From the Matrix, we had the 7110. There was the oddity but lustworthy Nokia 9000 Communicator. The relentless onslaught of the 5100-series, the ubiquitous 6310, the first candy-bar 3210. We can only hope that they make some amazing hardware (No, I don’t rate the N8) for the new WP7 NOKIA phones.

They should be aiming to be at the top end. Designer no-seams-and-screws hardware, engineer-wet-dream internals. Rock-solid construction, good quality capacitative touch screens (unlike Android cheap-phones), amazing aerials and, what the heck, offer a SatPhone version. You have the technology.

They need to pivot their entire software development teams into making amazing NOKIA-branded apps – and make them available on Marketplace to all phones – not just NOKIA devices. Make great software your greatest asset and best advert.

The Skills to Build Tomorrow

Article on Wired.com: 2011: Second Wave of Children’s Mobile Apps Is Coming Attributes of a Second-Wave Educational App The app can only exist on the mobile device. The app maximizes the opportunities presented by the technical capacity of the mobile device. It allows children to create. It connects children to each other and to the … Continue reading “The Skills to Build Tomorrow”

Article on Wired.com: 2011: Second Wave of Children’s Mobile Apps Is Coming

Attributes of a Second-Wave Educational App

The app can only exist on the mobile device.

The app maximizes the opportunities presented by the technical capacity of the mobile device.

It allows children to create.

It connects children to each other and to the outside world.

It looks beautiful.

Each of those points is explored in more detail in the article itself so you should read it. It also contains links to some apps which epitomise each point.

These decisions are much harder to implement than any of the arguments about platform or technology used. You’ll find it difficult to implement in non-native technologies (Flash, HTML) because they’re sufficiently abstracted from the platforms that they cannot take advantage of the plethora of unique sensors and attributes of each device. You’ll need to do this in native code.

Each challenge will require a separate skillset to be implemented. A chance meeting with Conann Fitzpatrick, who, along with Greg Maguire, is running a Maya course in the Belfast Campus of the University of Ulster today, got us talking about the different skillsets* which are needed to bring an animation or a game to fruition.

Whether the end result is to entertain, to instruct, to guide or to distract, the principles, the core skills are the same. We have already built considerable capability in platforms, in creativity, in new technologies and Northern Ireland has always been quick to adopt the new and shiny. Our weakness has traditionally been working together. Luckily, with Digital Circle, that’s a thing of the past.

*an example is rotoscoping. A lot of people with skills in Photoshop and the time to spend on it, could become good at this. And it’s one of the skillsets that an animation studio would need. So what’s stopping them?

Apps

At yesterdays SBRI briefing about the NITB Tourism Apps Competition, there was a brief discussion of the difference between “mobile apps” and “web apps”. At some point in the future, web apps are possibly the best way to go. They allow a certain amount of write once-deploy almost anywhere, they are utterly buzzword compliant, combining … Continue reading “Apps”

At yesterdays SBRI briefing about the NITB Tourism Apps Competition, there was a brief discussion of the difference between “mobile apps” and “web apps”.

At some point in the future, web apps are possibly the best way to go. They allow a certain amount of write once-deploy almost anywhere, they are utterly buzzword compliant, combining the advantages of cloud deployment and software-as-a-service. They are the future.

So far, they’re not really the ‘present’.

I’ll lay it on the ground by saying that I have never seen a web app executed to the level of native software. And that I don’t think I will see that app within the next twelve months which puts it well outside the remit of this SBRI.

A tourism app needs to be able to work everywhere. This really means that the bulk of the data needs to be installed on-device and not relying on intermitted 3G services. This doesn’t mean it can’t utilise the network but considering the target market is remote tourism sites (where network availability is low) and foreign visitors (who will have to pay exorbitant data costs), network availability should not be relied upon. And at the moment, most web apps rely on the network heavily.

I’m not saying you cannot create and deploy a tourism focused web-app but in terms of media capabilities, you end up using cutting edge (and possibly bleeding edge) web frameworks. I’ve seen people writing apps in ‘HTML5’ back in 2008 – and yet we’re still saying that HTML5 has a ways to go for full deployment in 2010.

