Baltimore-based Apkudo is debuting its “Apkudo Approved” program this week, extending its existing work with making sure that Android apps and devices perform well for consumers. The company has positioned itself in a growth market, to act as a layer both between developers and devices, and between devices and carriers, to help both parties deal with the fractured and often maze-like landscape of… → Read More
In a new report published today by Flurry, the company notes that optimizing apps to hit the majority of mobile devices that are active out there is an increasingly difficult task. In order to reach 80 percent of the active connected devices per Flurry’s data, you’d have to take into account 156 different devices. Even just edging over the 60 percent mark requires that developers account for 37… → Read More
Apple hasn’t done much to change the way iOS works at its core, in terms of navigating within and between apps and the home screen. In fact, iOS is maybe the mobile OS that has remained the most fundamentally the same since its introduction, at least among those that are still in active use.
But while Apple hasn’t been making huge changes to the basic iOS user interface, third-party developers… → Read More
OUYA, the Android-based affordable gaming console that inspired a wide range of reaction from tech watchers and gamers alike when it debuted on Kickstarter back in July 2012, today reached an important milestone: shipping product. Admittedly, it’s just the developer-specific consoles for now, but 1,200 units are now winging their way to actual people, and the company put the pre-release gaming… → Read More
Cisimple is a new development platform, launching today, which automates the build, testing and deployment process for mobile applications. The company is offering hosted Continuous Integration for both the iOS and Android platforms to start, with other platforms planned for the future. → Read More
Italian startup and cross-platform development solution AppsBuilder today announced a €1.5 million (just shy of $2 million U.S.) venture funding round, led by Italian angel investors Massimiliano Magrini and Mario Mariani, with participation from Vertis Venture and Zernike Meta Ventures. The company, founded in 2010, wants to use the funding to help expand further internationally → Read More
Last month as part of our TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Coverage, we wrote about Famo.us, the company behind a forthcoming HTML5 framework that its developers claim will make it easier to build HTML5 apps that perform as well as native apps. Now the company is revealing more information about how it works and what it can be used for. → Read More
Apple recently changed its developer guidelines to indicate that it might not be so happy with apps that essentially replicate what the App Store already provides, in terms of providing lists of apps to buy. But another change in iOS 6 pointed out by a developer contact suggests that Apple definitely does want to encourage developers to help it sell mobile software: a new object available… → Read More
Microsoft is really trying to increase the appeal of Window Phone to developers, and a new tool just released adds a small, but very useful feature: instant translation of user reviews from one language to another. Microsoft is calling this one a “fun surprise,” but it could actually be a very helpful convenience feature in helping developers understand their audience. → Read More
TrackVia, a company that provides tools that enable non-coders to build simple web apps, announced today that it raised a series B round of funding Led by Longworth Venture Partners and Fairhaven Capital. Others participating in the round include Access Venture Partners, Flywheel Ventures, Draper Associates and Allen & Company. → Read More
I spoke to Square today about some of their latest moving and shaking in recruiting, and learned that the company has nabbed a 5,000 square foot office space in the Atlantic Station section in Atlanta. This was first reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle earlier this month, but we’ve learned what Square is up to. → Read More
The new iPhone 5 has a new screen with new dimensions, and this time, making existing apps fill that space and look good isn’t just a matter of doubling dimensions of all assets like it was with the introduction of the Retina display. This time around, the change will require more varied responses, depending on what kind of app or app element you’re working with.
