Expanding horizons

devinross/tapkulibrary - GitHub [del.icio.us]

2012-01-29T11:31:35-08:00

Responsive Advertising | Mark Boulton [del.icio.us]

2012-01-27T04:39:59-08:00

Responsive Advertising · ART=WORK [del.icio.us]

2012-01-27T04:32:57-08:00

Funny.Pho.to - Create fun photo effects online with Funny.Pho.to. Free photo frames, photo collages, photo montages, e-cards and valentines [del.icio.us]

2012-01-26T14:52:23-08:00

Cobook - The Smart Address Book for Mac [del.icio.us]

2012-01-26T09:22:32-08:00

Detector [BETA] - combined browser- & feature-detection for your app [del.icio.us]

2012-01-25T13:12:17-08:00

Maruku: a Markdown-superset interpreter [del.icio.us]

2012-01-25T02:28:38-08:00

Debugging tool for Safari on iPhone, iPad and PhoneGap apps - Remote Inspector (Firebug) for JavaScript, HTML and CSS [del.icio.us]

2012-01-25T02:15:47-08:00

Cookies on the beta | Government Digital Service [del.icio.us]

2012-01-24T09:15:51-08:00

HTML5 Please - Use the new and shiny responsibly [del.icio.us]

2012-01-24T03:38:42-08:00

Explore features by various axes: mobile, api, javascript, IE

Over The Air 2011: The FT Web app - We've Got a Website for That

2011-10-04T12:20:00.001+01:00

Andrew Betts, Assanka @triblondon

An app is:
- responsive design
- responsive to human interface (mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, TV remote, …)
The Daily app is now generating less than 50 tweets a day (and still going down)
- Down from over 200
iPad web app also works on other devices
- not just tablets – phones too
- currently only accessibly on iPad
- works on Android & QNX but not released yet
- Android imminent, QNX a few months
server serves the same code to all devices
- client does customisation and caches as much as it can
- so can go offline and still access pages
FT web app
- 8 months with 3 people
- then additional 4 months with same people to get Android & Playbook

issues

flowed columns and flowing text around fixed elements
- adobe webkit fork has great flow additions - but not available on devices
- css3 template layouts – but again not supported
- so have to measure content and cut it into positioned containers using Javascript
content balancing
- always show a whole number of items across the width
- done by classifying devices into four groups according to screen size
  - small, medium, large, large wide
podcast pages
- want to keep playing audio even when move to another page
- put audio player at the top of the DOM, so not altered
- entire app is in a single page – just swap content in and out
swiping between sections
- continuous carousel made out of three divs
- middle one is always the current
- outer ones are preloaded as required
- implemented swipes using touch gestures
- have to do your own gesture interpretation
  - distinguish between slow drags and flings

tools

playbook has remote web debugging
WeinRE can do similar, but can’t debug Javascript
TouchScroll allows you to keep headers fixed and snap to columns when swiping across
web debugging proxies (e.g. Charles)
use desktop for layout, but real device for interaction (swiping)

discoveries

people use native apps differently
- they tap lightly and fast
- the web browser waits for fast taps in case there’s a double tap to zoom
- if you don’t want double tap to zoom
- Assanka made fastclick

offline access

launching app offline
- need to specify URLs in app manifest
- if you change a single file, all of the manifest needs to be re-downloaded
- store as little as possible
- the more you store, the longer your app will take to launch
- iOS manifest is buggy – you can get name conflicts with other webapps
  - so make sure you give your manifest a custom name
- development is hell – things get cached the whole time
  - instead, add a comment that changes every minute (for dev)
  - still leaves you time to refresh a few times to check the cacheing
manifest is no good for editorial content
- local storage is much faster than SQLite
- so if you only access by key then use it
- you need permission to store > 5Mb
- strategy:
  - launch app from web, just store <= 5Mb and prompt to save to home screen
  - saved from home screen, immediately ask for 50Mb and never ask again
- images downloaded from server as base64 encoded strings
  - can combine images into single requests
  - and can then gzip the whole thing
  - stored in local SQLite
  - rendered into DOM as a data: URI
  - base64 transfer also avoids operator image recompression!
analytics
- can’t use Google analytics
- log user actions into local DB
- POST the log when requesting updated content
- on the server, rewrite the log into an Apache format access log

unresolved issues

SSL security: no browser chrome, so no browser padlock
- trusted, because we tell you…
Social media integration – OAuth in separate window doesn’t work
- have to reload completely when return to app
offline adverts:
- not technically hard, but ad server companies don’t know how to deal with them
- can’t retract the ad
- can’t measure clicks
- can’t click through at all…
automated QA – selenium doesn’t really work
- ended up using lots of people and lots of devices

platforms

Android is by far the poorest web environment when compared with iOS and QNX
- mainly due to lack of hardware-accelerated CSS transitions
- so FT have a native Android app which has a single native component – the gallery to enable swiping
- the rest of the app is HTML/CSS/JS
QNX has a native app too, but only to have a home screen icon and to provide distribution

Q&A

upset Apple?
- probably not – FT are specific market
differences between web app and native
- web has more sections than native ever had
- web app preloads content, so people swipe more often
- as a result web app gets much more interaction
is not appearing in the app store an issue?
- yes, but instead making tactical native apps
- e.g. FT Top 100 Companies – tells users if you want the full edition, go to the web app

