March 10, 2013 at 11:58The digest of news from the world of mobile development for the last week No. 5 (March 4 - 10, 2013)
Last week turned out to be rich in life stories - comrade vofka told how he made the application productive, guskov wrote how downloads tripled by reducing the size of applications, Facebook shared an interesting story about how the company patched Dalvik, Halfbrick Studios and Kiloo Games described the development of their games . And besides, an interesting service for prototyping, updating applications without developers, Amazon’s own advertising network, Android support, and many other interesting things in our weekly digest.
UIView animation: moving along an arbitrary path using the example of the
Rus circle
To move UIView heirs along a more complex path, you have to go down below and go to the Core Graphics framework level. In this case, the number of examples on the network is reduced and it is difficult to find the necessary. And if it is, then the quality of implementation often leaves much to be desired. I faced this situation when it became necessary to make an animation of an interactive book for children.
My sales experience on the App Store. $ 29K for 15 months
Rus
I want to share the experience of developing and selling my iOS application from the Productivity category. I will not talk about the application, so as not to be considered advertising. Just the graphs and conclusions I made.
Programming low-latency sound in iOS
Rus
The article will discuss the features of the low-level API for working with sound in iOS that were encountered when developing Viber. It will be about choosing the size of the hardware buffer and the behavior of AudioUnit when changing the sampling frequency.
Qt for iOS: preview of
Rus
At a recent exhibition Embedded World 2013 at the Qt stand, a demonstration of portability of applications was presented: on the row of devices running iOS, Android and QNX, the Qt5 Cinematic Experience application was launched. It was reported that this is the same application, but attentive users may have noticed the lack of a particle system in the example on the iPad. Today in the official Qt blog, an announcement has appeared that reveals the nuances of portability.
ABI: Android will overtake iOS in the number of downloads, but Apple will remain the leader
Eng / Rus
There are several ways to measure the success of the mobile platform, but if you are interested in the number of downloads, then analysts from ABI Research predict that in 2013 Android will become the leader. According to the firm’s latest prediction, 58% of smartphone apps downloaded this year will be Android apps, while iOS will account for only 33%. But if you include tablet app downloads in the report, these numbers will look slightly different.
A program from a dozen lines brings down Springboard
Rus
It is highly likely that applications that cause SpringBoard to restart (including the crash of all other applications) can easily go through the App Review and get into the AppStore.
We triple the profit from the iOS application. No advancement, only technology ...
Rus
In this post I would like to tell the story of the development of the free version of my application, which was released a little over a year ago. Talk about how I was able to increase the number of downloads (and, in this case, profit) three times only by technical means.
Cyto: our trial and error
Rus
A year ago, we, the Ukrainian Studio Room 8, started making our first game called Cyto. No one in the team had any experience in game development and application development for iOS, but everyone had the ambition to do something really awesome. Everything had to be studied literally on the go and sometimes we felt like elephants in a china shop.
Under the hood: a patch for Dalvik from Facebook for Android
Eng
Facebook is one of the most functional applications available on Android. With features such as push notifications, news feed, and the built-in version of Facebook Messenger (which in fact is a full-fledged application) that work simultaneously in real time, the complexity and amount of code gives rise to a number of technical difficulties that other Android developers also encounter. - especially on older versions of the platform. (Our latest applications support the old version of Android 2.2 - Froyo, which is almost 3 years old).
Cloud Support for Android Eng Applications
In the Windows Azure Mobile Services cloud platform, Android tool support has been added to existing support for Windows 8, Windows Phone, and iOS. The released Android SDK is open source and available on GitHub along with all other SDKs.
Acceleration of crypto operations or porting experience for Android
Rus
The Android platform includes the Bouncycastle framework for crypto operations, for example, encryption or digital signature verification. A distinctive feature of this framework is that it is entirely written in Java, without the use of native code. This increases its tolerance, but significantly reduces performance. In a first approximation, the implementation of crypto functions using native code can give a significant performance boost. This can significantly increase the performance of an application that uses cryptography. Let's see if this assumption is confirmed.
