BlackBerry World: Day 1 Begins
Tue, May 1st 2012 7:11a John Wargo Got up early this morning and made it over to the hotel’s gym. It was nice to get some exercise in before starting my day. When I finished, I decided to walk around a bit just to get my back loosened up. As I walked past the BlackBerry World registration desk, I thought about my registration process and thought I’d write about it.
This is my 6th BlackBerry World (or Wireless Enterprise Symposium, WES, as it used to be called), so I knew exactly what to do. I walked toward the registration a [read] Keywords: application
blackberry
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enterprise
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116
Figured out PhoneGap Development for bada
Fri, Apr 27th 2012 7:12a John Wargo If you remember a while ago I published an article (which can be found here) that explained some of the issues I encountered trying to build and run a PhoneGap application for the Samsung bada OS. Well, with the help of the developer who wrote the bada code for PhoneGap I was able to finally figure it out, get it working and finished the bada chapter for PhoneGap Essentials.
First I’m going to complain a little and then I’ll tell you what you need to do to build PhoneGap applications for ba [read] Keywords: application
applications
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mobile
108
Error Capturing Video using PhoneGap
Thu, Apr 26th 2012 8:11a John Wargo I got up early this morning to answer some last minute questions from my editor for PhoneGap Essentials. We’re almost done with the book; I just had a few questions to answer. The editor asked me to redo one of the screen shots because it was a little blurry. I dug out the device I used to take the screen shot and setup the shot. The device battery had died, so I plugged it into power so it would charge as I began my test. As I loaded the application and started the video capture application u [read] Keywords: application
147
Rhomobile & Domino
Thu, Apr 19th 2012 6:11a John Wargo As part of my role as a technical advisor to the View I decided a long time ago to start writing a series of articles demonstrating all of the different possible ways to mobilize a Notes or Domino application. I had a bunch of ideas and a bunch of different tools I wanted to play with, so I got to work. The cool thing about this was that I wanted to learn these tools, but had so many other things going that I just couldn’t find the time to do it. Fortunately, writing a magazine article about a [read] Keywords: domino
notes
application
database
google
rim
server
136
4,500 Records
Thu, Apr 5th 2012 6:13a John Wargo I came across this press release yesterday:Mobiquity Takes Buildium Mobile; App for Property Management Software Leader Has Native-Like Scrolling. The article explains how the developers were able to build a PhoneGap application that allowed mobile users to scroll through a listing of up to 4,500 records with native-like performance and functionality. While that's probably a pretty good accomplishment, I have to ask why it was ever even done.
Why would you ever want to expose more than four th [read] Keywords: application
mobile
network
244
New Job
Tue, Apr 3rd 2012 7:13p John Wargo You may have noticed that I haven't posted much in a while. Lots going on in my professional life and I've been a bit busy.
I resigned from AT&T a few weeks back. I should't go into why I left, let's just say that it didn't end well.
I have accepted a postion at SAP. I'm in the Mobility Solutions Management group - which is SAP's name for customer-facing product management. I'm really excited to be working at SAP and to be back working for a software company again. In my new role, [read] Keywords: development
mobile
sap
177
Interesting Spam – Airline Ticket
Mon, Apr 2nd 2012 8:11p John Wargo I just received yet another interesting spam message in my inbox. Well actually it wasn’t in my inbox; Outlook recognized it as spam and quarantined it – I’m surprised Norton Antivirus didn’t catch this one (because of the likely infected attachment).
Anyways, here’s a screen shot of the email.
Figure 1
What I imagine happens is someone gets this email and goes “Crikey, I didn’t buy any plane ticket” and opens the attachment to see who purchased a ticket. Of course they open [read] Keywords: email
outlook
289
US Air Doesn't Care
Mon, Mar 5th 2012 7:13a John Wargo Living where I do, I take US Airways flights most of the time. I'm regularly surprised by their inability to use technology effectively and it saddens me. I was checking in for today's flight this morning and decided I wanted to give them some feedback. On the registration form, they asked me for my name, email address and frequent flyer number. Unfortunately, I was already logged into the web site, and this was all information they already had. Why ask me for information when you already have [read] Keywords: email
203
PhoneGap & Samsung bada
Mon, Feb 13th 2012 7:12a John Wargo While working on PhoneGap Essentials, I got a chance to work with some mobile device platforms I’d not worked with before. I did some work with webOS, but as soon as I got ready to write the chapter on webOS development for PhoneGap, HP announced it was killing the platform and the PhoneGap team added support for Windows Phone development. So, I whacked the webOS chapter and cheerfully replaced it with one on Windows Phone.
Another interesting one is Samsung bada, a ‘newer’ OS supposedly [read] Keywords: application
applications
css
development
google
javascript
mobile
wiki
291
Silly CAPTCHA
Wed, Feb 8th 2012 10:11a John Wargo I was registering for access to the Sencha forums (www.sencha.com) today when I saw the following on the registration form:
Figure 1
That's pretty advanced math for a CAPTCHA, isn't it?
So, is the math problem this:
6 – (2 x 3)
Or is it this:
(6 – 2 ) x 3
Having a degree in Physics and more than 30 years of experience as a professional software developer, I was certain I knew what I was doing. However, I'd be lying if I told you I got this right on the first try.
All of my years [read] Keywords: wiki
165
American Football
Mon, Jan 30th 2012 6:11a John Wargo If you know me, you likely know that I'm a big Soccer fan. I regularly irritate my wife by calling American Football...well, you know - American Football. It amazes me that the entire world (except for the United States and possibly Cananda) calls a sport Football but for us in North Americ it means something completely different. That being said, I've been trying to expose my son to the sport so he'll be able to fit in better than I do (wink).
So, for the last few years, I've actually trie [read] Keywords:
276
BlackBerry About
Fri, Jan 20th 2012 7:12a John Wargo I can't remember why, but for some reason I wanted to look at my BlackBerry device software version the other day, so I fired up the Options application and started typing 'about' as shown in the following figure. I noticed some interesting things and that prompted me to write this post.
