BlackBerry App Build Automation with bb-ant-tools

By Jonni | Published: 2011/10/04

Build automation (continuous integration) for mobile apps isn’t as mature as the “enterprise” world but it’s slowly getting there.

Recently we’ve had a need to automate the build of a reasonably complex BlackBerry app (with preprocessors, optional modules etc) because manual work had been error-prone and painful. We thought that implementing build automation for a BlackBerry app was going to be hard but it turned out easier than expected.

Below are the key pointers:

  1. Use http://bb-ant-tools.sourceforge.net
  2. If you’re a Maven guy like me, the Ant Manual is going to be very helpful
  3. Simple examples to get you started
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Posted in BlackBerry, Java | Leave a comment

Chris Sacca’s Inspiring Story

By Jonni | Published: 2011/09/29

If you’re into startups this is a must see video, where Chris Sacca casually recounts his amazing ups and downs to Kevin Rose: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/07/06/chris-sacca-has-an-inspiring-story-to-tell/

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Bowling Pin Strategy

By Jonni | Published: 2011/09/29

How would you start something like eBay? Would you first convince a bunch of sellers to come to a site that has no buyers? Or the other way around?

What about a social site? No readers, no writers (or sharers). No writers, no readers.

The answer is the “bowling pin strategy”, beautifully described by Chris Dixon on http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/ .

Funnily, yesterday I had to describe this same strategy in two separate occasions to people from completely different background. First was to a recruiter who probably had several roles in mind for me. Unfortunately (for him) I’m in the middle of my own startup and I’m now working with technologies that he didn’t expect. It’s part of the bowling pin strategy, I said to him :-)

The second occasion was when I had to explain to a RIM representative why the BlackBerry app we submitted to the BlackBerry Australian Developer Challenge is not yet targeted at Australian users. It’s the same bowling pin strategy. Australians are too much in love with iPhone so we initially target a market where BlackBerry is seen as the best. Simple!

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Posted in BlackBerry, Startup | Leave a comment

Ten Tips from Atlassian Co-Founder

By Jonni | Published: 2011/09/23

Mind you some of the tips are only practical once you’re out of the garage mode i.e once you have spare time and cash to burn. Other than that it’s a pretty nice set of ideas.

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/09/from-0-100million-with-no-sales-people-the-atlassian-10-commandments-for-startups.html

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What is Premature Scaling? Why is It Bad for Startups?

By Jonni | Published: 2011/09/04

A very nice write up on premature scaling from the Startup Genome project.  The article also provides example startups that fail a particular dimension, it even cites Groupon as failing in the Business Model dimension. A bit premature to be using Groupon as an example? (Pardon the pun)

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Posted in Startup | 1 Comment

Self-Contained File Upload Webapp

By Jonni | Published: 2011/07/25

If you run your own server and seek a simple web interface to upload files to your server here’s an easy-to-install web app: http://www.pipasoft.com/filenabber/

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Posted in Java, Web | Leave a comment

Anatomy of the Mobile Market

By Jonni | Published: 2011/07/24

This infographic puts many things in perspective. For example, everyone claims that Nokia and RIM are finished. Right, except that their combined market share worldwide is still a staggering 70%!

Edit: Related article about China being the second large iPhone app market

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Posted in Android, BlackBerry, iPhone | Leave a comment

How to Fix A BlackBerry Device That Keeps Restarting

By Jonni | Published: 2011/07/24

In my experience this is usually caused by a misbehaving application. To fix it:

  1. Start the phone in Safe Mode
  2. Remove the offending app
  3. Restart the phone normally
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Posted in BlackBerry | Leave a comment

Twitter Library for Java

By Jonni | Published: 2011/07/05

For many websites and bloggers social networks are the biggest source of incoming traffic, beating Google (OK, beating search engines). Whilst it’s easy to see the value of embracing social networks, it’s not straightforward to actually do it. The biggest problem stems from poor documentation. I don’t mind making low level HTTP connections, but I don’t enjoy reading incoherent documentation.

Which is why those who provide easy-to-understand wrapper libraries are a hero. We use Twitter4J for http://www.thecrowdvoice.com/ and you should too, if you ever need a library for the Java platform.

Update: …and of course if you’re looking to shorten URLs in tweets, bitlyj is a very easy-to-use library. After my struggles integrating with various APIs I was bracing for a tough time and to my pleasant surprise making bitlyj work took no time at all.

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Posted in Java | Leave a comment

Excellent Resources for Startups

By Jonni | Published: 2011/05/27

http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/

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