Handpick your iPad app developers to march into futuristic mobile devices

 iPad is the futuristic computing device and its potential must be tamed by SME’s as well.Read more

iPad has a created a dominance in the tab market. Thanks to its approach of presenting a whole new way to use tabs that rejuvenated the users. Part of the achievement can also be attributed to other manufacturers who jumped into the tab spree without contemplating the perceived value of their devices which they later sold at prices equivalent to glass and plastic. The iPad is going to become the most preferred device for organizational usage in the coming times however small and medium businesses are refraining themselves from going mobile and utilizing the iPad due to the development cost involved.

Well, let us tell you that the development cost to hire an iPad app developer can be high if you hire a fixed team of developers however there are iPad app developers who give you the authority to handpick your preferred team of developers. The foremost goal to provide such flexibility is to create an optimum group of developers that you handpick to balance your budget and the development talent you need to realize your app idea. This proves mutually beneficial to the client as well as the app development company. The client gets value for their money by trimming the development cost while the app development company can utilize the rest of its developers for some other projects.

According to a recent article featured on techcrunch it is implied that mobile web users across the United States have tried to go through the menus of various restaurant in their websites. But due to incompatibility of website with mobile devices they terminated their sessions. Infact, most of the restaurants and other small and medium businesses have a latent requirement to reach mobile users who are using iPads, iphones and android devices but due to incompatible mobile websites which does not support HTML 5, they are losing out a potential chunk of customer.

The fear of mobile app development cost must be eliminated and people should embrace future computing devices like the ipad to harness the potential customers in the market. And the one who wins makes the first move.

Shufflr Launches iPad App

Shufflr today announced the launch of their iPad app. Shufflr is a video discovery service that helps consumers discover videos that they would like to watch anytime, anywhere. Shufflr takes a unique (patent pending) approach of combining social signals with algorithms, creating a ‘Daily Fix’ of videos for a personalized TV like experience to its users.

“We recognise the shift to computing on mobiles and tablets as a game changer. For succeeding here, solutions must be designed ground up, easy to use and simple to understand,” said Kishore AK, Co-Founder and CEO of Shufflr.

 “Some people still think that the rise of social media is a fad. At Shufflr, we believe that the web is being rebuilt around people. It is re-orienting itself around how we interact offline. We use social data in unique and innovative ways to help our users discover the most relevant videos for them.”

Shufflr’s user base is growing rapidly in the last few months since the launch of re-designed apps for iPhone, Android and Facebook, anchored around the ‘Daily Fix’ theme. It has already clocked 3 million installs with users from over 160 countries.

 

Shufflr is attracting keen interest for its service from content owners, telcos and consumer electronics majors.

Shufflr is a path breaking social video discovery service, available as apps for Facebook, web, mobile and iPad. It is the new way to discover, watch and share videos on the web. It brings a personalized-TV like experience to online video. Shufflr is where videos find you.

Shufflr is created by Althea Systems, an Intel Capital funded company. Althea Systems is building technologies to fundamentally change the way people find and consume online video.

Original Source

ipad App Development

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2012/04/05/3865524/shufflr-launches-ipad-app.html#storylink=cpy

Apple Has a 7.85-Inch iPad in Its Labs

Ever since Apple launched the iPad in 2010, there have been rumors that Apple will launch a smaller and cheaper iPad mini.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who has a good track record when it comes to Apple related news, added yet more weight to the rumors claiming that Apple does have a 7.85-inch iPad in their labs during his Talk Show podcast with Dan Benjamin. When Benjamin asked Gruber if he thought a 7.85-inch iPad will ever be released, he responded:

“Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that they have one in the lab…a 7.85 inch iPad that runs at 1024×768… it’s just like the 9.7" iPad shrunk down a little bit. Apps wouldn't need to be recompiled or redesigned to work optimally on it. It's just the iPad smaller.

It has been speculated that the 7.85-inch iPad will come with a 1024×768 resolution, which is the same resolution as the original iPad and iPad 2. Some rumors have suggested that Apple is working with suppliers on the smaller iPad and could launch it later this year.

Jim Darylmple of The Loop who has an impecable track record when it comes to Apple related news had told us about the existence of a 7-inch iPad back in October 2010:

In a brief post on the website, he writes that Apple has been toying with tablets of various sizes and form factors all along and that the 7-inch iPad is not exactly a new thing. He further points out that Apple is in no hurry to release this new device simply because the company virtually owns the tablet market and the release of a smaller variant, which is expected to come at a lower price, could effectively cannibalize its own revenues. 

