• Read more about Mission: Impossible or How We Built the Oil Reporter App in Just Three Days

It started off innocently enough; it was just like any other Tuesday at the office when suddenly I got the call:

Secret Agent Chris: We have a job for you. We need a combination mobile and web application built in three days time. Should you or any member of your team fail in your mission, the Agency will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Me: You can count on us sir!

And with that we set upon building just what they had asked for: a mobile application that ran on both the iPhone and Android platforms that pushed data collected by clandestine agents to a web service with a nefarious purpose.

Actually, save for the limited time constraint, none of that is true. The app is in fact for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the clandestine agents are volunteers spread around the gulf armed with smartphones. CrisisCommons, a gathering of "idealists and innovators", had worked with Intridea previously in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake and with that collaboration came Tradui, a mobile app built for iPhone and Android that could translate English to Creole and back. Knowing firsthand our adherence to agile development practices, they turned to us for help in fleshing out their ideas for the oil spill.

Principally, what they wanted was a means for anybody to download the app for their smartphone, collect data for their affected area and then upload that data to a single web service which would make that information available to anybody who wanted it. Having already authored several cross-platform mobile apps, our Director of Mobile Development, Brendan Lim, immediately set to work writing the app in Titanium, an effort I was only too happy to help with. Having programmed iPhone apps only in Objective-C, I can attest to the fact that it's a strange sight to see your rather verbose Cocoa method calls reduced to just a few lines of Javascript. But the security blanket of verbosity quickly receded in my mind as Brendan and I made enormous progress in just a few hours. We continued working well into the night and by around one o'clock in the morning we had a working Titanium application that could be compiled for either the iPhone or Android platform.

The next big task on our list was the web service. Aside from some required fields, we were given lots of leeway as to how it would function. We went with a Rails instance running on Heroku and began developing a RESTful web service that would be simple to communicate with. Modifying the mobile app in tandem, we were able to get a working provider/consumer solution working within the evening. Users could now send data about a location such as the amount of oil, destroyed wildlife, etc as well as any associated photos. When the next day rolled around, we found ourselves with an additional resource in the form of Jonathan Nelson. Having a keen eye for UI, he set to work making both our mobile and web apps look fantastic. Iterating over countless designs, we had within an evening a splash page, theme and all the graphic components necessary to give our apps the professional and uniform look they deserved.

Since then we've gone on to add a Google Maps overlay, an API service for outside developers and a host of other features. But it's worth noting that within three days time a usable application was up and running. It speaks volumes not only about a small company spread over a dozen timezones but also about agile practices and the plethora of great services out there like Heroku and GitHub that make this quick development path possible.

Checkout the website and download the apps!

• Read more about Mobomo Mobisphere Roundup -- May 17, 2010

According to an ABI Research report, one billion people will have 4G cellular coverage by 2012. That's compared to the just under 500M people who had coverage by year end 2009. [Via Softpedia]

It's happened: According to the New York Times, cellphones are now used more for their data connection than for phone calls. Now that's very interesting, considering that other statistics show that cellphones outnumber home phones, at least in the USA. So how are people making phone calls these days? Is anyone still talking, or does everyone chat through IM apps?

If you're a TV fanatic to the point that you have a Hauppauge TV tuner card or external box for your computer, you can now use their WinTV v7.2 app's Extend feature to stream TV content to your iPhone/ iPod Touch/ iPad device. Note that the app is not free, checking in at a price of US$9.95. [Hauppauge via SolSie] I have used an older Hauppauge external box to grab TV via coaxial cable, but not their newer devices which can capture analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC, QAM) over-the-air channels. Hauppage devices also work with the Orb content streaming Web service, which allows you to watch live and recorded TV anywhere from almost any web-enabled device. Though you will have to leave your computer on. Note: Some Hauppauge TV tuners only work on Win PCs.

