Alexa will soon be featured on the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8
Friday, September 28, 2018 by Richard Harris
The new Fire HD 8 has been announced by Amazon and comes equipped with always-ready, hands-free access to Alexa. With hands-free mode, Alexa is always ready to respond - Alexa can start a video call with family, play music, launch games, read Audible books, and more. The Fire HD 8 also includes an HD 720p front-facing camera and up to 10 hours of mixed use battery life....
KaiOS talks smart feature phones and app developers
Wednesday, June 13, 2018 by Richard Harris
KaiOS is a Linux-based mobile operating system built on a fork of Firefox OS that first appeared in 2017 and was developed by KaiOS Technologies Inc. in San Diego. We recently chatted with Tim Metz, Marketing Director at KaiOS Technologies, about KaiOS' emerging operating system for smart feature phones. We discuss why these devices are becoming relevant again, what...
Vungle SDK to be released on the Amazon Fire tablet
Tuesday, August 8, 2017 by Richard Harris
Vungle, a marketing platform for in-app video ads, has announced the upcoming release of a software developer kit (SDK) for Amazon's popular Fire tablets. Vungle, working together with Amazon Appstore, will bring its user acquisition and monetization platform to Fire tablets.According to analyst firm IDC, adoption of Amazon devices increased 1,200 percent year over year...
Amazon Releases System XRay for Amazon Fire TV Developers
Thursday, August 25, 2016 by Richard Harris
Amazon Fire TV now has a feature called System X-Ray that allows developers to visually track device and application metrics while an application is in use. This is a useful tool for developers and testers, as it gives them pertinent metrics that can help diagnose issues within an app or game.System X-Ray is available on all Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices...
What You Need to Know about BYOD Security
Wednesday, December 2, 2015 by Jayaraman Gopal
As employees bring their own devices to work, IT teams face an assortment of challenges, from managing mobile apps on a myriad of different devices to backing up and restoring business data. But bar none, the greatest burden for IT staff is securing business data on mobile devices.The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (in Reverse Order)The UglyThe BYOD phenomenon has spawned ...
AWS Device Farm Now Tests BrowserBased Apps on iOS and Android Devices
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 by Stuart Parkerson
Amazon Web Services launched the AWS Device Farm this July to provide support for testing native and hybrid applications on iOS and Android devices. The AWS Device Farm provides the ability to test apps in the cloud against a large collection of real phones and tablets without the complexity and expense of deploying and maintaining device labs and automation infrastruct...
AWS Offers Android and Fire OS Testing Device Farm
Tuesday, July 14, 2015 by Stuart Parkerson
With the new AWS Device Farm developers now have the opportunity to test Android and Fire OS apps in the cloud against a large collection of real phones and tablets without the complexity and expense of deploying and maintaining device labs and automation infrastructure. Developers can use the AWS Device Farm by uploading an app and the service runs tests on ...
Amazon Releases Developer Preview of Fire OS 5
Wednesday, June 24, 2015 by Richard Harris
Amazon has announced the developer preview of Fire OS 5, the Android-based operating system for Fire tablets, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Fire OS 5 is based on Android Lollipop which helps ensure Android apps work on Fire devices with no additional engineering effort. Developers can request early access to the Fire OS 5 developer preview and view apps running...
Mozilla Taps Tappx for Firefox OS Collaborative Cross Promotion Advertising
Thursday, May 14, 2015 by Richard Harris
Mozilla has announced that Tappx, an open cross-promotion community for app developers, will offer its no-cost advertising service to Firefox OS developers. Tappx is based on a collaborative sharing economy, where members host advertising on each other’s apps. Tappx runs on credits (called Tappix) that are earned whenever a developer advertises another member’s app...
Mozilla Releases New Trainspotting Blog Series to Track Firefox Releases
Tuesday, April 28, 2015 by Richard Harris
The Firefox team is hosting a new blog series called Trainspotting on Mozilla Hacks which is designed to help Web developers keep up with what’s new, what’s changed and what is coming soon in all of the Firefox's, the Web platform, and the Mozilla tools for building the Web.The Trainspotting name comes from the way Mozilla develops Gecko and Firefox on a “train model” a...
GA Release of AWS Mobile SDK Now Available
Friday, October 17, 2014 by Richard Harris
The AWS Mobile SDK for iOS, Android, and Fire OS has been released out of developer preview and is now generally available. The AWS Mobile SDK provides access to AWS services specifically designed to help mobile app developers with identity management & sync (Amazon Cognito), analytics (Amazon Mobile Analytics), and push notifications (Amazon SNS Mobile Push). ...
Firefox Smartphone OS is Now Available in 24 Countries
Wednesday, October 15, 2014 by Richard Harris
Mozilla has announced that the Firefox OS is now available on three continents with 12 smartphones offered by 13 operators in 24 countries. Mozilla has been pushing its Firefox OS as an opportunity to use Web as a platform, outside the proprietary mobile operating systems.Three new smartphones have been launched in India and one in Bangladesh over the last few weeks as ...
