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  • MSDN article on jQuery Mobile

    - by Wallym
    My article on jQuery Mobile has been published.  Please check it out.There’s no doubt about it. Wherever developers look and whoever they talk to, mobile is at the top of the list. Talk to a C-level executive, and the conversation turns to mobile, and the question “How do I get me some of that?” comes up. Talk to other developers, and they tell you they’re targeting mobile devices. Mobile has become a big deal as smartphones have taken hold in the consumer marketplace.In the years leading up to the current focus on mobile applications and devices, Web developers have been adding more and more client-side functionality to their applications. You can see this in the use of client-side JavaScript libraries like jQuery.With the growth of the market for mobile devices, the ability to create applications that run across platforms is very important for developers and for businesses that are trying to keep their expenses in check. There are a set of applications, mostly in the area of content consumption (think Amazon.com), that run well in a mobile Web browser. Unfortunately, there are differences between Web browsers on various mobile devices. The goal of the recently introduced jQuery Mobile (jQM) library is to provide cross-browser support to allow developers to build applications that can run across the various mobile Web browsers and provide the same—or at least a very similar—user interface.The jQuery Mobile library was introduced in an alpha release in the fall of 2010 and released to manufacturing in November 2011. At the time of this writing, the current version of jQuery Mobile is 1.1.1. By the time you read this, jQuery Mobile will almost certainly have reached version 1.2.0. The library has been embraced by Microsoft, Adobe and other companies for mobile Web development. In August 2011, jQM had 32 percent market share compared with other mobile JavaScript frameworks such as iWebKit and jQTouch. This market share is impressive given that it started from zero little more than 12 months ago, and the 1.0 release is the first officially supported release.

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  • How Mary Meeker’s Latest Findings May Make You Re-Imagine Commerce

    - by Brenna Johnson-Oracle
    0 0 1 954 5439 Endeca Technologies 45 12 6381 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today, Mary Meeker released her highly anticipated annual “Internet Trends” presentation for 2014. All 164 slides are jam-packed with pretty much everything you need to know about the state of the Internet. And as luck would have it, Oracle is staying ahead of these trends (but we’ll talk about that later). There were a few surprises, some stats to solidify what you likely already know, and Meeker’s novel observations about where we are all going. What interested me the most is not only how people are engaging in their personal lives, but how they engage with brands. As you could probably predict, Internet usage growth is slowing while tablet user and mobile data traffic growth continue their meteoric rise around the globe, with tremendous growth in underpenetrated markets like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Now hold those the “Internet is dead” comments. Keep in mind there’s still plenty of room to grow, and a multiscreen model is Meeker’s vision for our future. Despite 1.5x YOY growth for mobile traffic, mobile still only makes up about 23% of all traffic today. With tablet shipments easily outpacing figures for PCs even at their height (in 2007), mobile will only continue on it’s path, but won’t be everything to everyone. Mobile won’t replace every touchpoint, it’s just created our shorter attention spans and demand for simpler, more personal experiences. As Meeker points out TVs, tablets, PCs, and smartphones are used for different activities at present, but lines will blur (for example, 84% of smartphones owners use their device while watching TV). Day-to-day activities are being re-imagining through simple, beautiful user experiences. It seems like every day I discover a new way a brand/site/app made the most mundane or mounting task enjoyable and frictionless – and I’m not alone. Meeker points out the evolution of how we do everything from how we communicate, get information, use money, meet someone, get places, order a meal, and consume media is all done through new user interfaces that make day-to-day tasks simpler. This movement has caused just about everyone’s patience for a poor UX to take a nosedive. And it’s not just the digital user experience, technology is making a lot of people’s offline lives easier, and less expensive. Today 47% of online shopping utilizes free shipping— nearly half. And Meeker predicts same day local delivery will be the “next big thing” (and you can take a guess on who will own that). Content, Community and Commerce creates the “Internet Trifecta.” Meeker pointed out that when content, communities and commerce occur in a single experience it’s embraced by consumers, which translates to big dollars for brands. The magic happens when consumers can get inspired, research, and buy in a single experience. As the buying cycle has changed and touchpoints (Web, mobile, social, store) are no longer tied to “roles” or steps in the customer journey, brands must make all experiences (content and commerce) available in a single, adaptable experience. (We at Oracle Commerce have a lot to say on this topic – stay tuned!) And in what Meeker calls the “biggest re-imagination of all:” consumers enabled with smartphones and sensors are creating troves of findable and sharable data, which she says is in the early stages, by growing rapidly. She notes that transparency and patterns of consumers with this hardware (FYI - there are up to 10 sensors embedded in smartphones now) has created a Big Data treasure chest to be mined to improve business and the life of the consumer. The opportunities are endless. So what does it all mean for a company doing business online? Start thinking about how you can: Re-imagine your experience. Not your online experience and your mobile experience and your social experience – your overall experience. When consumers can research, buy, and advocate from anywhere (and their attention spans are at an all-time low) channels don’t exist. Enable simple and beautiful interactions informed by all of the online and offline data you leverage across your enterprise. Ethically leverage the endless supply of data (user generated content, clicks, purchases, in-store behavior, social activity) to make experiences more beautiful, more accurate, and more personalized (not to mention, more lucrative for you). Re-imagine content and commerce. Content and commerce must co-exist in a single destination where shoppers can get inspired, explore, research, share, and purchase in a collective experience. Think of how you can deliver an experience where all types of experiences (brand stories and commerce) adapt to every customer need. (Look for more on this topic coming soon). Re-imagine your reach. Look to Meeker’s findings to see how the global appetite for digital experiences is growing, but under-served in many places (i.e.: India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, etc.). Growing your online business to a new geography doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch or having an entirely new team manage the new endeavor. Expand using what you’ve already built in a multisite framework, with global language support. And of course, make sure it’s optimized for mobile! Re-imagine the possible. After every Meeker report, I’m always left with the thought “we are just at the beginning.” Everyday there is more data, more possibilities, more online consumers, and more opportunities to use new latest technology to get closer to your customers and be more successful. There’s a lot going on in our Product Development and Product Innovations groups to automate innovation for our customers, so that they can continue to stay ahead of these trends, without disrupting their business. Check out a recent interview with our Innovations Team on some of these new possibilities. Staying on track despite the seemingly endless possibilities out there is the hard part. Prioritizing where you will focus based on your unique brand promise, customer and goals is what you do best. To learn how Oracle Commerce can help your business achieve your goals check out oracle.com/commerce. Check out Meeker’s entire report here.

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  • Global User Experience Research: Mobile

    - by ultan o'broin
    A shout out to the usableapps.oracle.com blog article Going Native to Understand Mobile Workers. Oracle is a global company and with all that revenue coming from outside the US, international usability research is essential. So read up about how the Applications User Experience team went about this important user-centered ethnographic research. Personalization is king in the mobile space. Going native is a great way to uncover exactly what users want as they work and use their mobile devices, but you need to do it worldwide!

