Apple to allow third-party app stores in Japan
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 by Richard Harris
The Japanese parliament has passed the Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software, a law that compels Apple to allow access to third-party app stores and payment providers on devices that run iOS. The legislation, which was passed by Japan's upper house and will be enforced following Cabinet approval within the next eighteen months, seeks to c...
Twitter and KaiOS take on KaiOSpowered smart feature phones
Wednesday, November 21, 2018 by Joyce Shen
Imagine you’re a seasoned designer for smartphones working with ever-expanding resources, including memory, CPU speed, and screen resolution. Then, one day, your manager gives you an assignment to work on a device that has less of all this and doesn’t even have a touchscreen!
This is what happened to some of the designers at Twitter and KaiOS, all of whom...
To make a progressive web app or not
Thursday, September 6, 2018 by Richard Harris
Mobile users are spending 80 to 94 percent of their mobile use time in apps, so you’d think the mobile web would be a thing of the past right? But the average mobile user also visits 100 different websites each month, and only half of all mobile users don’t download any new apps during that same period.
In order to achieve the speed and ease of use p...
The first blockchain based smartphone coming to the US
Monday, June 18, 2018 by Richard Harris
An Android-based dual SIM smartphone developed by Pras Michel, in partnership with IoT device company Borqs Technologies, will be offered through a new tech platform, Blacture. The branded, 5.99 inch smartphone device - called MOTIF - will be available later in 2018 and exclusively on blacture.com. The phone features a blockchain-based platform that will be "the fi...
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...
Wifi vs Bluetooth vs BLE, choosing the right IoT tech
Tuesday, May 16, 2017 by Yuri Brigance
Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are increasing in popularity and availability - think Amazon Alexa, smart thermostats & light bulbs, Internet-connected garage door openers, GoPro cameras, and so on. One thing these products have in common is that they communicate wirelessly with either a mobile device, the Internet, or both. As these devices become smarter and gene...
Mobile and IoT security gets a boost from new PN80T chipset
Tuesday, February 28, 2017 by Richard Harris
NXP Semiconductors N.V. has unveiled its new PN80T embedded Secure Element (SE) and NFC solution. It is the Industry’s first 40nm SE and is designed to ease development and implementation of an extended range of secure applications for any platform including smartphones, wearables, and the Internet of Things (IoT).A user experience built around NFC use casesThe new PN80...
ChecOut's new payment terminal to go on your phone!
Monday, January 16, 2017 by Austin Harris
ChecOut's mobile payment service is the newest solution for mobile commerce.Innowi, Inc just unveiled ChecOut M, the first mobile POS solution integrating powerful Payment (EMV, NFC & Magnetic stripe), POS and BI management applications into a smart, secure and sophisticated device. Their new product is designed to transform the customer shopping experience and chec...
Resonance launches SDK For proximitybased device pairing
Friday, November 4, 2016 by Richard Harris
Resonance has emerged from stealth to announce the availability of its new proximity-based software development kit (SDK) for device pairing. Developers are using the Resonance SDK to create advanced mobile application features for a wide range of iOS and Android apps where secure device-to-device connectivity can provide value - gaming, e-commerce, payments, retail, tr...
Mobeewave Tells Us About the Challenges With Mobile Wallets
Monday, September 26, 2016 by Richard Harris
Mobeewave is a Montreal-based FinTech company that has developed a patented technology that will enable banks around the world to capitalize on the market for cash-in-hand transactions. Their game-changing payment acceptance platform facilitates in-person, proximity mobile payments and is available as a white label platform-as-a-service (PaaS) technology for the banking...
myDevices Cayenne Drag and Drop IoT Project Builder Now Offers Integration with Arduino
Wednesday, August 24, 2016 by Stuart Parkerson
IoT firm has myDevices has announced its Cayenne drag-and-drop IoT project builder now offers an integration with Arduino’s open-source software and hardware ecosystem. The Cayenne development platform provides access to Arduino’s features when choosing an IoT board including WiFi, BLE, IR, NFC, Ethernet, and more.Cayenne provides tools to visualize sensor data&nbs...
