Facebook announces a new SDK for iOS and Open Graph for mobiles

The new set of announcements are aimed at providing a better experience for
mobile app developers to integrate Facebook into their applications. Though
most of the announcement concerns iOS devices, further updates for the
Android platform are to be expected soon.


Facebook has made a new set of announcements related to mobile phones at its Mobile Developer’s Conference held in New York today. It has announced that it will be releasing the Open Graph platform for mobile phones. This is a big change for the mobile ecosystem where Open Graph Mobile can work wonders and drastically improve the way in which apps integrate with Facebook thus providing much easier access to social graph information. Besides this announcement, the social networking giant also released a newer version of its Facebook SDK 3.5 for iOS and improved upon its Facebook Login for mobiles.

The new Object API makes it much easier for mobile developers to create Open Graph objects on mobile devices without needing a web server. There is also a new “Native Share Dialog” which is currently available for iOS apps as a limited beta which allows publishing of Open Graph actions from a mobile device.

While all these updates are already on the way for iOS devices, more updates for Android devices are also in the works as mentioned by Douglas Purdy on the Facebook developer’s blog post. Apart from these technical updates to its platform, Facebook also announced a new Technical Partner program which will include companies who provide products like Sencha Touch, C# SDK, Node.js, Corona SDK etc.

Facebook is working towards making mobile app developers integrate more and more into its Social platform on the mobile web too. Its products like Sign in with Facebook, Facebook Comments, Like and Share buttons have already penetrated deep into the traditional websites which heavily use these plugins to provide more social features to their experience. According to Douglas Purdy, “More than 81% of top 100 grossing iOS apps and 70% of top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook. With the new tools we’re unveiling today, we’re excited to see even more high quality mobile apps integrate with Facebook to engage with our 680+ million mobile users.”

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Opera has launched a new installment of its Opera Mini Browser.

Opera has launched a new installment of its Opera Mini browser, which is
now at version 4.5 for feature phones with limited capabilities and at
version 7.5 for slightly better phones. The new features include a privacy
mode among numerous other improvements.

Opera has just launched a newer version of its popular mobile browser Opera Mini which is now at version 4.5. It was once one of the most used mobile browser on any mobile phone. The main reason for its huge popularity was the fact that it only required a java phone as a minimum requirement. The same browser is now also available for Android and iOS platforms and also targets innumerable other platforms with the sole purpose of being available everywhere. This makes it a raging success in markets like India where a majority of people on the streets are still using a basic feature phone with limited capabilities.

Some of the newest features added to the latest version include something like an incognito or private mode for browsing web pages. There are also a lot of other changes in the visual department, memory usage and the download manager. One of the leading features that has made easier internet browsing possible on low end mobile phones however, is the ground breaking data compression feature which enabled such phones to perform a part of rendering of the pages on Opera’s servers and in turn send a compressed form of the data to the phone, thus incurring lesser data usage for these phones.

“Getting online is a must in the modern world, and the kind of equipment you choose to use should not stand in the way of having a first-class browsing experience,” says Christian Uribe, Product Manager for Opera Mini for Opera Software. “That’s why we introduced some of the best-loved features from the advanced series of Opera browsers for basic phones. Having an excellent download manager is just as important for the students downloading class work to their phones as it is for business people with more advanced phones.”

Apart from this 4.5 version, slightly better feature phones with better specs and better hardware have been made available with a slightly more capable version 7.5 of the same browser, which possibly enables a greater set of features. The latest of this browser can be downloaded by opening m.opera.com, which will automatically make the appropriate choice for you.

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Apple has announced the release of its latest iteration of iOS7 WWDC.

Apple just announced the latest release of their mobile operating system at
their WWDC in the form of iOS 7 which is expected to hit iPhone, iPad and
similar devices soon this year.

On the first day of its WWDC, Apple has announced the release of its latest iteration of iOS. The newest release i.e. iOS 7, has been designed with a whole new interface in mind and has been seen as the biggest change since it was first released. This not only means that there are a lot of changes and features for the consumer, it also means that there are a lot of goodies for the developers too. Of course, following this announcement, the iOS developers will have to redesign their application while keeping the newest changes in mind.

