0
0
was successfully added to your cart.

Cart

Category

Cobi News

Aug 25
0

Google Developer Summit 2015

By | Android, Apps, Cape Town, Cobi News, development, Events, Mobile Development, Uncategorized | No Comments

Cobi attended the Google Developer Summit on Tuesday, 25th August 2015. The event was organised by the Google Developers Group for Sub-Saharan Africa and was divided into two tracks: Android and Web Development/Cloud. The team attended the Android track to gain more knowledge on this rapidly changing platform.

The first of the morning’s talks was called “Building for the next billion users” and was presented by Abodunrinwa Toki, a software engineer at Google focusing on Android UI Toolkit and Google Docs. The talk discussed the challenges that developers face when developing Android apps for users in emerging markets. These challenges include:

  1. Smart data usage
  2. Minimising APK size
  3. Smooth and responsive user interface
  4. Minimising memory usage
  5. Minimising battery usage
  6. Optimising app architecture

The following talk gave us deep insights into Material Design and was presented by Takuo Suzuki, Developer Relations Japan Lead at Google. Takuo explained that Material Design is a set of design principles that unifies apps across all platforms whether it be mobile, web etc. The talk explained the four tenets of Material Design: tangible surfaces, print like design, meaningful motion and adaptive design, followed by a discussion of the design support library.

The afternoon was devoted to a code lab that was coordinated by Alex Koller. This gave developers an opportunity to experiment with the new material design features available in the design support library. We implemented some of the most common features such as Toolbar, RecyclerView, CoordinatorLayout, SnackBars and the FloatingActionButton.

Google Drive

Jul 20
0

Latest releases- PimPamPet & BusinessDay apps

By | Cobi News, iPad, Releases

As always, the Cobi developers have been busy over the past few months.

The latest releases span from an interactive game to a news app.
PimPamPet is a well-known question-and answer game from Jumbo Games, a Dutch founded jigsaw puzzle and games company. The project was commissioned and managed by Amsterdam based mobile agency, FONKMobile, who met with us in Cape Town earlier this year.

The game needs to be played in 2 teams, and the iPad and iPhone apps make use of the touch gesture to spin the wheel, complete with realistic sound effects. Regular outbursts of “Pim!Pam!Pet!” accompanied the development of these apps and now that they’re completed the office is feeling rather quiet!

The iPad app developed for BusinessDay has been long in the pipeline and seems to have been well received. Marc Forrest of MarcForrest.com reviewed the app and said “If you own an iPad I highly suggest you get this app. By far one of THE best daily’s I have seen on the iPad.”

BusinessDay is South Africa’s most influential and respected business news and analysis source, offering incisive coverage of business, politics, labour and other current affairs, written by the country’s award winning journalists.

To get the PimPamPet app, click here.

To get the BusinessDay app, click here.

Jun 02
0

Cobi @ MS Dev Day

By | Cape Town, Cobi News, Fun, Highlights, Windows Phone 7 | No Comments

Cobi went to the Microsoft Dev Day in Cape Town on 24 May at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The keynote speech that started it off was quite interesting – MS giving us a nice overview of new features to help developers, nice IDE plugin management, showing off their new Azure web servers, and how they are going to help us move onto the cloud in the future. My main interest was to see their new WP7 development, so Steve Asherson and I decided to attend their morning lectures introducing the WP7 development cycle.

Rudi Grobler from BB&D took us through creating a beer-brewing recipe app – something very simple showing us how to piece together a menu system with a details page, linking up to a local database. WP7 development looks good, the platform looks good, and from this initial introduction, the tools look easy to use.

Of particular interest to me was the device emulator used during development. Those who know me would know that I really dislike most of the emulators that the manufacturers have given us. The iPhone one is so far the best out there – stable and loads really quickly. This new WP7 emulator also seemed to load up fast (of course depending on the laptop running it), but it also has some nice location-spoofing tools. Finally a way to test GPS code on an emulator easily – Android & BlackBerry, take note.

On the platform side, WP7 has some stringent requirements, the chip must be running at 800Mhz. Coupling that with the fact that only one app runs at any one time, means that the UI experience looks great, smooth and slick. Unfortunately, coming from an Android fan, I am a bit disappointed that there is such limited multi-threading, but that can of worms can be opened on another day.

Otherwise, the conference was very well run, the food was great, drinks readily available, conversation on tap at every corner – I could do this everyday. Oh, and there was a raffle for an X-Box 360… I can’t help thinking that if I’d put my entry in after Steve did that I would have won it. Well done, Steve, for winning – get those dancing shoes on!

Mar 23
0

Job’s birthday in our new office

By | Cobi News | No Comments

Here at Cobi, we have 2 Steves, and it’s probably the only name our clients remember since they’re told twice, and we all know, repetition is the best way to remember something. Due to the confusion, we’ve nicknamed them Ballmer and Jobs. Anyway, it was Job’s birthday, which meant time for some good cake. Happy birthday Jobs!

Feb 25
0

The Past Few Months at Cobi

By | Cobi News | No Comments

Cobi Interactive's OfficeIts been a busy few months here at Cobi Interactive with plenty of apps being developed and released, our team doubling in size and a move into an established office. Lets take a look at some of the highlights:

– For a look at our new office check out Leo’s post on the move.

– On the development side of things, we completed development for our friends at SmallDonkey Inc. on Xtrafolio, a professional portfolio iPad app. Check out a review of it here.

– We also completed development on two iPad applications for Studio4332 and Grolsch. The apps are being showed off at Design Indaba this week in Cape Town so look out for them if you’re attending. Check out the article here on the apps.

– The News24 Android app received a major update which was released a few weeks back.

– We completed development on MWEB’s iPad app, which was released onto the App Store

– Zoopy recently relaunched their brand and site with a fantastic new look and feel. To compliment their shift to a heavy mobile focus; we carried out major updates to their iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

Its grueling work getting a self-funded startup going, but we find that reflecting on our progress and milestones helps to keep the energy levels up and motivation high!