In technology, Windows 98 SE became Windows 7, Ubuntu helped spread Linux, and Mac OS X extended its users base. The mobile world exploded after the introduction of the iPhone. Web Design gained importance, social networks arose, and rich media found its way to the masses via YouTube. Google became the god of Internet, Apple gained a church of fanatic followers and a legion of enemies. Flash was born, became a symbol of the future, and today is being stoned by HTML5 standards. Web became 2.0, and then people realized how wrong it is to give it a version number. The Web is dead. Long live the Internet. But it will reborn, as soon as people realize how wrong it is to claim its death.

Jeffrey Zeldman introduced and Jeff Veen brilliantly concluded An Event Apart 2010.

An Event Apart

The conference’s name is self-explanatory. I’ve attended a few technology and web events in Brazil, and followed many across the world using Twitter and live feeds, and An Event Apart was by far one of the most influential in my career. I attended the 2008 edition in Chicago, and came back with my mind full of fresh ideas. This year’s was no different. My mind was bombarded with new inspirations, techniques and information. The speakers are  geniuses, their slides were cohesive, well thought and well executed and the presentations were flawless and hypnotic.

In 2010 web technologies and concepts made a huge leap, so, for this year’s AEA edition, nothing seemed more appropriate than opening the event with the Internet’s history. Jeffrey Zeldman led all attendees through a brief retrospective from 1452 – Gutenberg’s Press invention – until today’s current state of Internet.

Every attendee, be they designer, back-end or front-end developer, UX consultant, or even entrepreneur, surely left Hilton’s Conference Hall fully satisfied. Interface gurus Eric Meyer, Nicole Sullivan, Dan Cederholm and Andy Clarke showed us the most recent techniques to get the most of HTML and CSS’ latest technologies. Luke Wroblewski and Ethan Marcotte proved that we cannot think of a computer’s big display as the web’s only substratum, as the iPhones, Androids and iPads are all capable of accessing the Web wherever we are. Kristina Halvorson, Jared Spool, Jeremy Keith and Aarron Walter taught us that human beings are not machines nor objects, and they need to be loved – and our interfaces should reflect this desire.

And, to close a spectacular event, Jeff Veen, in a very touching speech showed how the web works – how we enjoy it, and why suggesting that it is dead is pure madness. In the end, applause and passionate tweets told their own story.

As outlined in his talk, the very first question when developing for mobile is: what type of application do I want my product to have? Currently, there are three different types: Native, Web and SMS. Choosing one is based on the purpose of your project as well as the target audience.

• Native: used when the aesthetics of the app is very important. Native is recommended when you want to access a core feature of the device, like a camera or GPS. And, because of their app stores, Native apps have the added advantages discoverability and visibility.  The disadvantage with this type of application is fragmentation, i.e. you must write a different application for each device.
• Web: used when the focus is on distribution. Web apps are available on any device enabled with Internet access and there is no need to download. Considering testing and supporting, web applications have an advantage since they do not need to go through all the bureaucracy of the app store. Updates are also up and running instantly. The main disadvantage of web apps is sand-boxing.
• SMS: rare and only used in markets where internet access on the phone is not available or prohibitively expensive. SMS apps don’t offer discoverability.

Considering the above, Web applications are usually the best choice. They are cheaper to produce, more standardized and easier to distribute. According to Stark himself, “If you CAN build your app with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then you probably should.”

In the second part of the talk, two interesting tools were demonstrated:

jQTouch

jQTouch is a jQuery plugin for mobile webkit browsers developed by David Kaneda. It Allows native animations, navigation and automatic customization of theme. Even if you will not actually using it in your application, it is a great tool for prototyping it.

To set jQTouch, you have to add in your page:

That means:

(1) adding hardcore structural design rules. This is required and you shouldn’t edit it
(2) add your theme style file. There are some options in jQTouch website or you can write your own
(3) initialize jQTouch after javascripts files are added. You can pass an object as a parameter with some values as icon and preloadImages

You can learn more from the jQTouch website or its documentation.

