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Here at WIP, we partner with many mobile conferences taking place all over the world. As a result, we are able to secure discounted registration for the WIP Community for most and sometimes even a FREE pass or two. The next few weeks are jam-packed with events before the usual summer slow down. Check out the events below and many more on our Mobile Community Calendar:
AnDevCon, May 15 – 17, San Francisco, USA. Still time to register for this technical conference geared towards software developers building or selling Android apps. Exhibit Hall is Free to attend. Conference discount for WIP Community.
APPNATION, May 15 & 16, New York, USA. This is where the app and connected device ecosystems meet, combined with social TV apps. It is the first conference to focus entirely on the business of apps and their transformative impact on consumers and enterprise technology, devices, commerce, media and social interaction. Discount for WIP Community.
TouchType's SwiftKey is one of the leading paid Android apps in several markets, and has seen a huge amount of success despite having a relatively small marketing budget. TouchType CMO Joe Braidwood was kind enough to share some tips gleaned from his experience at getting the keyboard app downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and what developers can do to try and drive similar success from their own apps.
WIP: Hi Joe, can you tell us a little bit about TouchType, SwiftKey and what you do?
JB: Sure. Our company TouchType was founded in 2008 around the idea that we could use some recent breakthroughs in natural language technology and machine learning to make typing on touchscreen phones easier. After a couple of years of research and prototyping, we came up with a powerful language engine and strong UI that worked really well. SwiftKey was born.
SwiftKey replaces the keyboard on Android phones or tablets with one that has a smarter language engine, which learns your...
Lots of kids are headed back to school this week, but what about you? Has the summer sun parched your brain as well as burnt your skin? Have you lost some of the momentum you had in the spring to a few months of heat, vacation and relaxation? Get your mind moving again by catching up on some of the latest news and tips for mobile developers in our Back to School webinar series, which starts next Monday. Head over to the events page to register for the webinars, and receive reminders when they're about to kick off.
The series, sponsored by Immersion, features more than dozen webinars spread over two weeks that offer you an easy and convenient way to catch up on some things you might have missed this summer, and to quickly get you up to speed on the latest must-have additions to your apps. The main focus of the series is on Android development, but there's something for everyone. Topics include:
As WIP is the co-organizer of Droidcon London to take place on the 6-7 of October, we'll be sharing a few blog from Droidcon to give you a flavour of what will happen! We hope to see you there!
This is the second installment of our Speaker Friday where every Friday we'll be announcing new speakers at Droidcon.
This week we're keeping with the holiday mood with our "Play Hard" theme!! Announcing 2 Android games developers!
Yosi Taguri
The maker of the game Pah!
Haven't heard of it? That is quite surprising, there is an entire (noisy) youtube channel dedicated to the game ! 350,000 downloads on iPhone and just arrived on Android Market (or any Andoid appstore you use!)
Yosi will be talking about Pah! (obviously) and how he's been using Bluevia's Android SDK to find new innovative ways to interact with users and generate revenues. He'll also touch on porting from iPhone to Android and succeeding in the mobile games business!
One of the great apps created at the Muther! was Yosun Chang's Tap Shake Messenger. It's essentially a messaging client that translates SMS messages into "haptic Braille", allowing visually impaired people a way to read use messages apart from speech-to-text or text-to-speech. I was really impressed by its utility and clever use of technology -- and so were the judges, as Yosun took home several prizes! I followed up with her this week to find out a little bit more about her app and what else she's working on.
WIP: Hi Yosun, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Yosun Chang: So, I grew up in the SF Bay Area, went away for a while, then came back again. My background is in theoretical physics. My research interests are currently a bit far from that -- mostly in mobile apps, particularly, augmented reality, procedural graphics, AI, as well as immersive virtual simulations. I also explore new UX ideas design that fully utilize unique mobile device capabilities -- beyond just...
I was out in San Diego last week for Qualcomm's Uplinq event, and like in years past, it was a good few days. While there are a good number of people there, the environment is relatively intimate, so it's a great place to network and have really rewarding meetings and conversations. A highlight for me was getting to see Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's keynote on the second day. I hadn't seen him speak in person before, and to hear him talk through the company's challenges and its strategic changes was very compelling, and gave me a lot of optimism about the future of Nokia.
One significant change from previous Uplinq events was the relative absence of news and sessions about the BREW platform. Uplinq used to be known as the Brew Developer Conference, and last year, I was a little surprised by the amount of attention it got, and the huge amount of interest that remained in it from its devoted users. One year later, and there wasn't a lot of talk about it, and the focus was largely on...
The first ever AnDevCon is on its last day here in San Mateo. With an apparent 700+ attendees all coming to join in the Android fray the 2nd AnDevCon has already been scheduled for Nov 7-9, 2011 (registration starts March 21st). There were many different sessions from "Android 101" (for beginners like myself) to very specific/technical workshops like "Developing Media Applications - Taking advantage of camera hardware".
Generally I've heard from experienced java developers that Android is easier to develop for then iOS, what I have discovered at this event that it is not necessarily the case. (Well it is, but let me explain). I look at Android development at the same way I would look at snowboarding. It's difficult to to get your feet set, but once you have the basics down it becomes a lot smoother. This is of course also dependant on your coding background.
In the session, Android 101, the big thing that came out subtly was the distaste for Eclipse and the difficulty of...
Posted by Carlo on 09 February 2011
| Tags: android, wipjam
The WIPJam@MWC next Thursday will feature something new for us: a Guinness World Record attempt! We are excited to welcome the Blinkendroid crew from Germany along to the jam, and during lunch, we are going to try and break the record they set for "Largest animated mobile phone mosaic" at the Google Developer Day in Munich in November. If you aren't familiar with Blinkendroid, it's some cool Android software that makes devices aware of their neighbors -- and then able to act as one giant screen for animations. Here's some video of their world record:
Definitely very cool stuff! To break the record, we need at least 73 Android devices -- but let's shoot for 100. All you need to take part is an Android device running v1.6 or better; we'll have Wi-Fi in the room to handle the data. You can go ahead and download the app from the Android Market now, or grab it on site. Either way, if you have an Android phone, join in the fun and become part of a Guinness World Record!...
Download the WIP Survival Guide to Mobile World Congress or even better get the mobile app version with the WIPJam app for Android, Nokia and iPhone (visit your favourite store in the coming days and look for WIPJam)
Sign up for some of the "cliffhanger" developer events:
You will be excused for not knowing what the Eclipse mobile Pluginfest is and that it happened in the first place... But you will not be excused next time for having missed this historical moment of mobile development tool's history : 2007 the first mobile pluginfest..
Throw yourself back in 2007! I know it's kind of hard so I'll paint a quick portrait of the days, Symbian is the most innovative and widespread mobile OS on the planet, WindRiver and IBM are 2 different companies, J2ME is still an important part of Mobile development (even though the Mobile Tools for Java project is struggling a bit), Doug Gaff was still at WindRiver, Doug Schaefer still at QNX, Christian Kurzke still at Motorola, Lars Kurth and I still at Symbian. The only sign of stability in this world is Ian Skerrett who's still heading marketing at Eclipse Foundation and should be thanked for his efforts to get the pluginfest sparkle back!
Back in 2007 we (as in the team of people named above) realized...
TouchType's 