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  • JQuery Mobile: Fire Mobileinit Event

    - by Yousef_Jadallah
     Many people asked that the Mobileinit event didn't work. Simplicity just you need to follow this sequence: <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0b1/jquery.mobile-1.0b1.min.css" />     <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.1.min.js"></script>     <script>         $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {             alert('mobileinit is fired');         });     </script>     <script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0b1/jquery.mobile-1.0b1.min.js"></script> Hope that helps.  

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  • Free Java Workshops at Mobile World Congress

    - by Jacob Lehrbaum
    Are you attending Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week? If so, you might want to register for Oracle's free workshop series taking place in the App Planet. We will be hosting a series of 25 workshops in our booth covering a range of topics that include: Benefits of Deploying Phones with Oracle Java Wireless Client Oracle's Embedded Java solutions for Machine-to-Machine applications Building better User Interfaces with the Lightweight User Interface Toolkit Resources to help you leverage Operator Network APIs in your Applications The Java Verified Program: new trusted status and other recent initiatives Building better mobile enterprise applications with Oracle's ADF Mobile technology How to build a profitable mobile applications business with Java ME Guest speakers from Orange, Telefonica and from leading ISVs REGISTER NOW for one or more workshops in the Oracle Java Booth 7C18 located in the App Planet. Oh, and did we mention there might be giveaways? Note: you may need to "sign out" if you have an account on Oracle.com in order to see the registration page

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  • Get phone number of (via mobile networks) browsing mobile device

    - by TrialUser
    I recently figured out, that the web site of my phone provider (mobile) mysteriously identifies me and automatically logs me into my account when I'm accessing with my android phone, as if it knew my phone number. (I used several browsers. When I'm using the phone as WLAN hotspot and access the same site from another device that doesn't happen.) How does my phone provider do that? On the one hand, as a programmer, I'd like to be able to do that too, but on the other hand, as a user, I'm kind of scared. What information do they have, such that they (believe they) are able to identify me just by my device? I hope this question isn't completely inappropriate for this site; feel free to add better tags — it's hard to find the right ones without knowing the Webmasters site at all.

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  • JQuery Mobile Code Snippets 1

    - by Yousef_Jadallah
     I want to share with you some important codes that you may need during JQuery Mobile development.These codes are tested on Alpha 4 version. Beta 1 has been released before two days, Therefore I will test them in my current project and let you know if there is any changes : Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Show and hide back button in your Application    $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {           $.mobile.page.prototype.options.addBackBtn = true;        });     Customizing the back button text $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {$.mobile.page.prototype.options.backBtnText = "previous";});       Hide "Close button" for dialog programatically:   $('[data-role=dialog]div[id="YourDiaogdivID"]').live('pagecreate', function (event) {     $("a[data-icon='delete']").hide();          });  Change Select option element index:      var myselect = $("select#foo");       myselect[0].selectedIndex = 0; //The new index        myselect.selectmenu("refresh"); //uset this line of code after any updating on the select element      Change Select optoin elemetn text value:    $("select#foo").parent().contents().children('.ui-btn-text').text('Your Text Here');    Refreshing a checkbox    $("select#foo").parent().contents().children('.ui-btn-text').text('Your Text Here');     Hide select option element  $('#foo').parent().hide();     Hide and Show Page Loading Message :  $.mobile.pageLoading(); //Show $.mobile.pageLoading(true); //hide            overriding $.mobile.loadingMessage  $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {    $.mobile.loadingMessage = 'My Loading Message';    });    Hide and Show jQuery-Mobile-Themed-DatePicker    $(".ui-datepicker").hide();  $(".ui-datepicker").show();       Build your Custom Loading Message :           $('#CustomeLoadingMessage').hide();//Hide the div               $('# CustomeLoadingMessage').ajaxStart(function () {                $(this).show();            });             $('# CustomeLoadingMessage').ajaxStop(function () {                $(this).hide();            });   I wil publish other important codes soon.Hope that helps.

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  • State of the (Commerce) Union: What the healthcare.gov hiccups teach us about the commerce customer experience

    - by Katrina Gosek
    Guest Post by Brenna Johnson, Oracle Commerce Product A lot has been said about the healthcare.gov debacle in the last week. Regardless of your feelings about the Affordable Care Act, there’s a hidden issue in this story that most of the American people don’t understand: delivering a great commerce customer experience (CX) is hard. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The reality of the government’s issues getting the healthcare site up and running smooth is something we in the online commerce community know too well.  If there’s one thing the botched launch of the site has taught us, it’s that regardless of the size of your budget or the power of an executive with a high-profile project, some of the biggest initiatives with the most attention (and the most at stake) don’t go as planned. It may even give you a moment of solace – we have the same issues! But why?  Organizations engage too many separate vendors with different technologies, running sections or pieces of a site to get live. When things go wrong, it takes time to identify the problem – and who or what is at the center of it. Unfortunately, this is a brittle way of setting up a site, making it susceptible to breaks, bugs, and scaling issues. But, it’s the reality of running a site with legacy technology constraints in today’s demanding, customer-centric market. This approach also means there’s also a lot of cooks in lots of different kitchens. You’ve got development and IT, the business and the marketing team, an external Systems Integrator to bring it all together, a digital agency or consultant, QA, product experts, 3rd party suppliers, and the list goes on. To complicate things, different business units are held responsible for different pieces of the site and managing different technologies. And again – due to legacy organizational structure and processes, this is all accepted as the normal State of the Union. Digital commerce has been commonplace for 15 years. Yet, getting a site live, maintained and performing requires orchestrating a cast of thousands (or at least, dozens), big dollars, and some finger-crossing. But it shouldn’t. The great thing about the advent of mobile commerce and the continued maturity of online commerce is that it’s forced organizations to think from the outside, in. Consumers – whether they’re shopping for shoes or a new healthcare plan – don’t care about what technology issues or processes you have behind the scenes. They just want it to work.  They want their experience to be easy, fast, and tailored to them and their needs – whatever they are. This doesn’t sound like a tall order to the American consumer – especially since they interact with sites that do work smoothly.  But the reality is that it takes scores of people, teams, check-ins, late nights, testing, and some good luck to get sites to run, and even more so at Black Friday (or October 1st) traffic levels.  The last thing on a customer’s mind is making excuses for why they can’t buy a product – just get it to work. So what is the government doing? My guess is working day and night to get the site performing  - and having to throw big money at the problem. In the meantime they’re sending frustrated online users to the call center, or even a location where a trained “navigator” can help them in-person to complete their selection. Sounds a lot like multichannel commerce (where broken communication between siloed touchpoints will only frustrate the consumer more). One thing we’ve learned is that consumers spend their time and money with brands they know and trust. When sites are easy to use and adapt to their needs, they tend to spend more, come back, and even become long-time loyalists. Achieving this may require moving internal mountains, but there’s too much at stake to ignore the sea change in how organizations are thinking about their customer. If the thought of re-thinking your internal teams, technologies, and processes sounds like a headache, think about the pain associated with losing valuable customers – and dollars. Regardless if you’re in B2B or B2C, it’s guaranteed that your competitors are making CX a priority. Those early to the game who have made CX a priority have already begun to outpace their competition. So as you’re planning for 2014, look to the news this week. Make sure the customer experience is a focus at your organization. Expectations are at record highs. Map your customer’s journey, and think from the outside, in. How easy is it for your customers to do business with you? If they interact with many touchpoints across your organization, are the call center, website, mobile environment, or brick and mortar location in sync? Do you have the technology in place to achieve this? It’s time to give the people what they want!

