Ryan Pau, Ars Technica, 2/3/2012

Mozilla is developing a push notification system for the Firefox Web browser. It will allow users to receive notifications from websites without having to keep those sites open in their browser. The system will also be able to relay push notifications to mobile devices.

The project is part of Mozilla’s broader effort to ensure that the Web is a competitive platform that can match the capabilities of native applications. Introducing support for push notifications will help to close the gap, because the feature is one of the major advantages that native mobile clients have historically offered over the browser for accessing Web services.

Mozilla developer Jeff Balogh described the new push notification system in a recent blog entry. The post sketched out a high-level overview of how the system might work and provided some sample JavaScript code.

“Push notifications are a way for websites to send small messages to users when the user is not on the site. iOS and Android devices already support their own push notification services, but we want to make notifications available to the whole web,” he wrote.

The way that the system works is relatively simple. Mozilla or some other party would host a notification service that is capable of delivering messages to the browser. The service would have a unique URL endpoint for every active user.

The Web browser would provide a JavaScript API that websites can use to request permission from the user to send push notifications (such a prompt would be necessary to minimize spam). When the user grants permission, the browser hands the website the URL of the notification service endpoint associated with the user.

When a Web application sends a POST request with notification data to that endpoint, the notification service passes the message to the user. An instance of Firefox running on the user’s desktop would likely maintain some kind of persistent connection to the notification service so that it could receive notifications instantly.

In addition, the notification service would hypothetically be able to relay messages to mobile devices. It could use Google’s Cloud-to-Device messaging to send push notifications to mobile Firefox on the user’s Android handset. Or it could use the Apple Push Notification Service to send notifications to users of Firefox Home, Mozilla’s iOS application.

It’s important to note that this push notification system is distinct from the existing desktop notification mechanisms that are already defined in pending standards. The desktop notifications that websites like GMail and Seesmic Web display to Chrome users, for example, will only work when the website is left open in a tab. Mozilla’s push notification system moves beyond that limitation.

The push system is still at a relatively early stage of planning and isn’t available to test yet. Balogh has defined the JavaScript APIs that the browser will use to enable the functionality and ask the user for permission to send notifications. He has also proposed the set of properties that will be associated with each individual notification that gets transmitted to the notification server.

Mozilla’s push system will be especially useful for websites that want to send notifications to their users’ smartphones without having to build a native mobile application. If the concept evolves into a standard, mobile browsers could someday potentially have the feature built in.

No related posts.

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Servic, 1/9/2012

The operator also said it plans to launch an online store for HTML5 apps this year

AT&T is hoping to encourage developers to use HTML5 with the release of a new API platform. “It’s essentially a rich set of APIs and tools aimed at furthering the HTML5 appeal as an app development choice,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer at AT&T. “Why are we focusing on HTML5? We think it has the potential to address fragmentation.” He spoke Monday at the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Developers must rewrite native applications to run on iPhones, Android phones, Windows Phones, and BlackBerry phones. HTML5 simplifies things for developers by letting them instead build apps that run in a browser accessible by any smartphone. HTML5 apps look and act similar to a native app. By 2016, 85 percent of smartphones will have browsers capable of running HTML5, Christopher said, citing a prediction made by Strategy Analytics.

A spokewoman told InfoWorld she was not sure whether the APIs could be used for apps expected to run on devices provisioned by any carrier — the norm in most companies given the mix of corporate-supplied and employee-owned devices — or just on devices running on the AT&T network.

The new API (application programming interface) catalog includes APIs for MMS, SMS, location, and mobile-health capabilities. In addition, it allows developers to let users make payments in the app that appear on their AT&T bill. It also includes technologies that sense what capabilities a smartphone has to optimize the app for the individual smartphone.

The APIs are hosted on cloud services, including Heroku and Microsoft’s Azure. Developers must pay a $99 registration fee to start using the APIs.

AT&T also said it plans to launch an online store for HTML5 apps this year. It will initially be accessible by Android and iPhone users but will expand to include other phones, said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president of devices for AT&T. “The two things that are the biggest challenges for HTML5 to reach its full potential are distribution and monetization,” he said. The API platform and the new app center are designed to address these challenges, he said.

