1. iOS(iPhone)

Pros

• Offers copy and paste options
• Allows users to multi-task
• Has HTML5 support
• Offers Internet tethering
• Features video calling and visual voicemail
• Offers threaded email with a unified inbox
• Has exchange support
• Application placement is customizable
• Offers 300,000+ applications
• Offers storage folders.

Cons

• Does not offer widgets
• Does not feature Facebook or Twitter integration
• Does not offer flash support or Silverlight support
• No removable storage available
• No Microsoft office integration
• No Xbox live integration.

2. Android

Pros

• Offers copy and paste options
• Multi-tasking
• Flash support
• Offers HTML5 support
• Offers unified inbox and threaded email
• Has video voicemail and visual calling
• Removable storage is available
• Offers Facebook and Twitter integration
• Application organization is customizable
• Features folders for storage
• Has widgets available.

Cons

• Does not have Silverlight support
• Video calling is through a third party app
• Microsoft support is through a third party app
• 90,000+ mobile apps available.

3. Windows 8 (Windows phone)

Pros

• Offers exchange support
• Facebook integration
• Has built-in Xbox live integration
• Build in Microsoft office support
• Customizable mosaic tile user-interface
• Support available for ARM based chipsets, tablets and sensors
• Application information available while the mobile app is closed
• New charms allow users to customize apps and settings
• Multitasking available
• Application size change available
• Customizable start menu
• Two touch keyboards
• Has Internet explorer 10 browser
• Allows multiple users on one device
• Web navigation by touch
• Offers copy and paste.

Cons

• No removable storage
• 1,000+ mobile apps
• No twitter integration
• Video voice calling through third party app only.

If you’re looking for a device with the highest amount of mobile apps available, IOS is the way to go. With over 300,000+ apps available and more being offered every day, IOS has the biggest app store available in the mobile industry. For those looking to use their mobile device to watch flash videos, the Android would be a wise choice as this is the only device of the three that has flash capabilities. For someone looking for a PC like experience, Windows8 would be a wise choice. Windows8 mobile offers many of the features that are offered on a regular PC, yet fits all these features within the palm of your hand.

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Some of the areas which highlights the scope and adaptability of windows 8 are given below:

Single OS for a Range of Devices

Windows 8 will work not only on Laptops & Desktops but tablets and phones as well which makes Windows 8 a versatile and multipurpose OS. It will work well with both keyboards and touch screens. The potential is very appealing as a single OS will run tablets, desktops and all-in-ones.

Windows 8 on ARM

ARM processors are commonly found in most smartphones and tablets. With the efforts Microsoft has taken to design the OS to work on tablets and PCs, Windows 8 will be first version of windows to work on both x86 based PCs and ARM (processor) based portable devices like tablets & smartphones. “Support for ARM-based chipsets, touch, and sensors makes Windows 8 work beautifully on your choice of a full spectrum of devices, such as 10-inch slates with all-day battery life, ultra-lightweight laptops, and powerful all-in-ones with 27-inch high-definition screens”, Microsoft mentioned in guide shipped with Windows Developer Preview.

Metro UI & Touch Based User Interface (UI)

Windows 8 comes with home screen (desktop) which is customizable with mosaic of tiles this concept is innovative and very different from traditional desktop icons. With live tiles you can view live information from Windows 8 Metro style applications without launching the applications.

E.g. Live tile for Windows Live Mail will show you your latest message whereas live tile for a social networking application will show notifications for activities and updates. Windows 8 Metro applications are full-screen and are optimized for switching between applications and touch inputs. Still user has been given options to switch to classic windows look and feel.

Considerable Performance Improvements

Windows 8 holds a capacity to boot in less than 8 seconds and the Metro UI will launch applications instantly after you’ve clicked them. Windows 8 which is as 128-bit OS supports 512 GB of RAM. Also there have been considerable improvements in Memory (RAM), CPU and Power utilization.

Microsoft has realized the importance and potential of portable devices. In today’s world people like to carry light weight but high performance portable devices to stay connected as compared to desktop and laptops.Microsoft’s effort to make its presence felt in portable computing device market is visible as Windows 8 and things you need to know about it, which is described very crisply here.Yet Microsoft needs to cover a good distance to capture a descent amount of market shares in portable devices (tablets and phones) and will face strong competition with iOS and Android in doing so.

Talking so about the major changes that will highlight and differentiate windows 8 from others, it definitely is going to be one of the major changes that tablets and smartphones will experience in 2012. Please feel free to have an interactive exchange of views. Looking forward to knowing more viewpoints.

