iOS & Android Development

GitHub plu/ pxctest fbsimctl fbsimctl is a command line interface to the FBSimulatorControl Framework. It intends to expose the core features of the FBSimulatorControl framework with a syntax that accommodates many common automation scenarios. fbsimctl can be used to: Remotely control a Simulator via a HTTP Wire Protocol. Install & Launch Applications or Spawn Processes. Record Videos of the Simulator's Screen. Fetch diagnostic logs associated with a Simulator. Easily perform the same task over multiple Simulators at once. Provide Machine-Readable output with JSON Reporting, enables easier automation from any language. Launch XCTest bundles for WebDriverAgent GitHub facebook/ FBSimulatorControl fbxctest fbxctest is an experimental test runner for running iOS testing bundles for the iOS Simulator Platform. fbxctest will provide the following features: Structured Output of Test Results Support for concurrent running against Simulators. A T

Das Landgericht München I erklärte das zwischen einem Münchner IT-Unternehmen und einem selbstständigen Programmierer vertraglich vereinbarte Wettbewerbsverbot für sittenwidrig. Das Unternehmen hatte die Dienste des Freelancers aus dem bayrischen Gilching seit Ende 2000 regelmäßig in Anspruch genommen. Das von der IT-Firma vertraglich festgelegte Wettbewerbsverbot sollte nicht nur für die Dauer der vertraglichen Zusammenarbeit, sondern auch noch ein Jahr über die Vertragsbeendigung hinaus gelten. Eine Karenzentschädigung, wie sie beispielsweise für Handelsvertreter gesetzlich vorgesehen ist, sei aber nicht vereinbart gewesen. Richterin Cordula Brychcy sah darin eine unverhältnismäßige Beschränkung des Softwareexperten in seiner Berufsfreiheit. Golem.de Wettbewerbsverbot / 2.4 Karenzentschädigung Wichtigste Voraussetzung für eine wirksame Vereinbarung eines solchen Wettbewerbsverbots für die Zeit nach Beendigung des Arbeitsverhältnisses ist die Zahlung einer monatlichen Entsch

Apple Settings App Open the preference / settings app. You can open the app at different pages Native application URL string example: prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth Extended example: Tags: settings preferences Airplane mode: prefs:root=AIRPLANE_MODE Bluetooth: prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth Brightness: prefs:root=Brightness Location services: prefs:root=LOCATION_SERVICES Location services (System services): prefs:root=LOCATION_SERVICES_Systemservices Hotspots: prefs:root=Hotspot WLAN: prefs:root=WIFI UMTS-Settings: prefs:root=General&path=Network Mobile data: prefs:root=General&path=USAGE/CELLULAR_USAGE VPN: prefs:root=General&path=Network/VPN Sound: prefs:root=Sounds Rigntone: prefs:root=Sounds&path=Ringtone Siri speech settings: prefs:root=General&path=Assistant handleopenurl.com

There are two things you need to do. First, check to see if TestFlight is installed. Then create a new link to your app. NSURL *customAppURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"itms-beta://"]; if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:customAppURL]) {     // TestFlight is installed     // Special link that includes the app's Apple ID     customAppURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://beta.itunes.apple.com/v1/app/978489855"];      [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:customAppURL]; } This special https://beta.itunes.apple.com URL will be opened directly in TestFlight. Finally, if you are using iOS 9 (or later), you need to make an addition to your Info.plist to get the canOpenURL: method to work. If your app is linked on or after iOS 9.0, you must declare the URL schemes you want to pass to this method. Do this by using the LSApplicationQueriesSchemes array in your Xcode project’s Info.plist file. For each URL scheme you want your app to use wi

How to reset Google Ad ID and iOS IDFA: Google Tom's Guide  How to Reset Google Advertising ID on Android iOS Business Insider  How To Switch Off Apple's iPhone Tracking System In iOS 7

The Google Play Developer Publishing API allows you to automate frequent tasks having to do with app production and distribution. This provides functions similar to those available to a developer through the Developer Console, such as: Uploading new versions of an app Releasing apps, by assigning APKs to various Tracks (alpha, beta, staged rollout, or production) Creating and modifying Google Play Store listings, including localized text and graphics and multi-device screenshots Those tasks are performed using the new edits functionality, which take a transactional approach to making changes; you bundle several changes into a single draft edit, then commit the changes all at once. (None of the changes take effect until the edit is committed.) Developers Google

Are you testing on the right digital platforms? App Annie and Perfecto have teamed up to help! This index combines data from 4,000+ device profiles, industry and App Annie™ mobile market usage data, and proprietary Perfecto analysis to help you determine the best test coverage for your target customers. Get the latest edition of the Digital Test Coverage Index that now includes App Annie rankings! Mobile Test Coverage Devices Essentials Enhanced Extended Countries US Canada Brazil EU UK Germany Netherlands Switzerland Italy Spain France Australia China India PerfectoMobile