Over The Air 2011: OpenBTS - Open Source GSM

2011-10-04T11:39:00.001+01:00

Will Rogers, Senior Consultant at Detica

Open Base Transceiver Station: http://openbts.sourceforge.net/
software implementation of radio towers
USRP: universal software radio peripheral
written in C++ on top of GNU Radio
fairly stable – maintained by Free Software Foundation
only acts as an access point – doesn’t simulate entire mobile network
- another project: OpenBSC does more
but, can translate GSM into VOIP – Asterix
originally built by David Burgess (Range Networks) and Harvind Samra
- Range Networks building commercial implementations (e.g. Femtocells)
originally designed for:
- signals intelligence…
- disaster relief
- developing countries
- Island of Niue project - March 2010
enables GSM network for $1/month per subscriber
hardly uses any power
range depends on antenna & height
- Burning Man covered 5km – with a microwave backhaul
supports handset registration
- requires no pre-provisioning
- get a text with a code – reply and your IMSI gets added to the asterix
some branches support USSD (free data)
requirements:
- hardware:
  - can run the whole thing in a VM
  - USB (for USRP 1), or ethernet (for USRP 2)
- software:
  - most linuxes (Ubuntu well supported)
  - GNUradio
  - Asterix PBX
USRP was chosen as it was available, but it’s not really designed for GSM
- better to have multiple of 13MHz clock
- daughterboards available for various RF frequencies
- need to have GSM-specific one
resources
- OpenBTS for Dummies
- Will has an Ubuntu installer script that just works
channels
- default is one logical channel for control
- everything else (7) for voice
- that means 7 simultaneous handset calls at once
  - e.g. 3 on-network conversations + one outbound
- if you want more then you need multiple BTS units
- if want SMS then need to steal a voice channel for control
SMS messages need routing, so OpenBTS includes smsqueue which forwards messages
limitations
- doesn’t support live handover of calls
- no data support (GPRS or Edge)
- no way of supporting roaming or billing
- 3G/UMTS boxes are available, but not yet open source
  - OpenBSC may get there first
- doesn’t support encryption
use CC/MNC of 001/01 – these are the test values
OpenBTS console has various commands
- timsi lists connected IMSIs and IMEIs
- testcall creates a UDP connection to the phone
  - you can then send Layer 3 packets
- sendrrlp sends a request for location (as mandated by US Gov)
  - can provide info about cell tower locations and phone will calculate location itself

Over The Air 2011: Exploding the Gap Between Web and Native

2011-10-04T11:34:00.000+01:00

James Hugman - Engineer at Future Platforms @jhugman

Web vs Native is a false dilemma
- the answer is: it depends, or it’s both
often a lot of display in UI
story of the glastonbury app
- Orange app for iPhone, Android and Nokia
three/four phases of content:
- before (and before embargo)
- during
- after
lots of data
- 3000 bands, 65 stages – timings could change

experimentation & research

assumed offline and native UI
but native was too expensive for three platforms
how do you make native in web technologies?
- every phone has a different web view
- Android users don’t like seeing iPhone UX
- and Android back button can exit app if you’re not careful
- there is no release cycle of WebKit
  - manufacturers just take the trunk and fix bugs
- dev and cpu time spent getting UI just right
Titanium: write your UI in Javascript, render natively
- ListViews either don’t look right, or leak memory
- doesn’t always deal with latest design patterns – can’t override platform-specific behaviours
Impact for iOS: javascript talks to OpenGL
- experimental & proprietary
- morphed into appMobi’s DirectCanvas
game{closure}
- pre-alpha – HTML5
- also node.js
- debug your mobile app and your browser app all in the same browser
but Game UI is not platform UI
- easier to make cross-platform game UI as the UI is brand-specific, not platform specific
important to get events passing between rendering and UI logic
- all frameworks bundle their own Javascript engine
- Android users don’t like big apps – Titanium hello world is 6Mb!

new platform

Kirin requirements:
- native, platform appropriate UIs
- minimal download
design:
- native UI
- JS application logic
- native platform
advantages:
- raw events processed natively
- only app-specific events passed through to app
“the keyhole”
- instantiate an invisible web-view
- build proxies for objects
- javascript calls into native and the other way
modular javascript using CommonJS
- each screen has its own module (one file each)
threading using asynchronous APIs, inspired by node.js
native-specific features available as services
- e.g. Location, SQL, Network access
- same Javascript to native bridge
- JS just uses a require(...)

releasing as open source

available now on github
as a 0.5 release
apache license
looking for feedback
iOS and Android only at the moment (Qt coming later)
Windows Phone 7 might come later

Q&A

testing & debugging:
- build script runs node.js
  - so can include unit tests at build time with assert
  - have console access
  - no actual debugger
why port model code – isn’t it simple?
- but if using database on device, then model not so portable (Core Data doesn’t port well)
porting pain? scaling to iPad?
- most of pain was electronic programme guide
- download & syncing

Over The Air 2011: Crap! It doesn't quite look right!

2011-10-04T11:30:00.001+01:00

Or… how I learned to stop worrying and set my web sites free

Lyza Danger Gardner, co-founder Cloud Four @lyzadanger

Crap! It doesn't look quite right, or, how I learned to stop worrying and set my mobile web sites free

View more presentations from Lyza Gardner

Founder of Cloud Four in 2007
Explicitly for mobile web
Lyza was on the team that built the Obama app
Went through the app and realised that there was nothing in the app that couldn’t be done with the web
hautelook.com – high performance mobile web
deschutes brewery – one web
- uses geolocation to find where to buy the beer
mobile web is hard and getting harder
- and it’s not just phones any more…
- car radios, televisions, …
and there’s a whole stack every time (any of which can change)
in the 1990s, took print ideas and applied them – pixel perfect
- customers believed that we had control…
- “could you move the logo a half pixel to the right?”
no one can possibly know enough – devices are continually appearing and you still have to deal with the old stuff
how do you deal with WYSIWYG for customers…?

mobilewood

10 highly experienced mobile developers
working on where we wanted the mobile web to go
built http://futurefriend.ly
three pages, two images, no interactivity
100 man hours
-> not scaleable!

testing is very hard

Cloud Four helped set up a device laboratory in downtown Portland
multiple operators, device manufacturers
but even a well-stocked device library will not help

take heart!

relinquish control over a few things we thought we had down pat
four considerations:
1. content like water
  - consider wireframes that demonstrate the flow and flex of content across a continuum of device and window sizes
  - design approach: like proportion – not pixel perfect
  - build functional mockups, so you can show (not tell)
  - it will be an iterative process
  - will not be an overnight change – it’s not a brochure, despite what we told you earlier
  - it’s often surprising how willing customers will be to adapt or modify their content APIs
  - try using textile or markdown in CMS
2. essentials first
  - not just mobile – pare down to the essentials
  - not just about design – about process, performance, experience for every user
  - start serene and simple
3. arm the weapons!
  - responsive web design
  - fluid media: 100% width images
  - fluid grids
  - use media queries to enhance (mobile first)
  - see also Responsive Images (by Scott Jehl)
  - Boston Globe is a showcase
  - it’s ok to leave unmanaged gutter in % widths
  - use Modernizr’s modular approach (don’t test everything)
    - but it’s not infallible
  - use server-side work:
    - reordering – moving navigation around
      - android devices are too buggy
    - reduction – smaller images
    - respect – your users: don’t download graphics if you don’t use them
  - user agent sniffing – it ain’t perfect, but it gets the job done
  - don’t be afraid to do some server-side optimization
  - optimise!
    - especially your htaccess or apache config
    - use YSlow
    - make sure you gzip everything you can (not just html)
    - cache manifests are a little tricky to deal with
  - Cloud Four images:
    - server side sizing using WURFL for major sizes
    - common images are then cached
    - then 100% fluid sizing
4. draw the line
  - set expectations with your customers
  - explain how you don’t have control over everything
  - don’t be afraid to pull out egregious hacks!
  - be ready to fail gracefully
  - this isn’t religion!
frameworks:
- Lyza likes the columnal CSS framework
- most complex projects end up rolling their own…
iOS rotation
- use -webkit-text-size-adjust:none;

