Are Native Mobile Apps Really Better Than Web Apps?

In general, there is a perception that native mobile applications can be directly downloaded from the Play Store and easily installed on your mobile devices. Therefore, native applications are considered as more user-friendly than web applications, especially in terms of their general features. Moreover, the higher sales figures of native apps also give great evidence for this view.

Are native mobile applications really better than web applications? Let us take a look:

Creation:
When concerning about the process of mobile application development, native applications do win hands down. As the native apps are customized for various mobile platforms, the entire coding is usually done by the in-house developers of mobile app development companies. Therefore, finding out bugs and releasing updates, and also monitoring the application analytics are easy and guaranteed.

Speed:
If you buy and install an application from an iPhone or a Blackberry application development company, it automatically becomes a part of your mobile device’s built-in features. Also, launching the applications on compatible handsets generally takes only a few seconds. However, web applications are typically slower as they require strong internet connectivity all the time.

Cost Factor:
From the perspective of professional mobile app developers, the cost of native mobile app development is considerably higher than the cost of web application development. On the other hand, the applications that are compatible across various different platforms can be rather pricey. Also, the time taken to build prototypes of native applications is also higher.

Usability:
According to the professionals from leading Android or iPhone mobile application development company, both web applications and native applications can be user-friendly. However, the native applications seem to have the edge here, as they can be seamlessly integrated with the mobile camera, audio/video recorder, and another handheld device features.

App Store Approval:
Suppose, if a mobile app development company has developed a new mobile application, then the company has to get approval for that application in order to display at the online app stores. Even then, there is no guarantee that the new application would be able to gain the interest of many numbers of users. However, web applications do not require such store approval; hence it is easy for the development company to promote the web applications.

Security:
As mobile applications are tested for their quality and approved by leading app stores, they are completely bug-free and secure. However, no such assurance is available for web applications, even though the popular web applications can be easily trusted.

Requirement of Internal Memory:
Native applications usually require a certain amount of memory space in handsets, especially for functioning in an efficient manner. This is the reason why a great importance is given when selecting a mobile application development framework that never consume too much of memory on mobile phones. Conversely, web applications do not require any extra memory space to be launched and operated.

Monitoring Application Performance:
A mobile app development company that is expertise in native application creation would generally have to build multiple versions of each application, depending on the platform on which it would be used. Also, the analytics for each and every native application must be tracked in order to get an idea about how the application is performing. When concerning about web applications, they generally have only one version that makes performance tracking every easy.

Finding the Necessary Applications:
With the range of web applications available, sometimes it becomes little tricky for users to find the ones that they generally need on their mobile phones. There is no confusion regarding native applications as they are systematically displayed on the Apple Play Store, Android Store and the Blackberry App Store. Choosing and downloading native applications are not very difficult than searching for appropriate web applications.

Maintenance:
Since native mobile applications basically require customized coding for various different platforms, their maintenance seems to be a little more challenging than web applications. As web applications have a cross-platform single coding involved, making changes or modifications is easier. Also, the maintenance cost of web applications is also lower compared to the cost of native applications.

In terms of both performance and quality, the native applications are mostly better than web applications. Also, native applications offer more user-friendly advantages when compared to web applications even though the later have several positive points of their own.

HTML5 and CSS3 – Lift up your web design to next level

HTML5 and CSS3 are the new techniques which are considered as the future of web development. However, you don’t have to wait to start using them for your web development. Because, even though the specification is still in development, most contemporary browsers and mobile devices already support these techniques.

Gone are the days when adding additional markup just to design a button in a different way or stripe tables. Now, you have to learn how to use HTML5 and CSS3 new markup to create a better structure for your website content and also better interfaces for your forms.

Using HTML5 and CSS3, you can able to embed audio, video and vector graphics into your web pages without using Flash. You can find how web sockets, cross-document messaging, client-side storage, and offline caching can make your modern web development easy, also you can discover how CSS3 makes it into style sections of your web page. You will get a clear idea about both the developing solutions that are backwards compatible and accessible.

HTML5:
HTML5 is the most recent version of Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. This technology is currently supported by only a few numbers of browsers, hoping to see more in usage by the next year. However, the features that are available now are a best possible way to become acquainted with HTML5 and add some fantastic elements to your website.
To avoid many bugs and crashes, refuse to allow Flash on the iOS and also learn how to use the more intricate features of HTML5 to develop apps and iOS-friendly websites. As Google is rolling out an HTML5-friendly version of YouTube, many web and mobile app developers have started to see how important this technique will become in the near future.
Every browser may support various features of HTML5 that makes it mandatory for those interested in programming to figure out which features they require and which will be supported by various different browsers.