Refunds may be available for purchases on Google Play: If something was bought on your account or with your payment method that you didn’t permit, we can usually help. If the purchase you made wasn’t delivered, doesn’t work, or isn’t what you expected, we can usually help. If you bought something by accident, or bought something then changed your mind, we may be able to help depending on the specific situation. If you give your account or payment details to someone else, appear to be abusing our policies, or don’t protect your account with authentication, we usually can’t issue a refund. It’s important that you make a refund request as soon as possible after you find an issue. Select a link below for more information and to find out how to make a request. Refund times: Payment method Estimated Refund time Credit card 3–5 business days Processing time can be affected by the card issuer and sometimes takes up to 10 business days. If your c

Publishers including Slate and The New Yorker are ending deals with Taboola and Outbrain, the content recommendation companies that placed sponsored links at the bottom of their pages. “It is not the right look if you’re trying to say you’re a high-quality, upper-tier website — if you have something like this on it — and I think it’s time for us to be honest about that,” Slate president Keith Hernandez told The New York Times. NiemanLab

Das Smartphone zum Scannen von Objekten nutzen: Microsoft hat am 26. Oktober 2016 auf einer speziellen Veranstaltung das Windows 10 Creators Update präsentiert. Viele Features der zuvor als "Redstone 2" gehandelten Aktualisierung drehen sich um die Erstellung und Bearbeitung von 3D-Inhalten. Curved.de

One month ago I wrote an article about estimation anti-patterns. It all started off with a delayed release, followed by a message that we need to become more predictable, followed by a wild idea of removing story point estimation. Medium.com

Are you still writing native iOS or Android code for creating mobile apps? May be it is the eternal love for platform specific programming languages and tools, skill set issues, a very specific need of the application or just ignorance. It is high time to re-evaluate the approach to mobile app development and choose right set of tools and frameworks to get the job done for higher ROI and rapid development. NoEticForce

If you convert an app from Java to Kotlin, will it take longer to compile? This is part 3 in a series of articles on Kotlin. Part 1 discussed converting an Android app from Java to Kotlin, and part 2 contains thoughts on the Kotlin language. Medium.com

There is a severe issue with a broken multidex implementation on some Samsung 4.2.x devices: http://developer.samsung.com/forum/thread/a/201/279201?db=5 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29007309/class-cast-exception-to-same-class-on-android https://github.com/chrisjenx/Calligraphy/issues/224 But there are workarounds: A special Proguard setting to minify your code Android MultiDex & How to Deal With it Use DexClassLoader instead of Multidex and the default class loader Remove MultiDex library and use DexClassLoader instead What are differences between DexClassLoader and PathClassLoader? Official Android Documentation: DexClassLoader A class loader that loads classes from .jar and .apk files containing a classes.dex entry. This can be used to execute code not installed as part of an application. DexClassLoader is instantiated to load the library from the extracted secondary dex file. PathClassLoader Provides a simple ClassLoader implem

Gradle Killer This plugin kills Gradle tasks using the system task manager with just one click.  No more struggling with "ps" or playing Russian roulette with "java.exe" processes! Just click the icon in the "Run" section and you're done!  ADB Idea Speedup your daily work with shortcuts: Uninstall App Kill App Start App Restart App Clear App Data Clear App Data and Restart CodeGlance Embeds a code minimap similar to the one found in Sublime into the editor pane. Works with both light and dark themes using your customized colors for syntax highlighting. Android Methods Count For all you guys that are troubled by multidex! A plugin to get information about the number of methods on Android libraries. AceJump AceJump allows you to quickly navigate the cursor to any position visible in the editor. See a demo of AceJump in action! Simply hit "ctrl+;", type a character, then type the matching character to Ace Jump.

The IBM Swift Package Catalog Create, share and discover the many new libraries, modules and packages being created since Swift moved to Open Source. How to get started? The IBM Swift Package Catalog enables the Swift.org developer community to leverage and share code across projects Overview The Swift Package Catalog is just one of the ways IBM is radically simplifying end-to-end development Learn more Getting Started This tutorial provides an overview of the Swift Package Catalog and highlights some of the beta features Kitura This Kitura tutorial reviews how to create a Package.swift file for use with Kitura IBM developerWorks

Try the new IBM Cloud Tools for Swift (Beta) For developers interested in creating Swift applications that span both client and server-side code, the newest tools from IBM can help simplify the management and deployment of server-side assets. Extend your mobile apps and connect them to IBM Bluemix Cloud services with a local development environment that complements the productive Xcode environment with the IBM Cloud Tools for Swift (beta) now available on IBM Bluemix. IBM Swift Sandbox Experiment with Swift on the server, share your code and collaborate with your peers Swift on IBM Bluemix Radically simplify end-to-end development of modern apps with Swift services on IBM Bluemix Kitura Build end-to-end apps using Swift with Kitura The IBM Swift Package Catalog Share Swift resources using the IBM Swift Package Catalog IBM developerWorks