Lyza is writing a book – Head First Mobile Web

Over The Air 2011: BBC Digital Public Space

2011-10-04T11:02:00.000+01:00

Mo McRoberts - Developer, BBC Archive Development @nevali

Digital Public Space at Over The Air 2011

View more presentations from Mo McRoberts

Trying to make BBC Digital Archive accessible
Then working together with other organisations:
- BFI, Kew, national maritime museum, royal opera house, british library, national archives, national library of scotland
- have 25–30 organisations who have said yes to accessing data
- but only have Mo to connect things!
lots of separate catalogues
each catalogue refers to things in asset stores
- may not be able to get to asset stores, but linking catalogues by itself is useful
- also link to external sources such as dbpedia, geonames, etc
want to make the archives accessible to people other than archivists
golden rule:
- give everything a single, permanent URI
- make the data about that thing accessible at that URI
could try to fit everything into one giant, extensible XML schema
- or else just go with RDF…
can put all the RDF from catalogues into an RDF Aggregator
wanted to find overlaps in the catalogues
aggregator evaluates all info coming in and tries to find matches
- not just exact matches, but close matches too
- disambiguating is the hard part
create lots of stub objects
- people, places, events, things, …
eventually want to have spindle in the hands of the public
the archives themselves are slowly being digitised, but it takes quite a while
BBC Redux captures and stores TV and radio, transcodes them and makes them available in various forms
- been running since July 2007 for everything that’s been running centrally (not all local opt-outs)
now has an API and developers’ guide
available to developers for the duration of OverTheAir:
- prototype RDF aggregator to query
- API to Redux
- references to Redux are not fully tested – may or may not work
genome project:
- scan in, OCR and codify all of the Radio Times issues
- from 1920 to 2009
- this and /programmes will provide a public API for all broadcasts ever
three windows of content availability:
1. free to air on iPlayer
2. commercially useful
3. out of commercial time: e.g. desert island discs (but no music)
aiming to have content available in 10 years’ time
- BBC Director General has committed to this
1 recent episode of Doctor Who has 80 rights clearances
- an older episode would be worse as you would have to find the appropriate rights holders

Over The Air 2011: Stolen and lost phones - can mobile phone applications help with the problem?

2011-10-04T10:52:00.001+01:00

Detective Sergeant Andy Williams

National Mobile Crime Unit – based in Notting Hill
Criminals stealing to order
Cops are not the most technologically advanced people – when Andy wants something done, he asks his children…
in 2001, 45% street crime linked to mobiles
- this was from the British Crime Survey – not reported crime, but surveyed
current stats:
- 9.7% of all UK crime accounted for by theft of a handset
- 60% of mobile phones stolen in personal robberies are iPhones or BlackBerrys
  - not just the phone is high value, but the data on the phones
- avg 8,000 phones stolen every month in london

what happens to stolen phones?

used until blocked (by IMEI)
- IMEI blocking works across UK, 60% of Europe, plus North & South America coming in soon
- but main export markets are North Africa (mainly Algeria) & Romania
some handsets are vulnerable to having their IMEI changed (so can be unblocked)
phones used for parts (broken screens, etc)
phones used for non-phone functions – mp3 player, etc
blocking:
- operator will block SIM
- will also request IMEI to be blocked
individual can install a theft tracking app, but police would need a signed warrant
- police can’t monitor 8,000 phones a month
IMEIs are personal data in Germany
phones offered on eBay, shown as blocked or no signal

immobilise – national property register

http://immobilise.com

if device is registered with immobilise, police don’t need to go through RIPA
can put anything with a serial number on there
can check on people’s phones when stop people on the street
private company set up and operated in conjunction with the police

formation of NMPCU

initially front line - reducing robbery
expanded to all acquisitive crime
working at all levels of crime - local through to organised
now an offence to offer to reprogram a phone (change the IMEI)

Police Central eCrime Unit

trying to combat cyber-criminals
looking at denial of service attacks, etc
front line police notoriously poor at dealing with cyber crime
but no law enforcement agency that specialises in all areas of cyber crime
most expertise is in the forensic area
judicial system is not set up to deal with cyber crime
judicial boundaries don’t help – if online connections are not in UK…
recently starting up new kind of officer: Covert Internet Investigator
not very many across the country

Case study: organised criminals targeting music events

following same bands the whole time
- bands with mosh pits…
Download 2010: 3 people found with 140 phones buried under their tent

Security & new mobile tech

Man City gave 20 season ticket holders their tickets on their phone
if someone steals your phone, they have access to your wallet, your ticket, your flat…
NFC requirements requested by police:
- PIN required for all payments – not gonna happen!
  - at the moment, 5 payments of £10 until a PIN required
- capture IMEI during transactions
  - possible but not gonna happen
- compulsory registration with financial institution
  - may happen

key areas

registration at point of sale
carphone warehouse register 25,000 phones a day at Xmas
only 4 in 10 PIN lock their phone
- significant barrier
locating devices post theft
- works ok, but not great – won’t work if someone goes into a block of flats
identification of a SIM change post theft

checkMEND

http://www.recipero.com/checkmend

can find out if an IMEI is stolen
some operators run this service for free
but otherwise may cost £1 a shot

iOSDev UK: The Eternal Sunshine of the Developer Mind

2011-09-09T21:11:00.000+01:00

Steve “Scotty” Scott, iDeveloper iDTV, @macdevnet

Scotty gave a great talk complete with loads of cartoons that I can’t remember here. I’ve just noted down the more serious bits…

