Adobe is currently in it’s prerelease stages of testing AIR for Mobile, specifically on Android, and I’ve been one of the lucky developers invited to participate. Adobe was even kind enough to send over some Google Nexus One phones to get going and testing on multiple devices. (Thanks Michael Chou).

The first thing I’ve noticed when using AIR for Mobile is that it’s WORLDS easier than porting Flash content to the iPhone. Simply publish your swf and use the AIR SDK and Android SDK to convert and port the content directly to your phone. Done. You can either install the newly published apps using the Android SDK, or you can upload them to a server and browse to the the .apk files and install them directly from a website. If you install from a server (and not Google Marketplace) you just have to be sure that your device allows for “Unknown sources”.

I’ve also been involved in the CS5 Prerelease, and when publishing for the iPhone there were mobile provisioning files connected to certain devices and those devices were particular in the UDID provided with every Apple product and producing the security certificates (.p12 files) just added even more to the headaches in getting setup.

Well, when working with AIR 2.5 and the Android SDK, it way faster/easier. It took just a little getting used to the command line prompts, and my first Hello World app was off and running.

Note: The command prompt interface is only part of the early development stages. It will not be necessary in future releases.

I’ve also noticed quite a difference in terms of the speed at which Android seems to run compared to the iPhone/iTouch. AIR on Android reacts just as fast as the native Android applications, or at least really close. It’s performing much better than any results that I’ve gotten from the iPhone or iTouch. We’ll have to see how much it will improve over time, as this was the first build of AIR 2.5.

Now, the app that I had setup for iTunes is a Educational piece created for Pearson Education, and done in coordination with Media-Fuse. Here’s a video of the Android version for Digit Cards – Close to 20, 100, 100 Math Card game in action.

Overall, AIR for Mobile on Android is really off to a great start. Can’t wait for more builds to test. Adobe, you rock!

Augmented reality (AR) on the Flash and Flex platform is really quite a new technology, but there are a large amount of developers and businesses that are embracing the use of AR online. Media companies such as Esquire, and technology companies such as GE are using the tech to engage their users both through print media as well as online media.

AR research explores the application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams as a way to expand the real-world.

The possibilities of how you could use Augmented Reality (AR) are endless. Picture yourself walking or driving down the street. With augmented-reality displays, which will eventually look much like a normal pair of glasses, and informative graphics appearing in your field of view, and audio that coincides with whatever you see.

Now, this article doesn’t go as far as how to create your own AR glasses, but rather a “first step” into what is capable when using AR.

I’ve created a quick example of an AR environment below. Using your webcam, and the provided PDF, you can experience what AR is all about. Make sure to take a look at some more advanced examples in the links above also.

First, print this PDF.

Next, activate the Flash movie below to allow access to your webcam, and hold up the piece of paper to the camera to activate the AR environment. Make sure the large square is fully visible within the camera, and you’ll see how the AR loads and animates with how you position the paper.

Like I said, this example is brief. The AR that you will see above when holding up the pattern you printed is quite simple. There will be three cubes that will be displayed within your streaming video. The AR environment reacts to wherever the pattern on the printed pdf goes. You can rotate or angle the pattern against the camera, the the AR will follow.

There are many ways that this small “first step” towards a more interactive AR environment can be upgraded, and it’s only a start.

Using this technology you can stream video, add animations, or animate entire environments. You could green-screen actors or musicians and place them in a music video that comes to life seemingly right in your own hands. There are thousands of ways to implement AR to engage your website visitors or publication readers. Artist labels could use AR in their branding or CD packaging, or anyone with a business card could use AR to allow for mini-presentations. Whether that be a video or information displayed to a potential client by simply holding your business card card up to their webcam, while visiting your own website.

The ways of incorporating Augmented Reality into online and print media are nearly endless.

If you do not have a web cam, here’s how this simple example looks.

Have you used AR in any of your projects yet?

It seems that the larger url trimming services are gaining a lot of ground these days, and are churning over huge amounts of urls. This also feeds them a ton of data on what people are interested on the web, which will benefit these trimming services at some point in the future. We’re feeding their databases with enourmous amounts of information on what everyone on the web is talking about.

But, what about ourselves? How does keeping all of my trimmed url analytics on some other companies servers benefit me? How can I boost my own brand recognition if I were to create my own personal url trimming application?