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  • GTD on Windows Mobile

    - by A. Scagnelli
    Does anyone know of a good Windows Mobile application that follows the Getting Things Done method? Since I'm on a family plan without data access, and since I'm stuck with the beyond awful Mobile IE, webapps aren't an acceptable solution. For further reference the phone is a Motorola Q9M, a slightly upgraded version of the Motorola Q.

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  • XDIME for Mobile Applications

    - by Carlos Gavidia
    I'm involved in a project that requires to mobile-enable some previously developed Portlets. The Portlets are deployed in WebSphere Portal, and the container offers a technology called IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator that uses XDIME to render mobile pages according to the device. I'm trying to document myself in the technology and I'm having a bad time: Google only shows some outdated sites from IBM and even older posts from Volantis, another company involved in the technology (Amazon shows no related books). So... what's the current status of that technology actually? Is has some decent level of adoption?

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  • Welcome to the Weblog on Oracle ADF Mobile!

    - by joe.huang
    Welcome to ADF Mobile team's weblog.  My name is Joe Huang - I am the product manager for ADF Mobile.  Oracle ADF Mobile is a part of Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF) that support the development of enterprise/business applications that run on mobile devices.  The development tool for this framework is of course Oracle JDeveloper.  As some of you may know, we currently support the development of mobile browser-based application - this part of product is called ADF Mobile Browser.  Additionally, we are close to release a technology preview of ADF Mobile Client, which supports development of on-device, disconnect capable mobile applications.  What's truly unique about ADF Mobile development process is that it's a very visual and declarative experience, while still allow power Java developers to completely extend the framework to their liking.  The framework also provides a rich set of services needed by an enterprise-grade mobile application - these services would literally take years to implement if they are to be built from the ground up.  However, by using JDeveloper and ADF Mobile, you get the entire framework at your service!In the coming entries, the ADF Mobile product development team will publish any news, best practices, our observation on mobile technology trends, or just our experiences in playing with "gadgets".  Be sure to check back on this page!Sincerely,Joe HuangOracle

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  • useFastClick in JQuery Mobile

    - by Yousef_Jadallah
      Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} For who want to convert the application from JQM Alpha to JQM Beta 1, needs to bind  click  events to the new vclick one. Click event is working in general browsers butt that is needed for iOS and Android, useFastClick  is (touch + mouse click). Moreover if you have this event alot in your project you can turn useFastClick off in mobileinit event: $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {             $.mobile.useFastClick = false; });   vclick event is needed to support touch events to make the page changes to happen faster, and to perform the URL hiding. So you need to change something like this  $('btnShow').live("click", function (evt) {   To :  $('btnShow').live("vclick", function (evt) {     For more information : http://jquerymobile.com/test/docs/api/globalconfig.html   Here you can find full example in this case : <!DOCTYPE ><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>    <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0b1/jquery.mobile-1.0b1.min.css" />    <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.1.min.js"></script>    <script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0b1/jquery.mobile-1.0b1.min.js"></script>    <script type="text/javascript">     //Here you need to use vclick instead of click event         $('ul[id="MylistView"] a').live("vclick", function (evt) {            alert('list click');        });      </script>    <title></title></head><body>    <div id="FirstPage" data-role="page" data-theme="b">        <div data-role="header">            <h1>                Page Title</h1>        </div>        <div data-role="content">            <ul id="MylistView" data-role="listview" data-theme="g">                <li><a href="#SecondPage">Acura</a></li>                <li><a href="#SecondPage">Audi</a></li>                <li><a href="#SecondPage">BMW</a></li>            </ul>        </div>        <div data-role="footer">            <h4>                Page Footer</h4>        </div>    </div>    <div id="SecondPage" data-role="page" data-theme="b"   >        <div data-role="header" >            <h1>                Page Title</h1>        </div>        Second Page        <div data-role="footer">            <h4>                Page Footer</h4>        </div>    </div></body></html>     Hope that helps.

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  • Mobile cross-platform SDK for computationally intensive apps

    - by K.Steff
    I am aware of the PhoneGap toolkit for creating mobile applications for virtually all mobile platforms with a significant market share. However, the code in PhoneGap that is shared between the different platforms is written in JavaScript. While I like JS, I think it's hardly appropriate for computationally intensive tasks. The situation with Titanium is pretty much the same. So, is there any way that I can create a cross-platform mobile app that has the computationally intensive code shared between the platforms? Some context: Obviously, I don't want to implement the time consuming algorithm in many different languages, since this violates DRY, increases the chance for bugs slipping in at least one version and require boilerplate code to work. I've looked at Xamarin's MonoTouch and Mono for Android tools, but while they cover iOS and Android, they're not nearly as versatile for deployment as PhoneGap. On the other hand, (IMO) the statically typed nature of C# is more suited for intense computation than JS. Are there any other SDK/tools appropriate for the task that I don't know about or a point about the mentioned above that I've missed? Also, uploading data to a web service for processing is not an option, because of the traffic required.

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  • Windows Azure: Major Updates for Mobile Backend Development