However, the best slide was by far:

programming is:
- 10% science
- 20% ingenuity
- 70% getting the two to work together
embrace your pain and draw positives from it
just because something has failed, doesn’t make you a failure
unless you can own the failure, you can’t understand the problem and move on
if you’re trying to learn what went wrong, make sure you’re looking at the real issues
- keep on asking why until you hit the real reason
- was it the people or the technology?
you don’t have time not to do this
when you next find a situation that’s negative, find a positive
make sure you learn to understand what people are saying, rather than what you are hearing
- “developers get confused between Xmas & Halloween because DEC 25 = OCT 31”
it is impossible to mentor yourself
- you can’t get out of your own assumptions
- you don’t need someone highly experienced to mentor you — you just have to explain yourself and get someone to ask, “how do you know that’s true?”
often our thinking is shaped by a whole load of things that you haven’t let go
- process it and let it go
we don’t tend to learn a lot from success
- that’s ok - we just need to do the same thing again

iOSDev UK: Design Considerations for Educational Apps

2011-09-09T20:45:00.000+01:00

Fraser Speirs, Head of Computing & IT, Cedars School of Excellence, @fraserspeirs

http://speirs.org

last year gave every child an iPad
- only 100 pupils
- had 220 people come to visit the school…
when you give people the internet the whole time, you sometimes get unexpected results
- Fraser showed a slide of coursework on cell nuclei, decorated with a background showing the Statue of Darth Liberty
sitting around iPads — everybody faces each other rather than all facing the screen at the front
avoiding the ceremonial computer lab — moving to casual computing
beautiful artwork created by kids on iPads, within a month of receiving them
it’s not just the iPads, it’s the 1:1 — the 1:1 is more important
Fraser’s daughter is 4.5 — just started school
- will graduate from university in Summer 2029
- “we are already teaching the citizens of the 22nd century”
looking at investment as kids’ chairs & tables
- not as a guarantee that scores will go up

Do’s and Don’ts for apps in schools

don’t assume the internet works correctly
- schools change what internet is available through frequent policy changes
- youtube is often turned off
teaching fashions come and go regularly
in-app purchase doesn’t work in schools
- central purchasing or gifting
- e.g. PCalc has a full version that can be purchased at once
don’t assume your users can (will) read
- use conventions wisely (keep the back button in top left corner)
use push notifications sparingly
- no good advertising to kids in school — they don’t have the app store password anyway
watch out for number of devices nearby
- could be 20-30 devices around
- infrastructure may cope, but leave room in your UI
limit or prevent app store interactions
- no good in schools
- confuses kids; annoying for teachers
- that goes for “review me now” too
teachers need access to content
- support the photos app
don’t promote facebook
- facebook can be a major source of anxiety for many children
watch out for shaking gestures — not good for
don’t use bad language (and try to avoid double-entendres and local slang too). Some examples:
- Rasterbator
- Procreate
- Little Snapper
- hardware growler
- mental case
- FlashToPass
- http://gojobby.com
be very careful with user data — especially with location
talk to teachers and test with actual children
- Fraser’s school does not have the scale to be a beta tester…
watch out for different curricula in different countries
walk through guide in the app
- see toontastic
kids can use loads of apps to edit graphics, passing the image through the photos app
use sharing effectively
- use “Open In…”
- avoid huge sharing option lists
show proof of completion
avoid (penalise) random hits
structure + headroom = creativity
- app idea: make toontastic for creative writing
show user activity
- e.g. Brushes lets you record all your strokes and play them back as a quicktime video
localisation is useful even if your app is UK-specific
- e.g. Iraqi boy with a 1:1 iPod touch switched it to Farsi and used Google Image Search to show pictures of what he wanted to the teacher
support projectors & AirPlay
- don’t offer resolutions for external display — just pick one and do it well
there is a control to turn off Game Center at a policy level
- so go ahead and put it in the app but make the rest of the app work without it
gap in the middle for 7-10 year olds
- need more apps like toontastic — structure provided, but space for creation
- older kids can use general content apps
- younger kids don’t need so much freedom
- using iThoughts HD for mindmap, then writing in Pages

example apps

preschool memory match
the history of jazz
slice it — but gets too hard too quickly
DrawRace 2
Real Racing 2 HD — but uses up huge amounts of battery
toca tea party — not a game but a digital toy
- have a virtual tea party around the iPad
- lots of other other toca “games” available — see http://toca.com
math bingo
- gather “bingo bugs” and then use them in a breakout game
- 15 year-olds were saying “why do we not have math bingo?”
penultimate
- write on a project as you walk around

Q&A

research?
- study with university of western scotland
- two lessons back to back: one with iPad, one with paper & pencil
- same teacher, same children
- with paper & pencil, boys and some girls had less emotional engagement
- with iPad emotional engagement of all pupils was brought up to same level as best kids
- being submitted to BJET, but may not be published yet
separate educational version of an app?
- kids want the real thing
- universal design is best
- Fraser tries to buy things off the shelf rather than waiting for educational specific versions
damages?
- only had one — parent ran it over with Land Cruiser!
- kids are careful — the iPad has their name on it
teachers adapting to technology?
- about half of the teachers had iPhones/iPod Touches before the programme started
- the iPad is significantly more approachable than other computers
how do you find apps?
- school subscribes to Tap! magazine…
- more popular than the TES :-)

iOSDev UK: Standing Out from the Crowd

2011-09-09T10:41:00.001+01:00

Craig Lockwood, HuwDavid, @craiginwales

put a QR code on the presentation screen for a voting web page
- works surprisingly well (given good network connection…)
- voting page was well presented too http://wbxapp.com/join-in
pre-render your icon so you have control of the gloss
localisation
- french, dutch, german, italian translations pay dividends
app microsite
- drive traffic with google adwords & track with analytics
- good example: http://thecocktailapp.com
using social media
- shout loudly yourself
- and get your users to shout louder
- “if you’re not ethical, at least be targeted”
make your app meta data relevant
watch out for the app size
- you can’t download an app > 20Mb over 3G
- you have one opportunity to sell — don’t waste it
niche press works well for niche products
- e.g. rare pig breeds app (Guide to Pig Keeping), got featured in Farmers Weekly and got 6,000 downloads in a short period
getting designers:
- there are plenty of media students who are looking for portfolio work…