Google Play Celebrates Birthday
Sale!
Exactly a year ago, the Android Market was transformed into Google Play. And on this occasion a week of discounts has been announced.
Launched The Humble Bundle with Android 5
Official site
All offered games, except Android, can also be run on Windows (offered in standalone version, as well as keys for Steam), Mac, as well as on Linux (it is possible to get bundle via Ubuntu Software Center ) As usual, soundtracks also come with games.
Customization of Android emulator from Intel
Rus
As a result, you get an emulator with an open file system and access to Google Play.
Mobiroo offers “rental” of paid applications for Android
Rus
One of the common opinions is that Android users are not too willing to buy applications. Mobiroo offers a solution - subscribe to the download-all-you-want-service, which gives you access to many paid applications for a fixed fee. In many ways, this is a kind of Netflix analogue for applications.
Android 4.x has finally overtaken Android 2.3.x
Eng / Rus
Google has published new data on the distribution of different versions of Android. For the first time, more people are using new versions of the operating system than 2.3 Gingerbread.
Ouya opened a portal for developers and began accepting
English applications. Consoles
will begin to arrive to users (those who participated in the Kickstarter campaign) on March 28th.
Unity Launches Application Reception for the Windows Store
Eng
Users can port their applications to Windows 8 and Windows RT. While Windows support is in beta mode.
The BlackBerry community is independently porting applications to the
English / Rus platform .
When asked whether BlackBerry was counting on users to start porting the applications themselves, Saunders said: “We definitely didn’t count on this. And we did not try to make it easier for users to port applications for our platform, but we were afraid that this could happen. ”
Amazon opens its own advertising network for mobile developers
Eng / Rus
Amazon based on Android creates its own ecosystem: its own application store, its gaming ecosystem, its currency and, of course, its “iron” environment from Kindle Fire. Today Amazon has taken the next obvious step and has offered developers a mobile advertising API that will allow them to use Amazon ads in their applications in place or in addition to ad networks of other companies such as Google, for example.
How Halfbrick Studios develops games like Fruit Ninja, Age Of Zombies and Jetpack Joyride
Engl / Eng
It is interesting that literally all Halfbrick games use basically one engine (almost completely written in C ++). The core engine team consists of six “hardcore programmers” who provide a stable architecture for the rest of the teams working on individual games. One of the largest Halfbrick teams at the moment is the team involved in their cloud service, which provides technology that combines games on different platforms. Halfbrick uses Amazon's EC2 platform for this purpose and has recently migrated to the NoSQL database in order to improve scalability.
Scringo SDK: for retention and engagement
Eng / Rus The
sad reality of mobile development today is that less than half of the users who download the application use it more than once. And this is exactly the problem Scringo wants to solve - an innovative set of tools for developers. Scringo allows you to add various functions to the application that are designed to keep users in it - messages between users, a "radar" to find nearby program partners, an activity feed that can be public, interactive feedback from the developer, etc. And all this can be added to the application in minutes.
AppGlu launches a mobile platform that allows you to update applications without the intervention of developers
Eng / Eng
Without timely updates, applications can get bored quickly. But the problem is that, in most cases, the only one who can update the application is the one who created it. The new enterprise platform, AppGlu, is designed so that entrepreneurs can update applications without developer intervention.
AppGyver: application prototype in a few minutes
Eng / Rus
“It is more for designers and product managers,” explains the director. “If you have layouts, storyboards, or Photoshop files, you can use AppGyver to turn them into interactive prototypes. It literally takes a few minutes. ” He writes. The service also gives access to animation and native navigation, which is another advantage over competitors.
Europeans and European languages: translate or not translate?
Rus
Recently, TNS, which conducts research on public opinion and social networks in 27 countries of the European Union, has prepared a report on how Europeans use and perceive languages. And ABBYY introduced us to some of the most interesting findings made in this document.
Secrets of successful design of a children's application - an interview with the developer
Rus
In this interview we will try to reveal important topics and get answers to many questions regarding the design of children's mobile applications and the place of a designer in the development process.
