Top 10 Reasons to Choose iOS Platform

There has always been a buzz around related to the choice of Platform to be used for developing Mobile Applications and is highly debatable .  In one of my previous Blog  i discussed the intended pros and cons of Native Apps and Cross Platform Apps . When it comes to developing native apps , there always arises a dilemma between Android or iOS ? On which one to develop application first and much more.

There always existed an arch rivalry between iPhone development and Android App Development companies. As a result there is always something new and fascinating in the market in terms of app development and end user.  The cut throat competition between both these leaders ruling the app market made even necessary for developers to judge and decide the correct option for career development.

The market share has been the bone of contention between these two giants but the final judgement depends from company to company and their intended requirements for their applications , but here i will highlight some areas where iOS platform can prove out to be an amazing choice for development .

Benefits of iOS that outruns Android in app race -

1.   The App Quality is more Desirable

Quantitatively the number of apps developed using android platforms do outnumber the ones developed with iOS platforms but when the quality of app is taken into accountability tables are surely turned upside down. iOS platform offers unmatched quality particularly in niches of media, children’s apps or games.

2 .  No Carrier Data

Android allows the devices or smartphones to be overloaded with third party applications with compromised quality with some charging exorbitant subscription rates . Even many pre-installed apps fall short of their promised quality providing an overall deceptive experience. Wherein Apple does not allow any carrier junk or unnecessary apps. This is an advantage iOS users enjoy over Android ones.

3.   Complemented User Experience

Indeed the user interface on iOS devices has not been subjected to major changes unless iOS 7 which on contrary to Android varies a lot from one manufacturer to the other because of skinning . Fragmentation is a big issues for Android , nearly 60% of all iphone users are using the latest version of iOS while this number is very less when taken into account the android devices where less than 10% are using the newest versions. Yet another problem that arises with fragmentation is that large number of carriers and manufacturers of handsets that are associated with android does not keep their users updated with the new versions . This problem exacerbates with the increasing and endless number of devices running on iOS.

Whereas Apple  does not allow Skinning and subsequently allows its users to upgrade to new versions resulting in a more consistent and enhanced user experience.

4.   Better HTML Support

HTML5 has all the potential to replace Flash to cater the multimedia needs of users on the web. Afterall its already a big thing on web ,and a better support will definitely boost the  usage of apple devices.

5.   Dynamic Icons for Apps

iOS icons are much appealing and pleasant , they are designed aesthetically and some folders and apps shows notifications even without logging. While in this area android suffers from limited capabilities .

6.   Apps Listings are Tablet friendly

The Apple App store has long listings of apps which are managed categorically. It shows iphone and ipad apps differently in sections . ipad apps are specifically designed to suit tablets as they have larger screens .

7.   More Better Siri

Apple has improvised its Siri with many surprising features which answers questions using Artificial Intelligence technology . The questions can range from variety of problems to which it provides a very satisfactory answers. Siri has been made so sophisticated that very few answers surfaces any errors .

8.   Better Power Management

iOS is ahead in race when it comes to power management . One of the reasons being that ios is very repulsive to all third party apps that run in background . Another reason is that iPhone 4S does not provide LTE support . Battery life is one of the strong metric to pay heed while purchasing a smartphone. Apple surely provides its users a better sense of satisfaction in terms to it and a lot of people vouch for in their purchasing of a cell phone .

9.   Better Support for USB Audio Devices

iOS Devices can record and play audio with their standard USB devices . This facility of playing with USB audio devices is not available on Android phones . The USB port of android cannot host audio devices.  Prospective buyers lay more emphasis on smartphones that support good audio features and music on iOS devices sounds extremely good.

10 .  Ease of Compatibility

Unlike Android which is supported by abundant of devices in market the variety of devices in case of iOS are always compliant with each other. So it becomes quite easy for Mobile App Developers to focus more on development instead of compatibility of applications running on various devices. Apple devices has advanced functionalities and higher processor speed with huge storage so that iphone users can use small and feature rich applications that can be developed using Human Interface Guidelines used for iOS development . iPhone and iPads are being increasingly used by business classes as well as making their way into our young and youthful generation .