Figure 1
When you first launch the application, it displays a screen similar to the one shown in the following figure. I'm running a BlackBerry Bold 9900 and I absolutely love it. It's small, fast, eas [read] Keywords: apple
application
applications
blackberry
development
iphone
java
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307
Wozniak & Android
Wed, Jan 18th 2012 9:11a John Wargo I like my iPhone. It’s got a cool UI and the apps are great. Unfortunately, I just can’t use one day to day – there’s too many klugy things about it. The BlackBerry has spoiled me with the keyboard, I can so quickly go to the top of a list (by pressing the ‘t’ key), bottom of a list (the ‘b’ key), File an email message (‘f’ key) and most importantly use the keyboard to type the name of the folder I’m filing an email into.
I get more than 100 emails a day and the way iOS an [read] Keywords: apple
blackberry
email
enterprise
google
iphone
laptop
mobile
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256
BlackBerry Status Updates Pane
Tue, Jan 10th 2012 11:11p John Wargo I’m struggling to find value in the BlackBerry 7 Status Pane that appears at the top of the BlackBerry home screen and, when clicked, displays the screen shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1
When you look at the image, it should be clear that there’s really very little information displayed on the screen. Now, when I wrote about things like this in the past, I got comments back that the issue I’m experiencing is related to my device’s current font settings. Those comments were correct, [read] Keywords: application
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257
Finished PhoneGap Essentials
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 1:12p John Wargo I didn't get a chance to write a formal post about this, but on December 11th I finished the writing process of my forthcoming PhoneGap book called PhoneGap Essentials. I had a contract with the publisher that said I had to deliver the manuscript on February 2nd, but I delivered it about 6 weeks earlier – whew! It was a lot of work and a lot of fun, I really like writing.
Right now the manuscript is going through a technical review; an experienced PhoneGap developer is reading through the ma [read] Keywords:
210
Another Reason I'm Not Going to Lotusphere
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 6:12a John Wargo I wasn't allowed to talk about this until now, but I wanted to share with you another of the reasons I'm not going to Lotusphere this year.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've made a lot of friends through Lotusphere and even got myself a wife in the process (a very good wife as a matter of fact). I'd also shared my Lotusphere experiences with several very close friends that I've worked with for many (many, many) years.
When I started my first job out of College at Basicomputer, we were [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
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187
Xcode Frustration
Mon, Jan 2nd 2012 2:11p John Wargo I’m writing an article for the View on how to access Domino data from an iPhone application. My colleague Sunder Somasundaram built the application and I’m doing the write-up. While I know a bit about iOS development, Objective-C is a challenge for me (having grown up with a bunch of different development languages, Objective-C is very different than anything I’ve worked with in the past).
I have a Mac Mini I’ve been using for PhoneGap development and I’ve been trying for some time to [read] Keywords: domino
apple
application
applications
development
iphone
mac
macintosh
212
Silly Spammers
Tue, Dec 27th 2011 7:12p John Wargo I’m kinda fascinated with spam (the email kind, not the tasty breakfast meat). I’ve had one or more email accounts since the early days of the Internet and it’s been fascinating to watch how the spammer industry has adjusted to different efforts by email recipients to thwart them.
I’ve recently seen an increase in the number of emails I get (from complete strangers of course) asking me to help them bring some money they’ve acquired into the US through my bank accounts. What gets me th [read] Keywords: email
outlook
virus
155
Better Comments
Sat, Dec 24th 2011 9:12a John Wargo I'm already much happier with the new comments component I added to the site. I'd been using the yvComment add-on for Joomla, but it was hard to install, difficult to use and buggy. I'd had nothing but trouble with it from day one. Not that I get many comments on this site, but the comment module shouldn't be hard to use.
I switched to JComment, and it was a quick, seamless install and provides me with a quick way to approve comment posts directly from an email notice I get that a new comme [read] Keywords: email
131
Whacked comments from the site
Thu, Dec 22nd 2011 8:12a John Wargo I had to whack the comments component from the site this morning. I was using a Joomla extension I was never really happy with and I'd been having some problems with the component for some time now. I uninstalled it and installed a different one, so comments are now back up and running. I'll monitor this one for a while and see how well it works.
Unfortunately for those who'd posted comments previously, they are no longer available. I'm sorry. I still have the content, so perhaps I'll be [read] Keywords:
183
Not Going to Lotusphere 2012
Thu, Dec 22nd 2011 8:12a John Wargo For the first time in 16 years, I'm not going to be in Orlando for IBM Lotus Lotusphere. I've attended every Lotusphere but one and presented at many of them. It's been a wonderful experience for me and I'm sad for it to end, but I couldn't justify going this year. I hear from others, more and more people are in the same boat as me.
Too bad. A lot of really great things happened to me at Lotusphere. Let's see:
I met my wife at Lotusphere. I met her briefly at Sea World at Lotusphere 1999 [read] Keywords: ibm
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Not Going to Lotusphere 2012
Wed, Dec 21st 2011 4:11p John Wargo For the first time in 16 years, I'm not going to be in Orlando for IBM Lotus Lotusphere. I've attended every Lotusphere but one and presented at many of them. It's been a wonderful experience for me and I'm sad for it to end, but I couldn't justify going this year. I hear from others, more and more people are in the same boat as me.
Too bad. A lot of really great things happened to me at Lotusphere. Let's see:
I met my wife at Lotusphere. I met her briefly at Sea World at Lotusphere 1999 [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
lotusphere
application
applications
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121
RIM's Depressing Me
Tue, Dec 20th 2011 8:10p John Wargo I was doing some thinking about Research In Motion today. I was sadly disappointed (is that redundant?) when I heard RIM was delaying the release of the new QNX-based devices until late next year. That's a truly boneheaded move after a series of boneheaded moves.