The operator hopes to take a fresh approach to app stores with the store. Rather than simply listing apps by category, like most app stores do today, it will have a “magazine-like” format, he said. Developers can sign up to be part of the beta of the new app store at developer.att.com/appcenter.

Related posts:

1. New MobiUs Browser For iOS Makes Mobile Web Apps Act More Like Native Apps Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, 10/31/2011 Mobile development firm appMobi is launching...
2. How HTML5 may become the standard for apps Roger Cheng, CNETnews, 9/12/2011 The mass adoption of HTML5 as...
3. RIM Touting HTML5 Capable WebKit Browser, Will it Finally Bring Mobile Web Apps? Ronen Halevy, BerryReview, 8/19/2010 I have to say I have...

Lex Friedman, Macworld.com, 11/1/2011

When it’s not offline, Siri—the voice-driven personal assistant built into the iPhone 4S—is impressive at what it does. But it’s also limited: While you can access Siri at any time, you can’t use voice interactions to control third-party apps. Pioneer Corporation hopes to change that with its new, free Zypr application programming interface (API).

Zypr—pronounced “zipper”—is a voice-powered Web-based API that Pioneer is making available to developers on all platforms at no cost. In theory, desktop, mobile, and even car apps could all integrate with the service.

According to John Alfano, strategic consultant to Pioneer and a former Apple employee, customers want a seamless voice control experience that works from device to device. “Right now, that does not exist,” he told Macworld. With Zypr, developers get access to a slew of services—social networks like Facebook and Twitter, search services like Google and Yelp, and data services like AccuWeather and INRIX traffic data—and don’t need to worry about creating developer accounts with each service. Rather, developers merely register with Zypr, and can then integrate with all of those services and more, all via a Web-based, voice processing API. In addition to handling interactions with those Web services, Zypr offers voice transcription.

Alfano says that the team behind Zypr isn’t worried about Siri. “We’re thrilled that Apple is spending hundreds of millions of dollars with Siri promotions,” he said. “They’re reinforcing the belief that we’ve always had, that consumers want to be task driven, not app driven.” He explained the benefit of voice-driven control as “the difference between saying, ‘Find me a good place to eat nearby,’ and ‘Let me open the Yelp app to find a good place to eat nearby.’”

One benefit Alfano highlighted regarding the Zypr service is that developer’s needn’t stress staying current with best data providers or social networks. Should a new traffic-monitoring start-up offer better or more accurate data, Zypr makes updates on its end, but the developer “doesn’t have to sweat changing technology”; the API calls remain the same. To help developers explore Zypr more quickly, Pioneer on Monday released an open-source reference Java app, whose code developers can freely comb through.

And the service really is free. “We make money by advertising through paid search results,” Alfano says. “Google does it all the time—we’re interested in providing relevant data to people, not simply throwing banner ads all over the screen.” Even better: Developers will share in advertising revenue.

While Alfano welcomes comparisons with Siri, he’s quick to draw some sharp disinctions. “It’s conversational, but this isn’t artificial intelligence… We don’t have people spending time making clever responses to things,” he said, in an obvious reference to some of Siri’s well-document lighthearted interactions. “Ask what color its eyes are, and it’ll just say ‘Please repeat command.’”

Despite Siri’s recent hiccups, Alfano says that Zypr is ready to handle considerable load. “We can support hundreds of millions of users. We can’t be in business with low numbers, so we designed the system to support large numbers instead.”

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Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, 10/31/2011

Mobile development firm appMobi is launching a new HTML5-powered browser for iOS on Monday which will bring additional capabilities typically found only in native apps to the mobile Web. The MobiUs Web App Browser, as it’s being called, works both as a standalone browser alternative or in conjunction with Apple’s mobile Safari, similar to the way browser extensions work on the desktop Web.

Although HTML5 can already tap into some of a smartphone’s sensors, like the GPS and accelerometer, for example, appMobi’s MobiUs Web App Browser will go beyond HTML5′s current capabilities to provide access the smartphone’s camera, the ability to scan QR codes and barcodes, support for augmented reality, accelerated graphics, the ability to lock the rotation of the device and more.

