Tag: mobile

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Lumia Denim, Windows 10 Phone

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Lots of folks have been looking forward to the impending Lumia Denim update for Lumia Windows Phones.  I know, cause I’m one of them.   I wish I had special insight into when my AT&T 1520 will be updated, but I don’t… so I find myself checking sometimes multiple times a day hoping that the upgrade will suddenly become available. 

The amount of buzz on Lumia Denim is overshadowing a more important update, in my humble opinion.  The Windows 10 Phone update (not Windows Phone 10, but Windows 10 Phone.)

The killer feature for Windows 10 is the integration across hardware form factors…  Desktop, Laptop, Tablet, Phone and even Xbox will all be running editions of Windows 10 (thus we will have a Windows 10 Phone OS, rather than a Windows Phone 10 OS).

Recently my son ran across my old Windows Phone 6.   One thing that made me really love the platform was that I could develop code using the .NET Compact Framework, and the EXE worked anywhere that had a .NET runtime installed… and I mean anywhere.   I literally was able to take an EXE and drag it from phone to desktop and back without any form of recompile, and it would run great on either hardware.   More impressively still, I was able to take DLLs compiled for the .NET CF, and run them in unexpected places, like reference them in ASP.NET web applications…   at one point, I had code for a Sudoku game model that was running desktop, phone, and WEB server!  🙂

Needless to say, I was disappointed by the fact that Windows Phone 7 used a different flavor of the .NET Compact Framework called Silverlight, and Silverlight was a lot less compatible, and required a re-write of my hobby code to make it run.   This re-write wasn’t nearly so portable.  In fact, come Windows Phone 8, I had to we-write a chunk of the code I’d done for Windows Phone 7.   This has been the plight of the Windows Phone developer;  with each release of the OS comes a new set of SDKs to code against.

Like the undoing of the curse of the tower of Babelon, with Windows 10, we’ll see the all the hardware speak the same language again, and this will be huge.   It’s already massive to be able to suggest that you can run tablet apps on your Windows 8.1 machine.  Imagine how it will be when the lines blur further.

So… bring on Denim, please, but don’t hold back Windows 10!

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Candy Crush Saga Would Fail on Windows Phone

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Several sites including pocketgamer.fr and WMPowerUser are reporting that King has decided to not bring it’s popular Candy Crush Saga game to the Windows Phone ecosystem.  (It’s “on hold indefinitely”.)  I suspect Disney and Mojang have much more to do with this than Windows Phone’s market share.

Most sites reporting King’s changed stance cite poor growth of the Windows Phone ecosystem as the reason for putting Candy Crush for Windows Phone on hold.  I don’t believe them.

The news, of late, ironically, has been loudly about two things.  1)  after a lull while Nokia was absorbed by Microsoft, Windows Phone has significantly improved its market share in the past quarter or so.  2)  Microsoft bought Mojang.

The more likely reason:  (and I would love for King to prove me wrong, but…) I’m reasonably certain that if King released Candy Crush Saga for Windows Phone right now, it would fail… and I bet they know that.

I speculate that King has been holding their Candy Crush Saga app hostage from the Windows Phone ecosystem for some time, possibly hoping Microsoft would buy King in… a Mojang/Minecraft-like multi-billion dollar play. 

Clearly, Microsoft buying Mojang was a smart choice, since Minecraft has almost become a gaming platform of its own. There is a Minecraft community and ecosystem with many vendors producing products and supporting it for their own continued success.  I suspect that for those vendors, Microsoft buying Mojang will multiply Minecraft’s ecosystem success;  the ecosystem will be more broadly and more consistently available to more players.

King, on the other hand, is a one-hit wonder who’s core titles are fading as all titles do.

Candy Crush Saga’s fading brand isn’t the reason the title would fail on Windows Phone, however.  

The reason Candy Crush Saga would fail on Windows Phone is because Windows Phone has developed its own ecosystem, and King’s niche in that ecosystem has been filled by an even bigger fish…  namely Disney. 

