Life by Bits & Numbers » Enlightening

Mobile advertising by the numbers – inforgraphics from InnerActive

Inteist — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:07:49 +0000

An interesting infographic from the mobile advertising provider and mediation company – InnerActive was produced encompassing the timeline between the last year’s MWC in Barcelona and this year’s MWC.

Great collection of mobile UI resources

Inteist — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:12:38 +0000

A compilation of mobile UI resources:

Enjoy!

Building Secure Mobile Applications – AT&T free webcast

Keyboard shortcut to switch tabs in Safari

Inteist — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:00:17 +0000

If you are using Chrome and Firefox and well pretty much any other popular browser, you are used to switching tabs with CMD+number which switches to the desired tab e.g. CMD+1 will switch to the first tab (including the pinned ones for Chrome). This however does not work for Safari.

For safari to cycle between tabs use CMD+SHIFT+Left/Right

Firefox 3.6 fix the tab order to open at the end of the tabs

Installing/Updating BlackBerry Eclipse SDK – problem with authentication

Inteist — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:16:25 +0000

If you are getting an error similar to the error below while trying to install and/or update BlackBerry SDK as a plugin for Eclipse

An error occurred while collecting items to be installed session context was:
(profile=AppceleratorProfile, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.phases.Collect, operand=, action=).
Unable to read repository at:
Unable to read repository at https://swdownloads.blackberry.com/Downloads/auth/contactFormPreload.do?code=
...

You are in luck!

Your problems are over as you found the solution. All you need to do is to clear the “Secure Storage” contents. To do that go to

Windows -> Preferences

Type secure, drill down to find the org.eclipse.equinox.p2.repository, expand this, and you will see the swdownloads.blackberry.com. Select this entry and delete it. This should resolve the issue next time you try to update/install the plugin you should be asked again for your credentials to the BlackBerry developer portal and once you put them in the installation should proceed normally.

Here’s how it looks in Eclipse:

Eclipse marking SVN changes like Netbeans

Inteist — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:34:53 +0000

Eclipse is a great tool that I have been using for mmm… wow (!!!) probably about 7 years now and the most amazing thing about it is of course all the plugins that can really extend the functionality of the basic editor and make it highly personalized. This is great, but some things should just be in a good IDE. Like built in SVN integration. Seriously, why do I need to install a plugin for something so basic? Netbeans is another great IDE, but I use it less as most my development environments come from dedicated Eclipse plugins and while it is possible to do the development in Netbeans it is not as convenient and straightforward and this is what we the pragmatic programmers usually prefer.

So one nice thing I got used to in Netbeans is how it colors the changes that I made in the editor if the file is under version control (e.g. SVN). After I used Netbeans for a while and got to like this feature, when I got back to Eclipse I kinda missed it. It’s nice and convenient. Quite non obtrusive i.e. it doesn’t get in your way – you may not even be noticing this if you don’t know about it.

Anyways, turns out that it is quite easy to enable similar functionality for Eclipse, alas you have to have SVN plugin I suppose for the “diff” to work. Just follow the screenshot if you want to enable coloring of SVN changes in Eclipse similar to Netbeans.

Here’s how it will look (you can change colors if you want)

The power of SnapDragon processor with Adreno GPU

Inteist — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:30:18 +0000

Very energizing and inspiring video about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor with the Adreno GPU. Wide deployment of the SnapDragon processors (including in the new iPhone 4S) makes it so more attractive to develop for.

If you are a game developer watch the video and get inspired!

Click to view in the full post

View More Qualcomm Videos

Will Windows eventually loose portables war thanks to many ARM powered netbooks coming?

Windows 8 “contracts” what’s the fuss is all about

Inteist — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:41:07 +0000

So I just heard about the upcoming “contracts” concept for future versions of Microsoft products (the contracts will probably get propagated at least partially into virtually all Microsoft products like Windows Phone, XBox, Tablet OS versions etc). The general idea seems to be that various applications will be able to share data and communicate otherwise not really disclosing too much about their functionality.

It is exciting news yeah, but why does it so painfully reminds me of Android “intents” system? To me it is exactly the same. Although some sources say it has some ideas similar to what former Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s proposed as the “universal clipboard” concept — dating back to 2006. I still find it hard to see how this is different from Android’s intents system. It would be interesting to watch who sues who over that if at all. The huge piles of patents Google and Microsoft have do not make much sense to go to war over this.

It is interesting though to see how one of the most important features/ideas of Android OS gets propagated into other operating systems.

Rules of simple design by Eric Raymond

Inteist — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:18:48 +0000

Eric S. Raymond

Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.
Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.
Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.

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Interesting and amazing things you can do with a little creativity

Inteist — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:47:55 +0000

Using the latest version of Google Goggles on Android, you can automatically solve Sudoku. This is what a little creativity paired with technology does – it brings fun and innovation!

Check out the video of this in action!

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Windows Phone 7 – how to reset emulator

Inteist — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:29:42 +0000

I needed recently to basically remove my app installation from the Windows Phone 7 emulator. I could not find how you can remove the app from the emulator, but I found a way to reset and force the Windows Phone 7 emulator to cold boot.

You can clear the windows phone emulator state, by deleting the saved state file in:

%ProgramData%\Microsoft\XDE\*.dess

You can just hit the windows key on your keyboard and paste this “%ProgramData%\Microsoft\XDE\” and you will be taken to the right location.

Delete the *.dess files. This will force the emulator to reset and run the cold boot sequence.

Too bad, it’s not possible to do simulator reset right from the development tools. Here’s hoping that Windows Phone Tools development team will improve that situation in the future releases.

Please share your thought in comments.