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Appcelerator Titanium Mobile Platforms: iPhone and Android What you need to get started: Software installed from the site Feature set: 4/5 | Difficulty: 5/5 | Reach: 5/5 To use Appcelerator Titanium Mobile, you need to be familiar with Web languages like Python, HTML and Javascript. That said, you will not need to know specific programming languages typically required to develop apps for the iPhone and Android. All you do is build the app using Web languages, and Titanium does the rest. You will need to download the iPhone SDK (which is Mac-only) if you plan to make iPhone apps. This development platform doesn't come with any tutorials - you will have to rely on the goodwill of the community and learn how to use the tools through knowledge posted on forums. There are also paid services that provide support and automation during the app-making process. If you know how to wield the tools correctly, Titanium can offer more features than App Inventor for Android. But there are limitations to being a third-party development platform - the latest features in iOS and Android OS are not guaranteed to work here. Verdict: If you are open to teaching yourself app development as a hobby, the versatile Appcelerator Titanium Mobile is a great way to start. The faint of heart need not apply.

App Inventor lets you create apps by dragging and dropping "building blocks" embedded with code that work when you drag them onto a blank canvas. These blocks let you access virtually every function of an Android handset - from timestamps and touchscreen virtual buttons to the motion sensor and GPS.

The software, which is called “Find my iPhone,”will be offered at no charge for customers who have upgraded to the latest iOS 4.2 mobile software. In the past this feature was bundled into the Mobile Me suite, which costs $100 a year.

There are also a number of free products that enable tracking a lost mobile phone on the Google Android platform.

App of the Week: Find My iPhone By Doug Aamoth on November 23, 2010

The free Find My iPhone app locates any of your connected Apple products running the latest iOS 4.2 software and displays them on a map.

if your device gets lost or stolen, download the Find My iPhone app to an iPhone 4, 4th-generation iPod Touch, or iPad and sign into the app using the same MobileMe credentials that you used on your missing device.

The Volume Purchase Program makes it easy for educational institutions to purchase iOS apps in volume and distribute those apps to users

The program works with vouchers that educational institutions can purchase

Purchase Volume Vouchers: Volume Vouchers can be purchased at the Apple Store for Education in dominations of $100, $500, $1000, $5000, $10,000. These vouchers can be bought on behalf of the education institution by an Authorized Purchaser, and they may use purchase orders.

Google launched a new weather search feature for iOS and Android browsers. When you navigate to google.com and search for "weather", you will be presented with a widget-like interface that shows your current conditions and immediate forecast.

The iPad has a bigger screen, and so it has a bigger resolution. With the iPhone 4, however, Apple did something different: they increased the resolution without changing the physical size of the screen. This makes for a higher pixel density, pixels are smaller and more tightly packed. In one square inch of the iPhone 4’s screen there are around 106 thousand pixels (at 326 PPI, or Pixels per Inch), while the older models have only about 26 thousand (at 163 PPI) in an inch – 4 times less! This makes graphics on the screen seem like continuous lines, because your eye can’t see the individual pixels. Apple calls this technology the “Retina Display” because they claim the human eye (the retina) can’t physically see the pixels at this resolution.

Using Two Images The official way of adding high-resolution support to your application is by having two versions of each image, one in “regular” resolution and one in double resolution. Whenever your application is viewed on the Retina Display, the larger image will be loaded automatically. This method allows for full and precise control of how your application will look in each case, and is very easy to apply to your existing applications. The full size image file should be named however you want, such as “Button.png”. Use this image name in your code and Interface Builder wherever you want to reference the image. The double-size image should be twice the size of its matching smaller image and named exactly the same with “@2x” appended to the name. In our example, we would name it “Button@2x.png”. Unfortunately, this technique will not work on the iPad; a pixel-doubled application will not load the higher resolution resource. This will probably be addressed in the future iOS 4 update which is scheduled to come to iPad this fall.

In mobile browsers, you need to be especially careful about using timers because of the battery consumption. If you need to use many high-frequency timers at the same time, try to manage them using only one timer that will launch different behaviors from the same process.