First they announce that future devices will be running QNX. 6 months or so later, they give the new OS a name – BBX, only to find out LATER that that name was already taken. What? Nobody thought to do a trademark search? Apple's p [read] Keywords: apple
blackberry
linking
macintosh
microsoft
research in motion
rim
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Weinre Debugger and PhoneGap Build
Thu, Dec 8th 2011 3:10p John Wargo I'm working on the example application for the last chapter of PhoneGap Essentials. The chapter is about the Storage API and I've build a little mileage tracker (for expense management) application to highlight how to use the different capabilities of the API.
I got most of the application working but ran into a problem. I was able to create a local database and write to it, but unfortunately the call to the SQL INSERT method returns an error, even though the record is being successfully writ [read] Keywords: application
applications
database
desktop
google
sql
130
PhoneGap Beginner's Guide
Sun, Nov 27th 2011 2:11p John Wargo Although there are many books out there that mention PhoneGap or cover the topic lightly, it was nice to see books in the works entirely on PhoneGap. With PhoneGap Beginner's Guide being the first one out the gate, I was excited to receive my copy. Unfortunately I agree with many of the other reviewers on Amazon in that there were a lot of incomprehensible sentences in the book. It's clear that Packt, like with many other of their books, rushed this one out and didn't give it the thorough rea [read] Keywords: application
applications
desktop
development
mobile
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PhoneGap Build Android Woes
Tue, Nov 22nd 2011 7:12p John Wargo I've been using the heck out of PhoneGap Build these last few weeks as I work through the API chapters in PhoneGap Essentials.
For the last three weeks, the process for building BlackBerry applications was broken, it would build an app for you, but it wouldn't include the phnegap.js file, so none of the PhoneGap features in the application would work. They finally fixed it today, but it was broken for about 20 days, and that was painful.
Recently, I've been focusing on Android development s [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
development
google
65
Drupal 7
Mon, Nov 21st 2011 4:12p John Wargo I've been using Joomla! for some time now and I've gotten quite comfortable with it. Recently I've been helping August's cub scout pack, a neighbor and close friend build web sites using Joomla! and I've gotten pretty competent with it.
I branched out a bit and used Concrete 5 for my johnwargobooks.com site. It's pretty cool - it's more of a web based site builder than a true CMS like Joomla and Drupal.
I've setup domains for my new PhoneGap book, PhoneGap Essentials, and another site [read] Keywords:
87
PhoneGap Alerts
Sat, Nov 19th 2011 11:13p John Wargo I was working on Chapter 12 of PhoneGap Essentials tonight and I created a quick PhoneGap application to test something I wanted to verify about the JavaScript alert() function. When I tested the application, I noticed something interesting, taking a look at the following code - when I ran the application on an iOS simulator, the Test 2 alert executed before the Test 1 alert.{codecitation class="brush:javascript; gutter:true"} function onBodyLoad() { [read] Keywords: application
javascript
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PhoneGap Essentials
Tue, Nov 15th 2011 10:13p John Wargo Lots going on here on the book front. Last week, my publisher and I agreed on a different title for my PhoneGap book. It's going to be called PhoneGap Essentials, and we even finally have a cover for the book as well.
We wrapped up the table of contents, a description of the book and my bio last week and it looks like everything got submitted to Amazon because it went on the www.amazon.com site today for pre-order. You can access the book's page here: PhoneGap Essentials. Please use that link [read] Keywords:
77
(more) PhoneGap Build Problems
Fri, Nov 11th 2011 7:11a John Wargo PhoneGap Build's BlackBerry capabilities have been down for the last two weeks. I've been working through the book's API chapters, writing applications that highlight the capabilities of each and using PhoneGap Build to quickly build an application I can test on multiple devices. It allows me to simply create the index.html file I need, post it up to the server and within minutes (PhoneGap Build is NOT fast) get an application I can deploy to devices for testing.
This capability is especiall [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
server
55
BlackBerry DevCon App on WebWorks
Mon, Nov 7th 2011 9:11a John Wargo During BlackBerry DevCon 2011 I did some analysis of the BlackBerry DevCon 2011 mobile application; it was part of my everlasting "What Were They Thinking" series of articles. In the article, I postulated that the application was a BlackBerry WebWorks application which made sense since it's RIM's direction for mobile application development on BlackBerry and because it's a cool and quick way to build mobile applications.
Quickly after I wrote that article, I was able to validate that it is [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
development
mobile
rim
xml
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What Were They Thinking #11
Tue, Oct 25th 2011 3:12p John Wargo US Airways is such a technology unsavvy airline. I've been signed up for alerts for a long time now, but they just refuse to alert me when it's time to check in for example. Their day of travel alerts are next to useless as well (see Figure 1). They're notifying me that my flight is expected to be on time, but they refuse to tell me what gate the flight is scheduled to depart from.
Figure 1
If I already have my boarding pass (which I did) and I'm heading to the airport, many airlines lea [read] Keywords: email
security
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BlackBerry Development Tool Macintosh Installation Weirdness
Fri, Oct 21st 2011 8:12a John Wargo I was excited to learn at BlackBerry DevCon 2011 that RIM had finally released the Macintosh versions of their development tools for BlackBerry and Playbook development. Having a MacBook in my hotel room (my Windows Laptop died ore than a week ago) I downloaded the code and tried to install it. I noticed some weirdness with the tool installation, so I thought I'd write about my experiences here.
The tools download as a zip file, a different zip file for BlackBerry vs. Playbook development. Tha [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
development
laptop
macbook
macintosh
password
rim
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BlackBerry DevCon 2011 Days 2 and 3
Thu, Oct 20th 2011 9:13p John Wargo Today wraps up BlackBerry DevCon 2011. Overall it was a great conference. Like I said in a previous post, the sessions and the pace were great. There wasn't a lot of energy about the place, but it was a big crowd and lots of focus on web development and open source tools.