Some companies have invested heavily in the web app space and while I think this shows foresight, it’s not what this SBRI is about. I’m happy to be proved wrong on the ‘web apps are not ready for prime time’ if anyone can show me concrete examples.

An email sent to a senior person in one of NI’s Health Trusts

Hi, Some of the stuff we were talking about. As you know – I’m funded by InvestNI in assisting media and technology companies in Northern Ireland compete on a global scale. We’ve been looking at areas of “Connected Health (aka Telecare, Telemedicine) to find ways where there can be market pull rather than technology push … Continue reading “An email sent to a senior person in one of NI’s Health Trusts”

Hi,

Some of the stuff we were talking about. As you know – I’m funded by InvestNI in assisting media and technology companies in Northern Ireland compete on a global scale. We’ve been looking at areas of “Connected Health (aka Telecare, Telemedicine) to find ways where there can be market pull rather than technology push for ambient assisted living. We do some work with both the University of Ulster and QUB to find real-world solutions.

We can develop all of this locally with local expertise – we’ve worked hard to develop significant expertise in mobile development (specialising on iPhone and iPad but also including Android and other mobile platforms). Recent developments from DEL have meant there is fully funded training available to qualified organisations in the development of mobile technology plus local businesses are able to avail of innovation vouchers from InvestNI to solve particularly though problems.

And with new guidelines from the Central Procurement Department in the DFP, we’ve been working with DETI to find pathfinder projects for Pre-Commercial Procurement.

We’ve been trying to work with Mencap NI at the moment to find a way where our developers can tie into their perceived needs to provide ambient assistance, travel training, social networks and other products which are slightly more specialised for the individual with learning difficulties. The possibilities are pretty much endless. The idea that an app can ask someone how they feel in the morning (good, bad) and have that reported back and plotted to discover trends is very exciting. The ability to use off-the-shelf hardware to permit safety tracking of vulnerable adults and a social network of carers to assist in the location of a vulnerable adult or child is very close to my heart.

So here are some of the links to give you an idea of what we’re talking about. Very happy to talk to people who are interested in this.

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures.
http://cimota.com/blog/2009/08/12/global-social-open-mobile-playful-intelligent-and-instantaneous/

As ‘media’ has become disruptive – are there other industries that can be end-to-end digital: created, distributed and consumed – without ever becoming atoms.

Fred suggests:
Consumer Finance – money is already just bits. Why do we still use cash?
Education – education is interactivity, media, straight to the brain. The web as a textbook.
Energy – smart power in the home, renewable energy creating peer-produced micro-grids
Healthcare – self-care reporting, digital doctors, sharing data worldwide about pandemics?
Government – procurement, defence, law enforcement, entitlement, planning, crowd-sourcing?

Think about these areas: they’re incredibly disruptive to large organisations. To banks, schools and universities, power companies, hospitals and health trusts and, of course, the government itself.

The Fund for NHS Innovation
http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/4788/money_found_for_nhs_innovation

Health minister Lord Darzi has unveiled a package of measures to encourage and spread innovation in the NHS.
…
The Department of Health is creating a £20m prize fund to encourage people working inside and outside the NHS to combat the key health issues facing the nation.
DH information says: The funds will focus largely on promoting innovation in healthcare delivery, health improvement and patient engagement rather than the development of new medicines or devices, for which funds are already available.

New mental-health apps for iPhones like a ‘therapist in your pocket’
http://www.theprovince.com/health/mental+health+apps

The new apps let users track their moods and experiences, and either get instant advice on how to change negative affective states or assist mental-health-care providers with making psychological assessments.

“It gives me an additional source of rich information of what the patient’s life is like between sessions,” University of Pennsylvania researcher Dimitri Perivoliotis told NPR. “It’s almost like an electronic therapist, in a way, or a therapist in your pocket.”