You can also see a quick overview in the video bellow:

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. Using it, you can still take advantage of core features in iPhone, Android, Palm Symbian and Blackberry. It’s been recognized as a game-changer and its source code has been downloaded more than 200,000 times! Web applications can now compete with native applications when functionality is the main requirement.

For more information, you can visit the PhoneGap website.

To learn how to install it, check the video bellow:

Get the Best Apps Now!

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Flash Player 10.1
This release of the flash player sees the first realisation of the Open Screen Project whereby all the partners aim to bring the interactive web to all devices. And which better platform than the Flash Platform to implement this. This is why this version of Flash Player 10.1 will be available for all major OS’s as well as smartphones. Yes – that means Flash will be playing games,  movies, adding interactivity and more to web pages right on your mobile. This is a major step forward in using the internet on our smartphone, for all except one major player in the field, the Apple iPhone.
My prediction: Mobile will finally have the full web and this includes them in the web application target market. But the mobile internet far outweighs the PC internet market. This will mean websites will be optimised for mobile out the box. In fact it will become a standard to have a resizing version of your application so that it becomes easier to read on smaller screens. Since the device capabilities can be read in Flash, it would be able to adjust to whether its run on a mobile device or a PC.
Apple has decided not to have the Flash Player in its Safari mobile web browser. The mobile device sector is changing rapidly, specially with the introduction of Android. So my prediction is that either Apple brings Flash Player to its mobile Safari or the iPhone becomes the next “windows mobile” of its day.

Flash CS5 Professional compile to iPhone application
Developers will be able to compile a native iPhone application straight from Flash Professional CS5. So it is an iPhone application but created using Flash Professional. No longer do we need a Mac to create the application either, we can as easily create it on Windows. We can even create it using our beloved ActionScript 3 rather than Objective C. This does not mean that the application wont abide by the iPhone security rules, they still apply as they do to any other iPhone application. In many cases Flash allows certain features that break the rules for Apple’s security policies for iPhone applications – these features will be disabled when compiling to an iPhone application. An example of this is the way that the application will not be able to load an external .swf file. Another example is that writing to the camera is allowed but not displaying photos from the camera roll.
My prediction: This innovaiton will be welcomed by Flash developers. In the past writing an iPhone app meant learning a whole new language. This may even turn out to be the de-facto method for creating iPhone applications. We will definitely see more web applications being offered as iPhone apps, and it may become standard to offer Flash web applications as iPhone applications too.

AIR 2.0
Adobe Integrated Runtime(AIR) has been a great success. By January 2009 it had been installed more than 100 million times, and is currently around the 250 million mark. The big announcement regarding AIR is that it will be deployed on mobile as well. It will be installed just like a regular mobile application, and will appear to the user like a regular application. AIR 2.0 has more hooks into the native OS, and has the ability to create a native OS installer.
My prediction: The previous prediction applies here as well.  It will become standard to have a mobile app to go with every AIR application. This will be another method of  gathering stats, with the ability to get more information from users when they connect from AIR applications.
Because mobile devices offers more in terms interactivity, this could mean added functionality for web applications, for example: the poke feature on facebook could become a tickle (via vibrate) feature on the mobile version.

Summary
Now that Flash is going mobile it means we can finally have the full web experience on our mobile devices. This will complete the full circle of  devices to which we can port our web applications. So this will mean develop once and deploy once to let users access your application from Windows, Mac, Linux, your smartphone browser, as a native app iPhone app, or as an AIR application, straight from the website!  Now all we need are great ideas!

Nowadays it’s almost impossible to write an article about mobile phones without mentioning the very successful iPhone. Apple had practically turned the mobile  industry upside down with its touch screen device. Some people will argue to the death about how the iPhone, or the “Jesus Phone” as some call it, is the best thing since sliced bread – and nobody can argue against how successful this device has become. But I am predicting a total onslaught of Android devices within 2 years. The Android army of phones will be everywhere you look and you will not be able to visit any cellphone store without running into at least 50 different phones running this OS. OK – maybe that is going a bit far but I think you get the message and already we are seeing signs of it. At the time of writing this article there are 16 official Android devices. How will this army of Android devices be created you ask ? Enter the Open Handset Alliance.