Challenges Multi-platform support Mobile apps as an enterprise front end Continuous integration and continuous delivery The app store 'Pull' not 'push' deployment For consumer apps, failure is not an option 10 best practices for mobile DevOps Continuous integration and continuous delivery Ensure end-to-end traceability across all assets Practice continuous integration Maintain separate build and integration areas for each native mobile OS SDK version supported Use automated build and deploy scripts Testing and monitoring Test each build thoroughly with as much automation as possible, on simulated and physical devices Virtualize and simulate backend services that are not available during mobile app testing Monitor the performance of deployed mobile apps and backend services Mobile app delivery Employ centralized governance for mobile provisioning profiles, certificates, and API keys Use a virtual app store to test device deployment Convert

In den drei Monaten zuvor hatte es erstmals seit der Markteinführung des iPhones ein Minus gegeben, damals von gut 16 Prozent. Apple ist seit Jahren stark abhängig vom iPhone. Es steht für etwa zwei Drittel der gesamten Erlöse. Die Verkäufe der iPad-Tablets fielen zwar weiter - um neun Prozent auf 9,95 Millionen Geräte. Mit den teureren Modellen des iPad Pro stieg der Umsatz aber um sieben Prozent auf fast 4,9 Milliarden Dollar. Das war das erste Wachstum in dem Geschäft seit längerer Zeit. Golem

In the words of SC Moatti, former Facebook product leader, founder of Products That Count and author of the new book, Mobilized: An Insider's Guide to the Business and Future of Connected Technology, “Mobile has an entirely different resonance and cadence for users, which makes the development of mobile apps fundamentally different too.” RETHINK YOUR FUNNEL DEMONSTRATE YOUR VALUE, IMMEDIATELY DON’T SHOW TOO MUCH, DON’T ASK TOO MUCH KNOW WHEN TO ASK PERMISSION BUILD IT BEAUTIFUL MINIMIZE UNPREDICTABILITY IT COMES DOWN TO CULTURE First Round Review

Peek and Pop Let your users preview all kinds of content and even act on it — without having to actually open it. Users can then press a little deeper to Pop into content in your app. Apple 3D Touch PeekPop Peek and Pop is a great new iOS feature introduced with iPhone 6S and 6S+ that allows you to easily preview content using 3D touch. Sadly, almost 80% of iOS users are on older devices. PeekPop is a Swift framework that brings backwards-compatibility to Peek and Pop. GitHub

// Load the receipt from the app bundle. NSURL *receiptURL = [[NSBundle mainBundle] appStoreReceiptURL]; NSData *receipt = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:receiptURL]; if (!receipt) { /* No local receipt -- handle the error. */ } /* ... Send the receipt data to your server ... */ Apple Developer For an application purchased from the App Store, use this application bundle property to locate the receipt. This property makes no guarantee about whether there is a file at the URL—only that if a receipt is present, that is its location. Apple API Reference Quantity Product Identifier Transaction Identifier Original Transaction Identifier Purchase Date Original Purchase Date Subscription Expiration Date Cancellation Date App Item ID External Version Identifier Web Order Line Item ID In-App Purchase Receipt Fields A helper class for verifying App Store receipts under iOS. VerifyStoreReceiptiOS

LazyPages is a highly customizable library that helps you to show a scrollable list of view controllers synchronized with an index. It is written in Swift 2.2 for iOS 8+. Like Scrollable Tabs in Android. GitHub

Apple suggest to aim for a total app launch time of under 400ms and you must do it in less than 20 seconds or the system will kill your app. You control what your application delegate does but how do you debug slow startup times that happen before your code is even called? Here is a tip from WWDC 2016 that might help: To try it out add the environment variable DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS to your project scheme with a value of 1. User Your Loaf

Apple still has a market share of 47%, followed by Samsung 16%. Everybody is waiting for the Fall Apple Special event and the new Apple Watch! Top Five Smartwatch Vendors, Shipments, Market Share and Year-Over-Year Growth, 2Q 2016 (Units in Millions) Vendor 2Q16 Unit Shipments 2Q16 Market Share 2Q15 Unit Shipments 2Q15 Market Share Year-Over- Year Growth 1. Apple 1.6 47% 3.6 72% -55% 2. Samsung 0.6 16% 0.4 7% 51% 3. Lenovo 0.3 9% 0.2 3% 75% 4. LG Electronics 0.3 8% 0.2 4% 26% 5. Garmin 0.1 4% 0.1 2% 25% Others 0.6 16% 0.6 11% -1% Total 3.5 100% 5.1 100% -32% Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, July 21, 2016 Golem IDC