Cloud Security Alliance Issues Mobile Application Security Testing Report
Monday, August 1, 2016 by Stuart Parkerson
The Cloud Security Alliance has released a new report surrounding its Mobile Application Security Testing Initiative. The purpose of the report is to provide the Alliance’s insight into building out a roadmap for establishing a more secure cloud ecosystem to protect mobile applications.The Alliance’s Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST) Initiative offers...
Visa To Introduce Wearable Payment Ring Backed by a Visa Account at Rio 2016 Games
Wednesday, June 8, 2016 by Stuart Parkerson
Visa will be launching a new payment wearable for use at the Rio 2016 Games – a payment wearable ring backed by a Visa account. The Visa payment ring will be given to all Team Visa athletes in Rio, a group of 45 Olympic participants. The Visa payment ring is NFC-enabled, allowing the athletes to make purchases by tapping their ring at any NFC-capable payment terminal.&n...
AEVI Introduces New Android Based Point of Sale Device
Monday, May 9, 2016 by Richard Harris
AEVI has launched a new portable payment terminal product based on the Android operating system. The tablet point of sale (POS) device, called ‘Albert’, gives companies a platform to manage a range of business functions and accept a number of different forms of secure payments. The Albert POS device provides the ability for retailers to customize the device by only...
SOTI MobiControl 13.0 Release Offers Greater Mobile Device Management Functionality
Monday, January 18, 2016 by Richard Harris
SOTI has introduced SOTI MobiControl 13.0, the latest version of SOTI’s MobiControl enterprise mobility management solution. This latest iteration of the product offers greater integration with any device form factor, more consistent user experiences across all devices, and the ability to help companies support the next-generation Internet of Things (IoT) connected devi...
Mobeam Android SDK Facilitates Mobile Payments Beyond NFC
Wednesday, September 2, 2015 by Richard Harris
Mobeam is releasing its mobile beaming technology SDK to Android developers, providing the ability to create android-based applications utilizing barcodes or other applications of beaming. Offering a collection of self-service APIs and tools, the Mobeam Android SDK license will be initially offered free to developers to tryout. Mobeam’s light-based beaming technolo...
WyzBee Offers a New End to End IoT Platform for Device Makers
Tuesday, August 25, 2015 by Richard Harris
Redpine Signals has launched the WyzBee platform, a new IoT platform for device makers that includes a flexible hardware platform, development environment and cloud software and services framework. The WyzBee IoT platform provides the opportunity to reduce the time it takes to develop and bring to market new IoT devices by providing integrated sensing, computing, c...
NXP Releases NFC Solution for Linux and Android Drivers of IoT devices
Monday, June 29, 2015 by Richard Harris
NXP Semiconductors has released a new plug and play Near Field Communication (NFC) solution for Linux and Android drivers of IoT devices. The new, highly integrated NXP PN7120 helps create NFC solutions and enables exploration of new applications and use cases for IoT and the Smart Home including a variety of appliances and consumer electronics such as home network gate...
Google Releases Android M Developer Preview
Tuesday, June 9, 2015 by Richard Harris
Google has released the Android M developer preview, offering a clear timeline for testing and feedback plus more updates to the preview build. For the M release, Google reports they have focused on improving the core user experience of and making big changes to the fundamentals of the platform.The M Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools, system images fo...
How Next Generation Technology is Going to Drive Future Mobile Enterprise Initiatives
Thursday, January 1, 2015 by Stuart Parkerson
If there is one truth out there for the mobile enterprise, it is that there is no one real truth out there. The rate of growth and transformation associated with the smart technology ecosystem is simply growing too fast for companies to keep up with. The advice a specific approach to preparing for changes that will happen tomorrow differs profoundly based on who yo...
What Developers Need To Know About Android 5.0 Lollipop
Monday, October 27, 2014 by Richard Harris
Google is touting Android 5.0 Lollipop as its largest and most ambitious release for Android and now that the public has been notified of its upcoming availability, we thought we’d provide an overview of the latest L iteration.Google’s main goal with the new mobile SDK is to provide a more seamless experience across phones, tablets, wearables, TVs, cars and anything els...
Chase Webinar to Show App Developers How to Integrate Apple Pay into iOS Apps
Tuesday, September 16, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
This week, the onslaught of new iPhone 6 owners will be happily grabbing their new phones. As we have written in a number of recent articles, new iPhone launches provide a unique opportunity to reacquaint current users to your app and potentially gain a new crop of app users who are looking for new apps and new ways to use their phone.And one of the most important new u...
Apple Announcement Goes As Predicted With iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, New Apple Watch, iOS 8 and Apple Pay
Tuesday, September 9, 2014 by Richard Harris
As most pundits predicted, there were no shocking developments with Apple’s news announcement as the company introduced two new iPhone 6 models, a new smart-watch, dates for the availability of iOS 8 and a new payment system, Apple Pay.We’ll have more coverage of each aspect of this announcement, however here we are providing exerpts from the Apple press announcements f...
Broadcom’s New WICED Development Kit Lets Mobile Developers Dive Into IoT App and Hardware Creations
Wednesday, August 27, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Broadcom Corporation has introduced a new development kit into its Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED) family of offerings to enable developers to rapidly prototype ideas and concepts for IoT devices and applications.The Broadcom WICED Sense development kit is an all-in-one IoT prototyping kit that includes Broadcom's newest Bluetooth Smart chip,...
Twinsprite Brings Physical Toys and Other Objects to the Digital Mobile World
Friday, June 13, 2014 by Richard Harris
The Twinsprite Platform, currently under private beta, provides developers with the ability to manage the identity and attributes of physical objects so that they can be used as active elements inside a game. For examples, these objects could be toys, action figures or trading cards.Although the platform primarily targets products like toys, basically any physical objec...
71 percent of App Users Don’t Want to be Tracked by iBeacon or Receive In Store Push Modifications
Monday, May 19, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Retale, a shopping based platform that aggregates weekly circulars from over 60 retailers, has released a report showing that 71% of mobile app users indicate they don’t like the idea of being tracked into a store via their smartphones and 56% say they are not interested in receiving push notifications while shopping.The survey asked more than 3,000 iOS and Android user...
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...
Developers Can Test Out Windows Phone 8.1 with New Windows Phone Preview
Wednesday, April 16, 2014 by Richard Harris
As of this week, developers can now install Windows Phone 8.1 on their dev phone through the Windows Phone Preview for Developers and try out a lot features that were announced at Build a couple of weeks ago. Along with the tooling delivered in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC, developers can now get everything they need to start building and testing Window...
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...
Internet of Things Connected Device Overload: Are We in the Process of Jumping the Shark
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Many of you reading this may not be familiar with the term “Jump the Shark.” It originates from an episode of Happy Days in 1977 when the Fonz put on his leather jacket and water skis then jumped a shark held in a pen off of a California beach. I have seen it, not wanting to date myself I won’t say when.The episode was truly terrible, demonstrating that the show had got...
Fujitsu Introduces Smart Wearable Glove with Near Field Communication (NFC)
Tuesday, February 25, 2014 by Richard Harris
It’s too bad that Michael Jackson is not still around, because who else would be better to hawk a smart glove? Fujitsu will just have to find another spokesperson for its smart glove, equipped with a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag reader and that features gesture-based input for maintenance and other on-site operations.It’s actually a great idea. Fuji...
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...
Pivothead Wearable Imaging Launches Indiegogo Campaign
Monday, November 18, 2013 by Richard Harris
Pivothead, a leader in wearable
imaging technology, launched an Indiegogo campaign to bring their next
generation Pivothead SMART (Simple Modular
Application-Ready Technology™) line
of feature-rich eyewear to market.
Pivothead SMART provides the full 1080p high definition (HD)
video and 8 megapixel photo capture capability of Pivothead’s award winning
first ge...
Window’s App Studio Beta Receives Enhancements
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 by Richard Harris
New upgrades to the Windows Phone App Studio Beta have been announced today on the Windows Dev blog.
The Windows Dev team haw made several enhancements including a new cache implementation, allowing developers to access dynamic data or RSS feeds even if the user’s phone is not connected. Microsoft has optimized Visual Studio projects to remove external references when ...
Nokia’s “Create” App Developer’s Contest Kicks Off
Monday, September 16, 2013 by Stuart Parkerson
Microsoft and Nokia are wasting no time in generating buzz as they kick of the Nokia âCreateâ contest, a global competition to develop apps for Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone 8. Prizes include Nokia devices, promotions, credit for ad campaigns, and more.
It’s an ingenious way to get developers to dip their feet in development waters for the Windows 8 platform ...
