Reality Mechanic has recently launched a companion product to Balsamiq Mockups to help Android developers quickly prototype their UX designs, enabling them to get early feedback from customers and clients. Mockups2Android(m2a) is an Android application that reads Mockup files and converts them into working Android prototypes.  Buttons, checkboxes, lists, maps, camera controls and more all come to life, as you designed them, without the need for a developer. A UX designer can then use an actual Android phone for user testing before committing to expensive development iterations. If you need to make a change to the UX flow, simply complete it in Mockups and m2a will do the rest. It’s that easy! m2a supports all screen sizes and is perfect for prototyping on phones and tablets.

Below an overview of how Mockups2Android works :

About Reality Mechanic

Reality Mechanic is a start up based out of Auckland, New Zealand. We are passionate about streamlining the design process between concept and beautiful UX. Mockup2Android arose out of our need to quickly demonstrate and revise UI designs to our customers. For mobile applications, Balsamiq wasn’t cutting it, so m2a was born.  Our immediate plans are to complete our control support in m2a in addition to completing an iPhone version.

More details can be found on our website at www.realitymechanic.com.

HERNDON, VA – May 9, 2011 – Solving the problem of Android™ apps communicating with other devices, application developers can now use ORBexpress to connect their Android apps to any platform, anywhere, announced Objective Interface Systems, Inc. (OIS). Developers also solve the Android device fragmentation problem by using a standard interface on all platforms. ORBexpress for Android provides an easy-to-use communication protocol for connecting disparate systems. OIS is the world’s leading provider of high-performance communications middleware solutions.

As the popularity of mobile platforms increases, software developers are challenged with connecting and extending existing applications to mobile devices. The current Android SDK has a well-defined development interface for communication within the individual Android device environment but lacks a simple lightweight application-level abstraction for distributed communication. With ORBexpress for Android, integrating these applications across different systems is simplified. Using ORBexpress for Android, developers can now easily connect Android apps, regardless of the Android platform, to applications on desktops, laptops, enterprise servers, Android devices, and other mobile devices using a common protocol.

ORBexpress for Android enables applications to communicate real-time in the background while still maintaining an extremely responsive UI. ORBexpress fully supports multi-threaded distributed applications on all platforms. As a result, developers can communicate off the Android OS without impacting the application’s responsiveness. ORBexpress is a proven and reliable communications infrastructure that enhances time to market. Developers using ORBexpress for Android focus on their unique application development challenges, not building infrastructures.

“Communicating between apps on the Android device is easy, but connecting Android apps to other devices or other applications is a challenge. ORBexpress gives you an easy path to share information across your enterprise, regardless of the computing device,” said Charles Rush, Senior Vice President at OIS.  “ORBexpress simplifies the infrastructure, and shortens the development schedule required to connect Android devices to other applications regardless of location or platform.”

With ORBexpress, Android apps can now interoperate with existing applications everywhere. ORBexpress enables transparent Android app communication to enterprise applications and other devices across architectures, programming languages, and operating systems.

“ORBexpress acts as the communication mechanism on the Android device,” said Chuck Abbott, Senior Product Engineer at OIS. “This technology seamlessly opens up Android Apps to the world with the simplicity of an open standard framework that is widely deployed and well supported.”

About OIS
Objective Interface Systems, Inc. (OIS) is the global provider of communications middleware solutions for distributed and heterogeneous systems. OIS offers ultra-low latency, real-time connectivity software development tools for use in complex and demanding environments, such as aerospace, defense, automotive, telecommunications, financial, medical, and consumer electronics. The ORBexpress product family is widely deployed as a communications framework for inter-process communication.

ORBexpress is a high performance, secure real time implementation of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard.  The ORBexpress product provides a common communication platform that is available on a variety of processors, operating systems, compilers, and in C++, Ada, Java and VHDL for FPGA implementations.  For more information and product evaluations, visit www.ois.com.

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ORBexpress is a registered trademark, and Objective Interface and OIS are trademarks, of Objective Interface Systems, Inc. Android is a trademark of Google, Inc. Use of this trademark is subject to Google Permissions. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

French corporation Wysips is focusing on a whole new technique which could cause smartphone touch screens to perform double duty as pv power panels to recharge cell phones.

The thought is pretty interesting [1] because it entails laying an extra thin transparent photo-voltaic film layer along with the cellphone display. The film may trap energy not just from the sun, but any nearby source of light.

Believed recharge times will be about six hours from sunlight and some moments longer from leaching electricity from indoors lights. Wysips is at work for the 2nd development of the technology, which seems to offer thirty minutes of talk-time after just one hour in the sunshine.

The major problem with a solar battery charger is the fact that the sun moves continually, and my practical experience continues to be that you need to move the battery charger every couple of minutes to help keep it in the sunshine.

Actually most solar chargers for cell phones will be best for folks who spend lots of time outdoors, and should not readily work with a car or wall charger for his or her devices. Backpackers, fishermen, etc, could possibly like this.

Otherwise, you are probably best choosing another thing. The most effective solar cellphone chargers in the marketplace take a long time to charge – a single hour charge provides you with just enough to make a 5-10 minutes mobile call. It requires something similar to 8-10 hours to obtain a full charge.

Another big disadvantage of these chargers would be that the unit could only be charged around 500 times. This might equate to about 12 months in the event you used it everyday. You will never go green with this particular thing, since you’d ought to change it every 12-18 months.

With more men and women getting cell phones and ipads etc…., the drain on electrical power grids is increasing. So, including the capacity for the cellular phone to independently re-charge from the light suggests they might help pull their own weight, and you also wouldn’t need to take with you a different battery charger or move it around.