Micro-moments are the best opportunity for brands to connect with consumers at the exact moment they're looking for help. Explore this collection to understand key questions you need to ask yourself, your team, and your agency to put micro-moments at the center of your strategy. think with Google

Shortly after Apple's "Hey Siri" event the Xcode 7 GM was released to developers. Let's put the betas behind us and take a look at some real world UI Testing examples. The examples all use a test host that helps you manage your volleyball team. The app, Volley, lets the user manage the team roster, adjust the formation, and view game results. Feel free to take a look at the source code before continuing along to familiarize yourself with how it works. Additional topics covered: UI Testing with Stubbed Network Data Three Ways UI Testing Just Made Test-Driven Development Even Better UI Testing in Xcode 7 Masilotti.com Apple Developer UI Tests with Xcode 7 Appium vs. UI Tests

See how the LOOK of some of the great apps changed over time Instagram uber WhatsApp LinkedIn PayPa soundcloud foursquare Pinterest greatappstimeline.xyz

All App Categories Eligible 85% Revenue After One Year Territory Pricing and Expanded Subscription Price Tiers Keep Subscribers at Their Existing Price Starting this fall, apps using the auto-renewable subscription model will be able to keep active subscribers at their existing price while increasing the price for new users.  Subscription Level Changes Within each subscription group, you can offer different levels of service (for example, basic, premium, and pro memberships) as well as durations (such as weekly, monthly, or annually). Apple Developer

Now that Swift is open-source and cross-platform, several teams are racing to make Swift a viable language for web development. The major frameworks, Perfect, Vapor, and IBM’s Kitura, have over 13,000 stars on GitHub, and are growing quickly! Join us as we talk about the different frameworks, their pros and cons, and an introduction for how to get started with developing in server side Swift. (Several of the frameworks are even solely for Swift 3!) Join Edward for a live coding demo and even deploy a Swift application to the cloud! realm.io

This series of articles will focus on practical approaches on how to write testable, re-usable and maintainable code when developing applications for Android. Clean Android Code articles series: Clean Android Code: Main Clean Android Code: Building with Gradle Clean Android Code: Preparation Clean Android Code: Activities & Fragments Clean Android Code: Network & Data Clean Android Code: Navigation & UI Clean Android Code: Event Bus & Error Handling Clean Android Code: … Medium.com Anton Averin

Libraries like Espresso allow UI tests to have stable interactions with your app, but without discipline these tests can become hard to manage and require frequent updating. In this talk Jake will cover how the so-called robot pattern allows you to create stable, readable, and maintainable tests with the aid of Kotlin’s language features. realm.io

Apple allows developers to sell subscriptions in the App Store, but until now those subscriptions have been limited to music, video, services and news apps. So if you’re a magazine publisher or you have a streaming music or video service, you can get recurring revenue, but if you’re a game developer, you can't. Starting today, developers from all app categories — including games — can use subscription pricing. Moreover, Apple is changing the way it splits revenue with developers. Historically, 70% of subscription income has gone to the developer and 30% goes to Apple. Now, if a user subscribes to a service for one year or more, the split becomes 85/15 . In other words, developers will be rewarded for keeping users happy enough to stay subscribed. Developers will also be able to set territory-specific pricing. That means that you can charge less for your app or service in say, India, than you would in the United States. And when it comes to changing the price on a subscripti

The iAd App Network will be discontinued as of June 30, 2016. Although we are no longer accepting new apps into the network, advertising campaigns may continue to run and you can still earn advertising revenue until June 30. If you’d like to continue promoting your apps through iAd until then, you can create a campaign using iAd Workbench. iAds

This library manages the consistency of immutable models. So, if a model changes, it will automatically generate a new model with the diff and return this model to whoever is listening for changes. It is an asynchronous, decentralized model store. This means that it will never block the main thread even for large models. Also, it doesn’t actually store the models themselves, so you do not need to worry about duplicate storage, increased memory footprint, or model memory management. LinkedIn GitHub

WireMock is a flexible library for stubbing and mocking web services. Unlike general purpose mocking tools it works by creating an actual HTTP server that your code under test can connect to as it would a real web service. It supports HTTP response stubbing, request verification, proxy/intercept, record/playback of stubs and fault injection, and can be used from within a unit test or deployed into a test environment. Although it’s written in Java, there’s also a JSON API so you can use it with pretty much any language out there. WireMock.org

Do you have a website that shares content with an iOS app? As of iOS 9, you can connect them using universal links, meaning that users can now touch an HTTP link on an iPhone and be sent directly to your app! In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to link an iOS app to a Heroku website. Ray Wenderlich ...and its possible for Android, too! Enabling Deep Links for App Content To enable Google to crawl your app content and allow users to enter your app from search results, you must add intent filters for the relevant activities in your app manifest. These intent filters allow deep linking to the content in any of your activities. For example, the user might click on a deep link to view a page within a shopping app that describes a product offering that the user is searching for. Android Developer