Cross-platform development for mobile with Xamarin
Rus
More recently, Xamarin announced the release of a new version of its tools for cross-platform development of mobile applications, but there are no sane articles in Russian on this topic. A small review appeared on Habré, not related to coding, there were a couple of attempts to talk about this a little more, but things did not go beyond the process of creating a Hello World application. It's a pity. This time we will try to correct this annoying misunderstanding.
The creators of Subway Surfer explain how the collaborative development
Eng / Eng / Rus
Small studios have to get smarter - an example of this is Kiloo Games, which tried a collaborative development model and won. In fact, the developers of Subway Surfers did not create the game themselves. Instead, they teamed up with another studio to multiply the strengths of both companies and create a better finished product.
How Year Walk
English was created
In ancient times, people tried to look into the future using various very strange methods. Get acquainted with the ancient Swedish phenomenon of moving through time during various kinds of first-person adventures that blur the line between two and three dimensions, as well as between reality and the supernatural. Take a stroll through the dark swedish forest of the 19th century, where strange creatures roam. Solve mysterious puzzles, touch and listen during your searches in order to foresee the future and, in the end, find out if your loved one will love you.
White Nights: Mobile Games Conference: June 27-28 in St. Petersburg
Official website The
number of tickets is limited, as long as their price starts at $ 200.
3 Apps4All Forum
Official website The
number of tickets is not limited, as long as their cost is 2000 rubles.
3 Ways to Create an Amazing Mobile Product for the
English Brand
Consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices, and they are becoming the main channel for their reach and engagement. Brands need to offer innovative mobile experience that is relevant, priced and responsive to user needs.
Jumptap: traffic from tablets continues to grow
Eng / Rus
By the end of 2012, tablets on the network consumed 18% of all traffic, smartphones - 78%, and regular phones only 4%. But they believe that given the trends in recent months, by the end of 2013 the percentage of tablets will increase to one third of all traffic (29%), and the share of smartphones will drop to 70%.
And again Nokia
Part 1 -> Part 2 -> Part 3 -> Part 4 -> Part of the "leading mobile analyst"
Last week an interesting article was published about what was happening at Nokia and what are the reasons for the crisis that happened to the company (Part 4) . Naturally, Eldar Murtazin has his own point of view on Nokia.
iOS
UIView animation: moving along an arbitrary path using the example of the
Rus circle
To move UIView heirs along a more complex path, you have to go down below and go to the Core Graphics framework level. In this case, the number of examples on the network is reduced and it is difficult to find the necessary. And if it is, then the quality of implementation often leaves much to be desired. I faced this situation when it became necessary to make an animation of an interactive book for children.
My sales experience on the App Store. $ 29K for 15 months
Rus
I want to share the experience of developing and selling my iOS application from the Productivity category. I will not talk about the application, so as not to be considered advertising. Just the graphs and conclusions I made.
Programming low-latency sound in iOS
Rus
The article will discuss the features of the low-level API for working with sound in iOS that were encountered when developing Viber. It will be about choosing the size of the hardware buffer and the behavior of AudioUnit when changing the sampling frequency.
Qt for iOS: preview of
Rus
At a recent exhibition Embedded World 2013 at the Qt stand, a demonstration of portability of applications was presented: on the row of devices running iOS, Android and QNX, the Qt5 Cinematic Experience application was launched. It was reported that this is the same application, but attentive users may have noticed the lack of a particle system in the example on the iPad. Today in the official Qt blog, an announcement has appeared that reveals the nuances of portability.
ABI: Android will overtake iOS in the number of downloads, but Apple will remain the leader
Eng / Rus
There are several ways to measure the success of the mobile platform, but if you are interested in the number of downloads, then analysts from ABI Research predict that in 2013 Android will become the leader. According to the firm’s latest prediction, 58% of smartphone apps downloaded this year will be Android apps, while iOS will account for only 33%. But if you include tablet app downloads in the report, these numbers will look slightly different.
A program from a dozen lines brings down Springboard
Rus
It is highly likely that applications that cause SpringBoard to restart (including the crash of all other applications) can easily go through the App Review and get into the AppStore.