Q&A

how to deal with app store feedback complaints?
- point to the app website & twitter account within the app
- people look at the reviews more as the cost goes up (even if it’s only to £2.99)
- get your friends and family to review when you release — get in first with 5 star reviews
- good screenshots can filter out people who don’t understand the app
- price tier 2 gets less scathing reviews than tier 1 & free

iOSDev UK: Designing multi-user, single device interfaces on the iPad

2011-09-09T10:39:00.000+01:00

Kate Ho, interface3, @kateho

Started by designing for Microsoft Tablet
- kids started saying “this would be really cool an iPad…”

Example multi-user apps

Multi-user (sharing a single device at the same time)

Versus Games:
- Examples: PaddleBattle, Dorfball(?), Table Twister, Touch of Fun
- Very simple games: you’d think people would get bored, but people get very competitive
- “You can only play for 30 seconds at a time without killing each other” — playing with 8 year-olds can be very bad
- Best place to find inspiration for these games are the Wii mini games (Raving Rabbids, etc)
Co-op Games:
- Complete an objective together
- from interface3: iHave (just released)
- who has the maths answer?
- collectively get as many points as possible
- SliceHD — maybe not meant for multiplayer, but great for kids!
Games with a twist:
- one idea: two people playing on an iPad, and another player on a
Creative
- Singing Fingers — just watch the video!
- haven’t seen any specifically collaborative drawing apps, but perhaps regular drawing apps are ok
Exploration scenarios
- Topsee — can have a look at something and pass it over to someone else
- interface3 interactive mortgage guide on a Surface
- multitouch is better than keyboard since you don’t have to ask permission from the other person — just reach in a grab
Small group interactions
- one person in charge and two to three people learning over the same device
- interface3 built CoachAssist

Tips

design without orientation
- circular buttons with both-way-up text
- rotate the text every now and then
- draggable, rotatable objects
try to avoid one player’s actions getting in the way of others
design for short interactions
- around an iPad people are sharing personal space
- especially if they have to put their head over the screen
make sure players aren’t kept waiting
don’t have too many complex gestures
- “gestures are like the 21st Century command line”
- you shouldn’t spend too much time explaining yourself
create shared experiences
- what could two people do together that they couldn’t do by themselves

iOS Dev UK: Your App Sounds Great

2011-09-09T00:14:00.001+01:00

Dave Addey, Agant Ltd, @daveaddey

This was one of the barcamp slots in the evening. Dave went through the presentation he gave previously at NSConference on VoiceOver, Apple's device support for blind and partially sighted users.

RNIB have an accessible app of the month
- they’re really interested in helping people
2m blind or partially sighted people in the UK
- equivalent to population of Birmingham, or lefties, or gingers!
How it works:
- label - description
- hint - results of interaction
- traits - only need if making a custom control
triple tap with voiceover enabled to turn screen curtain on — blacks out the screen so you can test it without cheating
use UIAccessibilityPostNotification(UIAccessibilityNotification, ...) to post sounds on events rather than touches
iOS knows quite a lot of UK place names, but not all (and especially not Welsh names)
can set your own usability tags, but uses normal spelling, not phonetic characters
- can use say "word" on a Mac to test
can define accessibility containers to group stuff
it’s not just about making it accessible for a blind user or a partially sighted user, it’s also about making it usable for a sighted and non-sighted person using the app at the same time
At the bottom of accessibility options there’s a triple click home option — you can make this toggle VoiceOver
Maps do not have accessibility other than the pins
If stuff is still being selected by VoiceOver, then you might need to set them to be disabled

iOSDev UK: Robots!!

2011-09-08T18:02:00.000+01:00

Mark Neal, Co-ordinator for the Intelligent Robotics Research Group, Aberystwyth University

learning & adaptation
- neuro-endocrine control
visual navigation
- robots with cameras on top finding out where they are and how they are standing
- gyroscopes etc don’t always work in harsh environments
- map-building
control systems
- trying to make things that are redundant and reconfigurable by themselves
try to get out of the lab!
- sensors may start giving you junk…
- ideally having stuff work over a few years
- watch out for “Dalek syndrome” — falling down stairs
- flexibility tends to be reversible, adaptation tends not
department suffers from too much kit and not enough people
- started in 1998/99
- now have about 10 wheeled robots
- 2 and 4 wheel pioneers — not enough ground clearance so best indoors
- have had balloons and kits
- now have quadracopters…
- also have sailing robots
robot: autonomous
- try to avoid remote control other than start/stop
would like to buy off the shelf and build software
- works for little indoor bots
- but bigger ones don’t really work outside
- better to build yourself, or at least adapt
pioneer
- linux box on wheels
- 16 sonars
- laser scanners and grass don’t mix…
iCub — fancy toy
- human-shaped but can’t walk
- investigating how kids learn to do hand-eye coordination
IDRIS
- weighs 400kg
- 4 landrover sized tyres
- have done lots of work laser scanning monuments
ARGO
- 6-wheel drive amphibious
- £10K and then convert with a few more £K to make an autonomous robot
- doing the same with GWiz electric cars
- ARGO planned to be used as a radar tug in Greenland
- power is the killer
aerial robots
- had three helium balloons navigating in formation
- kite with aerial photographing — software is to stabilise the image based only on the camera
sailing robots: Beagle B
- 3.6m long
- disabled sailor’s boat
- vertical aerofoil wing on top instead of a sail
- has to be autonomous since the Wi-Fi only extends about 30m
- control system designed to use as little rudder and ropes as possible
- almost no power to run: < 5W
- 6W from solar panels
- unusual to have an autonomous robot that lasts more than a few hours
- these last at least 49 hours!

