At Last, You Have Alternatives: Switch to Firefox and Thunderbird

Virtualization Conference & Expo 2007 West

Join Us at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA - Nov. 3

The iPhone Can Play...Can It Also Work?

The answer to that question is a resounding 'Yes!' The iPhone is on course to be the most adopted enterprise device of 2009. From a starting-point of just over 500 when it was first launched, Apple's App Store has over 25,000 applications available and downloads have surpassed 1 billion.

The next iPhone Developer Summit is being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center on November 3, 2009, co-located with the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo.

The groundbreaking Summit is chaired by the Editor of iPhone Developer's Magazine, Ian Thain.

At iPhone Developer Summit, delegates will hear from industry experts about what makes the iPhone a great business phone. Technical sessions will explore a world of web development opportunities on the iPhone including building social applications, and developing high-quality, iPhone-style web-based GUIs for your applications.

Additionally, expert faculty speakers will help delegates learn about when to use the iPhone SDK and when to develop web applications.

Letter from the Technical Chair

Enterprise iPhone in Silicon Valley!

"With the iPhone more than earning its place in the consumer market, it is now being adopted by enterprises. In fact, many believe that the iPhone will be the most adopted enterprise device in 2009. So the next time you see the hottest device around, it may be in the hands of colleagues or competitors, giving them the edge over you! This adoption is being driven by such factors as the multitude of general applications available via Apple’s iTunes AppStore. But ask yourself....What do I need to know for wide-scale enterprise adoption?

Come join us at the next iPhone Developer Summit on November 3, 2009, in Santa Clara, CA - either as a delegate, a sponsor, an exhibitor, or a speaker. I look forward to meeting you there!"

About the iPhone Developer Summit Chair:

Ian Thain is Senior Technical Evangelist at Sybase Inc, where he works on the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP). He is also Editor of iPhone Developer's Magazine. Thain is an expert technologist has been involved in Enterprise Mobility from 2003 and in his customer facing role, he is very involved with the design, production and testing of Enterprise class UnWired Solutions that have been implemented using Sybase's UnWired tools for Sybase customers around the globe.

Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps
Adam Blum - CEO, Rhomobile
– In this session attendees will learn just how easy it is to create robust enterprise applications for iPhone as well as all the major mobile platforms with Ruby and HTML in the cloud.

Design Patterns for Distributed Mobile Applications
Jason Christensen - Proprietor, jasonc411.com
– This session will look at patterns for consuming ReST based web-services, TCP stream based services, and Push notification from the iPhone.

Enabling Enterprise Mobility on the iPhone
Senthil Krishnapillai - Director of Product Management, Sybase iAnywhere
– This presentation will give enterprise developers a way to expand the iPhone's capabilities to include critical business processes and ERP workflow applications. We'll explore how to leverage a mobile platform to securely turn the iPhone into an enterprise-class computing device for today's mobile workforce.

Selling Products with StoreKit
Ernie Svehla - Chief Architect, IntelliObject
– In this session we present best practices for leveraging the StoreKit framework to sell products from within your iPhone application. We begin with a quick review of key components then present best practices for organizing your products, selecting a selling model, and implementing your approach.

Push It Up! Implementing Apple's Push Notifications for Fun and Profit
Enabling Push in your app is just the start and this session will show you how to get your application up and running with Push Notifications in no time. Delegates will be walked through how and why to add push notifications to an application.

Key Steps to Developing VoIP-enabled Apps for the iPhone
Jan Skoglund - Chief Researcher, Global IP Solutions (GIPS)
– VoIP-enabled applications on the iPhone present a number of challenges to application developers. Trying to cobble a VoIP solution is likely to cause developers severe headaches, time delays and frustration. This session will discuss the four most challenging components to consider when working to ensure a quality VoIP application for the iPhone.

Rapid Application Delivery - Going Hybrid
Lee Barney - Professor of Computer IT, Brigham young University
– Using the standard UIWebView class in small or large ways in your application decreases the time to market for and the cost of your applications. Learn how and why to use it in your applications in any way from a simple display of easily formatted text using CSS to designing and building your installed application completely in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

MapKit Best Practices
Ernie Svehla - Chief Architect, IntelliObject
– In this session we present best practices for getting the most out of the MapKit framework within your iPhone application. We begin with a quick review of key components then present best practices for displaying map customizations and annotations specific to your applications needs.

