PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release

Sun Media’s new and free news streaming iPhone application ranks Top 5 in Canada’s App Store

Montreal, March 4, 2010 – The free news streaming application developed by Sun Media and Five Mobile for Apple’s iPhone has seen rich success thus far. Launched in December 2009, the application is now one of the Top 5 most downloaded applications in Canada. Simple to configure, it brings users exclusive news from Sun Media’s network, including Toronto Sun, Ottawa Sun, Winnipeg Sun, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Sun and London Free Press.

With this application, readers receive personalized news on their iPhones in real time. From monitoring stock prices to viewing various photo galleries, readers can choose the news that interests them. The application is always available for download via the App Store. or from any Sun Media newspaper website.

“This new application allows us to provide relevant content to our readers anywhere, anytime. It’s been designed with the end-user in mind, making it the most user friendly and customizable app out there. With our customer-based approach, the application quickly became a favorite, standing out from the competition, says Francis Beaulieu, Director of Mobile and User Identity Products. The application was developed in collaboration with Five Mobile Inc., its expertise has largely contributed to the success of the application.”

Ameet Shah, VP, Sales & Business Development, Co-Founder of Five Mobile Inc., says “working closely with Sun Media, a leader of Canadian information and content, has enabled us to develop a simple, effective and exclusive application that attracts people eager for up- to-the-minute news.”

Sun Media’s mobile strategy will soon cross another milestone when it launches an application that streams news and information to the BlackBerry network. This launch is expected in March 2010.

Sun Media Corporation

Sun Media Corporation, a division of Quebecor Media, is Canada’s largest newspaper publisher, with close to 15.0 million copies published each week. With 42 paid-circulation and free dailies throughout Canada, all with their own dedicated websites, and more than 220 community newspapers, shopping guides and other specialty publications, Sun Media Corporation’s English and French language papers are leaders in providing local news and information. Sun Media Corporation aggregates the activities of Canoe.ca, an integrated company offering e-commerce, information and communication services. It owns the Canoe Network, which attracts 9.2 million unique visitors per month in Canada, including more than 4.1 million in Quebec. Sun Media Corporation is also involved in the operation of SUN TV, a general interest television station in Toronto, and provides a range of commercial printing and related services as well as distribution for newspapers, flyers and magazines. For additional details, visit our parent company’s website at www.quebecor.com.

Five Mobile

Five Mobile creates interactive mobile applications and websites, working with many of thetop brands and enterprises in the space. Five Mobile takes mobile ideas from concept to completion and simplifies the creation and optimization of solutions across all mobile platforms. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. For more information, please email info@fivemobile.com or visit www.fivemobile.com.

Contacts:
Sun Media
Francis Beaulieu
Director Mobile and User Identity Products
Office: 514.504.2796
francis.beaulieu@canoe.ca

Five Mobile
Ameet Shah VP, Sales & Business Development, Co-Founder
Office: 416.479.0335
ameet@fivemobile.com

This is somewhat old news, but Five Mobile and Poolhouse are happy to announce the launch of DogBook and Catbook! See the press release below.

Dog book
Following the popularity of the Dogbook Facebook application, Poolhouse has launched the Doghouse iPhone application, which is now available as a free download on the iTunes store. Check out the video as well!

“The Dogbook iPhone app is an evolution of the Facebook application,” says Alexandre Roche, Dogbook co-creator. “Having Dogbook on your iPhone allows you to always have your dog with you, connect with other dog owners and gives you constant access to a number of resources like finding a dog park nearest to you.”

Features of the application include photo uploads, list other Dogbook users who are near you and locates nearby dog parks no matter where you are in the world. Lost a dog? You can use the application’s “Arf Alert” to send a message to all Dogbook users within a 15-kilometre radius with a photo and your contact information. Found a dog? Call the happy owner right from your phone.

“Posting your lost dog’s photo on a telephone pole is now a thing of the past as a way to find your favourite friend,” says Geoffrey Roche, Dogbook co-creator. “Posting a photo on ‘Arf Alerts’ takes all the great features of the iPhone, like GPS, and combines them with our two million strong user base to save the day for your dog.”

Dogbook is the creation of Canadian father and son team Geoffrey Roche and Alexandre Roche. Poolhouse developed the Dogbook iPhone application in conjunction with Five Mobile. The Dogbook Facebook application has over two million users and has been featured on ABC World News, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and BBC.

About Poolhouse
Poolhouse produces other popular Facebook applications such as Catbook, My Babybook, Horsebook, Ferretbook, Rodentbook, Fishbook and Birdbook.

About Five Mobile

Five Mobile creates compelling, robust and scalable mobile applications for brands and enterprises across a multiple of different platforms and handsets.

Its been a REALLY busy last few months here at Five Mobile… so busy that we’ve been neglecting our loyal blog readers!

We’re happy to say that we finally have an application that is featured in an Apple commercial! The ecobee application can be seen in various Apple commercials throughout the olympics. Check it out!

Check out the press release here. Exciting news on the home automation front!