Ritesh Dubey– Technical Lead (Windows Phone)

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Yet, the launch of these Smartphones drive people to loggerheads when its time to decide on one phone.But with so much said and heard ,how a user should make the best choice among these two super phones.

You can have look at comprehensive feature comparison here.

Operating System:

• With iOS 5 the latest major up-gradation to earlier version of iOS, over 200 new features have been added to the iPhone 4s adding the WOW factors to the device.
• With Windows Phone Mango 7.5 OS, which is the latest version of Microsoft phone OS, Nokia Lumia 800 looks beautiful and appealing.

Processor:

• Apple iPhose 4s operates on lesser frequency of 1.0 GHZ but has a dual core A5 processor which helps double the power efficiency.
• Nokia Lumia 800 is powered by Single core 1.4GHz processor which is one of the most powerful single core processors available on mobile.

Display:

• Apple iPhone 4s on one hand has a 3.5inch retina display screen and on other hand Nokia Lumia 800 has a bigger LCD screen of 3.7inch.
• If bigger sounds better to you then Nokia Lumia 800 is the sure bet here.

Camera:

• With 8 MP resolution primary camera housed on both the phones, their video quality is a significant factor.
• iPhone 4s comes with 1080p recording whereas Nokia Lumia 800 has 720p. Also iPhone 4s has a secondary VGA camera which is missing in the Nokia Lumia 800.

Graphics:

iPhone 4s has better looking graphics in Games as well as in-phone. However with high processing speed, graphics load faster on Nokia Lumia 800.

Sensors:

• Apple iPhone 4s has multiple sensors like Accelerometer, proximity, ambient light, GPS, Three-axis gyro.
• Nokia Lumia 800 also has multiple sensors like 3D Accelerometer, proximity, ambient light, GPS, magnetometer.

Storage:

• Both the phones come with in-built storage and have no option to expand memory using an external card.
• Nokia Lumia has 16 GB storage whereas iPhone 4s comes with three variations of 16GB, 32 GB and 64 GB storage.

Apps:

• Built in Apps for iPhone 4s: Siri, FaceTime, Reminders, Maps+Compass, Game Center, Calendars, Chat.
• Built in Apps for Nokia Lumia 800: Business apps, Reminders, Maps, calendar, Chat.

With iPhone already having over 500,000 applications already on their Apple app store, windows marketplace is comparatively very new, applications will be seen flooding on this marketplace as well. You may want to view a few of our iPhone and other Smartphone apps here.

All in all, seems like it might be a good reason for buying Nokia Lumia 800 phone for those who are still waiting to choose between Android, iPhone and other Smartphones. It would be great if you can leave your opinion here. Looking forward to having an open discussion on this very interesting piece.

Ritesh Dubey– Technical Lead (Windows Phone)

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Cloud Computing can be seen as the logical evolution in outsourcing IT services. The promise is that, with Cloud Computing, every company (big or small) can get IT services in a very simple way. Cloud Computing is an epitome of the change in use of IT Infrastructure and Services as the consumers will not have to spend capital of owning or renting the Hardware/Software rather they can use the resources and expense is cut down to usage only.

So, cloud computing would give extra business value over a long period of time along ensuring that the quick changing business needs can be supported better than using traditional IT services. It seems like creating a prospective horizon for changing the Information Technology world into different form than what we perceive it today.

With this change there would be certain pros and cons associated. As of now the visibility on the implications is not very distant and requires a wait and watch strategy to gradually build/change the business models for different domains.

Impact on various domains:

Having the basic idea about Cloud Computing ,in this blog we will discuss the pros and cons of cloud computing in general and would try to understand possible impact of these on the different domains.

We would see large range of highly scalable new generation agile products and services to choose from. These would provide abstraction from current process and thereby reduction in the overall cost.We also expect some standardization to come into picture.

Some of Pros are enlisted here:

Reduced Cost: Costing model is incremental i.e. pay only for what you use thus saving the money.

Increased Storage: Since resources provided by the Cloud Service Provider are virtualized and can be scaled up as required gives the consumer flexibility of unlimited storage space.

Highly Automated: Most of the things are responsibility of CSP like Software/Server update, physical maintenance of infrastructure, licensing of software/tools etc

Mobility & flexibility: Information/service is accessible from anywhere seamlessly if cloud is accessible

Currently this seems like dominance of few gig players (Amazon/Google/Oracle) and thus rise of new industry leaders and IT vendors will leave fewer options for small software companies to cope up with the evolving business model.