Those were the exact goals in the creation of my own url trimming app: http://entr.in/ger/

I wanted to accomplish the same things that bit.ly or tr.im were doing, but to also keep my brand http://derekentringer.com intact with all of the Trimmed URL’s that I was pushing out onto the web. Why would I push another companies brand recognition with all of the interesting articles and videos that I was sharing when using a smaller url? Why wouldn’t any Twitter or Facebook user want their own trimmed url? I believe that using your own custom url trimming service can benefit both your brand recognition, as well your own internal link tracking and social media monitoring initiatives.

Now, I don’t think that using tr.im or bit.ly is a bad thing, but, if you remember very recently, tr.im almost went offline right along with all of its data.

Protect your own data, boost your brand awareness, and get your own url trimming service.

If you’re looking for you own url trimming application, hit me up in the contact area. I’m sure we can work something out to fit your needs.

Note: If you decide to trim a url with entr.in/ger/, it will work, but you will not be able to track the link analytics. This is my own personal url trimming application.

One of my clients (borrispowell.com) has an upcoming fashion show, and we thought it would be pretty useful to promote the show as a streaming live production from his website the night of the unveiling of his latest creations. With this being one of his larger shows, we thought we would allow fans around the world to be able to watch the performance online, and for free.

Mogulus live broadcast tool seemed to be able to pull off the task of streaming the show for a pretty decent cost, and with only about 15 minutes of setup time. Their free streaming service only allows for 50 concurrent connected viewers, and for a streaming data rate of around 700kbps, but it may do the trick. We still have to get a feel for how the online streaming shows popularity is going to play out. If you shell out the $350 per month, you can have HD quality streaming, remove all of the ads, have access to a white label player, be provided deep analytics for your page viewers, and more importantly…have unlimited amounts of viewers.

So, with all of that said, I decided to set up my own account, get it streaming on my own site with chat enabled and some color customizations, and I was quite pleased with the results.

Feel free to check if I’m online, and to chat if you like

Click Here To Video Chat With Me Online

Start using version control

Version control is like a big UNDO button for your coding. You can go back to your previous code revisions and can compare/rollback to specific code areas anytime you see necessary. It will keep track of all your changes and will empower you to track your development changes across your work/team. Also, in a distributed development team, version control helps prevent overwriting of code by team members and keeps all the members code up to date.

Subversion (SVN) is one of the most popular open source version control system. If you’re on windows platform, you can try TortoiseSVN, a client for SVN.

Use Object Oriented Programming when useful

Not surprisingly, object oriented programming is focused around objects. While the idea of objects may be foreign to you in coding terms, understanding what objects are and why we use them shouldn’t take long. In short, our non-programming world is comprised of objects. Computers, fish, clouds, people, and cars are all objects. Objects have properties like color, size, name, and speed. Objects can also be comprised of other objects: cars have doors; doors have handles; handles have plastic levers; so on and so forth. Objects are everywhere around us. For this reason, many programmers find object oriented programming relatively easy to understand.

In my opinion any OOP language should have:

• Abstract data types and information hiding
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism

This can all be done using PHP classes:

<?php
class Something {
    //classes are usually named starting with a cap letter
    var $x;
    function setX($v) {
        // methods start in lowercase then use lowercase to separate
        // words in the method name example getValueOfArea()
        $this-&gt;x=$v;
    }
    function getX() {
    	return $this-&gt;x;
    }
}
?>

Of course you can use your own nomenclature but having a standardized one is useful.

Use coding standards

To develop anything programatically is difficult enough, this is why all programmers must work in an organised and systematic way. It is not obvious but the coding style you employ plays an important role in achieving this goal.

The idea is very simple: consistent code is much easier to maintain.

So, here are several reasons why to use coding specifications:

• Multi-developer projects require coding standards. Your peer programmers have to understand the code you produce. A coding standard acts as the blueprint for all the team to decipher the code.
• Even if you develop alone it’s advised to adhere to standards, because it really pays off when you revise your code after a time.
• Simplicity and clarity achieved by consistent coding saves you from common mistakes.
• Code becomes extensible and reusable. You don’t have to worry if people working on your current application would understand some reusable feature recycled from the previous project.
• It just looks professional!

Document your code

So, why do we really need to document our code? Answer to this question may differ from programmer to programmer, but I strongly feel it helps in debugging, reverse engineering, re-engineering, testing and giving the code a neat look. Moreover, it’s a step towards standardization of coding methodology. When you document your code using coding standards, you can then use tools such as phpDocumentor to create professional documentation from your existing php source code.

