2. Content is King:
While building the mobile site the focus should entirely be on the content displayed  within a minimalistic layout with few lightweight graphics. Mobile screens have very little real estate and don’t let your content fight with graphics for space and the users attention.

3. Page Folds don’t exist on a Mobile Site:
Designers and site owners at times get quite paranoid about the page fold and go to lengths to see how they can push all their important information above the page fold. That however doesn’t hold true for mobile sites. The easiest action on a mobile is scrolling so feel free to let your page flow into multiple scrolls. In fact since its easier to scroll than click,  I recommend its better to have long scrolling pages instead of smaller pages with buttons for  next and back.

4. Use CSS Animations instead of  JavaScript Animations:
Whenever you want to use animations or transition effects in your site try using CSS effects instead of JavaScript.  JavaScripts consume  more CPU cycles and hence put a load on the CPU which causes the device to slow down. This also causes the battery to drain out faster.
5. Ensure Significant Contrast between your text and backgrounds:
Unlike on desktops or laptops, websites on mobile are accessed at various locations, indoors, outdoors where lighting conditions are quite different. High contrast  are a lot easier to view especially outdoors in sunlight.

6. Stick to One Column Layouts:
At 320 or 480px wide there is no place to accommodate a 2 column layout, so don’t even give it a try. Stick to one column layouts. In case you are building a Responsive website then you could try to re-position  the 2nd column using CSS media-queries,  when the user switches to horizontal mode.
7. Don’t Let your Users Type:
On a desktop or laptop using the keyboard is the most easiest task which comes naturally, however on  a Mobile device is probably one of the most difficult and frustrating tasks that a user needs to perform. So as far as possible lets users click and select instead of type. For example a keyword search box on the website could be replaced by a tag could for the mobile version.

8 Your Users don’t care about your Logo:
Companies are obsessed with ensuring their logo and their ‘brand’ is seen upfront and is as large as possible. On the mobile, screen real estate is a premium so don’t waste it on your logo, keep it small and to the top left or center.

9 Avoid Fixing your Headers or Footers:
I’ve come across a lot of sites where have their header or footer (and at times both) stuck to the top and bottom of the screen.  Avoid that as much as possible because not only does it reduce your already limited screen space, it’s also quite a challenge to make it work smoothly when the user is switching from portrait to landscape and vice versa.
10 Use Oversized buttons and form controls:
Just because the mobile screen is smaller it doesn’t really mean you must reduce the size of everything on your website. It’s in fact the opposite. Not only should you be making the fonts slightly larger but you must also make your buttons and form controls like radio buttons checkboxes   reasonably large. Remember a person’s thumb or index finger is not as precise as the mouse cursor.

11 Eat your own Dog food:
Once your mobile site is ready for testing, make sure you play with it on the actual device and not on one of those  simulators/ emulators. The emulator can only show you how it looks on a mobile. There is no way it can simulate the user experience especially when you are clicking buttons with your fingers  and filling in forms where the virtual keyboard keeps popping in and out.

12 …and make your friends and family eat it too!!:
Many a times you don’t need to get into detailed usability studies or surveys to identify the usability issues on your mobile app. Just give the phone to a family or friend and closely watch them interact with your mobile site, you’ll learn a lot in those 10 to 15 minutes they spend on your mobile site. Trust me!!

The first step towards a private cloud is “virtualization”. By today, virtualization has become more or less ubiquitous and everyone runs one or the other hypervisor. In the open source world, Xen and KVM are two of the most popular ones and over at Neev, we have been able to utilize both of these to a great extent. At one time, Neev’s internal server infrastructure consisted of nearly 50 physical machines and a great deal of management & maintenance around them. Today, we have less than 10 physical machines for the same purposes and a good many VMs running in them. The drive to virtualize (nearly) everything came not just out of the projected cost benefits but also from other advantages. Backups are simple, VMs can be quickly resized or moved to different physical boxes if they need additional resources.

This provides the elasticity but to get the infrastructure to be truly on-demand, what is needed is a private cloud solution. This provides a way for end-users to launch a new VM whenever the need arises and to give it up once the job is done, thus freeing up resources for others. This results in optimal hardware utilization. Users don’t need to wait in the queue, server administrators don’t need to do much and the organization doesn’t have unutilized infrastructure overheads. End result: everyone is happy!

Eucalyptus and OpenStack are two very popular open-source platforms for building private clouds. They both run on top of Xen and KVM. Both communities are very active and both are working towards better compatibility with other cloud APIs such as the AWS APIs. This is great since a good many companies will eventually want to run a hybrid solution across public and private clouds. Neev’s tryst with both these platforms has shown that they have now come of age.

So, is a private cloud right for you? Is it truly advantageous for your needs? Get in touch with us and our team of cloud experts will help you map out a cloud strategy that’s right for your organization.

Simple App means Less Mistakes:

What do you want to develop – an app that is highly complex, but full of errors or an app that is simple and straightforward with zero errors? Of course you don’t want to leave scope open for making mistakes, what this means is that you need to focus on simplicity of the app. Now, please do not think simple apps do not work. If they are able to bring to life the client concept, than they are inherently successful. This is because if the app is simple, it is fairly easy to understand and users will be able to perform tasks in an optimal manner. This is what they appreciate.

Don’t try too hard:

Another trick or you could also call it a golden rule of mobile application development is that you shouldn’t try too hard. In this case the trying too hard refers to the fact that some developers are so intent on making their apps unique that they lose focus on everything else like functionality and design. The app finally might or might not end up being different, but there are no doubts about the fact that it is not functional and won’t appeal to the users in any way or form.

