How to speed up Eclipse on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

May 28, 2010 by Inteist

If you’ve been experiencing horrendous performance of Eclipse on OS X, or maybe you even did not know that Eclipse actually can run very fast, you’d be surprised to learn that apparently it is very easy to make Eclipse run 4-5 times faster  on OS X with proper settings to your eclipse.ini file.

First I will give you a bit of  background. If you want the gist of it or how to make it fly – just go the end of the post.  So a few days ago, PSU fried on my main desktop development machine. It is a newer Quad Core i5 2.6 machine with 4GB 1066Mhz memory and a standard 7200 RPM drive. Since the machine is dead and I am waiting for a replacement power supply, I had to move to my new and shiny MacBook Pro, which I have recently purchased and which is from the latest batch of the updated MacBooks and is quite powerful. It is also i5 (only dual core though) with the same 4GB of 1066Mhz memory and 5400 HD.

So, yeah, I would say that the systems are pretty close right. Nevertheless, working with Eclipse on OS X felt horrendously slow! I had already noticed this nuance in the past and I thought that the Eclipse is just not meant to fly on Mac-s (oh well…), especially when there are so many different distributions for OS X, it signals that the project is in a shifting phase basically (it is shifting from Carbon to Cocoa) and that you should expect all kinds of problems.

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Motorola Droid driver for Windows 7 64 bit

May 23, 2010 by Inteist

I’ve got the Motorola Droid from Google through their device seeding program a while ago. Which is nice although Nexus One would be much better since then I would have been actually using as my phone. The Droid has to be tied to Verizon and I am a T-Mobile lad all the way.

Anyways, I’ve tried a few times to get adb debugging talk to my Droid on my Win7 64 bit and I could not get it to work for a long long time. I tried to search around for the solution, but none of the drivers that I’ve found worked until today I started the search again and found the Win7 64 bit Droid drivers from Motorola here which worked perfectly fine!

Don’t forget to go to “Settings->Applications->Development” and enable “USB Debugging”

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Using Amazon S3 to serve JAD files for BlackBerry OTA distribution

Apr 4, 2010 by Inteist

If you don’t want the preamble of why I wanted to serve JAD files from Amazon S3, skip to the second paragraph.

I have recently came across the need to push OTA update of the DailyHoroscope application for BlackBerry. I conjectured that OTA updates have different behavior and thus different impact on the web server. There are still many people using their smartphones in general and BlackBerries in particular over the slower EDGE connections as opposed to 3G, not to mention 4G and/or WiMax. So to download 300K file over EDGE connection in the real usage example can take anywhere between 10 seconds to couple minutes. All this time the webserver’s thread serving this specific client will remain running. So it seems like you (or rather your server) can be in a nasty situation when 1000 users simultaneously or almost simultaneously decide to do the OTA update. Also quick calculation with Amazon WS calculator shows that serving files from S3 would be rather cheap even comparing to renting a cheap VPS for that purpose. My estimate was that the whole upgrade process (considering the fact that almost all the users update from S3) will cost me about $15. And this is independent of the time span. For $15 you could get a very cheap VPS for one month (if you are lucky). So it seemed like a no brainer. It indeed was until I faced a few problems with setting this up which I will cover here so that you don’t have to spend much time looking for solutions if you want to do the same.

Setting up S3 is a breeze. Using it – not so much. It is just like any other service pretty much – when you want to sign up and call sales you are answered immediately but if you have a problem and need customer service, well, you can be on hold quite a while. If you have Amazon account already set up, you can use this account. You will have the option to opt for the payment to any of the payment options (now it seems that this is only credit cards) already on file with Amazon or you could add a new credit card so that your S3 bill is billed separately.

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BlackBerry Eclipse plugin 1.1 will fix some of the annoying problems

Mar 29, 2010 by Inteist

The next version of the BlackBerry Eclipse plugin will fix most of the annoying things about blackberry development.

Some of the most important things are:

1) No need to restart emulator for new build to be loaded to the emulator (Hallelujah!!!)

The new build should be just loaded onto the already started simulator, pretty much as on Android and iPhone.

2) Ability to add external libraries i.e. *.jar files to the project

This is actually pretty peculiar since RIM was pushing hard 3-d party (external library) integration as one of important concepts and obviously it would be very beneficial for the BlackBerry ecosystem but if you did not want to use JDE, there was pretty much no clean way to add external library. That is until the 1.1 plugin comes out from beta, or at least that what was promised at the New England BlackBerry developers meetup.

3) The BlackBerry plugin would follow the “Eclipse way”

The 1.1 plugin is very different from previous version. Instead of following the “JDE way” it will be much more the natural “Eclipse way”. This is both good and bad. This is very good for developers that have experience with Eclipse and just now start to develop for BlackBerry. This will however be somewhat painful for the seasoned developers who got used to the old plugin and will need to discover many things from scratch. (I personally felt quite lost with the new 1.1 plugin and decided to stick with the old one until 1.1 comes out of beta).