Use php frameworks

Frameworks provide structure, and speed development. Some popular PHP frameworks such as Zend Framework, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Symfony, and Kohana follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which itself is a strong advocate of good coding practice. They also usually come with a number of helpful libraries to make your life easier as a web developer.

Re-use code and libraries

Don’t re-invent the wheel. This is the basic concept that should be followed, even though it may seem slightly lazy at times. It actually means that you should not spend much time on solving a problem that has already been solved, in an efficient way, by other programmers. Using already available resources will save you time in your development process.

If you do end up having to create your solution from scratch, give back to the community and share what you’ve accomplished. This is the best part about an open source development community.

Professionally test your code

PHPUnit and SimpleTest are the two most widely used Unit testing suites for PHP. To make code testing viable, good tool support is needed. This is where PHPUnit comes into play. It is a member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks and provides both a framework that makes the writing of tests easy as well as the functionality to easily run the tests and analyse their results. SimpleTest is an open source unit test framework for the PHP programming language and was created by Marcus Baker. The test structure is similar to JUnit/PHPUnit. SimpleTest supports mock objects and can be used to automate the regression testing of web applications with a scriptable HTTP Client that can parse HTML pages and simulate things like clicking on links and submittings forms.

Use an IDE

An IDE provides a one-stop shop for your coding work. An IDE contains an editor in which you can edit the code, debug the code, view your code in a browser (often embedded), and check in and out of source code control. To support that functionality, an IDE has a set of features you don’t find in a basic editor, such as Notepad or Vim. Again, you can extend editors to do a lot of these things, but IDEs have all this functionality in one tidy package and they’re typically pre-configured.

Here are a few well put together and widely used IDE’s.

• Eclipse
• Komodo
• PHP Designer
• PhpED
• PHPEdit
• Zend Studio

With so many excellent IDE options out there, some of which are even free, there’s really no reason not to give one a try, particularly if you’re a professional.

Looking for reviews on your new startup? Using BegForPost.com you can try to lure other bloggers or news websites into looking into your website, and maybe get some good feedback.

From their website:
“You’ve worked for months building a startup on a boostrap budget and the launch is near. How will you get an initial influx of traffic to propel your product/service into viral bliss? Don’t pay off bloggers to promote your startup, beg! Getting started is quick and easy. Fill out the form below, sit back, and wait for Internet stardom. You’re almost there!”

BegForPost.com

What is a Good Internet Citizen?

Becoming a good Internet citizen is pretty simple, but by no means easy. Provide a useful service, and do it in a way that makes it easy for your visitors, and you’ll thrive online.

“Please don’t add to my frustration!

Can you hear your customers begging?

“Please don’t make me wait for a movie to run before I can check my order.”
“Please don’t make me search for your contact information.”
“Please try to make this easier for me!”

Listen to your customers and you’ll hear them asking for simplicity when they interact with you through the Internet.

Keep your visitors in mind during the design and planning phase of your website, and you’ll build a better site.

The rewards for good citizenship are greater interest, participation, and loyalty from your visitors. That leads to brand recognition and ultimately business success.

Your website should be intuitive and easy-to-use.
Remember, a website is an extension of your computer. It must serve a logical purpose and perform its responsibility – not just look flashy or expensive.
Your website should perform a useful service.
One of the best reasons to build a website is to give your customers more customer service. Find out what they need and give them access to it on the Internet. You can save time and money.

Your website should be accessible and cross-platform compatible.
This part is simple but one of the most common errors on websites. Test your website on all versions of all browsers on Mac’s and PC’s. Test it with a 14.4 modem! Make sure visitors with physical impairments can access your information.

Your website must be secure.
If you are asking your customers to provide personal information or if you are processing credit card transactions online, your site must be secure.

Your website must be up-to-date.
Why should your visitors return? Because you’re constantly providing new information!

Following the above will lead to great returns on business, as well as provide your website with a constantly growing SEO bottom line.

“When we were young, we were told that ‘Everybody else is doing it’ was a really stupid reason to do something. Now it’s the standard reason for picking a particular software package.” — Barry Gehm

When you make decisions, one strong bias is the bandwagon effect. The idea is that humans often do or think things just because many others do the same. Now, after convincing yourself that Ajax is something you have to use, be careful not to find artificial excuses to use it. To some people, Ajax is the latest proverbial hammer, and they will use any excuse to find themselves some suitable nails. Remember that Ajax is a tool, not a toy or purpose in itself.

