WidgetPad Introduces Web-based Open-Source Development Environment for iPhone Widgets

WidgetPad Inc., a provider of collaborative developer environments for hybrid Web-based mobile applications, has announced WidgetPad for iPhone. WidgetPad for iPhone helps developers easily create native applications using standard Web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, and distribute them as stand-alone applications via the Apple iTunes store. WidgetPad is a collaborative, open-source environment that will allow thousands of developers to share source code and learn from each other.

WidgetPad takes the complexity out of creating native applications and eliminates the need to learn platform-specific API sets and tools, by taking advantage of emerging new standards, such as HTML5. Available through the Web via a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, WidgetPad for iPhone allows developers to create fully interactive, media-rich mobile applications. These applications can leverage all of the iPhone’s advanced hardware capabilities (GPS, accelerometer, compass, etc.) by simply accessing WidgetPad.com through standard browsers – Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Some key features of WidgetPad for iPhone include:
- Editing: Source code editing for JavaScript, HTML 5 and CSS (with syntax highlighting)
- Resource management: Uploading of various resources (image, sound, and other JavaScript and CSS files) and project management
- Code Sharing and Forking: Automatic sharing of all public projects
- Secure cross-domain scripting: Easily create mash-up applications with existing Web services accessing Web-service APIs over the domain boundary securely
- Application previewing: Run the application on a PC/Mac browser without the iPhone (Safari compatible)
- Publishing: Developers can choose to publish applications to iPhone either via a generic WidgetPad client (free), or as their own branded applications (free or paid)



WidgetPad Development Environment

Upcoming versions of WidgetPad will allow developers to seamlessly port applications to other smartphone devices such as the Palm Pre and Blackberry. The basic version of WidgetPad for iPhone, which is free, allows developers to distribute their applications to iPhone users via a generic WidgetPad client (also free). The source code of those “public” applications will be automatically shared among other developers (MIT license), creating a great learning and collaborative environment for developers. The premium version of WidgetPad for iPhone, available later this year, allows developers to create “private” projects and distribute stand-alone applications to the Apple iTunes store.

For more information about WidgetPad for iPhone and to instantly start developing hybrid applications for the iPhone, visit www.widgetpad.com.

WidgetPad Inc. is a provider of collaborative developer environments for hybrid Web-based mobile applications. The company’s development environment allows Web developers to easily and cost-effectively create hybrid web applications for smartphones and mobile devices, such as iPhone, Palm Pre and Google’s Android devices. The company was founded by Satoshi Nakajima and Yuichiro Masui. Nakajima is the creator of the world’s first CAD application for the personal computer, and a defining force behind the architecture for Microsoft Windows 95 and the creation of Internet Explorer 3.0. Masui is a contributor of various open source projects, such as PukiWiki, and played a leadership role in building Ruby on Rails community in Japan. WidgetPad is based in Bellevue, Wash.

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Google want to own or organize information

No doubt that Google decision to acquire Zagat gives its local business strategy a nice boost.

But it's not without some tension. Google, which likes to think of itself as the great organizer of the world's information, is increasingly owning important chunks of it. And that raises questions about whether the company will give the information it owns preferential treatment over information owned by others.

"This is exactly why Google is on the hot seat for antitrust," said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, an activist and frequent thorn in Google's side. "This is when the search engine becomes the find engine."

It's not an academic point. Fears about Google playing favorites with its properties have emerged before, and even tripped the company up. Last year, competitors in the air travel business raised those concerns when Google announced plans to buy ITA Software, which provides travel information to various Web sites. Companies such as Expedia, Kayak and Hotwire worried that Google could have created rival Web sites and not given them information necessary to compete. That led federal regulators to step in and require Google to continue licensing ITA's travel technology to competitors for five years on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" terms before approving the $700 million deal.

Google declined to discuss the potential conflict for this article, instead pointing to a blog post announcing the deal by Marissa Mayer, its vice president of local, maps, and location services. In that post, Mayer writes that "Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering."