The one disappointment for me was a session I attended this morning on PhoneGap and BlackBerry WebWorks. I was really looking forward to the content, but the presenter was interrupted with so many general questions about Phon [read] Keywords: blackberry
development
javascript
rim
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What Were They Thinking #9
Thu, Oct 20th 2011 10:13a John Wargo In preparation for BlackBerry DevCon 2011, RIM released this year's version of the DevCon mobile application. I've written here about this application and the BlackBerry World (WES) conference applications over the years and I've never been quite happy with the applications. I've always felt that the applications were hard to use and included features that just weren't needed in an application like this. My belief was that RIM focused too much on making a flashy, showcase application instea [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
application
applications
blackberry
desktop
microsoft
mobile
outlook
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BlackBerry DevCon Day 1
Wed, Oct 19th 2011 10:11p John Wargo Well, Day of BlackBerry DevCon 2011 has wrapped up and it’s been a pretty interesting day.
It started with RIM moving the start time of the opening session to 8:30 AM then delaying the start until 8:50 AM. I showed up later than I wanted to, about 8:20, and there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to wait long and was quickly let in. Being a DevCon Alumnus allowed me to use the line jumper queue and get in right away.
It makes no sense to me – [read] Keywords: blackberry
development
dojo
java
laptop
macbook
macintosh
password
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PhoneGap Build Woes
Wed, Oct 12th 2011 6:11a John Wargo I was planning on being about halfway through the book by the end of last week, but my travel schedule and several very full weekends have kept me from reaching that goal. I’m this close to finishing the chapter on PhoneGap Build, but I’m really making very little progress no matter how much work I put into it.
The problem I’m having is that the PhoneGap Build service is working out to be very unstable. Granted I have been working with an Alpha version of the service which only recently [read] Keywords: application
blackberry
javascript
rim
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Adobe PhoneGap?
Wed, Oct 5th 2011 8:12a John Wargo Of course things got kinda interesting this week with the PhoneGap project announcing that they're moving over to the Apache Project and changing their name. Originally slated to be called Apache DeviceReady, there's already a name conflict so the newer option looks to be Apache Callback. Ugh. We'll see what new names appear today.
Next came an announcement from Adobe that they're buying Nitobi, the company that founded and is managing the PhoneGap project. This is a very interesting develo [read] Keywords: development
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MWLUG 2011 Presentation
Tue, Oct 4th 2011 11:11a John Wargo At the MWLUG conference in Milwaukee this year I presented a session on the Mobile Application Landscape for Domino. It was a fun (for me), whirlwind session where I talked about all sorts of things I have been thinking about related to mobile development and, of course, Domino. There were more talking points than real content in the deck, but several people asked me if I'd post the deck, so here it is. Enjoy! [read] Keywords: domino
application
development
mobile
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Amazon's Silk Browser
Sun, Oct 2nd 2011 7:10p John Wargo I'm really stunned by the market's response to Amazon's announcement of their new ereader. Somehow people seem to think that the new Silk browser included with the device is something special - although much of what the Silk browser does is something the BlackBerry browser has done for years. What's the big deal? [read] Keywords: blackberry
62
Macintosh OS Developer Friendly Tools
Sun, Sep 11th 2011 12:14p John Wargo As I work through the chapters of my forthcoming book on PhoneGap, I’m working on both a Macintosh and PC which reminds me of first years of my professional career. I was doing PC support for a PC dealer called Basicomputer and always had a IBM PC and a Macintosh on my desk plus even had an Apple II for a long time as well (it was an Apple IIgs).
Anyway, as I’m writing about installing the PhoneGap software for Android and iOS development I found myself in need of installing Ant and Java on [read] Keywords: ibm
apple
application
development
java
mac
macbook
macintosh
RIM Update
Wed, Aug 31st 2011 9:14a John Wargo Research In Motion made some interesting announcements yesterday.
First of all they announced that they’ve FINALLY launched a private beta for native development tools for the PlayBook. With the device announced more than a year ago and physical devices in the hands of users since May, you’d think a native SDK would have been made available a long time ago, but you’d be wrong.
Here’s the announcement: http://devblog.blackberry.com/2011/08/native-sdk-for-blackberry-tablet-os-closed-beta [read] Keywords: apple
blackberry
development
google
research in motion
rim
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Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS
Tue, Aug 30th 2011 7:10p John Wargo This could be fun!
RIM announced today private beta for the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS. You can read the announcement here.
I’ve kinda gotten away from BlackBerry development, focusing more on cross platform development tools, so I’ve not really kept up with what RIM’s doing with the PlayBook. The WebWorks stuff is…interesting and Hybrid frameworks like WebWorks is where the market is going (the popularity of the PhoneGap and Titanium frameworks has helped prove that one) bu [read] Keywords: apple
applications
blackberry
development
google
rim
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RAID 5 Pain
Tue, Aug 23rd 2011 6:10a John Wargo At the beginning of the year, I replaced my main PC in my home office. I’d had the last one for more than 4 years and it was really time to get rid of it. When I build a new PC, I always go for the biggest and fastest and this one was really fast 4 years ago, but could no longer keep up.
For the new one, I purchased an Intel i7 quad core, dual graphics cards, 24 GB of memory and a big honking 8 TB drive array configured for RAID 5 (giving me 6 TB of available space). For my boot drive, I impl [read] Keywords: office
What Were They Thinking #9? RIM Again!
Wed, Jul 13th 2011 6:18p John Wargo For a long time now, I’ve been running a series on mobile applications, highlighting where developers build an application for a mobile device without really paying attention to the mobile device or the needs of the mobile user. In this article, I’m going to shift gears and talk about something related to mobile, but not directly to mobile applications. I’ve written about this company many times before, let’s take a look…
I received the following email this morning from Research In M [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
desktop
email
mobile
research in motion
rim
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On the Open Letter to RIM
Fri, Jul 1st 2011 7:18a John Wargo I don’t know if you heard about it or not, but a RIM executive published an open letter to his bosses: Mike L and Jim B of RIM. It’s an interesting read and it had to be said. It’s really sad, but RIM has been slow in its response to market changes and it’s likely that they won’t be able to recover.
