After lots and lots of work we have been unable to achieve the level of ongoing user activity needed to make the WotzEre mobile app viable.

From a development perspective the project provided the opportunity to experiment with cloud based back-end servers that can scale, unfortunately the only server load we really generated were visits from the Googlebot when we added an extremely large external data feed.

In hind sight many problems are very simple to avoid.

I’d like to share this tip so that you might not get caught out as easily as we did.

Check the expiry dates of your SSL certificates and diarise a reminder for their renewal a few days before expiry. EVEN IF YOU HAVE THEM SET FOR AUTOMATIC RENEWAL.

Yesterday one of our systems just stopped responding, a backend service that is only accessed by program calls, it took a little while before we tried to connect to it with a browser and were confronted by the certificate issue.

Turns out our provider’s auto renewal process had failed and they had no alert monitoring. The provider follow-up unfortunately lacked the level of urgency expected for a live customer system totally broken, resulting in a 18+ hour outage and no doubt a provider review.

Business apps can have some special data needs.

One we have been working on lately stores a large supplier database on the phone. However the information does change and needs to be updated easily and with no inconvenience to the user.

The first thing this app does after install is load the current database from the client server. From then on a check is made every four hours to ensure the app database is current and updated if need be. The time between checks must of course be configurable and transparent to the user. But what happens if there is no Internet connection? In the short term this isn’t a problem as the app will issue regular reminders that the information must be synced with the backend server. After a period of time (again configurable) the app will no longer operate if the database has not been synced and the local data will be erased. After an extended period the app will remove itself from the user device.

Robust data integrity capabilities like these are common in business applications and demonstrate the value of engaging with a development group who have large scale business experience as well as the skills to work with mobile platforms.

As a business, when you develop and deploy information to the mobile world there are a multitude of things to be considered.

You have a team of really talented and technical IT staff that could do the work, but can they really? If your staff are not constantly working in the mobile sphere how relevant are their skill sets, what was covered at University even a year or so back is no longer best practice. The world of mobiles changes almost daily, the pace of development is frenetic in both hardware and software. The mobile platform on which your customers will consume information will have a lifespan of a couple of years at most.

Recently there has been much discussion around developing a mobile web site that can be viewed by any phone with a browser against the overhead of developing multiple programmed applications for the various phone platforms. On the surface the idea of one website seems simple, the reality though is anything but. Every model of phone has a different screen size, optimising for that is non-trivial, added to which are a multitude of mobile browsers all with their own quirks which need testing and catering to.

The technical team at Pocketware provide objective advice on the best technical approach to use depending on the particular business needs and issues such as stability, security and access to individual platform hardware for the wide range of devices and technologies currently available. Recent developments like HTML5 are blurring the boundaries between native apps and websites, an understanding of the pros and cons of these options in addition to the current skill sets to utilise them is critical to your mobile development.

Join in the festivities of the Spring Carnival with a Melbourne Cup sweep app for Androids (2.2 and above).
Download Sweep by Pocketware

This easy to install, simple to use app is free from Pocketware and makes the organizing of the office sweep a breeze!

Key in names and email addresses of sweep participants and let the application assign the horses, assist to keep everyone advised of their entry and keep up with any field changes.

As this is a prototype application it can only be installed by downloading from the link below after first allowing installation of non-Market applications on your Android (please check: Settings / Applications / Unknown sources – clear this field again after the app is installed).

If you have feedback or encounter any issues with the app please let us know in the comments area.

Pocketware was formed in 2011 by a bunch of IT professionals who decided that the standard of apps out there in the marketplace could be a lot better.
The main objective was to have fun but also to apply their years of hard earned development and business technology experience to produce quality apps.