A Doctor’s Review of Rounds with An iPad
http://www.medcitynews.com/2010/06/a-doctors-review-of-rounds-with-an-ipad/

For any provider who is highly mobile this blows the doors off of the COWs (computer on wheels) which is like rolling a file cabinet around. It’s faster, more reliable, insanely long battery life, and goes up stairs (although I have often thought of testing the ’down the stairs’ mode on the COWS when they run out of batter halfway through rounds on CC7) this is the machine to get. If you are office based, there isn’t a reason for this, but if you round on more than a few patients, then it will be invaluable.

iHelp for Autism – from SFWeekly
http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-08-11/news/ihelp-for-autism/all/

Leo is Rosa’s 9-year-old son, and when people ask her about him, she is mindful to explain him in a way that will set appropriate expectations. He is a boy with intense autism, she says. He is not conversational, he learns very slowly, and he has been prone to violent outbursts.
…
Though scrolling through the icons is easy for most users, the device was not created with special-needs consumers in mind.

So when Leo took it in his small hands as if it were an old friend, and, with almost no training, whizzed through its apps like a technology virtuoso, his mother gasped in amazement. After he began spending 30 minutes at a time on apps designed to teach spelling, counting, drawing, making puzzles, remembering pictures, and more, she sat down at her own computer.

iPhone’s VoiceOver Helps A Blind Person “See”
http://behindthecurtain.us/2010/06/12/my-first-week-with-the-iphone/

Last Wednesday, my life changed forever. I got an iPhone. I consider it the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever. It offers unparalleled access to properly made applications, and changed my life in twenty-four hours. The iPhone only has one thing holding it back: iTunes. Nevertheless, I have fallen in love.
…
I have seen a lot of technology for the blind, and I can safely say that the iPhone represents the most revolutionary thing to happen to the blind for at least the last ten years. Fifteen or twenty years brings us back to the Braille ‘n Speak, which I loved in the same way, so have a hard time choosing the greater.
…
The other night, however, a very amazing thing happened. I downloaded an app calledColor Identifier. It uses the iPhone’s camera, and speaks names of colors. It must use a table, because each color has an identifier made up of 6 hexadecimal digits. This puts the total at 16777216 colors, and I believe it. Some of them have very surreal names, such as Atomic Orange, Cosmic, Hippie Green, Opium, and Black-White. These names in combination with what feels like a rise in serotonin levels makes for a very psychedelic experience.
…
The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color cues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened. The next night, I had a conversation with Mom about how the sky looked bluer tonight. Since I can see some light and color, I think hearing the color names can help nudge my perception, and enhance my visual experience. Amazing!

Apple is Self-Serving and How to Combat That

I don’t mean this title in a mean way by any means but it seems that companies seem continually to be coming up against Apple and then releasing sub-standard products with little useful differentiation. Apple’s position as a remote island was self-induced. They suffered from a terrible case of NIH (Not Invented Here) and though … Continue reading “Apple is Self-Serving and How to Combat That”

Apple’s position as a remote island was self-induced. They suffered from a terrible case of NIH (Not Invented Here) and though they used ‘standards’, they were seldom the widely adapted defacto standards of the PC industry. We got Nubus and ADB and were spared the horrors of ISA and both serial and PS/2 peripherals. With the iMac, most of this changed. USB was the interface of choice for peripherals and suddenly a Mac became an excellent citizen of the network (most had ethernet ports for years).

The compatibility problem was still there. Though most quality printers had high quality drivers, there was still a dearth of drivers for the odd little devices that were in your FLES (Favourite Local Electronic Store) and by the time MP3 players were breaking into the mainstream, Apple was seriously left behind. Manufacturers simply ignored making drivers or compatibility software for Macs. (My own experience in owning a Thomson Lyra was woeful – it needed a PC, it used some funky file format that only played on the Lyra and it needed to be loaded by CompactFlash). But Apple coming out with their own MP3 player was a surprise at the time – in hindsight it was entirely due to terrible support for Mac users with those peripherals. That was 2001. As we now know, the iPod went on to assassinate the MP3 player market.

Essentially the market failed to service Mac users so Apple had to serve themselves.