Our post about Mobile Web vs. Mobile Apps was quite popular, and as a follow up, I’d like to discuss an approach to mobile application development we’ve found ourselves using a few times in the last little while.

As we outlined, Mobile Web apps have their advantages in terms of cost and broad device reach, however they lose out on the ability to access device hardware and don’t get the presence on App Stores.  There is a compromise that lets you take a bit of both worlds.

1. Develop your mobile web application.  This can be done for as many or as few devices as you’d like.  This application should take advantage of the rich browsers in iPhone/Android, BlackBerry 4.6+, etc. as well as offer a solid WAP experience on feature phones.
2. For each platform you really want to make your application shine, you would develop a native “Shell” application which is nothing more than a window into your Mobile Web site, utilizing the platform’s native web UI component/widget.

This gives you the following benefits:

1. Ability to hook into the native features of the device, such as GPS and Camera, passing information to the mobile web app as suitable.
2. Ability to list your application on the various App Stores, increasing your application’s presence in the market.
3. The flexibility of having a mobile web app – it can be updated on the server in a moments notice without requiring the user to update the installed application on their device.
4. Simple, quick development of a mobile web site, reaching a broad set of devices in advance of having a native application completed for various platforms.
5. Easy transition from mobile web to hybrid app when desired – you can push out the URL for downloading the native shell application when the users open your mobile web site
6. If you’re seeing huge uptake on a particular platform, you can always decide to move the application more towards a conventional full native application – taking advantage of caching, snappier UI changes, animations, etc.

So this is a “Hybrid Application” – a perfect combo of mobile web and mobile app, giving you flexibility and power to develop your application in stages, growing as your number of users does.

“YouTube For Ebooks” Reaches iTunes App Store Top 4 In Two Weeks

Toronto, Canada (March 26, 2009) — Wattpad, the world’s most popular ebook sharing community, today announced that its popular iPhone application has propelled to the Top 4 spot in US, Canada, Australia and many other countries just two weeks after its launch on the App Store.

“iPhone now accounts for nearly 30% of our mobile traffic,” said Eva Lau, COO of Wattpad. “We are extremely proud to have accomplished this milestone in such a short period of time.”

Wattpad is the most popular destination for reading and sharing ebooks. Users have instant access to hundreds of thousands of novels, short stories, fan fiction, essays, jokes and more through Wattpad’s website (www.wattpad.com), mobile website (m.wattpad.com) and mobile applications. Wattpad has delivered billions of pages from its 100,000 plus strong ebook library. With cumulative downloads fast approaching 3 million, Wattpad is also the most popular mobile ebook application. Wattpad mobile application works on most mobile phones and smartphones such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic, RIM Blackberry and Apple iPhone / iPod Touch.

More information about Wattpad is available online at www.wattpad.com.

Wattpad Now Available for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch

Check out the press release!

Having been in the mobile space for a number of years, I’m often asked by prospective customers whether they should develop a mobile website or create a downloadable application that runs on the handsets. The short answer is, it depends on what your trying to accomplish.

Developing for the Mobile Web

Web development on mobile phones has long suffered from a very rigid platform and the inability for mobile browsers to keep up with current web technologies. This is slowly changing, partially due to the recent spikes in Smartphone handset sales. With many handset manufacturers attempting to clone the iPhone’s usability and appeal, a larger focus has been placed on the content on mobile phones, which in turn, requires better software to render this content. For example, both the iPhone and Blackberry Bold browsers can view HTML pages and process JavaScript. Technologies such as Flash have been rumored to be coming in the near term, but it will take some time before its supported on a large number of devices.

The “Pros” for Developing Mobile Web Applications

• The cost of supporting a mobile web application is relatively cheap in comparison to a downloadable application
• Accordingly, the speed at which a mobile website can be created is relatively quick
• If you have an existing high traffic web destination, developing a mobile version makes sense as your site already has a brand attached to it and a loyal following
• Higher-end devices are beginning to support existing desktop browser capabilities thus making the delta between your mobile and desktop browser experience smaller
• Deployment of a mobile website is quite simple
• The mobile web allows you to develop on a single platform and target the broadest set of launched across all handsets

The “Cons” for Developing Mobile Web Applications

• Currently, mobile websites are unable to take advantage of device specific features
• Ex: For the same reasons you can’t use a website to burn a CD, you cannot use a mobile website to access your phone’s contact list
• This is why high traffic sites such as Facebook will create both a mobile website and downloadable application
• Relatively speaking, interfaces on mobile websites are quite poor and clunky resulting in a less than desirable user experience
• Currently, support for AJAX and DHTML technologies is quite limited
• Despite developing for a single platform, developers must take into account mobile device idiosyncrasies across different handsets, firmware versions and operators
• Users must be connected at all times… there is no concept of an “offline mode”
• With the increase in mobile handset vendors, there has also been an increase in browser fragmentation
• On the web, typically developers are focused on Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari
• In the mobile space, there are 10+ relevant browsers and many more in development
• Mobile website owners must rely heavily on 3rd party sources such as Device Atlas to understand device characteristics

Developing Mobile Applications

Similar to the mobile web, the native capabilities of handsets have improved and so have the associated SDKs. If you’re watching how Apple markets the iPhone, its all about letting users know that their device is more than just a phone. Specifically, they showcase applications created for the handset that leverage it’s unique capabilities. In general, Apple has done a fantastic job of making users feel comfortable in downloading content to their handsets. It’s not only helped them, but it’s opened up the floodgates across other platforms.