Yes, Candy Crush Saga would have to compete with the likes of titles such as Frozen Free Fall and Maleficent Free Fall, which are both magnificent implementations of switch/match games that even I have burned some measurable amounts of time and real cash in.

To me, the message is clear.  King has made its bed. How embarrassing would it be for King to release it’s flagship titles to Windows Phone only to be shrugged off by the Windows Phone app market for the effort?  Especially after trying to leverage its brand to strong-arm Windows Phone.  Frankly, a failure like that could put King’s position in the iPhone and Android ecosystems at risk… which would bring potential value down in the eyes of, say, Apple or Google.

I suspect there are other app publishers facing similar choices.  Perhaps they have likewise made their beds. I believe the Windows Unified platform is the platform that successful iPhone and Android publishers can’t afford to fail on.  Such publishers have two choices 1) get in before a competitor fills their niche, (and succeed), or 2) watch and miss out while realizing in ever more clear hindsight over next decade that Windows Unified was the opportunity they wish they hadn’t written off.

[Edit:  1/8/2015 – So King has published Candy Crush Saga to Windows Phone 8, now, and I’m very pleased to see it… it’s one less reason for folks to avoid the Windows Phone platform deciding to make the switch or not.   Will the Windows Phone edition be successful?   By many measures of an app on a platform, it already is.   Will it be the success it was on other platforms in reasonable comparison?   That remains to be seen, and I still think my analysis is correct, but I think that King still held out for Microsoft to offer up some form of subsidy…  I notice that Microsoft has been shelling out for ads for Minecraft, and in those same ad spaces are lots of ads for Candy Crush, as well.]

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

#RandomAppOfKindness #PayItForward #WPDev Challenge

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Yesterday, I happened to be at the Panera Bread café down the road with my family.  We took a table next to a sign that boasted an iPhone / iPad app for the company.   Out of curiosity, I checked to see if there was a Windows Phone app…  the search in the app store turned up four apps, none of which had much to do with Panera Bread.  

On a hunch, I redirected my phone’s web browser to appstudio.windowsphone.com, and drafted a new project… a wrapper for Panera’s mobile site.   In minutes, I had used my phone to generate and sideload a brand new app.  I realized I could publish the app with only a few tweaks, and from the time I sat down to eat to the time this new Panera Bread app was certified & available for download only about two hours had passed.

I’ve decided to issue a challenge to the Granite State (NH) Windows Phone Users Group (and anyone else who wants to join in) to a “Pay it forward” style friendly ‘competition’.  

Whenever you see an app marketed for platforms other than Windows Phone, see if you can’t whip up a respectful/respectable presentation of an app that provides some approximation of the functionality advertised… for the Windows Phone platform… and publish it as a free app with no advertising or in-app purchases.  It should be a “gift” of sorts in honor of the subject.

Then feel free to let the folks who might be interested that they are subject to our #RandomAppOfKindness pay-it-forward activity. 

If the subject of your app complains of copyright issues, you may be required by copyright holders to remove the app…  and you should comply.  After all, this app was created and published out of good will.

Here’s my first #RandomAppOfKindness…
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/panera-bread/2b1e2cd1-a440-4657-910d-a0eec15ecc5e

I’d love to turn this into a real competition… Perhaps in the future we’ll discuss crating a list of #RandomAppOfKindness apps and set a finish date to see who’s published the most qualified apps… but I don’t have a budget for that (as of yet)  🙂

Have fun!

Addendum:
Three new #RandomAppOfKindness entries since the Panera Bread app:

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Publishing Content Separately from Presentation

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Separating content from presentation is a very old “Best Practice”™. 

Publishing using web technology is not new anymore, either, but mobile puts a newish urgency in that best practice.  I’m seeing ignorance of the old best practice bite some in a potentially surprising way as the age of mobile apps become the preferred way to consume content.

