In App Billing For Android

August 9, 2013 Vipin Jain

Google play was the first to introduce In App Billing for Android feature. This exciting feature helps you to put the digital content of your application into the market for sale. The users who use in-app billing will make income or profit through applications which are available free of cost. In app-billing can be referred as a place where you can find various income sources. With the discovery of this feature, the user is free to sell his application content whether it would be an audio file, video file or any other downloaded file or content.

There are two ways through which a user can sell products from his application:

Standard (single billing)
Subscriptions (bill generated for a definite interval of time)

In App Billing for Android is supported by Google Play and hence all the transactions details and check outs made by the user to buy or sell a product will be handled by the Google Play. There is no need for registration or any type of account to publish your application for in-app billing. Rather, you may require a developer console account in order to apply in In-App Billing for Android feature to your application. For the new users, there is an additional feature which helps and demonstrates the users by providing a trial application to launch their applications and sell the related products. The Android software development kit helps user to use all these tools in app billing.

In-app billing recently launched its version 3 which includes many new features which helped to make in-app billing a flexible and a powerful tool to host applications. Some of these features are as follows:

In new design, it will be easier for a user to write and maintain the application. User can easily detect the error and can debug it when required.
Before, many users used to write number of lines as a source code but in advanced feature codes is reduced as compared to earlier one.
In the earlier versions of in app billing, transactions made were lost frequently but now, robustness is added to the new version to avoid it.
Caching memory will be handled at a remote server so that rapid calls can be made for the application program interface. All the details about the product can be obtained. Any doubt related to the product can be cleared here. This will help the users and thus, they can get a better experience through in-app billing.

In the advanced version of In App Billing for Android billing, keys are managed on application basis. Earlier the developers were responsible for the keys. For every application, the service keys are different.

By: Vipin Jain

A New Technology: NFC (Near Field Communication) on Android

August 2, 2013 Vipin Jain

What is NFC?

NFC (Near Field Communication) on android is a standard based wireless connectivity appropriate for providing short range services. This technology is safe and also simple which provides two way communications. It is used mainly in the android mobile devices. The devices have to be at a distance of 10 centimeter for proper communication or data exchange. Near-field Communication Forum defined it which is a standard union of hardware, network-providers, banking, and companies of credit cards, software/application and others who take interest in the standardization and advancement of NFC.

How Does It Work?

It operates at the frequency of 13.56 mhz. and ranges from 106 Kbit/sec to 848 Kbit/sec. it requires an initiator and also a target. The initiator helps in generating RF field and a passive target is powered through it. Therefore, these targets take the forms of tags, cards and stickers as they hardly require power. Peer-to-peer interaction is also possible through NFC on android. Here, the devices should be powered. You must be thinking that wifi or Bluetooth perform the same task then what is the need of NFC? The answer is less amount of bandwidth and shorter range is used by NFC. It is cheap, the targets are un-powered and you do not have to do the searching and pairing tasks. All you have to do is to tap it.

NFC Specifications:

There are many network related plans or packages which are provided by NFC on Android. Some of them are given below.

Package for data format is known as NDEF or NFC Data Exchange Format. It includes data format for tags and devices.
Package for record types which are used in the messages between tags/devices. They are known as RTD or NFC Record Type Definition.
Library for posters with text, tags, audio or other type of data. It is known as Smart Poster RTD.
Another NFC package known as java.nio exists. It includes certain buffers which are of some particular data type. When the end points are java based (android devices), this package makes the communication process easy and handy.
The records having plain text use Text RTD package.
The records having references related to any internet source uses URI or Uniform Resource Identifier.

The above explanation described the ways used by Android to handle the tags of NFC. Further, it also notifies the applications which ever is relevant to the application. Therefore, it can be said that NFC on Android is the standard which is used by the smart phones and other mobile devices to make the radio communication possible. You have to get the phones closer to each other.

By: Vipin Jain

iOS 7 Beta 3 – Few Considerable Changes

July 25, 2013 Vipin Jain

The latest improved iteration of Apple’s mobile software, iOS 7 Beta 3 was released in the first week of July in 2013. As we talk about the past betas like beta1 and 2, these were not well equipped with the best features and modifications. But the new beta 3 is comprised of the improved fluidity and stability.

There is a big list of the changes that are in the new apple software. Most of the changes of this list are some small alterations in the user interface so that the user may get the best and can have more enjoyable experience. But this change is not valued to be the solid change as the operating system of it is as it is. It can be said that there are a few considerable changes in the iOS 7 Beta 3 and there are a number of videos available to inform users about the changes.

Some of the changes made are mentioned below:

A new app animation may be experienced when you will download an app for instance you may see the new animation when you will access the spotlight search.
The dictionary within the iOS is also working once again.
You may also see the re-addition of the time that will be visible on the lock screen as well as on the Music app while you are playing the music.
Change in the style, color, texture and icons of the app.

There are more changes that you may experience other than that are mentioned above. So, visit any good website and get all this on your own iPhone.

You may notice that stability of the operating system is same as it was in beta 2. With the release of betas Apple is now attempting and fixing the various issues and bugs that were reported by the people. That’s why the user experience with this technology is also improving continuously. iOS 7 Beta 3 is accepted as the most reliable and great responsive as compared to beta 2.

