I'd like to know what the status is to sync data (eg. SQLite, etc.) from Windows with smartphones. Ideally, the same tool should support the main smartphones (iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android).
Google returned information on OpenSync and SyncML, and I'd like to ask experts whether those projects are ready for showtime, and if not, if there are alternatives I should look at.
It seems like it's pretty much still a proprietary world, and the easiest way is to first sync with Outlook, and then sync Outlook with the smartphone using whatever sync utility it provided.
Thank you.
There is no single protocol which is supported by all phones. The two most popular ones are ActiveSync and OMA DM.
ActiveSync is supported by virtually all modern smartphones (except BlackBerry) and can sync mail, contacts and calendars. It can also (depending on the device support) do some basic device management such as remote lock or wipe.
OMA DM is a "competing" spec which is prevalent on Symbian phones but also supported on a few others. It is SyncML based and allows syncing pretty much anything on the phone.
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I'm tasked with developing a fullscreen native Mac OSX (Swift preferably, as I've been experimenting with it a lot lately) application that will connect two kiosks in two different parts of the US (each with high speed hardwired internet connections) in a video chat session. The kiosks must be able to automatically/programmatically connect and reconnect in case of lost connection. I was looking into TokBox but it seems their SDK/API is WebRTC, iOs, or Android oriented, otherwise it would have been a great choice at first glance. As I understand it, WebRTC is really just meant for browsers.
Does anyone have recommendations on an SDK/API that can help me accomplish this?
You can use WebRTC and make a web app out of the website. It will look and feel like a regular appp. Take a look at Mike Kelly's Refract for a painless web app packager.
I’d like to develop Windows 8 applications and have them hosted on Azure as if they were any other website, i.e. accessible to Macs, PCs, etc. I don’t want to be limited to people downloading Windows 8 applications to a Windows 8 PC or device. Can you explain how Azure achieves this?
I’d like to develop Windows 8 applications for desktops, but not be limited to running them on Windows 8 PCs and devices.
Thanks
Azure doesn't achieve this at all, other than providing a public endpoint for access to 'code'. What you have up in the cloud will depend on what you want to achieve and who you want to reach.
You mention web site and application, but those connote two very different architectures.
A web site will give you the most reach since you'll (presumably) be using standards like HTML5/JavaScript and CSS that are available on a multitude of platforms. As you can see by using applications like outlook.com, the user experience can be quite immersive. With a web site there's little to no client-side requirements other than a browser.
An application typically implies native installation on the target machine and provides the richest possible experience because you use techniques, frameworks, and APIs that are specific to a platform or a device. Applications also (arguably better than web sites) enable reach and monetization via marketplaces like Apple's App Store, Google Play, and the Window Store.
Technologies like Silverlight and Flash were part of the RIA wave (Rich Internet Application) that was a hybrid of both: use the web for reach, and a plug-in for richness. Those are still valid models, but the tide is shifting to HTML5 which is now much closer to reality and narrows the user experience gap that Silverlight and Flash filled. While Silverlight is definitely supported (in an out-of-browser mode as well), the choice of using a plug-in technology will limit your audience because of platforms supported and the need for an additional installation. That may or may not be acceptable given your target application.
What we are seeing now is a trend toward mobile application development paradigms - native still, of course, but also hybrid applications such as afforded by PhoneGap, AppMobi, Sencha, and other HTML5 frameworks and cross-platform options like Xamarin. Each of these allows you to develop in the language and constructs you know well for a given platform, but create applications which are partially or wholly 'native' and can run on multiple devices and platforms. Typically, you will reuse much of your 'back-end' and data integration layers across you targeted platforms, but rework the user interface to be in-line with the expectation for the device.
Windows Azure figures prominently in the development of such apps by providing infrastructure for data storage, services, identity management, push notifications, and other facilities that rely on centralization and scale.
And I suppose there's one other option in all this, virtualization, but that's a larger hurdle for end users and wouldn't recommend that as a general approach.