New York Sessions in June 2009 Included...

Break The Mold - iPhone for the Mobile Enterprise

Business users are actively embracing Apple’s iPhone and bringing it into the enterprise - both through the back door and the front door. iPhone developers have a significant opportunity to help businesses gain a competitive advantage by empowering workers with a true mobile office – secure email, mobilized business processes, and seamless access to back-end enterprise systems. In order to achieve this vision and help companies truly realize the power of the iPhone in the enterprise, a mobile infrastructure is needed that enables enterprises to move away from single ‘one-off’ applications to a more strategic mobile platform.

Speaker Bio: Senthil Krishnapillai is director of product management at Sybase iAnywhere. Senthil's mobile communications group, part of the Information Anywhere suite, is responsible for the designing and bringing future generation of Mobile collaboration products to the market. Senthil is experienced in managing enterprise products for worldwide markets and has successfully developed and marketed innovative products for the mobility market. He has more than 15 years experience in product management, product marketing and product development for mobile devices and smartphones with Sybase and Extended Systems and was the founder of Rand Software, a synchronization software company. He is a member of various consortia including OMA-DS and CTIA.

Combining REST and Context for Killer iPhone Apps

With the advent of the multimodal nature of iPhone, it's possible to be connected anywhere and everywhere. But did you know that it's possible for your iPhone to provide context to RESTFUL web services to create the next generation of killer applications. We will look at using web services, cloud computing, and the sensors on the iPhone to create applications that exceed what could previously be done on mobile devices. With this architecture, the sky is truly the limit on the capabilities you can provide to the users of your application. We will create an application that can use RESTFUL web services in combination with the GPS sensor on the iPhone to create a context-aware chat client.

Speaker Bio: Jason Christensen has over 15 years of industry experience providing technical direction in some of the world's largest companies. He regularly speaks at conferences regarding the use of advanced technology, and has worked as a technologist, lead-architect, and developer on high-profile, cutting edge projects throughout his career. He has been working on mobile, and mobile context-aware computing threads since 2004 and has developed on J2ME, Maemo, and iPhone platforms.

Mastering View Controllers

In this session we take a detailed look at best practices for leveraging the various view controllers bundled with the iPhone SDK. We start off with a quick review of the critical role view controllers play in the development of iPhone applications then dive into best practices for integrating multiple different types of view controllers together to support specific application needs.

Speaker Bio: Ernie Svehla, Chief Architect of IntelliObjects Inc., has been developing iPhone applications for the health care industry since the SDK's release. He has over 20 years experience in developing software products most recently in the web and mobile space.

Push It Up! Implementing Apple's Push Notifications for Fun and Profit

Ever looked into Apple’s Push Notification? If you thought it was as a simple as flicking a switch, think again! In this session Joe Pezzillo will walk you through how and why to add push notifications to your application, what's required on the server side with plenty of working sample code and specific examples to guide you through every step of the process.

Speaker Bio: Joe Pezzillo is the founder of Metafy LLC, a Boulder, Colorado based software boutique currently developing a suite of prototype iPhone applications for a Fortune 100 financial services company. In addition to pioneering work in internet radio and managing several startups, Joe spent three years as a researcher at the Apple Electronic Media Lab in the mid 90s. With Dan Burcaw he recently launched a joint venture called Push.io.

2008 West Coast Sessions Included...

Creating On-Demand Enterprise Applications for the iPhone

The arrival of the iPhone has heralded a new era for Internet-enabled devices; however, the device wasn't designed with the enterprise user in mind. To be successful, enterprise apps need to be optimized for the user experience and fit business requirements. In this session, Dave Carroll will demonstrate how developers using a modern Model-View-Controller (MVC) development approach provided by the Force.com platform can shape the presentation of data to a specific context and use standard web development technologies—including HTML, and AJAX—to create on-demand enterprise applications. With these technologies developers can easily add the iPhone to provide mobile access to their enterprise.

Speaker Bio: Dave Carroll is Principal Platform Evangelist at SalesForce.com. His focus is on growing the developer community and inspiring developers to think creatively about using various Web 2.0 technologies with the company’s Force.com on-demand platform and AppExchange marketplace.

iPhone in Action: Web Development or SDK?

There are two distinct ways to develop applications for Apple's iPhone, the top tech gadget of the year. Programmers can choose to create optimized web applications using web languages, or to write native programs using the iPhone SDK. Rather than seeing this as an either-or proposition, developers should consider the choice a continuum and pick the right tool to create each individual program.

