CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

This is wonderful news. According to the Apple Developer Connection website, 

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

What does this mean to you?  This means that developers can now share to the world any technical articles or tutorials related to developing iPhone apps or web apps.  Now, I can finally proceed with publishing my iCopyUPaste technical article.

According to the Netbiscuits blog…

The main advantages of client based mobile Web applications are that they provide very good possibilities for graphic design of user interfaces and keep content available even offline. Furthermore, they often show faster reaction times and are sometimes easier to link to other telephone functions such as directories, camera, etc. The main disadvantage of every client-based solution is that they initially need to be downloaded by the user and installed on the mobile – a practice that will need to be repeated for every new release. Many users are prevented from taking this step due to technical problems, security issues and a lack of clarity concerning costs involved. Furthermore clients are always dependent on the mobile phone operating system and must often undergo costly adjustments for each individual terminal.

Mobile sites, on the other hand, do not require any installation. They are immediately available over the browser and the sites’ content and software are continuously updated unobtrusively to the mobile user. Mobile sites also provide a greater scope of outreach than clients do, as nowadays practically all mobile phones have a browser. Adjusting mobile sites and rich media content to various mobile terminals can be made 100 percent automatic. This means a massive reduction in development and testing expenses. User interface design is also no longer an obstacle. Modern mobile phone browsers enable use of AJAX and Flash, thus creating a user experience similar to that of PC Web. If a company is looking for a larger audience reach with as little hassle as possible, the mobile site is the clear winner.

I totally agree. The one thing that I advocate is to have some kind of markup language that allows the browser to have access to native device functions such as the PIM, camera, etc.

Just take a read at this NYT article entitled “New iPhone Pricing Model Is a Step Backward for Consumers” and it explains exactly why I am not going to be in the market for the new iPhone 2.0.  Apparently, Apple and AT&T have closed off the biggest loophole that existed that enabled iPhone 1.0 users to ability to jailbreak their iPhones and do with them as they pleased. What exactly was that loophole? They won’t let you walk out of the stores with the new iPhone 2.0 without signing up for the new 2 YR contract!  That’s right.  Loophole closed.

What does iPhone 2.0 offer that warrants an upgrade?  GPS, 3G, and slightly larger storage.  That simply is NOT enough to warrant the extra $30 / month I’d have to shell out to get the new iPhone 2.0.  I currently pay $55 incl. taxes and fees for my iPhone 1.0 plan, and I thought that was pretty hefty to begin with.  This new plan simply is highway robbery!  Apple and AT&T, no thanks, but I’m sticking with iPhone 1.0.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how web browsers have become the central strategy for much of Web 2.0 and the Mobile 2.0.  Cloud computing is the next major step for many tech companies’ strategic roadmap including IBM. One of the biggest contributors to this surge is Mozilla’s Firefox web browser.

Why has Firefox surged to  the top?  Two things. Add-ons/extensions, and tabbed browsing.  I cannot even imagine browsing the web without these innovations.  Those two simple ideas have made my online experience a sheer joy.  My top ten add-ons include:  del.icio.us, Foxmarks, Adblock, Google Browser Sync, Google Gears, Google Notebook, Operator, Greasemonkey, Firebug, and User Agent Switcher.

The upcoming FIrefox 3 also promises new innovations to make browsing even more simpler and useful. The aptly named “Awesome Bar” is indeed awesome.  You just start typing in anything that you’ve accessed in your browser URL, and it comes up with possible suggestions.  Unlike type-ahead, the suggestions you get can come from any position in the URL (not just the first n characters). Also, the performance and security enhancements are much needed as pre-Firefox-3 browsers had started to become slow.  I remembered the primary reason that I had switched from IE to Firefox back in the day was because Firefox 1.0 was so much faster than IE 6.0.  Performance is as much part of the user experience as UI. You can have the prettiest user interface, but if the user has to wait longer to get their information, they will perceive the product as crap.

Mozilla’s next phase is to rule the mobile browser space. The space is already crowded with the likes of Webkit, Opera, Pocket IE, etc. How awesome will it be to be able to keep those Add-Ons while surfing the mobile web on any smartphone platform. That’s Firefox’s bread and butter.  That’s what will make them successful in the mobile web 2.0.

Let’s make an assumption that your smartphone has built-in Wi-Fi. I’ll be bold enough to claim that in a couple of years, Wi-Fi will become standard in smartphones. Wouldn’t it be nice that the smartphone knew that upon connecting to an open Wi-Fi hotspot, that it would automatically use the the Wi-Fi connection as the preferred data network, and in turn allow long distance or local calls to be routed using Skype, Gizmo, or some other VOIP provider?

This type of location network awareness could be applied to many other applications. For instance, upon connecting to your Wi-Fi router at home, it could signal an action of some kind. For instance, if your smartphone sensed that your PC or Mac was online in your home network, it could synchronize your smartphone’s contacts, calendars, and music automatically over Wi-Fi. On the smartphone, there should be the ability to discover open hotspots, store those hotspots to location profiles, and take actions based on those location and network profiles.