Dieses Jahr hatte unsere Mobile Developer Reisegruppe das Glück die MDC 2012 quasi vor der Haustüre, nämlich in Stuttgart, vorzufinden. Das machte den Besuch natürlich noch viel reizvoller. Darüber hinaus kündigte sich mit Robert Virkus,  dem  Gründer eines unserer Partnerunternehmens, Enough Software aus Bremen, ein spannender Talk über das , meiner Meinung nach derzeit heißeste Thema im Mobile Bereich, an. Doch dazu später mehr.

Weitere spannende Talks versprachen Markus Jungingers GreenDAO Talk und natürlich auch Lars Vogel seine angekündigte Übersicht über die Neuerungen von Android 4(.2)

Da unsere Gruppe aus iOS als auch Android Developern bestand war schnell klar, dass man sich unterschiedliche Talks anschauen möchte.

In a recent project I encountered a problem with SQLite on android 2.1. On later versions, my code worked perfectly, but on 2.1 it crashed every time when trying to get a column from a cursor.

Here's the simplified code:

For an upcoming, probably large mobile project, I was asked to look at the current situation on mobile multiplatform frameworks that cover at least Android and iOS and provide access to some native API's like the camera. So I looked at several of the available frameworks, but only two of them fulfilled all requirements while also providing advantages towards other ones.

First there is PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com/) which additionally provides you a buildservice in their cloud (https://build.phonegap.com/ - currently in beta), to which you can upload your project and it builds your Apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS, Palm OS and Symbian. PhoneGap furthermore supports Windows Mobile and will be supporting Bada and MeeGo in the future. For an overview of the supported features on the different platforms, check this site: http://www.phonegap.com/features

About one and a half years ago I decided to change companies. I was sick and tired of producing low quality software at my previous employer. I joined Synyx, a small team of highly skilled developers with the same passion and mindset, that I have.

One thing that got my attention, while looking for a new jobs was Synyx's vision of Open Source. Having worked at Synyx for quite a while now, I can say it is more than a slogan here. We are not only using open source software, but also producing it. There's dedicated time to polish and release, whatever you think is helping fellow developers out there. As for me, I was able to plan and organize the local Java User Group here in Karlsruhe during working hours.

It has been a while since my last update on our efforts over at the mobile solutions blog.

The most important announcement was without any doubt the imminent release of our new side project: "I think I spider":

The "I think I spider"App idea was born, when we discovered the corresponding web site. We had so much fun with it, that we decided to bring all the joy to the major mobile platforms.

Although, we haven't revealed any specific features yet, reading our vast number of blog posts on "I think I spider", you've probably got an idea of what the App is gonna bring to you.

Am 21. und 22.08. fand für mich die 2. Free and Open Source Software Conference FrOSCon in St. Augustin bei Bonn statt. Der Hauptgrund für meinen Besuch im letzten Jahr war ein ausgedehnter Java-Track, ich war jedoch von der Atmosphäre und der Vielfalt der Themen so begeistert, dass die Konferenz für mich sicher ein regelmäßiges Ereignis sein wird.

Die Gelegenheit soll natürlich genutzt werden, um ein paar interessante Vorträge aus diesem Jahr vorzustellen, um dem ein oder anderen vielleicht auch Lust auf einen Besuch zu machen.

Wie passt das alles zusammen? Ganz einfach ...
"Holla the woodfairy - holla die Waldfee". Was haben wir gelacht über diese und noch viele weitere "Übersetzungen" auf der Website "I think I spider". Und da lachen bekanntlich gesund ist, kamen wir schnell zu dem Entschluss noch mehr Menschen zum Lachen zu bringen. Was liegt da also näher, als eine iPhone App zu diesem Thema zu entwickeln? David Linsin, Ansprechpartner für den Geschäftsbereich Mobile Solutions, war sofort begeistert von dieser Idee und nahm Kontakt mit dem Betreiber der Website auf. Mit seiner Erlaubnis fiel der Startschuss für die unkommerzielle Entwicklung der App.

There's a lot going on over at the mobile solutions blog, so in case you are not subscribed to our feed, which I hope you are, you can grab it here. In order to convince you to hook your favorite reader up to our mobile blog, I'll highlight a couple of blog posts for you.

Tobias' post "Android and self-signed ssl certificates" gained a lot of attraction over the past couple of weeks. He basically brings you up to speed on how to tweak Android's version of Apache Commons Http to work with your own certificate:

In my last summary I forgot to mention, that I will be at WWDC this year. Now WWDC is over, I just got back and if you want to know more, checkout my blog post here. While I was gone, our team was busy publishing all sorts of good stuff!

Let's start with the release of Android's FroYo last month! Achim wrote a nice blog post highlighting the noteworthy features:

FroYo is like each previous version a mixture between API Changes, new Userfeatures and some new cool Apps....

New API-Features:

• Data Backup API

It has been quite a while since my last update on what's happening over at our Mobile Solutions Blog, so let's get right into it.

One of the most interesting posts was "User statistics from SynyxSudoku" by Tobias. It shows the distribution of Android devices, which are running our very own Sudoku App, which by the way got updated a couple of weeks ago: