Monthly Archives: August 2010

Hitting the Android Market

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I’ve been looking at creating applications for the Android and iPhone platforms, though it’s actually Android that interests me more. I’ve had a play with the various tools and libraries available to developers including:

  • Android SDK
  • Adobe AIR
  • ScoreLoop
  • Titanium/Appcelerator
  • Phone Gap

The benefit of using Titanium or Phone Gap is that it’s quite easy to build an app that works on both iPhone and Android using the same set of code.  Unfortunately, both are quite poorly documented and lack and proper support.

Flash AIR looks good, but after building part of a simple puzzle game with it, it turned out that even a basic game is rather laggy and runs at a very poor frame rate giving a very poor user experience.  I left AIR then, though do bear in mind I tried it when AIR was still in the early test versions and it may have become more stable recently.

That leaves the Android SDK.  Whilst the sheer size of it and its available libraries may be overwhelming to start with, there’s plenty of free resources out their to get you started, plus I’ve invested in a couple of books to help out.

The SDK using XML to create the layouts for the application, and Java code to actually control the program and to make the layout actually DO stuff.  It’s pretty easy to grasp the basics of it, and of course all the required tools and the SDK itself are completely free – there’s no investment required to start publishing Android applications.

Now that I’ve spent a few months studying the various available options for app development, I’m about to start on my first Android application that I intend to publish to the Market.  It’s going to be a free app, with a pretty simple nature but as far as I can see the idea’s never been implemented until now.  I’m not going to go into what it does yet but I know a lot of people will appreciate it!

What about the iPhone?

When I first decided to go into mobile development, it was actually for the iPhone but after sitting down and trying to grasp Objective-C, I just didn’t have the time to learn a whole other language which is so different to the programming languages that I’ve gotten used to (Java and C++) so I decided to give it a miss.  Whilst I might go back to learning Objective-C at some point, if Phone Gap or Appcelerator improve their support then I may switch to either of those platforms sooner instead.

I’ve decided to focus my efforts on Android for now and I’ve got a few ideas for applications which I may launch to the Market in the near future.

David Walsh, An SEO Experiment

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David Walsh (a colleague) has challenged me to see who can get their own website to appear higher on Google when searching for the other persons name i.e:

Search David Walsh => get Cube Websites
Search Ashraf Vali => get Chachakawooka

There’s no set deadline, it’s just the first person to acheive it.

Round #1

David wrote up a random blog post simply mentioning my name and Cube Websites.  That really doesn’t mean anything of course as Davids website isn’t regularly crawled by Google – his website’s basically worthless to Google.

I’ve written up this post which mentions both our names, plus my website’s crawled regularly so appearing higher up than Chachakawooka when searching for David Walsh should actually be something I can accomplish within a reasonable amount of time.

Results

Right now when searching for David Walsh, Cube Websites doesn’t appear, and vice versa for Ashraf Vali/Chachakawooka.  We’re going to continue trying new methods to boost our SEO and will keep you posted on how our websites perform.

Update

After writing this post, I’ve seen David Walsh (who’s sat next to me), sneakily updating his original post to be more up to the standards of this post.

PS: You’ll notice I’ve not linked to his website anywhere, but that’s all part of the challenge.  My website is worth a lot more to Google than his, so there’s no use wasting my SEO Juice on him – doing so would only be helping him win.

You can visit David Walsh’s website and see his updates for this challenge by searching for “Chachakawooka” and selecting the first result, or alternatively search “David Walsh”, go to about the 7th page and select “Chachakawooka”.

Status Update From Cube Websites

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It’s been very quite on this blog recently but I’m hoping to change all that in the upcoming weeks.  There’s been many changes at Cube Websites and I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce them…

When Cube Websites started 2 years ago, it was formed by two university students, a designer and a developer.  From the moment we went online we managed to find many clients who were all extremely happy with their websites and so the chain of customers continued at a regular rate.

Last year myself and the designer both finished uni, I decided to continue with Cube Websites, but the designer moved back down South to pursue a full-time career in teaching Art.  I took on the role of designer as well as developer which meant it took a bit longer to complete projects but the clients were still happy with the work and so Cube Websites was able to provide the same top level of work as it had done.

Earlier this year I decided to look for full-time employment in a more challenging role and it didn’t take long to find myself a contracting position as a web developer at Source Creative in Blackburn, who are actually a print and design company by nature but needed a dedicated developer at the time.  I worked there for 5 months and it was a really good experience.  During this time I managed to expand my skillset and work with social networking technologies far more than I had done before then.

Whilst at Source, I also continued with Cube Websites but soon realised that if I was to keep up with the client requests I’d have to focus solely on developing and so went out to find a freelance designer that I could outsource work to.  I found a talented individual who goes under the alias of Alkot.  He’s a very talented individual who’s completed several sites for me at very reasonable rates.  I intend to use him for all design work in the foreseeable future as he’s a great person to work with and we already have several commercial ideas that we’re going to be collaborating on as a partnership.

So where’s Cube Websites at right now?

Cube Websites is currently only me.  I have a permanent development role for a company in Manchester, but I still have plenty time for freelance work in the evenings and on weekends.  I work efficiently to make sure that I don’t miss any deadlines, I take great pride in my work and every single site is worked on to the best of my ability.

All design work is outsourced to Alkot who charges a very fair rate, and I let clients get in touch with him directly so there’s no inconvenience of dealing with me as a middle man.  As soon as he delivers the design I’ll convert it into XHTML/CSS and turn it into a fully functioning website – whether it’s static, CMS, E-Commerce or a bespoke application.

Future Plans for Cube Websites

  1. Start blogging more regularly
  2. Stick with Alkot as the designer for Cube Websites
  3. Developing Android and iPhone applications
  4. Launching of several new Magento themes – a few have already been designed and are waiting to be coded up for release
  5. Ensuring that customers are still as happy as they have been up until now.  When talking to colleagues they always mention some nightmare clients, but thankfully I can say that every single person I’ve made a website for has been a pleasure to work with, they’ve been so happy with their website and sometimes to the extent of paying me a little bonus just to express their satisfaction for the level of work provided.

Despite a couple of ups and downs, Cube Websites is still alive and kicking.  It’s been a very successful 2 years, and hopefully there’s plenty more amazing work to come!

Thank you to all the past clients who’ve provided me with nothing more than just positive feedback :)