It remains to be seen if Apple believes that the time has come to launch a smaller iPad. Though a smaller and cheaper iPad will help Apple to compete with Android-based tablets like Amazon Fire that is available for $199, we feel that if Apple had any plans to launch an iPad mini this year, then it would have unveiled it alongside iPad 3. It seems highly unlikely that it will launch a smaller and cheaper version of the iPad after sometime as it would not go down too well with early adopters of iPad 3 who would feel robbed of the opportunity of buying a smaller and cheaper iPad.

Original Source

ipad App Development

New iPad complicates life for HTML 5 developers

Apple’s new iPad, already a hit with consumers with its high-resolution display, is nonetheless underwhelming some HTML 5 developers. The tablet’s iOS 5.1 operating system complicates HTML 5 data storage, offers no expanded HTML 5 support, and the tablet’s Web performance is at best only at par with iPad 2.

Ten terrific apps for the new iPad 

It’s too much to call these “setbacks” and no one is saying Apple is reneging on its aggressive support for the emerging Web standards that will eventually let browser-based apps behave much like native apps. But for some, Apple’s decisions are a compromise they could live without.

Sencha, an HTML 5 tools vendor, last week posted its “HTML 5 Scorecard” for the new iPad and iOS 5.1, calling the results a “mixed bag” for Apple. The vendor’s scoring weighs two criteria: completeness – how much of the various HTML 5 elements are present – and correctness – how well it supports these elements, says Aditya Bansod, senior director, product management, for the Redwood City, Calif., software company.

The blogpost also included results of a pair of Web benchmarks testing the new tablet’s Web performance.

“It’s still the best HTML 5 platform on the market,” says Bansod. “But we had hoped for a bigger advance than this [in the new iPad]. Instead, we’re treading water and even slid back a bit. That’s a little disappointing from Apple.”

Complicating Web data storage

One change, first introduced early in 2011 with a beta release of iOS 5.1, limits some aspects of HTLM 5 local data storage. Data that’s locally stored using the HTML 5 data storage feature, is no longer regarded by the OS as persistent. That presented a problem for developers using that feature with either localStorage or WebSQL as the storage mechanism. Because the OS no longer sees this data as persistent but temporary, “iOS can destroy it at any time, without warning, including during low memory scenarios,” Bansod noted in his blogpost.

Web developers quickly picked up on the change last January, in various online forums, including the Phonegap forum on Google Groups, which had one developer posting about his troubles as recently as April 1.

The issue affects a subgroup of iOS apps, sometimes called hybrid apps, which use an embedded WebView. “WebViews power HTML5 applications that live inside of native packages, such as PhoneGap or Sencha Touch native packaging,” Bansod writes. “They provide an embedded web browser that is hosted within a native application, permitting the distribution of web apps to native app stores. WebViews are a feature of all modern mobile operating systems.”

Until iOS 5.1, WebView apps could store data locally, and keep it persistent, using HTML 5 storage. “Specifically, if your application used localStorage or WebSQL, it was considered part of the application’s data,” says Bansod. If a new app version was released, this data was still present.

That’s no longer the case. “This is probably because Apple can’t reliably iCloud backup, or iCloud sync from anything that’s not stored in the native [iOS] CoreData storage,” Bansod speculates. One developer at the Phonegap forum say he was told by “an Apple guy” that the reason for the change was “they did that to save space, because with apps loading a lot of content into a UIWebView (like twitter), it takes a lot of space [being backed up to Apple’s iCloud service].....But they completely forgot us, poor phonegap dev[elopers], relying into LocalStorage or WebSQL to store users data.”

“For developers who relied on localStorage or WebSQL as their mechanism to store data in their app, breaking this mechanism is a big deal,” Bansod says in his blogpost. It’s not a showstopper: “There are various workarounds, such as using the PhoneGap-SQLPlugin which uses the underlying SQLite, or writing your own JavaScript bridge to CoreData.” For some developers, he says, it means recoding their apps.

In effect, apps without a workaround will “forget” data. Users might lose data too logging into a website repeatedly because their app which used use to store their relevant user data no longer does so, for example.

At least some developers hoped this change was actually a bug and Apple would fix it. On March 7, with the announcement of the new iPad, and iOS 5.1, they discovered that Apple had pushed them into some new territory. “They did it. Apple has released their app with that bug. I already got angry users that lose all their work on my app :-/,” posted Sam at the Phonegap forum.

The workarounds have not been simple, as you can see following a discussion thread for one Phonegap plugin, created by Shazron Abdullah, at the Apache Software Foundation.

No advance in HTML 5 features

Sencha’s scorecard also found an absence of any new HTML 5 functions in iOS 5.1 and the newest mobile version of Apple’s Safari Web browser. “No new features showed up between iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.1,” he writes. “iOS still features some of the best HTML5 support on any mobile browser, but this latest incarnation hasn’t increased the depth of Mobile Safari’s support for the standards.”

