What I Did Over the Summer Past Year and a Half

In late 2010 my partner and I founded Mobile Developer Solutions to create free software tools for web developers who want to write mobile web apps. AppLaud, our Eclipse plugin for Android, bundles PhoneGap technology with an easy-to-use project creation wizard, allowing users create and deploy a complete PhoneGap for Android app with just a few clicks. The AppLaud plugin includes a few goodies like JSLint, jQuery Mobile, a choice of PhoneGap versions and project templates.

While Paul did the heavy lifting: designing and developing AppLaud (in Java), I created the Two-Minute Tutorials (TMT) series (HTML / JavaScript / CSS) to help developers rapidly ramp up their mobile device skills. The TMTs get increasingly advanced, starting with a basic PhoneGap API, then using a jQuery Google Maps Plugin, a PhoneGap Native Plugin: the popular BarcodeScanner, and finally OAuth and the social media plugins: Twitter and Facebook.

The best part: it’s all free under the MIT License! (copy, modify, sell, etc) My work is available in all the usual places:

• Getting started and demo videos on YouTube
• TMTs - written tutorials with source code
• Source code on github
• Free demo apps on Google play

Next blog: Good-bye to AppLaud Cloud version!

Socialize your PhoneGap App with Facebook and Twitter!

With the enormous popularity of Facebook and Twitter, it’s no wonder people want to make mobile web apps that incorporate a social aspect. Whatever awesome things your app surely does, imagine letting users tweet about it with just a few taps, from within your app!

My latest tutorial shows how to add Facebook to your PhoneGap App on Android using the Facebook SDK and PhoneGap Connect Plugin. The Hackbook for Android app is the app contents, so examples of SSO, API calls and the Social Graph are already there. Makes it easy to use and learn.

I've already written a tutorial that shows how to add Twitter to your mobile app using the Child Browser plugin. After the user logs in with their Twitter credentials (from your app) the app can access their account. Let your app users tweet, search, read, or whatever cool way you come up with to socialize your app with Twitter services.

Next blog: More on AppLaud Eclipse Plugin for PhoneGap on Android. Get started writing PhoneGap Apps with just a few clicks.

Back from Sabbatical 

Hey, I'm back from my 2+ years sabbatical from blogging!

So my business partner, former office mate, and husband, Paul, recently joined a very cool company named Apportable. They've published a game on Google Play called Zen Bound 2 by game creators Secret Exit. Zen Bound 2 is "a meditative puzzle game of wrapping rope around wooden sculptures". Sounds great.. right? For whatever reason the game description, together with the accompanying down-tempo music, appealed to me immediately, and I knew I had to get it. 

 

So far, I really like "playing" ZB2. I find it very relaxing, especially when I'm wound up. The 3D graphics combined with touch and orientation (gravity-like) control are visually stunning. The task of winding rope around the objects to paint them may at first sound trite, but the spatial puzzle aspect is slowly roping me in, and I look forward to solving it better each time. A rope-on-wood creaky sound effect adds to the realism.

When the gorgeous, meditative music, by Ghost Monkey, is too downbeat for my current mood, I just select something from my own collection. Yep, you can supply your own tunes during play! Today I dusted off some long-neglected Mazzy Star and Mark Kozelek CDs and ripped 'em.

It works great on my tablet, but not sure I'd recommend it for smaller screens or lesser devices (due to its computational intensity). No, I'm no plugging this game (costs a few bucks), because I honestly don't think this kind of game can be plugged. It just.. is. 

Winter Trip

Last February and March I had a chance to travel to Berlin and London. Cold? Yes, but often sunny, and no crowds. I went to the East Side Gallery twice, evening and morning. What a great use of wall - about 1 mile of it.


We also went to the Jewish Memorial park, Checkpoint Charlie, many museums and restaurants. So much to see and do there, can't wait to go back some day.

London was bril' as usual. I love that I can get around "almost" effortlessly, under or above ground. We were rocked at We Will Rock You and enjoyed some local humor at a comedy club: unlimited drinks and almost saw a row (rhymes with 'cow' :-) in the audience. On my a.m. walk through parks, saw a picture perfect view of the Royal Horse Guards at Wellington Arch.

Positive vs. Negative

I'm at a peaceful crossroads at the moment, in between groups of projects. Recently completed 7 cards for a Valentine's swap, 6 pages in a traveling journal, and these Yup'ik-inspired drawings of dance fans/dance masks.
While looking through The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks by Ann Fienup-Riordan I was inspired to draw these. I just love the imagination, materials, shape, including asymmetry, of the Yup'ik masks. Can't help but wonder if it's genetic? Of course the materials (watercolor, pencil) aren't traditional at all. The second image is simply inverted (thanks, scanning software), but works just as well if not better.
Makes me wonder about taking some of my traditional hand-crafted pieces digital, just to see what's possible. Turns out playing with computers CAN be as fun as playing with art supplies.