May 19 2013
Google IO – Android Highlights
We have anotherWeWe have another I/O in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
Google Cloud Messaging – This one was new to me, still it seems that is widely used and with great success. This technology allows you to communicate effectively through the cloud with your entire application installs. There are several communication patterns for this, and they just announced upstream communication (i.e. your applications can communicate with the cloud which in turn will communicate with your server). This is part of the Google Play Services so it is available for use right now for all OS versions higher than Froyo.
Volley Networking framework – This really picked my interest since it has a lot of potential. This networking framework promise to take care of all the heavy lifting regarding network communication. It is multithreaded and optimized for certain tasks such as downloading images.
ActionBarCompat – The action bar will be added to the support library making it available for older OS versions. Finally you will be able to standardize your navigation and UI look and feel for older devices (version 2.2 and above). This one was a “soft” announcement since, as with many other things, they didn’t provide a release date. The fact that is being used by the IO application distributed for the event indicates that should come sooner rather than later.
Android Studio/New Build System (Gradle) – I list these two together because the new Android Studio relies on the new Gradle build approach. They are effectively deprecating the ant support for builds. Support for Eclipse will continue, however it is clear that they are investing heavily in the IntelliJ IDE. The release for Studio that is available right now is marked as “early preview release” and it is not recommended yet as a primary IDE.
We will continue to expand on the I/O announcements in future blog posts. In general this I/O was more about incrementally updating the platform instead of introducing significant change. In my opinion this speaks to the maturity of the OS, after project Butter and Jelly Bean we have a stable environment that provides most of the necessary pieces to build incredible applications. Now if I could only get my new Pixel to run Android Studio, everything will be perfect :).
have another I/O in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
Google Cloud Messaging – This one was new to me, still it seems that is widely used and with great success. This technology allows you to communicate effectively through the cloud with your entire application installs. There are several communication patterns for this, and they just announced upstream communication (i.e. your applications can communicate with the cloud which in turn will communicate with your server). This is part of the Google Play Services so it is available for use right now for all OS versions higher than Froyo.
Volley Networking framework – This really picked my interest since it has a lot of potential. This networking framework promise to take care of all the heavy lifting regarding network communication. It is multithreaded and optimized for certain tasks such as downloading images.
ActionBarCompat – The action bar will be added to the support library making it available for older OS versions. Finally you will be able to standardize your navigation and UI look and feel for older devices (version 2.2 and above). This one was a “soft” announcement since, as with many other things, they didn’t provide a release date. The fact that is being used by the IO application distributed for the event indicates that should come sooner rather than later.
Android Studio/New Build System (Gradle) – I list these two together because the new Android Studio relies on the new Gradle build approach. They are effectively deprecating the ant support for builds. Support for Eclipse will continue, however it is clear that they are investing heavily in the IntelliJ IDE. The release for Studio that is available right now is marked as “early preview release” and it is not recommended yet as a primary IDE.
We will continue to expand on the I/O announcements in future blog posts. In general this I/O was more about incrementally updating the platform instead of introducing significant change. In my opinion this speaks to the maturity of the OS, after project Butter and Jelly Bean we have a stable environment that provides most of the necessary pieces to build incredible applications. Now if I could only get my new Pixel to run Android Studio, everything will be perfect :).
I/OWe have another I/O in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
Google Cloud Messaging – This one was new to me, still it seems that is widely used and with great success. This technology allows you to communicate effectively through the cloud with your entire application installs. There are several communication patterns for this, and they just announced upstream communication (i.e. your applications can communicate with the cloud which in turn will communicate with your server). This is part of the Google Play Services so it is available for use right now for all OS versions higher than Froyo.
Volley Networking framework – This really picked my interest since it has a lot of potential. This networking framework promise to take care of all the heavy lifting regarding network communication. It is multithreaded and optimized for certain tasks such as downloading images.
ActionBarCompat – The action bar will be added to the support library making it available for older OS versions. Finally you will be able to standardize your navigation and UI look and feel for older devices (version 2.2 and above). This one was a “soft” announcement since, as with many other things, they didn’t provide a release date. The fact that is being used by the IO application distributed for the event indicates that should come sooner rather than later.