The browser integrates two full sets of APIs from both appMobi and from PhoneGap (1.0) to give the Web apps a native look-and-feel, plus the ability to access all the hardware features of the smartphone. Like native apps, the mobile Web apps can work online or off, deliver push notifications and offer in-app purchasing capabilities. AppMobi’s DirectCanvas game acceleration technology is included as well, for optimized HTML5 gaming.

Users won’t have to switch from using Safari as their primary Web browser in order to take advantage of the new functionality, says appMobi. Instead, when a user encounters a webpage that requires the capabilities provided by MobiUs, the Web app in question will prompt you to install the MobiUs iOS app from iTunes. The experience is similar to how online users are prompted to install the Flash plugin to watch online videos. Except in this case, the additional software is not a browser plugin – it’s an app.

After the initial installation, any future Web apps requiring MobiUs’ technology will be able to seamlessly switch over from Safari to MobiUs as need be, without any user intervention. Mobile Web app developers will be able to configure various settings affecting the user experience during the transition, including the customization of the splash screen. And when MobiUs launches, it will be in full-screen mode.

AppMobi knows that, eventually, HTML5 will be able to do what its MobiUs browser is doing today, but those APIs won’t be added to the standard for years. Other solutions, like the HTML5 capabilities chipmaker Qualcomm is working on bringing to mobile, operate lower in the stack than what appMobi offers, and will be provided to OEMs to be sold on new handsets. That’s another way to solve the problem, but on a slower cycle than what appMobi is now doing.

The company had a few developers testing the technology pre-launch, but unfortunately, we couldn’t go hands-on.  It remains to be seen how truly seamless the experience is for the end user or how “native-like” the apps really feel. However, the launch is interesting in terms of its potential to bring that long sought after “write once, run anywhere” ability to Web developers. Now they can write for the desktop, Facebook, iOS and soon, Android, using HTML5, without having to sacrifice so much functionality when porting the codebase to mobile.

The MobiUs app is available here. The Android version will arrive early next year.

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Phil Nickinson, AndroidCentral, 9/27/2011

If you’re a fan of the Firefox browser for Android, know that Firefox 7 is now available in the Android Market. Officially, the changelog is as follows:

• Improved copy and paste: Copy any site content and paste to other applications, SMS, or text fields
• Built-in language detection on first run
• WebSockets API: Powerful tool for Web developers to build responsive Web apps and sites

The list of desktop changes is a bit longer, but rememeber that the mobile app is cut from the same cloth, and we’re very much enjoying this accelerated release schedule. Download links are after the break.

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Donald Melanson, Engadget, 9/20/2011

Well, it looks like the “field trial” is officially over. Google today announced that its Google+ social network has moved up to beta status and, as a result, it’s now open to everyone (no invitation required). It’s also rolled out a slew of new features for the occasion, including a number of improvements to the Hangouts video chat service. That includes Hangouts on your phone (Android 2.3+ only, for now), a new Hangouts On Air feature for public broadcasts, and a number of “extras” including screensharing, a sketchpad and shared Google Docs (not to mention Hangouts APIs). Google’s now also finally added search functionality across the site, and it’s renamed the Huddle group chat feature to Messenger (which also includes a number of new tweaks). Hit the links below for the complete rundown on what’s new.

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Dan Rowinski, ReadWriteWeb, 9/19/2011

Mobile cloud platform Appcelerator is having its first-ever developers’ conference this week in Mountain View dubbed CODESTRONG. At the conference the company is announcing the “Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace” that is essentially a Salesforce AppExchange-like marketplace for independent software vendors and cloud providers. Appcelerator’s marketplace is the first ever to bring software and solutions specifically for mobile to a centralized hub and could be an inflection point for how mobile development growth and how tools are bought and shared.

Appcelerator, through its acquisition of Aptana this January, gives it a developer base of almost 1.5 million. The marketplace will be integrated into the company’s Titanium platform and provide mobile modules, app templates, design and cloud extensions. Salesforce was a driver behind cloud development with AppExchange. Appcelerator hopes to do the same with mobile.

What’s New In The Marketplace?

The idea for the marketplace will be that Appcelerator can position it to be an integral part of a developer’s workflow. The company wants developers to ask on a daily basis “what is new in the marketplace that can help add functionality to our app?”