I spoke to a couple of… → Read More
San Francisco-based FatFractal is today launching a competitor to backend-as-a-service (BaaS) providers like Stackmob, Parse, Kinvey, and Applicasa, and it’s not just following in the others’ footsteps – it has a completely different take on how using the cloud on the backend should work. It’s not that the team at FatFractal thinks that the “cloud as a service” model is the wrong idea, exactly. → Read More
Y Combinator Summer 2012 graduate Data Nitro (formerly known as IronSpread) has a simple proposition: it enables you to to use the popular programming language Python in Microsoft Excel. The plugin is free for individual non-commercial and enterprises will pay for the privilege. So far it’s only available for the Excel 2007 and 2010 for Windows. The company has no plans to support OSX. → Read More
Today agile software project management Rally Software announced that it will acquire its longtime partner Agile Advantage. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Agile Advantage makes that helps organizations track the return on investment of agile software methodologies. Features from the company’s Performer product will be integrated into Rally’s existing Portfolio Manager tool. → Read More
MakeGamesWithUs is a new iOS game publishing company with a twist: its focus is on helping high school and college students to build games. MakeGamesWithUs us will take the kids’ creations, provide professional graphics and art and publish them in the App Store. The kids will own the code, and the company will own the graphics and take a cut of the sales. The company already has a few games built… → Read More
Microsoft continues to make in-roads into open source development. Early last year it open sourced several development related tools, including NuGet and several libraries for its ASP.Net language. And by the end of the year the company announced sponsorship of projects to port both the Node.js development platform and the big data analytics tool Apache Hadoop to Windows. It’s even making Linux… → Read More
Program or Be Programmed author, CNN columnist and Frontline documentary director Douglas Rushkoff announced on his blog today that he’s taken a job with Codecademy, a company that offer free online programming courses entirely through a web-based interface. Rushkoff writes that he is joining the company as an evangelist much in the same capacity as Vint Cerf’s role at Google as a “net… → Read More
Keen, a mobile analytics startup co-founded by former Google Analyics employee Kyle Wild, announced a $750,000 series A investment from 500 Startups, Data Collective, SK Ventures, Cloud Power Fund and several big name individual investors, including Dropbox investor Pejman Nozad, PayPal investor Jared Kopf and TechStars managing directors Nicole Glaros and Jason Seats. You can find a full list of… → Read More
Icenium is a brand-new integrated cloud environment (get it? i-c-e not i-d-e = Icenium) for mobile application development. The service, which is a spin-off product division at Telerik, is just now entering its private beta stage and is in search of developers willing to kick the tires. Initially, Icenium will focus on the iOS and Android development platforms, and will later expand to other… → Read More
MeeGo, the unification of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo, and shepherded by the Linux Foundation, is getting a lot of support from a variety of companies. From hardware developers to software houses, from games to automotive to embedded solutions providers, the recent announcement indicates an influx of potentially millions of developer-hours. Some of the new participants are no-brainers, while… → Read More
After so many years of hoping and wishing, developers can start getting excited about coding for the Symbian platform. Sure, it’s taken a while and some might be looking forward to Maemo 6 later this year far more than a newer version of Symbian, but opening up the source code to the world’s largest operating system is nothing to sneeze at. The Symbian operating system is aging and… → Read More
I’m a big believer in open source development. The bazaar development model allows quality ideas to float to the top, albeit in sometimes contentious ways. The Linux kernel, the Apache httpd web server, and the PHP programming language are all developed in the open, and anyone is allowed to participate in their development. Filing bug reports is as important as writing the actual code. It helps… → Read More
Well Windows 7 is out, the reviews are in, the service packs are starting to be worked on – that’s the end of it right? Wrong. Microsoft is already looking forward to the next generation of its OS, Windows 8. → Read More
Hot on the heels of the news of UNIX’s 40th anniversary comes a Linux Foundation report entitled Who Writes Linux. This report investigates who is contributing to the Linux kernel, and how much: “Since 2005, over 5000 individual developers from nearly 500 different companies have contributed to the kernel. The Linux kernel, thus, has become a common resource developed on a massive scale by… → Read More
Making the jump from user to developer isn’t always an easy thing to do, and usually requires some specific motivation — a problem to solve, or a market to satisfy. I’ve dabbled with various kinds of programming for years, but have never really considered myself a developer. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platforms are, I think, making really compelling platforms to entice people to make the… → Read More
I’m no coder, but this sure looks like a useful tool for people interested not just in making Flash games and applications, but in learning how others do it and seeing what goes into, say, a Flash version of Tron. wonderfl’s two-pane, all-online system lets you write or paste code in the left, which is then compiled by the server and instantly displayed on the right. I have a couple friends… → Read More
Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion, has admitted that they just barely got the Blackberry Storm out by Black Friday. The mad rush to release a product before a major shopping day cramps the normal development and testing cycles, which lead to more and more bugs being included in the shipped product. Balsillie says this is the “new reality”, basically telling consumers to suck it up. → Read More
MIT professor Hal Abelson started today’s final presentation for the school’s “Building Mobile Applications” class by saying, “A course like this couldn’t have existed ten years ago… maybe not even a year ago. Courses like this right now are unique, but in two years they’ll be completely ordinary.” What’s extraordinary is that on top of a full college course-load at one of the… → Read More
You know the HP TouchSmart? It’s a neat bit of work—that is, it has to potential to be. That potential is now one step closer to reality given that HP has just opened it up to third-party development. Would-be developers need to sashay over to the TouchSmart Community. There you’ll find the necessary software to develop your fancy application. I think it’s fairly obvious… → Read More
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