Features of HTML5:
• Any HTML5 syntax needs a doctype that must be specified, so that the browser can provide the web page in standards mode. One important thing is that the doctype declaration has also been made simpler from previous HTML. Hence, it is now just: <!DOCTYPE html>
• HTML5 provides an outstanding support to both audio and visual. As soon as all browsers support HTML5, you can be able to easily add audio and video to your website without the need of other plugins.
• Using HTML5, you can easily edit the content of your website. Use the attribute “contenteditable” to effortlessly change your content on your website. To do this, just add contenteditable=“true” to any element.
• You can use the canvas element to bypass Photoshop in order to make your 2D images and directly add them in your code.
• The application cache allows you to easily navigate web applications, even though you are offline.

Why use HTML5?
• HTML5 gives you more flexibility when creating your website.
• As HTML5 generally implements Web sockets. Hence, it will load much faster than its older version.
• Using HTML5, you can create universal applications for all mobile devices. Therefore, mobile phone applications will become much more accessible if they are written in HTML5.
• Audio, video and images are all effortlessly written perfectly into the code. This eliminates the need for any other third-party software like Flash.
• HTML5 is growing more rapidly and this will be resulted in a number of features that will leave traditional websites looking outdated.
• As HTML5 is generally built on HTML4, the old markup can able to stay in place as you develop the new features.
• Both HTML5 and CSS3 together will provide some great designer credibility.

CSS 3:
CSS3 or Cascading Style Sheet 3 is a style sheet language that specifies style formatting, such as color, font, size and layout, for websites. This technique is mostly used in HTML pages. However, unlike HTML, CSS mainly focuses on the design and style of a website rather than its content. The main purpose of using CSS is to make changes on every page on a website without rewriting the code.
Even though CSS3 is not supported by all browsers that are available now, it is becoming very popular because it makes website changes so much easier, when compared with its previous version or JavaScript plugins.
CSS3 provides many exciting new features that help you to enhance the appearance of a website. Using CSS3, you can able to improve the functionality and appearance of your website exponentially.

Features of CSS3:
• Using CSS3, you can easily create a shadow around an element by using the same code, and also be able to change the color, position, and blur of that shadow.
• Rounded corners appear more user-friendly than square boxes. Using CSS3, you can apply this effect to HTML elements.
• Just like normal text, you can be able to add a shadow to HTML text that can be highlighted. Using CSS3, you can change the shadow blur, the shadow angle, and the shadow color in CSS.
• The property “opacity” can make elements more transparent. You can set the opacity of an image in an image editor and then save it with transparency enabled.
• With CSS3, you can create gradients right in the browser as soon as you load the web page.

Why use CSS3?
In fact, there is no high demand of innovation that CSS3 was developed, however, the possibilities that CSS3 could be able to provide for us. Before CSS3 has been introduced, web designers can able to create CSS to meet the expected result using images and markup. But, now, with CSS3, they can be able to create the same effects as layout images and extra markup with less effort and more dynamics. This not only helps in making changes easily, but also decreases the size of a web page with less number of images.

Conclusion:
Hence, the combination of both HTML5 and CSS3 are very powerful and can create incredible, high-quality solutions. So, it is mandatory for you to learn them and start using them from today, otherwise you will fall behind your competitors.

What are the most popular magento eCommerce plugins?

Magento eCommerce is an open source web application used mainly for eCommerce websites. Users prefer Magento for their websites because Magento eCommerce platforms provide flexibility, scalability and features for their online business growth.

As Magento provides feature-rich eCommerce platforms, it provides merchants with a complete flexibility and control over the presentation, content as well as functionality of their online channel. Hence, around 2, 00,000 merchants are reported to be using the Magento platform now. Also, there are more than 5000 plugins available to extend the merchants’ eCommerce experience.

Some of the most popular Magento eCommerce plugins are as follows:

