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.

Here is a nice presentation which talks about the standards for Mobile web development.

 

Accessing this blog from your Mobile browser is now enabled. Thanks to Alex King of alexking.org. Its a simple Wordpress plugin, Its called Wordpress Mobile edition. Just follow the instructions, activate the plugin, The blog is up for the mobile now, just call blog.macronimous.com from your Mobile browser..and Yes.. you got it!

Alex has written it the Mobile site as a separate theme, with XHTML/CSS with less or no graphics (Logo is not coming up, you need to tweak the code a bit if you need). Otherwise the job is done. We are planning to write some Themes based on Alex, with bit more graphics – optimized for the mobile!

Do you want your phone looks like your wristwatch?, Pen? or even like your arm band? Do you like a phone which never need to charge its batteries? Nokia is working on making this into reality with the support of Nanotechnology. Recently at Design and The Elastic Mind” exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, Nokia Research Center (NRC) in collaboration with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre (United Kingdom) released its Morph concept technology.

Nanotechnology enables materials and components that are flexible, stretchable, transparent and remarkably strong, and Nokia believes this can be applied to making Flexible, Changing, Self-Cleaning communication devices with Advanced Power Sources (such as solar power utilization). Your device will also will be capable of – Environment sensing. It can measure analyzing air pollution, to gaining insight into bio-chemical traces and processes.

Tarmo Virki of CNET Says “The market for Internet services is approaching 100 billion Euros, and Nokia is the first big mobile phone manufacturer to embrace the Internet media business. Close rivals Samsung and Sony Ericsson could follow, but are a couple of years behind”. While Forrester Research says mobile Internet users to triple over next five years to 125 million just in the Western Europe, Nokia confirms their wild ideas like Apple and Google succeeded with many such ideas. Nokia now has its global device market share was about 40% in Q4 of 2007, so reaching their customers with innovative products is something they are working hardly now.

Changing new directions is not new to Nokia. They started as wood-pulp manufacturer in 1865 (Nokia wood Mills), after acquired by Finnish Rubber Works, they entered in to telephone and telegraph cables manufacturing. They were also involved in producing telephone and telegraph cables, and finally they entered in 1967 into commercial and military mobile radio communications technology.

Click here to see the official web page to read more on Nokia Marph.

Apple released the long awaited iPhones Software Development Kit (SDK) and the associated iTunes “App Store” and iPhone Developer Program. If you are a developer you can download it for a price of $99 and start developing applications for iPhones.
Unlike other Phones, Apple was keeping their phone isolated from third party applications, means you cannot develop or buy a third party application developed by programmers like us.
Things changed now – You may expect good, useful, buggy, unusable applications for your phone, which you can buy, install, enjoy or crash your phone.
Now developers need to start learning this tool for development, application optimization, porting with memory management etc. Unlike other phone manufacturers, Apple has only one phone, one screen resolution and one style – so at least for now we do not have to worry about the screen sizes and some other constraints in mobile phone development.
Apple wants to compete with rivals like RIM’s BlackBerry and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile on enterprise features, so, we, developers got another environment to develop and market our applications and to make money.