mobiForge Recent Content

Build a Mobile and Desktop-Friendly Application in Django in 15 Minutes

ronan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:20:48 +0000

This article quickly walks you through the process of setting up an absolutely minimal mobile- and desktop-friendly web application using the Django framework. This particular framework works very well with mobile thanks to the way its templates are structured and makes for a good choice for new web-based applications.

Developing Location Based Services: Introducing the Location API for J2ME

nicogoeminne — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:10:02 +0000

Many mobile phones today support the Location API for J2ME under JSR-179. Using the location API, you can easily develop useful location based mobile Java applications. In this article, we demonstrate how to develop and test a mobile location based client server application using JSR-179, servlets and Google Maps.

Don't forget the supine surfer

ronan — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:43:40 +0000

It's easy to be waylaid by the word "mobile" in "mobile web", to assume that the defining characteristic of mobile web surfer is the fact that they are out and about. Not always so! Sometimes, mobile = not at PC. Remember that "mobile web" often means the "consumed-on-mobile-device web" rather than the "out-and-about web".

Transcoding: what are the Viagra, Cialis and "Dear Winner" of HTML tag soup?

ronan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:31:27 +0000

Over the last 6 months or so part of the tech team in dotMobi has been working on Instant Mobilizer, a site mobilizer service to help small businesses dip their toes in the waters of the mobile web. One of the big problems with content transcoding is deciding when it should be applied: if there is little hope of it working well another alternative should be offered.

A Very Modern Mobile Switching Algorithm - Part II

James Pearce — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:20:03 +0000

This article follows on from last month's Part I, where we discussed some of the principles of handling mobile users and switching their experiences. If you haven't read it yet please do so before we dive into some of the technical ideas and implementation details.

Character Encoding Issues and the Mobile Web

casaise — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:20:38 +0000

Character encoding, the binary representation underlying every symbol in documents delivered to mobile devices, is often treated as an afterthought in mobile Web development. Many developers simply rely upon ISO-8859-1; not a bad choice, as this encoding efficiently supports all important Western European languages, has long been available in the mobile and fixed Internet, is widespread among low-end phones, and is the default encoding in the HTTP standard.

Trinity College Dublin - TA-DA, Research and Secret Projects

daniel.hunt — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Yesterday (Wednesday, 3rd December) I had the honour of being invited along to Trinity College, Dublin, to give a slightly modified version of the presentation I gave at the recent Drupal Ireland Meetup on TA-DA (our mobile browser test suite) - which I've attached to the end of this post.

One web 2.0 - social edition

jonarne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:30:37 +0000

I bet I am not the only one wondering what Nokia was going to announce yesterday... In addition to the N97, Nokia Messaging was the big news. Put short, Nokia Messaging is enabling a bunch of IM-like services on the phone. In my mind this is an important change in the traditional mind pattern device manufacturers, and MNOs, have had until the iPhone.

The Best and Worst of the Mobile Web

ruadhan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:32:25 +0000

Our sister-site mobiThinking.com has just published an eBook on "The Best and Worst of the Mobile Web".

In it there are examples of winners and sinners, those who do it right, and those not quite right, and why! So now might be a good time to fire up your mobile browser and let us know if you agree.

The DeviceAtlas API in ASP.NET- Part I (The Basics)

adrian.hopebailie — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:51:16 +0000

DeviceAtlas is the world's most comprehensive database of mobile device information. The database comes with an API that developers can use to determine the capabilities of devices browsing their website and in so doing adapt their content to make it suitable for the user’s context.

Part I of this tutorial will assist ASP.NET developers in learning the basics of the API and how to use it.

DeviceAtlas 2.1.1 online, also C++ API and video properties coming soon

atrasatti — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:08:34 +0000

As the number suggests, DeviceAtlas 2.1.1 is minor upgrade from version 2.1 that we released just 3 weeks ago.

Hotbeds of Mobile Development

James Pearce — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:52:37 +0000

When you register for mobiForge, we ask you a few optional questions about who and where you are. This is not because we are running some elaborate email spam scheme, but basically because we like graphs.

In particular, we ask you to provide your city and country. We thought we'd let you know where the hot beds of mobile development are around the world - at least for a sample of the 22,000 users who've registered on mobiForge.

DeviceAtlas Data Explorer filtered by year of release

atrasatti — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:47:15 +0000

About 2 weeks ago we introduced something that we thought was very exciting, a new way to visualise data in DeviceAtlas, we called it Data Explorer. If you missed it, you can watch a screencast that explains how it works and gives a few ideas of what you can do, see Introducing the new DeviceAtlas Data Explorer.

Vote for your favorite mobile app

ruadhan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:15:58 +0000

Last week I posted that it was nomination time for the Open Web Awards by Mashable. Nominations have closed, and it's time to get voting.

I've always wanted to say this, maybe wearing a tuxedo and under bright lights, but here goes:

And the nominations in the category for best mobile application are...

