Having purchased and immediately returned one Android tablet because it lacked the Android Marketplace I’ve been doing some research into exactly what is available, or will shortly be available, in tablet form. There are a few promising things on the horizon or already here from some relatively big names – Samsung with the Galaxy Tab, Archos with tablets in several sizes, and Toshiba with a 10″ tablet due by the looks of it for Christmas. However there are problems.
Sep
15
My Favourite Android Applications
As an Android user since early 2010 I have a plethora of applications installed, and each month a few more of my friends acquire an Android phone of their own. So of course we get chatting about the various applications I am using and I end up sending them a list. From now on however I’m going to direct them to this blog post that will catalogue my main recommendations. I’ve split the applications into sensible categories and added some relevant notes.
Sep
11
Beware the early Android tablets
Having jumped into Android development and nearing the point where I can start distributing something to friends to test in the wild, I decided to invest in a couple of extra devices for test bench purposes to sit alongside the Nexus One I already have.
The first was an HTC Magic, second hand from eBay. The Magic was released in April 2009, and has a 320×480 pixel screen and a 528MHz processor. So about half as powerful as the Nexus and a screen in the ‘small’ range. I’m picking it up from the post office in the morning. The second was a tablet device and I picked up on my way to work today – it was a complete disaster…
Aug
03
I’ve Given Up my iPhone
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a religious war, a gripe about iOS 4 or the iPhone 4′s relative ability to sustain a phone call. Earlier this year I gave up my iPhone 3G and started using the Google Nexus One. Why? I’d had an iPhone for over 18 months and could upgrade (relatively) cheaply to the iPhone 4 if I’d wanted to.
Jul
30
Welcome to Surfsoft Consulting
Welcome to my blog and the Surfsoft Consulting web site. Feel free to have a look around, read the blog and leave comments. For more information about myself and the company, see the about page.
Sep
15
Thoughts on DHTML and Ajax-enabled Web Sites
My Formula One site Fantasy-F1.Net is currently looking rather tired and dated – it is after all a six year old UI design that was first implemented in Microsoft ASP and then re-written in JSP/Struts when Ajax was a cleaning product. So some months ago I took the decision to completely re-design and implement the user interface using JSF and Ajax.
Jul
24
Java Enterprise Security
An essential non-functional requirement of any system is security. Different categories of users are allowed to perform different functions, and these requirements are satisfied by the two-pronged approach of authentication and authorisation. Authentication is pretty well covered by existing frameworks while authorisation is feasible but less elegant. How can this be improved?
Mar
23
Build Your Software on Firm Foundations…
What makes for a successful software development project? I was mulling over a number of projects I had been involved with in the past, some very successful, some not so, and thinking about the key differences between the two. There are any number of aspects that can be considered – the quality of project management, clearness of requirements, thoroughness of the analysis, quality of execution and technical leadership to name but a few. Here I am going to focus on two key technical aspects, not being a career project manager, and explain why they are both important and also both frequently neglected.
From my experience there are two main aspects to a technically successful software development project, the Software Architecture, and the Software Engineering Process (I am taking it as read that your teams have the basic capabilities to develop software using your chosen technical platform, which in my case is Java).
Jan
15
Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
The SANS Institute has published a list of the top 25 most dangerous programming errors and reading through the list was pretty much like meeting a bunch of old friends. Such lists may seem self evident to some but that doesn’t stop development teams falling into the same traps today that were being fallen into ten, twenty or even thirty years ago.
The first thing that struck me was that the list talks specifically about internet application development. Now some younger commentators have pointed out that ‘all this was covered in my degree’. However for anybody who’s been in work for ten years or more, such courses would not have covered preservation of web page structure or cross-site scripting issues because the internet was so young that it was not an issue. It also got me thinking about the wider issues around coding standards and reviews, and why we are so bad at creating and adhering to standards, performing reviews. In short, development teams are still woefully ineffective at learning from the mistakes of others.
The SANS Institute has published a list of the top 25 most dangerous programming errors and reading through the list was pretty much like meeting a bunch of old friends.