The Open Handset Alliance was formed in 2007 and currently has 47 members. It is a consortium of technology and mobile companies all dedicated to bringing us better mobile experiences, with Android being their first project . There are some big names amongst the 47 members, including Google, Intel, Nvidia, HTC, Asus, SonyEriccson, LG, Ebay. With so many big names dedicated to Android development, it is bound to be amongst the top mobile device OS’s. You can read more about this argument here, let me get to the Android architecture.

Android is a Linux based software stack. On top of the Linux kernel layer lies a layer for the system libraries such as SQLite, SSL, OpenGL, etc. This layer also houses the Android runtime, which runs the Dalvik Virtual Machine. On top of this there’s the Application Framework, housing the managers like the Activity Manager, Window Manager, etc. Then finally there is the application layer, which is the layer we are most interested in.

Android applications can consist of different sections, namely Activities, Services, Broadcast Recievers and Content Providers. Activities form the User Interface(UI) part of the application, Services run in the background similar to RSS feed readers checking for updates. Broadcast Receivers just listen for particular system broadcasts, for example , when the battery is low. Content Providers just provide content to any asking application , for example your application asking the contact book to provide the users contacts for use within your application. We will mostly be concerned with Activities.

Activities were designed to be totally integrated with one another. What I mean is that Activities can call one another and pass data to one another, basically  like an event driven system, but on a system wide level. An application is thus a group of Activities passing Intents to one another. It is then possible to include , lets say, a Google Maps Activity into your application by passing a Google Maps Intent to it and waiting for a result from it. It would seem to the end user that you created a Google Maps section to your app. I think this is pretty powerful.

To get started with creating these applications you need the free Android SDK, Apple iPhone developers need to register first($99!). Then you going to need an IDE, there is an Eclipse plugin, the Android Development Tools(ADT) plugin that has everything including the latest stable SDK. You don’t immediately need a phone to test on as ADT comes with an Android emulator that you can debug and test with but you will eventually need a phone to properly test with. ADT is pretty awesome as it comes with many tools to tell you exactly whats happening on the phone, which threads are running,it has code completion, wizards to quickly create sub classes and much more. It took me less than 30 minutes to get a “Hello World” application running on the Android emulator from the time I installed the ADT!

Since ActionScript 3 is a lot like Java I could easily jump in even though there were a few syntax differences – but after about 2 days and the help of ADT I had a basic application drawing a ball bouncing round the screen. But that was only the beginning and have rewritten sections of the game many times. Now after two weeks of lots of learning I have created the game and have it running on my phone. It is still a prototype and even though it needs weeks more spit and polish, after demonstrating the game I have gotten the thumbs up to turn it into a real game which we will be registering in the Android market.  There is still a lot to learn from this wonderful framework but the Android groups have been great help, as well as all the Android forums and of course, the Reference guide which ships with the SDK. It has been a challenge to get to grips with this entirely new development area but it was far easier than imagined it would be. I spent about 10 times longer getting to know Flash, and that was with people available to help me.

What about my experience using the phone? I can honestly say I am now more connected than ever before. My email, both gmail and exchange, is pushed to the phone. My Twitter application runs in the background constantly fetching  tweets, while my Facebook application gets all my buddies’ status updates to me as often as I want to see them. News and weather is updated all the time. My calendar and contacs are synchronised between my phone and my mobile. I never get lost anymore, maps are always available and my Gtalk status is always “available” and running in the background, unlike on some other phones Oh, and it makes phone calls as well.

I will follow up with another article of my findings, good and bad, this time focusing on the actual Android game development.

You may wonder? Telnet? My phone has Telnet ability? Yes. It is a powerful technology with many applications, and it is particularly useful for mobile banking and mobile payment. USSD opens a secure session that leaves no message trail and requires no local storage in the phone.

USSD response times are faster than SMS, and there is a session between the application and the mobile phone, just like a remote, old style, mainframe terminal. This means that if a carrier includes a USSD gateway into their network you can easily build all kinds of applications for a mass user base (yes, even old GSM phones can use USSD). USSD is part of the standard GMS stack, and all that is required to implement it is the USSD gateway.