Another interesting truth is the opportunity to utilize this system to charge the mobile phone while using indoor light… this can be a real bonus. The telephone will be continually charging as light falls on display screen, meaning it will be topping off it’s power as the mobile phone just sits inactive.

This evolution is a bit more appealing than previous attempts to make solar battery chargers for mobile phones, including Samsung’s Blue Earth mobile [2], which included a solar charger on its back. A few months ago Apple was awarded a patent [3] for a process to charge small units using solar energy, an indication how the company considers solar powered energy worth exploring.

The solar efficiency from Wysips’ charger happens to be only 9 %, when compared to the most effective solar panels used elsewhere. That is a lot better than the 0 % mobile phones offer now. The additional green energy gained coming from a solar charger for example Wysips’ could allow cellphone designers to formulate slimmer batteries for their devices, or facilitate faster, better devices with adequate battery lives.

Footnotes:

[1] Wysips Official Website explains in greater detail how the new solar charger works

[2] Official Samsung web site where it’s published the info about the Blue Earth Phone

[3] Techcrunch writes on the Apple’s patent on solar powered devices.

About the author: Sofia Susan Sheppard writes for the 12v solar battery chargers blog, her non profits hobby weblog she uses to publish the latest technology announcements about solar rechargers for small devices.

Google have just announced App Inventor, a new tool in Google Labs that makes it easy for anyone – programmers and non-programmers, professionals and students – to create mobile applications for Android-powered devices.

App inventor will not only make Application development for Android easier, but it will even change the way people use their mobile phones. We have previously mentioned that Google Android is targeting developers, and today we are discovering that it’s trying to make application development easier even for non-programmers.

No other mobile platform will be able to compete with Google on this side. The only negative point for Android remain the differences/incompatibilities between versions, especially that we started already talking about Android 3 – Gingerbread.

From App inventor website :

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.

An online development environment will definitely make a revolution for the Android platform, even if you will say that applications will be limited in features compared to advanced programming capabilities.

With App Inventor you can create location-aware applications, for example to help you remember where you parked your car, an app that shows the location of your friends or colleagues at a concert or conference, or your own custom tour app of your school, workplace, or a museum. Or simply apps that use the phone features of an Android phone such texting, camera, sensors, … etc. But if you are more familiar with webservices you will be able even to interact with your favorite websites such Amazon and Twitter… etc.

App Inventor  gallery already include apps such :

DROIDMuni : displays schedules for the San Francisco transit system. After the user selects from one of the transits lines and choosing a direction and particular stop, the application will display the lines next arrival times. Once the user has retrieved the desired arrival times, they are able to set up to four favorites which are saved and stored based on their unique e-mail address. Using the DroidMuni remind feature, the user can set a reminder to be notified when a bus is a specified number of minutes away.

ParkIt : allows users to locate their car on their Android phone. After clicking the “Park It” button, the app stores the users car’s location until the “Find It” Button is clicked. The “Find It” button displays the user’s current location, and the user’s car’s location using latitude and longitude. When the user clicks “Show On Map”, GoogleMaps is activated, and the route to the car is displayed.

Drum Kit : allows the user to hit seven different parts of a full, labeled drum kit and hear each drum’s respective sound. This app allows the user not only to learn more about the drums (i.e. the names and sounds of the drums), but also to have fun and create their own beat.

Super Hero Game : a fantastic Quiz game that tests the users true Super Hero Knowledge. Each screen shows a different character from a superhero world and asks a question pertaining to that picture. The user types in the answer and clicks submit. The program responds with a RIGHT or WRONG and the user is prompted to go on to the next question. The question will change as well as the picture. If the user wants to quit at any time they can GIVE UP and the program closes.

Where’s Speedo : allows a user and a users friends or family find each other. The app detects the user’s location and sends it to the users friends or family using the app. The app allows the user to view the location of another user on a map. It also allows the user to set how often the app sends his/her location.

I think we should expect more amazing apps from this magical inventor ! Behind the app inventor a research work conducted in MIT including the Open Blocks Java library used by the blocks editor, Open Blocks visual programming which is closely related to the Scratch programming language, and Kawa Language Framework and Kawa’s dialect of the Scheme programming language used to translates the visual blocks language for implementation on Android.

App inventor is still invitation only, and you can complete this form to get an invitation when available.

Wave is pleased to announce the launch of “MyLink” this December. MyLink will enable users of Google Android handsets to access their Lotus Notes or MS Outlook emails, contacts, notes and calendar directly from their devices. Available on Android Market by December this year, it will also be offered through different telecom operators reselling Google Android handsets as well as online at http://www.waveglobal.net. This essentially transforms the Android devices into smart business friendly phones, bringing Google that one step closer into the corporate space.

Sophie Navro, Marketing Manager at Wave commented “As businesses grow and as time becomes more of a privilege than a right, we wanted to devise an option for every user to have what they need at the touch of a button” “We were determined to cater for every need, whether you are an MD of a company or a girl about town, MyLink offers something for everyone”.

MyLink is the first comprehensive solution to synchronize your Google Android phone with your Lotus or Outlook email and has released four new products. MyLink Access, MyLink Essential, MyLink Advanced and MyLink Enterprise are available to purchase online from 1st December 2009. Each type is adapted to suit the needs of every kind of user, ranging from business to social. MyLink Access is free and prices range to a maximum of £4.99 per licence for consumers and available on application for any business.

About Wave

Wave is a Lotus, Microsoft and Google Android technologies specialist in moving from one mail system to another. As a migration specialist, Wave proudly provides high quality, cost effective products and solutions to large outsourcers, customers and small businesses around the world. Wave has offices in the UK, France, USA, Tunisia, Dubai and opening soon in Hong Kong.

Visit the website, http://www.waveglobal.net to find out more or contact Wave at: contact@waveglobal.net