Android Studio/New Build System (Gradle) – I list these two together because the new Android Studio relies on the new Gradle build approach. They are effectively deprecating the ant support for builds. Support for Eclipse will continue, however it is clear that they are investing heavily in the IntelliJ IDE. The release for Studio that is available right now is marked as “early preview release” and it is not recommended yet as a primary IDE.
We will continue to expand on the I/O announcements in future blog posts. In general this I/O was more about incrementally updating the platform instead of introducing significant change. In my opinion this speaks to the maturity of the OS, after project Butter and Jelly Bean we have a stable environment that provides most of the necessary pieces to build incredible applications. Now if I could only get my new Pixel to run Android Studio, everything will be perfect :).
We have another I/O in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
Google Cloud Messaging – This one was new to me, still it seems that is widely used and with great success. This technology allows you to communicate effectively through the cloud with your entire application installs. There are several communication patterns for this, and they just announced upstream communication (i.e. your applications can communicate with the cloud which in turn will communicate with your server). This is part of the Google Play Services so it is available for use right now for all OS versions higher than Froyo.
Volley Networking framework – This really picked my interest since it has a lot of potential. This networking framework promise to take care of all the heavy lifting regarding network communication. It is multithreaded and optimized for certain tasks such as downloading images.
ActionBarCompat – The action bar will be added to the support library making it available for older OS versions. Finally you will be able to standardize your navigation and UI look and feel for older devices (version 2.2 and above). This one was a “soft” announcement since, as with many other things, they didn’t provide a release date. The fact that is being used by the IO application distributed for the event indicates that should come sooner rather than later.
Android Studio/New Build System (Gradle) – I list these two together because the new Android Studio relies on the new Gradle build approach. They are effectively deprecating the ant support for builds. Support for Eclipse will continue, however it is clear that they are investing heavily in the IntelliJ IDE. The release for Studio that is available right now is marked as “early preview release” and it is not recommended yet as a primary IDE.
We will continue to expand on the I/O announcements in future blog posts. In general this I/O was more about incrementally updating the platform instead of introducing significant change. In my opinion this speaks to the maturity of the OS, after project Butter and Jelly Bean we have a stable environment that provides most of the necessary pieces to build incredible applications. Now if I could only get my new Pixel to run Android Studio, everything will be perfect :).
in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
Google Cloud Messaging – This one was new to me, still it seems that is widely used and with great success. This technology allows you to communicate effectively through the cloud with your entire application installs. There are several communication patterns for this, and they just announced upstream communication (i.e. your applications can communicate with the cloud which in turn will communicate with your server). This is part of the Google Play Services so it is available for use right now for all OS versions higher than Froyo.
Volley Networking framework – This really picked my interest since it has a lot of potential. This networking framework promise to take care of all the heavy lifting regarding network communication. It is multithreaded and optimized for certain tasks such as downloading images.
ActionBarCompat – The action bar will be added to the support library making it available for older OS versions. Finally you will be able to standardize your navigation and UI look and feel for older devices (version 2.2 and above). This one was a “soft” announcement since, as with many other things, they didn’t provide a release date. The fact that is being used by the IO application distributed for the event indicates that should come sooner rather than later.
Android Studio/New Build System (Gradle) – I list these two together because the new Android Studio relies on the new Gradle build approach. They are effectively deprecating the ant support for builds. Support for Eclipse will continue, however it is clear that they are investing heavily in the IntelliJ IDE. The release for Studio that is available right now is marked as “early preview release” and it is not recommended yet as a primary IDE.
We will continue to expand on the I/O announcements in future blog posts. In general this I/O was more about incrementally updating the platform instead of introducing significant change. In my opinion this speaks to the maturity of the OS, after project Butter and Jelly Bean we have a stable environment that provides most of the necessary pieces to build incredible applications. Now if I could only get my new Pixel to run Android Studio, everything will be perfect :).
