05 · 12

Develop iPhone, iPad, Android And BlackBerry Apps With Just A Browser

Last week, at Web 2.0 Expo, during a Zoosk-sponsored speed-dating event for startups and venture capitalists (Zoosk is an Web-based dating service), one entrepreneur took some time to show me what his startup Yapper does. The demo, which I captured on video (below), shows how ordinary non-programmers can develop mobile applications for iPhones, iPads, Android-based devices, and BlackBerries with little more than a Web browser.

First off, based on the demo, Yapper is incredibly cool. As an editor at a media company, I can envision immediate benefits to any organization that wants to pump structured content out to mobile users. But structure is key.

Yapper isn't for developing just any sort of mobile application. It is specifically suited to the development of applications that consume RSS feeds and leaves very little room for flexibility when it comes to developing your own user interface. In other words, outside of the ability to change the skin (colors, icons, splash page, etc.) of an application, all Yapper-built mobile apps get the same basic user interface.

Even so, given what you get for the price (discussed below), Yapper.com can do a remarkable job in helping to get certain types of mobile applications up and running in minutes without developing one line of code. Yapper even takes care of submitting the iPhone (and iPod Touch) and iPad applications for approval to be listed in Apple's App Store.

As can be seen in the video below, there are basically four easy steps, the first of which includes selection of the final delivery platform (iPhone, Android, or BlackBerry). According to Yapper.com founder Chintu Pratikh, the iPad as a delivery platform is included when you pick iPhone. But, the user interface makes to indication to that effect until you get to the end of the four step process.

The first step also includes pointing the Yapper.com mobile app dev interface at an RSS feed to consume (a single application can consume more than one). Immediately after selecting a feed, the mobile device simulator (off to the right in the video) responds to that selection by giving you (the developer) some idea of what the final application is going to look like when it consumes that feed.

For each feed that an application consumes, Yapper creates a new Tab (up to 11 of them) at the bottom of the user interface and the developer can select from a list of icons (or upload their own) to display on the those tabs. Yapper.com won't intermingle two or more RSS feeds on one tab. In order to do that, you'll probably have to turn to a service like Yahoo's Pipes which can not only handle such intermingling, but also spit out a new RSS feed as the result (one that could be consumed by a tab on a Yapper-built mobile application.

In subsequent steps, the "developer" can personalize the application colors, labels (the application's name for example), icons, App Store image, and the application's splash page (appears on launch). As can be seen from the video, you're better off uploading exact image sizes instead of counting on Yapper to properly resize or crop any images. Fortunately, Yapper gives you a good idea of the image dimensions that it's expecting.

Any further customization of an application requires the attention of Yapper's engineers at a rate of $100 per hour. During the video interview, the company's founder and CEO Chintu Pratikh told me that the application development process isn't entirely cloud-based and that where the cloud-based development leaves off, Yapper's engineers take over (approximately 20% of the process is manual).

In terms of cost, the first decision is whether you, your organization, or Yapper is going to be the publisher of record for your application (in places like Apple's App Store). If the answer is something other than Yapper, then it costs $50 extra per application. Next, you must decide which platforms to generate the application for. Each incurs a one time cost (provided there's no custom work required). Android and BlackBerry apps cost $199. Native iPhone and iPad apps are $299. If you want the output as a Web app that works on both iPhone and Android, that's $99 and there's an additional $50 if the application will include pushing alerts to end users.

To the extent that Yapper's applications are all about content and RSS feed consumption, Yapper would be well-advised to offer other functionality that's common to the types of customers (eg: media companies) that might use its service. For example, a provision for some type of mobile advertising or embedded linkage to contextually-related content. For a closer look at the how Yapper.com works be sure to watch the ReviewCam below.

05 · 12

Google and Verizon to Launch Tablet Computer

This is something we are waiting for! Come on Google.

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Add a big new twist to the tablet computing wars. The Wall Street Journal is confirming that Google plans to bring a tablet computer to market with Verizon Wireless.

Although details –- including a name, manufacturer, launch date and operating system (Android or Chrome OS?) are not yet known — Verizon’s CEO told WSJ,”We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience.”

