Stories by Martin Heller

  • Kinvey boosts enterprise mobile apps

    An MBaaS (mobile back end as a service) such as FeedHenry, Kinvey, or Parse is a kind of PaaS (platform as a service) for server-backed mobile applications. Kinvey bills itself as a complete mobile and Web app platform. It has extensive client support, integrates with the major enterprise databases, and offers a back-end data store, a file store, push notifications, mobile analytics, iBeacon support, and the ability to run custom code on the back end.

  • FeedHenry uses Node.js to fortify mobile apps

    A few years ago, the mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) seemed to be the likely answer to the huge challenge of creating groups of mobile applications that work together and integrate with enterprise data. In hindsight, MEAP systems, which typically combined a back-end server and middleware stack with a client application, seem excessively expensive and heavyweight.

  • Jumping JavaScript! Hands-on with the Famo.us framework

    Famo.us is an open source JavaScript framework for building high-performance mobile Web and hybrid mobile apps. The framework gets its speed and sizzle by replacing the browser's slow, DOM-based rendering mechanism with its own rendering engine and by tapping the GPU acceleration provided by CSS3's 3D transformation functions -- no plug-ins or native code required.

  • Google's tantalizing Mobile Chrome App SDK

    Mobile app development is a huge pain point for most enterprises. The debate still rages about the best strategy. Should you develop native apps for the major smartphone and tablet platforms? That's expensive and time-consuming, and it means hiring hard-to-find specialists for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and any other platform you want to support. Should you develop mobile Web apps? That is faster and cheaper, but sacrifices both performance and features. Should you develop hybrid mobile apps, combining native app shells with Web views? That still sacrifices performance in some cases, but recovers the most important features.