iOSDev UK: Making Money with In-App Purchases

2011-09-08T18:00:00.000+01:00

Dave Verwer, shinydevelopment, @daveverwer

Developing in-app purchases in the Explore Flickr app

purchases can be:
- content, functionality (permanent purchases)
- services, subscriptions (repeatable purchases)
have to design your own store
in-app purchases restrictions:
- no promo codes or volume purchases
store should answer:
- what is this store?
- what will I get if I upgrade?
- big green friendly buy button
ruby script to switch info plist based on DEBUG/RELEASE — needed to switch between versions
measure success with analytics
- log each stage to capture where people fall out
- e.g. store shown, video played, upgrade button tapped, upgrade process complete
1.6% conversion from Explore Flickr (from those who view the store)
A/B testing for store designs
- HuffPost do A/B testing on headlines
- have 3 choices for first hour, then automatically chosen
- be consistent with presentation (don’t let people know we’re A/B testing them)
- need to know if we’re still A/B testing
- put both bits of code in app, and choose according to web check on first launch
Results:
- store -> video -> upgrade pressed -> upgraded
- A: 100% -> 7.5% -> 3.2% -> 1.6%
- B: 100% -> 9.5% -> 3.5% -> 1.8%
- interesting stat is that video
What next?
- make the store more dynamic
- downloaded plist file for wording
- HTML for whole store page (but would need to download and cache it)

iOSDev UK: Mobile Apps: Bringing Together Real and Online Worlds

2011-09-08T17:57:00.000+01:00

Graeme Gibson, AppSherpas

iOS device as controller
- an interface to home automation using DMX
existing products:
- POSCard: point of sale mobile commerce at low cost
- Print&Post: Royal Mail from an iPhone
use eye movements to control a device
mobile image discovery
- scan an image instead of a QR code
- extracts “DNA” of image
- matches against database of monochrome images
- 3-5s response on 3G (< 1s on Wi-Fi)
- 100% accuracy for flat objects with a reasonable amount of light, that are large enough in the phot
- 70-80% accuracy with less light and > 15% perspective
- unlike QR codes, works for distant media (e.g. poster on the other side of the road)
- also works for a trailer on the TV
indoor wifi location is already available with Cisco kit
- no extra client kit
- extra stuff needed in the AP

iOSDev UK: Coding for your Future Self

2011-09-08T17:55:00.000+01:00

Martin Pilkington, @pilky

there are three you’s
- now — doing the work
- future — code guru
- past — got let near your computer and vomited all over your code…
consistent formatting — follow conventions
- don’t fight the conventions
composition vs subclassing
- cocoa often better to use composition
copy immutable classes — don’t use a reference
don’t ship code with exceptions
- in Objective-C they’re for invalid state — programming errors
- use NSError instead
naming
- don’t abbreviate
- no namespaces, so prefix all your classes, preferably with 3+ chars
- prefix category methods on other classes too, e.g. abc_categoryMethod
- capitalise acronyms
- if last param is error return, should be error:
if you comment every method then you’ll be in the habit of commenting when it counts
- not sure I totally agree — comments can get out of date with the code. perhaps better to comment longer code pieces rather than each and every method
large classes and large methods are unmaintainable
- also splits out more stuff into back-end code
- better for testing, better for multi-platform
better to inject dependencies (tell, don’t ask)
- or at least expose a property to set during tests
- if do so, then either set default in init, or use lazy construction in the getter method
notifications
- can also be distributed to other devices
- see kellabyte.com for continuous client
regular refactoring:
- always leave the campground cleaner than you found it
- have spring cleaning days/hours
- lots of little refactors mean less big rewrites!

iOSDev UK: Adapting Content for Apps

2011-09-08T17:52:00.000+01:00

Dave Addey & Alyson Fielding, Agant Ltd, @daveaddey & @alysonf

Why an app?
- Can you do something with it in dead time?
- It’s always there when you need it
- Would you use it yourself?
Preparing content
- content definition lets you split up content into small pieces
iPhone vs iPad
- use cases are different
- e.g. full page illustrations just don’t work on an iPhone — universal app just doesn’t show them
network content:
- assume no network and make as many things possible as you can
- then download & cache what you need when network becomes available
- same goes for submitting stuff — add it to a queue and submit it when a network becomes available
- e.g. QI app submit a fact
- provide the app bundle with some initial content to get started
- if you have information always show it — but show how old it is

content formats

HTML
Property list
Custom XML
NSAttributedString
Core Data store
SQLite database
bundled media files
text files — e.g. QI facts to rate
PDF
e.g. QI app
- books came as ePub (HTML)
- needed tidying, but was very useful
- errors could be spotted & fixed directly
- however, not the right format to put in the app
- used script to transfer into NSAttributedString
- better presentation
- better layout for images & text
- better pagination
- content definition really helped
e.g. Malcolm Tucker
- email views driven from plist
- Aly edited directly in XCode and rebuild to check
- email content in HTML
- attachments in PDF
e.g. Arsenal app
- already had a CMS for the website
- beginning of project — defined an API
- tweaked the API throughout development, but had something to work from right at the beginning

Helping content experts

work hand in hand with them from the beginning
make sure they have a real device that they’re using every day
try to let the content expert able to make their own build of the app as they change the content
- anyone working on the content has XCode installed and knows how to build it
- they also have access to check stuff back in
let them play with your toys — it’s fun!
put the content in with the development

stats

2.7 million stations are picked from UK Trains picker every month (~88k per day)

Q&A

testing
- looking to do more
- UI testing is a bit of a faff, but is possible

iOSDev UK: Tap to Experiment

2011-09-08T17:43:00.000+01:00

Chris Ross, Osmosis Apps, @darkrock

An attempt to find success on the AppStore

App: Tap to Chat
- Other chat apps look very similar — buddy lists & tab bars
- Decided to try something different — picture-based
Go along to a nearby group (e.g. Brighton iPhone Creators)
Experiment #1: universal Facebook chat app with a novel UI
- 1.5 weeks each for two people
- Used pre-existing code from other apps (Facebook XMPP chat)
Collaboration helps — both to evolve good ideas and filter bad ideas
Can appeal app store rejections, even if you don’t change the code (e.g. if your app relies on a third party that was down during testing)
Don’t underestimate the phenomenal power of the Christmas period
- e.g. EA drop their prices just before Xmas, their apps go to the top, and their downloads rocket
Experiment #1.5:
- iAds seeing only 10-15% fill rate
- Apple pay you just to show the advert
- Admob have a higher fill rate, but only pay you for click-through
- More differentiation with paid app
- Removing adverts is not enough to get people to buy the paid version
- Added “share app on friends’ walls”
- had a spike -> 1000 shares a day
- revenue jumped to £4-4.5K / month
Experiment #2:
- Started a company to house the app
- Rewrite the code
- Changed the facebook (spamming)sharing since Facebook complained…
- but they were polite
- Added Google chat, AIM + others
- More free apps: one per API — better upgrade path (get all in one app)
- Got a designer
Aimed to do all that in two weeks…
- but took three weeks from 6am-11pm
- downloadDidFailWithError is a private API
Got an expedited AppStore review to be in store in time for Apple Design Awards
Results:
- Revenue jumped to c.£6k/month
- Difficult to convert people from v1 to v2 (especially since v2 was on a new (company) iTunes account)
Success in the AppStore?
- Overall stats:
- Mean amount of money made: £30,000
- Median amount made: £600
- Tap to Chat:
- 18% revenue from paid apps (18K downloads)
- 82% revenue from adverts in free (500K downloads)
- £40K made so far
Moving to using mopub to do advertising
- provides more control on the server side
Mistakes
- changed sharing in v2 — less visibility
- no push notifications in v2 (but kind of a choice anyway)
- transitioning to a new iTunes Connect account
Next steps
- building a backend server for push notifications
- building libraries for MSN & AIM
- improving user retention:
- Osmo character offers advice and news