• Canonical URLs for Magento: It is a free module for Magento that  not only allows you to add ”rel” canonical URL to the head of your website pages, but also enables you to manually set custom canonical links for products or services.
• Yoast MetaRobots: This plugin allows you to easily add the appropriate meta tags to your web pages, disable unused archives, and nofollows unnecessary links.
• Remerce CMS Meta Robots:  This module adds the option to set the Robots Meta for CMS web pages.
• MailChimp ECommerce360 Reporting: This plugin helps you to measure the rate of return of email campaigns that you have created. It aggregates the information and display the information on your campaign report.
• Auto CrossSell Products: By using this plugin, you can automate your product cross sell maintenance. Suppose, if a customer checks out, all the products that are chosen are linked as cross sell products.
• Lazzymonks Twitter: This plugin displays Twitter updates in the menu. It also allows updates from within the admin panel, whereas the number of updates is also adjustable.
• Product Gallery Importer: This plugin enables you to import more than one product images from a CSV file.
• Lazzymonks Google Ads: If unnecessary ads need to be blocked for better viewing, then the Lazzymonks Google Ads is the right plugin to use. Using this plugin, you can able to add the Google Ads blocker.
• Auctionmaid Matrxrate: Suppose, if your operations are global, then it would be useful to add the plugin “Auctionmaid Matrxrate”. This plugin enhances shipping fee details specifically for international shipping.
• Category admin product tab: edit product link: Another useful plugin is the Category admin product tab. This plugin helps you to add a product edit link in the category tab.
• Change Attribute Set: This plugin gives you the ability to change or modify products attributes after your product registration is done.
• Fontis WYSISYG: This is a Magento plugin that ensures that the features or descriptions of your product match the product received, i.e., ads what you see is what exactly you get feature in the product description.
• Mass Product Relater: This is a useful plugin for registering connected products and to up-sell and cross-sell products.
• Fooman Google Analytics Plus:  This plugin is useful for tracking every individual page as well as the details about the keywords typed by the users.
• Advanced Sitemap: This plugin helps in listing the products in the current store.
• Post Affiliate Pro Connector: This Magento eCommerce plugin helps in managing the click and sale affiliate details automatically. It also helps in tracking them by using either PHP API or JavaScript.
• IW PayPal Standard Currencies: This plugin lets you choose the currencies supported by PayPal, and also directly adds them to your shops admin panel.
• J2T Points & Rewards: This plugin is useful for customers to gather points on products they purchased. Subsequently, these points can be used for discounts on their other purchases.
• Fontis SecurePay: This plugin is primarily a payment module, mainly used for processing of payments through SecureXML gateway.
• Checkout Newsletter: This plugin helps you to send newsletters to registered customers about your latest promotional offers, sales, products, etc.
• Events Calendar: This Magento plugin is used to display your events on your website.
• Exploded Menu: This plugin helps in replacing the standard menu with a multi-column drop down menu system.
• Magento EasyLightbox: This plugin is used for displaying the images of your products as a lightbox.
• Teaserbox: This Magento plugin shows the teasers of your products if they are available.
• Magento EasyTabs: This Magento plugin adds extra information tabs on your product page in your website.
• MostViewed module: This plugin automatically generates a list that shows the most viewed products in your website, and also displays the list at the homepage in the customer area.

SEO tools that assist you to optimize your website

Are you thinking about managing your website? Have you even been spending few hours in a day to optimize your website? Are you not getting close to the results that you are expected to achieve?

Yes, these are definitely the challenging tasks that most SEOs have to meet in their daily activities. There are so many things to do that it seems you have to do them by yourself, or you need to hire an SEO agency to do the job for you.


If you are planning to do it by yourself, you need to get some good SEO tools that will help you to optimize your website more efficiently. SEO tools are very well known for assisting you in your SEO campaign in a more relaxed and convenient way and also in a quick manner at the same time.



The following are some of the tools that assist you to optimize your website:

• AdWords Keyword Tool
• SEO by Yoast
• Majestic SEO
• Google Analysis
• Google Drive
• Advanced Web Ranking
• Google Webmaster Tool
• Ahrefs

AdWords Keyword Tool: This is a great tool to start with, especially for the beginners SEOs. This tool is an external keyword suggestion tool provided through Google AdWords. It provides detailed information about the competition in the industry and about researching keywords whether locally or globally.

SEO by Yoast: This tool is really an efficient tool for optimizing your webpage effectively. It works perfectly when you optimize your website content with the help of different steps of SEO.

Majestic SEO: This tool is a beginner-friendly tool for SEO, helps you to determine the backlink strategy from competition by comparing them with your business. This tool will also show your backlink’s history, and also can gather information from others into your own tools through API as the Link Intelligence.

Google Analysis: This is a handy tool for SEOs in their SEO campaign, as it helps in getting you informed of the URL as well as blog analysis including its traffic, target audience and conversations.

Google Drive: This tool is formerly known as Google Docs. It has the ability to use XPath that will allow you to inspect and verify the external web data such as web contents, Meta descriptions, page rank and titles.

Advanced Web Ranking: This is an SEO tool that will help you to search outranked keywords. It also assists you to evolve in the SEO proposal that supplies the most top Return on Investment or ROI. This tool will also analyze your steps in link building, and shows your search ranks and also produces an automatic operation of reports.

