New to maps and would like to make a map from scratch. Can Mapbox do this for mobile applications? If not, is there another tool that would work?
Here is a list of the requirements:
Map must work on mobile devices running iOS and Android.
Map is on local device and can't require a server connection.
Map is semi-fictional. Represents a real place but not to any standard or consistent scale (ex. London Underground Map)
Support multiple zoom levels.
Show inside of multi-story buildings when zoomed.
Allow paths and points to be defined.
Soft requirements:
Small memory footprint
Well supported and stable platform
Nice to have
Uses open standards.
Free to use.
Thx
Okay - so assuming that unscaled means non-georeferenced, yes: you can use your image as a source in TileMill, export to MBTiles, and use the result in the Mapbox iOS SDK and Mapbox Android SDK offline.
Related
I am trying to build a web application that can capture audio and video from a web cam and upload it to our server. The solution should work with both Windows and Mac. Supporting mobile devices would be a plus, but is not required. My boss would prefer if the platform/framework was from Microsoft.
My initial impulse was to start looking into SilverLight... Interestingly, there were plenty of demos showing how to capture video and display it to the user, followed by many comments suggesting that for the application to be useful we need some way to save/upload the video, followed by the original poster saying that of COURSE it's possible and easy and that he is working on an updated demo that does just that, followed by silence. As far as I can tell SilverLight will not record video.
I already have a component that can record video in a winforms application using DirectShow, but the goal is to build something that is cross-platform so that our program will work for Mac users as well as Windows users. A desktop application is not out of the question, but we would much prefer to stick to a web page.
I am aware that Flash can record video from within a browser, but the higher ups would prefer to avoid flash. Is there any other way to record video captured from a user's webcam from within a web browser?
To build a cross-platform solution you shall consider either one of :
VLCj
Xuggler
JMF
I have been working lately with VLCj.
I am aware that Flash can record video from within a browser, but the higher ups would prefer to avoid flash. Is there any other way to record video captured from a user's webcam from within a web browser?
Unfortunately on the desktop there is no other production ready way to record video in a web page except a Flash client linked to a media server like Red5 or Wowza. The Flash client captures and encodes the video and audio and the media server stores the encoded data in .flv or .f4v/.mp4 files.
On mobile you could use HTML Media Capture which, for recording video, is widely supported on all mobile browsers. The downside is that you'd end up with .mov files from iOS and .mp4 and .3gp files from Android devices. The .mov and .3gp files need to be transcoded before they can be used on other platforms.
Quick commercial solutions that implement the above include HDFVR (downloadable) and Pipe (cloud video recording).
Is there a good solution for A|B Testing in mobile apps like online? I know with iOS it's against the TOS to have different user experiences with identical actions, but what about Android? And what about firms like Apsalar which claim to offer A|B Testing in their analytics for apps? How would one implement that?
Artisan mobile makes an A/B testing solution for iOS and Android.
The basic idea is that you drop the SDK in your app and then put it out in the app store. You can use the service to create A/B tests and optimize your application without having to touch the code or go back through the app store for each test.
For mobile apps, A/B testing basically works by replacing static, hard-coded objects with dynamic objects that can be controlled from a remote server.
This methodology raises a potential performance issue: What if the end user's device is not connected to pull configuration data for an object being tested? We've built Splitforce (http://splitforce.com) to seamlessly setup and manage A/B testing in mobile apps while controlling for performance risk.
Los details
Once the SDK and experiment has been integrated, non-technical product or marketing folks can setup new tests or tweak existing tests on-the-fly - without having to resubmit to the app stores or hassle engineers.
On first app launch, the mobile app requests configuration data from the server and then caches that data locally on the device. This is to both ensure a consistent user experience on subsequent app launches, and prevent corrupt test results by guaranteeing accurate attribution of conversion events to variations.
If the end user's connection fails or is timed-out on first app launch, the library displays a hard-coded 'default' variation. And to make sure that everything is looking good before you go live, we've built a 'shake to preview' functionality in debug mode that does just that :-)
Once the app is deployed with Splitforce event data are stored locally and sent back to the website to be displayed for each variation alongside measurements of observed improvement and statistical confidence.
Instructions on integration of the SDKs and new tests can be found at https://splitforce.com/documentation.
And how is it used?
We've seen Splitforce used to A/B test:
UI elements + layouts (color, text, images, ad/menu placements)
UX workflows
Game dynamics + rules
Prices + promotions
We've also seen the tool used to control mobile apps remotely, by essentially setting one variation of a test subject to 100%.
Yes there is: E.g. the company Leanplum offers a Visual Interface Editor for iOS and Android: This requires no coding, and Leanplum will automatically detect the elements and allow you to change them. No engineers or app store resubmissions required.
Apple must have updated their TOS (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#user-interface) - At least I am not aware of anything that prohibits altering the UI in a way that the Leanplum Visual Editor is doing it.
Generally that is achieved by method swizzling (iOS) and reflection (Android).
To learn more about the Leanplum Visual Interface Editor, check out leanplum.com. They offer a free 30-day trial.
(Disclaimer: I am an Engineer at Leanplum.)
I wrote a small open source project called Switchboard.
It let's you A/B test, remote configure and stage rollout things in your native mobile app. It contains a server component that specifies what information the application should have and 2 native clients for android and iOS.
You can find the codebase at github.com/keepsafe/switchboard and a blog post about how you can use it HERE
The new kid around the block is Arise.io. They provide an A/B testing service for iOS and Android.