Their development tools are sub-par and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to release them. Where Apple and Android pre-release their development tools or at least ship them on the same [read] Keywords: apple
applications
blackberry
development
eclipse
email
iphone
java
linux
mobile
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Seesmic & BlackBerry
Wed, Jun 29th 2011 7:14a John Wargo Apparently Seesmic has announced that they’re dropping support for BlackBerry users. You can read the announcement here: http://blog.seesmic.com/important-update-for-blackberry-users.html. Seesmic makes social media tools for mobile devices and, back when their solution was in beta, it was a highly anticipated product.
I guess I’m not that surprised they’re dropping support for BlackBerry, since BlackBerry and many other device manufacturers have made social media such an integral part of [read] Keywords: application
blackberry
development
facebook
iphone
mobile
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twitter
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Concrete5
Tue, Jun 28th 2011 6:15a John Wargo A while back I got really interested in content management systems (CMS). When I discovered Joomla!, I quickly created this site and hundreds of articles later it’s still going strong. A few years ago, Wired Magazine (I think it was Wired) did an article about an open source CMS called Concrete5 (www.concrete5.org) and it looked…interesting. I installed a copy of it, but never really got the hang of it. I didn’t have a site I wanted to build at the time, so I didn’t really have a reason [read] Keywords: database
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My Books
Mon, Jun 27th 2011 7:14a John Wargo I’m getting ready to start writing my next (third) book. As I mentioned before, I’ve been having conversations with my publisher about what I’m going to do next and I think we’ve decided on the topic. I’m waiting on a contract from my publisher then I’ll get started.
In the mean time, I decided to register a domain and open up a site where I can list information about my different books. Additionally, there’s another John Wargo writing books so I have to have a way to distinguish [read] Keywords:
60
Third Book?
Wed, Jun 22nd 2011 8:14a John Wargo I've been having discussions with my publisher about my next book.We talked a bit about doing an update to BlackBerry Development Fundamentals, but the market has really seemed to stall with regards to BlackBerry development books. Everyone's interests are now focused on iPhone and Android, but there's also a lot of great stuff being done in the cross platform development space.
I got involved as a tech reviewer for the My Motorola Atrix book, and that was a lot of fun. I tried to get on the [read] Keywords: blackberry
development
iphone
Review of Beginning BlackBerry Development
Mon, Jun 20th 2011 9:14a John Wargo Here's a review I wrote more than a year ago for Anthony Rizk's Beginning BlackBerry Development:
Considering how long the BlackBerry platform has been available in the market, it’s amazing that there haven’t been any books on BlackBerry development until very recently. There was Craig Johnston’s Professional BlackBerry that was supposed to be a ‘Programmer to Programmer™’ book but ultimately had very little to do with BlackBerry development (except for some simple chapters on Bla [read] Keywords: application
applications
bes
blackberry
development
eclipse
enterprise
interface
java
mobile
networking
server
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BlackBerry Developer Book Reviews
Fri, Jun 17th 2011 9:12a John Wargo Back in 2009, right after BlackBerry Development Fundamentals came out, I approached Dr. Dobb’s Journal about writing some reviews of the other BlackBerry development books that were coming onto the market. The editor told me to go ahead, so I did the writing and submitted two reviews. Nothing happened; I’m not even sure the articles were ever read. So, what I’m going to do is publish them here next week.
It’s two years later, my book has sold well but the BlackBerry development and mob [read] Keywords: blackberry
development
mobile
View Article Update
Wed, Jun 8th 2011 6:11p John Wargo I've got an article being published soon that digs into how to use Teamstudio Unplugged to mobilize Notes applications. I had a lot of fun working with their platform and found it to be a very interesting implementation. They created a synchronization engine and client-side development environment for mobile applications without requiring any plug-ins or additional development tools beyond two Notes databases and out of the box Domino Designer. Cool stuff.
I've finished my work with PhoneGap. [read] Keywords: domino
notes
application
applications
blackberry
development
enterprise
iphone
mobile
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84
Moving Playbook Apps
Mon, Jun 6th 2011 11:09a John Wargo I received a BlackBerry PlayBook at the newly renamed BlackBerry World Conference in Orlando this year. It's an amazing device and except for a few little hardware and UI things (which I know will get fixed) I love it. I'm going to write a series of short articles on the PlayBook just to provide you with my feedback and to give you a general idea of what I think of the device.
One of the things I've been trying to do, and have not been able to figure out how to do, is to move PlayBook applic [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
rim
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Going Cross Platform
Fri, May 13th 2011 12:14p John Wargo I came across an article in APC Magazine this week that discusses problems developers have with cross platform mobile development. The article is called Smartphone Devlopment: Going Cross Platform and what interested me was what was being said about iPhone development.
There’s this perception in the market that since the iPhone platform is so cool and the apps are so beautiful, that it must be easy to develop for the platform. There’s so much bias out there in favor of the iPhone that it is [read] Keywords: apple
application
blackberry
development
iphone
java
macintosh
mobile
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Gartner, MEAP and RIM
Wed, May 11th 2011 7:12a John Wargo In my role at AT&T I work with customers looking to mobilize Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) applications using Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAP). MEAP is a term I believe was coined by Gartner a few years back and since it’s their term, their publications on MEAP are the industry’s reference on the topic.
In December, 2009 Gartner published a MEAP Magic Quadrant document that talked about the different MEAP vendors, their capabilities and how they [read] Keywords: application
applications
development
enterprise
mobile
rim
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PhoneGap
Tue, May 10th 2011 8:11p John Wargo I started working with PhoneGap today. I've been poking around the framework for a while now and I finally got around to actually working with it. As with most Open Source projects, I find that the documentation is sorely lacking.