Mobile Device UI trends

atrasatti — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:07:16 +0000

I was reading on Techcrunch a rumor about the new UI design for Windows Mobile 6.5. See the article, Rumor: Windows Mobile 6.5 screenshot shenanigans.

I quickly followed up with a blog post on my personal blog, Windows Mobile 6.5 and Zumobi, but while that writing that quick post made me think about the new UIs and trends in mobile devices.

Drupal Ireland Meetup - 2008

daniel.hunt — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:00:57 +0000

On Saturday 15th November I, along with Andrea, Ruadhan and over 70 (yes you read that right, over SEVENTY) other Irish Drupalers rolled over to DIT Kevins Street for a spot of Drupal-centric discussion and joviality.

Your favorite mobile app - only two days to say 'thank you!'

ruadhan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:10:42 +0000

The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards are currently accepting nominations in a wide range of categories, including, of course, the Mobile Application category. Now would be a great time to reward those responsible creating your favorite mobile app. But be quick, nominations are only open for another 2 days (until Sunday 16th 11:59 pm PST).

Mobile App Design: Getting to the Point - Part II

paulca — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:55:52 +0000

Following on from part I, I want to put into practice the principles that I isolated by looking at GMail, Twitter and Facebook. I’ll apply the principles to one of the most common of web applications: the online store. I want to look at three typical online store pages and then go through some ideas about how best to apply mobile-design principles to the pages.

I'll go through the process of building the site from the ground up... from simple sketches through wireframing and the final design.

DeviceAtlas 2.1

atrasatti — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:00:10 +0000

DeviceAtlas 2.1 brings some VERY exciting features that kept us awake during the last few nights and we hope that the results will also keep you awake at night looking at how you can improve your mobile sites and contents.

First the less exciting part, we have made the signup process for Developer licences much easier, now all that is required is to accept the EULA and you're on. We REALLY want everyone to get a licence and get started. We have also streamlined some other portions of the purchase process and we hope this will make the navigation easier for you.

It's Open if We Tell You It Is

Ronan_Mandel — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:20:47 +0000

I'd like to come back to a topic that I touched on a few months ago: open. In case you weren't paying attention to CTIA in San Francisco last month (and I won't fault you if you weren't), you may have missed the clarification that the major operators in the States provided to the definition of an 'open' network. Sitting together on a stage the bigwigs from Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile each found ways to describe why an 'open' network is not really what the end user wants. Given some of what was said, it's a wonder that any of us are ever able to get apps out there at all.

Introducing the new DeviceAtlas Data Explorer

James Pearce — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:53:32 +0000

We teased you about this a few months ago and we've now finally finished! DeviceAtlas v2.1 offers analytics tools to explore the mobile device information in its database.

In the video below, James and Andrea give you a teaser of how it works, and talk through some of the cool new tricks.

~~We're going live next Monday, and we'll announce here when it's available.~~ UPDATE: we've gone live.

Mobile App Design: Getting to the Point - Part I

paulca — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:00:30 +0000

This is the first in a two part look at mobile web application design. In part 1, I focus on three current 'big guns' of mobile web applications and look at how they solve the problems of mobile application design by getting to the point. In part 2 I'll get practical and run through a series of steps to design a small sample mobile eCommerce site, applying what was learned in this article.

Using OpenCellID cell information in a mapping application

ruadhan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:16:09 +0000

We've just published part II of our OpenCellID feature. This time we look at making use of the OpenCellID positioning information introduced in the first part, and using it to display a device's location on an open source map, with a result similar to the Google Maps "MyLocation" feature. Thanks to Thomas Landspurg for this great contribution.

Adding Location to a non-GPS Phone - Part II

tomsoft — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:00:02 +0000

In the first part of this article, we introduced the concept of CellID, and OpenCellID – an open source database of CellIDs that can be used to build location based services, and we created a small program to determine location from CellID information. This time, we will go a step further and display a map on a mobile device, using the open source "OpenStreetMap", and we position the map using the device's location. This will deliver an experience similar to that offered by the Google Maps for Mobile "MyLocation" feature, and will run on top of JavaME.

mobiForge - A Brief History

ruadhan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:51:09 +0000

As mentioned in our first official mobiForge newsletter, as a tribute to dev.mobi, the site that mobiForge once was, we thought it would be fun to put together a time-line of notable moments in its two year life. We feel that dev.mobi, has done a great job of serving the mobile development community, and has very much helped to make the mobile Internet dream a reality. We're very proud of what we've achieved so far. So here's the longer version of the shorter version in the newsletter:

The Google Phone Cometh (so what)?

Ronan_Mandel — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Last week saw the announcement of the first Android based device, the HTC Dream better known now as the T-Mobile G1. Despite the fact that this phone is based on on Open Source platform, the details as they have been released, make it feel very much like any other smartphone that Joe Consumer can go purchase from his operator. It's locked to T-Mobile USA at launch and will find its way into the UK in November before it conquers the world in 2009. Now the real question: So what?