Fast forward to 2007. Support for the Mac with new smartphones and PDAs was disastrous. Manufacturers were simply not bothering. Nokia just ignored the Mac. Sony Ericsson the same. The software was buggy, Apple was having to build syncing of data themselves and users were having to hack text files to add compatibility strings to add new devices. The situation was unsustainable. And then Apple came out with the iPhone. Now, three years later, every phone manufacturer is scrambling to compete with it – and I think this is for the same reason as the iPod. Mac users have, on average, higher disposable income and they’re prepared to use it. They actually buy stuff. This is the secret of the AppStore. People have had smartphones for years but the amount of money from selling apps was woeful and for many relegated to a side hobby. In contrast, the iPhone is selling billions of apps and I believe it was because there was a niche in the market that needed filled. For Mac users.

This trend is repeated. Development of iChat AV because video-conferencing options for Macs were woeful. Development of Pages and Numbers and Keynote because most office productivity apps were crap. Development of Safari because browsers were crap (and political). The theme seems to be: if you don’t want Apple to stomp on your market, make excellent products and don’t exclude Mac users.

Compromise: pull and background

I have a deep-seated desire for multi-tasking on the iPhone (and now the iPad). I understand their reasons for not including it and I understand the tradeoffs of performance, stability and user experience. I don’t want to be bothered using an app to micromanage device resources – that smacks too much of using Mac OS … Continue reading “Compromise: pull and background”

And that’s the world you live in with Android and Windows Mobile multitasking. The resources on a mobile device are sufficiently limited that you are forced to manage your apps to maintain the best performance. That’s obviously something that Apple wished to avoid.

In my entirely unscientific survey (which consists of standing about with other geeks and moaning about how we wish there was some multitasking on iPhone), I have come to consider the compromises.

Ahhhh, Push It!
Salt-N-Pepa pre-empted the Apple faithful with the refrain “Push it” when anyone considered multitasking to be necessary. This was meant to be the first compromise – notifications could be pushed from the ‘cloud’ (the new word for ‘server on the internet’) to specific installed apps on the iPhone which gave a semblance of being able to interact with more than one application at a time. You could set notifications based on receiving messages on Twitter, a server being down or anything that can be reported (for example, a GPS with sender sending a Push notification that your car alarm has activated). But – push is one way and limited in scope so rather than just demanding multi-tasking, wouldn’t it be better to consider other compromises?

Pull
If we can push to an iPhone, what about the server setting up a pull mechanism? Essentially it’s a push designed to ‘get’ data rather than just ‘set’ data. That would mean you could have a service running in the cloud which pings your phone for a location update or a state change in a document and updates the server copy. You could obviously set the frequency, you set the amount and quality of data to be pulled and Apple can provide a simple interface. Heck – build it into MobileMe or demand a MobileMe subscription for it – I have MobileMe anyway and they use part of this already for the “Find my iPhone” feature. So – why not extend this and open a Pull API for iPhone and iPad?

Pull puts intelligence in the cloud. It makes you want to run server-based applications which will hold your calendar, pull in your location, intelligently warn you when you’re going to be late. Pull makes a difference by putting apps in the cloud.

Background
The more I think about it, the more I realise that I don’t need true multitasking on a phone or a tablet. iPhone (and by extension iPad) are fast enough that there’s no significant delay in launching apps at all. But I do want some apps to be ‘backgrounded’ when certain events occur rather than quitting. I might want to run Spotify on my iPhone (I currently don’t use it) while browsing the web. At the moment I can’t do this – but if Spotify could be identified as a Backgrounded app so that when I hit the Home button, it goes into the background rather than quitting (a little like the Voice Memos app) and only quits properly when something would directly conflict (like an incoming phone call) or when I tell it to quit by holding down a button sequence (the system in place to quit a running app is hold down the Sleep button and then hold down the Home button). There has to be a simple way to do it and, frankly, it’s a pain that Apple can do it with iPod, Phone calls and Voice Memo and third party developers can’t.