We have another I/O in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
Google Cloud Messaging – This one was new to me, still it seems that is widely used and with great success. This technology allows you to communicate effectively through the cloud with your entire application installs. There are several communication patterns for this, and they just announced upstream communication (i.e. your applications can communicate with the cloud which in turn will communicate with your server). This is part of the Google Play Services so it is available for use right now for all OS versions higher than Froyo.
Volley Networking framework – This really picked my interest since it has a lot of potential. This networking framework promise to take care of all the heavy lifting regarding network communication. It is multithreaded and optimized for certain tasks such as downloading images.
ActionBarCompat – The action bar will be added to the support library making it available for older OS versions. Finally you will be able to standardize your navigation and UI look and feel for older devices (version 2.2 and above). This one was a “soft” announcement since, as with many other things, they didn’t provide a release date. The fact that is being used by the IO application distributed for the event indicates that should come sooner rather than later.
Android Studio/New Build System (Gradle) – I list these two together because the new Android Studio relies on the new Gradle build approach. They are effectively deprecating the ant support for builds. Support for Eclipse will continue, however it is clear that they are investing heavily in the IntelliJ IDE. The release for Studio that is available right now is marked as “early preview release” and it is not recommended yet as a primary IDE.
We will continue to expand on the I/O announcements in future blog posts. In general this I/O was more about incrementally updating the platform instead of introducing significant change. In my opinion this speaks to the maturity of the OS, after project Butter and Jelly Bean we have a stable environment that provides most of the necessary pieces to build incredible applications. Now if I could only get my new Pixel to run Android Studio, everything will be perfect :).
We have another I/O in the books, and even though we didn’t get any updates to the Nexus family or official updates to the OS; there were a lot of announcements regarding the future of the platform. During several Android sessions it was mentioned that we would get an incremental update to Jelly Bean (API 18) in the next couple of months. But while we wait for it, there are many updates that we can start leveraging right now. These are the ones that I think will have a major impact in the short term,
May 17 2013
Microsoft Announces Android Tablet Editing Support in SharePoint 2013/Office Web Apps
In our April webinar “SharePoint 2013: Building Better Business Outcomes,” Kelly Rusk and I covered the mobile capabilities and limitations of SharePoint 2013. Recently Amanda Lefebvre on the Office 365 blog announced upcoming changes that address some of the limitations around mobile access and real-time coauthoring.
May 17 2013
Hothousing: New Concept or New Word?
The topic of hothousing has come up recently in several conversations with Agile colleagues. When it was first described to me as a two or three day intense working session that produces a work product or provides portfolio and architecture planning for organizations that use Agile, I also breathed deeply and reminded myself of Bikram’s Hot Yoga that I’ve incorporated in my personal yoga practice. Until recently I never heard of “hothousing” as an agile term, but it seems to be making a debut.
The term originally came out of England at British Telcom as a way to plan out the backlog for a given product. The entire project team and several different disciplines come together with business partners to creatively solve problems and launch into a 90-day development cycle.
May 15 2013
A New Case for Big Data
Most people segregate the regular data away from big data in their thinking process. The structured relational or non-relational data is often thought of as the regular data and the data in web logs or files is thought of as big data. Traditionally, managers who are successful in last few decades embraced such thinking and reaped great career benefits. However, the new breed of managers have begun to look at the data assets quite differently as they evolve into formulating new strategic drives.
Conceptually, it may be true that big data assets have quite a few differences with the traditional data assets. However strategically, this isolated thinking is leading to segregating the data organizations into two silos. This can make long-term information strategy costly, ineffective and suboptimal for the organizations.
May 14 2013
Rendering UIViews with anti-aliasing, Identifying Problems and Solutions
If you have experience designing views in Xcode you likely have run into an instance where a UIView or one of its subclasses is rendered blurry. This is caused by anti-aliasing, an attempt to avoid jagged looking edges by blending with the colors of the layer below it. This blog discusses both simple and complex issues with rendering UIViews with anti-aliasing.
In the image below, the left text and image have been anti-aliased. Select an image to see a larger view.
The difference can sometimes be subtle. The left image below is anti-aliased.
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