IT Shopkeeping

We’re proud to announce that PCR Essentials, a mobile app we developed for Android using Xamarin, was awarded a Davey Gold Award and a W3 Award by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA). Commissioned by Thermo Fisher Scientific and Grand Interactive, this app pushes the boundaries of the Internet of Things (IoT) by bringing real-time data directly from DNA-processing laboratory equipment into the hands of scientists on their mobile devices. The Davey awards are run by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts(AIVA). With nearly 4,000 entries from …

Software analysis changes with the times, and in these times that means going mobile. The first concept to be aware of is responsive design, the ability of an app or website to adapt to the size of the device it is viewed from. Without it, sites and apps look teeny-tiny on a phone and require a navigation approach called “squint and scroll”. The most important technology decision to be made in the building of a mobile app is:  Do we go with a mobile web app, which is an HTML5 …

I’m excited to announce that my forthcoming book, Xamarin Application Development, is available for pre-order on Amazon!
Build world-class native mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone in C# using Xamarin.  Learn best-practice techniques, architectures, and cross-platform coding strategies for the creation of visually stunning and highly interactive native mobile apps using .NET.
The Xamarin tool suite, Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS, is a bridge from .NET into the world of native mobile development.  They give C# developers a direct line into native Android, iOS, and Windows Phone development, allowing them to …

Our latest mobile creation just hit the app store! Commissioned by a Thermo Fisher Scientific brand, Life Technologies, this app pushes the boundaries of the Internet of Things (IoT) by bringing real-time data directly from DNA-processing laboratory equipment into the hands of scientists on their mobile devices. The app provides a suite of functionality ranging from training videos, a full e-commerce experience with lab product details, specs, images, and downloadable PDFs, and a specialized calculator for creating properly balanced solutions for use in the featured lab equipment. The pièce de …

Building Mobile Apps for Business
July 17th, 12:00 PM
Presenter: Dan Hermes
Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC)
5th Floor, Conference Room: “Havana” directions
Here are slides from the presentation:
 

 
Mobile is for business.  Every firm with a web app must now consider the visibility and sales they are losing by not having a mobile version.  Every new business or software product  is faced with this same concern.  Responsive design only gets us so far before it’s time to build a native app for several platforms.  How do we build business apps for Android, iOS, and Windows phones …

One of the biggest problems with C# mobile development, platform-specific UI, is solved with Xamarin 3.
The greatest foe we face in our quest for cross-platform implementation is platform-specific code.  Code that is platform-specific must be implemented differently depending on the platform, whether iOS , Android, or Windows Phone.  Cross-platform patterns are the same regardless of operating system.  Cross-platform code is sometimes referred to as shared code, or core code, as it is shared between projects for different mobile operating systems. Certain types of code lend themselves well to cross-platform sharing …

Dan Hermes gave a talk at Boston Code Camp 21 on Mobile Design Patterns (mostly UI patterns) and Xamarin.Forms.  Slides below.

Time: 9:00 AM – 10:10 AM, Saturday, June 21, 2014
Location: Microsoft New England (aka NERD), One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, fl 1: Thomas Paul
Details: https://www.bostoncodecamp.com/CC21/Sessions/Details/7183
SLIDES

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) Greater Boston Chapter presents Dan Hermes spoke about How App Usability, Functionality, and Analysis are Changing with Mobile on April 10, 2014 in Wellesley, MA.  Now we’re building apps for Android, iOS, Windows phone, and mobile web but is requirements gathering really any different? This talk will cover mobile mock-ups, usability, and important differences between PC web browser and mobile application analysis.   Here is what the talk was about and the slides:

The first publication in my QuickNotes series is  Agile Development in .NET.  Most Agile methodologies used in .NET shops nationwide are variations of Scrum and Extreme Programming(XP). This booklet covers these tools and techniques: Test-driven Development (TDD), Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Continuous Integration (CI), and Refactoring to Patterns.  The QuickNotes series covers relevant topics in software development to provide the reader with a swift overview of important trends, terms, and concepts.  This book is available at Amazon.com.

We bring our phones to work now and use them for everything.  Facebook, Candy Crush, and Twitter are a great use of a smartphone but these devices are also helping us become more productive: email, file and document handling and editing, as well as contacts, calendars and integration with sales, financial, and other third-party business apps.  This creates two things:  opportunity and challenge.  We want to seize upon the opportunity of best utilizing these devices to do our jobs while addressing the challenge of the resulting exposure of company data …