Even just having one backgrounded app would be great – especially when you’re in the middle of something like a multiplayer game – the ability to send a ‘pause’ to the other player because you’ve got a phone call rather than just kicking you out of the game! Backgrounding apps should be a toggle you enable in Settings. Apps that I would background right now would be relatively few but I would consider:

iSSH – for keeping alive the connections I’ve made to servers while I check something on the web (thanks to MartyMc for the inspiration on that.) Losing the SSH connection can be a pain. This will become more important on larger screen devices like iPad.
‘TrafficMob’ – an as-yet unwritten app which just runs in the background on your phone, uses your GPS and records your position every 30 seconds. It then uploads this data to a server which plots the points on a map, crowdsources the lot of them and shows you when and where the traffic snarl ups are.
Skype – this is obvious. Skype is powerful for me because I talk to people all around the world. I can’t currently just leave it running on my iPhone because then I can’t do anything else and it’s annoying when a call comes in on cellular while I’m in Skype as it takes precedence. This needs a real backgrounding option.

And if something does come in, some notification or call or anything – give me the choice to continue what I’m doing rather than divert my attention.

I’m sure that the talented software engineers and designers at Apple have gone through dozens of permutations trying to find the right one. I just hope that something like this makes it into iPhone OS 4. They’ve already got the UI down, it’s now the engineering challenge of making it work.

Ten Apps I Want…

Ten Apps that I’d like to see on the iPhone. I’m also suggesting names for these. To be honest, I’d like to pull together a team to build them but that seems to be a lot more difficult than I’d hoped. If anyone wants to call me and work with me to pull together funding, … Continue reading “Ten Apps I Want…”

MeetFreak/TrendSeek
Helps people find each other by abusing Twitter trends and trying to suck Location Data in there. This is a lot easier now that Twitter is supporting GeoTags. So, let us see a map of trends? People are talking about #RED, where are they talking about it? Let us see every tweet with the Trend on a map that we can see. Then you’re more likely to be able to congregate with people
Multitool
Uses the five tabs along the bottom to give you a view of
1) IMAP account
2) Web Browser
3) Twitter
4) Mapper
5) Converter/Calculator
Redirects all http:// and mailto: seen inside the app, to the app and not outside so doesn’t launch Safari or Mail. A lot of this is kinda redundant when we have decent clients for much of this inside Safari. But some offline caching is a big deal for those of us who tend not to be inside the city centres where you can get decent 3G.

Verifriend, Reputato
This is an online reputation profiler. Yes, it’s going to be a popularity contest but essentially it all depends on trust. Adding your rating to someone is not something to be done lightly. In some ways it needs to be a trust engine – and it can be as simple as giving a trust rating to a new friend based on the trust ratings that others have provided. There needs to be some sort of anonymity (maybe like the reviews process on iTunes you only get a rating when a certain number of reviews have been processed) but unlike FaceBook it should provide that extra level of security.

Director
Allows me to text directions to someone who asks me on the street. In plain text. Or Bluetooth them. Or even just email them. Or something. Or magic them straight into their brain. Any of these things would be fine. Just so I don’t have to try to explain the directions to someone.
REDACTED
This one was so good, someone asked me to take it down. 🙂 Suffice to say it was AR related.
Tweet16
Twitter lists are all very well but they don’t solve th problem I have. I follow about 1000 people but there’s probably less than 150 or so (that magic Dunbar number) whom I regularly interact with. There’s probably only 10% of those whom I really want to pay attention to. I’d like a Twitter client that shows me my timeline, my mentions, my DMs and finally, my Tweet16 – 16 people from whom I see all of their public messages rather than not seeing the ones who are at people I don’t follow.
Plannity
So, I fill in all of this information into my calendar and that includes times and dates and, most crucially, locations of my meetings. Why hasn’t there been a social app that runs via Exchange/Outlook, on iPhone, iCal and other formats which takes this location information, munges it up with my social network and allows me to see when I can grab lunch with friends or when I’m in the same town as someone I like. I think that Tripit is meant to do this and today I read about Plancast which promises to do something about this. But this is a hot topic, guys. Location is the big thing for 2009/2010.
Echelon (or TwitterBug)
I mentioned this a week ago – a cool idea for Twitter and other social networks which again uses location. So – get this – all of your messages are geotagged, or if not now, a lot of them will be. So, Echelon ‘listens’ in for anything said in an area rather than things said about trends or by your friends. The default set is seeing tweets which are in your immediate area – the killer part though is being able to drop a ‘bug’ (for bug, read ‘pin’) on a map and be able to sample the Tweets going through that area and the surrounding radius. So, in effect, you’ve dropped a Twitter Bug somewhere and you’re able to listen in. The Freemium version could monitor one location, the PayFor version could monitor several. ( ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK-USA Security Agreement (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States)