The above points highlights some areas where iOS is doing extremely well . For Enterprises and Businesses adapting their products for the right audience in the marketplace is a key factor that way they can keep their company in the forefront of minds of users and can boost their brand value.

Apart from end users here are some Benefits of developing Mobile Applications for Business -

• Attracting New Customers - Attracting new customers and making them stay with your business is the key to produce more sales . With a developed iPhone app companies can advertise to more tech-savvy audience . A Quality mobile developer  will present much related suggestions that relates much to the products you are selling in the market.

• Ease of  Use -   iPhone apps are very easy to use and are enjoyable, making it more desirable among users . The more satisfaction they will get out of your apps the more better relationship you will develop with them.  A well designed app can present new ways to increase profits , revenues and can serve you with much of new offerings .

• Enhanced Customer Experience -  Your business can keep the communication lines open 24*7 via your app and curb the need to have twenty four hours a day call center to receive queries from your customers . They will then able to access companies services with much greater ease . You can even highlight all special events and upcoming sales by sending them periodic updates.

iOS does not compromise on its quality and every mobile developer should leverage the awe-inspiring features that comes with iOS phones. The quality has allured many users and therefore huge benefits can be reaped by developing ios apps . An app should be designed for iOS first to test all the limits and skill sets . Creating on Android later on will always be an easier task.

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iOS 7 and iOS 8 What Users should Know

A quick look on all major features , benefits and drawbacks of iOS 7 and iOS 8 . Whether a veteran Mobile App Developer or an end user, here’s everything about iOS Application that you should pay heed to .

iPhone lets you do so many things so easily and quickly accompanied with its amazing Camera , the Retina Display and longer Battery life that no wonder iPhone users truly love their iPhone.  

iPhone is so easy to use, Innovative features like Siri and FaceTime plus built-in apps make iPhone not just useful for everyone but also fun to explore and operate. iOS updates download right on your iPhone, so the latest iOS version is only just a tap away. Also iOS features are designed to work perfectly with iPhone features like the Retina display, gyroscope , and accelerometer.

iOS is also the platform for over 900,000 apps that let your favourite iPhone do even more. With the availability of its seventh update, iOS 7 is now ticking inside over 300 million devices worldwide.

iOS 7 gives you more features to make the things you do everyday even more better. Its free and easy to upgrade wirelessly on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Since there are about 500 million iGadgets, those running on iOS 7 account for 60% of the entire flock .                                                                                                                                  

After the release of iOS 7 in June 10th 2013, the iPhone market grew at a very rapid pace providing some amazing features and facilitation to the developers for developing apps. iOS 7 adoption climbed to 87% in the months prior to iOS 8 Release.  iOS 7 comes with a new user interface with flatter and simpler style and is visually different from usual iOS versions .

Some amazing Features of iOS 7 are just a click away -

• Multitasking -  iOS 7 includes an updated task manager to show the app preview before hand. It includes intelligent scheduling to periodically update the app based on how frequently the app is used.
• Safari  -  Enhanced safari allows to show a preview of the webpage as user is switching between them. It also includes new bookmarks menu that contains shared links from people you follow on social media.
• Camera  -  It contains photo filters and a redesigned photo app that organizes photos automatically into moments with respect to date and location .
• Improved Siri  -  The Siri was improved to include the ability to make reservations in restaurants, launch apps, dictate Facebook or Twitter updates and retrieve movie reviews. This feature was added in iOS 6. With iOS 7 update siri can now have more access to Wikipedia , Twitter and Bing Search engines.
• AirDrop  -  With this feature you can share data and pictures with nearby people . It supports share sheet and is available on recent devices like iPad Mini, IPhone 5 and iPod Touch.
• ITunes Radio  -  Its a streaming music service quite similar to Pandora , it features radio stations based on an genre. It enables browsing Radio history and buying music directly from the app and adding to your iTunes wish list.
• The folders now support saving multiple pages in a single folder.  All  purchased videos and audios  shows  up even if they are not on your device.

The Apple iOS 7 has brought big changes to the mobile platform including scores of enhanced functionalities and features . This update has provided mobile developers with over 1500 new APIs  to work with .