    - by ScottGu
    This week we released some great updates to Windows Azure that make it significantly easier to develop mobile applications that use the cloud. These new capabilities include: Mobile Services: Custom API support Mobile Services: Git Source Control support Mobile Services: Node.js NPM Module support Mobile Services: A .NET API via NuGet Mobile Services and Web Sites: Free 20MB SQL Database Option for Mobile Services and Web Sites Mobile Notification Hubs: Android Broadcast Push Notification Support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Mobile Services: Custom APIs, Git Source Control, and NuGet Windows Azure Mobile Services provides the ability to easily stand up a mobile backend that can be used to support your Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS, Android and HTML5 client applications.  Starting with the first preview we supported the ability to easily extend your data backend logic with server side scripting that executes as part of client-side CRUD operations against your cloud back data tables. With today’s update we are extending this support even further and introducing the ability for you to also create and expose Custom APIs from your Mobile Service backend, and easily publish them to your Mobile clients without having to associate them with a data table. This capability enables a whole set of new scenarios – including the ability to work with data sources other than SQL Databases (for example: Table Services or MongoDB), broker calls to 3rd party APIs, integrate with Windows Azure Queues or Service Bus, work with custom non-JSON payloads (e.g. Windows Periodic Notifications), route client requests to services back on-premises (e.g. with the new Windows Azure BizTalk Services), or simply implement functionality that doesn’t correspond to a database operation.  The custom APIs can be written in server-side JavaScript (using Node.js) and can use Node’s NPM packages.  We will also be adding support for custom APIs written using .NET in the future as well. Creating a Custom API Adding a custom API to an existing Mobile Service is super easy.  Using the Windows Azure Management Portal you can now simply click the new “API” tab with your Mobile Service, and then click the “Create a Custom API” button to create a new Custom API within it: Give the API whatever name you want to expose, and then choose the security permissions you’d like to apply to the HTTP methods you expose within it.  You can easily lock down the HTTP verbs to your Custom API to be available to anyone, only those who have a valid application key, only authenticated users, or administrators.  Mobile Services will then enforce these permissions without you having to write any code: When you click the ok button you’ll see the new API show up in the API list.  Selecting it will enable you to edit the default script that contains some placeholder functionality: Today’s release enables Custom APIs to be written using Node.js (we will support writing Custom APIs in .NET as well in a future release), and the Custom API programming model follows the Node.js convention for modules, which is to export functions to handle HTTP requests. The default script above exposes functionality for an HTTP POST request. To support a GET, simply change the export statement accordingly.  Below is an example of some code for reading and returning data from Windows Azure Table Storage using the Azure Node API: After saving the changes, you can now call this API from any Mobile Service client application (including Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS, Android or HTML5 with CORS). Below is the code for how you could invoke the API asynchronously from a Windows Store application using .NET and the new InvokeApiAsync method, and data-bind the results to control within your XAML:     private async void RefreshTodoItems() {         var results = await App.MobileService.InvokeApiAsync<List<TodoItem>>("todos", HttpMethod.Get, parameters: null);         ListItems.ItemsSource = new ObservableCollection<TodoItem>(results);     }    Integrating authentication and authorization with Custom APIs is really easy with Mobile Services. Just like with data requests, custom API requests enjoy the same built-in authentication and authorization support of Mobile Services (including integration with Microsoft ID, Google, Facebook and Twitter authentication providers), and it also enables you to easily integrate your Custom API code with other Mobile Service capabilities like push notifications, logging, SQL, etc. Check out our new tutorials to learn more about to use new Custom API support, and starting adding them to your app today. Mobile Services: Git Source Control Support Today’s Mobile Services update also enables source control integration with Git.  The new source control support provides a Git repository as part your Mobile Service, and it includes all of your existing Mobile Service scripts and permissions. You can clone that git repository on your local machine, make changes to any of your scripts, and then easily deploy the mobile service to production using Git. This enables a really great developer workflow that works on any developer machine (Windows, Mac and Linux). To use the new support, navigate to the dashboard for your mobile service and select the Set up source control link: If this is your first time enabling Git within Windows Azure, you will be prompted to enter the credentials you want to use to access the repository: Once you configure this, you can switch to the configure tab of your Mobile Service and you will see a Git URL you can use to use your repository: You can use this URL to clone the repository locally from your favorite command line: > git clone https://scottgutodo.scm.azure-mobile.net/ScottGuToDo.git Below is the directory structure of the repository: As you can see, the repository contains a service folder with several subfolders. Custom API scripts and associated permissions appear under the api folder as .js and .json files respectively (the .json files persist a JSON representation of the security settings for your endpoints). Similarly, table scripts and table permissions appear as .js and .json files, but since table scripts are separate per CRUD operation, they follow the naming convention of <tablename>.<operationname>.js. Finally, scheduled job scripts appear in the scheduler folder, and the shared folder is provided as a convenient location for you to store code shared by multiple scripts and a few miscellaneous things such as the APNS feedback script. Lets modify the table script todos.js file so that we have slightly better error handling when an exception occurs when we query our Table service: todos.js tableService.queryEntities(query, function(error, todoItems){     if (error) {         console.error("Error querying table: " + error);         response.send(500);     } else {         response.send(200, todoItems);     }        }); Save these changes, and now back in the command line prompt commit the changes and push them to the Mobile Services: > git add . > git commit –m "better error handling in todos.js" > git push Once deployment of the changes is complete, they will take effect immediately, and you will also see the changes be reflected in the portal: With the new Source Control feature, we’re making it really easy for you to edit your mobile service locally and push changes in an atomic fashion without sacrificing ease of use in the Windows Azure Portal. Mobile Services: NPM Module Support The new Mobile Services source control support also allows you to add any Node.js module you need in the scripts beyond the fixed set provided by Mobile Services. For example, you can easily switch to use Mongo instead of Windows Azure table in our example above. Set up Mongo DB by either purchasing a MongoLab subscription (which provides MongoDB as a Service) via the Windows Azure Store or set it up yourself on a Virtual Machine (either Windows or Linux). Then go the service folder of your local git repository and run the following command: > npm install mongoose This will add the Mongoose module to your Mobile Service scripts.  After that you can use and reference the Mongoose module in your custom API scripts to access your Mongo database: var mongoose = require('mongoose'); var schema = mongoose.Schema({ text: String, completed: Boolean });   exports.get = function (request, response) {     mongoose.connect('<your Mongo connection string> ');     TodoItemModel = mongoose.model('todoitem', schema);     TodoItemModel.find(function (err, items) {         if (err) {             console.log('error:' + err);             return response.send(500);         }         response.send(200, items);     }); }; Don’t forget to push your changes to your mobile service once you are done > git add . > git commit –m "Switched to use Mongo Labs" > git push Now our Mobile Service app is using Mongo DB! Note, with today’s update usage of custom Node.js modules is limited to Custom API scripts only. We will enable it in all scripts (including data and custom CRON tasks) shortly. New Mobile Services NuGet package, including .NET 4.5 support A few months ago we announced a new pre-release version of the Mobile Services client SDK based on portable class libraries (PCL). Today, we are excited to announce that this new library is now a stable .NET client SDK for mobile services and is no longer a pre-release package. Today’s update includes full support for Windows Store, Windows Phone 7.x, and .NET 4.5, which allows developers to use Mobile Services from ASP.NET or WPF applications. You can install and use this package today via NuGet. Mobile Services and Web Sites: Free 20MB Database for Mobile Services and Web Sites Starting today, every customer of Windows Azure gets one Free 20MB database to use for 12 months free (for both dev/test and production) with Web Sites and Mobile Services. When creating a Mobile Service or a Web Site, simply chose the new “Create a new Free 20MB database” option to take advantage of it: You can use this free SQL Database together with the 10 free Web Sites and 10 free Mobile Services you get with your Windows Azure subscription, or from any other Windows Azure VM or Cloud Service. Notification Hubs: Android Broadcast Push Notification Support Earlier this year, we introduced a new capability in Windows Azure for sending broadcast push notifications at high scale: Notification Hubs. In the initial preview of Notification Hubs you could use this support with both iOS and Windows devices.  Today we’re excited to announce new Notification Hubs support for sending push notifications to Android devices as well. Push notifications are a vital component of mobile applications.  They are critical not only in consumer apps, where they are used to increase app engagement and usage, but also in enterprise apps where up-to-date information increases employee responsiveness to business events.  You can use Notification Hubs to send push notifications to devices from any type of app (a Mobile Service, Web Site, Cloud Service or Virtual Machine). Notification Hubs provide you with the following capabilities: Cross-platform Push Notifications Support. Notification Hubs provide a common API to send push notifications to iOS, Android, or Windows Store at once.  Your app can send notifications in platform specific formats or in a platform-independent way.  Efficient Multicast. Notification Hubs are optimized to enable push notification broadcast to thousands or millions of devices with low latency.  Your server back-end can fire one message into a Notification Hub, and millions of push notifications can automatically be delivered to your users.  Devices and apps can specify a number of per-user tags when registering with a Notification Hub. These tags do not need to be pre-provisioned or disposed, and provide a very easy way to send filtered notifications to an infinite number of users/devices with a single API call.   Extreme Scale. Notification Hubs enable you to reach millions of devices without you having to re-architect or shard your application.  The pub/sub routing mechanism allows you to broadcast notifications in a super-efficient way.  This makes it incredibly easy to route and deliver notification messages to millions of users without having to build your own routing infrastructure. Usable from any Backend App. Notification Hubs can be easily integrated into any back-end server app, whether it is a Mobile Service, a Web Site, a Cloud Service or an IAAS VM. It is easy to configure Notification Hubs to send push notifications to Android. Create a new Notification Hub within the Windows Azure Management Portal (New->App Services->Service Bus->Notification Hub): Then register for Google Cloud Messaging using https://code.google.com/apis/console and obtain your API key, then simply paste that key on the Configure tab of your Notification Hub management page under the Google Cloud Messaging Settings: Then just add code to the OnCreate method of your Android app’s MainActivity class to register the device with Notification Hubs: gcm = GoogleCloudMessaging.getInstance(this); String connectionString = "<your listen access connection string>"; hub = new NotificationHub("<your notification hub name>", connectionString, this); String regid = gcm.register(SENDER_ID); hub.register(regid, "myTag"); Now you can broadcast notification from your .NET backend (or Node, Java, or PHP) to any Windows Store, Android, or iOS device registered for “myTag” tag via a single API call (you can literally broadcast messages to millions of clients you have registered with just one API call): var hubClient = NotificationHubClient.CreateClientFromConnectionString(                   “<your connection string with full access>”,                   "<your notification hub name>"); hubClient.SendGcmNativeNotification("{ 'data' : {'msg' : 'Hello from Windows Azure!' } }", "myTag”); Notification Hubs provide an extremely scalable, cross-platform, push notification infrastructure that enables you to efficiently route push notification messages to millions of mobile users and devices.  It will make enabling your push notification logic significantly simpler and more scalable, and allow you to build even better apps with it. Learn more about Notification Hubs here on MSDN . Summary The above features are now live and available to start using immediately (note: some of the services are still in preview).  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Web Development Trends: Mobile First, Data-Oriented Development, and Single Page Applications