Scott Schwarzhoff, Appcelerator’s VP of marketing likens it to the explosive growth of Facebook. The inflection point for Facebook vis-à-vis MySpace was when Facebook opened up its API to developers and the ecosystem skyrocketed. Salesforce and RackSpace made similar movements within the cloud and enterprise application space. Appcelerator thinks that kind of scale for developers is at hand.

“This is all about scale,” Schwarzhoff told ReadWriteMobile. “From here on out it is all about the ecosystem and we think this is a good starting point.”

There will be 50 premium modules in the Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace to start. Those include offerings from Get Glue, PayPal, AdMob, Box.net, Greystripe, Twilio, OpenGL and Urban Airship. That is a short list of what is getting offered, but think about what it can offer. Get Glue can offer a sticky social service as a module. PayPal can help integrate payments. Box.net can give an app user easy storage. AdMob provides the primary tools for advertising for Android developers.

Functionality Featured

The marketplace will not just become a place where developers check for new tools, but a central repository for functionality itself. You want to use an SDK to add payments? That can be found? An API to call on Facebook? It will be in there. One complaint I hear from many developers are that there are just too many APIs and SDKs out there and it is near impossible to sort through the mess at times. Appcelerator could position itself to cut through the clutter.

There are three main products that will be found within the marketplace. ISDs such as services with SDKs and cloud solutions will be the most valuable for day-to-day developers. Then there will be long tail functions like third party extensions that can provide certain functionality, like UI control and template provider Mosaic. The third will be design elements like OpenGL.

Mosaic is a template and theme for developers to make Flipboard-like content

There will be free services, one-time purchases, PSD files that can range from $50 to $100 and subscription modules. Appcelerator is taking the traditional 70/30 revenue split route that was popularized by the Apple App Store.

“The stage is set for enabling the entire mobile value-chain to scale their business by increasing their reach and adding innovation on top of the Titanium platform,” said Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator. “This open and extensible approach represents the future of where Titanium is going as a platform and where Appcelerator is going as a company.”

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Barry Levine, Mobile Tech Today, 5/17/2011

A vulnerability in Android-based devices can allow a hacker to access a user’s Google accounts. Mobile apps that send unencrypted data on Android 2.3.3 or older can be intercepted on open Wi-Fi networks, providing access to a user’s data. Long-lived Google authentications can allow hackers access to user information for up to two weeks.

As Google‘s Android operating system has soared into the top ranks of mobile platforms, a pending question is security . Now researchers from the University of Ulm in Germany have reported that 99 percent of Android-based devices are susceptible to attack.

The researchers found that devices running Android 2.3.3 or older are most vulnerable when logging in over open Wi-Fi because of an insecure ClientLogin authentication. ClientLogin is used for authentication by applications, and it passes an account name and password through a wireless connection.

‘Impersonation Attack’

The researchers — Bastian Konings, Jens Nickels, and Florian Schaub — said they decided to investigate after reading a blog post by Dan Wallach from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

Wallach described risks from using Android smartphones over open Wi-Fi networks, as some Android apps transmit unencrypted information, and he wrote that “an eavesdropper can definitely see your calendar transactions and can likely impersonate you to Google Calendar,” or, as the researchers found in another posting, to Google Contacts.

The team said it wanted to know “if it is really possible to launch an impersonation attack against Google services,” and found the answer is yes. It noted that it’s “quite easy to do so,” and could be done with any Google services by using the ClientLogin authentication protocol for access to data APIs.

The researchers said the authToken, or authentication token that is requested from the Google service , can then be used for any later request to the API and is valid for up to two weeks. But if it’s used in requests over unencrypted http, the authToken can be captured and used to access any personal data through the service API.

Advice To Google, Users

As an example, the researchers noted, someone could “gain full access to the calendar, contacts information, or private web albums of the respective Google user,” allowing the intruder to view, change or remove any information or media.

The greatest vulnerability is in Android 2.3.3 and older, which is present on virtually all Android smartphones — about 99.7 percent, according to the Android Developers web site. The researchers noted that Android 2.3.4 uses a secure https connection for Calendar and Contacts apps, but the Picasa synchronization still uses plain http and is thus vulnerable.