With iPhone web applications, programmers can enjoy all the advantages of the Internet, including ease of development and deployment, speed of updating, and off-line server access. Meanwhile, with iPhone native applications, programmers can immerse themselves in a sophisticated development environment, dig deep into an object-oriented language, and access the iPhone's built-in utilities, like its accelerometers and its GPS. This session will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each style of programming and discuss ways to hybridize them, creating integrated projects that utilize the best of both worlds.

Speaker Bio: Christopher Allen is one of the leaders of the iPhone developer community. He is the host of iPhoneWebDev.com, which is the largest independent community of iPhone-based web developers, and manages its mailing list. He is also one of the founders of iPhoneDevCamp and oversees its Hackathon, and is co-author of iPhone in Action:Introduction to Web and SDK Development . Christopher is a longtime technologist, and is also a leader in social software and was one of the authors of TLS, the next-generation SSL protocol.

Understanding iPhone JavaScript Extensions

Apple has introduced a number of extensions to the JavaScript programming language to assist iPhone web developers. Including new fast lookup functions, native SVG graphics processing, CSS effects, database storage and full screen mode. These new functions will transform the way web and AJAX developers look at the iPhone for application development. This session introduces the JavaScript extensions, and shows practical examples of their usage.

Speaker Bio: John Fronckowiak is the President of IDC Consulting, Inc., providing consulting and technical writing. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor in Information Systems at the Adult Learning Program of Medaille College and is the author of several books and articles about iPhone development, programming, database design and development and networking. Fronckowiak has previously spoken at the Internet Commerce Expo in Boston, and the Conference on Instructional Technologies. In addition, he has over a decade of experience in the classroom as a college professor and runs dozens of training sessions for application developers.

Scaling Web Apps to Meet the iPhone Challenge

Demystify what it takes to build a web application that can scale to the millions of users in the iPhone ecosystem. Learn about the need for pre-development architecture and the requirements for the deployment and ongoing maintenance environment for the applications. In this session we will discuss real-world examples of how good ideas can go completely wrong.

Speaker Bio: Guy Naor is CTO of Morph Labs, Inc. A veteran of the technology world, building and implementing software solutions since 1981, in his most recent role he served as CTO of Famundo, a Web 2.0 start-up. Prior to that, he led the development of Goldmine software for four years and has served as an advisor and a consulting architect on a variety of Web 2.0 products.

Mobile Collaboration Using the iPhone

The iPhone is a very successful mobile device. This session shows how to use it for business: How can I access my records? Where to manage accounts? How to deal with customer requests and other employees? The session will also includes development guidelines for your own enterprise mobile clients, mail support efficiency and case studies.

Speaker Bio: Marcus Franz is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of BF Blogform Search GmbH, a company based in Berlin, Germany, with offices in Oslo, Norway, and Santa Monica, CA. Prior to this, he worked as an independent consultant and was a researcher at several universities.

Social Computing: the iPhone as an Ideal Platform

Without a doubt, Social Computing is the preeminent phenomenon rising on the second wave of the web, and the iPhone will become one of the dominant clients for Social Computing in the mobile space.

Come to this talk and find out how ICEfaces delivers the goods today for development of web-based social computing applications. The open source ICEfaces project pioneered web-based real time collaboration, an essential capability for truly interactive Social Computing, and its server-centric architecture is well-suited to resource-constrained devices such as the iPhone. During this session you will see several live demos of collaborative applications running on the iPhone. You will gain an understanding of ICEfaces' server-centric architecture and understand how it is a natural way to deliver high-powered, but light-weight AJAX capabilities to your mobile applications. You will also learn how to leverage AJAX Push to make your applications truly collaborative, and prepare yourself to deliver on the promises of social computing.

Speaker Bio: Steve Maryka is CTO at ICEsoft Technologies Inc., and leads the ICEfaces open source project. He has been involved in Java-based AJAX techniques since 2003 - a time before the term ?AJAX? was even coined. Prior to joining ICEsoft, Maryka was co-founder of AudeSi Technologies where he served as VP of Technology and led Java product development for Internet appliances. After AudeSi was acquired by Wind River Systems in 2000, he served as a Principle Technologist there until joining ICEsoft.