The other cons that we can list are:

Security: A proper security model for cloud computing is still awaited. Physical location of hardware and software being unknown would make site inspections and audits difficult. There is also risk of data loss due to improper backups or system failures in the virtualized environment.

Dependency (Loss of Control): Most of the critical things are under control of CSP (Cloud Service Provider) like – Quality of Service (QoS), Contingency Procedures, Measurement of resource utilization

Cost: Cost structure would be difficult to analyze during initial setup/migration as there could be associated hidden costs for backup, restore, disaster recovery, issue solving and compliancy regulations. Moreover future changes in the cost should also be taken into consideration.

Decreased Flexibility: Migration to different CSP would not be simple and would require proper planning starting right while developing the applications (making them generic and portable)

Taking specific businesses into account:

Telecom: Telecom sector is one of the biggest consumers of IT infrastructure, may it be software or hardware so we can expect it to be affected at all levels viz Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Cloud Computing is based on virtualization of the resources much like running multiple VMs on same hardware, we know that there would be some trade-off for this in terms of lag due to network/virtualization. The lag of fraction of second could be fine for data traffic on the network but may not be up to mark for real time voice/video based services. So it looks like some services would still require dedicated resources/hardware to meet up the SLAs.

Healthcare: Quite obviously medical businesses generate huge amount of data like patient records, biomedical research, insurance claims. It is one of the major concerns for hospitals, insurers and researchers to manage this large amount of data. Cloud computing would offer each of these players a potentially more cost-effective alternative to traditional data storage and management solutions. But still there is fear that sharing a platform in a public cloud would compromise privacy regulations, So need of a strong regulatory standard is necessary.

E-Commerce: Cloud computing would be boon to the businesses in e-commerce as they are the ones working in a pretty similar fashion since a long time viz usually these businesses run virtually on the internet only,  for this  they have to setup virtual infrastructure and services from different vendors. Interaction with various vendors will now be eliminated and limited to a single service provider who can take care of all the requirements. So we expect a substantial growth of e-commerce to be obvious in near future.

Outsourcing: Most of the current business models associated with IT infrastructure and services do include outsourcing of various activities may it be maintenance or labor. With business migrating to cloud the need for these would be decreasing in long run as most of the things would be taken care by CSP. This means that there would be a downfall expected in requirement of traditional outsourcing but on the other hand the increase in specific outsourced services for migration to cloud can be seen. Overall there should be major change/shift in the outsourced services but this would be gradual.

Currently IT costs seem to be quite competitive but still remains inflated as compared to other products and services that we use today. We do see cloud computing as a potential candidate who can play the role of game changer and help to regulate the IT economics.  But the side effects and implications are yet to be well totally foreseen and understood. Kindly share your thoughts and understanding on the above topic to have a fruitful interaction.

Jitendra Singh– Senior Software Engineer

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The last few years have seen the emergence of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). In fact various organizations are now solely known by their APIs and have become popular among developers. Every popular site, be it Facebook, Twitter or even start-ups like Twilio are focused on exposing their core services and data via an API so that developers can take advantage of it. There are a couple of important things that is highlighted by these APIs. The first one is that they are exposed via standard mechanisms like REST and provide data typically in JSON/XML formats. The second one is that these services are primarily hosted on Cloud infrastructure. The Cloud infrastructure here is typically from the IaaS vendors (Infrastructure as a Service). Some of the key players in IaaS are Amazon and Rackspace, which provide computing resources, storage and bandwidth via a pay per use billing cycle.

Entire ecosystems of applications have developed around these services that have been exposed in the Cloud. And a large number of those applications are mobile applications. The interesting part is that the mobile application development landscape is pretty much fragmented. Each of the big OS vendors have their own language, toolsets and operating systems that make interoperable applications difficult to write. But the one place where they is a sort of a common understanding and which has resulted in a large number of client applications is that the Server layer i.e. the Cloud API exposed is pretty much the same. The REST API mechanism that is exposed over standard HTTP protocol helps create a client platform agnostic mechanism in which a developer can pick a language of his/her choice on the client side and simply code up the front –end i.e. the client application.

So a combination of an API, exposed as a Cloud Service via standard HTTP bindings is a great way to write a common server layer and power all your mobile applications via that. Doing so also addresses one of the defining principles in software engineering of reusing as much as you can instead of writing a layer for each client programming environment.

