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My presentation on Android during Mobile Apps 2012

avinash — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:01:19 +0000

What is Android? How to develop apps?

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Thank you for your presence during my presentation this morning at Mobile Apps 2012. I had a lot of pleasure talking about Android and how we can get the best apps for it: either using existing ones from the Android Market, subcontracting the development (to Knowledge Seven for example) or by setting up an Android development team (by following our Java and Android training starting soon and getting 20% discount in the process).

I loved the questions & answers session at the end. We had great exchanges about the value of open-source software as well as competing mobile platforms.

Once again, thanks for having listened to me. I hope you learnt 1-2 interesting things.

UNIX/Linux Security Best Practices

navind — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:30:35 +0000

You can take steps to protect yourself from intruders who attempt to break into your UNIX or Linux system. Among many of the different security services here are some things to do to make intrusion more difficult.

Turn off unused services
Services which you don't enable can't be attacked from the outside. If you don't provide access to a service, it doesn't matter if there is any vulnerability in the daemon which would provide that service. So disable anything you don't need to use.
Where available, install IP filter or firewall rules
Restricting network access helps, it is no security that you won't be attacked. But restricting access to a smaller group of systems will reduce the number of attempts you see made against you.

Install ssh and tcpd
SSH (Secure SHell) is a protocol which supports logging into a remote system or executing commands on a remote system, using an encrypted communication between the two systems. Both ssh and the tcp wrapper tcpd use a pair of configuration files to define what hosts are allowed to make connections to specific TCP services on your machine. Use these to limit access to those services and prevent unwanted intrusion attempts.
Keep your system up-to-date with the latest patches from your vendor
UNIX and Linux exploits are discovered from time to time, and if you don't keep your configuration updated, you'll potentially leave yourself exposed to attacks that try newly discovered vulnerabilities. Get the latest patches for your version of the OS.

UNIX File Sharing
You may want to give others access to your directory or files in one of your directories. As an individual user, you can control who has access to the files which you own, by setting UNIX file permissions. Network File System (NFS) is the most frequently used method of sharing access to a filesystem (or a directory in a filesystem) between UNIX systems.

At this point, if your system does not meet at least the above or if you need to make your Linux production systems compliant with various audit requirements, then our training should offer a good baseline and starting point, see our Linux page for more info in training and consulting services.

Why do you need to know Java?

liliane — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:47:08 +0000

Java technology powers hundred of thousands of websites and billions of mobile devices worldwide, including 200 million Android smartphones and tablets. Consequently, people who master Java and who can develop websites and applications in Java are in great demand both in Mauritius and worldwide.

As a school leaver with Computing at HSC or you have a good knowledge of programming, you can give yourself a head start by learning Object-Oriented Programming in Java.

Mastering Java will make learning other technologies such as Java Enterprise and Android much easier.

One of the best ways to master such a powerful platform is to follow quality training courses and this is precisely what Knowledge Seven is proud to offer.Training with us can give you the opportunity to work for one of the major companies in Mauritius (such as Mauritius Telecom, TNT and General Construction) who have trusted our Java quality training by sending us their IT staff to gain competencies in this programming language.Consult the complete list of our clients and read also the enthusiastic testimonials left by our trainees.

You also want to gain competencies and skills in creating Android apps, follow our Android Application Development course which starts on 10 April.

A special package will be offered if you book for both the Java and Android courses.Same will apply for group booking.

If you are among the first three students to book for these courses, you can also choose any book from our book store and get it free.

Get 20% discount off our Java and Android training!

avinash — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:09:56 +0000

Did you know that your company can target more than 200 million worldwide customers using Android-powered devices by creating apps on the Android Market? Android is also fast gaining ground in Mauritius thanks to the availability of affordable and powerful Android smartphones and tablets from Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, HTC, LG, etc. To tap into this fast growing market, your IT team would no doubt benefit from our quality and highly specialised training.

Follow both our Object-Oriented Programming in Java and Android Application Development training and get a 20% discount off the normal price. The deadline for registration is 24 February.

jQuery Mobile for HTML5-based user interfaces

avinash — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:11:12 +0000

jQuery Mobile is a new framework for developing HTML5-based user interfaces for smartphones and tablets. As it is multi-platform, web applications built with jQuery Mobile, look and feel the same whether one is using Android or IOS devices. The framework also supports Blackberry, Windows Phone, Symbian, etc.

This is the framework that people are going to use during our next Mobile Application Development in HTML5 training. For some time I was wondering whether it would have been better to write all HTML5 code "manually" and, finally, I realised that jQuery Mobile saves a lot of time and has a formidable set of widgets and behaviours which would be difficult to replicate "manually".

Anyone of you using jQuery Mobile at this moment? What do you think of it?