Developing Open Source Mobile Messaging and Sync Apps for iPhone vs. Android

The iPhone and Google Android platform are undisputedly transforming the mobile industry by bringing smartphone capabilities to the masses. They are also making for enticing new mobile platforms for developing and deploying new types of mobile apps and services for mass market users. Yet, developing for them is not that easy.

This session will focus on our experience of developing open source-based mobile messaging and sync applications for both of these platforms. It will compare and contrast the platforms in terms of the development methods and tools required, and their strengths and weaknesses from a developer's perspective. The presentation will ashare lessons learned as well as tips and techniques for developing for both platforms.

Speaker Bio: Stefano Fornari is co-founder, CTO and principal contributor of Funambol, the leading mobile open source project in the world, whose software has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times by 10,000 developers in 200 countries and is used by leading mobile operators and service providers. His most recent work includes developing for both the iPhone and Google's Android SDK. He holds a master's degree in computer science.

Interviews

At Last, You Have Alternatives: Switch to Firefox and Thunderbird

An Exclusive Interview with Marcia Knous and John Hedtke, Authors of Firefox and Thunderbird Garage

By: Ibrahim Haddad

Jul. 16, 2005 04:45 PM

Firefox is very easy to install and manage. Because Firefox is very compact (~5MB) and installation is largely automatic, a corporate rollout isn't difficult. There are relatively few options that need to be set as part of the installation. One Fortune 500 company is currently evaluating switching their 44,000 worldwide employees to Firefox and many smaller companies are already Firefox shops.

One of the best parts of the installation process is that Firefox will import favorites, bookmarks, settings, display preferences, and other information from other browsers automatically. I was able to install Firefox, converting from IE 6.x with 40-50 folders containing ~350 favorites to Firefox in less than five minutes from start to finish on a Windows 2000 computer. It's not a difficult operation; in fact, it went far smoother than my conversion some years ago from Netscape to IE.

Q: What cool things can users do to customize Firefox?

While Firefox works fine as-is, there are a number of extensions, small modules that augment existing features or add new feature sets that are incredibly desirable and that have a place in any business installation. Some of my favorites are:

Adblock, which filters ad images from Web pages
MouseGestures, which lets me perform a number of common commands (back, forward, open new tab, etc.) by right-clicking and moving the mouse pointer
Bandwidth Tester, a quick bandwidth testing utility
Tabbrowser Preferences, which extends the built-in tabbed browsing features
Download Manager Tweak, which extends the built-in download manager features

None of these are essential to running Firefox in most environments, but these - and the 600-700 other Firefox extensions - can be highly desirable for increasing productivity.

You can also change Firefox's look-and-feel using themes, which change the display colors, the button styles and toolbars, and menus. Both extensions and themes can be previewed and downloaded from the www.mozilla.org website.

Q: Microsoft recently announced IE 7. Why shouldn't users just wait for this version to be released instead of switching to Firefox?

Details on the new version of IE announced in March are few and far between. There may be support for some of the Cascading Stylesheet standards; there probably will be interaction with Microsoft's new anti-spyware service (currently in beta), and it's likely that there will be tabbed browsing and RSS features. It's unlikely the source code will be released and no plans for extensions or themes have been discussed. The Microsoft Security Zone Model is likely to continue as the basis for IE's architecture. The one really solid piece of data is that the start of the first beta cycle for the product will be this summer. No release date has been targeted at this time, but it's likely that this release of IE won't see the light of day until sometime in 2006. In addition, unless you're using Windows XP with SP2 installed, you won't be able to use IE 7.

But even assuming that Microsoft brings out a new version of IE with all the features and appeal of Firefox and with a new product architecture, you're still going to have to wait until next year at least before it's released. We may live in hope, but it's a poor way to browse the Internet or plan your security. Use Firefox now and if and when Microsoft comes up with a product with as many security and user features, you can always switch back.

I use Firefox almost exclusively, but there are still a few sites that I have to access that require me to use IE. Firefox doesn't support ActiveX or VBScript, so any Web site that uses either of these won't run correctly when viewed with Firefox. Some of the Web sites that still require IE are sites for online accounting programs, a few travel sites, a major weight watching site, and (of course) the Microsoft site. While I understand the desire to run MS-free computers, IE is still a requirement at least for some Web sites. Fortunately, many Web sites are being modified so that they're no longer browser-specific to reflect both the steady rise in Firefox use as well as the potential risk of using ActiveX or VBScript. More importantly, if you're running a Windows computer, removing IE can in some cases destabilize the system if it's simply yanked out. It's best to have IE available for those increasingly rare cases where it's required and not use it unless you absolutely need to.