AT&T is now offering a Palm Pre Plus phone that's very similar to Verizon's, with the exception of a SIM card slot for AT&T's version. (Verizon runs on CDMA and thus their Pre Plus has no SIM card.) Not sure yet if AT&T will offer tethering via the Mobile Hotspot ability that Verizon now offers for free (which used to be $40/month). They don't offer tethering for the iPhone -- which is what led me to buy the Palm Pre Plus in the first plus -- but if I'm not mistaken, do offer it for select Android devices. Now while the AT&T version is more expensive than the Verizon version, you do get a Touchstone charger for free. PocketNow has a video review of the phone.

Image: Flickr.

• Read more about iPhone As Car Remote on a Nissan Leaf

The Nissan Leaf is an electric car that'll be getting an iPhone app with two initial features: letting you know when it's all charged up, and allowing you to control the in-car climate. It'll be interesting to see what comes next for the app, but there are a whole host of possibilities, including using paying for parking, finding the car easily in large parking lots, and much more.

Now if Apple goes ahead and adds NFC (Near-Field Communication, a close cousin to RFID) chips to the next generations of iPhones -- which some recent patents hint at -- there are additional possibilities, including being able to lock and unlock your car with your iPhone, and maybe even remote starting, for those colder days.

In short, the iPhone becomes a car remote control unit. Unfortunately, all the computerized features in cars today mean hacker attacks on your car might increase in the future, and smartphone integration aids the proces.

Nissan is not the only car maker with iPhone integration in the works, though Ford was recently told it'll have to wait a year to get the necessary communications chip from Apple, for it's Sync system.

[Via: MobileCrunch]

• Read more about Hybrid Smartphones: Android on iPhone Devices?

Sounds crazy, but a couple of mobile developers have managed to successful port the Google Android mobile OS to iPhone devices. One of them even has a dual-booting system, and should be releasing a version for iPod Touch. The only drawback is that you'd have to do something to your mobile device that Apple says is a no no: jailbreak it. But the experiments developers have been doing on iPhone OS devices, including iPad, just goes to show that Apple is dumbing down the capabilities, but for what purpose, I'm not sure. Why have a device with certain features that most owners will never access? Or is it a way for Apple to test what people might want in the future, since jailbreakers tend to be extremely tech savvy power users, whose activities hint at desirable features?

[Via: The Next Web]

• Read more about Send in the (Apple iPad) Clones

Even if you have no interest in Apple's new iPad tablet computer, you probably can't get away from news about it, so you probably already know that it's pretty hard to get your hands on one, even in the United States. International availability will be done in phases, and it seems the date keeps getting pushed forwards, making a longer wait. But if you're not sold on the iPad, there'll be a number of competitors offering similar devices, and probably fairly quickly.

Currently, no less than Sony, Google, Nokia, RIM and BT (British Telecom), are considering releasing an iPad competitor, according to various online sources. Dell's Streak tablet (5", 7", 10" versions) will be out fairly soon, especially in Europe. HP just bought Palm and seemingly scrapped their Windows 7 tablet project shortly afterwards. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon have a tablet with Palm WebOS out in the future. And of course there are a while slew of other companies with tablet devices already out, including Fusion Garage's JooJoo and Aigo's N700.

• Read more about Get Ready For A Mobile App Usage Explosion

The NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics), a CDC sub agency that uses telephone surveys for data gathering, has determined that nearly 25% of American homes have no landline, only wireless phones. As well, 15% of American homes have landline phones but don't usually use them. These and other related mobile statistics are available in a CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) report [PDF, 17 pgs; via Reuters].

Now as early as 2006, there have been reports about how many N. Americans were tending towards wireless phones over landlines. What this essentially means is that smartphone ownership will continue to increase as "dumb" mobile phone usage decreases. Thus, too, the number of people using mobile applications will increase -- which is in line with predictions that the mobile platform in general will become the predominant distribution channel for software applications. With tons of new smartphones offering great new features, like the rumored next-gen iPhone, that's even more likely to be true.

So if you own a business, you should at least be aware of what mobile marketing or even a custom mobile application can do for your bottom line. Feel free to contact us to discuss your mobile apps or mobile campaign needs.