Google Webmaster Tool: The service provided by this tool will help SEOs to track their website’s indexing status, sitemaps, most keyword hits, and a loop of links into their website including both external and internal.

Ahrefs: This tool will help you to find out what keywords your competitors are targeting. Also, it will investigate links in which the database can boast over 50 billion URLs.

Meta Tag Extractor: This is a strong tool that will extract any website’s meta tags, useful information in decisive that keywords area unit serving to the rivalries website rank higher than yours.

HTML Optimizer: This is a handy tool that helps you to remove all the extra white spacing in your HTML website. It also helps in optimizing your websites for faster load speed.

Web Design Trends in the year 2014

As the World Wide Web continues to evolve, new web design trends, techniques and ideas are also surfacing constantly. To ensure that your website is effective and reaching your visitors in the best possible way, it is necessary for you to analyze your website design, content and features frequently. Some new trends were arriving in 2013; however, some among them have been faded out and others are stuck around and still having a strong presence.  While in 2014, these are some of the web design trends that have started to emerge:

Single Page Websites
A single page web design is great for small websites that don’t have too much of the content. It helps you to keep your content easy to navigate while heavily relying on scrolling.  The single page design technique enables you to convey linear and controlled information to your visitors and makes them focus on important details.

Scrolling
Today, website visitors are used to scroll down a website to read more information that leads to more possibilities for the layout of your site. A lengthy homepage with many web design elements can help convey more information to the visitor; however, longer pages can also overwhelm visitors if they are cluttered with website content. In 2014, keep an eye out for lengthy and considerately designed web pages, and also consider about how you might engage your visitors by encouraging them to scroll.

Flat UI
Flat user-interface or flat UI is an up-and-coming concept in web design, which is being implemented on so many websites. This is a technique that focuses on website content and provides a fundamental design with less distracting elements. Flat UI takes a much more basic approach, mostly with a less image-intensive web design. Less number of images and simpler web design elements enable faster load times and thus help those who will load the website on a slower internet connection.

Fixed Header Bar
Previously, menu bars are placed in the header of a website, mostly near the logo. As the users scroll down, the navigation would disappear with the header. So, if the users want to navigate further on the website, they have to scroll back to the top of the web page. To avoid this, many websites have now fixed the header bar at the top of the browser window, allowing it to follow users as they scroll down the web page. This allows users to easily access the menu, and thus improves navigation and serves as a subtle prompt for the users to drive deeper into the website.

Large type
If your web page consists of too much of the text, then your visitor might choose not to take the time to read it. Large type can help you to make headings that draw the attention of the readers and make them to read the rest of the content. Generally, the average reader decides within a few seconds whether your website is worth exploring. So, these large headings can help you to grab the attention of the readers and pull them into other content on your website.

HTML 5 Animations / CSS 3 / JavaScript / Flash / Silverlight
For so many years, Adobe’s Flash plug-in is dominated video, games, and other animations on the World Wide Web. However, recently, Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in helps to cover much of the same ground similar to Flash. Both Microsoft’s Silverlight and Flash are rapidly fading due to the emergence of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, which help bring a website to life and create an excellent and unique browser experience.

Parallax Scrolling
Parallax Scrolling is a special scrolling technique that helps in animating both background and foreground images as you scroll. This not only creates depth but also the web page to life. As you scroll through the web page, both text and other graphics will become animated, and they also move on the web page to help create scenery and change content.

Large Backgrounds
In the past, having large background images on a web page is hideous as it takes too much time for loading. Also, it makes a website look horrific, distracting and annoying. But, nowadays, large background images are no longer an issue of loading time. But, the question here is whether the background image fits with the website. With the perfect web design and image, the web designers can easily connect large background images into the rest of the web design, helps in enhancing the user experience.

Video Backgrounds
In previous days, the browser limitations and the low internet speed connections prevent video backgrounds from being easily implemented within a website. However, the newly introduced browsers can able to seamlessly play video that can ingeniously augment a website’s design. This is because video backgrounds are generally designed to support the website design and content.

Responsive Web Design
The best way to implement a mobile website is a responsive web design. It helps you to avoid having a completely separate set of content and a new web design. Using responsive web design, you can utilize existing content that perfectly responds to the resolution of any devices, such as mobile, tablet or desktop, whichever your visitor is using. Within a responsive design, you can accentuate website content important to mobile users, such as time, location, or phone number.  The responsive web design has been very helpful to maintain mobile websites effortlessly; Instead of just having to persistently change a second set of website content, the responsive web design will integrate with your already existing content to provide a flawless browsing experience for your mobile visitors.