New Marmalade 7.4 SDK Optimizes Cross Platform Development for Windows Phone 8.1 and iOS 8 and Xcode 6
Wednesday, September 3, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Marmalade has launched the latest edition of its cross-platform app development tool with the release of Marmalade 7.4.The updated SDK includes a number of new features to assist developers in deploying their apps to a broad range of platforms. Marmalade uses a core C++ tool to give game developers the ability to publish native like performance for games in the app stor...
Two Low Cost Smartphones Launched in India Running FireFox OS
Tuesday, September 2, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Mozilla is betting on the potential of low cost phones running its open Web standards/HTML5 FireFox OS to make it a viable option as a mobile operating system. Recently two new low priced phones have been launched in India running FireFox.Intex Technologies has launched a FireFox powered smartphone with introductory pricing of Rs. 1999 (around $33US). The Intex Cloud FX...
Urban Airship’s Push Messaging Platform Rolls Out New Functionality for Mobile User Engagement
Saturday, August 30, 2014 by Richard Harris
Urban Airship has announced enhancements to its push messaging platform including cross-platform support for widgets and button-enabled interactive notifications in iOS 8 and rich notifications in Android 4.3 and Amazon Fire OS.The new enhancements were added to help drive deeper engagement outside of apps, on device lock screens and in the Notification Center, by offer...
Amazon Mobile Ads API Now Offers iOS App Support for Interstitial and Banner Ads
Thursday, July 24, 2014 by Richard Harris
The Amazon Mobile Ads API allows developers to display ads from the Amazon Mobile Ad Network in their apps, and now, both interstitial and banner ads can be displayed across iOS devices in addition to Android and Fire OS devices (including Fire phone). With this release, Amazon is also expanding ad serving to Android and iOS users in the US, the UK, Germany, ...
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Offers Mobile Developers New Services
Tuesday, July 15, 2014 by Richard Harris
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has upped the ante in its efforts to woo mobile developers to use its services to build, deploy, and scale mobile applications. It has introduced a number of new services as part of the AWS platform.Amazon CognitoAmazon Cognito is a new service that provides user identity and data synchronization that lets developers create apps that authentica...
Top Minds Across the Globe Give Their Thoughts on Advances in Security and Privacy
Friday, July 11, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Sometimes we forget that its not just companies within our industry that are providing thought leadership on relative topics concerning the mobile app industry. The top minds at universities across the globe are also analyzing current and future developments.This May in San Jose, California, the Mobile Security Technologies (MoST) conference brought together r...
Mozilla’s WebIDE Offers Developers In Browser Building and Editing Features to Create HTML5 Apps
Wednesday, June 25, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Mozilla is adding in-browser editing features across devices with WebIDE, built directly into Firefox, providing a functioning blueprint app and tools needed create, edit, and test a new Web application right from a browser. WebIDE provides the ability to install and test apps on Firefox OS devices and simulators and integrates the Firefox Developer Tools...
Amazon Unleashes the Fire Phone and Shakes the Mobile Industry To a New Level (with specs)
Wednesday, June 18, 2014 by Richard Harris
Amazon has announced the Fire Phone, an exclusive Android based device (ships with Fire OS 3.5), supplied directly from the online shopping giant. The Fire Phone comes with an enormous amount of breakthrough technologies that when put beside Apple's, Samsung's, HTC's, and other manufactures leading devices, kind of leave you wondering what they have been up to all this ...
Amazon Releases Research on Success of Developers on the Amazon Appstore Platform
Monday, June 16, 2014 by Richard Harris
Amazon is trumpeting its success in convincing developers to utilize its platform with its latest announcement of an IDC study saying that developers are having positive results from the Kindle Fire platform. According to the IDC survey commissioned by Amazon, 65% of developers building apps and games for Kindle Fire are making at least as much money on t...
Latest Firefox OS 1.3 Release Helps Game Developers Improve User Experience
Monday, May 12, 2014 by Richard Harris
Mozilla has released the next update to Firefox OS which offers app developers the arrival of new platform technologies such as WebGL, asm.js and WebAudio for creating more immersive games with better audio effects.Highlights from the release:Improved support for Graphics and Gaming: The update will ship WebGL, asm.js and WebAudio supp...
Amazon Developer Program Adds New Features To GameCircle for Player Engagement and Retention
Friday, April 11, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
GameCircle is designed to increase player engagement, improve retention, and enhance the customer experience when playing mobile games on iOS, Android, or Fire OS. Amazon has added new features to GameCircle designed to help developers increase engagement through player Achievements, Leaderboards, and game data synchronization.The two new features are: (1) expanded play...
Google Believes it Will Rule Smart Wearable App Market With New SDK
Thursday, March 13, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Sundar Pichai with Google has dropped the news that Google will release an SDK for the wearable’s market in a couple of weeks. He discussed the SDK during a presentation at SWSX on Sunday.It’s the latest salvo in the war for app domination by the two biggest players in the market. Last week Apple launched CarPlay with Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyunda...
