the mobile montage

a collection of scattered thoughts on mobile technology and related topics…

iOS Bootcamp: learning to create awesome apps on iOS using Swift

I teach a couple of courses here at GVSU on mobile app development, both at the undergraduate and graduate level.  Normally, I record my lectures and make them available to students taking the course via Blackboard.  Since we are switching to Swift (from Objective-C) this year,  I’ve had a number of past students and others […]

Successfully Integrating Web Services Into Your Android Apps

One of the things I’ve noticed budding Android developers struggle most with is how to properly integrate content being pulled form web services into their Android apps. Many of them have been focusing exclusively on figuring out layouts and other user interface related issues and haven’t yet developed an understanding of the underlying threading model […]

Do mobile app stores have a future?

This morning I came across this interesting and well-written article on the current state of affairs with regard to mobile app stores.   I think the author’s forward looking comments are reasonable if you limit your outlook to a year or two,  but there are a couple of things to consider with regard to app stores […]

Mobile testing madness

I saw a couple of interesting videos this week that are worth taking a look at. The first one is about testing mobile application. So if you have an app that targets a multiplicity of handsets, all with different form factors, technical specs, and service providers, how can you go about testing your apps? Its […]

Mobile Applications & Services Lab Launched at GVSU

The Mobile Applications and Services Lab recently held its first research group meeting at GVSU’s School of Computing and Information Systems.  In addition to myself, the group currently consists of five CIS graduate students and two undergraduate researchers. A variety of topics were discussed at the initial meeting, and perhaps most importantly we discussed our […]

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  • About Me

    Jonathan Engelsma

    Jonathan Engelsma is a computer scientist, programmer, teacher, mobile technology enthusiast, inventor, beekeeper and life long learner. He is currently a Professor in GVSU's School of Computing, where he leads the GVSU Mobile Applications and Services Laboratory.

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