We had an awesome Ruby|Web conference at Snowbird ski resort outside Salt Lake City last week. I was able to share some of my thoughts on WebGL and also connect it with ruby event machine. I have slides available and I also replicated the content on my github account. I know now that the websockets [...]
brad.midgley
Our team talking about our company, our work, our clients and each other.
Android iPad knockoffs… pass
We have a tablet running android that we use for testing software development. While it is an interesting device, I expected it to be easier to use. This tablet is labeled “iRobot”, a name I thought was reserved for vacuums. The tablet is not very responsive but I expected that. The battery doesn’t last as [...]
App submission changes
If you have an existing project and you try to resubmit to the app store, you are likely to run into a problem with the changes Apple has made. Error: The binary you uploaded was invalid. The bundle did not contain an icon for iPad of exactly 72×72 pixels, in .png format. Solution: Add a [...]
Develop your WebGL strategy now
WebGL is a developing standard for delivering 3D content inside an HTML5 canvas. The spec hasn’t reached a 1.0 version yet, but Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome have support we can try out in their nightly builds for the draft version. I had the best luck on both Linux and OSX in trying out WebGL [...]
WebGL delivers 3D everywhere
WebGL is a developing standard for delivering 3D content inside an HTML5 canvas. The spec hasn’t reached a 1.0 version yet, but Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome have support we can try out in their nightly builds for the draft version. I had the best luck on both Linux and OSX in trying out WebGL [...]
JQTouch mobile app integration with SmartFoxServer
In the previous articles on http://surgeworksmobile.com/cross-platform/jqtouch-mobile-app-for-user-registration-tutorial, I focused on the JQTouch side of things. I’d like to mention the ingredients to make the app work with SmartFoxServer since that can be tricky. I built both grails and jython web services to serve as the back end interface for this application. Unfortunately, both these implementations would [...]
The great tablet catch-up
It doesn’t matter if people understand your business model or not… if you sell a million of anything in 28 days, the competition will soon be clawing to get into the game. Apple is seeing some potential for competition. The other tablets are coming in a few classes of devices. Several models will run Windows [...]
iPhone users upgrade, Android/Blackberry/WM users don’t
Many people don’t give a second thought to the idea that you can upgrade your laptop or desktop computer to a newer operating system, even an OS from a different vendor, down the road. It’s a completely different story for mobiles. The roots of the problem are in the specialized hardware that mobiles have. The [...]
Game changing tablet & mobile at HP
Palm’s Foleo appeared to be a misguided attempt to add value to PalmOS phones. It had an ARM CPU, instant on capability, and ran a custom version of linux. The offering was canceled just shortly before it would have become available. Looking back on this effort now, it has some similarity to the expected Android [...]
JQTouch mobile app for user registration, tutorial
In the first article in this series I described a way to redirect iPhone clients to our mobile application. Now I will describe how to build a registration application using JQTouch. A typical web application sends the content of each page, but in this model we deliver the whole application and only parts of the [...]
How to redirect iPhone users to your mobile site
JQTouch is a web framework built on JQuery and intended to make mobile sites render through a webview and operate like a native mobile application. We’ve used JQTouch in a couple of different scenarios, such as a web site interface for iPhone and running on top of phonegap to build a standalone application. I’ll describe [...]
Microsoft on the verge of releasing Windows Mobile version 2.0
OK… sorry about the inflammatory title, but it really does feel like MS has been coasting since it came out with its first mobile software release. I’ve used Windows Mobile on two Dell Axim revs and two cellphones. Instead of feeling like each new OS revision was an upgrade, it just felt like the same [...]
How long will it take to understand Rails 3 in and out?
According to David Heinemeier Hansson, you will never understand it all. Case in point? David himself. That was the gist of his answer to how a new change to the way rails 3 renders actions in the browser would be handled for older browsers. DHH gets involved in the parts he cares about and doesn’t [...]
iPad influencing the tablet market
My first thought on seeing this image today was “wow… Steve Jobs looks really small now behind his big iPhone”. Fortunately, this isn’t a case of Steve shrinking, it’s the mobile computer that got bigger. I believe there is a lot of potential for the Apple tablet and I’m excited to write software for it. [...]
Linux kiosk
I recently did some maintenance on a linux-based kiosk project. It runs linux and has a rails application serving content. Firefox is running in a kiosk mode and there is no keyboard or mouse present. In adding a touchscreen from a different vendor, I found some details that can help make a kiosk application more [...]