    - by dwahlin
    I recently had the opportunity to give a keynote talk at an Intel conference about key trends in the world of Web development that I feel teams should be taking into account with projects. It was a lot of fun and I had the opportunity to talk with a lot of different people about projects they’re working on. There are a million things that could be covered for this type of talk (HTML5 anyone?) but I only had 60 minutes and couldn’t possibly cover them all so I decided to focus on 3 key areas: mobile, data-oriented development, and SPAs. The talk was geared toward introducing people (many who weren’t Web developers) to topics such as mobile first development (demos showed a few tools to help here), responsive design techniques, data binding techniques that can simplify code, and Single Page Application (SPA) benefits. Links to code demos shown during the presentation can be found at the end of the slide deck. Web Development Trends - What's New in the World of Web Development by Dan Wahlin

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  • Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

    - by David Dorf
    When most people discuss mobile in retail, they immediately go to shopping applications.  While I agree the consumer side of mobile is huge, I believe its also important to arm store associates with mobile tools.  There are around a dozen major roll-outs of mobile POS to chain retailers, and all have been successful.  This does not, however, signal the demise of traditional registers.  Retailers will adopt mobile POS slowly and reduce the number of fixed registers over time, but there's likely to be a combination of both for the foreseeable future.  Even Apple retains at least one fixed register in every store, you just have to know where to look. The business benefits for mobile POS are pretty straightforward: 1. Faster checkout.  Walmart's CFO recently reported that for every second they shave off the average transaction time, they can potentially save $12M a year in labor.  I think its more likely that labor will be redeployed to enhance the customer experience. 2. Smarter associates.  The sales associates on the floor need the same access to information that consumers have, if not more.  They need ready access to product details, reviews, inventory, etc. to meet consumer expectations.  In a recent study, 40% of consumers said a savvy store associate can impact their final product selection more than a website. 3. Lower costs.  Mobile POS hardware (iPod touch + sled) costs about a fifth of fixed registers, not to mention the reclaimed space that can be used for product displays. But almost all Mobile POS solutions can claim those benefits equally.  Where there's differentiation is on the technical side.  Oracle recently announced availability of the Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, and it has three big technology advantages in the market: 1. Portable. We used a popular open-source component called PhoneGap that abstracts the app from the underlying OS and hardware so that iOS, Android, and other platforms could be supported.  Further, we used Web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript, which are commonly known by many programmers, as opposed to ObjectiveC which is more difficult to find.  The screen can adjust to different form-factors and sizes, just like you see with browsers.  In the future when a new, zippy device gets released, retailers will have the option to move to that device more easily than if they used a native app. 2. Flexible.  Our Mobile POS is free with the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service product.  Retailers can use any combination of fixed and mobile registers, and those ratios can change as required.  Perhaps start with 1 mobile and 4 fixed per store, then transition over time to 4 mobile and 1 fixed without any additional software licenses.  Our scalable solution supports lots of combinations. 3. Consistent.  Because our Mobile POS is fully integrated to our traditional POS, the same business logic is reused.  Third-party Mobile POS solutions often handle pricing, promotions, and tax calculations separately leading to possible inconsistencies within the store.  That won't happen with Oracle's solution. For many retailers, Mobile POS can lower costs, increase customer service, and generally enhance a consumer's in-store experience.  Apple led the way, but lots of other retailers are discovering the many benefits of adding mobile capabilities in their stores.  Just be sure to examine both the business and technology benefits so you get the most value from your solution for the longest period of time.