So where does that leave rival sites that also review restaurants such as Yelp, with whom Google has tangled before? It's unclear. Google has consistently said it won't tweak algorithms to favor its businesses. And right now, if you search, say, "Thai food Chicago," Yelp's data is the first result that pops up on Google.

If Zagat displaces Yelp on that search and other similar ones in a few months time, it will undoubtedly raise questions. That's the peril of owning information when you dominate the business of organizing it as well.

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Yahoo! Up For Sale?

The big tech news yesterday was that Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, was fired. Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo! is a possible takeover target (when weren’t they a takeover target). As Business Insider puts it,”That’s the equivalent of sticking a FOR SALE sign on the lawn.” Yahoo! may have missed their opportunity back in 2008 when Microsoft made the play to acquire them.

Obviously, Yahoo! has been one of the top upstream providers for domain parking and many large portfolios have relied on their feed over the years including Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling. Parking companies like Skenzo, Parked.com and TrafficZ also rely heavily on Yahoo!.

The continued uncertainty about the future of Yahoo! can not be good news for anyone in the space.

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What is the Best SEO Method?

My Best SEO Method

Now, I don't consider myself an SEO expert by any means. However, I do have many articles that rank highly in Google's SERP's (search engine results pages). Therefore, based on my own personal experience and the success I've had with article syndication, in my opinion, the best SEO method is to create and distribute quality, relevant content.

You see, if you create and distribute quality, relevant content, your website will get linked to by quality websites. And if your website gets linked to by quality websites, your search engine ranking will increase. And isn't that the whole point of SEO to begin with - increased search engine ranking?

The Panda Update

Just to be clear, when I talk about search engine ranking, I'm not talking about "PageRank", Google's 0-10 logarithmic toolbar which is nothing more than a "superficial beauty contest" vanity tool - very much out-of-date, and does NOT have a direct impact on a site's ranking. No, I'm referring to where your pages rank in Google's SERP's.

And if the recent Panda update has taught us anything at all, it's that Google is committed to "taking out the trash." And if you produce garbage content, eventually one of Google's algorithm changes is going to punish you.



Link SEO

In fact, this is what Google said about the recent Panda update:

"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does." (Source: Google Blog)

Ya Gotta Have Pride

But it's not just Google that has a problem with garbage content. Many Internet users despise the low-quality content that permeates the Internet as well. That said, you shouldn't create quality content just to please Google or visitors to your website. Creating quality content should be a matter of personal and professional pride.

Because just like the products and services you sell are a direct reflection of you, so too is the content on your website. There are many marketers who consider the content on their site unimportant - little more than filler. The content is just there to take up space. It has no goal and serves no real purpose.

That's a fatal mistake. The content on your site should have a purpose. If it doesn't have a purpose, then why is it even there? And you can bet, if I'm asking that question, so is Google. Remember what I just said about your content being a reflection of you and having personal and professional pride?

Create Useful Content

Always make sure the content on your site is useful, informative, interesting and/or entertaining. If it isn't, visitors are unlikely to return or refer your site to others - depriving you of valuable word-of-mouth exposure. Also, make sure your content is well-written. It doesn't have to be a journalistic masterpiece, but it shouldn't be an embarrassment either - like it was written by a 3rd grader.

If you don't write well, reputable and professional content writing services like Nicole Beckett's PremierContentSource.com, can write content for you at a reasonable cost.

A Word About Keywords

Since this article is about SEO, I would be remiss if I didn't discuss keywords. When interspersing keywords throughout your pages, be careful not to repeat them so often they looked forced. Overdoing it with keywords (known as keyword stuffing) will make your content read unnaturally, and will lead to an unpleasant reading experience for your readers.

In addition, if search engine spiders discover too many of the same keywords on your pages, you will likely be penalized for spamming. This will adversely affect the search engine ranking of your pages. It might even get your site blacklisted, if a pattern of keyword stuffing is detected on your site.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

In closing, you have a choice. You can either create garbage content that belongs outside on the curb waiting to be picked up and disposed of by Google's waste management algorithm truck, or you can create quality, relevant content that is useful and helps people.