I wrote MSActiveConfig, an extremely flexible framework to do remote configuration + A/B testing on iOS, with a portable format to be able to implement clients on other platforms: https://github.com/mindsnacks/MSActiveConfig.
This framework is being used in applications with more than 5 million users.
There have been a spate of new entrants in this field...you could check out Swerve, Appiterate, leanplum...all of them seem to be having SDKs for iOS as well, not really sure whether and how Apple TOS allows for that, but since there are some many of them doing it, there must be a way.
Yes, new entrants are showing up in app A/B testing practically every week! But, I think Appiterate has gone two steps ahead of other competitors by creating a visual interface, without any need to re-write code. I have seen their platform (you can ask for an invite. I got a demo within 12 hours) and believe me, it is actual WYSIWYG that they are providing.
I would like to start developing mobile-friendly versions of websites for my clients, however, I am baffled with options and google search wasn't very helpful - there is so many options and opinions, I've been reading for few days now and still have no idea how to start.
What's your opinion/experience about/with it?
My main points:
mobile devices supported (in order of relevance): iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G, Blackberry, Droid powered mobiles, other
phone friendly numbers, phone friendly emails
contact/register form working on each (or the most possible) devices listed
jQTouch seems superb (simple, quick, working), I'm not sure about it on blackberry/droid and I don't want to create 6 web versions for each mobile device - Makes even less sense if you consider, that I'm starting with small web (6-10 pages, 1 contact form, 3 register forms) to play with.
Thank you
my 2c;
the best approach is the one we use on the web as we know it; cross-browser development.
use (basic) html & css to start with (ensuring you'll reach as many handsets as possible) & progressively enhance by adding more complex stuff (javascript & more specific css) for more advanced devices.
jqtouch (which has to be combined with jquery if i'm not mistaking) is swell, but very much iphone-centric (some of the nifty css-stuff doesn't work anywhere else). a (slightly) more cross-platform js-framework is the jquery-like xui.
once you have something up and running, testing it on mobi.ready might be a good idea.
Have you heard of NetBiscuits?
http://www.netbiscuits.com/
Check out the mobiforge site, which is run by dotMobi. They have a very powerful tool called ready.mobi which you can use to get a health check on your mobile site. The results give advice on what you need to do to improve your site, so getting a really well optimised site is simply a case of testing and taking note of the recommendations. Mine now get 5/5 scores as a result of using it and work really well on any device, including many I never really tested it under. I can't recommend it enough.
Mobile Devices: See QuirksMode.org for charts, tutorials, and more to get your pages working on multiple mobile browsers. (Blackberry might be the hardest on your list)
Phone friendly links: Not sure why this would be difficult, as far as I am aware, all mobile browsers/OS's support the same mailto: protocol that desktops use. Most phones also support tel: so you can have links like:
Call Me
The only issue there is desktop computers generally don't have a way to handle that standard despite being able to link with Bluetooth phones. (Feature request for those in OS development)
Contact/Register Forms: Again, most mobile browser support basic form elements out of the box, the key here is more user experience. Anything you can do to reduce the amount of data entry will lead to more users filling out the form. (Remember the user's session info for a long time, they will go back to the page after they finish the 2 hour call from their mother)
I'd suggest going with a responsive framework like zurb or bootstrap. If you stick with what the frameworks have, you can have one codebase of the site that works in mobile browsers also.
I am developing an ASP.NET intranet application that needs to have an interactive map interface.
There are some pretty neat Silverlight mapping plugins that I think could work well, specifically:
ArcGIS Silverlight API: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/silverlight/
DeepEarth mapping framework: http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth
There are no doubt many more plugins out there that will allow easy interaction between ASP.NET and the mapping interface (please suggest some if I've missed the major players).
My major concern however is using these tools with local data sources. What is the best option here? All I need is some basic satellite imagery of moderate resolution and some overlays of cities and country borders. Can I download a dataset of these images? I dont really care if they are up to date or not, so long as the photos were taken in the last 20 years.
I want to be able to use local data sources because external internet connections could be very slow due to the nature of the organisation's work, Intranet communication will always be much faster.
To summarise:
1.) where can I find a dataset of moderate quality global satellite imagery?
2.) Which web based mapping plugin will allow me to plug into such a data source?
If I can get something like the DeepEarth demo (http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth) but grabbing the data from internal company servers I would be very happy.
You can check out the free geodata listing at:
- http://www.freegis.org/database/?cat=1
Or have a look at:
http://downloads.cloudmade.com/
where cloudmade provides downloadable openstreetmap data converted to shape files.
I'm building a little play project and I'd like to use satellite images of a town inside deepzoom, what's the easiest way to get them? I'm sure there's a MUCH better way than PrtScn, I've tried google maps downloader but it doesn't download satellite images and it's company don't seem to be offering it anymore.
Take a look at Deep Earth, unless what you're trying to build is what deep earth give you - in which case it may remove all the fun ;)
http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth
If you want to go your own way, then it used to be that you could just manually request the various image tiles directly from the MS Virtual Earth server hosting them, if you could calculate the quad keys and build the correct URL, thus bypassing their payment model. Whilst I know they were looking to cut out this loop hole, that's certainly what early versions of Deep Earth did.
Microsoft Virtual Earth has SOAP and AJAX-based services that you can use in your application. The service has a Staging and Production version. Using the Staging version is free, and could easily serve the needs of a "play project." The Production version costs money and can serve info to a large application with many users.
http://dev.live.com/VirtualEarth/
However there is some registration required to get working with the Staging sdk. You can get started here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc980844.aspx