I was pretty shocked this 6am cloudy miserable morning to read Googles new CEO Larry Page is changing their app policy. From purely developing Rich Web Based Apps to native mobile based apps for all the OS’s available.. I’m not so sure this is a great move by Larry instead of developing for 1 platform (the web browser) and then doing a sweep test against the other OS’s on their native browser. I imagine you are now going to need more teams each specialised with the chosen mobile OS to rollout to. Then you have potential issues of re-engineering the way the app works with the device as some may have limited functionality and finally support for new patchsets, upgrades etc… Madness I tell you complete madness – hey they have the money and it does mean more jobs.. You go Larry!!

If you want an App why not just use the power of html 5 and use one of the many tools that can convert it to a native app?

Anyway this news comes after AppsFire release their info graphic on ios apps vs web apps.

I really cant wait to see after a year of Google developing apps for each OS they decide to jump back to the web platform.. .. or do you think I’m wrong and biased ?

Great Viewlet from John Brunswick to check out on the power of PS3!

So as promised here is the start of the UCM MIS solution using jquery mobile and a bit of javascript webdav magic..

These are the platforms that are supported with the native browser for jquery mobile.
iOS – v2.21 to v4.0
Symbian S60 – v5
Symbian Platform v3.0
BlackBerry OS – V5.0/6.0
Android – V1.5 to v2.2
WebOS – 1.4.1
bada – 1.0
MeeGo – 1.1

For Windows Mobile V6.5.1/7.0
it will only work with Opera Mobile 10.0 or Opera Mini 5.0
User will need to download and use these browsers.

I’ve known about the possibilities of using javascript to interact with webdav for a couple years now but I’ve never played with it..

This weekend I had a brainwave after discussing with a couple colleagues different mobile applications and how we could migrate some of the powerful features of things like Desktop Integration Suite Webdav explorer to a mobile device..

Well… tonight I started up my UCM VM… I accidentally dropped the external hd and corrupted the vm so that took me some time to fix.. sigh.. but anyway I tried it out…
I now can leverage webdav instead of the standard UCM services to interact with content held on the UCM..Pretty sweet.
It’s very basic and have hard coded the settings but as a test I connected to a folder and brought back its contents…

I then thought hey this is working in my browser can I port it across to my mobile device and get it to work.. .. .. hmmm

YES!!! it works.. I used Appcelerator it authenticates.. Awesome.

So what next? … Well bed I think.. so so sleepy.

Ok, next steps::

1. Leverage html5 local storage to cache folder structure for offline quick view.
2. HTML 5 Drag Drop file from local machine into a browser javascript folder structure using the new File & DD API. (Not for mobile though)
3. Setup local file system area to copy files to – for offline access accessable via browser and cached folder structure.
4. Setup Checkout/Checkin/download – Native or Alternative/ Sync Files and alert user if files have been updated on UCM to update local copy based on revision or checksum tool.
5. Setup Table MetaData view with dynamic headers.
6. Add search feature.
7. Integrate with Mobile Blackberry Spaces App.

Lets see how cross device compatible I can make this..

Yes, I could use the UCM services and jsonify it but hey who has used webdav via javascript?
Actually thinking about it the services would be better in a way as they provide all this functionality and output as json..

But it’s an excuse to try something a little bit different.. And build on the webdav RFC 2518

Last couple months I have been working on a custom javascript framework to serve information (push/pull) from the WebCenter Rest API over Christmas I created a simple html5 based site which happily works on my HTC and Blackberry browser, I have no iphone as it is in peaces in the attempt to replace the facia…  But in theory this should work on any mobile device – it doesn’t look pretty at the moment just white background links and structured layout.

I started mocking up the interface skin for the BlackBerry on Sunday, I’m hoping around 19th the interface will be ready.. All depends on what free time I can find.
Then I can work on the CSS3 skin should take 1-2 days to test and get in place… but I need your help..

If you have a BlackBerry device; access to a WebCenter Spaces environment and some spare time to ftp files across onto the local WebCenter apache environment – post me a message and when I’ve finished fingers crossed end of the month I’ll send you a copy of the files for your opinion and to play with. Due to the time and effort I wont be making this opensource – maybe the improved JS rest api adaptor will be though.

I’ll also get a screencast done so those without the device can see it in action.. maybe a live one with me recording it.

Why BlackBerry Skin and not just a generic interface that will be cross device specific?
Well; I feel this is probably one of the hardest devices to design for with some devices having touchscreen some not, different resolutions I thought it may be a challenge. The iphone and android devices although different in essence can be easily skinned as they take up virtually the same real estate in screen dimensions but phones like blackberry and Nokia’s I’m not so sure – Here’s a good guide developing on the android, ios resolution.

It may be possible to create a generic cross device skin but I’m just not that confident – I feel that 3 interfaces would be needed to globally support all mobile devices and make UIX great for any phone but until I try it out I wont know for sure.

So a couple weeks ago TheAppsLab released an internal survey at Oracle to get a good understanding  which mobile devices, apps are popular and to get a understanding of peoples needs at Oracle you can see a few tidbits and results over at their blog – The Apps Lab:: Answering Questions about Mobile Devices

Whats better is they have also opened the survey to the readers of their blog..
If anyone here has a spare 5-10 mins please head over to TheAppsLab Survey here and fill out the form so they can help push and release a great suite of apps.

And open the survey results to the rest of us

It’s the end of the year and everyone seems to be doing there tax returns and stat analysis.
So here are the Bluestudios stats for last year..

Quick Overview of my monthly visitors..

This is easier to visualise over the daily stats as my weekend stats drop down to around 120 visitors – daily visitors are around 160 mark but have spiked to 300 depending on the post.

In total BlueStudios reached 44,528 visits over the previous year where it only achieved 30,118.

Country breakdown

Breakdown of the top 10 countries::

1. United States – 11,403

2. United Kingdom – 4,545

3. India – 3,763

4. Germany – 1,826

5. Canada – 1,698

6. Australia – 1,652

7. Brazil – 1,263

8. Netherlands – 1,008

9. France – 1,005

10. Spain – 990

Mobile Devices

Not many mobile devices accessed Bluestudios but I haven’t put in the support or time to blog about much on mobile devices. But still interesting to see that there are users accessing the site with a handheld device

… ok, if you were curious to know what – Danger Hiptop is – I just found out it’s a T-Mobile Sidekick.. Strange name.

Top Referring websites::

blogs.oracle.com
Oracles blog aggregator

pmoskovi.wordpress.com
Peter Moskovitz Webcenter Blog

corecontentonly.com
Jason Stortz Oracle UCM Blog

itnewscast.com
Oracle aggregator

bexhuff.com
We all know of Bex – Never met in person though..

twitter.com
My blog gets featured on twitter?! wow.. I don’t tweet.. Maybe I should start..
There are people who tweet about bluestudios.. hmm I bet it is all bad stuff…

forums.oracle.com
I used to be one of the UCM guys helping others in the top 10 list of helpers but this last year I havent had the time and all efforts have been dedicated to Webcenter Spaces

cfour.fishbowlsolutions.com
Fishbowls Solutions – US based Oracle consulting company.
These guys are one of the best out there for providing unique and innovative solutions to there clients.. They’ve even helped me out. They also have Billy Cripe leading the way on E2.0.

theappslab.com
Adopted into Oracle – I always get so jealous of this team.. They get to do what I consider to be the fun stuff and branch out to create unique innovative apps / tools with a great UI. In the last year most of the blogging has been on mobile devices and I believe these guys are really pushing apps to the limit and I’m sure 2011 will be there year to impress us all.

club-oracle.com
Not sure how I got featured here – I think through their blogs and people linking back to me.

cmstechie.blogspot.com
A great blogger – and one you should follow he always has good advice to give.

fishbowlsolutions.com
Fishbowl Solutions Corporate site

contentoncontentmanagement.com
David Roes’ blog – I`m not sure whats happened with David he just seems to have stopped but he used to come out with great ideas and awesome components releasing them before Oracle do – i.e setting media server to using S3 as a data store for UCM. etc go check him out if you haven’t

hishamgalal.blogspot.com
Hisham Galals blog – Previously an Oracle Consultant now setup on his own but provides useful snippets of info that you may not be aware of.

andrealmar.wordpress.com
Andre Almar – Another ECM Blogger interesting articles and often ahead of the rest with access to the beta Oracle software.

oraclecommunity.net
I’m not part of this site but I’m getting the hits you may want to check them out and signup they seem to have a lot of Oracle members.

iandevlin.com
Web Guru like myself – Ian gets stuck into anything and everything a bit like myself keeping up with the latest web technologies.

webmonkeymagic.blogspot.com
Aussie based web monkey – always keep an eye on this blog for useful code snippets and ideas.

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