Adhere to the Fundamentals of Design and Development:

Whether you are designing and developing for the web or the mobile, the fundamentals remain the same. For e.g. when it comes to navigation, the focus should always be on simplifying navigation as much as possible. Or you can talk about the user experience, whether it’s a mobile platform or a web platform, the focus on ensuring a satisfying user experience should drive all efforts regarding design and development. What this means is that if you don’t ignore the fundamentals, you will be on the right track as far as mobile application development is concerned.

The pointers given above can be called tricks or something else, but the fact remains that if you want to achieve success in android app development, it’s of paramount importance that they figure in your considerations while developing the app.

Neev Technologies is a Mobile application development company from Bangalore, India. To know more please log on to www.neevtech.com .

jQuery mobile framework takes the “write less, do more” mantra to the next level: Instead of writing unique apps for each mobile device or OS, the jQuery mobile framework allows you to design a single highly branded and customized web application that will work on all popular smartphone and tablet platforms.

Neevtech is a leading Mobile Application Development Company from Bangalore, India.To know more about us log on to www.neevtech.com .

Humans are inherently social creatures, and we define ourselves both by the people we know and our interests. We make decisions about where to eat, what to buy, where to visit, etc. based on a complex matrix of social relationships, past experiences, location, long standing interests and future goals. Today’s platforms approach our lives from different angles but both are integral to how we define ourselves and interact with the world around us.

There are opportunities to establish differentiated, sustainable social media brands. There are many companies who have ideas but don’t want to indulge themselves in product development part. This creates an opportunity for outsourced software development companies like Neevtech.

Neevtech is a leading outsourced product development company from Bangalore, India. To know more about us log on to www.neevtech.com.

From a business prospective—using open source allows you to invest in a technology that gives you the power to modify the code to better meet your business needs. It can accelerate development time and speed of diagnosing problems when issues pop up. And issues always do pop up. If something is not working very well, we can look at the problem which a much higher degree of granularity.

If it’s a simple problem, we never contact support. We only contact support when we’re stumped. And we’re not easily stumped. Usually, they can’t answer they question immediately because if we’re asking for help, the problem is complex. Our ticket is escalated, and eventually we talk to someone who can help us. But it does take time. Even if a support staff is top notch, there is the time is costs to deal with that, and that costs us and our clients’ time. We have a highly customized ESP installation for one of our clients it always take an enormous amount of time to explain over and over how we have our systems set up, the different parts work, and it’s a big pain to go through that every time you run across a problem. If it were open source, you can simply look at the source code and solve the problem.”

If you choose a popular open source search engine solution like Lucene Solr, you have an active, passionate community behind that solution. There are several developers looking at that engine, working on it, and actively posting in publicly available forums. You can often get your questions answered there by top notch experts in search technology. You can potentially talk to the original coders and creators of the product—and they are often happy to help you.

The downside is the formal documentation isn’t usually as good as the proprietary, and there isn’t a dedicated support team for the product. But if you have some savvy software developers on your team, the open source community is robust and willing to share information about the product. And having access to the source code is extremely valuable.”

Neevtech is a leading Application Development and Open Source Software Development Company from Bangalore.  To know more about our capability areas log on to www.neevtech.com

1. Focus on Product:The best way to get your app noticed is to build a unique and engaging product. Although that’s an article all on its own, let’s sum it up in a few key points.

2. Allow Users to Engage Others with Your App:Your customers’ word-of-mouth multiplies your network a hundred times over without costing you a dime, so be sure to put mechanisms in place that allow users to talk about the app and share experiences with friends.

3. Get Media and Blogger Attention: To make your app easier for media to cover, provide materials like press kits, beta codes (if necessary) and reviewer guides. It also helps to identify technology and pop culture trend stories that your app can fit into.

4. Continue Your Marketing Efforts: Make sure you exhaust every “co-marketing” opportunity out there with other app developers. Some major publishers will trade their app installs for your app installs.

5. Use Analytics :When developing apps, you have all kinds of data at your fingertips to evaluate how your app is being received. Use analytics to monitor your ranking and as a marketing tool.

6. Prepare for Success: Think of your app as a brand that will enable you to leverage brand extension opportunities. Build your apps to welcome future cross-promotion opportunities, rather than intrusions on the user experience.

Neevtech is a leading Application Development Company from Bangalore.For more details log in to www.neevtech.com.

Use HTML5 with care: HTML5 offers a lot of exciting flexibility that can make a website truly interactive. Seamlessly embedded videos, drag-and-drop interfaces and dynamic message posts are all achievable via HTML5, and with relatively little code work. But take help of professionals.

Cut the fat : The traditional layouts for websites often call for separate pages that encapsulate the “About,” “Contact” and other informational areas of the website.HTML5 can help create a one-page website that cleverly contains all necessary information via pop-up boxes or other media, but the amount of information that can be on a one-page website is still relatively limited.

Tie in Social Media Intelligently: Social media should absolutely be a presence on a business website, but it should not be a dominating presence. Integrating social media, whether in graphic links or a social ticker, should be done with the user’s eyes in mind.

Neevtech is a leading Software Development company from Bangalore India. To know more please log on to www.neevtech.com

OsCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease, and is available for free as an Open Source based solution released under the GNU General Public License. OsCommerce was started in March 2000 and has since matured to a solution that is currently powering 12,564 registered live shops around the world.

Today, osCommerce has been taken to the next level, moving towards an e-commerce framework solution that not only remains easy to setup and maintain, but also making it easier for store administrators to present their stores to their customers with their own unique requirements. The success of osCommerce is secured by a great and active community where members help one another out and participate in development issues reflecting upon the current state of the project.

Neevtech is leading software development company from Bangalore India.To know more about us log on to www.neevtech.com