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General
When a 19th century romantic French writer by the name of Victor Hugo said “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come” he obviously could not envision Pakistani bureaucracy. Not only can it reduce an idea to nothing more than its meager skeletal remains squirming in its own vile, it too often does.
Come 2004, the IT bubble is about to burst in a military run, democratic, American influenced politically independent subcontinent country by the name of Pakistan. It is here in our story that along comes an idea. It is a simple idea yet revolutionary in every way, the idea to prepare this country for the…
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Events General
The past whole week I was really excited about going to the exhibition on 5th and 6th at expo center Lahore since the theme read “home expo and super car expo”. I was counting on seeing some innovative home solutions, fancy cars and a lot of appliances for both. As I entered the arena, an ear piercing heavy bike engine race greeted me. Oh wow nice, we have bikes here too… and lots of them, but let’s see if we have the actual products that are expected.
First cars!! Honda Launched its new City Aspire at the event. This attracted a lot of young crowd who wanted to check it…
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General
NOTE: This is a sponsored post
Football. The most popular sport in the world. That may be hard to believe, we being a die-hard cricket nation, but there are many amongst us who get their blood pumping whenever our favorite team kicks some balls (pun intended). There’s excitement in the air, and the airwaves for that matter, when Spanish rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona are about to have a face-off on the field. Manchester United or Chelsea? The answer could incite either jeers or cheers, depending on who you’re surrounded by. It feels like you belong to an exclusive club really, not to mention how convenient it is to…
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Coffee Session General
There are two main things that are currently causing out growth in ICT to stall. One is the lack of original ideas, so most of the entrepreneurs either copy what is already around internationally or locally (same ideas of online shopping, online bidding) we still have not hit the jackpot with someone creating some thing like instagram or drawsomething and being acquired by one of the big names.
The second issue always lamented by entrepreneurs is lack of any funding sources in Pakistan. Over the years we have seen efforts being made to create funds which would help but what ended happening that most of these funds either did…
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Coffee Session General
We all know about the 7 layers of the OSI model. This is the framework by which computer networks are defined. Starting with the physical layer, going through the transport layer and finally culminating in the application layer where end user applications reside. I believe that this should be redefined to include and additional layer – the Social Layer. From the current vantage point, the Social Layer lies right above the Application layer – hence it is served by the Application layer.
The 90s witnessed a boom in what is now referred to as web 1.0. This consisted of static applications hosted over the web. Static applications meant that…
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General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
Pakistani IT industry has been progressing rapidly over the last few years. It is heartening to see that the industry players are innovating and working in different areas to establish their expertise.
Recently, TenPearls, one of the leading IT companies of Pakistan, launched “Carumba!”, a 3D car racing game for iPhone and iPad. Carumba! has been designed and developed by TenPearls’ innovation labs. Launched as a free game, Carumba! allows users to earn coins during the race, and redeem them to unlock other cars and tracks or to get additional nitro boosts. It has also been integrated with Apple’s Game Center.
The game has received very good response from…
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Events General
‘Rethinking Pakistan’ [and my expression goes LOL and I will explain why] was the theme of the conference which took place at margalla hills Islamabad on March 31st 2011 organized by TEDx, lets just summarize here what TEDx is; before we further dig into the “theme” and happenings of this conference.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) and ’x’ denotes the independently organized events under the TED umbrella, mission is “Ideas worth spreading” and this events basically brings together individuals, communities and organizations with the opportunity to excite dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level (geographically). The programs combine live presenters, performers and pre-recorded talks from some of the most brilliant…
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Announcements Events General
ICT R&D Fund aims to provide graduating students a chance to really make their final projects counts. I have always felt that students in their final year some times product excellent products which due to lack of any infrastructure and proper guidance plus funding just go in the Universities Libraries.
Seems ICT R & D fund is giving these students a chance to take their projects to the next level by acquiring funding, if you are a final year student doing a project all you need is to get this form filled and submitted through your head of department .
Last date for submission for forms is 31st…
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Coffee Session General
I wanted to discuss the Thiel Fellowship and sort of run the idea among our readership to figure out if it was justified or not. Bay Area hedge fund manager Peter Thiel started a Fellowship program in his name about a year ago trying to capitalize not on start ups, but the smart kids who may actually come up with the next billion dollar idea.