With each new technology that is introduced, people like to experiment and test the tipping point. For instance, when color monitors first came out, a deluge of applications changed their fonts and colors as much as possible, just because they could. No user really wants a mouse trailer, yet a large number of Web designers seem to think that they have to add them to their sites. I feel that, if we’re not careful, the same phenomenon will happen with Ajax.

Ajax is also fueling a venture capital frenzy. The investment climate for technology startups seems to have become friendly again, and one of the magic keywords these days is Ajax. Collaboration-based startup Zimbraâ„¢, a heavy Ajax user, has already secured $16 million. Other startups are scrambling to claim that they are Ajax-based as a result, to sell more products or receive more attention from investors.

If you find yourself wanting to use Ajax, make a balanced decision about where exactly you think it makes sense, and where it does not.

XHTML is the standard markup language for web documents and the successor to HTML 4. A mixture of classic (HTML) and cutting edge (XML), this hybrid language looks and works much like HTML but is based on XML, the webs markup language, and brings web pages many of XML’s benefits.

Converting from HTML to XHTML is easy, and provides your code with several immediate and long term benefits:

A painless transition to more advanced technology: The web is moving to XML, a powerfully enabling technology. Writing well formed, valid XHTML pages is the easiest way to begin this transition. All it takes is learning a few simple rules of XHTML markup.

Cleaner, more logical markup: XHTML brings uniformity to document structure. The rules of XHTML help restore the structural integrity of documents that was lost during the webs rapid commercial expansion between 1994 and 2001. This is critical for large organizations, whose web pages must interface with logically marked up documents in legacy systems and databases.

Increased interoperability: Unlike old style HTML pages, valid, well formed XHTML documents can easily be transported to wireless devices, Braille readers and other specialized web environments. Moreover, XHTML’s insistence on clean, rule based markup helps us avoid the kind of errors that can make web pages fail even in traditional browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera browser.

Greater accessibility: Because they follow strict rules and avoid non standard markup, well authored XHTML pages are more accessible than old school HTML pages.

If you want your site to work well in today’s browsers and non traditional devices, and to continue to work well in tomorrows, it’s a good idea to author new sites in XHTML, and to convert old pages to XHTML.

Ajax lets Web developers create interactive Web sites that function more like desktop programs rather than static Web sites. Gmail and Google Maps are two of the most common examples of sites built using Ajax. A variety of techniques allow Ajax to place the interactivity directly within the browser, instead of the browser having to constantly contact a Web server to get information.

When someone visits an Ajax site, the browser loads the HTML page as it would normally. After that, though, Ajax uses JavaScript for interactivity. When a site visitor makes a request for more information — for example, to fetch a map — the JavaScript makes the request. The JavaScript doesn’t make a request for information directly to a Web site, though — instead, it uses an API called XMLHttpRequest to transfer the data back and forth. (The data requested is usually in XML format, although it doesn’t have to be.) This allows the Web page and JavaScript to continue to interact with the user, while the XMLHttpRequest handles communications with the server.

JavaScript takes the information handed to it by the XMLHttpRequest, and then uses it or displays it. But only the portion of the page that needs the information is refreshed. This speeds up the display of information, because the entire page doesn’t have to be changed.

Biomimetics is defined as the development of synthetic systems based on information from biological systems.

It has been debated for quite some time for web design as well as application development to become more biomimetic, at least in the sense that systems in biology appear to deal fairly well with unpredictability, failure, and interaction without strong interdependencies, which is yet to be fully accomplished in application architecture.

The basis of these debates comes from the idea that enterprise-class “hard-coded” applications are flawed by nature. Web technologies that mimic biology with the ability to adapt to reactions of users as well as information would be more successful and appropriate for large scale or global use. We see these types of systems such as Technorati, Digg, and Google Maps becoming more prevelant and extremely useful in all different types of applications.

What I’m thinking is that, through web technologies, we’ve spent the last few years walking back from decades of “hardening” of runtime environments and development tools, and consequently of applications. The effect of this being that a lot of web design and application development has become thin (in terms of static/strict checks). Where things like applets failed, DHTML, JavaScript, XML, XHTML, and CSS interfaces are succeeding in creating a rich ecosystem of applications that build on each other or share information across different platforms uniformly.

How are social networks effecting how we live on a daily basis? How do they affect young adults or adolescents who are emerging on their own and creating their own theories about relationships they have with others? Have these social networking circles that are so prevalent today brought our world together, or is it going to effect our younger generations in a negative way, creating a social dependence? A great article published by New Science Print Edition asks those exact questions.