Soon the beta 4 will get released for iOS 7 but its date has not arrived till yet. You may download the stable and the polished version of beta 7 from a number of good websites. The registered iOS application developer can access and download the latest version of beta 3. The one who have already installed iOS 7 may get upgrade by making setting in his iDevice. The unregistered users may pay for this version and enjoy the changes.

So, for what you are waiting for? Find out a reliable source and get known to all the changes that may prove to be very useful to you.

Multitasking in iOS 7

July 5, 2013 Vipin Jain

At this WWDC-24 Tim Cook, CEO of Apple surprised the world with the launch of new iOS 7 that is the biggest change is iOS since the launch of iPhone. iOS 7 is completely decorated with a new flat beautiful design which look very simple and useful. iOS 7 design feature like full screen layout, transparent views, multilayer views etc. will give a pleasure to eyes of all iPhone lovers.

With a new design apple introduces some fascinating features in iOS 7. Like Control Centre, Airdrop, iTunes Radio, Multitasking, Siri, Photos and many more. Basically iOS 7 is power packed box with new design and new features.

Multitasking:

In iOS 7 we have a quite new and beautiful layout of multitasking to switch between apps and close an app. When you press home button twice it will open a new screen where you can swipe left to right to choose the app, which you want to open. If you want to close just a swipe up it will be removed, no need to press and hold and wait till close button appear. It’s simple now.

Today we are going to talk about “Multitasking enhancement” in iOS 7. Multitasking is supported in iOS since iOS 4 but it was quite restricted as we can only do few things when app is in background mode like music, location and voip. This becomes very frustrating when we need to download some content for app in background, as it wasn’t supported. With iOS 7 apple provided multitasking for almost every app. Now we can perform lots of task when app is in background.

iOS 7 supports these background modes :

• Audio (audio)
• Location updates (location)
• Voice over IP (voip)
• Newsstand downloads (newsstand-content)
• External Accessory Communication (external-accessory)
• Bluetooth networking (bluetooth-central)
• Bluetooth data sharing (bluetooth-peripheral)
• Background fetch (fetch)
• Remote notifications (remote-notifications)

Background fetch and Remote notification will be really very useful for developers. Suppose you are developing an app, which is a kind of social network that has a feed screen, which needs regular updates but when app is in background mode then we were not able to refresh our feeds in background. Users have to wait while feeds being update. With background fetch feature in iOS 7 we can schedule app to fetch content in background before user is going to use it. When we schedule app for download in background then iOS automatically trigger an event when it finds that this is best time (with best network condition) to update app. So we can program app for this event to download all content in background. This will be very useful for all iPhone user as they will not require to open the app to update the content of app. Users will find app updated when they will open the app.

Similarly with remote notification support in background we can update content of app when app received a push notification. So iOS will trigger an event to app as it received a push notification and as the app complete its content download process push will be delivered to user. By this way app will get time to update content before the push is being delivered to user. This is really an awesome feature in iOS 7. Apple provided background supports for app when required which will save a lot of battery life, as app is not running in background all the time, it will run only when required. This is really a futuristic approach by Apple because saving battery life is really very important in mobile technology.

Schedule app in background:

To fetch content of app in background we need to schedule our app to run in background and fetch content when iOS triggers an event. For this we need to include “UI Background Modes” key with “fetch” value in info.plist Then we need to set a minimum background fetch interval by which minimum interval iOS triggers an event using this “set Minimum Background Fetch Interval:” method of “UI Application” class.

At last we have to implement “application:perform Fetch With Completion Handler:” in our app delegate to handle trigger event by iOS and fetch content in background.

Here one thing which is very import to remember after completing download process we have to tell iOS that download is complete by using the “completion handler” in above method. So that iOS can switch the app to suspended state.

Improve Your Programming Skills

June 4, 2013 Vipin Jain

Most of us at the time of our Engineering consider the programming as a horrible thing . Programming logics may differ from person to person . One may solve a problem using fewer lines of code while other consuming greater . Your programming logic defines the complexity and the time consumption of your program . Lesser the complexity and time consumption of your logic better your program will be considered . One should always keep brushing his programming skills no matter how much experience does he/she contains . Number of sites are there providing various programming competitions , challenges and interview questions . Some are as follows : –

1. Project Euler : This site provides you the math challenges and problem that most of us often face while development
Site URL : http://projecteuler.net/

2. HackerRank : This site provides you challenges and problem and you can create your own profile congaing all the information of the problems solved by you .
Site URL : https://www.hackerrank.com/

3. cProgramming : This site provides you challenges and problems to be implemented in the various programming languages . The site also contains the tutorials on various topics in various programming languages .
Site URL : http://www.cprogramming.com/

4. CodeBetter : A community of developers who publishes best practices , superior tools , proven logics and techniques .
Site URL : http://codebetter.com/

Most of us often faces problems during development that may kill our hours with no solutions to it . No matter what programming language you use or what operating system you call home , if you have a question it bounds to be answered at StackOverflow . Yes you heard it right

StackOverflow : Sites provided you with the tons of question regarding various topic in programming languages . You need to create profile in order to post your own question or to give answer to any posted question by other user . The is controlled and managed under the keen observation of highly skilled moderator .

By: Vipin Jain

In App Billing For Android

A New Technology: NFC (Near Field Communication) on Android

iOS 7 Beta 3 – Few Considerable Changes

Multitasking in iOS 7

Improve Your Programming Skills

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