The news doesn’t come as a total shocker –- last month Google’s CEO reportedly told friends that his company was building a tablet device.

However, the move does exemplify the increasing competition between Apple and Google –- a competition increasingly taking place in the mobile space where recent reports suggest that Android is gaining significant ground on iPhone. The move also casts some doubt as to whether Apple will open up iPad and iPhone to Verizon customers — something that has seemed increasingly likely in recent weeks.

Now, we’ll see this competition play out in the tablet device market, where Apple has an early lead with its iPad selling more than one million units in its first month, and the iPad 3G just hit stores with AT&T as the exclusive wireless carrier.

05 · 12

How to Make a Mobile Website – 6 Easy Tips

mobile website design tips

Accessing the web through mobile handheld devices is a usual practice these days. It’s apparent that people hooked to the Internet via their phones are on the huge rise. Furthermore, lots of consumer-focused companies have already realized how promising the mobile platform is and have by now equipped themselves with a mobile-friendly alternatives to their primary websites so that they will as well provide an accessible user experience on mobile devices.

In fact mobile web browsing is not a passing fad, it has actually become an absolute necessity, even the new Internet standard. So if you haven’t yet set up your own mobile site, we’ll today focus on how you can create a mobile version of your site running through various important options and basic techniques you can employ to make your mobile site work successfully. Now having got some of the theory out of the way, let’s turn our attention to more practical matters.

There is a special procedure involved in designing a mobile website. The easiest way to build your mobile site is to modify your existing website to make it compatible for mobile handsets. If you decide to do so, expect that there will be big changes in terms of layout, design and construction. Here are some principles you should take note of before proceeding to build one of your own:

1. Layout

It can be time consuming to browse through a mobile site, so remember to put all of the most important information you want mobile users to see on the top of the page. And don’t forget to include your company logo being customized for a mobile site. Make sure to minimize left/right navigation, which is difficult on a phone, and instead arrange your content in a single column layout. Also you should minimize the use of tables, but if you do need to incorporate them, use no more than 2 columns, and avoid row and column merging.

2. Content

You should make sure that the information on your website is easy to read and navigate, and doesn’t take the visitors much to figure out, since they’re probably on the go while looking at your mobile site. Having finally selected what part of the content should be displayed on mobile, tailor your site menu adjusting text to avoid zooming. As for the typography used to render the content, consider using headings to control font sizing.

3. Coding

There is no really any special coding required for your actual mobile site. It is much easier if your mobile site is coded using either XML or XHTML. You may also build your site with the most basic HTML and CSS coding possible. Title tags, description meta tags, heading tags and filenames should be carefully crafted with target keywords to maximize the little optimizable content available.

4. Images

Most mobile phones would take forever to load heavy images. So use images and graphics as little as possible, only where contextually relevant. And if you do wish to put images on your mobile website, it should be in .jpeg or .gif or .png format as these files are pretty much light-weight. Plus make sure to compress your pictures to avoid zooming. And one more, today nearly all current devices display images, however, users may browse with the images turned off. So always use the alt text which is a recommended practice.

5. Page size

When assigning a style for a mobile website, it’s very essential to keep it all simple and page sizes small. Mind that the maximum page size for a mobile page is only 20 Kb, so make everything fit and if possibly use less than 10 Kb. Keep in mind that the users usually get charged per KB of mobile web data.

6. Link pages

A good mobile website design provides back buttons and links. While it is rather difficult to get around on a mobile phone and many phones are not equipped with back buttons, try to provide them to escape dead ends. Plus make sure that all pages are linked to other pages. And one more, if it is actually a phone site why not invite to a call making it a link.