Pros of iOS 7 include -

• This update brought with it major changes targeting especially mobile developers in order to ease out or simplify the entire process of Mobile app development.  It helps developers to become more creative and productive with their apps .
• The look and feel of UI has undergone a massive change making it look more modern and contemporary. The new version uses transparency , layering and blur to add illusion of depth. Now app designers can experiment more with textures and colors making better elegant icons compared to previous versions .
• It offers several toolkits to designers to build more powerful apps even faster than before which will also prove to be beneficial to end users.
• iOS 7 comes with a powerful multi tasking abilities with its processor performance making the apps more efficient as they can still function in background even when inactive without effecting the system performance.
• It offers better iCloud facilities with Airdrop and improvised control of GUI handling and much powerful rendering of graphics with enhanced OpenGL functionality.
• The upgrade includes support to all major social platforms which is a boon to end users , app developers , mobile marketers and businesses as a whole . It also includes peer to peer SDK  to wirelessly exchange data via an exclusive framework.

But as there is two sides to a coin, even iOS 7 Suffers from few drawbacks and challenges which demands equal attention :

• Making a Transition was never easy though. The biggest challenge for developers  is to make the iOS 7 app backward compatible to older iOS versions. Not all users feel the excitement and same urge to make a transition immediately , so developers have to design apps in such a way that it retains their existing customer base while also keeping a step with the latest moves in mobile evolution.
• Several APIs are yet in process of being documented with many notable changes in between releases creating complications and much of a challenge to developers.
• The UI kit included in iOS 7 SDK is much different from its previous versions which can result in some UI elements looking worse or not rendering well enough on the device. Buggy apps that crashes frequently is also a downside as it discourages users from using them .
• iOS 7 apps though compatible with iphone 4 runs slowly on those devices and older iphones and ipods users are generally unwilling to upgrade themselves to latest models , so if developers develop targeted apps for updated versions they may end up losing their existing customer base.

Apple has recently taken the wraps off its 8th and latest version iOS 8 of Mobile Operating System in June 2014 in San Francisco .

This new operating system is not the complete overhaul as with iOS 7 rather it builds on iOS 7 . It comprises newer features like health monitoring technology, new family sharing functions for iTunes , video messaging and much more.

Let’s highlight some notable features of iOS 8 :-

• Its the 8th major release of iOS mobile operating system designed by Apple on June 2 2014 .
• Messaging in iOS 8 is more fun, there are many surprising features that comes with it. It enables sending audio and video messages by holding the record button.
• New photo app and new iCloud Photo Library.
• UI designs are same as that of iOS 7 with few changes like more transparency and faster animations .
• Multitasking is  even more improved to show favourite contacts and recently added lists.
• For the first time since the first iphone, keyboard has witnessed the biggest change as third party keyboards will now be available and you can even tap to choose perfect suggestions for the next word.
• Family sharing is a commendable change that comes up with this version. Now up to six people in your family can share purchases from iBooks, iTunes and App store without sharing accounts.
• Now you can store all your data i.e spreadsheets, presentations, images and PDF’s in iCloud and can access them anytime anywhere from your iPhone, iPad, Mac ,iPod Touch etc.
• HealthKit a new tool for developers allows health and fitness apps to work together and provide a dashboard for your health-fitness data .
• Another notable feature includes sharing e-mails and websites through Wi-Fi , it also allows replying to text and calls from their iphone on their Mac or ipad.
• Spotlight : It provides suggestions and ideas from Wikipedia entries of trending news and nearby places after recognizing the location.
• Touch ID :  Now no need to enter password for using third party apps . You can use touch Id i.e your fingerprints to access your data.

With this trending market of iphones and iOS 8 , there are extensive features that iphone developers should get accustomed with before developing their apps.  iOS 8 with its advanced features provides assistance to developers while making mobile apps for iphone and ipad.

 To discuss how we can help you in your projects, please contact with our team at info@oodlestechnologies.com  , skype : oodles.tech or Visit : http://www.oodlestechnologies.com

Everything about Video On Demand

Video on Demand is a dynamic feature offered by IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) . VoD is customer driven video service where video data is transmitted through Real-Time Streaming Protocol.  It enables users to select and view video content of their choice from a list of available videos . It allows them to request immediate access to video content on PC’s or TV’s  featuring videos from a wide selection including educational programs and remote learning facilities , weather forecast and local news, home shopping ,sports, games , films and music.