At high level you have the following architecture that can drive multiple mobile applications via a single REST layer that you expose in the cloud:

You may refer to “Extending cloud infrastructure to the mobile world” for more exposure.

To summarize:

• Build a common REST layer (API) that will expose functionality over XML/HTTP
• This common REST layer will be used by all Thick Client applications and Thin Clients. This means that even if you go the route of HTML web applications, they can use the same API.
• Further sophistication can be provided on the Server side to restrict access to certain kinds of devices. This helps in ensuring that you deliver optimum experience to the devices or even restrict access as needed.

Romin Irani– Principal Architect

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In this blog we shall first discuss about generic implementation of Single Sign-On aka SSO.Then we would take the concept forward by extending the use of SSO in a cloud environment.

Let’s start with what is SSO?

Basically SSO is a centralized access control mechanism used for multiple applications which could be independent and may or may not be interrelated. User authentication is done only once and further user requests to multiple applications are handled seamlessly.Know more about SSO here.

An appropriate analogy to help you visualize this would be iGoogle login where user once logged in can access multiple applications like Gmail/Google docs/Orkut accounts without having to login to each individual applications. Hasn’t this made our lives simpler?

Generic Implementation of SSO

There are various security mechanisms e.g. Kerberos TGT, Smart Card, One Time Password Token OTP, Integrated Windows Authentication a re few of them. We would not go in to the implementation details of these security mechanisms but in general the basic set of implementation considerations would include the following:

• SSO should know what all applications it would be catering to and accordingly it would be using the encryption/decryption keys for handling the authentication requests.
• Using different keys across applications is recommended as these keys are shared between SSO and Client applications. Securing these keys is equally important to make sure the credibility of encryption mechanism is not compromised.
• SSO would manage a central user Database which contains user roles along with the authentication parameters. These roles could be queried by the serving application to decide the user privilege/grants.

SSO Implementation in Cloud

Currently, , there are two approaches available for using SSO in Cloud:

1. Self implementation of SSO adapters based on the exposed APIs from the Cloud Service Providers, which would include writing the code to integrate with cloud applications.
2. Another approach, a simpler one would be to use Out-of-Box SSO Products available in the market or use the SSO as a service (SaaS) from Cloud itself

You can also refer this link for further related information that you may want.

Once in place, it would simplify things from the user perspective as user would have to login only once either on the machine or a web portal depending on design and then user can access various applications and resources seamlessly. By leveraging Single Sign-On capabilities an organization can merge their IT infrastructures and Cloud in a seamless manner and enable a user to access both the user’s desktops and any Cloud Services via a single password.

Some of the Benefits to mention:

• Users get convenience of single user-id/password which is easier to manage/remember.
• Saves on user time by avoiding re-entering password while switching between applications.
• Stronger security and Easier for System Admin as the management of user accounts is centralized.
• Helpful for the provisioning and de-provisioning of passwords. If a new employee joins or leaves the organization there is only one single account to activate or deactivate rather than having multiple accounts to deal with.
• In addition to preventing security issues, there are significant costs savings to this approach.
For example, Single Sign-On users are less likely to lose passwords reducing the assistance required by IT helpdesks.
• Allows anywhere, anytime seamless access.

Benefits usually come with some tradeoffs like:

• Security threat due to password leak/misuse could affect multiple applications/resources.
• SSO System should be Highly Available (HA) as failure is critical for multiple applications.

We know that SSO is not a new concept, but it is now finding new horizon for connecting organizations to Cloud service providers like Google, Amazon, Oracle. It is an evolving concept providing potential for enabling users to experience seamless access to their corporate applications along with email/social-network accounts, documents/files/photos and shared resources. Big Organizations have been using SSO systems to manage internal applications/resources since a long time but extending the SSO to cloud would be a major step ahead. Do write in your views so that we can share this important information in an interactive manner.

Jitendra Singh– Senior Software Engineer

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Desktop systems gained prominence in late 80s and they derive their name from the concept in which the entire computing unit can be placed on top of a desk. There are various uses of desktop computers dictated by the desktop users and their requirements.

• A student or business user might use the desktop for their daily activities like creating Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations or a calendar application to schedule events for the day /month / year.
• A home desktop may be used for storing multimedia files like images, mp3, videos or browsing World Wide Web.
• A person might be having some specific requirement depending on the job at hand and may use a software suite to do that. A good example would be photographer or designer using Photoshop for image editing Or a music artist using an Audio mixing setup for music recordings.