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  • Apps UX Launches Blueprints for Mobile User Experiences

    - by mvaughan
    By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceAt Oracle OpenWorld 2012 this year, the Oracle Applications User Experience (Apps UX) team announced the release of Mobile User Experience Functional Design Patterns. These patterns are designed to work directly with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware, specifically, ADF Mobile.  The Oracle Application Development Framework for mobile users enables developers to build one application that can be deployed to multiple mobile device platforms. These same mobile design patterns provide the guidance for Oracle teams to develop Fusion Mobile expenses. Application developers can use Oracle’s mobile design patterns to design iPhone, Android, or browser-based smartphone applications. We are sharing our mobile design patterns and their baked-in, scientifically proven usability to enable Oracle customers and partners to build mobile applications quickly.A different way of thinking and designing. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences for Apps UX, says mobile design has to be compelling. “It needs to be optimized for the device, and be visually rich and simple,” she said. “What is really key is that you are designing for a user’s most personal device, the device that they will have with them at all times of the day.”Katy Massucco, director of the overall design patterns site, said: “You need to start with a simplified task flow. Everything should be a natural interaction. The action should be relevant and leveraging the device. It should be seamless.”She suggests that developers identify the essential tasks that a user would want to do while mobile. “They need to understand the user and the context,” she added. ?A sample inline action design patternWhat people are sayingReactions to the release of the design patterns have been positive. Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fusion User Experience Advocate (FXA), has already demo’ed Fusion Mobile Expenses widely.  Fellow Oracle Ace Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen, called it a “cool demo by @debralilley of the new mobile expenses app.” FXA member Floyd Teter says he is already cooking up some plans for using mobile design patterns.  We hope to see those ideas at Collaborate or ODTUG in 2013. For another perspective on why user experience is such an important focus for mobile applications, check out this video by John King, Director, and Monty Latiolais, President, both from ODTUG, or the Oracle Development Tools User Group.In a separate interview by e-mail, Latiolais wrote: “I enjoy the fact we can take something that, in the past, has been largely subjective, and now apply to it a scientifically proven look and feel. Trusting Oracle’s UX Design Patterns, the presentation really can become one less thing to worry about. As someone with limited ADF experience, that is extremely beneficial.”?King, who was also interviewed by e-mail, wrote: “User Experience is about making the task at hand as easy and error-free as possible. Oracle's UX labs worked hard to make the User Experience in the new Fusion Applications as good as possible; ADF makes adding tested, consistent, user experiences a declarative exercise by leveraging that work. As we move applications onto mobile platforms, user experience is the driving factor. Customers are "spoiled" by a bevy of fantastic applications, and ours cannot disappoint them. Creating applications that enable users to quickly and effectively accomplish whatever task is at hand takes thought and practice. Developers must become ’power users’ and then create applications that they and their users will love.”

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  • Bad Spot to Be In: Playing Catch-up with Mobile Advertising

    - by Mike Stiles
    You probably noticed, there’s a mass migration going on from online desktop/laptop usage to smartphone/tablet usage.  It’s an indicator of how we live our lives in the modern world: always on the go, with no intention of being disconnected while out there. Consequently, paid as it relates to mobile advertising is taking the social spotlight. eMarketer estimated that in 2013, US adults would spend about 2 hours, 21 minutes a day on mobile, not counting talking time. More people in the world own smartphones than own toothbrushes (bad news I suppose if you’re marketing toothpaste). They’re using those mobile devices to access social networks, consuming at least 17% of their mobile time on them. Frankly, you don’t need a deep dive into mobile usage stats to know what’s going on. Just look around you in any store, venue or coffee shop. It’s really obvious…our mobile devices are now where we “are,” so that’s where marketers can increasingly reach us. And it’s a smart place for them to do just that. Mobile devices can be viewed more and more as shopping facilitators. Usually when someone is on mobile, they are not in passive research mode. They are likely standing near a store or in front of a product, using their mobile to seek reassurance that buying that product is the right move. They are the hottest of hot prospects. Consider that 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop, 52% of Americans use mobile devices for in-store for research, 70% of mobile searches lead to online action inside of an hour, and people that find you on mobile convert at almost 3x the rate as those that find you on desktop or laptop. But what are marketers doing? Enter statistics from Mary Meeker’s latest State of the Internet report. Common sense says you buy advertising where people are spending their eyeball time, right? But while mobile is 20% of media use and rising, the ad spend there is 4%. Conversely, while print usage is at 5% and falling, ad spend there is 19%. We all love nostalgia, but come on. There are reasons marketing dollar migration to mobile has not matched user migration, including the availability of mobile ad products and the ability to measure user response to mobile ads. But interesting things are happening now. First came Facebook’s mobile ad, which let app developers pay to get potential downloads. Then their mobile ad network was announced at F8, allowing marketers to target users across non-Facebook apps while leveraging the wealth of diverse data Facebook has on those users, a big deal since Nielsen has pointed out mobile apps make up 89% of the media time spent on mobile. Twitter has a similar play in motion with their MoPub acquisition. And now mobile deeplinks have arrived, which can take users straight to sub-pages of mobile apps for a faster, more direct shopper/researcher user experience. The sooner the gratification, the smoother and faster the conversion. To be clear, growth in mobile ad spending is well underway. After posting $13.1 billion in 2013, Gartner expects global mobile ad spending to reach $18 billion this year, then go to $41.9 billion by 2017. Cheap smartphones and data plans are spreading worldwide, further fueling the shift to mobile. Mobile usage in India alone should grow 400% by 2018. And, of course, there’s the famous statistic that mobile should overtake desktop Internet usage this year. How can we as marketers mess up this opportunity? Two ways. We could position ourselves in perpetual “catch-up” mode and keep spending ad dollars where the public used to be. And we could annoy mobile users with horrid old-school marketing practices. Two-thirds of users told Forrester they think interruptive in-app ads are more annoying than TV ads. Make sure your brand’s social marketing technology platform is delivering a crystal clear picture of your social connections so the mobile touch point is highly relevant, mobile optimized, and delivering real value and satisfying experiences. Otherwise, all we’ve done is find a new way to be unwanted. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Kate Mallatratt, freeimages.com

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  • Site Studio Mobile Example - WCM Reuse

    - by john.brunswick
    Mobile internet usage is growing by leaps and bounds and it is theorized that in the not-to-distant future it will eclipse traditional access via desktop browsers. Mary Meeker, a managing director at Morgan Stanley and head of their global technology research team, recently predicted that mobile usage will eclipse desktop usage within the next 5 years in an Events@Google series presentation. In order for organizations to reach their prospects, customers and business partners, they will need to make their content readily available on mobile devices. A few years ago it was fairly challenging to provide a special, separate, site to cater to mobile users using technologies like WML (Wireless Markup Language). Modern mobile browsers have rendered the need for this as irrelevant and now the focus has moved toward providing a browsing experience that works well on small screen sizes and is highly performant. What does all of this mean for Oracle UCM? Taking site content from an existing Site Studio site and targeting it for consumption for mobile devices is a very straightforward process that is aided by a number of native capabilities in the product. The example highlighted in this post takes advantage of dynamic conversion capabilities in Oracle UCM to enable site content to be created and updated via MS Office documents. These documents are then converted to a simple, clean HTML format for consumption in the desktop and mobile browsing experiences. To help better understand how this is possible the example below shows a fictional .COM and its mobile site counterpart that both leverage the same underlying content. The scenario is not complete or production ready, but highlights that a mobile experience may be best delivered by omitting portions of a site that would be present within the version served to desktop clients. If you have browsed CNet (news.com) on a mobile device it becomes quickly apparent that they are serving an optimized version for your mobile device. An iPhone style version can be accessed at http://iphone.cnet.com/. In order to do that they leveraged some work done for the iPhone iUi project developed by Joe Hewitt that provides mobile browsers an experience that is similar to what users may find in a native iPhone application. For our example parts of this framework are used (the CSS) and this approach provides a page that will degrade nicely over a wide range of mobile browsers, since it is comprised of lightweight HTML markup and CSS. The iPhone iUi framework also provides some nice JavaScript to enable animated transitions between pages, but for the widest range of mobile browser compatibility we will only incorporate the CSS and HTML DIV / UL based page markup in our example.