Trends That Will Drive HTML5 This Year
Monday, March 3, 2014 by Robert Grossberg
2014 promises to be a big year for HTML5 mobile games. As
the CEO of a NYC-based mobile web game distribution company, I see three trends
application developers should look for this year that will drive the HTML5
resurgence.
Trend Number 1:
HTML5-based mobile web app demand will skyrocket
There is a growing set of HTML5 app stores that are all
looki...
Mozilla Announces New Dual Core App Developer Reference Phone, Firefox OS PhoneGap Integration
Monday, February 24, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
It’s going to be a week of announcement overload as companies try to maximize their access to media at the Mobile World Congress so hold on as a cornucopia of mobile news is served.Mozilla joins the fray with a number of announcements, including a 4.5-inch dual-core reference phone, enabling developers to test new Firefox OS features and apps against different memo...
Amazon AppStream SDK Streams Resource Intensive Apps and Games from the Cloud
Thursday, January 30, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
The Amazon AppStream SDK was created to help developers manage streaming an app from AWS to local devices. Currently in limited preview, CPC games has been using Amazon AppStream to improve the new-user experience for Eve Online science fiction game.Halldor Fannor, CTO of CCP Games, noted the use of AppStream could allow new users of Eve Online to st...
Panasonic to Adopt Mozilla Firefox OS Open Platform for Next Generation Smart TVs
Sunday, January 12, 2014 by Richard Harris
Mozilla has scored another win in its efforts to expand its Firefox Os with the announcement that it is joining with Panasonic to bring Firefox to the next generation of smart TVs. Here is what Panasonic and Mozilla has to say about the partnership:The development of the new Firefox OS platform aims to deliver more expansive access into smart TVs by...
Mozilla and Goo Promote US$45K Game Creator Challenge to HTML5 App Developers
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 by Stuart Parkerson
Mozilla and Goo are looking for all developers, from experienced game creators and JavaScript coders to those with just a little coding knowledge, to enter the Game Creator Challenge and a chance to win a part of US$45K. The contest is running now through January 14.
To create games, contestants will use the Goo platform consisting of Goo Engine – a 3D J...
HTML5 App Development: Insight into Choices for Mobile Developers to Bring Web Apps to Market
Monday, November 11, 2013 by Stuart Parkerson
How HTML5 mobile app developers decide between four fundamental choices to bring web apps to market is the basis of a recent report by Vision Mobile.
The report is taken from data derived from four different sources: raw data from Vision Mobile’s Q2 Developer Economics survey (6,000 respondents, April-May 2013); analytics from 30,000 plus Android apps available in Goog...
Amazon Releases a Free Cross Platform User Engagement and Testing Tool
Friday, November 8, 2013 by Richard Harris
Amazon Analytics and A/B Testing services are now available for developers, with support for iOS, Android, and Fire OS. By leveraging the data provided by Amazon Analytics Reports and A/B Testing, you can take steps to increase user engagement and monetization overall across platforms. Both services are free to use, regardless of usage level. These new services are buil...
Mozilla Announces Firefox OS Update (1.1), Hosts Second Round of Firefox OS Market Launches
Wednesday, October 16, 2013 by Richard Harris
Mozilla has announced that Firefox OS smartphone partners are planning future expansion into more markets. Also announced was version (1.1) of the Firefox OS.
The ALCATEL ONE TOUCH Fire and the ZTE Open Firefox OS phones are currently available from Telefónica in Spain, Colombia and Venezuela and Deutsche Telekom in Poland. There are plans to launch Firefox OS phones i...
Amazon App Developers Can Fire Up Android and Web Apps With Kindle Fire HDX Powered By OS 3.0 Mojito
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 by Stuart Parkerson
Amazon has officially launched its new Kindle Fire HDX featuring a new 7-inch or 8.9-inch HDX display, quad-core 2.2 GHz processor with 3x the processing power, twice the memory of the previous model, 11 hours of battery life, and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio.
From a consumer standpoint, probably the most innovative aspect of the new device is the...
Mozilla Temps App Developers With Round 2 of Free Firefox Phones
Thursday, September 5, 2013 by Stuart Parkerson
In May Mozilla launched the Phones for Apps for Firefox OS to encourage app developers to port their HTML5 apps to the Firefox platform. The free Geeksphone Keon phone program maxed out and many developers were unable to get a free phone.
Mozilla has restocked its phone inventory and is again enticing developers to port their current HTML5 app. The company is not guara...
One Click Carrier Billing Payments Now for Firefox Phone Developers Too
Wednesday, August 7, 2013 by Richard Harris
Mozilla Firefox developers will soon have a new choice in how they monetize their Firefox phone apps for the soon to be released Firefox phones, by choosing to use Bango - a carrier billing platform that will let users pay for apps, and in-app purchases with one simple tap and no real billing process.Mozilla has signed mobile payments company Bango to allow op...