Desktop Systems:

Desktop systems are nothing but desktop computers but available on the cloud.Today internet connectivity and computers  have become quite inexpensive and are widely available while Mobile phones have moved beyond as a texting and calling to a ‘must have’ device, featuring giga bytes of Ram, giga htz of processing power and 4 ~ 7 inch displays.

With the multiple platforms available in the market, currently the convergence between different platforms is done by developing apps for each of the platforms. Let us take an example of a simple application – Dropbox.

Dropbox allows you to save your file on a remote system; it is your dedicated space on internet.  Dropbox offers a free space of 2 GB and it will automatically sync all the files that are in your Dropbox folders across all the devices that have Dropbox client installed. This is a typical example of SAAS where you dump your files on a system which gets replicated across all the devices (if they are connected and switched ON). There are many other cloud based services where not only software but platform and infrastructure also as a service.

A few more services available in the market are:

• For documents, spreadsheets etc – Docs by Google, Office 360 by Microsoft.
• Music – iCloud by Apple and Google music by Google.
• Books – Amazon Kindle, Google books and iBook by Apple.

These applications can be installed on your current desktop system, mobiles and tablets. Space of your “device at use” will be used only for caching purpose to sync timely with cloud in case the application offers offline storage model. This makes your system pretty much a client in the SAAS model.

A cloud OS or desktop in Cloud is a concept that tries to provide an integrated space for all the services from within your browser either on desktop systems or on mobile devices. These systems will offer one stop solution for your daily computing needs whether it may be word processing, games, music or running development tools. Though still immature they try to mimic the current desktop offerings via a web browser.  Let us take a look at two such products –

EyeOS – Your desktop in the cloud

EyeOS is an open source initiative; Give it a try. It requires Apache and PHP 5 and doesn’t require a database. It is nowhere near a  professional OS, but it will give you a look and feel of native desktop running in browser and it does comes preloaded with few applications like word processing tools, calendar, IM to name a few. As the name goes – right now it is just eye candy.

CloudMe

Initially called iCloud, CloudMe is another company that is developing their operating system for the cloud since 2000. And yes they have made a pretty cool interface, it is best among the competitors. It is a clean, carefree, zero-configuration XML-based OS, running within browser.  They offer a suite of 40+ applications that you can install on your desktop in the cloud. It offers tools for SAAS application development that will run on their internet-OS.  Currently the registration is free and it also offers 3 GB of free space. You can try it here.

There are three other major players which have recently done great cloud services and it would be worth taking a look at these.

Google cloud solutions – Applications from Google require an active data connection and are pretty fast. Google is targeting the future where internet will be available in every corner of the earth and they all run from within any browser. The data is stored in Google servers. Although the model is great and holds a lot of promise, in current scenario for people who are already connected with internet 24×7, its full potential however will be realized only in near future with unlimited and uninterrupted connectivity being a reality.

Apple iCloud – Apple has recently launched iCloud, it offers seamless data syncing between all the Apple devices. Data sync capabilities are built into the applications. Apple solution is good for current scenario where people do get disconnected with internet and have to rely on offline storage model for completing the task at hand, be it making a spreadsheet or listening to music.

Microsoft LiveMesh – This is a product from Microsoft using which you can create a mesh of all the systems owned by you and having a browser running on any system to perform task on any system. It is like a refined version of Remote desktop. To add to this Microsoft also offers 5 GB of free storage – Windows Live Skydrive in the Mesh, that can be synced with all or a selective set of devices.

To Conclude

Desktop as a cloud is still immature, but yes it holds a lot of promise. To gain user acceptance, it has to provide the rich experience of desktop system and a facility to install majority of application or application clones that are currently used by a desktop consumer.

Pradeep Sharma– Technical Lead – Mobile CoE

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Cloud Computing now finds a way through most technical discussions. Irrespective of the medium (Web Search, Twitter, Online Journals), you will find Cloud Computing being discussed. But ask anyone the definition of Cloud Computing and you will be hard pressed to get two exact definitions from different people.

Some define it as servers available for rent to storage or applications that we access from the browser, etc. All of them are right in ways. But is there a definition that describes the essence of Cloud Computing. While there might be various definitions of that, we shall look at one of the definitions of Cloud Computing in this blog post. It is known as the 5-3-4 Formula.

