I’m deeply entrenched in learning Objective-C at the moment due to my overwhelming obsession to create an iPhone application. However, within the past couple of months I’ve taken note of some interesting tools that rely heavily on JavaScript and HTML to allow developers (particularly web) to create mobile phone applications without knowing anything about Objective-C.

Today as I discovered an open source development tool called “PhoneGap” which allows a developer with JavaScript and HTML knowledge to build a mobile application.

From the PhoneGap site:

If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you.

Take note that not only is this an iPhone development tool, but also Android and Blackberry.

The other is tool is called “Atlas” and it’s a development environment which is powered by Cappuccino and built on top of standard web technologies like JavaScript.

These technologies are amazing, but they say something more profoundly important in that web developers realize that the future is on the mobile platform and they need to be there to stay relevant.  Thankfully they’ve decided to share these tools!

BBtv has a good episode on very simple Iphone Jailbreaking.  Damien Stolarz says “It started out very complicated, but these days uh… if you’ve ever heard of a script kiddie, uh… hacking your iphone has gotten to script kiddie simplicity”

It turns out that with the click of a mouse using an application on a computer you have connected your iphone to you too can unlock your iphone.  The application you’ll need is called iLiberty+

This morning Adobe opened their beta for Acrobat.com which essentially offers a word processor “buzzword”, some file storage options, and they are integrating all of this into a Flash player environment.  If you already have an Adobe account you’re already signed up for the beta, you just need to log in at www.acrobat.com

The interface is pretty slick, as everything is in a Flash player interface.  There is a six page document explaining the buzzword processor to help you get up to speed quickly, interestingly you can edit the documentation which is a nice way to learn more about the tools as you’ll find a variety of elements such as hyperlinks, images, form elements (such as check boxes), tables, etc…

As I navigate the buzzword processor I feel like the Flash interface isn’t as snappy as something that might be written in C++, I wish I could disable the animation of the tools, such as fly-outs and fades… they just add to the time it takes when trying to work efficiently.

There is a “meet” feature which allows you to conduct online meetings to collaborate with others, the feature uses AdobeConnect for its functionality.  Upone clicking the “meet” button your provided with a URL which is what users need in order to get to your “meeting room”.  In your meeting room you can share a web-cam, computer screen, and microphone.  There’s also “pods” which can be enabled adding functionality for chat, whiteboards, etc…

The biggest reason Adobe built and is releasing Acrobat.com into beta is to get people excited for Acrobat 9 when it ships, this online product (acrobat.com) will provide additional support for Acrobat 9 when it ships.

Acrobat.com feels semi-finished, but when Acrobat 9 ships it will feel a whole lot more useful.

I’m impressed by this little device called the Yubikey which is the creation of a company called Yubico.  The Yubikey is a tiny form factor USB authentication device which produces a one time password for authentication purposes.  Essentially the Yubikey acts like a keyboard and auto enters passwords which are 32 characters in length (8 characters never change) so in layman’s terms this gives you a 32 characters password which is always different each time you use the Yubikey! (hence the one time pass key).

It should be noted also that you’ll need to authenticate with a Yubikey server.  You can build your own in-house server using Yubico’s basic SDK, click here for more info, or you can authenticate with Yubico’s own server using their API.

There is sure to be more Yubikey authenticating servers as support increases.

The Yubikey is around $44.00

If you program in any computer language you’ll soon realize that debugging can be a real drag.  I was  reading a techcrunch today and noticed an interesting debugging tool called TuneUp which was just launched by a start up called FiveRuns.  This is any interesting debugging tool for two reasons.  One if automatically reports on your complete rails configuration along with path of your request (something that is tedious if posting to multiple forums).  The second thing that TuneUp does is it allows other developers and community members to help debug your application, it essentially creates a “social network” of helpers.

I’m going to give this a try on some of the rails apps I’m developing to see how it improves my work flow.  There is a short demo video below:

FiveRuns TuneUp Screencast from Josh Dilworth on Vimeo.