Safari 6 on the Mac, for example, supports a feature called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) regions, a way of making it simple to create and change digital magazine layouts. But it’s missing from the current Safari on iOS 5.1 devices.

“We were also looking to see if WebGL [a JavaScript API for rendering 3D graphics without a plugin], which is currently only available for Apple iAds, is available in the public browser,” Bansod writes. “haz.io [a Website that assesses your browser’s support for emerging Web standards] reports that WebGL is supported in Mobile Safari, but when we used the Khronos demo repository to test, we were unable to get any of the demos to work.”

Web performance

To assess, the new iPad’s Web performance, Sencha ran set of Web-specific benchmark tests, comparing a new iPad, an iPad 2 (both with iOS 5.1), a Motorola Xoom tablet with Android 3.0, and RIM Playbook with Tablet OS 1.0. Bansod’s team ran the SunSpider test and the V8 Benchmark Suite to measure raw JavaScript processing power.

As is well known, the new iPad uses a version of Apple’s dual-core A5 chip, with a new, quadcore graphics processor.

Overall, the new iPad (dubbed “Retina iPad” in Sencha’s test results) was somewhat slower in six of the 9 SunSpider tests. In the seven V8 tests,  the new iPad general matched the iPad 2, but both lagged the Motorola tablet.

For most Web browsing, Bansod says, users of the new iPad won’t see any problems. But there is a noticeable difference between the two iPads when it comes to drawing complex Web pages. For example, the new iPad was visibly loading new tiles at the bottom of one sample page as the page was being scrolled, something that rarely occurs with the iPad 2, according to Bansod.

He speculates that one reason for the performance plateau in the new iPad is that while Apple added the quad-core graphics processor and more memory, it didn’t make the memory faster. That would mean, he says, that pumping images and other graphic assets into the GPU is taking more time and bandwidth “than the device can handle in real time.”

Original Source
iPad App Development

IPad app is gift of techies to autistic kids

A group of techies has come out with an iPad app that would allow autistic children with extreme communication challenges to connect with the world around them.

The app, called Bhol (in Hindi), is specifically designed to “suit the requirements of autistic children in Indian conditions”.

Since autism is a developmental disorder that varyingly affects a person’s communication and social behaviour, care givers often find it hard to understand the needs of children with the condition.

“Especially when they are at the lower end of the spectral disorder, it is harder for them to communicate their needs. Technology such as the app comes in handy for such children,” said Kavita Sharma, executive council member of Autism Society of India (ASI), who worked with the group of techies volunteering from SAP Labs to create Bhol.

Created on the lines of a photo album, the app allows non-communicative autistic child to display a picture on the iPad accompanied by audio or text captions to convey his/her needs.

The picture book can be enhanced as the child can take pictures of things he needs and add to the app and index it based on the frequency of his needs. “If the child needs to eat dosa, for instance, he has to point to the picture of the dosa on the app. This can be customised to the extent that any specific variant of dosa he/she likes can be saved in the app for ready communication,” Sharma added.

Project Prayas Idea for the app was born when a group of techies volunteered with the ASI. The NGO had partnered with SAP Labs in Bangalore to establish Project Prayas, a technology lab for Autistic children. “There are several apps available for non-communicable persons, but they were either costly or were very difficult to use,” said Ruchit Mathur, a techie volunteer from SAP Labs.

“It then occurred to us that we can create an app which not only suits Indian conditions, but also is easy to configure and use for the autistic children.” The team of three senior techies spoke to the parents of autistic children at the labs to identify the requirements for the app.

Ruchit said the app will be initially released for children in the labs before the wider availability. “We want to ascertain the iPad apps work fine and then release it. Based on its success, we would make it available in other (mobile) operating systems like Android and Windows,” Ruchit said.

Good for early intervention Kavita Sharma said the app is particularly useful for early intervention.

“Using technology solutions at an early stage has an impact on the child’s communicative abilities. The younger children are certainly taken to an app like this much faster than the older ones.

Hopefully, it improves the way they communicate as they grow up,” she said.

Original Source
iPad App Development

Not just iPhone, but iPad too uses Wi-Fi more often

With unlimited data plans soon to be history, it seems Wi-Fi will soon become key to the growth of not just iPads, but also iPhones. A survey released by ComScore shows that of smartphone owners in the U.S. and U.K., iPhone users are far more likely than their Android-toting counterparts to take advantage of Wi-Fi networks when available.

The study shows that in the U.S. 71 percent of iPhones and 32 percent of Android phones connect to Wi-Fi and cell networks. In the U.K., the divide was a little narrower: 87 percent of iPhones and 57 percent of Android phones connect to both types of networks.