DeviceAtlas 2.0

atrasatti — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:40:05 +0000

We're thrilled to launch the new version of our award-winning DeviceAtlas platform. Version 2.0 is a huge step forward for us, and we hope it's going to change the way you think about mobile device information.

Since we launched DeviceAtlas at the start of the year, we've been working hard to source mobile device information from all over the world. Take a look at the footer of the site and you'll see the logos of handset manufacturers, mobile operators and leading vendors who've all helped us enormously to do this.

A Very Modern Mobile Switching Algorithm - Part I

James Pearce — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:39:32 +0000

An important question that most web developers ask when developing their first mobile web site is "how do I distinguish between mobile users and desktop users?". Although this seems like a simple enough question at first, of course there's more to it than meets the eye. In fact, what do we even mean by 'distinguish'? How we distinguish their requirements? Their desires? The services they expect? The browsers they happen to be using?

Ready.mobi API has landed

ruadhan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:15:51 +0000

Well, is landing. We're just about ready to start beta testing on ready.mobi v2.2 aka API release. We've been planning this for a while, and a few of you have already had a sneak preview, but before we launch it fully, we invite any interested parties to try out the beta.

Vertical Search just got better

ruadhan — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:21:00 +0000

One of the new goodies we developed for mobiForge was our Vertical Search feature. This search replaces the stock search functionality bundled with the CMS that mobiForge runs on. If you haven't tried it out yet, in a nutshell, Vertical Search combines mobiForge search results with relevant results from various other mobile resource sites from around the web.

Open source LBS

ruadhan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:25:05 +0000

Location based services are becoming more and more prevalent every day, with innovative applications that make use of location, like FireEagle, and Google Maps for Mobile, popping up all the time. We've just published the first part of a two-part piece on Location via CellID, and the open source database of CellIDs, OpenCellID.

Adding location to a non GPS phone: introducing OpenCellID

tomsoft — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:32:24 +0000

In this two part article (see part II here), we will introduce mobile positioning based on CellID, and we will take a look at OpenCellID, the open source database of CellIDs. We will demonstrate how to use OpenCellID through some simple examples.

User Agent Widget Trace Facility

James Pearce — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:59:39 +0000

Sometimes you've got a user-agent on your clipboard and you just can't work out what it is. Enter our User Agent Widget Trace Facility (or UA-WTF for short). Scroll down a little and start entering a mobile browser user-agent into the box below. With a bit of cross-site scripting magic, we've hooked up this page to a live instance of our DeviceAtlas API. As you type (hopefully) you'll see what we know about it. DeviceAtlas Ts&Cs apply. Have fun!

America's largest mobile web site

James Pearce — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:29:43 +0000

We have a sister site over at mobiThinking, and they've just published a bunch of cool new case studies and interviews about businesses making their presence felt on the mobile web.

Up this time is the Weather Channel, who, with weather.mobi, have between 7 and 9 million unique users per month, and claim to be the largest content site in the US for the mobile web.

Official mobile metrics for the Norwegian market

jonarne — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:49:56 +0000

Earlier this year TNS-Gallup launched a product for the Norwegian media market providing a common currency for traffic measurements. Today the first numbers were published. The product measures unique users, sessions and page views at this stage, but of course much more information is available.

Sony Ericsson joins DeviceAtlas

atrasatti — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:28:29 +0000

Today we have added a new source to DeviceAtlas and we think it's very exciting. Sony Ericsson via their developer site is officially joining DeviceAtlas providing profiles for their own devices. Check out the P1i for example or the W550i and you will see information from Sony Erisson.

TADA Advanced Tests - A Tutorial

daniel.hunt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:28:35 +0000

Following on from my previous tutorial and the public release of TA-DA, I'd like to present a new tutorial based on 2 of our more complicated tests: Usable Display Height and Usable Display Width.

An Operator Decides to be Polite…

Ronan_Mandel — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:00:01 +0000

Say what you will about the network operators with whom we have to play in the mobile space, but every now and again they do think of the developer community before implementing changes that may impact us all. Case in point, our friends over at AT&T devCentral recently sent out an announcement to the developer community about changes that will be coming as a result of some modifications to their gateway.

TADA - Alive and kicking, and DA 2.0 (preview)

daniel.hunt — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:41:52 +0000

The DeviceAtlas 2.0 Preview was released on Monday, and with it, access to our TA-DA test suite was opened up to the unwashed masses.

A total of 5 new test have been added to the list, which is due grow further with the full 2.0 release due in the coming weeks.

DeviceAtlas 2.0 PREVIEW

atrasatti — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:40:09 +0000

Back in June we announced the launch of TA-DA, our own test suite for mobile devices. We followed up with a little tutorial.

Despite the summer, the sun and everything else (ok, alright, there is not much sun in Ireland, but we DO go on vacation sometimes) we worked hard in the last couple of months and in fact we are ready to release yet another improvement to DeviceAtlas.