Image: Flickr.

• Read more about Does an Apple iPad Replace a Laptop or Netbook?

For the sake of usability testing alone, I've spent a considerable amount of time with my iPad, taking it with me whenever I leave the house. Since it's a WiFi-only model, I also take my Palm Pre Plus phone for it's Mobile Hotspot tethering feature, in case there's no WiFi wherever I'm going to be. While I have done "in the field" testing all that extensively since Apr 3rd (the day iPads were first available), I have found that the iPad is definitely not a laptop or even a netbook replacement, but for what it does do, it does quite well.

Yes, there are a number of limitations that the current iPad has, but app and OS limitations will eventually be dealt with, and it probably won't cost much if anything to upgrade. (Though there are rumors that iPads will only be allowed one free major OS upgrade.) Hardware limitations are a different story, but numerous sites are reporting their findings that the new iPad USB camera connection kit actually supports far more than cameras, including USB keyboards and even external hard drives. So some of the hardware limitations are being handled already, albeit often by third parties, not Apple.

Now until I do some more thorough usability testing, I don't want to write too much about the pros and cons just yet. However, Michael Gartenberg of Altimeter Group carried just his iPad around for two weeks, and wrote over at Slashgear about his ten iPad lessons learned -- much of which I've also found to be true. The most prominent feature is that the battery lasts so incredibly long, depending on your usage. (The drawback is that my Palm Pre Plus runs out of juice long beforehand, so I sometimes find myself without a wireless connection for the iPad, if I'm away from home the whole day or an entire weekend.)

While an iPad is not a replacement for a laptop or netbook for most people, it is still an amazing device that lets me take care of running my business while I'm away from my home office. For any tasks that it can't do well, I reserve for a netbook that my wife otherwise uses, or for my MacBook Pro when I get home.

The iPad also has numerous other uses that just aren't suited to netbooks and laptops, including being used as an inflight entertainment system, which Bluebox Avionics is doing. In fact, web video browsing was going to be one of the primary personal uses of my iPad, but iPad-enabled video content is still lagging. But for longer flights, with video content already loaded, the iPad could make for a great entertainment system. Sound quality especially via headphones is superb, and I say that even as a long-time audiophile. (It means more airlines could offer this extra without having to upgrade their airplanes, possibly reducing airfares?)

Still, For me, the iPad has been worth every cent, and that's before I've even acid-tested it with my own custom apps -- which are still a glimmer in my eye at the moment. It might be a relatively costly device, but for the workflow it offers and what it does well, it's worth it.

If you’re interested in knowing more about what a custom iPhone or iPad app can do for your business, please contact us.

• Read more about More iPad-Enabled Video Coming

In Apple's latest "What is iPad?" commercial, there's a claim of "all the world's Web sites in your hands." Of course, that's hardly true, despite the big push by some video content providers to switch from Adobe Flash -- which Apple refuses to support on iPhones and iPads, and possibly soon on Macs -- to HTML5's H.264 format, which Apple does support. The fact is, it's not true that you have "all the world's Web sites" on the iPad because I daily get frustrated at all the free TV shows I can't watch on my iPad while lounging on the couch.

So how much video online uses H.264? All Things Digital quotes MeFeedia, a video search engine, who say that H.264 makes up only about 26% of online video content. However, TechCrunch quoted Encoding.com, who claim a figure of 66%, and blinkx, who claim 67%.

Eiteher way, these figures put the lie to Apple's claim, but several TV broadcasters are claiming to be converting their online video content to be iPad-enabled, and other content providers are likely to follow suit. There may only be about a million iPads sold to date, but there mid-double digit millions of iPhones out there, and if a Verizon iPhone does in fact come out, many more millions of iPhones might sell to the increased consumer base. In other words, HTML5/ H.264 video content is a trend that will continue.

• Read more about Intridea Insider: Thadd Selden

This week in the Intridea Insider, meet Thadd Selden, our Project Manager and Scrum Master.