The 5-3-4 Formula is further broken down into the following:

5 key characteristics

The key characteristics are:

• On Demand Self Service: As the application owner, you should be able to provision additional computational resources for your application, look up reports and perform Administration tasks without requiring human intervention. Cloud vendors are now providing monitoring and provisioning tools where the user is in full control of provisioning things.
• Ubiquitous Network Access: We are living in a world where a desktop and laptop computer is not the only way that people access the Internet. Mobile device access is increasingly becoming a major source of traffic to your application. And it is not just mobile devices but devices fitted in vehicles and even our Televisions that are accessing the Internet. These explosion of device types and various networks around the world brings to the important concept of “ubiquity”. It means that no matter from what device or network , one should be able to reach your application via the public cloud networks. And this access is the cornerstone of cloud computing. Always available and from anywhere.
• Location Independent Resource Pooling: This feature is key to providing your additional resources. As a consumer one should not be worried about how the cloud allocates additional servers, takes care of multi-tenancy and allocation of physical and virtual servers in different geographical locations to meet your demand. Location Independent Resource Pooling is the ability of the Cloud to do exactly that.
• Elasticity: If you have released any online web application you can now look back and see those days where the number of hits to your sites peaked due to a new release or a press announcement. There will be spikes in user activity and you cannot scramble around for additional hardware when that happens. Cloud Computing addresses this through Elasticity. What it means is that the Cloud Vendors will automatically allocate you more resources as your application needs it. Extra Servers, more memory, more storage, etc will be available to your application if the need arises.
• Pay per Use: This is one of the key characteristics and one of the reasons for cloud computing gaining acceptance. Just like you can seldom predict your peak usage, it is important that you pay only for the amount of resources that you use. Cloud Computing vendors have various schemes starting with freemiums and then tiered pricing that clearly specify the quotas that are available based on what they charge you. At any point in time, you can switch between plans and allow for extra charging depending on additional resources that your application might use.

3 delivery models

Cloud Computing is typically delivered in 3 models and each one builds on the other

• IaaS : Infrastructure as a Service. This layer is about providing processing power (CPU cycles), storage, bandwidth, networks and other infrastructural resources. Some of the key players over here are Amazon Web Services (AWS) , Rackspace and others.
• PaaS: Platform as a Service. This layer builds on top of the IaaS layer and provides a developer with a complete stack on which to build applications. The stack comprises APIs that abstract out the low level details and allow the developer to quickly use them to build out the application. The key players in this space are Google (Google App Engine), Microsoft (Azure), Sales Force (force.com) and recent entrants like CloudFoundry from VmWare.
• SaaS: Software as a Service. In simple terms, these are ready made applications that you can use either for free or a fee. You simply need to sign up, optionally pay and login to use the software. Examples of this include SalesForce (CRM), Gmail, Google Apps, etc.

4 deployment models

The 4 deployment models available are given below:

• Public
• Private
• Hybrid
• Community

Typically, the public cloud is what is best known to most of us. While classification does exist for other types like private, hybrid (mix of public/private) and community – they are not that prevalent and no clear classification exists. So for all practical purposes, when we refer to the cloud, it is public and with appropriate authentication and access control mechanisms built in.

So the next time, someone asks you to define “Cloud Computing”, you can simply say “5-3-4”.

Romin Irani– Principal Architect

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In this blog post, I am going to talk about the very basic steps that are mandatory to get application published in to Android Market. Android Market https://market.android.com is a store developed by Google for Android devices, it allows users to download published apps of different developers.

Follow the below procedure to generate a suitable .apk file for Android market.

1. Specify Version

To define the version information for application, set following attributes in the application’s manifest file:

android:versionCode - An integer value that represents the version of the application code

android:versionName – A string value that represents the release version of the application code

Versioning is required for following reasons:

1. To check compatibility and dependency issues between applications.
2. While Publishing and Upgrading the application to Android market
3. It is also used in the Android Market to automatically offer application upgrades to users.

Here’s an example manifest file that shows the android:versionCode and android:versionName attributes in the <manifest> element.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
package="com.example.package.name"
android:versionCode="2"
android:versionName="1.1">
<application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name">
...
</application>
</manifest>

2. Signing of Application

Google expects a Signed copy of the application in order to verify the developer account. The Android system will not install or run an application that is not signed. In preparation of signing the application, you must first ensure that you have a suitable private key, if you don’t have any private key then generate it with following 2 methods.

