Sessions Snapshot

The iPhone OS platform and the App Store have been opening new horizons and creating new business opportunities for the last 2 years. They also are an interesting platform for software developers to create new and innovative solutions using proven languages and frameworks. In this long talk at MDS 2011, you will learn how to use Xcode and Interface Builder to create a simple iPhone application from scratch. Adrian will guide you step by step, showing you how to integrate design and behaviour to achieve a usable and complete small application.

Software developers with any programming background, interested in creating iPhone and iPad applications using Apple's tools and SDKs.

The Android OS is a popular and flexible platform for many of today's most in-demand mobile devices. This session offers you a hands-on introduction to the basics of Android development. Topics discussed include:

• Android Architecture and Dalvik VM, the software that runs the apps on Android phones
• Building blocks of Android
• Building Application Screens, Event handling and navigation
• Activity Life Cycle
• ListActivity and Layouts

With the new camera, compass, and processor power of the iPhone 3GS, it's possible to integrate the iPhone with even more of your users' everyday life using Augmented Reality. Join Jonathan Saggau as he walks you through a demo application for finding your hotel in a strange city. Learn how to use the orientation and magnetometer APIs to place virtual tags on objects in the real world. Depending on weather, we might even head outside to chase down that hotel!

Adrian will show you 10 do's and dont's about iPhone software development, taken directly from his own experience, which will help you identify and solve potential problems in your own projects.

Cloud computing and mobile are two emerging technologies that can be combined to create novel, hybrid solutions. We discuss how you can connect Google App Engine, using Python, with iOS, Apple's mobile platform, using our open source framework TouchEngine. Inside of TouchEngine, we leverage a heavily modified version of another open-source project, mogenerator. Mogenerator gives TouchEngine the smarts to automatically generate model files for both platforms using the graphical data modeling tools in Xcode.

We change data models' relationships and their attributes in both Python, and Objective-C, during development. On-the-fly refactoring for both platforms then becomes a simple affair. We'll dive deep into the details of how TouchEngine dynamically vends data from Python, in Google App Engine, to Objective-C, in iOS. Deep introspection of model attributes are available through Python's "inspect", and this is coupled with plistlib to share application data using Apple's Property List XML format. Because plist is native to iOS, it obviates the need to write a parser. Finally, we demonstrate how TouchEngine uses CoreData, to cache App Engine data for offline viewing.

Android runs on a variety of devices that offer different screen sizes and densities. For applications, the Android system provides a consistent development environment across devices and handles most of the work to adjust each application's user interface to the screen on which it is displayed. At the same time, the system provides APIs that allow you to control your application's UI for specific screen sizes and densities, in order to optimize your UI design for different screen configurations. Come to this session to learn the following:

• Building for SmartPhone Vs Building for Tablets. Using Fragments effectively.
• Building for Different Screen Resolutions.
• Automation Testing for Different Screen Resolutions (If time permits)
• Publishing Apps for different devices on Android Market
• Making sure your application runs on every Android Device.

Many successful iPhone applications draw their power from online systems. Social networks like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and online services such as newspapers, stock information or weather sites offer iPhone applications that interact with their existing infrastructure in different ways. In this talk you will learn how to leverage the power of your server-side API, whether it is based on REST or SOAP architectures, and you will get an insight into knowing the best approaches in terms of choice of data formats, costs of implementation, performance, and bandwidth consumption.

Web and server-side API developers interested in offering iPhone or iPad clients to their online services. Experienced iPhone and iPad programmers interested in using networking libraries to access remote data from their applications.

Users of native iPhone apps, even those pulling data from 'the cloud'expect a snappy experience. The 'Death by a thousand papercuts' of aslow UI is possibly the quickest way to disappoint. Follow along withiPhone developer and author Jonathan Saggau as he applies some embeddedsystems caching tricks to optimize the user experience within exampleapps, while balancing the trade-offs as a result of caching data.

The popularity of smartphone devices and platforms like the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry has triggered an explosion of proprietary and mutually incompatible software platforms. Web applications, thanks to HTML5 and the WebKit engine, are slowly gaining traction as a true cross-platform environment, suitable to reduce development, deployment and quality management costs. The aim of this talk is to provide an overview of the current state of mobile web development, including an exhaustive survey of the most important standard technologies available today to create compelling, immersive user experiences on mobile devices. The talk is suited to desktop, web and mobile developers looking to expand the reach of their applications.

