Through the wonder’s of twitter I found out about the Random Hacks of Kindness event that is going down in Sydney in about a week and a half’s time (Saturday June 5 – Sunday June 6). Personally, I think this is one of the better hackathon’s I have seen organised as it’s not only about talented devs getting together, but also about building apps that can potentially make the world a better place. Something I’m sure we’d all like to get involved with.
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posted on the May 26th, 2010 2 Comments »
As I get back into “coding for money” again after a couple of years of being paid to manage people, projects, technology, etc. I am once again diving into different languages to look at what are going to be the truly productive and innovative languages over the next few years. As I do this, I reflect on some of the syntax and library clutter in my mind from having coded in a number of languages over the years, and wonder which of those I’d be most happy to forget (Johnny Mnemonic style) to make room for the new ones…
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posted on the May 24th, 2010 12 Comments »
While many would argue that Google’s recent issue with accidentally collecting wifi packet data from public broadcasting networks will have minimal impact to developers, I disagree.
Having just left a corporate environment in which I would occasionally get to chat with the CIO regarding the pros and cons of some current technology trends, such as cloud computing, which would also include discussions around the enterprise suitability of those solutions, I can tell you – accidents like this are going to have an impact.
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posted on the May 20th, 2010 No Comments »
Last week I started a 5 day exercise to re-evaluate the various frameworks that are at the disposal of developers for the purpose of iPhone and Android cross platform mobile development. This time, the focus was on what the various frameworks had to offer if I was to build a mapping application for multiple different mobile platforms.
This is part 1 of the wrap up from that week – a comparison of the native bridges for cross platform iPhone and Android web app development.
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posted on the May 18th, 2010 4 Comments »
Well, I’m now officially out of the corporate world and Sidelab has been in business for a week now 
. On the cards for this week are 5 days of non-chargeable work (eek) that I have allotted to determine whether a mobile mapping application can be implemented using some of the iPhone and Android mobile development toolkits that are currently available (PhoneGap, AppCelerator, RhoMobile, etc). Targeted platforms at this stage are iPhone and Android only.
To add an extra layer of complexity I will be doing this using the deCarta Mapping Platform rather than Google Maps, as I’ve had some experience with the deCarta platform in the past and found it to be technically very good.
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posted on the May 10th, 2010 2 Comments »
While businesses and security professionals have done a great deal of work to educate consumers about online security, it seems to me that processes used by business are not of the same standard for the mobile channel.
This feeling was confirmed for me today when I received an SMS titled “**IMPORTANT MESSAGE**” from my bank saying I need to contact them. While I’m not going to tell you who I bank with (it was one of the big four banks in Australia), I will take you through my experience and attempt to highlight the weak points in the approach, as well as suggest what I think could be done to improve the process.
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posted on the May 6th, 2010 1 Comment »