Thadd's experience in Project Management is rooted in years of working on government contracts at companies like Raytheon. He studied Math and Physics and minored in Astrophysics and French in college, but his career in programming was initiated when he was recruited by a Navy research lab after his sophomore year at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA. "They took me on for the summer and that's where I learned to program. Their philosophy was that it was easier to teach physicists coding than the other way around; so I spent my first two weeks (while waiting for my security clearance to come in before I could even log on to the system) reading C and FORTRAN books."

Thadd worked as a civilian scientist for the research lab while teaching himself different programming languages. "Most of my job was doing code archaeology on ancient algorithms written by a guy who retired a few years earlier." He was migrating the codebase from FORTRAN to C, and later to C++; "I offered to do a trial of it in C++ to see how it worked and everyone got on board." And because he was working on a classified system, "We couldn't download anything to it; so if we needed a tool, we had to write it." So he wrote things like calendar programs and chat clients. "Everything was usually written in nasty combinations of shell scripts, Motif, etc. I even wrote a whole to-do application in awk. We used to build GUI apps in Matlab even if they had nothing to do with our algorithms, just because that was the only easy UI toolkit we had."

Even now, Thadd still writes his own tools when he needs to. For example, he's been using a combination of Pivotal Tracker and Unfuddle at Intridea and made a way to import tickets from one to the other: "We like Unfuddle, but when we need to prioritize tasks against each other, we have to use Pivotal. So I wrote a little script that lets us import our Unfuddle tickets into Pivotal, which makes things a lot easier."

Although he was learning a lot at the research lab, Thadd battled with personal conflicts between being a pacifist and working on a nuclear weapons program. "I actually remember the exact moment that things changed for me: I was building a simulator that loaded terrain data from massive data files and I needed to know if I had north/south setup properly. So the solution was to load up New York in the simulator and go based on the buildings that were recognizable. It hit me when I realized I had just run a targeting sim, and there on my screen, were the Twin Towers."

That pivotal moment got Thadd working on his resumé. He got a call from Raytheon to go work on their unmanned vehicle programs, which weighed less on his conscience; "That was easier for me since it was all surveillance and they had some peace-time uses too." Not only was Thadd writing the control software for the vehicles that the pilots on the ground used, but he also was part of a startup R&D team at Raytheon that was charged with doing accelerated development and proofs of concept for new ideas and technologies.

I actually remember the exact moment that things changed for me: I was building a simulator that loaded terrain data from massive data files and I needed to know if I had north/south setup properly. So the solution was to load up New York in the simulator and go based on the buildings that were recognizable. It hit me when I realized I had just run a targeting sim, and there on my screen, were the Twin Towers.

As one of the tech leads on those projects, he began to get into agile development and processes. "Since Raytheon was a big company and did mostly government contracts, we had to have formal process; but we quickly realized that the traditional waterfall process wouldn't work for our team or our products. So we spent a lot of time working on developing agile process definitions and educating management and other teams on our lessons learned." Surprisingly, the government was on board with the agile development; it was Raytheon that he fought to convince: "They were so used to seeing the exact metrics and charts that they were used to, that trying to convince them that a project was on track with other data was a huge headache."

Thadd, now a certified Scrum master, is our agile evangelist. He discovered Intridea when he found himself in dire need of a company that would allow him to work remotely. "My wife is a college professor, and when she started a new tenure-track position here in Wilkes-Barre we had to relocate." Raytheon allowed Thadd to work remotely for a while, but eventually it became too hard to be the only remote worker on the team. Since most of our development team is distributed Thadd jumped at the opportunity to join us.

Thadd has been spending most of his time at Intridea leading a team of developers on a huge project for a gaming website, written in Ruby on Rails. He taught himself RoR when it first came onto the scene. "I was deep into the enterprise-y stuff when RoR came out, and PHP just didn't fit well for bigger projects at the time. I liked the idea of using model-view-controller for web development." He started building some small personal projects in RoR, and even used it a little bit at Raytheon; "There is now a RoR server running onboard an unmanned airplane." Although Thadd has used many different programming languages over the years, he loves Ruby the most; "I love that literally everything is an object. Other object-oriented languages half-ass it, but the fact that you can say 4.times in Ruby kicks ass."

