Macronimous Web Blog

In late 90s and initial few years during the last decade, developers (and the users too) used to  have a confusion. If they need a software solution, for an example, invoice management system, how do they need it? An installable PC based software or a Web application? (Why don’t we ever call it as Web software?). Due to Bandwidth limitations, many of our customers preferred to get their software in PC. Some of our clients felt unsecured of using web applications.

But when years passed by, the requirements too changed. When we started working collaboratively, (which was made easy with the internet and the bandwidth growth) people slowly started moving into web based application. Web based Emails are possibly the first web applications people used. People started developing cross-browser compatible web applications. We stopped application development with VB and started focusing only on ASP and then ASP.NET. Now Web 2.o has changed the perspective of ’software’ completely. Also Hybrid applications became possible with APIs etc.

Likewise, in Mobile, there are two ways to develop Mobile applications. Mobile browser based applications – which are websites optimized for Mobile browsers and Installable or Native Mobile applications. They both has advantages and disadvantages.

Why Mobile Browser based applications and why not?

Mobile Brower based applications are slow due to the bandwidth limitations and will eat up your download limits in your plan. Also, the user need to remember the URLs, Type it which is really hard. Advantage is that the development cost is low since the developer pays additional attention only to make it compatible with most possible mobile browsers. Also now the many Mobile browsers supports HTML and the smart phones comes with bigger screens to see the full sized websites, if not by zooming it. We have keyboards too to manage this. But, if you want to browse sites, you can do that in your tiny Netbook, which you carry with you always, right?

So, In short: The advantage is the low development cost and the disadvantage is the bandwidth limitations and the limitations of Mobile websites which does not access your Phone’s components like Address book, Camera etc.

Why Native mobile applications and why not?

Native (installable) application resides in your Mobile, if you launch it, the search with parameters which are within your mobile (Eg. The 50 state names in USA, Your favorite locations to see daily weather etc). Except free text search, the rest of the search parameters can be stored in the mobile – OR they can be updated just one time.  The communication between the Data/Web server and the mobile could be drastically reduced. An application like share portfolio can be created within your Phone and stored. Every day you just need to update the stock prices. You need not download the entire portfolio each day. Also, the application resides within the phone can access phone’s capability such as camera, phone book /contacts etc to and make the applications ‘Native’.

I also absorbed another  hidden advantage of native application is brand loyalty. If the customer installs a mobile application which you supply, he will rely on your application. For Eg. I use Viigo for regular information updates (News, weather etc) But a site called Justdial.com or Google local for local address research. If Justdial comes with a Blackberry solution, they captured me as their user

The disadvantage is obviously the development cost. No two mobile platforms share a mobile application, and there are too many Mobile operating systems (or platforms) exist in the market. If you develop a mobile application to market it widely, you need to develop that in J2ME (for phones that support only Java with no loaded OS), Symbian, Mac iPhone, Android, RIM, WebOS( for Palm pre), LinMo and Windows mobile. Though J2ME (or Java ME) is widely used, it has the Graphic limitations and I am sure it won’t look nice in my Blackberry Bold!. If the developer do not have expertise in more than one technology, then you need to run behind various mobile developers, finding them under one roof would be difficult.

So, In short: The advantage is quick access, less data transaction  and the disadvantage is the cost of development.

Hybrid mobile applications?

No, Hybrid application is not ‘going Green’ or developing applications ‘environment friendly!’

They are Applications that uses browser interfaces and native mobile components. With HTML5 and JavaScripts now the browsers are becoming capable of accessing phone’s built in features like contacts, camera etc. We started developing applications using PhoneGap and I believe solutions like PhoneGap should fill-in this gap.  Platform free mobile solutions are what we need now and the gap between the browser based applications and native mobile applications is getting closure.

Finally what could be the disadvantages in hybrid mobile applications? Two things comes to my mind. Application security and learning curve for the developers. Mobile developers need to know HTML and Web developers need to know mobile phone APIs. Right? Let us see how we overcome these.

We learn from the projects we do and time teaches us too. The following simple 12 rules for the developers are we learnt from the customers over a period of time. I hope they will help us to be better to the customers who teaches us, and improve the deliverables that justifies our experience.

1. Test, Test and Test your applications before you send it to QA team

2. Fix all the bugs which you find

3. Remember this: If you forget to include QA in the project schedule and swallow QA time by extending your development time, you are doing injustice to the client, your employer and the worst is to yourself.

3. Fix all the bugs which QA team finds

4. Assure yourself that you leave no faults in your application before sending it to the client

5. Do NOT expect the customer to test your application for yourself. The customer need not be a Testing professional.

6. Make the list of changes and bugs reported by the customer.

7. Schedule them – and Let the customer know the turnaround time to fix them all.

8. Fix them and let the QA check them.

9. Make sure that you make the customer happy, and let him prefer him as your favorite developer.

10. Learn from the bugs; By not repeating them you can become a super developer.

11. If a project has strict deadlines, it needs strict QA.

12. Avoid reporting the known bugs to the client – instead fix them!

As I said learning never ends. So, I welcome if your valuable rules or strategies or comments could extend this list are welcome. Shoot them them as your comments.

We have our iPhone application successfully approved by apple and available in iTunes.  The application’s purpose is to bring different love tools under one roof. With our first version, we have included four different modules and we are planning to bring more features in our future releases.

Our first tool is “Love Chart” where you can check the relationship you might have with your partner(s). Our Next tool is “Compatibility Chart” which helps a person to find their compatible, incompatible and neutral partners, using their moon sign. We believe this might help you in zeroing in on your mate. The next tool is “My Partners” using which you can preserve memories with whom you have spent time together. Our final tool is “Gender prediction” which helps a couple to predict gender of their baby they are going to have, using mothers age and month of conceive. The couple can also decide the month the mother has to conceive, to have baby of their own preference.

We developed the application using XCode 3.1 IDE tool to program our logic and interface Builder to design our interface. Since this was our first application, we went through almost all the video tutorials available from Apple’s Developer Site which taught us what is iPhone application development all about. We then started with learning Objective C programming. Finally we went through the Human Interface Guidelines, which is essential when you develop any iPhone application. With this base knowledge, we dived directly into our first application and successfully got it approved by apple without any problem.

We are working on our next application in the same Lifestyle category and it will be available soon in iTunes store and you can check this site for more information. You can expect more from this before this year end. We will keep them posted.

You can buy My Love Vault from:

What exactly do we mean by duplicate content? Websites with identical pages and websites identical to another website on the net is considered as content duplication. Writing a content for a website is entirely a different thing to normal writing. It involves plenty of creative ideas and more importantly it should contain related keywords which is most used by the visitor.

Now let us see why you should avoid duplicating the content?

First of all, copying the content brings down the understanding of the concept. If you start understanding, that is only how you grow. The scriptwriter should understand why something is and how it works. If you copy, you are missing out on that. You are just resurfacing the upper layer and not getting into layers underneath when you do that.

If you are not willing to write on your own, you will not know the exact intention and get stuck at one place. You will not know how to take it forward. The originality of the content will be missing.

While it is easier to just copy from someone else, why do you have to create a new one? If you don’t do that, you will not know why it looks like, you cannot feel the way it feels like and you will not be able to read the way it should be read. The final outcome will be an artificial one.

Content Duplication and its impacts on SEO

1. Duplication of content will be considered a spam by all the search engines. There are so many websites with similar products, so the copywriter must be very careful in creating content. Search Engines likes fresh and unique content. It ranks websites depending primarily on the content used in web pages. 

2. Changing the phrase of an existing content and rewriting is also considered as content duplication. Search Engines have ways to find out and it is supposed to be spam. This will certainly affect the ranking of a website.

3. When a website is reported to have duplicate content issues, the total number of pages ranked by the search engine will automatically come down. Fewer pages to rank will lessen the rankings and might lead to lower traffic.

4. It is important to make your content unique; otherwise there is absolutely no point in doing all these. The search engines will not bother to feature your website in its result pages.

5. There is a difference between content duplication “penalties” and “filtering”. When we refer to penalty in search engine rankings, we actually talk of points being reduced from your overall score, but the truth is, the pages are just filtered like you filter unwanted particles from a can of liquid. Accidently, this filtering can sometimes filter out your good particles.

Tips to avoid Content Duplication

1. While preparing content, make sure you don’t copy it from somewhere and try to replace the words with exact meanings. The search engines have already come up with a solution to deal with this issue.

2. Before you sit down to write, ask yourself what exactly will create value for your users.

3. Try to get various perspectives, take the good points from them and fill the rest with your own thoughts and creativity. After all, you have to make it happen and move forward.

4. You can be influenced by many, but make sure you don’t copy anything.

So while preparing content, watch out for duplication from search engine’s point of view and as well as loyal customer’s point of view. At the end of the day, it is the search engine and ultimately the customer who are going to “look” at your content, so make sure it is liked by both, otherwise all the efforts you put in for your business to grow will go wasted.

After a month’s time today we have completed our Apple iPhone developer program registration. We have three applications and a game to be tested for our clients and it’s a milestone to do the testing and certification for the application in house.

The process goes this way:

1. Register and get an Apple ID
2. Apply for the iPhone developer program and wait for them. It took 15 days for them to contact us back.
3. Send your company incorporation to Apple with the registration ID by Fax. They provided 3 Fax numbers.
4. After Faxing, I also sent them an Email. Received an acknowledgement the next day from Apple.
5. Again, a waiting period, 8 days.
6. I wrote them again.
7. Got a call from Apple Hong Kong within an hour and then the agreement form by Email within another hour
8. Sent the agreement to them (Just a click to agree). It took me to a print form to send the credit card details. Printed it, filled it up and sent by Fax.
9. Next day, payment was processed, and we are allowed to access the iphone developer portal.

Everyone says that it’s not easy to join in the developer program. Actually its right partially, But Apple wants to allow only serious developers in. Their verification system is but time consuming, and they really want to see if the developer is providing complete details. I like this verification system, which filters non-serious developers.

Ok, now why take all these steps?

Here is the list of iPhone development program benefits.

1. Develop and test it on the actual device (iPhone or iPod Touch) – You can only test the application in the simulator, until you become a member.
2. You can distribute your application or game through iTune store for free or for a price.
3. Share your application with other iPhones (up to 50) for internal testing – called ad-hoc distribution
4. Coupon code for your application reviewers

Overall, your application is reaching millions of iTunes store users, and you get a chance to reach them easily.

I believe now RIM is also working on a store like this (http://mobileapps.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=appworld) to support Blackberry developers.