ComScore points to increasingly scarce spectrum and, of course, carriers moving away from unlimited data plans as reasons for this behavior:

“The scarcity of unlimited data plans and higher incidence of smartphone pre-paid contracts with a pay-as-you-go data model likely contributes to data offloading among users wanting to economize their mobile usage. In addition, the current lack of high-speed data networks in the U.K. might also lead users to seek out higher bandwidth capacity on Wi-Fi networks. In the U.S., the increased availability of LTE, 4G and other high-speed data networks currently make it less necessary for smartphone users to offload, but it’s also possible that the diminishing availability of unlimited cellular data plans will eventually push more usage to Wi-Fi.”

Wi-Fi’s popularity among mobile devices isn’t limited to iPhones: Tablet users are overwhelmingly in favor of Wi-Fi use too. Two weeks ago mobile analyst Chetan Sharma released a report noting that in 2011, more than 90 percent of tablets in the U.S. connected to Wi-Fi instead of mobile broadband. While sales of tablets shot up last year, the percentage of 3G- and 4G-capable tablets stayed relatively low. And it’s safe to assume that the iPad is what we’re talking about when it comes to tablets: It accounted for roughly two-thirds of all tablets sold in the U.S. in 2011.

So while iPhone users are relying heavily on Wi-Fi, so are iPad users. It’s not clear what exactly accounts for the difference in behavior between iOS and Android users — it could be something as simple as that Wi-Fi is just easier to set up on iOS devices.

But it also may have something to do with the amount of content users are downloading. And with the new iPad, it’s likely that this reliance on Wi-Fi will only increase. Its shiny new high-definition display makes watching videos on it easier on the eyes than ever — and that can eat through monthly data plans pretty quickly.

Original Source

iPad App Development

5 great-looking apps for your new iPad

The biggest selling point for Apple's newest iPad is its high-resolution screen, which packs more pixels in a 9.7-inch tablet than you've got in that big HDTV in your living room.

But if you ran out and bought the new iPad, you may notice that not all of your apps look as good as you thought they might. That's because the programs designed to run on the original iPad and the iPad 2 have graphics scaled for the lower-res displays on those tablets.

It's up to the developers of those apps to update them so they look better on the latest iPad. But even when they do, there may be other issues.

For example, The Guardian Eyewitness is a wonderful app showcasing the best news photos from around the world. The app's buttons and menus have been updated, but the photos are not being dispatched in high-res format. They looked beautiful on the older iPads. On the new one, not so much.

Here's a look at five apps that show off what the new iPad's so-called retina display can do. Some of them aren't new, but their high-res updates inspire a second look.

iTunes Movie Trailers - Free, Apple. One of the biggest threats to your productivity is now even more of a temptation for epic time-wasting. The Trailers app, which features both movies available in iTunes as well as those now playing and coming to theaters, now delivers movie previews in high-definition video on the new iPad.

The new hardware can display up to 1080p HD video, but the quality will vary depending on the speed of your Internet connection Find a zippy WiFi or 4G connection before you settle in to watch.

Flipboard - Free, Flipboard. One of the best things about the new iPad's display is how good simple text looks on it. Flipboard, which is easily my favorite iPad app, is even more readable with its razor-sharp fonts. The app uses social media and RSS feeds to generate a customized digital magazine.

Flipboard recently added cover stories - highlighted content with large photos - and these look beautiful on the new iPad. The app won't do much for low-res images coming out of Twitter and Facebook, but when the content providers offer high-res pictures, they really shine.

iPhoto - $4.99, Apple. While the iPad 2 had a notoriously lame rear camera (and the first iPad had none), the camera on the new iPad is quite good. For that reason alone, you'll want to get this beautifully designed image editor that's easy to use and pretty to look at.

The iPhoto name is about all it shares with the original OS X version for Macs. It uses lots of analog references for tools - colorful paintbrushes to designate tweaking of images and negative strips to signify various effects. The overall look of the app is richly detailed, and you'll find yourself staring at its components as much as you will looking at your own pictures.

ABC Player - Free, ABC Digital. More and more networks and cable channels are letting iPad owners access their content through apps, and the ABC Player is a standout. It's fast, responsive, with a rich look and slick animations.

The shows are the stars here, playing in full HD when, of course, the speed of your connection allows for it. But it's a great way to get your "Grey's Anatomy," "Dancing With the Stars" or "Modern Family" fix.

Tweetbot - $2.99, Tapbots. If you're a Twitter user with a new iPad, you'll want to investigate this app, which has been a big hit on the iPhone for a while. Tweetbot makes innovative use of multitouch taps and swipes to provide access to a slew of useful ways to work with tweets. It's also gorgeous to look at, with textured backgrounds, borders and buttons.

Now that you've got some things to put inside your new iPad, next week I'll concentrate on the tablet's outside with a case roundup.

Original Source

iPad App Development