Generally television is on broadcast technology while VoD is provided as unicast transmission and is often used for videoconferencing. Internet Television , using the internet is an increasingly popular form of video on demand .

What is Video On Demand (VoD) ?

Video on Demand is a digital feature cable that allows to rent programs and movies from the comfort of your home with the functionality of pause , fast-forward and rewind just similar to a DVD player . Charges are applied to these videos via regular VoD menu .

VoD is a great way to eliminate the need to visit video stores to buy or rent movies , it was originally introduced in 1990 in Hong Kong and ever since became the part and parcel of most cable and network systems. A type of pay per view system, it has both streaming and downloadable video on demand systems . Streaming system allows viewers to watch as the video is being downloaded to a system while in downloadable a user can only start viewing after it is fully downloaded to a set top box .

VoD has all the functionality of a DVD, companies permit to watch a movie for a certain period of time so viewers can download it and watch whenever they choose on their digital video recorder (personal video recorder) or portable media player.

Viewers can not only watch films and television programs but also music, reality television and music. Some VoD providers as part of their package even offer free access to already shown programs .

At consumer level the interactive TV technology that allows real time subscription to videos comprises of  a standard TV receiver with a STB (set top box) . The service can alternatively be delivered via internet to home computers , high-end cellular telephones sets and advanced digital media devices .

Previously VoD suffered from lack of available network bandwidth leading to bottlenecks and huge download pauses and delays . It works well over wide geographic region or on a satellite based network when there is a modest demand but when there is a pool of consumer demand for multiple programs then the data can overwhelm network resources . It can be mitigated by storing programs on geographically distributed servers and by providing programs on request to local users , this technology is called store and forward . It improves the overall reliability of system with use of single gigantic repository. With store and forward local providers can maintain their systems and billing structures independently .

Few airlines offers VoD facility to the passengers via video screens embedded in seats back or arm rests with portable media players offering specific stored audio and videos to play with fast forward, rewind and pause functionality .

Some forms of Video on demand includes SVOD i.e subscription on demand that has services such as Netflix which requires the user to pay a monthly fee to access a bundled set of content , another service being AVOD i.e advertising video on demand is free for users and this platform sells advertisements for generating its main revenue stream .

How Video On Demand Works ?

Video on Demand gives the system a realisation of a video rental shop brought into home . The key components of a VoD service includes a VIDEO SERVER that stores and provides program access , the Data Delivery NETWORK that interconnects the subscriber and STB (Set Top Box) which is an interface between home TV equipment and the VoD services.

Pre-recorded videos are digitally stored on video server and are then transmitted in compressed coded format , the videos then are decompressed and decoded by set top converters in individual homes as they are ordered via dual remote control or by interactive voice response. The picture quality matches to standard VHS .

Viewers can call on a lot of functions while watching videos , all this is processed by the set top box and are sent to the local server , the server then processes the request if feasible at that time otherwise relays it to a video archive server in much of a hierarchy system.

The compressed audios and videos are stored on hard disk and can be advertised on network, depending on available bandwidth multiple archive servers can simultaneously  run over the network .

When a movie is requested by a subscriber from VoD , the end result is a compressed digital stream of bits which is transmitted from the video server to the STB which decodes it to the analog mode and finally displays it on TV directly or by modulating on RF channel which links both(tv to set top box).

                      

The VoD steps can be quickly summarised as  -  

1.     The digitized video is compressed and distributed to video server.

2.     The video information is added to both management system and to the list of     

       movies from where the selection is made .

3.     Allocating resources for delivery and setting up protection scheme to allow only  

       that particular subscriber to view the movie.

4.     Lastly delivering the movie and to pay heed to user commands of pause ,stop,     

       forward  or  rewind.

Apart from sending video to the server there are other elements which has to be accountable for delivery of right video to the right person and a fair bill is generated for the services received.  This process includes  -  

1.    The billing system which is the repository of all financial transactions .

2.    A Controller to direct the server about what action to take and to manage on-demand   

       services.

3.    Another controller to allocate the resources to complete a request and to set path   

      ways from server to customer home channel .