High-Resolution Screens
Due to the adaptation of Apple’s Retina screens within the iPhone, iPad and MacBook products, we have seen the requirement to have high resolution graphics integrated into websites. Hence, high-resolution screens are doing a great job of reducing pixilation and making websites look exceptional.

Third-Party Services
Third-party services are available in handy, helps in showing video on a website, implementing a newsletter system, or collecting stats on visitors to a website. Using third-party services, you can get your website access to fantastic and robust software that can satisfy many expectations.

Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software as a service or SaaS allows you to integrate with a service that is already being developed for solving a problem. These services are free for a certain amount of usage and then they charge for additional usage or for more features. Examples for Software as a service are MailChimp, Post Kudos, etc.

Open Source Software
Open source software helps you to build and implement so many features faster than ever, as it is developed by a large community to solve most common problems. Today, many websites are relying on content management system for adding, updating, and maintaining the content on the website. These content management systems are often open source platforms that have a community frequently adding new features, fixing errors and creating additional plug-ins to enhance the system.

Conclusion
The above mentioned web design trends are booming in this current year 2014. It is nonetheless agreeable that many of these web design trends are going to set solid foundations for the future. Also, there is no doubt that there will be even bigger and industry-changing web design trends will take off in the next coming years.

Digital Marketing Helps You To Stand Out In The Online Market

If you are really concerned about your online business to grow up and excel to the success, and also you want it to come up with relatively distinguished ratings, then look out for digital marketing to your target audiences.

To profitably promote your product or business, then choose digital marketing to attract your target audience in an effective manner.

Digital marketing is the perfect medium to promote your products or brands through various forms of electronic media or digital media channels such as email, mobile phones, social networks and the like. It has become very important due to the rise of technology and also the growing awareness that make people expecting more qualitative and quantifiable results.

Digital marketing is completely different from traditional marketing. Earlier, the traditional marketing method of promoting your product or brand used to be very slow and not very effective.

But now digital marketing has changed the trend in the marketing industry. It has become very popular among business people, as it is so pervasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place they want it.

In these days, digital media has become ever-growing source of entertainment, shopping, news and social interaction. Therefore, the consumers are now exposed not just to what your company says about your product or brand, but also what others saying as well.

Therefore, the use of digital marketing enables you to measure quantitative results, providing you information about exactly who was exposed to your message, and also when and which actions the viewers performed as a result.

Using digital marketing, you can launch successful campaigns without having any prior knowledge, and also not hiring any professional who is expertise in this niche. As digital marketing has so many significant advantages, it becomes an important addition to your business and helps you to achieve success.

So, do you want to effectively promote your product or brand? Look out for a professional digital marketing company that provides you with premium and cutting-edge solutions focused on your business requirements.

Generally, there are three most ingenious solutions that help you to grab for better promotions. They are the web presence, email marketing, and better engaging customers. These cost-effective solutions are offered by many of the digital marketing companies that you find assisting.

There are some professional companies that expertise in growing your business through online marketing channels. They usually implement the right customizing solution. To find the most appropriate digital marketing channel for your business, you need to examine the requirements and resources of your company.

Whether it is email, mobile phones or social marketing, or may be numerous channels that incorporate the different types, the professional digital marketing service providers will offer you simple, effective, advanced and comfortable solutions.

How to create mobile apps using PhoneGap?

What is PhoneGap?

PhoneGap is an open source mobile development framework that enables you to build mobile applications for various platforms by using eminent web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The main idea is to build a application using the architecture of PhoneGap and distribute across manifold platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, Symbian, webOS and Bada.

The following are some of the main reasons that you want to build PhoneGap applications:

• PhoneGap applications have the potential of running on various mobile platforms like iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
• You can use web development skills of already existing developers instead of learning and implementing device-specific languages such as Java or Objective-C.
• You can make your applications accessible to more than one native APIs such as camera, accelerometer, etc.
• The applications that you develop using PhoneGap will be available offline also.
• You can make your applications available in an app store or market and monetize it.
• You can make the icon of your application appear on the home screen of mobile devices.

If you want to build a native application for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other devices, then use the PhoneGap that wraps your HTML, CSS and JavaScript into an application, which can be installed on mobile devices, and provides access to some of the device APIs like camera, location, permanent storage, and phone’s contact list.

However, WaveMaker is an open source software development platform that supports you to build native applications. It provides users with easy access to most common PhoneGap APIs, a build option for building a zip file that can be uploaded to a location where your project will be converted into native applications, and the tools that enable you to build PhoneGap applications locally on your system.

PhoneGap acquires the whole WaveMaker client-side runtime environment and your entire project files, and then provides access to them through iOS, Android and Windows WebView components.