Most iPhone developers have said something like this at one point or another: If only Apple would release their photo viewer component, or perhaps their calendar UI, or maybe their coverflow (R) view, then life would be so much easier. Happily, several open source developers have concluded the same and written code so we don't have to. Join iPhone developer and author Jonathan Saggau as he demonstrates open source libraries that mimic much of the UI that you see in Apple's own iPhone applications. Learn the ins - and - outs of these components and leave with code that uses the image views available from the Three20 framework, an open source coverflow view called OpenFlow, and a recreation of Apple's calendar view called Kal. Apple has built it, the community has rebuilt it, and now you can use it in your app.

The session will compare three tools, namely Titanium Appcelerator, PhoneGap and Adobe FlashBuilder 4.5 for developing mobile apps. The comparison will focus on performance of apps developed by each tool, the power of api's exposed by each tool as compared to native api's, code reusability and the app bundle sizes growth with introduction to new features. All the above comparison methodologies will be made using different applications developed by these tools and the natively developed application. Come to this talk to gain a holistic understanding of which tool to use and when.

This talk will briefly walk you through the advantages of writing test cases for mobile applications followed by a hands-on description of how to write unit test cases, application test cases, UI automation scripts and finally continuos integration. It will be an end to end and inside out description of how to keep your code away from unnecessary breakage. Under unit test cases, the talk will include a brief comparison of unit testing framework accompanied by showcasing how to use GHUnit for unit testing and application. Hudson will be used for configuring continuous integration, which will heavily interest large size teams who want to keep their code stable. UI automation testing showcasing will be done by the use of JavaScript.

Does the world need a better fart game, or does it need a brand that people are willing to invest their time & money in? Apple Store has 300,000 apps. Android Market has 200,000 apps. Nokia just threw in the towel & hitched the Microsoft bandwagon. Palm sold off WebOS to HP. Blackberry is betting on its brand power in the enterprise market to make a play with new smartphones & Playbook. Come to this inspiring talk to discover a life beyond Apps.

Today, many of the most popular games in the world are played on social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and hi5, and mobile devices, like the iPhone and Android. With the widespread, viral nature and accelerated adoption rate of these social platforms, the rise of gaming, and more specifically, social gaming, has been tremendous.To manage the unpredictable success and growth of these games, many companies are turning to the cloud computing platform of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host their games and applications. AWS offers maximum security, reliability, and flexibility while enabling gaming publishers to go to market quickly and limit up-front expenses. Attend this session to find out how the new breed of games can leverage the Cloud.

HTML5 heralds huge efficiencies for web publishers, because it lets companies develop and distribute across any device through internet browser. For a few years now, there’s been quite a bit of debate about whether HTML5 will make native mobile apps (i.e., apps designed specifically for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, etc.) obsolete. HTML5 technology promises to deliver an unprecedented open, democratic and wonderfully fertile mobile web, which native mobile apps sometimes fail at! Come to this session to gain a definitive comparative understanding of HTML5 vs. Native Mobile Apps. You will learn about the pitfalls for each of the approaches and take back home the actionable recommendations, and beyond the hype advise. You will go back with decision points that will help you choose the right development approach for your needs.

Session description will be made available soon.

This session will have two parts. In the first part, I’ll talk about generic guidelines for building games targeting the Android platform based on my own experience in building mobile games. Mobile game development is radically different from PC/Console game development. Game developers need to worry a lot about the design considerations including Tombstoning, memory usage, device capabilities, and platform fragmentation. The first part will cover on design principles and examples.

In the second part, I’ll talk about various tools available for building Android games. I’ll quickly give an overview of S3D and other game engines and will move on to a live example of building a simple touch-based game for mobile phones/tablets using Flash Builder. The second part will be a demonstration showing how ActionScript/Flex can be used to build Android games fully supporting gestures and device sensors like accelerometer.

With the help of Titanium, a web developer who knows Javascript can write native mobile apps that run across a variety of platforms such as iPhone and Android. Further, the development time is greatly reduced and one does not have to learn Objective C or Java to create a native app. This talk delves into the nitty-gritty of developing mobile apps using Titanium, explaining core concepts. This talk will also walk you through a demo to create an app and run it on both iPhone and Android phones. You will also be able to compare Titanium with existing methods of writing mobile apps using native tools and languages and engage with Rajdeep in a discussion over the benefits of each.