What is it? This is a ruler in the Android "dip" (Device Independent Pixel) unit. You can print it, cut it and give it to your designer. Why? I've found that the concept of dp is not that easy to explain / understand. Designers are used to think in pixels (especially if they also work on iOS projects). Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and so this ruler will make it immediately obvious that the dp is a physical unit of length. Some essential information is also present on the ruler: Definition of a dp List of Android logical densities (ldpi, mdpi, etc.) with their properties And of course it can also be actually used to measure things (screens…) since it is a ruler :) BoD GitHub See also Android Cheatsheet for Graphic Designers The Android Design Cheat Sheet

A self-controlled, unsupervised optimal A/B Testing strategy that results in user-specific best choice for all variants! With a simple 20-line change to how A/B testing works, that you can implement today, you can always do better than A/B testing -- sometimes, two or three times better. This method has several good points: It can reasonably handle more than two options at once.. Eg, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, � New options can be added or removed at any time. Steve Hanov Why Multi-armed Bandit Algorithm is Not “Better” than A/B Testing Bandito, a Multi-Armed Bandit Tool for Content Testing

Apples inzwischen quelloffene Programmiersprache wird einem Bericht zufolge von Google als Alternative zu Java in Betracht gezogen. Auch prominente App-Entwickler wie Facebook und Uber zeigen angeblich Interesse an Swift. Kotlin scheint allerdings die deutlich naheliegendere Wahl für Google, da die Migration zu der JVM-Sprache (Java Virtual Machine) im Vergleich zu Swift einfach ausfüllen dürfte. Der Kotlin-Entwickler JetBrains ist zudem kein Unbekannter für den Such-Konzern, mit IntelliJ IDEA stellt die Firma die Basis für Android Studio, Googles Programmierumgebung zur Entwicklung von Android-Apps. Golem Recently talked to an Android engineer: No plans to enable Swift and become dependent on Apple!

The company tested the tab bar on iOS to see how it impacted user engagement. It found that users with the tab bar ended up clicking 9% more in general and 30% more on actual menu items. The tests also revealed that reducing the number of options in the tab bar to five increased the reach of Spotify’s programmed content, the company says. New users also engaged more with the navigation menu in their first sessions than they did when the hamburger menu was present. TechCrunch Why the Hamburger Menu Is so Controversial

SwiftyBeaver Logging Framework is the extensible &  lightweight open-source logger for Swift 2.2 and later. It is great for  development & release due to its support for many (custom) logging destinations. Framework Unique Feature Set Log to Xcode Console and / or log to a file Add custom log destination handlers to log to Loggly, Redis, etc. Send your logs with end-to-end AES256 encryption to the SwiftyBeaver Mac App Colored output to Xcode Console, log file, etc. Uses own serial background queues/threads for a great performance Log levels which are below the set minimum are not executed for even better release performance Increases productivity & saves a lot of time thanks to "Needle in the Haystack" mode Easy & convenient configuration Use multiple logging destinations & settings, even for the same type Already comes with good defaults Use log.debug("foo") syntax Get started with 2 lines of code Simple installation via Cartha

The idea is that you can define a protocol with functions that take in a type that is defined by the object that uses that protocol. This means that if you want to have a protocol extension with a default implementation for the eat function, you need to specify the type - and you may constraint it, too. Natasha the Robot

Upcoming Requirement for watchOS Apps April 22, 2016 - Starting June 1, 2016, all new watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK or later. Developer Apple Looks like the new Apple Watch might be independent from the iPhone. Die nächste Generation der Apple Watch ist in Arbeit und es gibt erste Hinweise auf die Neuerungen. So soll die Smartwatch einen schnelleren Prozessor und Mobilfunktechnik erhalten. Golem

This plugin help you to set material design icons to your Android project. GitHub konifar

Agera is a set of classes and interfaces to help write functional, asynchronous, and reactive applications for Android. Requires Android SDK version 9 or higher. GitHub Google

TextAttributes makes it easy to compose attributed strings. let attrs = TextAttributes()     .font(name: "HelveticaNeue", size: 16)     .foregroundColor(white: 0.2, alpha: 1)     .lineHeightMultiple(1.5) NSAttributedString("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", attributes: attrs) Features Strongly typed properties Chainable setter methods A direct access to the NSParagraphStyle properties Better autocompletion TextAttributes GitHub

Principles of Mobile App Design: Engage Users and Drive Conversions In a crowded market, how does an app attract new customers, gain loyalty, and deliver value? With great design for a delightful app experience. Here, Google's UX Research Lead Jenny Gove will take you through 25 principles to build an app that helps users achieve what they’re looking to do. Think With Google