We triple the profit from the iOS application. No advancement, only technology ...
Rus
In this post I would like to tell the story of the development of the free version of my application, which was released a little over a year ago. Talk about how I was able to increase the number of downloads (and, in this case, profit) three times only by technical means.
Cyto: our trial and error
Rus
A year ago, we, the Ukrainian Studio Room 8, started making our first game called Cyto. No one in the team had any experience in game development and application development for iOS, but everyone had the ambition to do something really awesome. Everything had to be studied literally on the go and sometimes we felt like elephants in a china shop.
Android
Under the hood: a patch for Dalvik from Facebook for Android
Eng
Facebook is one of the most functional applications available on Android. With features such as push notifications, news feed, and the built-in version of Facebook Messenger (which in fact is a full-fledged application) that work simultaneously in real time, the complexity and amount of code gives rise to a number of technical difficulties that other Android developers also encounter. - especially on older versions of the platform. (Our latest applications support the old version of Android 2.2 - Froyo, which is almost 3 years old).
Cloud Support for Android Eng Applications
In the Windows Azure Mobile Services cloud platform, Android tool support has been added to existing support for Windows 8, Windows Phone, and iOS. The released Android SDK is open source and available on GitHub along with all other SDKs.
Acceleration of crypto operations or porting experience for Android
Rus
The Android platform includes the Bouncycastle framework for crypto operations, for example, encryption or digital signature verification. A distinctive feature of this framework is that it is entirely written in Java, without the use of native code. This increases its tolerance, but significantly reduces performance. In a first approximation, the implementation of crypto functions using native code can give a significant performance boost. This can significantly increase the performance of an application that uses cryptography. Let's see if this assumption is confirmed.
Google Play Celebrates Birthday
Sale!
Exactly a year ago, the Android Market was transformed into Google Play. And on this occasion a week of discounts has been announced.
Launched The Humble Bundle with Android 5
Official site
All offered games, except Android, can also be run on Windows (offered in standalone version, as well as keys for Steam), Mac, as well as on Linux (it is possible to get bundle via Ubuntu Software Center ) As usual, soundtracks also come with games.
Customization of Android emulator from Intel
Rus
As a result, you get an emulator with an open file system and access to Google Play.
Mobiroo offers “rental” of paid applications for Android
Rus
One of the common opinions is that Android users are not too willing to buy applications. Mobiroo offers a solution - subscribe to the download-all-you-want-service, which gives you access to many paid applications for a fixed fee. In many ways, this is a kind of Netflix analogue for applications.
Android 4.x has finally overtaken Android 2.3.x
Eng / Rus
Google has published new data on the distribution of different versions of Android. For the first time, more people are using new versions of the operating system than 2.3 Gingerbread.
Ouya opened a portal for developers and began accepting
English applications. Consoles
will begin to arrive to users (those who participated in the Kickstarter campaign) on March 28th.
Microsoft
Unity Launches Application Reception for the Windows Store
Eng
Users can port their applications to Windows 8 and Windows RT. While Windows support is in beta mode.
Blackberry
The BlackBerry community is independently porting applications to the
English / Rus platform .
When asked whether BlackBerry was counting on users to start porting the applications themselves, Saunders said: “We definitely didn’t count on this. And we did not try to make it easier for users to port applications for our platform, but we were afraid that this could happen. ”
Money
Amazon opens its own advertising network for mobile developers
Eng / Rus
Amazon based on Android creates its own ecosystem: its own application store, its gaming ecosystem, its currency and, of course, its “iron” environment from Kindle Fire. Today Amazon has taken the next obvious step and has offered developers a mobile advertising API that will allow them to use Amazon ads in their applications in place or in addition to ad networks of other companies such as Google, for example.
Development
How Halfbrick Studios develops games like Fruit Ninja, Age Of Zombies and Jetpack Joyride
Engl / Eng
It is interesting that literally all Halfbrick games use basically one engine (almost completely written in C ++). The core engine team consists of six “hardcore programmers” who provide a stable architecture for the rest of the teams working on individual games. One of the largest Halfbrick teams at the moment is the team involved in their cloud service, which provides technology that combines games on different platforms. Halfbrick uses Amazon's EC2 platform for this purpose and has recently migrated to the NoSQL database in order to improve scalability.