Yes, I know your probably thinking “your just signing up now!”.  Your right it took me a while, but now I have a twitter account.  You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/wbullockiii

There’s been a ton of buzz around the recently announced Google App Engine. Various blogs have covered it including TechCrunch for which I’m a huge fan. One article talks about the experience of developing a simple application, while another article talks about the App Engine service specifically.

I’ve taken the time to understand and read about the benefits of using App Engine. There are a lot of benefits for start ups and those not wanted to manage the servers that would need to power the applications they build. It turns out that there are also some potential problems that could result from relying too heavily on the solution presented by Google. Some argue that developing a web application for App Engine will tie developers into Googles services too much and present a huge problem when trying to migrate away, which to me is a valid argument. I’m also not crazy about the fact that the only supported language right now is Python. I’m both a PHP and Ruby programmer so at this point I’m not all that interested in developing anything on App Engine, though these languages should be included soon I would guess.

The obvious competitor to App Engine is Amazon’s offerings which include EC2 and S3 specifically. At this point I’m actually a bigger fan of EC2 and S3 simply because they aren’t as tightly integrated into the overall service offering such as App Engine is, and the problem of migrating an application away from Amazon’s technology isn’t as much.

There is a YouTube video in which a Google engineer demonstrates using the new App Engine to build a simple Python based web app in around 10 minutes.

The pie chart shows what seems to be the top 10 most popular ways to tweet according to ReadWriteWeb.com.

Every time the New York based company Aviary releases another new web tool to their already impressive line I’m even more impressed. Unfortunately all of their applications are currently in private beta so I haven’t been able to play with them directly but the video demos are impressive (I’ve already requested access 3 times to the private beta, still not in).

Just today Aviary has released a video demo of a tool in private beta called “Dodo“. I grinned when I watched the demo because I was taken back at how powerful Dodo seems to be. You upload an image and Dodo acts like a time machine and gives you a peek at what something or someone might look like at that time in the future or past. Interestingly Aviary is spinning the product as a possible tool for a lot of other uses besides fun including “tracking down long missing children”.

Dodo can be run through a browser as you would expect as a web app or as Adobe Air desktop application. I’m excited that companies are utilizing Air more and more, the traditional methods of software distribution are starting to fade.

Steve Gibson from Gibson Research Corporation ran several benchmark tests against TrueCrypt 5 and has a theory that Windows might actually run faster with whole disk encryption than without. Recently on Security Now episode #133 Steve explains to Leo Laporte what he did, here is an excerpt from the podcast:

Steve: I don’t know. It’s like, okay. So I wrote a little batch file using that EndTimer tool and the Windows defrag and Vopt and Windows defrag. I ran those three in sequence. With no encryption, Windows defrag took 8 minutes and 35.765 seconds. Vopt took 4 minutes and 31.046 seconds. And then a final Windows defrag took 1 minute, 54.765 seconds. Okay, so just look at the first number, 8 minutes and 35 seconds. I did it; I did it again. That is, I restored the image, ran the script again, and it was 9 minutes and 1 second. So, you know, about 8 minutes and 45 seconds on average. And the difference are just we’re doing a lot of head-seeking. And so where the disk’s rotation happens to be is going to affect timing a little bit.

Steve: Okay. So it’s like, okay. So I’m seeing, like, 8.5 to 9 minutes to do the first defrag of a very well-fragged image. And this is the image where I went from Service Pack 2 and applied those 95 patches and rebooted a whole bunch of times. So, I mean, it mangled up the drive, so it was nicely fragged. Okay, then I restored that image, the superfragged image. And I encrypted it. Then I ran the defragger in the encrypted system. The first time it took 6 minutes and 13.531 seconds, down from 8.5 or 9.

Leo questions how this could be true… Steve offers up his explanation:

Leo: So do you have a theory for why this is doing that?

Leo: That’s just amazing. And great. I love it.