Picks of the Week #8

avinash — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0000

You want to receive our Picks of the Week every Monday morning? Please subscribe.

Merry Christmas! Thank you for reading the eight edition of Knowledge Seven's Picks of the Week on this special day!

Every two weeks, Avinash Meetoo and his team of collaborators will make you discover interesting articles and websites to help you broaden your understanding of the world of open source software and information technology in general.

Recess Framework
Want to build a highly scalable RESTFul archirecture in PHP ? Choose Recess! By Chris Jordan, CEO of New Media Creations. Recess aims at developer joy, whether you are a beginner or a professional, Recess! puts you on the right track to bring life to your server. Running on PHP 5.3, Recess! gives you proper tools to quickly and efficiently build a REST API. Based on the MVC structure, Recess! puts at your fingertips cool developer tools ranging from tools for model,controller and view creating, code introspection and an application route summary that run as a bundled browser app. If ever after using Hibernate in Java, you have been crazy looking a similar one in PHP, then Recess! has a really nice looking ORM that automate a very important aspect, Lazy Loading. Besides being well documented and having a large community, there are many upcomming developments which include plugin system, model validation and an improved templating system for the views. Also, setting it on your server is free from crazy configurations, just download it, place it on your server, set up your database and start creating great apps in Recess!

Google Web Toolkit
GWT, released by Google, is an open source software intented for the creation of Rich Internet Applications. You program in Java and through GWT Compiler, everything is converted to JavaScript. What's really nice with this software is that while programming in Java, Web Programmers have a wide subset of the Java Libraries with which lots of magic can be done. Moreoever, even if GWT uses Java, its also allows support to wrap JavaScript within Java through JSNI (JavaScript Native Interface). Many other frameworks on the market force a pattern but GWT gives you the freedom to structure your app with any pattern, whether with MVP or MVC or any other. Also, in many cases, Web Programmers have to be browser gurus in the sense they have to understand browsers' tradeoffs and incompatibilities and implement workarounds. However, with GWT, the compiler handles heterogenous browser platforms by generating several versions of the JavaScript intended for numerous browser engines such as gecko, safari and many others. Well, Web Programmers, what are you waiting for, rush to GWT and start building powerful Rich Internet Applications that gonna surprise web surfers.

HTML Purifier
You want to save HTML from your clients, then bear in mind, not all client are 'good', some are really 'bad'. 'Bad' Clients can insert malicious code within the HTML and then perform things that surely you wouldn't be happy to know. However, to prevent these problems, HTML Purifier is here to parse your HTML from malicious content such as xss. Attackers can place series of xss within HTML. What HTML Purifier really does is that it tokenises the whole HTML content and defeats xss by removing all non-whitelisted elements. Morever, it cleans the HTML through ensuring that HTML contents are well-formed by validating all attributes according to their RFCS. Thus, aftet using HTML Purifier, your document is both safe from malicious code and also W3C compliant. In case , you are using some frameworks, then you are lucky enough because HTML Purifier Plugins are available for some major frameworks such as Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Symphony and others.

Jahshaka
Formely CineFX, Jahshaka is a video editing software written in QT and uses OpenGL and OpenML. It provides solution for film compositing, editing and special fx system that uses OpenGL and OpenML hardware rendering to give operators real time interactivity. Edit your videos in an easy and flexible way, create effects in real time, animate, paint, add texts, support for many video formats, etc. - these are just a few of key features of this advanced video editor.The program is available for multiple platforms including Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Currently, the official page of Jahshaka shows a countdown to the release of Jahshaka 3.0. But if you are pretty impatient about it like me, you can try out Jashaka 2.0 from here.

JQuery UI
Want to build highly interactive web applications, try JQuery UI. Jquery UI is a widget and interaction library built on top of JQuery JavaScript Library. Jquery UI provides a comprehensive set of core intareaction plugins, UI widgets and visual effects that use a jQuery-style, event-driven architecture and a focus on web standards, accessiblity, flexible styling, and user-friendly design. On top of that, Jquery UI has its own powerful theme framework with a wide theme gallery that also allows you to create your custom theme. With interactions such as Draggable, Droppable and widgets like Accordion and Tabs and amazing Utilities and awsome effects, you can know build great Web Applications that are compliants with major browers such as IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome.

The picks for this week have been selected by Noor Bakerally, Research & Development Specialist at Knowledge Seven.

Announcing AndroidMauritius and Knowledge Seven forum

avinash — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 03:43:10 +0000

Knowledge Seven is proud to announce the launching of a new Android portal at androidmauritius.com. During the past 18 months, Android use has exploded around the world and in Mauritius to become the world’s most widely-used operating system for smartphones and tablets. Google has just announced that people have downloaded Android applications more than 10 billion times hence showing how dynamic the Android ecosystem is.

