I'm a Mobile Technical Architect focused on creating tools and methods to envision and develop mobile and web apps with more efficiency and effectiveness. I track industry trends and have been an early adopter of mobile web and hybrid apps.Responsive vs. Responsible Design
Responsible design seems to be a buzzword lately, so I thought I’d share my $0.2 on the subject. I wrote about it before, but lately I don’t think its as complex as we all thought it’d be. There is a lot of smart solutions out there that seem like a good fit for a blog-type of website, but when you deal with online applications that often have multiple stakeholders involved it gets tricky…
Imagine saying to the marketing manager that the ads need to go away, or telling social media team that you are replacing share component with built-in device sharing capabilities.
To me responsive design is nothing new, and its nothing more than “responsible” device-independent design. Of course you built your applications and web sites in the past to fit the form-factor viewport. This shouldn’t be nothing new or trivial to an experienced professional. It is merely “fluid-layout” and “media-scaling” methods that fits the UI to whatever the wrapper is set to or the screen-size the content is viewed on. Continue Reading →
If iPad was running Windows 8, what a device it would be
As an forever Apple fanboy who gets two of everything, I have to admit the chemistry between me and the mothership is fading fast. Maybe I’m all grown up now and my expectations from a handheld device exceed linking my friends memes.
As we create more and more apps for other mobile OS’ I keep noticing more and more shortcomings of iOS that the Cupertino manufacturer is purposely neglecting, things like – Multitasking.
Android was the champion at this, and God bless them; they try their best. Windows Phone also came out of the box multitasking, and did not consume resources (read: battery life) as much as android does (is today). Continue Reading →
appaccelerator v.s. phonegap
PhoneGap is a web-app that runs in a native web browser view. It lets us utilize HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as front-end UI frameworks, like jQuery Mobile, Sencha, etc.
Appcelerator is pure JavaScript that compiles to native code. PhoneGap supports more platforms but Appcelerator may give us better performance in specific instances, i.e. Animations… Continue Reading →
Verizon – a tradeoff network for iPhone
Verizon officially announced today that the rumors of iPhone coming to their CDMA network are true. After some back-and-forth bashing between the AT&T and Verizon over whose network is better and faster a question from the Q&A session finally put this battle to rest. Continue Reading →
What does 4G mean to you?
We all anxiously await the 4G to come out, but what does that really mean? Some providers claim that they already have it, but what is really the truth?
The 4 Generation cellular wireless standard or 4G is does not mean that you will be able to use your phone to teleport to another dimension or that it will heat up your lunch or jump-start your car. It does however mean a significant increase in data speed, not necessary the voice quality. A 4G system is expected to provide comprehensive all-IP based mobile broadband for smartphones laptops and wireless modems. Continue Reading →
Quick and dirty native mobile apps
BlackBerry OS, Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, Simbian, Java, C, C#, Objective C… Argh! My head is spinning. Who’s got the time today to learn all this? Mobile developer is the most un-respected calling today. I’m sure you have approached a client or a boss with a killer iPhone app idea, and then faced with a question: Does it work on BlackBerry? Continue Reading →
Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Mango… The future of mobile is Sweet!
Who can remember only short while ago the way to communicate was to borrow a quarter or visit a library to hop on an IRC chat. For someone like me with friends and family overseas, scheduled chat sessions were a new hi-tech way of exchanging information for free and it couldn’t have been better. Continue Reading →
Designing for the masses
Most the designers UX or UI start off small. A couple of small 6-page information websites for our aunts and neighbors, then our over-animated portfolio site with cool fonts and unique design that makes us think we have become seasoned professionals.
Later on we get a real agency job where we start creating some consumer sites for real businesses and start working with project managers, business analysts, perhaps with some usability aspects, perhaps not… Continue Reading →
What can iOS 5 do for you.
Many friends kept asking me to demo the betas of iOS 5 and just what new things will be available once released. Ever since it was revealed earlier this year it was met with anticipation, and it was finally released on October 12th generally available thru iTunes update (as scheduled). Continue Reading →
Siri violated (sort of)
@plamoni has been on this for a few weeks now, and finally he’s been able to reverse engineer the Siri protocol.
Siri communicates to her back-end service (Guzzoni) using a binary plist encoded, zipped, pseudo-HTTP, SSL-ed protocol. Some guys in France worked out the SSL man-in-the-middle and the basic protocol structure, and pete built a little Ruby app that sits on the proxy server that is broadcasting the Wi-Fi network. Once a custom root certificate is installed on a client device, and points to the internal Wi-Fi that now contains a hijacked DNS entry to point the guzzoni requests to the local proxy, You can manipulate the answers she provides by injecting your own. Continue Reading →