They also said the vulnerability is not limited to standard Android apps, but applies to any apps that use the ClientLogin protocol over http rather than https.

The researchers advise all third-party app developers and synchronization services to switch to https. It also recommended that Google, whose security team has said it is investigating, should drastically limit the lifetime of an authToken, and that Google services should reject ClientLogin-based requests from insecure http connections.

As for users, the researchers suggest updating to Android 2.3.4, switching off automatic synchronization in the settings menu when connecting with open Wi-Fi networks, and avoiding open Wi-Fi networks when using the vulnerable apps.

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Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb, 4/27/2011

OpenPlug, a development toolkit for creating native apps for phones, tablets and other connected devices using JavaScript, ActionScript and XML, today became available free of charge or advertising – after more than 8 years of doing paid and ad-supported business. The company also announced a Certified OpenPlug Solutions Provider Program.

OpenPlug was acquired by international communications network technology platform (and sponsor of this blog) Alcatel-Lucent in the Fall of 2010. Over on the main channel of ReadWriteWeb we analyzed the role of the technology in the larger ecosystem of network-level applications and APIs in depth when the acquisition was announced. I said over there that it was a very big deal; now what could be better than a very big deal turned free? For further perspective, see this 2008 discussion of open (including OpenPlug) vs. closed mobile application development platforms written by John Puterbaugh, founder of 10-year old mobile marketing technology company Nelly Moser. See also related companies Titanium and PhoneGap.

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Barry Levine, Mobile Tech Today, 2/25/2011

A free plug-in adds collaboration to older versions of Microsoft Office through Google Cloud Connect for Office. Office 2010 already offers collaboration, but Google Cloud Connect does not work with Microsoft Office for Mac, which doesn’t have open APIs. Synced Office files are given a URL and backed up for desktop and mobile access.

Google is bringing the cloud to office productivity tools — Microsoft ‘s Office tools, that is. On Thursday, the search giant announced that it’s releasing Google Cloud Connect for Office, which was initially shown as a preview last fall.

The company said that, with a free plug-in, Cloud Connect for Office “brings collaborative multi-person editing to the family Microsoft Office experience.” It enables users to share, backup and simultaneously edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents.

‘Smart Synchronization’

No SharePoint deployment is required, and Connect supports Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows PCs. Office 2010 offers collaboration, but Google Connect gives that capability to earlier releases of the popular productivity suite. Google noted that, “due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac,” Connect is not currently available for that platform.

Office files are synced via the cloud and given a unique URL. Once they are synced, files are automatically backed up. Files can be worked on from connected mobile devices as well as desktop or laptop computers.

When documents are shared, participants get a notification e-mail. Shared documents get downloaded from the cloud and edited in the app normally. When working offline, changes are synced to all participants the next time they log in. If two or more participants edit the same section simultaneously, Cloud Connect for Office provides paths for choosing which edits to keep.

Editing is simultaneous, with no document or paragraph locking while one person is working. Each Office file has a URL that is shared in Google Docs, and Docs retains a version history. Documents can be edited offline, and can be brought up to speed with online docs via “smart synchronization.”

DocVerse Technology

A potentially big advantage of the plug-in approach is that, instead of importing and exporting Office docs to Google Docs, which can result in formatting or other issues, the plug-in enables users to stay within Office.

While the plug-in is free, there’s a cost of $50 per user per year for the Connect service, plus the user must have the necessary Office license. There’s also a new Appsperience program which offers a 90-day trial period with Google Apps and support. Google Apps includes Cloud Connect for Office, Google Spreadsheets, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Presentations, and Google Forms.

Prices for Appsperience range from $7,000 for 50 to 500 users, to $15,000 for more than 500 users. The offer includes user training, change management assistance, a week of tech support, and a dashboard to analyze return on investment from the collaboration.

The technology behind Connect was obtained as part of Google’s acquisition of DocVerse in March 2009. When Google bought DocVerse, Group Product Manager Jonathan Rochelle wrote on the Office Google Enterprise Blog that “the future of productivity applications is in the cloud.” He acknowledged that “many people are still accustomed to desktop software,” so Google’s approach makes it easier to “interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.”

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