I'm building a PhoneGap application that uses the Domino RESTful web service I documented in a previous article on this site (Mobilizing Domino Data Using REST: Part 1). I'll be using what I'm learning now in one of my sessions at the View Domino Developer Confere [read] Keywords: domino
application
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What Were they Thinking #8 – Part 2
Fri, May 6th 2011 7:13a John Wargo A few hours after posting my article about the BlackBerry World conference application, RIM released an update to the program. I can’t imagine what change would be so important to release an update to the application in the middle of a four day conference, but they did. Must have been a bug.
When I opened the application the first couple of times after installing the update, instead of the default ‘please wait 2-3 minutes while the application loads’ that I complained so much about, the a [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
bug
database
integration
rim
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Multiple-login Smartphones
Thu, May 5th 2011 6:11a John Wargo Why can’t you login to your smartphone? You can password protect them (either set by the user or required by an enterprise administrator), but why can’t you log into them?
I got started in the mobile apps world many years ago. RIM hired me to be a mobile apps evangelist for AT&T’s customers. I worked with mobile apps at BoxTone and in my current role at AT&T I work with mobile application platforms that allow organizations to build one application that runs natively on multiple mo [read] Keywords: application
applications
bes
blackberry
email
enterprise
facebook
iphone
linkedin
mobile
office
password
rim
security
server
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What Were they Thinking #8
Wed, May 4th 2011 8:09a John Wargo I’m at the BlackBerry World conference this week and I thought it was a good time to add an article to the What Were They Thinking series. The example for this article is the conference application for the BlackBerry World conference in Orlando. RIM has hired different developer organizations to create the different applications, there was the Sweet Ceasar applications commissioned for the BlackBerry Developer conference which used so many fancy screen effects that the application was unusable [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
integration
mobile
rim
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Using the Motorola Atrix
Wed, Apr 13th 2011 12:11p John Wargo As I’ve written about here, I’ve been trying out all sorts of new mobile devices. Working for a carrier certainly has its benefits and getting one of every new smartphone is one of them. I have been very interested in seeing if I could carry an Android device full time and the Motorola Atrix seems like it could be the device for me.
I’m not abandoning the BlackBerry platform, but Android is…cooler and I don’t have someone like Steve Jobs deciding what I can and cannot do on my mobile [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
email
mobile
password
91
Kryos AppXtender Shipped
Sun, Apr 3rd 2011 7:11p John Wargo I've been so busy since Lotusphere (ya, I know - that was months ago) that I never got around to letting all of you know that Kryos AppXtender shipped in February. If you haven't heard about AppXtender, it's pretty cool - it's a tool you can use to mobilize your existing Domino databases. The folks at Kryos asked me to be a bete tester for the platform and I really enjoyed working with it. I demonstrated the platform in my session at Lotusphere 2011 and published an article in the View that [read] Keywords: domino
lotusphere
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BlackBerry Widgets & Domino
Fri, Apr 1st 2011 8:11p John Wargo For those of you who are interested in BlackBerry Widgets (BlackBerry WebWorks) and how you can use them to talk to IBM Lotus Domino applications, The View just published an article I wrote called BlackBerry Widgets — A Fast, Easy Way to Mobilize Your Domino Applications. In the article, I use the RESTful agent I illustrated on this site to build a BlackBerry Widget that talks to the Domino service. It was a fun app to write and I'm very proud of the article.
I wish I could share the informa [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ibm
lotus
application
applications
blackberry
widget
widgets
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Book Shopping
Tue, Mar 22nd 2011 9:10p John Wargo I was poking around in a mall in Plano Texas today and stopped by a Barnes & Noble just to see what's new, but of course to see if my BlackBerry book was on the shelves. As I looked through the computer books I noticed something that's really indicative of the smartphone market. There were a TON of iPhone and Android development books (I didn't count, but I imagine there were around 30 or more overall) and even quite a few Windows Phone development books. As I searched and searched thro [read] Keywords: notes
blackberry
development
iphone
rim
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Google Analytics & Domino
Mon, Mar 14th 2011 7:26a John Wargo If you have a public-facing web site that you maintain, you're probably aware of the capabilities provided by the free Google Analytics (GA) service. Essentially it's a web-based web metrics application that you can use to understand a whole bunch of stuff about your site's visitors.
I use the service to track visitors to this site and several other sites I maintain, it provides you with a lot of very useful information. I can tell how steady my site's traffic is, where people are visiting [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
application
database
google
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Domino & Dashcode
Wed, Mar 9th 2011 7:14p John Wargo As you know (or may not know) I've been working on a series of articles for The View on mobile development for IBM Lotus Domino. I've tried to identify each of the ways you can mobilize Domino and Notes applications then write an article about it. I proposed a series of about 15 articles and the most recent article (#5 in the series) was just published today. It's called Mobilize Notes Applications to iPhone and iPad Using Apple Dashcode and it was a lot of fun to write. The article essential [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
notes
apple
application
applications
database
development
google
iphone
mobile
75
Mobile Device Heaven
Thu, Feb 24th 2011 9:11a John Wargo I’ve been in device heaven the last couple of weeks. With all of the new devices AT&T has released and finally having some time to play around with them, I’ve been having a blast.I've got 7 devices here on my desk and I'm playing with all of them.
Windows Phone 7
I got a couple of Windows Phone 7 devices before Christmas and I’ve been using them the last week or two (I’ve even taken one of them as my primary device for the week). As I said in my post yesterday, I’ve found that [read] Keywords: apple
blackberry
integration
mobile
research in motion
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Managing Email Folders & the Grand Mobile Experiment
Wed, Feb 23rd 2011 3:12p John Wargo When I first joined AT&T, my boss challenged me to see how long it would take before I switched full time to the Apple iPhone. Once I got settled, I put aside my BlackBerry device and tried to make the switch. My plan was to see if I could use it for two weeks solid; I made it 10 days before I had to switch back to my BlackBerry.
