Web Data Source

iPhone SDK

by Akshay Sura on Apr 29, 2009 (3) Comments

In March of 2008, Apple released an SDK, or Software Development Kit, that allows independent software developers to design applications for the iPhone, write the programs and test the software to see if they will work properly on the iPhone.

IPhone owners can find all kinds of applications at the Apple App store. If you’re a developer, you can post your application for free or for a fee, depending on what you’ve put into it and what you want to get out of it.

It costs $99 to download the Standard SDK and $299 for the Enterprise version, or you can ask a company like Webdatamation to create an iPhone app for you.

SDK provides an environment for development tools that is similar to other Apple environments. Developers will find the source editor and graphical debugger look familiar and are intuitive to use.

Apple also provides an iPhone Simulator with SDK that allows a developer to run an app on the simulator, see how it would act in an actual iPhone environment, and then debug the app locally with the iPhone simulation.

In order to facilitate optimization, use the development instruments to collect and compare data. The instrument panel allows you to display the data graphically and in real time, making optimization easy.

Other development tools for SDK users include a drag and drop interface builder, an iPhone reference library, and a coding how-to reference that gives you examples of code you can add to your app to make it more functional, or simply serve as examples of ways you can develop your own.

Look for the videos and documents that cover all kinds of topics, and join the developer’s forum to get questions answered and to answer questions from other iphone developers.

If you want to create iPhone apps to promote your business, Apple’s SDK is your method of reaching the tech-savvy group of customers who own Apple iPhones by developing apps for the iPhone.

Promoting Your Business Through Mobile Development

by Akshay Sura on Apr 23, 2009 (1) Comments

The explosion of growth in the production and use of touch screen smartphones is creating a fantastic opportunity for developers such as Webdatamation and companies who want new ways to promote their business.

Android, the open source operating system for G1 smartphones developed by Google, T-Mobile and many other wireless companies, is a booming marketplace.

Apple iPhone is another major player in the smartphone market. They are close to selling 1 Billion Apps.

It provides a great chance to monetize and distribute your company name and create a brand through mobile phone applications and through content you supply with your logo and name.

These phones are creating a significant change in the way consumers use mobile devices and the way they access information. In fact, 85 percent use the smartphones for surfing the web, and 70 percent use them to download and play games and other applications.

The most popular applications for smart phone apps are weather, games, shopping and music. By creating an application that fills a need or want in the smart phone community, you reach the consumers with the most expendable income, become a part of something they consider cutting edge, and create a monetized way to get your brand out there.

Use your logo all over a finger hockey game, show your business name at the app startup, provide links to your website, promote your product; there are many ways to make money from a mobile app. You can also find ways to extend your current marketing and advertising campaigns by gathering data from consumers who download your “free” apps.

Think of creating communication, office/business, multimedia, travel, internet, utility or security applications along with games.

You then have direct access to that user on a very personal level. It’s an interactive form of marketing, and encourages users to buy or inquire with a simple click of the send button.

Users can refer you apps to friends, and can help you build a clientele without you spending a cent more on marketing or development.

With more and more consumers spending their internet browsing time with their “second screen” devices (mobile phones) have an exclusive app for those phones is a plus for businesses.

Since android does not make any differentiation between the core applications found on the phone and third party applications added later, it is an ideal platform for integrating apps that feature your brand.

Android Development to Build Your Company

by Akshay Sura on Apr 14, 2009 (0) Comments

Android is a new, open platform environment for use on all kinds of mobile devices. It is an alternative to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile proprietary operating system.

The Android system is the result of an open collaboration between Google, T-Mobile, Intel, and other industry leaders all bent on offering mobile device users the best, fastest, and most innovative mobile experience available.

Because of its open nature, there is a great deal of cooperation and open communication between developers, leading to an enhanced user experience for anyone with a G1 mobile device.

Android allows developers and manufacturers to ship out innovative new features faster and cheaper than ever before, and it opens up a huge development market for creative developers to provide customized quality solutions.

Most mobile phone providers have android-based phones, and the number of applications for Android phones is growing. The system is running on more and more phones, and will continue to grow in popularity as more applications are developed for the platform.

The open source philosophy is a real appeal of this phone to many people, including developers at Webdatamation.