One of our Senior Engineers, Joe Grossberg, asks Thadd how he keeps his programming skills so sharp now that he's a PM and Scrum guru: "I have to know my way around the code really well because I'm always doing deployments and configuration. Also, I have to know how the code is structured so I can process all the bugs and features requests from the client." In addition, sometimes he will code up small features or fix small bugs himself if it's easier than pulling a dev off a task. "This project is so big and complicated, especially with all the various stakeholders. But the Intridea developers are so great that they make my job easy."

Thadd loves programming, but his computer hobby began with hardware when a family friend introduced him to BBSes and AOL when he was in middle school. He learned how to build and fix computers, and even tinkered with Linux early in college. "I bought a domain name and set up a simple box in the Society of Physics student's lounge." As a teenager he was mostly interested in discovering how he could use software as a means to an end, like using lighting software in high school plays, as the Tech Director. "My Mom was a graphic artist and my step-father was a published expert on Postscript and Photoshop. So I was involved in the desktop publishing side of things too for awhile in high school." He credits his early experience with desktop publishing for giving him a "more critical eye for usability."

These days, Thadd works exclusively on Macs but he still tinkers with Linux from time to time. When Thadd isn't working, he makes time to enjoy sailing; "My main passion is sailing. I grew up spending a lot of time around boats and I still love it." He says that the lack of good sailing in Wilkes-Barre is problematic, but he keeps himself busy with hiking, reading Sci-Fi, practicing Kung Fu, and hanging out with his wife and their three dogs and four cats.

What does Thadd love most about working for Intridea? "Working on a challenging project and leading a talented team of developers. It's also great to be able to work out on my deck, which I get to do whenever the weather is nice." During the winter, he hibernates in his office down in the basement, which gives him the opportunity to "build a nice warm fire." It's a different life from the pressure of writing software for unmanned vehicles and nuclear weapons simulations. And different is good.

This post is part of a weekly series, called "Intridea Insider"

• Read more about Next-Gen OS 4 iPhone Promises Many New Features

Aggregating all the little clues that various blogs have gathered about the next Apple iPhone and the iPhone OS 4 suggests that the 4th generation of this smartphone is going to be one powerful mobile device, with lots of new features.

One such feature is the integration of Facebook right into the OS, at least in terms of contact syncing. This is a "fact" that has already been discovered by a few bloggers who discovered the details by digging around in the iPhone 4 SDK. Of course, other competing smartphones, including Palm webOS phones, already offer this. However, Apple might just gain the edge on competitors, thanks to a recently-granted Apple patent for the iPhone that suggests a social version of Mac OS' signature 3d "cover flow" method of browsing a collection of information -- such as documents in a Finder window, or albums or DVDs in iTunes.

A "social cover flow" feature on the iPhone would give users a very nice visual means of quickly flipping through social media (e.g., Facebook) profiles, as the patent diagram below suggests. This alone could make it worth having the new iPhone -- yet to be announced -- at least for all the mobile users of Facebook -- which as many as 100M at last count, not all of whom use an Apple iPhone OS-based device.

Then of course there are the rumors that the new phone will have a front-facing camera (and probably retain the back-facing camera as well), to enable video calling. And Steve Jobs already announced that 3rd-party apps would now have multi-tasking. There's surely many more features we haven't even heard about it.

So the 4th-gen iPhone is going to need a faster processing chip and more RAM memory. The current 128MB for the 3GS model simply won't be enough for all the new capabilities. So it's no surprise that the latest iPhone prototype discovered in the wild is found to have an A4 chip like the iPad and 256MB of RAM. (This is system memory, and separate from the storage capacity, which has been speculated at as high as 128GB for the top end.)