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  • Mobile Java, shiny and new: Nokia Asha and Nokia SDK 2.0

    - by terrencebarr
    Nokia has announced a series of new S40 phones called “Asha” – mass-market devices with smart-phone features: Good-sized touch screens, 1 GHz processors, WiFi connectivity, social networking integration, and more. Prices starting around €60 retail. In case you don’t know, the S40 series is built on Java ME and has a huge deployed base in many parts of the world where price/performance is critical. Along with the new phones, Nokia is also making available the new Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java (beta), which enables developers to build rich Java applications with multi-touch, sensor support, an improved Maps API, and the Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) (more API & tools details). Furthermore, there is a host of developer information, the remote device access service, and even a porting guide to help you port your Android app to the new Asha platform. Last, but not least: More and better options to monetize your applications. Nokia has enabled in-app advertising and in-app purchasing, and improved the way applications can be discovered by customers. Nokia has seen downloads from the Nokia app store rise by 63%, now totaling billions. From what I’m hearing, the revenue opportunities on S40 for developers are often way better than what is typical for other smart-phone platforms (where competition is huge and consumers are fickle). Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: Asha Series, Java ME, Java ME SDK, Mobile Java, monetization, Nokia, S40

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  • New Trusted Status awarded to first Mobile Java Developer

    - by Jacob Lehrbaum
    Java Verified has just announced that GameLoft is the first developer to receive its new Trusted Status!  Java Verified is an industry-recognized Java testing and signing program backed and funded by companies such as AT&T, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Samsung and Vodafone, and chartered with making it easier for mobile developers to certify and deploy applications for use across the billions of mobile handsets that run the Java ME.  Because of its breadth and diversity, Java ME provides an unmatched opportunity to reach more than 3 billions consumers, but at the same time, developers are faced with the challenge of working with multiple distribution channels and a range of handsets. To this end, the Java Verified program provides a suite of tests that help to validate identity, functionality, integrity, and quality.  Since its rebirth in 2010 as an independent organization, the Java Verified program has been actively working to make it even easier to create and distribute Java ME apps.  Example initiatives include updates to the Unified Testing Criteria to make it easier to test "Simple Apps," community outreach to better understand and address developer pain-points  and a new "Trusted Status."  In the words of the Java Verified Program, Trusted Status is:a privileged status to be granted to developers who will have proven that the quality of their Java ME apps is of a consistently high standard. These are developers who will have earned the trust of Java Verified by demonstrating unfailingly that testing to the UTC standard is a crucial part of their product development activityThe first developer to be awarded this status is GameLoft.  By achieving Trusted Status Gameloft can now test their applications to the Java Verified standard without needing to provide Java Verified with the evidence.  The apps then automatically get signed with the Java Verified signature enabling GameLoft to benefit from reduced costs and time-to-market for their new Java ME applications from here on out.  Learn more about the exciting news or apply now for Trusted Status!

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  • How to plan/manage multi-platform (mobile) products?

    - by PhD
    Say I've to develop an app that runs on iOS, Android and Windows 8 Mobile. Now all three platforms are technically in different program languages. The only 'reuse' that I can see is that of the boxes-and-lines drawings (UML :) charts and nothing else. So how do companies/programmers manage the variation of the same product across different platforms especially since the implementation languages differ? It's 'easier' in the desktop world IMO given the plethora of languages and cross-platform libraries to make your life easier. Not so in the mobile world. More so, product line management principles don't seem to be all that applicable - what is same and variant doesn't really matter - the application is the same (conceptually) and the implementation is variant. Some difficulties that come to mind: Bug Fixing: Applications maybe designed in a similar manner but the bug identification and fixing would be radically different. A bug on iOS may/may-not be existent for that on Android. Or a bug fix approach on one platform may not be the same on another (unless it's a semantic bug like a!=b instead of a==b which would require the same 'approach' to fixing in essence Enhancements: Making a change on one platform would be radically different than on another Code-Design Divergence: They way the code is written/organized, the class structures etc., could be very different given the different implementation environments - leading to further reuse of the (above) UML models. There are of course many others - just keeping the development in sync and making sure all applications are up to the same version with the same set of features etc. Seems the effort is 3x that of a single application. So how exactly does one manage this nightmarish situation? Some thoughts: Split application to client/server to minimize the effect to client side only (not always doable) Use frameworks like Unity-3D that could take care of the cross-platform problem (mostly applicable to games and probably not to other applications etc.) Any other ways of managing a platform line? What are some proven approaches to managing/taming the effects?

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  • Using the OAM Mobile & Social SDK to secure native mobile apps - Part 2 : OAM Mobile & Social Server configuration