4.    A Management System to keep record of everything that transpires . It is connected  

      to all different elements and checks if billing system has enough credit to play a

      requested movie and ask the network controller for desired bandwidth and to set the

      path for optimum delivery .

      

It takes a while to verify the status of an account and once its done the services are launched, if customer is not entitled to service due to overdue bills or credit limits the services are stopped .  

Video Server  -     

The main task of a Video Server is to deliver isochronous compressed video to correct port , the one connected to the downstream modulator and to address that video stream for customer STB to retrieve and recognize it . Even after delivering video it listens to commands from users . An ideal video server should be able to hold hundreds of terabytes of digital data and should be able to provide simultaneous access to hundreds of real time subscribers .

Set Top Box  -  

STB is a conflicted box which decodes analog channels and digital cable signals . It has a secured and sophisticated decryption hardware and a smart card that contains encrypted data providing access to only authorized customers.

STB’s have secured software that operates on all elements in real time and generates display , handles notifications and to maintain updated schedule informations . Being limited memory few applications have to be loaded on request via high speed path or from a separate channel.

We at Oodles Technologies have extensive experience in Video Transcoding and Video Content Delivery , our developers are skilled in developing Set Top Box applications using NETGEM and ROKU SDK’s .

To discuss how we can help you, please contact with our team at info@oodlestechnologies.com  or skype : oodles.tech

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How To Gain Business Value From Hadoop

Apache Hadoop is the hottest thing in Big Data Technology and is a software framework that allows distributed processing of larger data sets using a simple programming model across clusters of commodity servers  . This open source software platform is managed by Apache Software Foundation and was primarily named after a toy elephant. Its been very helpful in storing and managing vast amounts of data efficiently and cheaply . Hadoop is been designed to scale up from single to thousands of machines each offering local storage and computation unique to Hadoop and subprojects HDFS, MapReduce, Hive , Pig and Hbase .

Wondering what makes Hadoop special ??

The inspiration for hadoop came from Google’s work on MapReduce a programming model for distributed computing that allowed big data to be stored, managed and accessed from multiple servers . Doug Cutting then created Hadoop to manage data which is too big for conventional Databases .

The library has been designed with a high degree of fault tolerance, instead of relying on high-end hardware , the resiliency of clusters comes from its ability to handle failures at application level.

Two important qualities of Apache Hadoop is its Efficiency and Robustness . Big Data application will continue to run even when individual servers/clusters fail and it does not require application to shuttle large volumes of data across network .

If you look deeper than you will realise that Hadoop is also modular means you can swap any of its components for different software tool making the whole architecture flexible , robust and highly efficient.

One of the reasons for Hadoop’s popularity is because companies  like Google, Yahoo. Facebook and Amazon use it on huge data sets . It makes shorter works for larger tasks managing the big data flowing for these online giants. But they aren’t the only ones who can benefit from it, enterprises are also adopting it on larger scales. Technology is being flowing from big internet companies and adapting it for enterprise environment.

                  

How Hadoop Works ?

Unlike traditional applications and hardware architectures Hadoop applications are more like Batch jobs that transforms data from a database into a data warehouse . In general terms hadoop takes chunks of data , perform actions on it and handovers to  another application to utilize and all this takes place at massive scale . This scale is achieved using Distributed Computing i.e larger no. of commodity computers processing the data at the same time . The only way to achieve this type of computing in a quick timeframe is to distribute to thousands of commodity servers . These server nodes are grouped into racks and further into clusters all connected by a high speed network.

Hadoop has Two main Subprojects :-

1.  HDFS (Hadoop Database File System)

This component helps to manage the data, split the data , put it on different nodes and replicate it . HDFS spans all nodes in cluster for data storage and links the file system on local nodes to make them into one big system . It achieves reliability by replicating data across multiple nodes  .

HDFS runs on a cluster of nodes and can handle very large no. of files, it breaks larger files on multiple nodes for efficient storage.

                  

2.  MapReduce

This component understands and assigns work to nodes in cluster . It performs parallel data processing ,progress rate and calculates the result of the job .

Hadoop’s supplemented with an ecosystem of Apache Projects like Pig , Hive and Zookeeper that extends the overall value and improves usability .