Mobile and Cloud are undoubtedly the most discussed trends in the world of IT. When you are getting ready to publish your app across the AppStores and the market places to reach millions of consumers, you need a scalable, reliable and secure infrastructure at the backend. Amazon Web Services offers the required compute and storage capabilities for the new breed of mobile applications. In this session, we will explore the AWS SDK for Android through a real world scenario. You will learn how to get started with the mobile SDK of AWS.

Join us for an augmented reality (AR) lab. Developers will get a quick intro to Qualcomm's AR platform, see a few examples of iOS and Andorid sample apps developed with the AR platform, and then experience a live walk through of how to create an app using Qualcomm's AR Extension for Unity on iOS and Android.

Mobile Devices are drawing attention for the massive increase in how many are in active use compared to PCs. What has been missed in this story is that the uptake is driven by Mobile Apps and Cloud APIs, which are supercharging the mobile computing market. This talk presents the facts about the market landscape, identifies key drivers for the future of mobile computing, and makes specific recommendations for developers, telecommunications operators, and device manufacturers.

This talk will briefly walk you through the advantages of writing test cases for mobile applications followed by a hands-on description of how to write unit test cases, application test cases, UI automation scripts and finally continuos integration. It will be an end to end and inside out description of how to keep your code away from unnecessary breakage. Under unit test cases, the talk will include a brief comparison of unit testing framework accompanied by showcasing how to use GHUnit for unit testing and application. Hudson will be used for configuring continuous integration, which will heavily interest large size teams who want to keep their code stable. UI automation testing showcasing will be done by the use of JavaScript.

The phone is a very personal device; an extension of one’s own personality. The tablet, on the other hand, is a consumption/development/collaboration device, depending on the time & place it is used. Most developers, when designing for one device, completely ignore, or worse, serve the same app for the other, without utilizing the full potential of differing size factors. It is these fundamental differences that developers must keep in mind while designing & developing multi device apps. I will showcase some simple principles to develop an app for both phones & tablets.

The Presentation Model pattern, or the Code-Behind is an efficient approach to organize code in such a way so as to separate a user interface from its behavior. This pattern allows us to share the code across multiple environments, each with their separate identities, while providing standardization in usability behavior.

We will build an app by doing the following:

• Structure code base to create multiple mobile & library projects
• Connect to a live API to submit parameterized data and display the result
• See how data is shared between the different views of the apps, allowing storage of data in memory when the app is running, and persistence when the app is shut down, either by the user or the system.
• Easily implement mobile UI using resource bundles, CSS & images, thus providing an engaging & aesthetic experience

The takeaway for the audience is to see how easy it is to design & build apps for multiple devices, while optimizing on codebase, thus improving maintainability & achieving a consistent user experience.

This session will focus on introducing Enterprise Mobility, and all that needs to be done to mobilize the Enterprise infrastructure. AB will take the audience through his own experiences working at Endeavour and sighting numerous examples of how his team approached enterprise mobility. He will also cover the Android OS in a nutshell and its enterprise ready features that can be used to build upon or utilize in enterprise apps. AB's talk will provide the Dos and Don'ts of enterprise app development for mobiles including the best practices. Come to this session to also learn about how you can write apps for Android and other mobile platforms to provide a truly integrated and unique user experience to enterprise users.

• Enterprise Mobility at a glance
• More on Android OS
  • Overview
  • Enterprise features, what can be leveraged?
• Extending or building upon Android platform
  • Security Concerns
  • Enterprise Architectures
  • Connecting to backends enterprise systems
  • Using Standard MEAPs, Customizing the MEAPs
  • Device Management Support, Android C2DM Model
• Android Secure Coding Practices for Enterprise

Explore the latest trends in Application development for Nokia devices and get an understanding of the architecture of Nokia Platforms and Technologies. This session shares thoughts on Java™ ME developer offering from Nokia for Series 40 mass-market platform with DUAL SIM. It will cover the new Java ME API's available in Series 40 devices and teach you about the latest Touch and Type UI in your Java ME applications for Series 40 devices such as the Nokia C2-03.