Here’s what I mean by publishing separate content and presentation… 

Take for example a menu from a restaurant.  I’m finding in many cases, restaurants have web sites that publish their menu.  Their menu items are content, and the web site presents it in a pleasant manner.  In many cases, the presentation and the content are published just in that web page.  (The menu items are “hard coded” as HTML into the page.)

If the restaurant’s menu items are “hard coded” into the page presentation, it’s very hard for anyone to re-use that information in any other presentation.  It’s not impossible.  It can be “scraped”, and some tools do a decent job of it.  It’s just not easy enough. 

The more technically correct path is to publish the content as a web service, and then publish the web site.  The web presentation layer should consume content it gets from the service. 

Why does this matter?

There’s lots of functionality that can be provided by a content service.  Users can consume portions of the content by filtering it, sorting it, or classifying it.

To expand on that, I’ll pick on Microsoft’s Windows Phone AppStudio a bit, since they’re the star in my circles right now.  Microsoft’s AppStudio is one of many ways to create apps for mobile devices.  (In this case, for Windows Phones, but that’s beside the point.)  AppStudio’s niche is making it easy for people to pull in content from various sources and present it in their own Windows Phone app.  LOTS of people are building apps for just about everything you can imagine…  members of the Granite State Windows Phone Users Group are producing a ton of apps based on it.  

Here’s some statistics to try to paint a picture of this.  The NH Windows Phone UG community publishes a list of apps produced by its members.  In the past three months since App Studio was released, I estimate that the number of apps in that catalog has doubled, and 95% of the new apps are AppStudio apps, consuming and re-presenting, making use of content provided by 3rd parties. 

What makes it easy to build AppStudio apps is that it has a simple presentation of its own… all folks need to do is find content that’s been formatted in one of a few very standard ways.

We have, for example, a grade-school aged member of the #NHWPUG community building and publishing apps with AppStudio.  His publisher name is YoungMaster, and his first app is called “Kids Zone”.  The cool part about Kids Zone is that he was able to add video content from YouTube.  His app merely queries YouTube for certain kinds of videos, and YouTube responds with a list (in a standard format) of items.  Users of the app simply tap the list for more information about it, or to watch the video.

Now, back to that restaurant…  if a patron/fan developer wants to make an app for a specific restaurant, it would be very hard to add that restaurant’s menu items if the menu item information is not published separate from the web site presentation.  

Another application might be to allow a person searching for a meal to browse menu items from a number of nearby restaurants.  Will your restaurant’s menu items be available in the list?

Lots of folks already understand this concept of separately published content and presentation, and apps pop up around the content all the time.  Movie theaters, travel agencies, transit authorities, social media updates, news agencies… all publish their content separate from their web site presentations. 

What’s rougher, for folks using a CMS (Content Management System), chances are, you have the ability to publish a Syndicated Feed or RSS Feed that would do the job… but if you’re not enabling and exposing it, you’re missing a chance for folks to help spread the word about your company in these new ways.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Alaska, Undiscovered Country

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

There’s been a note of surprise in the money news of late about Alaska. 

It’s become a bit of a surprise that the most sparsely populated state in the US has suddenly become the hottest opportunity for corporate growth.  Alaska is a place where consumers have been largely ignored and fully under served…  yet suddenly logistics technology caught up with economists.  The change in tide has come about so suddenly that there’s actually a race to get established there before the market gets saturated by competition.  (For Example)

What’s a tech blogger doing, pointing out an economics topic?  Well… here’s where the post turns into a geek post…  🙂

I can’t help but notice a parallel between the Alaskan boom and the Windows Phone boom that’s also under way.  Corporations in saturated markets (IOS and Android) meet the growing, underserved market, and the realization that both past investments and new technologies can be leveraged…  and suddenly there’s a whole new customer base waiting to be conquered in terms of apps and customer attention and loyalty in the company’s native space.

Unlike Alaska, the Windows Phone market is global.  It’ll likely literally take something earth shattering to make Alaska a bigger part of the US market than one of fifty states.  Windows Phone Store is already serving over 100 markets world wide.