Q&A

Facebook App ID
- can share same app ID between apps
- v1 & v2 (different iTunes Accounts) and free apps use same facebook app ID
Facebook spamming guidelines
- you must have a single action per share
- you must allow the user to edit their text on others’ walls
- If there is an issue, facebook contact you to say that you have to resolve the issue in 24hrs — but they need you to respond in that time
- you can ask for a grace period
- Tap to Chat asked for 2 weeks
Transferring iTunes Accounts
- can convert a personal account into a corporate account if you ask
Experiments with price?
- v1: 59p
- aim to bump the price with each added network
- “no point putting things for less than £2 on the app store — if people have made a decision to buy it, then they’ll buy it…”

iOSDev UK: Handling the Press

2011-09-08T17:30:00.000+01:00

Chris Phin, Editor, Tap! Magazine, @chrisphin

Or, “How to get five-star reviews, sell millions of apps, and retire six months from now — guaranteed!”

Getting an app noticed:
- Exposure
- Endorsement
- Tap! magazine really want to embrace developers
- Purchase
- 91% of readers buy recommended apps
UK magazines make money from selling issues
- In the US it’s more based on advertising
How reviews are chosen?
- Gut feeling from the editors
- Fitting in to specific sections
How to piss off an editor?
- Not knowing the magazine title or anything about it…
- Unfocussed pitching
- Aggressiveness
- Choosing the wrong comms channel (email/SMS/phone)
How to make an editor happy?
- Devs with passion & high standards
- Personal connection — trust other devs’ feelings
Freelancers
- e.g. Craig Gennell — Tap! mag contributing editor for games
- Some are integral part of team; some are chancers…
- But help them as much as possible
Press releases
- Same rules as any other content — first line should be who made the app, its name and what does it do
- Links — to the web site and the app store
- Contact details
- include twitter
- After all this, can put in description of company (but not before)
Website
- What it is — in as few words as possible
- Price — including details of promotions (if poss)
- Screenshots — equinux.com does a good media room
- Contact details — again, specific media details if poss
- Contact forms not so good as the sender can’t track the outgoing email
- So have an obfuscated email address on the page
- Reviewers’ guide
- Often hooked around a narrative
- Opportunity to guide the review — pick out USPs, etc
What to do when you get a review
- Read it! Not just the score…
- Take any feedback
- app reviewers see a lot of apps, so maybe a little more informed
- but they are just another individual user!
- Shout about good reviews
Other ways to get in a magazine
- Not just full reviews: app roundups, features, updates
- Building relationships leads to tweets etc

Q&A

innovative ways of catching attention
- direct mail involving cookies!
press area
- often include reviews from other magazines (but that’s not useful for reviewers)
- screenshots, hi-res logos, videos
- useful to have a zip
beta builds
- interesting from bigger apps (well-known, anticipated)
- Chris loves TestFlight
mailing out
- really targeted, passionate, individualized approach to 5 or so key targets
- mailshot out the rest
screencasts?
- prefer image galleries as can skim them
- otherwise, 20 seconds max!

iOSDev UK: iPad-native Game Design: Exploring a New Gaming Interface

2011-09-08T00:12:00.001+01:00

Gareth Jenkins, @36peas

iPad specific — using the iPad interface as primary interface to game mechanic
Multi-touch interfaces don’t work when you can’t see what you’re interfacing with
The iPad is more likely a shared device
iPad player more likely on the sofa than the toilet :-)
- i.e. usage is more purposeful rather than filling time
areas of focus:
- take advantage of space available
- think about appropriate gestures
- think about gaming context
- think outside the (phone) box
- iPad specific does not mean exclusively iPad — take the idea elsewhere as well
examples:
- Hyperion: d7
iPad provides more room for dedicated interaction areas
- e.g. left hand & right hand controls on edges + general interaction in middle
ways to think about it
- play lots of iPad games
- play iPhone games scaled up and work out what’s wrong
- look at the fingerprints on your device!

iOSDev UK: Animation for Serious Apps

2011-09-08T00:10:00.001+01:00

Neil Taylor, Aberystwyth University, @digidol

CALayer is not actually the view — it’s the model
Old-style UIView animations are now discouraged — start to use blocks instead
- block-style also allows you to add further animations on completion
CALayer animation is slightly different
- animate position, not centre
- bounds, not frame
- values are animated, not changed
- CAAnimation setFromValue:/setToValue:
Keyframe animation lets you animate across a complex path
- Core Animation will calculate intermediate frames
- e.g. shopping cart items thrown into a cart at the bottom of the screen
Other bits
- can have transactions to tie animations together
More useful references in slides…

iOSDev UK: Real-World Data (or There and Back Again)

2011-09-08T00:07:00.001+01:00

Hamish Allan, Olive Toast

The story of writing Files Pro — an app to take files with you on an iOS device.

Used Deusty’s CocoaHTTPServer
- but starting now, would use Matt Gallagher’s simple HTTP server code
Dropbox has a nice API
- operations are aynchronous
Gamekit makes device to device connection over bluetooth easy
Could use HTML5 to make a PC-based interface to an iOS app
- Visit a web page served from the device from your PC and see a flexible app within your browser
iCloud
- NSFilePresenter tells you when a file transfer has completed
- iCloud syncs the meta-data about files first, using NSMetadataQuery
“Your market is not power users”
Apple is moving towards a flat list of files with search, rather than a hierarchical system

Q&A

No hooks in iOS for AirDrop (yet?)
Nor any GameKit APIs which talk to desktop

iOSDev UK: Using TDD to write an iOS App

2011-09-07T15:59:00.001+01:00

Graham Lee, professional in-betweener, @iamleeg

Or, “What is TDD and why should you use it?”