A. Using Command line tools

B. Using Eclipse ADT

A. Using Command line tools

Following are the 4 processes to generate published .apk file.

a. Obtain a suitable private key

Use following command to generate a private key:

$ keytool -genkey -v -keystore my-release-key.keystore -alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Command line attributes:

• -v = Verbose mode
• my-release-key.keystore = generated key file
• alias_name = alias name for application
• validity = expiry time here is 10000

The above command generates the keystore as a file called my-release-key.keystore. The keystore and key are protected by the passwords you entered. The keystore is valid for 10000 days.

b. Compile the application in release mode

To export an unsigned .apk from Eclipse follows th steps:

1. Right-click the project in the Package Explorer
2. Select Android Tools > Export Unsigned Application Package.
3. Then specify the file location for the unsigned .apk.

c. Sign your application with your private key

When application package is ready to be signed, then you can sign it by using the Jarsigner tool.

$ jarsigner -verbose -keystore my-release-key.keystore my_application.apk alias_name

Command line attributes:

• -verbose = Verbose mode
• my-release-key.keystore = generated key file.
• alias_name = alias name for application
• my_application.apk = unsigned application

While running the above command, Jarsigner prompts you to provide passwords for the keystore and key. It then signed the .apk file. Use following command to verify that your .apk is signed:

$ jarsigner -verify my_signed.apk

If the .apk is signed properly, Jarsigner prints “jar verified”.

d. Align the final APK package

Once you have signed the .apk with your private key, run zipalign on the file.The zipalign tool is available inside the Android SDK, tools/ directory folder. Follow the command to align your .apk file:

$ zipalign -v 4 your_project_name-unaligned.apk your_project_name.apk

The input .apk must be signed with your private key before you optimize the package with zipalign

B. Using Eclipse ADT

Follow the steps to create a signed and aligned .apk by Eclipse ADT:

1. Select the project in the Package and select File > Export.
2. Open the Android folder, select Export Android Application, and click Next.
3. The wizard now guide you the process of signing your application, including steps for selecting the private key or creating a new keystore and private key.
4. Complete the Export Wizard and your application will be compiled, signed, aligned, and ready for distribution.

3. Preparing to Publish: A Checklist

Following checklist is useful while publishing android application to market.

1. Complete your application testing extensively on an actual device
2. Consider adding licensing support
3. Specify an icon and label in the application’s manifest, you define the attributes android:icon and android:label in the <application> element of the manifest.
4. Turn off logging and debugging and clean up data/files
5. Remove the android:debuggable=”true” attribute from the <application> element of the manifest.
6. Specifying an appropriate value for both the android:versionCode and android:versionName attributes of the <manifest> element in the application’s manifest file.
7. Generate a private key by keytool utility and compile it with application by using release mode.
8. In <manifest> file check that the proper permissions are used, so that user can grant permissions when application is installed in device.

For example:

<pre>&lt;uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA"&gt;&lt;/uses-permission&gt;
&lt;uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE"&gt;&lt;/uses-permission&gt;
&lt;uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"&gt;&lt;/uses-permission&gt;
&lt;uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"&gt;&lt;/uses-permission&gt;</pre>

9. For supporting maximum screen sizes of devices used by customers, following attribute must be added in the Manifest file.

With these steps and procedures you are quite set to upload and disclose your Android application to the world .Some attractive screenshots along with a perfect description should get you going. So keep developing your applications with interesting UI and continue adding more innovative apps to the market and your portfolio. And if you encounter issues do write us back here and we shall surely reply.

Suresh Rapakala– Sr. Member at Xoriant QA Center of Excellence

No related posts.

What are Widgets?

Well, basically they are simple miniature applications/app views that can be embedded in other applications for e.g. Home screen.. I am quite sure you must be hooked up to Facebook, so say you could have a miniature view on the home screen, that allows you to post on to your wall and then constantly update you with recent likes or comments and status updates in a small scrollable view. Well this is not just a possible concept, it exists. This is exactly what a widget is. Likewise widgets exist for a variety of applications like stock market, audio manager, battery manager etc. Everything is on the home screen and you don’t even have to launch the application. The best part about a widget is, it can update itself constantly if required without you having to refresh your screen. That’s precisely as easy as it gets!!!

Now have a look at the demo snaps and then let’s get on with creating these widgets. It’s really very simple. What we are going to do is create a simple digital clock. So let’s begin!!!

Now follow these steps and you will be on your way to creating your very own widgets for the Android Application.

Step 1: Modify Android Manifest File For the Application:

What we are essentially doing here is specifying the broadcast receiver that will process the app widget updates. The meta-data tag is used to inform android about the widget provider. In this case it is located in res/xml/widget.xml. The activity tag is used to declare the activity and the event that launches it.