Because if you focus on consistently creating quality, relevant content, regardless of what other SEO methods you choose to implement, they will only be enhanced.

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Adventure PHP Framework (APF) 1.11 released

The APF team is proud to anounce the new website together with the 1.11 stable release.

Revision 1.11 serves a reworking of the form support on the basis of taglibs. Now generic definition of validators and filters on the basis of the observer pattern is supported and forms can be customised to own needs more easily.

The OR mapper GenericORMapper already added in the release 1.9 was extended with tools to automatically setup and update a database. Now the developer can completely concentrate on the development of the logic of the application since the storage of the objects is completely managed by the mapper.

Part of the performance optimisations of the releases were optimisations in the core of the frameworks and the reworking of the integrated BenchmarkTimer. It now supplies the developer with a better graphic representation of the measurements to find hot-spots within an application. Thus, an application can the optimally prepared for operation.

With appearance of the release 1.11 the support for PHP 4 was announced discontinuation and the compatibility with PHP 5.3 was improved. In the coming version 1.12 lies the focus on the extension of the new form support and the reworking of the configuration component.

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ShiftEdit – Web Based IDE

ShiftEdit is a new online IDE built around ExtJS and Mozilla Skywriter.

Philosophy behind the project:

Screenshot of ShiftEdit - Web Based IDE

“The web-based IDE is one of the final frontiers of apps ported to the web. I would like to be able to develop from any computer or operating system and have the same experience without having to install software or create site definitions.” – Adam Jimenez
These are some of the main features:

Code editor
The editor component is based on Mozilla’s Bespin. It has support for:

Syntax highlighing for HTML/ CSS/ JS and PHP
Block tabbing
Undo/ Redo
Line Numbers
Jump to line
+ It’s very fast
(S)FTP support
There is a built-in FTP explorer which support FTP and SFTP.
You can create/ rename/ delete files and folders. You can also set file permissions.

Find/replace
Find and replace works across current or all open files. You can do text searches or regular expression searches.

Revision History
File revisions are stored whenever you save a file. You can then look back through past revisions and view a diff comparison.
You can then restore to an earlier version. Very useful if you or a colleague breaks something!

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HP TouchPad screen can now support Android

The HP TouchPad is now capable of running Android with full use of the touch screen, thanks to the technical team at TouchDroid.

Hard at work porting Android over to HP's discontinued but much-in-demand tablet, the TouchDroid techs were able to create the necessary drivers to coax Android 2.3.5 to run on the TouchPad and let people tap into the touch screen.

Unveiling a video (also seen below) showing off the team's progress, a TouchDroid developer demonstrated how he could fluidly and smoothly tap and move his finger around a TouchPad running Android with no delays or skips. He even demoed Android's multitouch feature, moving five fingers and then ten fingers across the screen.

Though TouchDroid is currently using Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread on its demo tablet, its ultimate goal is to support the current flavor of Honeycomb or even the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich on a TouchPad. The team seems to be making quick progress as a little more than two weeks ago, its developers were still trying to drum up a TouchPad that they could use for testing.

The latest development also follows a conflict among some of TouchDroid's members over soliciting money to buy TouchPads, an issue that actually split the group into two teams now working separately.

In addition to TouchDroid, another group called CyanogenMod is striving to port Android to the HP tablet. As of late August, the CyanogenMod team had succeeded in running Android on the TouchPad but had yet to build support for the touch-screen drivers.
HP's TouchPad has been a hot commodity since the company announced a few weeks ago that it was pulling the plug on the tablet. To sell off existing inventory, HP lowered the price to $99 for the 16GB version and $149 for the 32GB model, from $499 and $599, respectively. That fire sale ignited a flurry of buyers, causing HP and other retailers to quickly run out of available stock.

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