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
Perfect for the Sandbagger or Spook among us, this is a recently published book derived from an official manual. As most of them are small pictorial sessions, they’re ripe for viewing on the iPhone, turning the iPhone into the ultimate tradecraft manual. You can see clips from the book on Gizmodo. So scan it, make it searchable so you can quickly flick through and find the perfect tradecraft for the perfect moment.
Pollenator
For public debates, a simple push notification which opens the app and gives you a simple couple of choices accompanied with text, audio or video. Push one, it’s recorded (with time, place, ID, IMEI and whatever other data you have collected and after a certain amount of time, the poll times out. Poll answers should be “Yes”, “No” or “Whatever”. If you choose to ignore or “Whatever” it, then you’re counted as an abstention. I’d love to see this app running and see visualisations of what it could bring in terms of demographics, location and other meta data. I sat with Stuart and Phil (and with PJ on the end of a Skype call) one evening and we mocked up some stuff for this based on Stuarts idea of “Pirates versus Ninjas”. But the actual implementation could have led to entirely other applications.

Polls widget from Google Wave

I’d love to see all of these on my iPhone. Id love to talk more about these apps to people who are interested. I’d love even more to be involved in the group/company/whatever that was going to make some of these.

Please comment if they inspired you or if you’re working on something similar.

Belfast Met announces iPhone Dev course

Belfast Metropolitan College have released details of their iPhone course. Starts on the 28th January, and us every Thursday evening for 15 weeks. It costs a mere £68 and is being run by an experienced developer. See page 22 of the Belfast Met prospectus. (and yes, if it hadn’t been on a Thursday, I’d have … Continue reading “Belfast Met announces iPhone Dev course”

See page 22 of the Belfast Met prospectus.

(and yes, if it hadn’t been on a Thursday, I’d have been in there)

XCake Belfast November

XCake, the local developer group for folk who use XCode had an interesting meeting last night. It was held in the very impressive University of Ulster Belfast campus and was catered for with cake and traybakes by Digital Circle. The first presentation lasted about an hour and detailed the developments in the OneAPI, a GSMA … Continue reading “XCake Belfast November”

The first presentation lasted about an hour and detailed the developments in the OneAPI, a GSMA Reference model for interoperability of network services for telecommunications operators. That’s the long way of saying it’s an easy way for developers to get access to call control, SMS and location services from cell networks. We had three clever folk (Seamus, Richard and Michael) from Aepona who very ably demonstrated the services and answered developer questions. More usefully, however, they were asking the developers about their opinions regarding the use of SOAP and JSON. This is all above me – but it was entertaining to hear the opinions (which were essentially: making XML for SOAP isn’t an issue for most developers but JSON is lighter and simpler).

After that we had a short discussion about our future meeting with Translink, the developments we’ve had with accessing their data and the renewed enthusiasm considering that the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain is opening up it’s 1:10000 map dataset to the public. I hope you’ll join me in encouraging the Ordnance Survey in Northern Ireland to do the same. For what it’s worth, we also have our baleful eye cast in the direction of the Postcodes held by the Royal Mail. At the end of the day if there was government money (our taxes) used to pay for datasets, then I’m determined not to pay for them again.

And we finished with a discussion of future events:

An Intro to InterfaceBuilder
NimbleKit, PhoneGap and Titanium: do they do what they say or is it all bollocks?
Developing for iPhone without InterfaceBuilder
Unit Testing for iPhone

We’re kinda unaware of other developer-related events in Belfast but we did mention that Monday night is Demo Night at MobileMondayBelfast.

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