AndroidMauritius provides the latest news concerning Android, reviews Android smartphones and tablets available in Mauritius, and gives tips and tricks.

Remaining faithful to Knowledge Seven's motto 'Sharing Expertise', we are also glad to announce the launching of our new forum at knowledge7.com/forum. Open-source enthusiasts and IT professionnals will be able to discuss and share their knowledge on the various open-source software and technologies they use on a daily basis such as Linux, PHP/MySQL, Java. Android, etc.

We hope that you will find both AndroidMauritius and the Knowledge Seven forum useful. Feel free to share with your friends and colleagues.

Knowledge Seven sponsors Terre de Paix

liliane — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:47:32 +0000

Terre de Paix

For our first Corporate Social Responsibility contribution, we have decided to sponsor Fondation Pour L'Enfance – Terre de Paix. This NGO aims at combating poverty in general and has among its objectives to carry out child care activities in a secular and non-discriminatory way.

On June 30, the chairman of Knowledge Seven, Mr Jaynarain Meetoo, presented a cheque to Mr Alain Muneean, the secretary of Terre de Paix and Mrs Patricia Yue to encourage them in their efforts to make a better world for children.

Why did we choose this NGO? Simply because Knowlege Seven strongly believes that education is the key to the success of our future generations.

Enter the Android Market with our brand new training

avinash — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 06:34:14 +0000

Android, developed by Google, is now the top-selling smartphone platform powering more than 100 million devices in the world. Android smartphones (and, now, tablets) are made by companies such as HTC, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, LG, Acer, Archos, Dell, ViewSonic and Toshiba. Fortune Magazine observes that Android powers 35% of the smartphones sold in the US in 2011 while Apple has 18%, Blackberry 14% and Microsoft 2% of the market share.

Applications can be easily added to Android smartphones and tablets by downloading them from the Android Market which hosts more than 240,000 free and paid applications which have already been downloaded more than one billion times.

Clearly, Android is massive and the market for Android applications is ever increasing.

Developing applications for the Android platform

The Android platform is open source software and the tools which are required to develop Android applications are readily available. Interestingly, Android applications are written in Java using a subset of the Java standard classes as well as Android specific classes. Someone willing to master Android apps development needs to be knowledgeable in object-oriented programming with Java.

At Knowledge Seven, we are proud to launch our new Android Application Development training starting on Wednesday 14 September and will run over five consecutive Wednesdays.

Over the duration of the training, participants will develop Android applications in our state of the art computer lab and test the applications on real Android devices. We will cover the following topics during the training: the user interface preferences, file system and menus, services, accessing databases, lists and adapters, broadcast receivers, content providers and system services (e.g. alarms, GPS and various sensors).

At the end of the training, the participants will know how to develop powerful Android applications ready to be submitted to the Android Market.

The trainer will be Avinash Meetoo, Founder and Managing-Director of Knowledge Seven. He has extensive experience of object-oriented programming, Java and Android development. During the last world cup, Avinash created an Android application, World Cup 2010 TV Guide, which was downloaded more than 15,000 times by people all over the world.

Do not hesitate to contact us on 464-7446 for more details.

Master PHP/MySQL for real

avinash — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:37:32 +0000

Since their introduction a few years ago, PHP and MySQL have become the de-facto standard web technologies used to power most blogs and websites. They are used, for example, by Facebook and Wikipedia.

Learning the basics of PHP and MySQL is easy. There are a lot of online resources available, most notably the official PHP and MySQL documentation.

But what if you want to go further?

What if you want to learn advanced PHP techniques such as sanitization, validation, templating, sessions, cookies, PHP data objects (PDO) and file uploads? What if you need to master the new aspects of MySQL like transactions, stored procedures, triggers, locking and partitioning?

Your best bet is to follow a quality training.

At Knowledge Seven, we are proud to offer you 10% of discount for our next Web Development with PHP and MySQL training starting on Monday 8 August 2011. Our course covers all of the above and more! Our training, Avinash Meetoo, is a well known IT professional and has extensive experience in both PHP and MySQL.

Joelle followed this training a while back and would like to share some thoughts with you:

Who are you and what do you do?
Joelle Teck Yong, a Web Developer at Mauritius Telecom - Telecom Plus, now with 5 years’ experience in web development field.

Why did you choose to follow our Web Development with PHP and MySQL training?
To get a refresh on the fundamentals of PHP and MySQL.

What has the training allowed you to achieve at work?
This course helped me to pay more attention to details that sometimes I thought were not important.

Would you recommend colleagues and friends to follow this training?
Yes, the trainer knows the topic very well with good practical examples in a friendly environment.

Register for our Web Development with PHP and MySQL training and get your 10% of discount. Places are limited so be quick! Call us on 464-7446 for more information.