Few more tips:

  • Your URL says much about your mobile website. So think of using the better .mobi domain which indicates a mobile experience instead of .com, .edu, .org, etc. that stand for a desktop web experience.
    Plus, you may also want to think on having your mobile version on a subdomain – that’s the way many websites do it. For example mobile version of Digg is http://m.digg.com/ (the ordinary is http://digg.com/)
  • Test the mobile version of your site on multiple devices (and preferably of different platforms) since it is the only way to be really sure that your site provides a good mobile experience. IF you do not have an access to multiple devices (which is a common thing) you may use one of these web-based emulators, such as the iPhoneTester.com for example.
  • Make sure that you have one of the refreshingly updated site, otherwise your mobile website won’t catch up with the growing amount of mobile web surfers.
  • Since most mobile browsers aren’t compatible with Flash, most video and audio players, JavaScript, frames, pop-ups, and other things that people like to use to spice up their sites, they are completely unusable for those who come to your website through their mobile phones.
  • It would be also very convenient to have variable screen sizes and resolutions of your mobile website to scale page elements by screen size, rather than setting fixed pixel widths for page elements. Do consider that different mobile phones have different screen sizes.

If you follow the foregoing standards carefully, there is a pretty good chance that your mobile website will be able to render all essential information in a manner that is basically usable and efficient for your customers. Thanks for being involved, and let us know what you think about the increasing role of mobile Internet by commenting below.

05 · 10

5 Wordpress Plugins To Increase Your Blog’s Security

Wordpress, like any other popular script or online service, is heavily targeted by malicious users who try to get access to it to use the high-jacked blogs or services to execute malicious activities. This includes spamming ads to the blog’s visitors or placing links to their sites on the blog’s pages.

Wordpress administrators can improve the security of their blog with several standard practices like selecting a secure password, changing the admin username or disabling features in the blog (like preventing registration or remote publishing).

But there are also Wordpress plugins that can increase the blog’s security tremendously. The following list contains five Wordpress plugins that improve a blog’s security.

1. Login Lockdown

Login Lockdown increases the protection against so called brute force attacks. The plugin will log every login attempt and blog attempts from IP addresses that. The login retries, the retry time interval and the length of the lock out can be configured in the plugins’ options.

The list of blocked IP addresses can also provide the webmaster with information about undergoing attacks.

2. WP Security Scan

WP Security Scan scans several key elements of the blog. The plugin checks the Wordpress version, table prefix, if the Wordpress version is hidden, if DB errors are turned off, if the ID Meta tag has been removed, if a user admin exists and if a .htaccess file has been placed in wp-admin for extra security.

It can furthermore scan the file permissions of the core Wordpress folders (showing what it suggests and the actual permissions), change the Wordpress table suffix to protect the blog from zero day attacks and provides access to a password strength checker. Does not need to be active all the time.

3. Antivirus for Wordpress

Antivirus for Wordpress scans the active theme folder for malicious injections. It protects the blog against certain forms of exploits and spam injections. Runs in the background and can be configured to notify the admin if a scan finds an anomaly in the theme files.

wordpress antivirus

4. WordPress File Monitor

The plugin monitors the files of a Wordpress blog and notifies the webmaster if any of them have been changed. It can check the file modification date or compare hashes to find modified files.

Folders can be excluded from the scan, important for cache folders for instance with files that change regularly.

5. Secure WordPress

The plugin performs a series of one-time operations on the Wordpress blog, specifically:

1. removes error-information on login-page
2. adds index.php plugin-directory (virtual)
3. removes the wp-version, except in admin-area
4. removes Really Simple Discovery
5. removes Windows Live Writer
6. remove core update information for non-admins
7. remove plugin-update information for non-admins
8. remove theme-update informationfor non-admins (only WP 2.8 and higher)
9. hide wp-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins
10. Add string for use WP Scanner
11. Block bad queries

Secure Wordpress can be downloaded from the official Wordpress Plugin repository.

05 · 10

Sony Rumored to Announce Android Televisions With Intel Chips

This year’s Google I/O is shaping up to be an awesome event full of Android goodness if all these rumors come true. The latest comes by way of Bloomberg who states that Sony will introduce an Android television at the event. This television will not only be powered by an Intel chip but it will feature a new custom version of Android called Dragonpoint.

Could this be the rumored Google TV? Only time will tell, we’ll find out sometime during the I/O. not much else is known about this television. There’s no information on pricing, size or when it will be available. Dragonpoint may turn out to be something special, stay tuned for more information.

Kyle Reddoch

I am an aspiring Web Developer, Android Fanatic, Family Man, and all around Web Geek! I also do Freelance Development work.

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