discovering bugs is not the point of testing at all
- instead, you are proving that there aren’t bugs
once we’ve fixed bugs, we don’t want to see them ever again
- tests can ensure that regressions don’t come back
TDD allows us to prevent bugs from ever happening!
- you won’t prove that the app works how the customer expects, but you will at least prove that it works how you expect it to work…
TDD imposes black-box thinking for the developer
- makes you think about how the code should be designed and scoped
accurate planning: we know how much we’ve done
- and we can be honest how much we have done
TDD does not:
- ensure that the developer understood the requirements!
- ensure that the requirements remain static
- ensure that pieces work together (unless you add integration tests)
tests should be short and have descriptive, English names
- e.g. testDatesOnTheSameDayAreConsideredSame
- general pattern
tests should be fast — well under a hundredth of a second each, so a second or so for all of them
- avoid integration tests in unit testing since they take too long
- don’t interrupt your concentration by waiting for tests
as a result, your classes will be smaller and have obvious effects
- any side-effects are few and easy to predict
- if your test fixture gets big, then that’s a sign that you need to refactor (possibly including the tests!)
TDD encourages “tell, don’t ask” configuration
- inversion of control
- pass in helper data rather than discover it internally
avoiding testing everything at once:
- use fake objects (with same interfaces) to provide simulated interactions
- use mock objects to record and verify interactions
Objective-C mock frameworks:
- OCMock
- Mocky
Code coverage is useful for adding tests to an existing app
- Not so useful for building new code
- If you’re not covering code with TDD, then you’re kind of cheating yourself

Q&A

@pilky knows about using the accessibility framework to write automated UI tests using javascript
can use XCodeBuild to run unit tests from command line
use GHUnit instead of built-in OCUnit to output JUnit XML reports
iOS Enterprise Development — O’Reilly book by James Turner
- includes lots of useful
squish automated GUI testing?
test code linking…
- app should be plugin host, providing linked libraries
- but it doesn’t work — have to link yourself from test code

iOSDev UK: Building Custom Controls with UIView

2011-09-07T15:55:00.001+01:00

Rory Prior, ThinkMac Software, @roryprior

generally subclass UIView directly
- can subclass other controls, but things might not happen how you expect since lots of things happen in the background
- and you may need to use private APIs…
override methods:
- initWithFrame for programmatic creation
- initWithCoder for IB-created views
- drawRect for actual drawing
UIKit uses top left as origin
- but CoreGraphics uses bottom left…
adding UIImageView is easy
- but quite heavyweight
- instead can draw a UIImage directly
similarly, can use UILabel or draw string directly
- NSString drawAtPoint:withFont:
- NSString drawInRect:withFont:
- NSString sizeWithFont:
drawing shapes:
- CoreGraphics (nasty low-level C stuff :-) )
- UIBezierPath (introduced in iOS 3.2)
complicated graphics often still done better by using bitmaps — UIBezierPath can be processor-intensive for lots of lines
UIColor can fill in patterns as well as flat colour

user interaction

override UIResponder methods to detect touches
you’ll need UIGestureRecognizers to detect swipes, pinches, etc
but use sub-views of UIButton etc to make thins much easier
see slides for nice example of adding UIResponder and UIGestureRecognizer
use the delegate pattern to send feedback from your view to the rest of your app

iOSDev UK: Beyond NSLog

2011-09-07T15:51:00.001+01:00

Tim Isted, @timisted

NSLog, XCode and gdb

useful macros for logging:
- __FILE__ (full path)
- __LINE__
- __FUNCTION__ (and __PRETTY_FUNCTION__)
NSStringFromSelector(_cmd) gives you current message
- Lots of these useful NSString functions, e.g. NSStringFromCGRect
use macros in log define
- non-debug version should be something like: TILog(...) do {} while (0)
XCode preferences > Behaviours
- Run starts — can choose what displays
XCode also has a variables view, hidden in the next pane of the debugger
add breakpoints for exceptions or non-source code by using little plus button at bottom of breakpoints pane
breakpoints have really useful options
- log to console on hit (with auto hit count)
- continue automatically
- only do stuff on conditions
gdb commands:
- s = step = Step In
- m = Step Over
- c = Continue
- p = Print
- po = Print Object
debugging Core Data: use [self valueForKey:@"propertyName"]
can use addresses instead of variable names in po
can make breakpoints user-specific instead of project-specific

Instruments

Time Profiler — great for catching infinite loops!
- shows you time spent at certain places in call stack
- tick the “Show Obj-C Only” checkbox
- look for purple user symbols!
Heap Shot tool find leaks
quite a few WWDC videos on Instruments

iOSDev UK: Programming iOS Sensors

2011-09-07T14:40:00.001+01:00

Alasdair Allan, Babilim Light Industries

http://programmingiphonesensors.com/

Magnetometer (it’s not a digital compass!)

4th gen iPod Touch doesn’t have magnetometer
- so no outside AR apps without markers
UIAccelerometer API newly deprecated for CoreMotion in iOS5
if you want compass heading but not location, then just start up [locationManager startUpdatingHeading]
- you won’t get location updates warning
however, magnetic north varies across the world
- there’s a big lookup table in the iPhone that can translate the magnetic heading into true north
- so you need actual location to work this out
watch out for device orientation: magnetometer always reports heading pointing out of top of device
- need to rotate according to device orientation…
local magnetic anomalies cause a fluctuating magnetic field — which is when it tells you to wave your device around
Earth’s magnetic pole is a quadrapole, not a bipole — it swaps over every now and then and the north pole goes south

Gyroscope & Accelerometer (CoreMotion)

iPhone 4 has more bits in its accelerometer sampler
combining gyroscope and accelerometer provides very accurate device attitude
if there’s no natural timer in your app, then you may have to use the push API
- otherwise much easier to use pull API
CMMotionManager should be treated as a singleton (but API allows you to create multiples…)
monitoring does take a lot of CPU, so remember to stop it when you’re finished
- device motion at 100 samples/sec uses 65% of iPhone 4 CPU
- see “Pushing Device Motion” slide
you can fetch a frame of reference and then work out attitude relative to that

AR Toolkits

Marker based:
- ARToolKit for iOS
- Qualcomm AR Toolkit
Location-aware
- doPanic Toolkit
- ARView — available from Programming iOS Sensors

External accessories

Arduino for iPhone!!!!
- Redpark Breakout Pack for iPhone
- been going through Made for iPhone accreditation for the last 3 years