A Relational Database is analyzed using queries (SQL) .Non-Relational databases also use queries but are not constrained to SQL and can use other queries to pull information from databases . But hadoop does not involve any queries and is more of a data warehousing system , so it needs a system like Mapreduce to process and analyze its data .

MapReduce provides an efficient and fast way of running queries over big data . Instead of copying a file for querying it runs them on same system on which data is stored , on reducing they are sent back to the user program .

MapReduce runs a series of Job each being a separate Java Application . There are two steps in MapReduce process - Map and Reduce . Suppose you require to count no. of blogs regarding a specific entry lets say Big data and want to count no. of times hadoop , bigdata are mentioned. So first the file will split on HDFS then all nodes will pass through the map computation for their datasets i.e counting the no. of times those words show up . After mapping the node output is a list of key-value pairs , this result is then sent to other nodes as inputs for reduce step. Before commencing the reduce step these key value pairs are shuffled and stored . The reduce step then sums up list into single entries for individual word .

          

3.  Job Tracker

Its one of the important components of Hadoop and is responsible to manage everything stated above . If manually we have to divide terabytes of data and copy it to thousands of computers then the process will take forever to kick job off . So there is  a set of components which automates this step . Entire process is a Job in Hadoop and Job Tracker divides each job into tasks and schedules them to run on nodes. It keeps tracks of all participating nodes , handles failures and monitors the process . Task Tracker reports to the Job tracker and runs tasks. With this arrangement hadoop can distribute jobs on larger number of nodes in parallel .                                  

Hadoop is most widely used system for managing large amounts of data and has surely changed the dynamics and economics of large scale computing .

So lets Boil down some of its powerful capabilities and salient characteristics -

1. Flexibility -

Hadoop can absorb any type of structured or unstructured data and is schema-less . Data from any no. of sources can be aggregated for deeper analysis in arbitrary ways .

2.  Scalability -

New nodes can be easily added without the need to change data formats or how jobs are written or data is loaded etc.  It doesn’t requires data to be changed in a different format like in a traditional data warehouse . Data is not lost in translation process in hadoop . It is a good framework that allows data analysts to choose when and how to perform data analysis.

3. Cost Efficiency -

It offers massive parallel computing which results in sizeable decrease in cost per terabyte of storage  and nodes can be added or removed as per project demands . This ability is driving organization to harness more data for projects which previously never made any business sense .

4.  Complex Data Analysis -

Hadoop considers complex and diverse data like images , videos , text , real-time feeds, devices, scientific sensors etc . While it is often used for petabytes of data many organization perform processing on terabytes scale , hadoop with its mapreduce framework can abstract the complexity of distributed parallel processing across multiple nodes providing huge benefits of scaling .

5.  Fault Tolerance  -

It is highly robust , it will continue to run even when clusters fail and even you lose a node the system redirects work onto another location without posing a break in processing .

Some important sectors where its powerful features can be leveraged include -

1.  Social Media Data   -   With hadoop you can mine social media data and conversions for real time and make respective decisions to increase market share . Its been used used to track media consumption and engagement , advertising, customer retention as well as operations . The Video gaming industry is one of the huge users of it to analyze performance and tracking during gameplay .

2 .  Clickstream Data   -   It can help a lot with customer segmentation making it easier to  visualize and understand how visitors behave on your website . This clickstream data can be used to help with conversions and to reduce bounces .

3 .  Server Log Data   -   Hadoop provides a low cost platform to analyze server logs by speeding and improving security forensics  .  With hadoop its easy to store , identify and refine patterns providing insights to ease out business decision process .

4 .  Financial & Automotive Industry   -   Financial sector uses Hadoop to analyze big scale investments and to make better financial decisions . In Automotive industry its been used to identify issues of travelling arrangements , lower maintenance costs, avoid collisions etc.

Hadoop’s biggest advantage is its speed , it is capable to generate comprehensive reports which would have otherwise taken weeks . Its possibilities in enterprises are endless and that’s why it will still remain the big elephant in Big Data room for some more time.

To discuss how we can help you, please contact with our team at info@oodlestechnologies.com  or skype : oodles.tech

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