The most appealing aspect of iOS 7 is definitely touted to be the flat and simplistic design that the general UI elements are presented in. Some other noticeable features include a “Control Center” which could resemble the notification bar in Android, where you can toggle quick settings. There is an enhanced notification center, which shows you everything related to weather, calendar and app notifications. Multitasking is something else that has been given a huge uplift and has been made much smarter and better. Among others are features like a new radio service, Airdrop sharing. The App Store has also seen a few updates including features which shows nearby apps and automatic updation of all apps.

Since the guidelines for developers have already been released, it is understood that app developers are expected to start working on re-designing their apps for integration with the newest features. The transparent status bar and navigation bar are some of the main UI elements which will need to be considered while designing your app. Some of the main thematic elements which are constant throughout the new OS are Dynamic Type, Auto Layout and an outlook towards depth to indicate hierarchy of UI elements. This means a more polished layout which matches the overall theme of the operating system with translucent windows, edge-to-edge layout of every application and a little more simplistic design

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Microsoft announced or previews visual studio 2013.

Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio 2013 preview among
other major updates relevant to mobile app developers at its BUILD
conference.
Microsoft made several new announcements at the Build conference yesterday, the most important one among them being the preview of the newer versions of Visual Studio 2013 and .NET framework. An update for Visual Studio 2012 was also released, which includes bug fixes and enables Visual Studio 2012 to run on Windows . While the VS 2013 preview included a slew of new features related to Azure and cloud based testing. There is also a lot of focus on testing how the battery life of a device will be affected, power consumption for which can be measured down to the milliwatt. Other cloud related integration's come in the form of connectivity to Windows Azure Mobile Services and synchronization for developers to multiple devices. S. Somasegar, the VP for Microsoft Developer division said, “As just one example, .NET developers have been asking for a feature that’s been available to C++ developers for a while: viewing method return values in the debugger, even if those values are never stored into any declared variable. With .NET 4.5.1 and Visual Studio 2013, this capability is now built-in.”

The company also announced that it is opening up a lot of functionality of Bing as a platform for developers, wherein they will be able to access Bing data in a variety of different forms. They will also be able to access the knowledge base, entities, Optical Character Recognition, mapping etc.

The third major announcement that Microsoft made was related to the Internet Explorer browser, wherein it confirmed that for the first time ever, it will support WebGL. As of now, IE is the only major browser that does not yet support this features and it seems the functionality is finally coming, for everyone’s delight. There might be a lot of small announcements which were made, however these are some of those which took the stage away.

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Launches Mega cloud storage Android app.

Mega cloud storage launches Android app

Kim Dotcom's Mega acquires and re-launches Mega app for Android with 50GB free cloud storage, confirms apps for iOS and Windows coming soon.

New Zealand-based cloud storage service, Mega has officially launched a free storage app for Android users Kim Dotcom's Mega gives users 50GB of secure storage free on Android devices. Dotcom has positioned Mega as a more secure version of Dropbox though that is still to be questioned.

Dotcom has been stated that “every file that is being uploaded to Mega is not just on one server, meaning if one hosting company goes bankrupt then those files will be on least two servers in the world and in two different jurisdictions.”

The developer has mentioned that Mega's Android version is not a new product as the company acquired and re-launched an unofficial third-party client, in February. It already has most of the features like automatic uploading from camera, as well as browsing, creating and sharing files. The app has been acquired recently by Kim Dotcom according to the Google Play changelog and stated, “The app has been acquired by Mega and is now being maintained by Mega contractors.”

The key features of the service are:

- Users can upload and download files even faster from your Android device

- Search easily for files in the MEGA account

- Automatic camera sync, photo and video uploads to MEGA

- Create, download, rename, move or delete files with ease

The changelist states that apart from the new features, the Android app has received a new Mega approved design, as well as the usual bug fixes. You can download the official app for free from Google Play. Mega has also stated that the iOS and Windows sync client apps are “in the final stages of development,” and will be launching soon.

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