You can create Silverlight apps, it runs in browser. So it can be open Windows PC as well as in Mac. Do visit Microsoft Silverlight website. Here's few links regarding Azure with Silverlight.
Silverlight in the Azure cloud
Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration
Windows Azure with Silverlight End To End Demo
More you google, more you will get results.
Folks,I am planning to build an app to count the number of sms's sent by an user over a period of time.But I am not sure if WP OS SDK gives access to the depth of writing such an app.I am still very new to mobile development,and as Microsoft has limited the access to some API's (ex:language) in the windows phone OS,I was not sure if I can do so.
On the contrary the application I want to build is kind of a basic feature that is in built in many basic phones.I need to get a start for app building,and may also come in handy on my personal phone! ;)Anyone who has come across working on any related feature might help me with his experience.Thank you for your time.
The Windows Phone SDK does not allow developers to access the content of SMS messsages for privacy reasons (or count of those, for that matter).
Your best (and only) bet at the moment is let the user use SmsComposeTask and count the number of messages potentially sent from your app.
We're working on the next version of a tracking system. The previous incarnation used an LCD with a simple custom UI however as we've had usability problems and we've found development time-consuming, and as our display is going out of production, we're considering using a regular cellphone or PDA as the interface instead.
Our main worry is whether we can keep such a product on the market for five to ten years without having to continually keep porting and adapting the application to new devices. To make things somewhat easier we intend to bundle the phones with the system, though in an ideal world our (largely non-technical) users would be able to use their own.
So, what's our best bet? Are there a good platform-independent libraries we can count on being supported for a while? Or are we better of betting on a single platform at a time? Perhaps backward-compatibility is more likely to be maintained on a PDA? Truth be told I'm not even sure what language to bet on for the generic parts of the code.
I'm also a little anxious about the link to our hardware. Bluetooth SPP is attractive since it's particularly easy to use and there are plenty of ready-made modules available, but support on the phone side is far from universal.
Any pragmatic advice would be most welcome as I must admit to having no experience with mobile application development.
If you don't control the entire production chain for hardware like Apple does for example, you have no chance on long term. Unless your product is really innovative and market wants it so much, or if you are playing on a market niche (healthcare for instance). My proposal would be to make a market study and check what your customer use as mobile devices first. You should choose one or two top platforms first, and gradually add new platforms if market asks. If you are in US probably iPhone, Android, RIM would be the top choices, in Europe I would have to choose between iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows. It's the same like developing a website you start with two top browsers and gradually add support for minor ones.
About portable libraries I wouldn't bet on this. Instead I would design an architecture using abstraction layers. For example I would have Bluetooth abstraction layer that would expose functionalities to my Business Logic Layer; underneath I would have BlueZ if I deploy on Android/Linux, maybe GameKit for iPhone, MS stack or Widcomm for Windows and so on.
PDAs are dead, actually they've merged into smartphones and tablets, they were an evolutionary step. So forget them.
HTML5 is a good idea but is only the front layer, you must deal also business logic and lower layers.
Bluetooth SPP is good because it is common, and interoperable it's like the webservices for enterprise. Instead of giving an API that is platform dependent you could provide a set of custom AT commands, that can be used by anyone that can connect on Bluetooth to SPP.
Cross platform sounds like HTML 5, CSS and Javascript, along with some javascript frameworks for mobile development like the ones listed here
I'd interested in sending data from one WP7 to another WP7 phone so I could create 2 player games. If I understand correctly most WP7 will support bluetooth, but its not in the minimum spec, is this correct? What API's can I use to access the bluetooth, any good examples of this out there?
Unfortunately Microsoft don't provide any access to the bluetooth stack via any documented APIs in this version of the Dev tools.
They don't seem to have any sense of urgency about fixing this (or any of the many other missing features), so I wouldn't expect the situation to change any time soon.