It’s not that I’m a BlackBerry bigot, I love technology and playing with different devices. I promise you that if I could find devices that worked the way I ne [read] Keywords: apple
blackberry
email
enterprise
google
iphone
mobile
research in motion
40
BP209 Lotusphere 2011
Mon, Feb 7th 2011 3:13p John Wargo Attached is the presentation that Rob Wunderlich and I presented at Lotusphere 2011. The session was entitled BP209 Delivering IBM Lotus Domino Data to Mobile Devices: More Stupid Tricks and in it, Rob and I revisited our Ten Tricks for Mobilizing Domino from Lotusphere 2010. For this year's session, we took a look at last year's tricks and identified which ones didn't matter so much anymore (since the market changed the way it looked at the requirements) and tried to come up with some new on [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
apple
application
applications
blackberry
database
development
mobile
widget
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First Impressions of Titanium
Wed, Jan 26th 2011 8:21p John Wargo I've been poking around at Appcelerator Titanium for the last week or so and I have to admit that I'm really not impressed. It looked like a really interesting solution, but:
There's absolutely no documentation - what 'documentation' they do have is nothing more than a sample application called Kitchen Sink that has examples of everything Titanium can do inside of it.
It took me hours (and I do mean hours) to get the kitchen sink demo to run in the Android simulator. I followed Einstein [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
development
iphone
mobile
vm
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Kryos AppXtender and More
Thu, Jan 20th 2011 1:17p John Wargo A while back I started a series of articles in the View about mobile development for Domino. The first article was called Mobile Application Development Trends — What Today’s Developer Needs to Know Now which was an overview of waht I saw as trends in the mobile development space. It really had nothing to do with Domino development, it was just an analysis of the market. I followed up with two articles about developer's options for mobilizing Domino databases. The first article was called T [read] Keywords: domino
lotusphere
application
applications
blackberry
development
email
mobile
widget
wireless
What does AT&T do?
Mon, Jan 17th 2011 4:14p John Wargo Another great article surfaced recently about AT&T and how it will be affected by Verizon getting the iPhone. The article is from PC World and it's called What does AT&T to when Verizon Starts Selling iPhones. It does a really good job highlighting the things that AT&T has done to deal with the network overload caused by iPhone users and at the same time preapre for Verizon getting the device as well.
People are going to switch, but AT&T's network has been built up to support [read] Keywords: apple
iphone
network
34
The Verizon iPhone
Mon, Jan 17th 2011 10:15a John Wargo I've said this for a long time now and I'm speaking for myself, NOT my employer: The best thing that can happen to AT&T is for Verizon to get the iPhone.As I've written here before, Apple doesn't care about the network, they just don't. So, Verizon getting the iPhone is going to really show how good AT&T's network really is.
What's interesting is the "Verizon Deal May Expose iPhone Flaws" article in the New york Times. Like the wired article of last summer, it's a good, even, [read] Keywords: apple
blackberry
iphone
network
wireless
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Spam Tester
Wed, Jan 12th 2011 1:16p John Wargo I run a WordPress blog and setup the registration option so friends and family (especially my last remaining Aunt) can know when I post new items to the blog. I setup the system to notify me when someone registers and it's funny to see the different spammers register for the system. Usually the user name they enter doesn't look anything like the email address - that's usually a good clue for me that it's a spammer. You'd think that the user name someone selects would match their primary ema [read] Keywords: email
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Torch Refresh Weirdness
Tue, Jan 11th 2011 7:18a John Wargo I've been using the BlackBerry Torch 9800 since it came out (one of the benefits of working for AT&T, you get new BlackBerry devices as soon as they come out). The first release was not ready for prime time, I had responsiveness issues and some pretty interesting ui weirdness. When the first maintenance release came out, most of the issues I'd encountered were resolved, and the Torch became an excellent device for me. I carry it as my primary device and have had very few issues with it.
Y [read] Keywords: blackberry
office
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Dashcode, Dashcode, Dashcoding away!
Mon, Jan 10th 2011 1:14p John Wargo I spent some time over the holidays building some sample applications for my Lotusphere presentation. I finally got the time to spend some quality time with Dashcode and build a couple of applications that get their data from a Domino server. After some trials and tribulations I was finally able to get it to work - woohoo!
Dashcode is cool and now that most of the major smartphone players are all using the WebKit browser, applications written in Dashcode should (and I'm saying should - I have [read] Keywords: domino
lotusphere
apple
application
applications
iphone
server
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Macintosh Woes
Wed, Jan 5th 2011 1:18p John Wargo I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Macintosh lately. My employer gave me a Windows laptop, but when I started doing more mobile development, they gave me a 17” MacBook as well.
What’s funny about using the Mac for me is how hard it’s been for me. Not because I’m uncomfortable with the Macintosh or the Mac OS - I was an old Macintosh user, I used a Mac before I ever used an IBM PC. No, the issue for me is the keyboard.
When I taught Novell and Lotus Notes classes, my server was alwa [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
applications
blackberry
development
laptop
mac
macbook
macintosh
mobile
server
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Lotusphere 2011 Session
Mon, Jan 3rd 2011 9:22a John Wargo My Lotusphere 2011 session with Rob Wunderlich is BP209 and entitled Delivering Domino to Mobile Devices: More Stupid Tricks. The session is scheduled for Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 1:30 PM.
Last year they scheduled a repeat session, I guess that won't be the case for this year. Come see us and say hello! [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
mobile
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BlackBerry Widgets
Mon, Jan 3rd 2011 6:17a John Wargo I spent some time this weekend working with the BlackBerry Widget (now inappropriately called WebWorks) development tools. They're pretty cool. I've never built web applications designed to run on device (rather than on a server) and didn't have any real experience with much client-side JavaScript, but it real easy after Scott Good kindly provided me with some sample code to work with. I created a couple of applications right away and learned a bunch while I did it.