    - by kanishkmahajan
    Objective  In the second part of this blog post I'll now cover configuration of OAM to secure our sample native apps developed using the iOS SDK. First, here are some key server side concepts: Application Profiles: An application profile is a logical representation of your application within OAM server. It could be a web (html/javascript) or native (iOS or Android) application. Applications may have different requirements for AuthN/AuthZ, and therefore each application that interacts with OAM Mobile & Social REST services must be uniquely defined. Service Providers: Service providers represent the back end services that are accessed by applications. With OAM Mobile & Social these services are in the areas of authentication, authorization and user profile access. A Service Provider then defines a type or class of service for authentication, authorization or user profiles. For example, the JWTAuthentication provider performs authentication and returns JWT (JSON Web Tokens) to the application. In contrast, the OAMAuthentication also provides authentication but uses OAM SSO tokens Service Profiles:  A Service Profile is a logical envelope that defines a service endpoint URL for a service provider for the OAM Mobile & Social Service. You can create multiple service profiles for a service provider to define token capabilities and service endpoints. Each service provider instance requires atleast one corresponding service profile.The  OAM Mobile & Social Service includes a pre-configured service profile for each pre-configured service provider. Service Domains: Service domains bind together application profiles and service profiles with an optional security handler. So now let's configure the OAM server. Additional details are in the OAM Documentation and this post simply provides an outline of configuration tasks required to configure OAM for securing native apps.  Configuration  Create The Application Profile Log on to the Oracle Access Management console and from System Configuration -> Mobile and Social -> Mobile Services, select "Create" under Application Profiles. You would do this  step twice - once for each of the native apps - AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler. Enter the parameters for the new Application profile: Name:  The application name. In this example we use 'InventoryApp' for the AvitekInventory app and 'SchedulerApp' for the AvitekScheduler app. The application name configured here must match the application name in the settings for the deployed iOS application. BaseSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM server.  Mobile Configuration: Enable this checkbox for any mobile applications. This enables the SDK to collect and send Mobile specific attributes to the OAM server.  Webview: Controls the type of browser that the iOS application will use. The embedded browser (default) will render the browser within the application. External will use the system standalone browser. External can sometimes be preferable for debugging URLScheme: The URL scheme associated with the iOS apps that is also used as a custom URL scheme to register O/S handlers that will take control when OAM transfers control to device. For the AvitekInventory and the AvitekScheduler apps I used osa:// and client:// respectively. You set this scheme in Xcode while developing your iOS Apps under Info->URL Types.  Bundle Identifier : The fully qualified name of your iOS application. You typically set this when you create a new Xcode project or under General->Identity in Xcode. For the AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler apps these were com.us.oracle.AvitekInventory and com.us.oracle.AvitekScheduler respectively.  Create The Service Domain Select create under Service domains. Create a name for your domain (AvitekDomain is what I've used). The name configured must match the service domain set in the iOS application settings. Under "Application Profile Selection" click the browse button. Choose the application profiles that you created in the previous step one by one. Set the InventoryApp as the SSO agent (with an automatic priority of 1) and the SchedulerApp as the SSO client. This associates these applications with this service domain and configures them in a 'circle of trust'.  Advance to the next page of the wizard to configure the services for this domain. For this example we will use the following services:  Authentication:   This will use the JWT (JSON Web Token) format authentication provider. The iOS application upon successful authentication will receive a signed JWT token from OAM Mobile & Social service. This token will be used in subsequent calls to OAM. Use 'MobileOAMAuthentication' here. Authorization:  The authorization provider. The SDK makes calls to this provider endpoint to obtain authorization decisions on resource requests. Use 'OAMAuthorization' here. User Profile Service:  This is the service that provides user profile services (attribute lookup, attribute modification). It can be any directory configured as a data source in OAM.  And that's it! We're done configuring our native apps. In the next section, let's look at some additional features that were mentioned in the earlier post that are automated by the SDK for the app developer i.e. these are areas that require no additional coding by the app developer when developing with the SDK as they only require server side configuration: Additional Configuration  Offline Authentication Select this option in the service domain configuration to allow users to log in and authenticate to the application locally. Clear the box to block users from authenticating locally. Strong Authentication By simply selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin while configuring mobile related Service Domains, the OAM Mobile&Social service allows sophisticated device and client application registration logic as well as the advanced risk and fraud analysis logic found in OAAM to be applied to mobile authentication. Let's look at some scenarios where the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin gets used. First, when we configure OAM and OAAM to integrate together using the TAP scheme, then that integration kicks off by selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin in the mobile service domain. This is how the mobile device is now prompted for KBA,OTP etc depending on the TAP scheme integration and the OAM users registered in the OAAM database. Second, when we configured the service domain, there were claim attributes there that are already pre-configured in OAM Mobile&Social service and we simply accepted the default values- these are the set of attributes that will be fetched from the device and passed to the server during registration/authentication as device profile attributes. When a mobile application requests a token through the Mobile Client SDK, the SDK logic will send the Device Profile attributes as a part of an HTTP request. This set of Device Profile attributes enhances security by creating an audit trail for devices that assists device identification. When the OAAM Security Plug-in is used, a particular combination of Device Profile attribute values is treated as a device finger print, known as the Digital Finger Print in the OAAM Administration Console. Each finger print is assigned a unique fingerprint number. Each OAAM session is associated with a finger print and the finger print makes it possible to log (and audit) the devices that are performing authentication and token acquisition. Finally, if the jail broken option is selected while configuring an application profile, the SDK detects a device is jail broken based on configured policy and if the OAAM handler is configured the plug-in can allow or block access to client device depending on the OAAM policy as well as detect blacklisted, lost or stolen devices and send a wipeout command that deletes all the mobile &social relevant data and blocks the device from future access. 1024x768 Social Logins Finally, let's complete this post by adding configuration to configure social logins for mobile applications. Although the Avitek sample apps do not demonstrate social logins this would be an ideal exercise for you based on the sample code provided in the earlier post. I'll cover the server side configuration here (with Facebook as an example) and you can retrofit the code to accommodate social logins by following the steps outlined in "Invoking Authentication Services" and add code in LoginViewController and maybe create a new delegate - AvitekRPDelegate based on the description in the previous post. So, here all you will need to do is configure an application profile for social login, configure a new service domain that uses the social login application profile, register the app on Facebook and finally configure the Facebook OAuth provider in OAM with those settings. Navigate to Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and create a new application profile. Here are the relevant parameters for the new application profile (-also we're not registering the social user in OAM with this configuration below, however that is a key feature as well): Name:  The application name. This must match the name of the of mobile application profile created for your application under Mobile Services. We used InventoryApp for this example. SharedSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM Mobile and Social service.  Mobile Application Return URL: After the Relying Party (social) login, the OAM Mobile & Social service will redirect to the iOS application using this URI. This is defined under Info->URL type and we used 'osa', so we define this here as 'osa://' Login Type: Choose to allow only internet identity authentication for this exercise. Authentication Service Endpoint : Make sure that /internetidentityauthentication is selected. Login to http://developers.facebook.com using your Facebook account and click on Apps and register the app as InventoryApp. Note that the consumer key and API secret gets generated automatically by the Facebook OAuth server. Navigate back to OAM and under Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and edit the Facebook OAuth Provider. Add the consumer key and API secret from the Facebook developers site to the Facebook OAuth Provider: Navigate to Mobile Services. Click on New to create a new service domain. In this example we call the domain "AvitekDomainRP". The type should be 'Mobile Application' and the application credential type 'User Token'. Add the application "InventoryApp" to the domain. Advance the next page of the wizard. Select the  default service profiles but ensure that the Authentication Service is set to 'InternetIdentityAuthentication'. Finish the creation of the service domain.

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  • Best open source ASP.NET MVC e-commerce projects

    - by Øyvind Knobloch-Bråthen
    I need to get a e-commerce site up and running, but I really don't want to program it from the bottom up if I don't need to. I want to program it using ASP.NET MVC. I'm looking for a good open source alternative (or one for purchase if it's modular enough) that I can use as a base and enhance with the needed functions? It has to have all "normal" e-commerce functions, and also the possibility to integrate with a credit card API of my choice. If anyone have any recommendations for me here, I would appreciate it :)

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