Unlike Alaska, the Windows Phone market growth opportunity is virtually unlimited.  A company that conquers an Alaskan market will see growth, but it will not likely ever exceed the established markets in the lower 48.   In the Windows Phone market, a company could make it’s big break there in the relative scarcity of competition, and even as the Windows Phone platform market share grows, could end up seismically shifting the landscape in their market.

Unlike Alaska, there’s no logistics challenge.  Many companies already have all the elements required to make the jump to Windows Phone…  the talent pool, the code base, the infrastructure, very likely existing network services and even binaries.

Microsoft and Nokia have already taken the Windows Phone platform to the many Alaska’s of the world, and the platform’s already beating out the likes of both IOS and Android in many of them.   The US market is critical, but Microsoft (and Nokia) know that these the Alaska’s they’re winning in will eventually unite, and overwhelm from the edges as the incumbent platforms fade past their maturity.  Those with vision beyond this quarter’s numbers would be wise to jump on board before their competition saturates their market.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

D11: What’s Wrong with Devices Everywhere?

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Reports coming back from D11 indicate that most companies are focusing on (according to a report attributed to Mary Meeker)  “Wearables, Drivables, Flyables, Scannables”.

Simply put, I tend to disagree still. 

While all these brilliant minds are gathering, I think the feedback leaking out feels as out of touch as the iPhone…  I’m not sure it even sounds different anymore.

With respect to wearables, I believe the pre-backlash against Google Glass is telling, and has more to do with the fact that people are very comfortable with their smartphones… and not so comfortable with the Borg-like assimilation of them.  

I think Apple will run into the same sorts of issues with the iWatch.  I’d rather put an iPhone on an arm- or wrist- band than have both an iPhone and an iWatch…  that makes two devices to manage the care & feeding of…  this goes directly against the premise of the SmartPhone… the idea that *one* device is your buddy and your complete “away-mission” kit.

The idea of drivables is similar.  Computers in cars is one thing.  I don’t want to have another computer interface in my car. 

Blame it on R2-D2 and the Borg.

No one wants to be assimilated. 

Further, why carry an X-Wing (or Y-Wing or B-Wing) fighter around when you can have your astromech (smartphone) follow you from fighter to fighter?

While I fully agree…  any company worth their salt should be looking at making everything have a well connected computer in it,  they should not, necessarily, be looking at having a human interface on those devices.  These should be control & reporting processors built into devices, not redundant smartphones built into devices.

Let the interface be our beloved astromech… I mean smartphone.

I love where some auto manufacturers are going with things like Ford SYNC.

The ten year cycle on the smartphone is only just beginning, and wearables, drivables, flyables and scannables probably won’t work as stand-alone products, but as extensions of the smartphone era.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

GSSPUG Hub (Free App) for Windows Phone Now Available

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

My “artisan portfolio” of Windows Phone apps just DOUBLED in size!  Yes, I’ve now successfully published my second Windows Phone app.  🙂

The Granite State SharePoint Users Group Hub is a somewhat minimal app, but if you’re a member of the group, it’s got some useful features.   My favorites are being able to get info about the next meeting, (both in the app, and as a live tile) and being able to RSVP through EventBright.

The direct link to find it in the Marketplace on your Windows Phone is this.

Regarding the name…  GSSPUG?  Ya, I know… it’s not quite as intuitive as NHSPUG…    

If you’re from New Hampshire, you know you search for “Granite State” any time you’re looking for something local…  and if you don’t know that, it probably is just as well you don’t find it.  😉

One other nice thing is that the content is largely driven from the group’s web site, which, of course, is a SharePoint site.   The app does require a network connection, but it can be updated without having to go through the week-long process of publishing an update. 

Like Jimmy Sudoku, the app uses your phone’s system wide theme colors.

Essentially this is what ends up in the Hub app.

And it appears like so: