BlackBerry

I have a pending review about my last BlackBerry device I bought some time ago. I'm very happy with it and that's why I decided to put some comments here about my experience.

On the hardware side, I must say that it's excellent. BlackBerry IS a hardware company more than a Software company and that's very visible... The quality of the screen is excellent for reading. My Samsung Galaxy has a much brighter screen and that's not good for long readings. So I prefer BlackBerry.

The camera is good enough for what it must do. The overall performance is very good.

BlackBerry now has a new Sync app for Desktop, called "BlackBerry Link". It has a new design and many new functionality. The one I like most (something I was expecting from other manufacturers) is the capability of sync without the USB cable!

You can copy files and do all you do but no need fo USB plugging. That's good for battery life optimization. Apple has the same problem with devices plugged to the computer and charging the battery when it's already full. So they are not sending any charge to the device and saving battery... To me, this BlackBerry implementation is much better.

Finally, I hope BlackBerry can rise and become a competitor for the today's World. And if they reach that goal, I hope they don't forget about what happened: They thought they were the biggest ones and did nothing for users.

Game of the day: Find developer error

Click on the image to enlarge and find

What do developers want?

My project manager is always asking me to use routines already done by “the big ones”. And I’m always telling him that I can do the same but lighter, because those routines are usually heavy (in bytes) because they have to handle many people’s necessities.

And not only this current project manager is asking me this. It happens with all of them. and that’s why I’m thinking all the time to start my own projects, because I’m tired of dealing with this kind of stuff.

OK, but here’s also some thoughts I have for you to analyze why I’m saying that not for all the cases you have to go with something already done:

1) The most important: If others are doing our routines for our applications, then what do we developers are going to do? If we leave this happen, then clients will not longer hire us.

2) Let’s talk about Android Fragments. Are you sure you can’t do this by code? By your own? It’s lame if not. Do you really need to go up in your Android API version only to support Fragments? I did the basics of Fragments for my own projects and they work. And they are not as heavy as Google’s, of course. Because I did what I needed for my project and I can upgrade that routine as I need it.

3) Animated left menu: This nice effect that you find in Facebook’s mobile application and it comes as a Drawer component in Android… Really can’t do your own? You need to go to that API level to get this fancy menu? I did my own animated menu like this one in a couple of hours and works really well.

4) Bugs: Do you really think these routines have no bugs? You think (as a project manager) that because it’s Google code then has no bugs? So wrong! They are really buggy. So, instead of dealing with someone else’s bugs, I prefer to deal with my own!

5) About testing on different devices: Everything is very limited these days (I’m talking about how many devices your customers use) The World is using basically technology you can buy for testing. So, it’s not like the old days, where all the stuff to test it was too expensive.

Conclusion: Start coding and stop letting others do your job because if we continue this way we -developers- are going to have no job .

BlackBerry - The story of a big mistake

If you build your business first because you want to make money, then you may suffer the BlackBerry symptom.

You need to build your business because you want to do good things for people. You have to start a business because you want to make a better World. If you have this in mind, then you will never fail.

BlackBerry did build something in the past and then they thought that the glory will never end. But the World is not like that any more.

Other companies like BlackBerry are BlockBuster, Microsoft (they are now offering Office for Android for free) and in a near future: Apple.

A new report has arrived to BlackBerry and their situation is not getting better. They are in big troubles... Learn to be updated. This is the future and there is no intention of stopping.

WinJS - Javascipt Framework for a Windows 8 look and feel

The WinJS documentation.

WinJS (GitHub: winjs / winjs, License: Apache 2.0) is a new UI-oriented library from Microsoft for developing cross-platform applications with JavaScript.

Microsoft have been pushing WinJS applications for a while as Windows 8 apps that are written with JavaScript instead of what we typically think of as .NET programming languages. This library is a set of UI controls that support desktop and mobile devices, and also some modern JavaScript APIs for things we’ve come to expect: promises, networking, data binding, and templates.

The UI style fits in with Windows 8, and although WinJS applications should run in modern browsers, there’s talk of specific support for Windows Phone 8 and other Microsoft platforms in the future.

There’s an announcement post on the Microsoft News Center:

Today we’re also announcing that Microsoft Open Technologies has brought the Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) cross-platform apps and is open sourcing it under the Apache 2.0 license. Find the source code on GitHub. Use this powerful Windows development framework to build high-quality web apps across a variety of browsers and devices beyond Windows, including Chrome, Firefox, Android, and iOS.

Some corners of the UI widgets still need aesthetic attention – the date and time pickers don’t look particularly great on Chrome on my Mac. But the APIs seem consistent and similar to other popular open source projects.

If you’re looking to make Windows 8-style applications and love JavaScript, then this is definitely worth following. The added benefit is you can run these web apps in non-Microsoft browsers as well.

Framework7 - Develop iOS Apps for the Web

http://www.idangero.us/framework7/

Make responsive auto-sized grids in your HTML projects

GridList is a drag and drop library for a two-dimensional resizable and responsive list of items. An agnostic GridList class that manages the two-dimensional positions from a list of items within a virtual matrix. A jQuery plugin built on top of the GridList class that translates the generic items positions into responsive DOM elements with drag and drop capabilities.

https://github.com/uberVU/grid

Please note that the current implementation is for a horizontal grid. This means that the number of rows is configurable, whereas columns extend dynamically, based on the number, size and position of items placed inside the grid.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://ubervu.github.io/grid/
License: Apache 2.0 License