Something from our internal  WeltN24  native apps lab: We just setup a new app from scratch, which puts us in the nice position of incoroporating the latest frameworks an pattern. We go for a Reactive and MVP approach. Please find below some details. I would be happy to hear about your choices - please leave a comment! Android iOS OS Android 4.1 (4.0.3+) API Level 16 iOS 8 Language Kotlin 1.0, with fallback to Java where necessary Swift 2.1.1 Pattern Reactive & MVP Reactive and MVVM Libs AndroidRx Dagger 2 Retrofit 2 Dbflow Glide Crashlytics JW-Player Gson Interstellar Dependency Injection (custom) JW-Player Alamofire JW Player realm.io Carlos BrightFutures ObjectMapper (custom) Testing JUnit Mockito / PowerMock & Hamcrest Esp

Pushy is a standalone push notification gateway, completely independent of GCM. It maintains its own background socket connection, just like GCM, to receive push notifications. The underlying protocol is MQTT, an extremely light-weight pub/sub protocol, utilizing very little network bandwidth and battery. We chose MQTT after comparing multiple protocols, including WebSockets and XMPP. Also, the fact that Facebook chose to implement its push notifications using MQTT is highly-convincing. A huge advantage of Pushy is that it's a drop-in replacement for Google Cloud Messaging. The code for sending a push notification (from the server) and receiving a registration ID is almost identical for GCM and Pushy. This makes it super easy to switch to Pushy after implementing GCM and having to ditch it for its instability. We charge $0.005 for each active device (number of devices connected to the service at least once during one month of period) every month. Do you have plans for iOS? A

Nice JS text effect Gthibaud on codepen.io CodePen is a playground for the front end web. Show off your latest creation and get feedback. Build a test case for that pesky bug. Find example design patterns and inspiration for your projects.

Ty Smith and Yohan Hartanto are Software Engineers at Twitter. During the last Bay Area Gradle Users Meetup at Google, they gave a short overview of the Kotlin language and examples about how they are using it with Gradle. Benefit from other developers’ experience by watching this video. Gradle.org

Metaphor hängt wohl direkt der Medien-Bibliothek von Android zusammen und ermöglicht den Zugriff von außen auf ein Android-Gerät. In diesem Fall muss ebenso aber erst der Nutzer agieren, er müsste beispielsweise eine kompromittierte Webseite auf seinem Smartphone öffnen, welches mit Android 2.2, 4.0, 5.0 oder 5.1 ausgestattet ist. Daten könnten gestohlen werden, selbst der Zugriff auf Mikrofon und GPS eines attackierten Gerätes soll möglich sein. SmartDroid

Luckily ThoughtWorks had a process that was a bit different from the usual standards companies had back then. After a quick recruiter screening, they sent me three options of a code challenge, a small problem I could solve in any programming language I would like to use. My code submission would then be used during follow-up interviews, including a pairing session where a ThoughtWorker and I would try to extend my code adding a new feature. Phil Calcado Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill

In today’s globalized economy you could be negotiating a joint venture in China, an outsourcing agreement in India, or a supplier contract in Sweden. If so, you might find yourself working with very different norms of communication. What gets you to “yes” in one culture gets you to “no” in another. To be effective, a negotiator must have a sense of how his counterpart is reacting. Does she want to cooperate? Is she eager, frustrated, doubtful? If you take stock of subtle messages, you can adjust your own behavior accordingly. In an international negotiation, however, you may not have the contextual understanding to interpret your counterpart’s communication—especially unspoken signals—accurately. Harvard Business Review

Zeplin is the ultimate collaboration tool between designers and developers. It cuts meetings in half and ensures that designs are implemented perfectly, however complex. Developers Lower the repetitive work, keep everything in sync Don’t lose yourself in folders, here they are! Get notified of design updates instantly via Slack Designers Design hand-off has never been easier Keep your style guides always up-to-date Don’t think on sizes, generate assets easily Discuss with developers, don’t miss anything Notify teammates about design changes instantly zeplin.io

Mit Android N bekommt Googles Mobilbetriebssystem eine Mehrfenster-Unterstützung. Die mit Marshmallow eingeführten Stromsparbemühungen werden weiter vorangetrieben, damit Geräte vor allem dann wenig Energie verbrauchen, wenn sie nicht benutzt werden. Außerdem unterstützt die neue Android-Version Java 8. First Preview of Android N: Developer APIs & Tools Google veröffentlicht erste Version von Android N

Now that the Swift Continuous Integration system is established and proven, we’d like to grant commit access on a more frequent basis to project contributors who have established a track record of good contributions. If you would like commit access, please send an email to the code owners list with a list of 5 non-trivial pull requests that we accepted without modifications. Swift Blog