You can download the beta of 1.1 from here (you would need to have BlackBerry developer account which is free and can be obtained with simple sign up immediately)

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Super App webcast Q&A follow-up

Mar 29, 2010 by Inteist

During the Super App webcast Mike Kirkup covered many questions from the attendees. I have gathered many of those in the webcast summary. He did not get through all of the questions and promised to answer all of the questions on blackberry development forum. He did just that and here is the Q&A extracted:

[Q] The problem I found with a super app that was tightly integrated with the address book is that people were looking to see an icon and not something that was just part of the existing BlackBerry UI.

[A] A good point.  Many users will still expect a simple icon for the application whether only to provide information on how to leverage the application or how to manipulate settings.  Fixmo is a really good example of this point.

[Q] Is there a way for my app to get notified when new notifications are shown on the device?

[A] Unfortunately, no.  But this sounds like a great feature request you should log via the BlackBerry Issue Tracker.

[Q] Is there a way to include full camera control in the application?

[A] Yes.  Check out JSR 135 (MMAPI) for more information on how to include the camera field within your application including the ability to modify zoom and flash settings.

[Q] With the definition of a “Super App” being one that you cannot live without, can a game be a super app?

[A] Great question!  Yes, a game definitely can be a “Super App” or take on many of the characteristics of a Super App including being notification driven, contextual (even location based), integrated with other applications and so on.  It isn’t hard to imagine having a game that you love so much that you can’t live without it.

[Q] Can I make a Super App by developing a BlackBerry Widget?

[A] Yes, definitely.  One of the most important attributes of the our Widget technology is that you can fully integrate your Widget into all of the same APIs that are available to Java applications whether exposed already through Javascript APIs or through your ability to write Javascript to Java APIs.

[Q] Do you plan on setting up a program to certify applications as Super Apps?

[A] No, we do not currently have any plans for certifying applications as a Super App today.  The concept here is to help people really understand not only the capabilities of the BlackBerry platform but also the possibilities on better engaging your users.

[Q] We have developed a collaboration application which works on a “pull” basis.  How can we leverage push?

[A] Check out our newly launched Push Services page for more information on how you can start leveraging push in your application whether for the enterprise or consumers.

[Q] Is it possible to add a custom menu item in any third party application?

[A] Yes, although not in a granular fashion today.  As part of the ApplicationMenuItem API you can specify that you want your menu item included in all applications on the device but you do not get to pick which applications if you don’t want all apps.  Can you submit a feature request in the Developer Issue Tracker if you think this is a good use case.

[Q] Suppose the application flow is such that screen 1 pushes screen 2, screen 2 pushes screen 3 and from screen 3 the user needs to go to screen 1.  Should the application push screen 1 again or pop screens to get to screen1?

[A] You should definitely maintain the proper ordering of the screens on the stack for the user such that your application will automatically pop off the top screen on the stack when the user presses the escape key.  So, in this case, it depends on your ultimate goal of the screens.

[Q] This is a great presentation but it gives very little to seasoned developers.  Will you have additional presentations with more details and more code samples? (Editor: this, I think is actually my question slightly rephrased)

[A] Yes, definitely.  This is the introduction to the concept of Super Apps and you will see additional webinar presentations that go into substantially more detail on all of the key aspects of bringing Super Apps characteristics to your application.  The Big Ideas, Little Screens UI Webinar from Brian this month is a perfect example of more involved webinars.

[Q] What are the OS or device requirements for the Javascript examples provided?

[A] These are part of the new BlackBerry Widget technology and require v5.0 handheld software.

[Q] You mentioned the Super Apps website.  Where is that?

[A] www.blackberry.com/developers/superapps

He also promised to keep posting answers so see the original forum thread here for more information

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Building Secure Mobile Applications – AT&T free webcast

Mar 29, 2010 by Inteist

AT&T will host a webcast about building secure mobile applications on April 1-st. It’s interesting to see how the mobile ecosystem is going crazy right now, every brand  trying to get as much people involved as possible.

The MotoDev, Verizon Developers portal and AT&T developer center being promoted to potential developers very aggressively lately. Those companies (carriers, manufacturers etc…) understand that the platform value shifted to having quality consumer applications. Those, supplied by small companies and indie mobile developers.

The webcast  info:

Who Should Attend:
Developers who are building applications with networking or messaging functionality.

When:
Thursday, April 1, 10:00-11:00 AM Pacific Time

What you will learn:

• Evaluate threats to your mobile applications
• Prioritize security features that should be enabled in your applications
• Minimize risks to your applications

You can sign up here for the webcast

As an added bonus AT&T smartphone will get drawn between participants in the webcast.

All actual attendees can enter to win an AT&T Smartphone. Winner will be notified via email after the Webcast.

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