Webdatamation’s offering in the Android development front is FileDroid – the best overall file manager for your Android powered phone.

FileDroid fills a void in the Android market. File management in the native Android environment is cumbersome and a bit sloppy. FileDroid is the best value in correcting that problem with Android’s file management, with it’s small application size and multiple features.

Development is ongoing, and more features are being added constantly. It’s garnered great reviews so far, and will only continue to improve.

Android development is a great way to get your business’s name out in the public sphere for communication. Product development, such as developing applications for Android, can build a buzz for your business and give you some new ways to promote yourself online.

If you have a great idea for an Android Application but lack the time and expertise to develop it, contact us. We can develop an application for Android and quickly put it to use for your business.

Google Map API

by Akshay Sura on Apr 08, 2009 (0) Comments

A great website with superior content goes a long way to getting your business recognized. But if you want to convert that customer contact into a sale, some businesses require a customer to find the brick and mortar place of business. Other customers need to know where to bring items for repair, and others just prefer to conduct their business in person.

Save yourself a lot of time and trouble giving directions by embedding a Google Maps locator right on your website using Google Maps API.

This tool allows you to use JavaScript to place a Google Map into your site, pinpointing your location with the superior accuracy that internet users have come to expect from Google Maps.

You can add different utilities for manipulating maps that are the same as the tools your customers are used to using on the Google Maps page. You can also utilize the numerous utilities available for manipulating maps, and add content to your maps by using various other services.

The Google Maps API will let you create a robust, customized map environment that is familiar to your customers and unique to your business. You can choose from normal, 2D maps, satellite maps, and hybrid maps showing some photographs and prominent roads.

There are many other features you can add to your map, like street view, street view points of view, geocoding and reverse geocoding (converting physical addresses into geographic coordinates of latitude and longitude), and a local search bar.

If your website is free and open access, then Google Maps API is free for your use.

You can actually earn advertising revenue from using your Google Maps API. The new GoogleBar has advertising beside local business search results. You can earn from this advertising if you have a link from the GoogleBar to an AdSense account. It’s easy to sign up for an AdSense account, as well.

For an overview of the Google Maps API and an introduction to the many features, check out the website at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/.

For instructions on how to utilize many of the features of Google Maps API, including the advertising feature, click here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Advertising

Data Centers configured to take a “nap”!

by Akshay Sura on Apr 07, 2009 (0) Comments

The modern work culture now allows its employees to take a “power nap” in between stressed out work shifts. Servers now have an equal demand! Researchers from the University of Michigan have declared a new mechanism by which power-hungry computer data centers can save up to 75% energy by putting these servers to sleep, when not in use.

Thomas Wenisch spearheaded this research, who also happens to be assistant professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His team performed an analysis on the power consumption and data center workloads. They used mathematical modeling techniques to optimize their findings. Their proposed technology would include “PowerNap” that conserves energy by eliminates almost all power used by servers that are idle and RAILS (Redundant Array for Inexpensive Load Sharing).

Most of the energy wasted by these servers is because of the enormous amounts of energy they draw while they are configured to meet peak processing requirements on demand. This is much higher compared to the normal demand. However, such servers when remain idle cause considerable energy losses together with loss in power delivery. In addition to this, their cooling mechanisms too, increase power consumption two-three fold.

The researchers made a quite interesting observation that typically, industrial data centers are utilized 20-30% on the average. This means, almost one fifths of their time is spent doing nothing. What is more surprising is the fact that they still consume at least 60% of the power while the are idle! Aw! Now that’s got to burn a hole in your pocket!

Just like ordinary laptops, Wenisch and his team has come up with this idea of applying the same underlying technology to hefty data centers. Techniques such as voltage scaling and dynamic frequency comparatively, do not help to conserve power by larger factors and are hence, not as efficient. However, the “sleep and wake up” process has to be fast enough so that there isn’t any considerable delay in between servicing requests and placing unique demands on them. These servers typically exhibit recurrent and concise bursts of activity so this posed a challenge for the team.

Wenisch has made a point in a podcast that the carbon footprint of Czech Republic is as high as tat of all the world’s data centers! Therefore, he claims that “PowerNap” is all set to bring about the necessary savings in power consumption. However, in order to continuously co ordinate the sleeping and waking, “PowerNap” would require a new operating system designed for its specific purpose.