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it was buying Xamarin , a company that helps software developers write applications for mobile devices. The price was not disclosed, but is believed to be more than $300 million. It is a deal that says much about the competition between Google, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to control much of the computing world over the next few years. [...] “The customers we are working with have a desire to build applications factories,” said Nat Friedman, the chief executive of Xamarin, who will oversee all tools development under Mr. Guthrie. “They all want end-to-end service, and this is a way to offer that.” New York Times

Motivation When implementing mobile apps connecting to a backend you usually write a client-specific middle-ware providing filtered or aggregated information from the backend. With GraphQL this comes out of the box. GraphQL Introduction At the React.js conference in late January 2015, we revealed our next major technology in the React family:  Relay . Relay is a new way of structuring client applications that co-locates data-fetching requirements and React components. Instead of placing data fetching logic in some other part of the client application – or embedding this logic in a custom endpoint on the server – we instead co-locate a declarative data-fetching specification alongside the React component. The language of this declarative specification is GraphQL. GraphQL was not invented to enable Relay. In fact, GraphQL predates Relay by nearly three years. It was invented during the move from Facebook's HTML5-driven mobile applications to purely native applications. It

In a nutshell, the Crosswalk project provides a generic WebWiew with the latest HTML5 feature support. It is based on the Chromium project. Enable the most advanced web innovations with the Crosswalk Project web runtime to develop powerful Android and Cordova apps. Problems addressed by Crosswalk With the platform variations in the market you are forced to assume that every Android WebView works differently. There are differences in: Which JavaScript APIs are available Support and syntax for CSS properties How your application's interface is rendered …and plenty more. You want to support as many versions of Android as possible, but it’s frustrating and time consuming. Advantages using Crosswalk Get consistent, predictable behavior by reducing Android device fragmentation. Use the latest web innovations and APIs. Provide a feature rich experience on all Android 4.0+ devices. Easily debug with Chrome DevTools. Improve the performance of your HTML, CSS, and Jav

Customer feedback can help you understand what features to add, what features to get rid of, and where to direct your development efforts. Adding it into your marketing plan is a no-brainer. But mobile app companies have a unique challenge. When it comes to communicating with customers, they’re at the hands of Apple and Google. Because these two giants privatize your customers’ information, it’s impossible to get feedback in conventional ways. Unless your users create an account, you can’t email out a survey to a customer or email list, or search for your customers on social media. You have to be creative. Thankfully, mobile app companies have found savvy ways to get feedback from their users. In this post, I’ll explain how you can learn what customers really think of your app Ask for Reviews Use In-App Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys Savvy Support Communities Use Beta-Tests => Act Upon Mobile Feedback kissmetrics

Want to learn about functional reactive programming (FRP) on iOS? We created this guide to help everyone, from beginners to seasoned experts, learn how to leverage the power of FRP on iOS. In this guide, you’ll learn: Why you’d want to want to use FRP What FRP is How far can you can go with the power of FRP How to use FRP Who to follow to learn more about FRP Realm

Stetho is a sophisticated debug bridge for Android applications. When enabled, developers have access to the Chrome Developer Tools feature natively part of the Chrome desktop browser. Developers can also choose to enable the optional dumpapp tool which offers a powerful command-line interface to application internals. Facebook Github

Der Hauptsponsor der freien .Net-Reimplementierung Mono, Xamarin, wird von Microsoft übernommen. Das Unternehmen bietet Dienste zur plattformübergreifenden App-Entwicklung in C# und mit dem Framework .Net. Golem Xamarin

New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter. When companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized. NY Times

iTerm 2 iTerm2 is a replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. It works on Macs with OS 10.5 (Leopard) or newer. iTerm2 brings the terminal into the modern age with features you never knew you always wanted. Split Panes Hotkey Window Search Autocomplete Mouseless Copy Paste History Instant Replay Configurability Colors ... iTerm 2 iTerm 2 Themes And there is a bunch of Themes available! oh-my-zsh themes Oh My Zsh And of course you wanna use the zsh! oh-my-zsh GitHub

Dan Luu: Advantages of monolithic version control Simplified organization With multiple repos, you typically either have one project per repo, or an umbrella of related projects per repo, but that forces you to define what a “project” is for your particular team or company, and it sometimes forces you to split and merge repos for reasons that are pure overhead. For example, having to split a project because it’s too big or has too much history for your VCS is not optimal. With a monorepo, projects can be organized and grouped together in whatever way you find to be most logically consistent, and not just because your version control system forces you to organize things in a particular way. Using a single repo also reduces overhead from managing dependencies. A side effect of the simplified organization is that it’s easier to navigate projects. The monorepos I’ve used let you essentially navigate as if everything is on a networked file system, re-using the idiom that’s used to n