Q: Why should users switch to Thunderbird?

Users should switch to Thunderbird for several reasons. First, Thunderbird contains a number of features that will help preserve their security and privacy. If you value your time, Thunderbird's junk mail filtering can make your life a whole lot easier, since it lets you keep your inbox spam-free. Thunderbird contains a robust set of features, including an integrated spell checker and RSS support. If you need added functionality, Thunderbird has a wealth of extensions available that can be installed to extend its capabilities. Finally, Thunderbird is under continuous development, and is always fresh due to the fact that many eyes are on the code every day. Getting continuous feedback from the Open Source community lets the developers produce a dynamic product that's always forward-thinking.

Q: How would migration to Thunderbird work for users who have been using their current e-mail client for a long time and have lots of e-mail, lots of rules and filters, and lots of folders?

Thunderbird lets you import options, account settings, and address book information from a number of other mail clients (see the book for a list of all of the clients that are currently supported). Before doing this, we recommend users back up their important information and keep their current mail client on their computer until the transition is complete. Mail is important to all of us, and because there are so many machine configurations and different mail setups, it's important to follow these steps. I would encourage everyone to try Thunderbird to see what it can do for them - they won't be sorry.

Q: Is Thunderbird more secure than other mail clients? If so, how and why?
Thunderbird is more secure than other mail clients. First, Thunderbird doesn't let any scripts run by default. Second, its remote image-blocking feature lets you control remote content that may be embedded in e-mail messages. Thunderbird lets you define your trusted list of senders so you only accept mail from people you trust. In the next release, we're taking things a step further by adding anti-phishing support, which is another way to ease the minds of those worried about this prevalent practice.

Q: What distinguishes Thunderbird from Outlook and Eudora?

I did a Web chat with the washingtonpost.com last week, and one of the poster's chief complaints about Outlook was the fact he could never find the e-mails he was looking for with the search. One of the great things about Thunderbird is that it offers you numerous ways to search your mail, and I think that is one of its greatest strengths.

The other advantage that Thunderbird has is the fact is very secure, and it has the added RSS functionality, which is something that other mail clients do not have. RSS is becoming more popular every day, as users are catching on to the fact that it makes content delivery very easy - no more hunting around as information changes.

Q: What cool things can we do to customize Thunderbird?

One of the great advantages of Thunderbird is the fact you can customize the product with extensions and themes. Again, this lets you add functionality where you need it. For example, if you handle a great many attachments in your daily e-mail, you can install an extension such as Thunderbird Attachment Tools that gives you much more control over them that you get in e-mail messages. If you need extra dictionary functionality, you can install DictionarySearch to look up and translate words. You can even configure a music player (FoxyTunes) and play your music while you dive into your mail. There are countless other examples of extensions that can be added to Thunderbird to extend its already powerful capabilities. On the themes side, there are some great iconographic themes out there for Thunderbird. I personally like the Mostly Crystal theme, but there are a lot of other really cool ones.

Q: How can I manage my RSS feeds and newsgroups using Thunderbird?

Managing RSS is a snap using Thunderbird. You simply create an RSS account, and then you can either drag-and-drop the XML links onto the account, or you can right click on the account and enter the feed URL. There's also an extension called Forumzilla that gives you extra functionality in the RSS space.

Creating a newsgroup account is just as easy. All you have to do is create the account, enter the name of your newsgroup server, and then you can subscribe to the newsgroups you want.

Conclusion
Firefox and Thunderbird afford the user a great deal of flexibility in the Internet space. With a robust set of features and unparalleled extensibility, both products put the user in the driver's seat. There are over 600 extensions and themes available that let users configure the browser and the e-mail client to their specific needs. Firefox and Thunderbird are also proactive in their approach to security, letting you know when bad things may be looming on the horizon. Both offer a number of features that will help protect your privacy and security. Finally, the Open Source development engine that drives both of them ensures that they are always fresh and never stale.

For more information about the products and to download them for free, go to www.mozilla.org.

About Ibrahim Haddad
Ibrahim Haddad is a seasoned telecommunications expert with over a decade of multinational experience in infrastructure, carrier grade, Linux mobile platforms, software development, standards, industry global initiatives, Open Source software and legal compliance.