This session will cover some awesome tips and tricks (which no one told you earlier :) ) to help you turbo charge your flex mobile apps for Android & iOS. We will see how to enhance the scrolling, touch and transition performance of your mobile apps. We will dig deep into the secret lands of itemRenderers, touch scrolling UI elements to explore some great ways to enhance runtime performance of your apps.

Designing and developing games for multiple devices, multiple platforms and form factors has been the most common challenge today. In this session, learn the different aspects of game design & development that need to be considered. Understand the challenges from the right perspective and overcome them with one of the best tools and platforms. Learn how Adobe Flash Builder enables you to write code intelligently for all the platforms, including Web, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Android, BlackBerry PlayBook and iOS. Understand how easy the porting and packaging is for these platforms. Understand how Adobe Flash Builder can be used to develop and deploy multi-device games and also how to use third party gaming engines. The session also would briefly cover various methods of creating multiplayer/multi-device games, the new 3D capabilities of Adobe Flash Player to bring out the best user experiences on desktops, tablets and phones.

Today, an estimated 31 percent of users are accessing websites via their mobile device. However, difficulty accessing websites on a mobile device already causes an immense amount of lost traffic, customer engagement and sales from mobile users. This disconnect between the mobile web demand and relative immaturity of mobile device browsers creates an opportunity. Join this session and experience Verisign MobileView: a fast and easy way for you to make your customers’ web sites mobile-friendly.

If you're interested in learning how to build a Twitter app on your Android phone, this session is a must-attend. Rohit will provide you with a crisp overview of the Twitter API's, and walk you through how to register an application and get your authentication keys to use with OAuth on Twitter. He will also show you how to fetch tweets from Twitter, how you can effectively show Twitter profile images in List Activity and finally tweet from the application.

5 billion mobiles across the globe. 1 out of 2 people have a mobile. 2474 known Languages. 116 officially claimed languages. 50,332,699,002 WebPages as on 2008, written in 43 languages. 650 Languages with their Unicode’s which can be classified into 103 Scripts. 12million text messages in 2000 to 2 Trillion messages to be sent by 2012. Total Number of languages that can be written on a mobile device is around 70+. And bring in other devices to this equation and we can go number crunching.

Today, content consumption on mobile & connected devices is very high vs content creation which still has a huge gap to fill. Addressing this gap called the “Input Gap” is what will bring more life to your devices such as smartphones, tablets, notepads, connected TVs etc. In this presentation we give you an insight into Text Input Technology, the different type of input solutions, few input solutions on Android, features that define assistive text input, OpenSource solutions for text input, challenges to creating input solutions for Android, the vast language needs of users, intricacies of languages, fonts & font rendering engines on Android, high level architecture of Input Method service on Android, Indic Language support on Android and related topics.

How to keep pace with the growing needs of Enterprise Mobility ? This session would be focused on some of factors that would influence the growth of Enterprise Mobility. Starting from the benefits, the components, with a brief description of the technology, standards and protocols used for wireless, the discussion will also throw some light upon cloud-based mobility solutions.

In this session we will walk you through all the steps required in building an app for Windows Phone in an Hour – and relate the secrets of the masters for maximizing your impact. Leverage the graphics, audio and input capabilities of the phone, get up to speed about the new features for gams and app developers in Mango. Also, learn how to leverage the power of the browser top deliver compelling interactive experiences, both inside and outside the context of a traditional application.

The world of mobile applications is fast paced and dynamic, with new features and functionalities emerging constantly. As with operating in any dynamically changing field, developing apps in the mobile space presents both opportunities and significant challenges. As interest in mobile applications surge and mobile app development in India comes of age, this keynote address will provide you a laser focus on the possibilities for the Indian mobile app developer, how the mobile developer and entrepreneur communities can take advantage of these impending changes and most importantly visualize what the future has in store so you can take advantage of it today.

The mobile of today has transgressed and metamorphosed from its positioning as a mere communication device to encompass and enable different facets of our lifestyle that were hitherto out of scope -- including serving as books, health monitors, payment transfer devices, social connectors and location guides. Mobile is enhancing and expanding education and thus, transforming the world. In an era where developers are at the core of this transformation, contributing to the guts of application and software under the hood, come, listen to this visionary keynote address as the speaker celebrates the current state of mobile, offers a glimpse into where mobile has the potential to go next, and addresses the role of developers in the future of the mobile ecosystem.