One of the things I've [read] Keywords: agent
domino
lotusphere
application
applications
blackberry
development
iphone
javascript
mobile
server
widget
widgets
xml
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Dreaming in Code
Sat, Jan 1st 2011 7:17p John Wargo I've been interested in Chandler for a long time now. Chandler, if you don't know about it, is an open source project created by Mitch Kapor (one of the founders of Lotus). Chandler was supposed to change the world of calendaring in personal information management, but I don't think it ever did.
For Christmas, my boss gave me a copy of Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software a book that chroniclized the creation of the project [read] Keywords: calendaring
lotus
development
google
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Getting Ready for Lotusphere 2011
Tue, Dec 28th 2010 1:18p John Wargo In preparation for Lotusphere 2011, I've been working on some demos for the session Rob Wunderlich and I will be giving at next year's conference. One of the things I want to be able to show is how to use Apple's Dashcode web application development tool to access Notes data plus how to build a BlackBerry Widget that does the same thing.
I spent some time over the last week or so poking and prodding at Dashcode and was able (finally) to get it working this morning. It's pretty easy to build [read] Keywords: domino
lotusphere
notes
apple
application
blackberry
database
development
server
widget
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Perfecto Mobile
Wed, Dec 22nd 2010 2:20p John Wargo I've been getting some briefings lately from Perfecto Mobile regarding their mobile application testing capabilities. I'd known a little bit about the market and identified some of the players in BlackBerry Development Fundamentals, but really didn't have a good idea of how it worked. From the briefings I learned more about the technology behind it and it's pretty cool.
They essentially place a bunch of active mobile devices in cradles in a data center then connect to them via a USB cable. [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
development
interface
mobile
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Sizing Windows in Windows
Fri, Dec 17th 2010 1:13p John Wargo In all of the different things I do, I often spend a lot of time writing about computer-related topics. With my book, magazine articles, conference presentations and in my regular day to day job activities, I find myself needing screen shots of Windows computer screens. While it’s really easy to grab screen shots in Widows (I’m a huge fan of Snagit From TechSmith corporation (http://www.techsmith.com/)) it’s not always easy to set the size of the window you’re taking a snapshot of. When [read] Keywords: application
vista
BlackBerry App Problem with 6.0
Tue, Sep 28th 2010 7:30p John Wargo At the BlackBerry Developer conference opening session yesterday they highlighted a bunch of consumer applications that they, RIM, thought were interesting, ground breaking or at least fun. What I noticed though was that many of them were not available yet for a device running BlackBerry Device Software 6.0. In the session they demonstrated the dictionary.com, not available yet for BlackBerry 6.0. They highlighted the things Xobni has done (cool product), not yet available for BlackBerry 6.0. Th [read] Keywords: application
applications
blackberry
rim
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BlackBerry Conference Application
Mon, Sep 27th 2010 11:29p John Wargo At the BlackBerry Developer conference this year Research In Motion waited until the very last minute to announce availability of the conference application for this year’s conference. Last year’s application was written by Sweet Caesar and, while functional, it was hard to use – they’d tried too hard to build in all sorts of screen effects and because of it the application was unusable. I wrote about it here in my ‘What were they thinking series’.
Anyway, for this year’s conferen [read] Keywords: application
blackberry
enterprise
java
mobile
research in motion
server
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The BlackBerry BlackPad
Sun, Sep 26th 2010 10:36a John Wargo OK, I'm convinced. RIM's going to announce the BlackBerry BlackPad tomorrow. There were rumors of this last week, but you know how rumors are. What's sinching it for me is how coy my RIM contacts are. Tomorrow starts the BlackBerry Developer Conference, and it makes sense that if you're going to bring to market a new tablet device and run it on a new OS (as the rumors say) then you're probably going to make it available to developers (like me) first. I'm thinking, but I'm probably wrong, [read] Keywords: blackberry
rim
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Additional View Articles
Sat, Sep 25th 2010 9:33p John Wargo I just finished my second and third articles for the View (www.eview.com). The second article is an introduction to mobile development for Domino and focuses on web development. The third article extends the second and talks about native mobile development for Domino and includes Hybrid and MEAP applications. It was a lot of fun to write these articles. I started with an idea and as I started writing, the article got bigger and bigger and bigger. When I submitted it, my editor immediately starte [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
applications
blackberry
development
mobile
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BlackBerry Developer Conference 2010
Tue, Sep 21st 2010 8:28p John Wargo My publisher has arranged to have copies of BlackBerry Development Fundamentals on sale at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco the week of September 26th, 2010. This year, there's a special book store being setup at the conference and they'll be raffling off several free copies of the book during the conference. They've also scheduled a book signing for Tuesday afternoon between 12 and 1 (during lunch), look me up if you're going to be there.
My editor brought a whole bunch [read] Keywords: blackberry
development
widgets
16
Amusement Park Marketing and Technology
Sat, Sep 11th 2010 6:56p John Wargo We went to a local amusement park today, just about 20 miles from here. I noticed two interesting things while we were at the park. One was an interesting marketing trick and another was an interesting use of technology.
Living in North Carolina, we get more nice weather than we were use to in Northeastern Ohio. I loved Cedar Point, but never seemed to make it there. With the nicer weather here, I can go from March to November, much longer than I could at Cedar Point.
As we walked around the p [read] Keywords: application
mobile
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BlackBerry Web Clip
Fri, Aug 20th 2010 11:11a John Wargo I noticed something interesting this morning while playing with my new BlackBerry Torch 9800. I was checking in for a flight home and thought I'd try the new boarding pass on the mobile device thing. I finished my check-in and had the airline send the boarding pass to my work email account. I opened the message and clicked on the link to bring up the mobile boarding pass. It's a web page and the page had some instructions for how to make it easy to load the page while at the airport. I didn't [read] Keywords: application
blackberry
email
iphone
mobile
2011-11-28 05:31:10 Failed to fetch http://johnwargo.com/index.php/feed/rss.html. (HTTP Response: ). 