Scringo SDK: for retention and engagement
Eng / Rus The
sad reality of mobile development today is that less than half of the users who download the application use it more than once. And this is exactly the problem Scringo wants to solve - an innovative set of tools for developers. Scringo allows you to add various functions to the application that are designed to keep users in it - messages between users, a "radar" to find nearby program partners, an activity feed that can be public, interactive feedback from the developer, etc. And all this can be added to the application in minutes.
AppGlu launches a mobile platform that allows you to update applications without the intervention of developers
Eng / Eng
Without timely updates, applications can get bored quickly. But the problem is that, in most cases, the only one who can update the application is the one who created it. The new enterprise platform, AppGlu, is designed so that entrepreneurs can update applications without developer intervention.
AppGyver: application prototype in a few minutes
Eng / Rus
“It is more for designers and product managers,” explains the director. “If you have layouts, storyboards, or Photoshop files, you can use AppGyver to turn them into interactive prototypes. It literally takes a few minutes. ” He writes. The service also gives access to animation and native navigation, which is another advantage over competitors.
Europeans and European languages: translate or not translate?
Rus
Recently, TNS, which conducts research on public opinion and social networks in 27 countries of the European Union, has prepared a report on how Europeans use and perceive languages. And ABBYY introduced us to some of the most interesting findings made in this document.
Secrets of successful design of a children's application - an interview with the developer
Rus
In this interview we will try to reveal important topics and get answers to many questions regarding the design of children's mobile applications and the place of a designer in the development process.
Cross-platform development for mobile with Xamarin
Rus
More recently, Xamarin announced the release of a new version of its tools for cross-platform development of mobile applications, but there are no sane articles in Russian on this topic. A small review appeared on Habré, not related to coding, there were a couple of attempts to talk about this a little more, but things did not go beyond the process of creating a Hello World application. It's a pity. This time we will try to correct this annoying misunderstanding.
The creators of Subway Surfer explain how the collaborative development
Eng / Eng / Rus
Small studios have to get smarter - an example of this is Kiloo Games, which tried a collaborative development model and won. In fact, the developers of Subway Surfers did not create the game themselves. Instead, they teamed up with another studio to multiply the strengths of both companies and create a better finished product.
How Year Walk
English was created
In ancient times, people tried to look into the future using various very strange methods. Get acquainted with the ancient Swedish phenomenon of moving through time during various kinds of first-person adventures that blur the line between two and three dimensions, as well as between reality and the supernatural. Take a stroll through the dark swedish forest of the 19th century, where strange creatures roam. Solve mysterious puzzles, touch and listen during your searches in order to foresee the future and, in the end, find out if your loved one will love you.
Conferences
White Nights: Mobile Games Conference: June 27-28 in St. Petersburg
Official website The
number of tickets is limited, as long as their price starts at $ 200.
3 Apps4All Forum
Official website The
number of tickets is not limited, as long as their cost is 2000 rubles.
Marketing
3 Ways to Create an Amazing Mobile Product for the
English Brand
Consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices, and they are becoming the main channel for their reach and engagement. Brands need to offer innovative mobile experience that is relevant, priced and responsive to user needs.
Devices
Jumptap: traffic from tablets continues to grow
Eng / Rus
By the end of 2012, tablets on the network consumed 18% of all traffic, smartphones - 78%, and regular phones only 4%. But they believe that given the trends in recent months, by the end of 2013 the percentage of tablets will increase to one third of all traffic (29%), and the share of smartphones will drop to 70%.
And again Nokia
Part 1 -> Part 2 -> Part 3 -> Part 4 -> Part of the "leading mobile analyst"
Last week an interesting article was published about what was happening at Nokia and what are the reasons for the crisis that happened to the company (Part 4) . Naturally, Eldar Murtazin has his own point of view on Nokia.