PhoneGap APIs

The two tools that are used to access the PhoneGap APIs are as follows:

1. PhoneGapService component
2. A typical ServiceVariable

PhoneGapService component: Insert PhoneGapService component from the Studio’s Inset menu, and you can able to set an operation to any of the below mentioned device APIs.

• geolocation_getCurrentPosition
• notification_beep
• notification_vibrate
• contacts_read
• contacts_delete
• contacts_save
• capture_picture
• capture_audio

A typical ServiceVariable:

• Calls a server
• Sends inputs and a method to the server
• Gets back a response
• Stores the response; allowing you to access it via., binding or calls to getData or getValue
• Calls onSuccess, onError and onResult

Local Storage

You can access LocalStorage by using your wm.Variable/ServiceVariable/LiveVariable's saveInPhonegap property. Any data that is stored to your Variable/ServiceVariable will also be stored in permanent memory.

Other APIs

You can get an entire list of APIs that are provided by PhoneGap from the website http://phonegap.com.

PhoneGap Build Server vs. Local Build

• PhoneGap Build Server: 

This server requires no installation or configuration. You just need to register with their website and then upload the zip file that Studio generates. Instead of installing and configuring various development environments, you just let the build server do all of the work.

• Local Builds using XCode or Eclipse: 

There is installation, setup and if you have made any mistake in this, then definitely debugging involved. Once you set up the environments, the time that is taken between hitting Save in the studio, and viewing the updates to your project that is running in an emulator is not more than 20 seconds.

• Register PhoneGap Build Server:

You can register Phonegap’s build server for free.  To configure your build, go to Studio's File menu -> Deploy Project submenu -> PhoneGap Build, and then hit the Ok button. This will generate a build for you. Then you can upload the generated build at http://build.phonegap.com.

It will take only few minutes to upload your project to the build server. Once it is done, it would have generated iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other applications.

Building using Local Development Environments

Generally, when you test your applications, your server runs on localhost. To do effective testing, you need to ensure that your test device can access your localhost server, or use Emulators that are running on the same machine.

You can do this by simply connecting them to the same wireless router, editing config.js, and then setting wm.xhrPath to have the IP address of your computer to the wireless router.

Debugging
You can able to install a debugger onto your computer. The debugger allows you to use an entire webkit debugger that helps you to debug your application when it is running on test device or an emulator.

Error Messages

1) When launching the application on an Android device.
Error message: The connection to the server was unsuccessful.
Solution: You have to move the loading of remote resources out of index.html and also into your application where it will fail gently.
2) http://build.phonegap.com, IOS build
Error message: You must provide a signing key first
Solution: Start reading https://build.phonegap.com/docs/ios-builds.
3) http://build.phoengap.com, Blackberry build
Error message: Too many files in www directory
Solution: Buy a phone from someone else
Resources/Links
• To use the PhoneGap API, use this link: http://docs.phonegap.com/
• To log into the PhoneGap build server, use this link: http://build.phonegap.com
• To configure your PhoneGap build server app, use this link:  https://build.phonegap.com/docs/config-xml
• To use the PhoneGap API natively within a browser, without using a PhoneGap build, then use this link: http://phonegap.com/2012/07/09/phonegap-and-dolphin-browser-garage-api/

What are the benefits of using CodeIgniter framework?

Nowadays, you have so many open supply platforms that enable you to develop websites for gratis, but, only a few of them like CodeIgniter allows a hassle-free website development, as it provides various features in a suite to support quick and efficient development.

CodeIgniter is an open source rapid application development framework that is used to develop dynamic websites with PHP. However, CodeIgniter is not a perfect PHP substitute; it is a PHP driven framework that includes a grab-bag of plug-ins, libraries, modules and other resources to support complicated PHP procedures and functions.

CodeIgniter is a very simple and elegant toolkit that comprehensively serves you with many benefits:

• As CodeIgniter is an open source framework, it is really simple to configure
• It is easy to learn, adopt and deploy
• It allows you to easily do customization for your own requirements
• It simplifies the PHP syntax
• It makes coding in PHP very simple, quick and easy to use
• It is a brilliant framework used to learn more about how PHP works
• It allows you to streamline the code underlying your web pages easily
• It is built on a linear and easy-to-use folder structure
• It is a depiction of straightforward solutions
• It supports easy, hassle-free migration from server hosting to server hosting
• You can apply a new functionality that doesn’t affect the customization at all
• It provides suppleness and effortless management with an MVC based framework
• Active Record Implementation is outstanding and easy to remember
• It provides simple configuration and also customization of configuration files
• It facilitates easy working with different kinds of developers
• It consists of a good collection of possessed libraries
• Excellent documentation of the user guide that helps coders to use the entire framework easily
• It enables to integrate its own existing scripts and develop core libraries for the system
• It is lightweight and widespread Thai user base
• With the help of CodeIgniter, you can make synergistic, spontaneous, interactive, and proficient websites in no time
• As CodeIgniter provides an extensive compatibility along with standard hosting accounts, configuration and typical coding rules are not needed
• CodeIgniter uses a direct approach while handling models. The workings of CodeIgniter are very clear as well as open, hence it is easily understandable what is happening and therefore it is simple to use
• It underpins the MVC approach to website development, i.e., a good practice philosophy that must be adhered by all developers
• Using CodeIgniter, You can construct your own cleaner URI lines