Other than its use for banking and terminal initiated sessions, USSD also has server initiated messages that can be used, for example, for local oriented marketing. We can send a service message to all the users near a particulare base station indicating that a nearby store is running a sale.

Unfortunately most carriers and Value Added Service companies have never heard of USSD. Why? Well this can be explained when you understand the culture prevailing in mobile carriers, particularly in the developing world. I have had the opportunity to meet and I know lots of people from a number of different carriers. I have even had the opportunity to watch some of these carrier owners talk, and can confirm first hand that the culture prohibits the exploration of technologies such as USSD.

I also believe that in most companies, the owners or the founders are responsible for setting the tune of the company or the corporate culture. Once this is in place, it is very difficult to change. Therefore – if you know the origin of the company, you can take an educated guess as to what to expect when you try to do business with them.

Everybody knows that the cell phone carrier business is a good business to be in, particularly in the developing world, because people in these markets have very few alternative communication options. And since everybody needs to communicate, no matter how poor they are, the market is captive.

Every country has its upper class, wealthy and successful people. Again, no matter how poor the country is, there is always someone rich enough. It can be a land owner, coffee salesman, a politically influential oil company owner … there is always someone wealthy enough to buy or build his own carrier. It is no surprise that most countries have GSM coverage.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to know a thing about technology or networking to build your own carrier. You can always call Sony Ericsson or Nokia-Siemens and tell them “I have purchased a spectrum from my country’s government, and now I want you to build a GSM carrier network for me”. They will be glad to do it.

After your business is up and running, thanks to the GSM standard you can try to make your operational costs lower by using other network providers and playing them against each other. Then you can start doing what you are good at. These guys are good into buying cheap and selling high, understanding their customers’ needs and how things work in their country.

As a technology provider we have to understand how these companies operate to enable us to work with them. If you want to sell a great technical project to them you have to understand that they don’t care about technology, and can barely understand how great or innovative your idea is. They want to increase their profit and they know that their user base is very different from their European or Japanese counterparts. They probably understand their user base a lot better than you do. Be prepared to learn from them, be patient in explaining the good points of your product and be ready to adapt to whatever they have in mind. Keep in mind that you will have a more difficult sell and probably a lower margin than you can could get from European carriers. You will probably have to shoulder all the risk for yourself and try to negotiate a kind of revenue sharing that does not require investments from them.

As a user I just want to have more payment options. As a technical guy I know that USSD can enable people that cannot have a bank account today to have access to banking services. Thus, I have to say that USSD technology may be old but it’s very new and useful in many places.

I believe that there will always be a relatively small, and relatively very privileged, community of web users in Africa who will be able to use the services which the web enables from devices such as laptops, PCs and iPhones. These are the people who will blog, post youtubes, tweets, flickrs and who “get” the web the way it is being used in North America, Western Europe, and the wealthier parts of the East.There is a much larger part of Africa that is unlikely to ever be able to meet the energy requirements for running desktop (or laptop) computers that are capable of providing full, broad-band consuming, graphically intense user experiences to the consumer. And what’s more – it is my contention that this part of Africa will never need, nor want this service.

Why ? Because of “cultural” differences ? Because of “too low” standards of education ? No – absolutely not. The reason is that Africa will find new, and different uses for the web – for the services that are enabled on the internet – because Africa has different needs. The devices that Africans use to access the web will not be the devices that immediately comes to our minds (us being technologists, geeks, hackers, bloggers, twitterati and the like). It will NOT be iPhones, Blackberries, Macbooks, Dells nor Sonys. I doubt that netbooks are going to feature in any significant way. Africa is going to be mobile.

Africa is going to use mobile devices, with very low energy requirements. Durable, portable devices. Devices that provide utility, not bling. Devices that are hand-cranked, and that can eat sunlight. Africa will use the internet to create a web of relationships. Africans will stay in contact, and foster community using the web their (our) way.

It is up to us – the technologists and evangelists – to facilitate what Africa needs. Let’s take a step back and see the web as an immensely versatile protocol and philosophy that can be adapted to a great many needs. The web is about linking – and we do not need Flash to do that. WAP will do.