Now that Apple replaced Objective-C with Swift for iOS, the lack of a less archaic language for Android development has become more apparent. For the desperate and adventurous there are the JVM alternatives like Scala and Groovy, but using them with Android is expensive: importing a language means importing the whole runtime, which is a nightmare for the package size and method count. Fine for small applications, but they are not what you are trying to solve with a better language. Kotlin Introducing Kotlin -- JVM-based language made by JetBrains (folks behind IntelliJ IDEA and, by extension, Android Studio) and named after an island near Saint Petersburg, which is where the development office behind the project is located. Introduced in 2011, it's been around for a few years now and the Android support came in the second milestone release (M2). Expecting the standard reaction: yes, another JVM alternative, but this one is specifically designed to be light by excluding all t

If I own you and you own me, we never dissappear in memory. Alex S.

A lightweight, one line setup, network debugging library that provides a quick look on all executed network requests performed by your app. It grabs all requests - of course yours, requests from 3rd party libraries (such as AFNetworking, Alamofire or else), UIWebViews, and more Very useful and handy for network related issues and bugs Implemented in Swift 2.1 - bridged also for Objective-C Start To start netfox add the following line in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method of your AppDelegate Swift NFX.sharedInstance().start() Invoke netfox UI Just shake your device and check what's going right or wrong! Shake again and go back to your app! GitHub kasketis/netfox

Injection is a plugin for Xcode that allows you to "inject" Objective-C and Swift code changes into a running application without having to restart it during development and testing. Injection no longer requires you to patch your project or it's sources for iOS projects in the simulator. To use: download this project, build it and restart Xcode. When your application is running type control-= and any modifications to the selected class should be applied to your application while it runs. That's it. GitHub johnno1962/injectionforxcode

The new iOS application that I’m working on – written 100% in Swift – was noticeably taking much longer to compile than should, given its size (~200 files). More concerning, it was suddenly a lot slower than only a couple of weeks prior. I needed to get to the root of the problem as soon as possible, before it got any worse. Identify methods with slow compilation time and take action! Add -Xfrontend -debug-time-function-bodies to my Swift compiler flags Using the xcodebuild command line tool results in the logs being printed to standard output, where we can message them to our liking: xcodebuild -workspace App.xcworkspace -scheme App clean build | grep [1-9].[0-9]ms | sort -nr > culprits.txt You may also want to sort the result by the amount of times methods gets compiled: awk -F '\t' '{print $2}' < culprits.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr > culprits_count.txt Best list compilation was to sort by the multiplication the time a method needs

FlatBuffers is an efficient cross platform serialization library for C++, Java, C#, Go, Python and JavaScript (C, PHP & Ruby in progress). It was originally created at Google for game development and other performance-critical applications. Why use FlatBuffers? Access to serialized data without parsing/unpacking - What sets FlatBuffers apart is that it represents hierarchical data in a flat binary buffer in such a way that it can still be accessed directly without parsing/unpacking, while also still supporting data structure evolution (forwards/backwards compatibility). Memory efficiency and speed - The only memory needed to access your data is that of the buffer. It requires 0 additional allocations (in C++, other languages may vary). FlatBuffers is also very suitable for use with mmap (or streaming), requiring only part of the buffer to be in memory. Access is close to the speed of raw struct access with only one extra indirection (a kind of vtable) to allow for format ev

but... there is a plugin for that: Refactorator GitHub

MockFive allows you to make a single mock for a class or protocol. You can then configure instances of this mock with stubbed implementations. For any commonly used class, MockFive can offer a powerful means to satisfy Swift's strict typing system without sacrificing power. Because of Swift's strict typing, you must implement every method you intend to mock with calls to MockFive's stub(). // Optional types will return `nil` by default func myFunc (arg1: Int , arg2: String ) -> String ? { return stub(identifier: " myFunc " , arguments: arg1, arg2) } // Non-optional types require a default value var customItem = MyCustomClass() // This may be changed later. stub will return new value func myFunc () -> MyCustomClass { return stub(identifier: " myFunc " ) { customItem } } MockFive GitHub

Running Swift code on Android The biggest issue here is going to be a missing SwiftCore library. Right now Apple is shipping one for iOS, OS X and Watch OS. But that's it - and obviously they don't ship an Android version. However, not all Swift code requires the SwiftCore library, just like not all C++ code requires the STL. So as long as we use the subset of Swift that doesn't hit SwiftCore, we should be ok. Romain Goyet How to Use Apple Swift to Make an Android App Our best course of action to get something working quickly was to take Swift code and compile it into Java source code — and then take it into the Android development environment to finish building it into an installable app. So we started in Xcode, where we wrote the Swift code. Then we tested it, including running it on an iPhone or in the iPhone Simulator, and ran a custom compiler that parsed the Swift code and output Java source code (adjusting any necessary syntax, and substituting appropriate A