How does augmented reality works?

Augmented Reality or AR is a cutting-edge technology that enables a digitally enhanced view of the real world. It is alive, either direct or indirect, view of physical and real-world environment in which elements are improved by computer-generated sensory input such as video, audio, graphics or GPS data.

The possibilities of Augmented Reality are nearly endless. It enhances one’s current perception of reality. Using Augmented Reality, the artificial information about the environment as well as its objects can be overlaid on the real world.

The main objective of Augmented Reality is to build a system in which the user cannot be able to find out the exact differences between the virtual amplification and the real world. Hence, Augmented Reality is used in almost all industries today.

Now, let’s take a look at how augmented reality actually works. This will give you a pretty knowledge of why and where we are with Augmented Reality applications, and what is going to take this technology up to the next level.

To understand the process clearly, we will break the process down into the necessary components that make Augmented Reality possible.

There are different options, such as a projector that can be placed on the top of the surface you want to augment, or the another common one, a monitor or television that provides a clear view of reality through a remote camera, and also the power to display graphic information based on the things that are added by the production team in their broadcast studios or your computer hardware.

Also, you have some other devices for other senses like a glove or earpiece that could provide more information to both the sense of touch or hearing. Whatever may be, something must be there in between your organic senses to allow them to transform an unseen stimulus into something that you can able to detect.

Window on the world: 

The first and foremost thing that you need for Augment Reality is absolutely some reality. If you have some reality, then you can possibly create an exclusive virtual world. So, the main thing that you need for Augmented Reality is a window on the world. Either a remote view through a video screen, or the location with which you want to augment, you need the canvas of reality to add information. If there is no reality, there is no Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality display device:

After getting your background environment, you need to think about the way of displaying the augmentations. The main idea of Augmented Reality is to provide information about your environment, that is, otherwise not detectable to your naked senses. So, to make this to work, you need a method of exhibiting those annotations that would not normally exist. Most often, an effective frame is needed through which you can look at the world. The typical examples are mobile phones, head mounted display like a visor or glasses, heads up display, or tablets.

The second option is the Internet, which is the great source of freely accessible data. For example, Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc., are some of the sources where you can able to retrieve data such as photos, telephone numbers, status updates, likes, dislikes, and so on.

Connection: 

No matter wherever you retrieve information, you need a live connection to that information for Augmented Reality to work. You need to use high-speed cables to have a direct and flawless connection between the computer and your windows on the world, i.e., your Augmented Reality display device. For consistent Augmented Reality experience, the user must rely heavily on coverage and speed of the Internet connection.

Application:

The hardware is in place; however, there is a lot of reality out there and a huge amount of information on the Internet for your Augmented Reality display device to connect to. Now, you need some software to recognize what is coming into your device from the outside environment, call up the needed information according to that, and then instruct your mobile device or HMD to display and overlay the data flawlessly.

However, you will require some graphics processing hardware that works appropriately for the initial recognition part of the process and also having the capacity to generate the augmentations for the users to view. Moreover, all of these have to be done in real-time for it to work.

The initial recognition part includes using GPS to track the user’s location instead of having to rely on the software to perfectly identify the user’s environment based on a view of information through the lens of your mobile device.

Perhaps one of the difficult tasks of all is nothing but tracking the virtual objects and render them perfectly in 3D, so that the users can able to move through their environment while still receiving perfect annotations of what they view.

It might be possible for an application to pull in 3D information of absolutely everything in a scene. Hence, it is significant to have something that is both selective and self-effacing as well. This is nothing but augmented reality, and both the augmentations and the reality are just as imperative as one another.

Conclusion:

These are the elements that made Augmented Reality possible. If you manage to complete that chain from one end to another, then you can have a system that works well, and is hopefully useful at the same time.

Recent trends in internet technologies 2014!