The first question we need to ask ourselves is, what happens when our web page goes to the background because the user switches focus to another application (in multitasking operating systems) or opens or browses to another tab or window? Another problem is what happens when the phone goes to sleep (because of the user’s inactivity while the script is executing). The behavior of timers can be a little tricky in these situations.Yet another problem is that timers execute on the same thread as the main script. If our script is taking too much processor time (a normal situation with large scripts on low- and mid-end devices), our timers will be delayed until some spare execution time is found.If we use a low frequency for the timer (for example, 10 milliseconds), the timer will generally have problems meeting the timetable.Remember that the JavaScript execution time depends a lot on the device hardware and the browser’s engine. Even if they’re running the same operating system, like Android, execution times can differ: for example, an HTC G1 will be much slower than a Nexus One with a 1-Ghz processor.

As shown in Figure 4, the real times are very different on different devices. On low- and mid-end devices, if they work at all, the result is far from our 200 ms intention—some low-end devices don’t even accept timers with a frequency of less than 1 second.

Monday night, Adobe released a new, experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool codenamed Wallaby.Wallaby is an AIR app that lets devs and designers quickly and simply convert Flash Professional files to HTML5 — and when we say “simply and easily,” we mean it’s a matter of dragging and dropping. The company is specifically hoping this tool will make it easier for designers and developers to get their content onto iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Hangouts - the video chat feature - have come to mobile, currently supporting Android 2.3+ devices, and iOS support is "coming soon." Hangouts also now have an "On Air" feature, which allows any Google Plus user to tune in and watch. Furthermore, Hangouts now offer screensharing, a shared sketchpad, and names for Hangouts. But perhaps the killer app is Google Docs in Hangouts, which will open up the possibility of live collaborative work (especially once Google Apps accounts get access).

App considerations - What store? - we have chosen to live within the spirit of agreements rather than line item agreements - on issue is: “The iTunes Service is available to you only in the United States, its territories, and possessions. You agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes Service from outside these locations. Apple may use technologies to verify your compliance.” We have made peace with using the U.S. store and dealing with it, the Chinese store has far fewer apps and isn’t nearly as good a fit for our student population We created iTunes accounts with gift cards, purchased in the USA - no one used a credit card for apps Volume Purchasing Plan (VPP) is the answer to many of these questions - lets a site administrator have control over iPads and iOS devices in the school ecosystem - this is only available as of today in the United States (not in China) - is coming to other countries, the legal issues are being worked out

Suggested management solution from 1 of the vendors present at this session: - create a separate iTunes account for each iPad you have - then have 1 account to hold the money: that account then “gifts” money to individual iTunes account (gift certificates) So now as things exist, we buy large ($100) cards for our main, master iTunes account - we also purchase smaller cards ($10) for innovator teachers to try different apps

During a recent show, legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder took a few moments to praise those who made significant efforts to make the world accessible to every single person. And he made it a point to single out former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his company.

The technological advancements Wonder — who has been blind since childhood — refers to are the accessibility features built into iOS, Apple's mobile operating system. These features include something called VoiceOver, which — according to Apple — is the "world’s first gesture-based screen reader." It basically allows someone to enjoy an iPad's (or iPhone's) features without being able to see the screen.

The open source learning management system Moodle has a new mobile companion. Developers at Moodle HQ have released a free app for iOS designed to work with Moodle 2.1 or later.

My Moodle isn't a replacement for the Moodle interface; rather, it just provides some additional tools tailored specifically for mobile users. These include the ability to: Capture video, still images, and audio and upload those to Moodle; Upload images and video from users' existing libraries; E-mail and message participants in users' courses; Add notes about users; Add course participants to users' iPhone contact lists; Get help through MoodleDocs; and Access the full Moodle site. (A separate login for the Web version is required with the version of the mobile app.)

Guinness World Records has launched a new application for both Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating system. The application features six games and all you need to do to make a Guinness World Record is complete them in record time