Ready for a Nap there Mr. Server?…oops…for you, we now have “PowerNap”!

Comparing Umbraco and DotNetNuke

by Akshay Sura on Apr 02, 2009 (16) Comments

So if you are going for an open source Content Management System (CMS), which should you choose: DotNetNuke (DNN) or Umbraco.

Both have the advantage of being open source programs, which means they are constantly updated and improved. There are many plugins and applications created by a core of invested users, increasing functionality and removing bugs with regularity.

Still, there are plenty of differences, as anyone who has used both systems will note.

Here are some things to consider about Umbraco:

It can be edited in Microsoft Word, making for easy editing for most users.
There are OSS or commercial install options
A high-quality, highly functional CMS
Install gives you a blank page – no template, not much of anything else – This means plenty of freedom and flexibility – freedom to succeed or freedom to fail. Success of a site is entirely up to a developer, meaning you must have a highly qualified and creative developer who also knows legal compliance and standards compliance.
Umbraco has high requirements for hosting, so it is difficult to find a “shared” hosting environment that will support it
Still working on good ecommerce solutions
Version 4 has better support for Safari and Firefox
There are good plugins available, and a management system built into Umbraco

By contrast, here are some items to consider about DotNetNuke:

Has a proprietary feel, despite being open source

Dot NET developers like it, those who are not dot NET developers have trouble with it
Based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET, which is the most popular web technology currently
Cheap to use and reduces total development costs – no ongoing licensing fees
Full access to source code so it can be altered to fit individual organizations
Can manage text, image, documents, links, events, news, banner ads and threaded info
Supports multiple websites
Installs easily
Can manage site hosting, content, security, web design and membership in one program
Multi-language ability
Fully extensible and scalable
User friendly interface and intuitve site wizards, help icons and interface for those familiar with Dot NET
DNN has a large user base (125,000 registered users) and a core programming team dedicated to the system, so it is a large community. There are also an increasing number of third party developers of plug-ins, etc. for DNN

Which open-source hosting program is right for you? It depends on your abilities, wants and business model. Either way you go, using an open source CMS might be the way for you to save money and still have a strong, attractive site.

Social Networking-The journey from toys to tools

by Akshay Sura on Mar 31, 2009 (3) Comments

“Follow me on Twitter!”

“I’ll add you on Facebook!”

“Hey, we are Orkut friends!”

“I’ll subscribe to your RSS feed right away!”

You will agree, these are some of the most touted phrases that we use when we “network”. However, this is not the way the journey had begun. The transformation from toys to tools was a revolution that brought out a whole new “Social Economy” in “Social Networks”.

Emotions have been replaced by emoticons, expressions have given way to smileys and the English Language has seen drastic reforms in the present era. Yes, we are using a super condensed and more “expressive” way of communication, thanks to social networking.

Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and many others took birth in the World Wide Web and primarily made their presence felt as networking toys. Little did we realize then, about the enormous networking capabilities they had. Soon, along with inviting our near ones to hang out at a party, we were “inviting” them to our online profiles on these websites. There were friends, friends of friends; can I say an online “big bang”?

Yes, the concept might be surreal, but the sheer fascination and excitement to be a part of this revolution paved way for the dynamics of theses toys to mutate into tools. It would be quite difficult to point out the exact period when this transformation took place, but you knew it was there when you were networking more online rather than calling up or e-mailing the same people. Your business cards and identities changed during this era and now included information of your online profiles or networks.

“Human networks” is the word of the hour. We have been consistent in synthesizing our conversations through these digitally woven, close environments, with a wide array of inbound and outbound hyperlinks dominating our online presence. We are scheduling meetings, hanging out, having conversations, sharing interests, making a social statement in a world of our own. All these worlds come together in the digital universe. The good news is, we are getting addicted to it every day and striving to reach its epitome.

“To err is human…” What is human? Is it an online Avatar or the one who sits behind it and controls its actions? Are our online counterparts facing an identity crisis?

The principles associated with this new social economy have brought about the tools in toys and I am now a part of it. The trick of the trade is to propel your identity towards the proper direction and your intended audience.

Welcome to the world of social networking once again…have you noticed the change?

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