Let there be no mistake. Innovation solves problems. Bankers, lawyers and hot shot executives are good for only one thing: managing an existing infrastructure. It is the innovators who turn existing ideas on to their heads and enable breakthroughs. Considering the point above, it…
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8:07 pm
I am interested in FB apps regardless of FB Fund.
but for iphone i have a problem with the way the platform is structured. Delivering your app via iTunes ONLY? where Apple will keep x% of the share on your app?
That said, I am sure iPhone development will be getting better soon and it will be interesting to see how we can build one codebase to target major handsets..
12:29 am
Thats a very common model for both ensuring consumer security and stability and also allowing the platform to provide deeper integration over time.
The Qualcomm BREW platform is also proprietary and closed, but it seems to work fine.
12:35 am
Qualcomm BREW still enables you to allow users to simply install the app (they get a security warning and blah blah) but to actually push it to the masses all you have to do is get a security certificate for your app.. where as for iphone the only way your user can download your app is to go through itunes..
I am not that comfortable with that distribution idea.. they can keep the x% profit i don’t care.. but charge that for my security certificate ..
but i will still try to make something neat on it.. lets see.. i have been working on getting workspace to port over to iphone.. so this might be interesting .. and we already have a new wixd app running internally for iphone and ipod touch.. but i would love to get an actual application build for iphone..
8:52 am
Actually iPhone is the OSX platform so theoretically you can port your OSX applications directly to iPhone. This is how people have been developing applications before Apple released SDK.
There is no comparison between facebook and iPhone as such; as facebook is very limited in what it can go and in any case they are just two very different things.
By the way, there have been rumors that Apple has been developing a Mac compatible version of Lotus Notes. Once that’s done, it’ll be a UI update for it to work on iPhone. Think of how many businesses have Lotus Notes installed… iPhone will be real threat to Blackberry then.
For all the geeks out there who haven’t had a chance to do Mac development, I think they should try it out along with iPhone and who knows a few millions may come their way
By the way, I am talking about actual iPhone platform application development and not mobile web applications – those are not too interesting (again from GPV – geeky point of view:))
6:17 pm
wow MacDeveloper… that was a bold statement: “I am talking about actual iPhone platform application development and not mobile web applications – those are not too interesting (again from GPV – geeky point of view:))”
Indeed the iPhone platform is *in theory* a OSX BUT in OSX there are limits on how much apple controls your application delivery method.. where iPhone the *ONLY* way you can deliver your application is via iTunes.. correct me if I am wrong but last time i checked you could download Windows Mobile apps from anywhere and same was true with Blackberry apps.
Also, not sure where you heard about lotus notes implementation but iPhone does play friendly with Exchange server and that itself should raise some concerns over at Blackberry folks.
I am not sure if you have seen the way development on iPhone works. There are two SDK’s one for those who are coming from Desktop dev world and then there is a iPhone Web Developer SDK..
Most of the apps that were being delivered to iPhone before SDK launch were via Safari and it will continue to do so.
7:59 pm
Ob,
Actually, unofficially you can run your applications on iPhone. You don’t really need to download them via iTunes. Of course, Apple doesn’t like that and the warranty is void if you run your own applications (as far as I know). But there are ways to run your own applications on iPhone.
From a mass-distribution point of view, yes ITunes is the only way to distribute applications. You are absolutely right about Windows Mobile and Blackberry or for that matter Nokia/Symbian applications.
I’ve seen iPhone development SDK but even before that we’ve been fooling around with running our own apps for iPhone.
9:02 pm
MacDev: Interesting. I didn’t know you can run the app without giving up your warranty.. can you point me to some help article on this? (for my own knowledge sake)
As far as i understood – the only way you can test your app initially is via simulator then you buy your license (whatever that might cost or be free) and then u can test it out via sandbox delivery system.. I might be wrong on this but i will digg up the articles for you
11:51 pm
Actually ob, the warranty does get void – in our case, we din’t mind that as we were just ‘fooling around’
You are absolutely right about the distribution process.
I hope more people come to OSX development in Pakistan – so far, I don’t know of any firm doing some major development on this platform…
11:56 pm
Btw if you restory you phone through ITunes, it’ll wipe out all data from hacked apps and the warranty should stay intact – theoretically at least …
Is warranty even applicable in Pakistan?