Have a look at the code snippet below:

<application android:icon="@drawable/icon"
                 android:label="@string/app_name"
                 android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent">

		<receiver android:name=".Widget" android:label="Custom Digital Clock">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE" />
            </intent-filter>
            <meta-data android:name="android.appwidget.provider" android:resource="@xml/widget" />
        </receiver>

        <activity android:name=".info">
        	<intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.INFO" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

    </application>

Step 2: Create Widget Provider xml file as specified in the manifest:

Following  is the definition of the widget. It has only one element i.e. appwidget-provider which takes attributes specifying minimum width, height, the update frequency and the initial layout or design for the widget. Now that was simple wasn’t it!!!

<appwidget-provider xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:minWidth="294dip"
android:minHeight="72dip"
android:updatePeriodMillis="0"
android:initialLayout="@layout/widget"/>

Step 3: Create Layout for the Widget(widget.xml)

Now this step is pretty self explanatory. You simply have to create layout to represent the widget. Yet the Code sample is available as always for your reference.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout android:id="@+id/Widget"
 	android:layout_width="wrap_content"
	 android:layout_height="wrap_content"
 	xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

 <TextView android:textColor="@android:color/primary_text_dark"
	android:padding="10dip"
	android:textSize="35dip"
	android:layout_width="wrap_content"
	android:text="12.30.35 PM"
	android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
	android:typeface="monospace"
	android:textStyle="bold"
	android:layout_marginRight="3dip"
	android:background="@null"
	android:layout_marginBottom="3dip"
	android:layout_marginLeft="3dip"
	android:id="@+id/widget_textview"
	android:layout_height="wrap_content"
	android:layout_marginTop="3dip"/>

</RelativeLayout>

Step 4: Create Widget Provider Class

Don’t get alarmed by the name here, it’s very simple. All you need to do is create a class that extends the AppWidgetProvider class. This is the same provider specified in the manifest file as the receiver.

The onUpdate() method needs to be overridden to include the necessary code to update time, which can be easily done using the TimerTask class in the java.util package and then it can be represented in a text view as per layout.

The onUpdate() method is called whenever an update is to be performed. Additionally pending Intents may be used to configure action to be performed on click of the widget. In this case the widget will display a simple information activity on click. Pending Intents can be given to other applications which serve as permission for the app to perform specified operation.

public class Widget extends AppWidgetProvider
{
    private Handler mHandler  = new Handler();
    RemoteViews views;
	AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager;
	ComponentName currentWidget;
	Context context;
	DateFormat format = SimpleDateFormat.getTimeInstance(SimpleDateFormat.SHORT,Locale.getDefault());

	public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds)
	{

		//Update Widget Using a a runnable and a handler to manage it.
		.
		// some code here.
		.
		mHandler.removeCallbacks(mUpdateTask);
       		mHandler.postDelayed(mUpdateTask, 100);

	} 

	final Runnable mUpdateTask = new Runnable()
	{
	   public void run()
	   {
		   Intent informationIntent = new Intent(context,info.class);
	       PendingIntent infoPendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, informationIntent, 0);
	       views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.Widget, infoPendingIntent);
		   views.setTextViewText(R.id.widget_textview,format.format(new Date()));
		   appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(currentWidget, views);
		   mHandler.postDelayed(mUpdateTask, 1000);

	   }
	};

Step 5: Create Information activity and xml file

This is a simple activity with a text view that is used to display some information on click of the widget. Creating a layout may be a piece of cake for you by now but the sample is there for your reference as always.

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
			    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
			    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
			    android:background ="@android:color/white"
			    android:scrollbars="vertical">

	<TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent"
			  android:layout_margin="3dip"
			  android:textColor="@android:color/black"
			  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
			  android:text="@string/information" />

</RelativeLayout>

So here we go, with the help of a few simple steps, we have created our very own widget. Wasn’t that straightforward? I am sure you would be amused at the simplicity of the thing and yet its elegant beauty which is there for all to see.

As with everything, along with a dozen of advantages there are a few downsides to it , else how would we improvise? So a few things that you must keep in mind while you are involved in creating widgets are:

• They can consume a lot of resources, battery life so you need to regularly kill open unused apps.
• They take some real estate on screen, so you need alternate screens and launchers for some extra space.

So keep these in mind while making and embedding widgets on your home screen and you should have absolutely no problem. If you still get stuck while making your widget you can always use the entire source which is available for download or leave a comment and I would be pleased to answer it.

Vinay Ramkrishnan– Team Member – Mobile CoE

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