Today’s life is definitely dominated by the prevailing technology of the internet. Every phase of our life is either directly or indirectly connected with various existing internet technologies such as the internet of electronic things, wearable devices, augmented reality, big data & machine learning algorithms, mHealth technologies, 3D printing, Intraday delivery, mobile payment & virtual currencies, electric cars, and e-learning.

Almost all electronic devices are now connected to the internet. Initially electronic devices, such as personal computers, notebooks, tablets and mobile phones, were the only things connected to the internet, but later on, some more have been added such as televisions, cars, glasses and watches.

Subsequently, the things like refrigerators, electric meters, hoovers, and many more will also be connected in the future. However, these smart devices are not only just connected to the internet, but also will provide contextual relevance and a smooth experience to the users.  So, these devices are expected to have higher adoption rates, linking every part of our lives.

Next, wearable technology is going to be a big buzz in the year 2014. Some products like activity bands, smart helmets, smart clothing and Google Glass are all equipped with interconnected devices powered by the internet. While wearable watches are already available in the market even they have very limited functionality.

And, Google Glass is getting closer to the consumer, introducing a new trend in the market, where web-based information is directly integrated into our daily activities. The launch of Google Glass in the year 2014 will definitely lead to a greater growth in the market. This will shorten the distance between the technology and the users by allowing them to augment their day-to-day activities such as buying products by merely scanning them from a magazine, watching a video on the cover of a newspaper, taking photos and videos, etc.

Furthermore, it is expected that the technology is going to merge with clothing too. For example: Smart Shoes from Adidas will be having an integrated accelerometer, Bluetooth and a gyroscope, which will motivate the user to do exercises.

Another new technology that is having great impact in this modern world is the augmented reality, i.e., the apps that connect the physical world and the virtual world. It is the assimilation of digital information with live video or the user’s surroundings in real time. It is predicted that the market for augmented reality mobile apps is going to grow rapidly during this year. According to the report given by Juniper Research, the revenue will expected to reach $5.2 billion by the year 2017.

However, traditional analytics has become outdated, and the future of technology is going to be shaped by machine learning algorithms, i.e., the algorithms which can be learned from the data they process and trained to advance as they process huge amount of data.

Due to the exponential growth of data, simple data analysis is no longer valuable today. Machine learning has become very important in our lives, as it helps in filtering spam emails, providing appropriate searches on the top pages of Google search, and so on. Machine learning technologies always provide you the information that you want when it is required.

With the proliferation of mobile phones at low costs in the up-and-coming economies, mHealth technologies have possibly improved the lives of millions of people all around the world, and also making healthcare more customized and effectual. Based on the analysis, it is expected that the global mHealth market is going to be worth $11.8 billion by the year 2018.

The ingenious dimensions of the latest technological possibilities are enormous, ranging from architecture to interior design to art & education. On the other hand, technology also plays a vital role in manufacturing. Now it is not necessary to store spare parts in large warehouses, and send them over thousands of kilometers. Instead, you can print them whenever and wherever they are really required.

Also, the new technologies in e-commerce have changed the way we do online shopping. For instance, one-day delivery service model has entirely disrupted the business models of traditional logistics and transport companies. This model has important consequences, even though air traffic control and buzz safety and usage system are there which prevent rapid proliferation.

Another internet technology with a huge impact on the world is the mobile payment. Not only the number of mobile phones has increased, but also the payment methods have significantly increased. Various payment methods, such as PayPal’s new wireless payment solution, NFC-enabled devices, digital wallets and Beacon, etc., have been progressively reaching the mass market, enabling people to pay an amount without using any wallet or cash.

Applications that provide flexible payment options are Google Wallet app, Apple’s iBeacon technology, etc. Google Wallet app allows users to send money using only their mobile devices, and Apple’s iBeacon technology not only just provides various payment options but also provides indoor mapping as well as personalization.

In 2014, many vendors including traditional car manufacturers have launched electric cars. Unlike traditional cars, the electric cars will be equipped with wireless connections, computers and sensors. This allows the cars to know more information about the drivers, which could be very helpful for the manufacturers. Even though few issues are there with the batteries and charging, some enhancements and adaptations are expected to be done in the coming future.

Finally, e-learning has changed the face of education and learning system forever. Several novel online learning platforms and portals have also been disrupted the traditional education models. Initially, these platforms and portals were introduced to provide high-quality education, but later the consequences have been unexpectedly high. This technology has made the classrooms an interactive and inspiring learning environment, and also made knowledge accessible to everyone easily.

If there is one segment in Information Technology that had an enormous amount of innovation and swift development in the past 10 years, then it is internet technology. So, it is important to have a better understanding about the changing trends in internet technology in today’s competitive business world.