The “Pros” for Developing Mobile Applications

• Mobile applications can interact directly with the device obtaining useful information such as location, contact lists, accelerometer functions, etc. This is critical for a “mobile” application
• Having the ability to control exactly what is displayed on screen allows for customized (and optimized), rich user interfaces directly on the device
• User interactions can also be directly controlled via the possible inputs (touch, voice, keyboard, etc)
• In your mobile application, you are able to store reasonable amounts of data directly on the handset in a secure manner as opposed to storing everything on a remote server (slow!)
• Performance can typically be optimized for each handset and platform
• Mobile (Smartphone) development platforms are improving quite rapidly
• Developers can create a consistent look and feel throughout their application
• Measurement in terms of how users interact with an application is possible

The “Cons” for Developing Mobile Applications

• Unless proper design measures are taken, upkeep and continued portability of your application is difficult to maintain.  This happens to be something we specialize in
• There are 5-6 relevant mobile application development platforms to choose from, and understand which ones best suit your needs can be confusing
• Within these platforms, additional fragmentation exists at a per device, firmware and operator level
• Typically, developing rich mobile applications is more costly than creating a mobile website
• Mobile applications may require porting to additional platforms and this takes up front consideration
• A single, publicly available source for data across all mobile handset characteristics and attributes as they relate to the individual SDKs does not exist
• Testing can be time consuming and costly as mobile applications must be tested on the physical handset
• One needs to understand the various carrier requirements if an “on deck” strategy is preferred

In conclusion, it very much depends on your organization’s goals with regards to the mobile application. If it’s simply an extension of your mobile website, is heavily content focused and does not require an interactive user experience, then the mobile web may be a better choice. If one requires access to device functionality such as location or the contact list and have an appropriate development and porting strategy formed (either internally, or through a partner) that will help minimize the effects of device fragmentation, then developing a mobile application makes sense.

As we’re all aware, the iPhone represents an exciting innovation in the mobile space. Developers finally have a platform to distribute content that has a widespread audience of techies and casual users. One of the major draws to the platform is the perceived lack of device fragmentation that exists given that one is developing for a very small set of devices in the iPhone and iTouch.

While Apple has done a tremendous job in limiting the level of fragmentation, its inevitable that developers will run into issues as they create content. Keeping some of the suggestions we’ve provided in mind when designing and developing your application will help make your code more portable across the different platforms.

1. Device Simulator vs. Actual Hardware

Its incredibly difficult to create an accurate device simulator that runs on a developers machine, given that the underlying hardware and user input mechanisms are different from the get go. Apple has provided one of the best device simulators that we’ve seen for mobile devices. Given their focus on the generation of unique and compelling content, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

The first thing I noticed was the accuracy and speed at which the emulator operates at. To given an example, the Apple emulator can be loaded in a matter of seconds while RIM’s BlackBerry emulators take quite some time to load and I’ve found the load time takes me out of the development “flow”. They’ve also made it very easy to run the emulators across the different released firmware versions (which is quite useful when you’re trying to isolate firmware specific bugs in your application).

When developing using the emulator versus the device, the following should be noted:

• The simulator does not have an accelerometer, thus making it difficult to test any applications that require those functions
• There are ways to simulate the accelerometer and tie it to the one located inside your MacBook
• The simulator does not provide access to location but it does provide you with a default location thus allowing you to use the API
• The performance on the hardware itself is notably slower than on the simulator. Graphically demanding applications should always be tested on the handset itself to ensure the performance is up to par
• There are several video playback issues
• The simulator does not appear to take into account the case sensitive filenames stored on your MacBook’s hard drive. For example, if you have a test.png in your application, [UIImage imageWithName:@”Test.png”] will work on the simulator but not on the device (notice the capital “T” in “Test.png”)
• I had a custom button with an image:
  

  UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
  [button setImage:image forState:UIControlStateNormal];

  I tried to dynamically position the button using some computations. If button.frame.origin.x was not a round number the margin of the button will show up fine on the simulator but is chopped of on the real device. The solution was to use the round() function when computing button.frame.origin.x, which makes sense but is something I assumed the platform would have done for me

   

2. Differences between firmware SDK versions

When you develop for a mobile device, the firmware version of the device is often a major factor. One could have different firmware versions for a single device as its deployed across multiple carriers as an example. There are also have some users who actively update their firmware to the latest and others who do not. As a result, one could end up with different builds for the same device for each targeted carrier, because they introduced the device at a different point in time with different firmware versions.

Luckily, with iPhone updating the device is extremely well thought out and easy process from the user’s point of view. A developer typically only has to worry about the current operating firmware and the previous version. While a developer compiles the application, its tied to the version of the SDK so a user with an older SDK will not be able to install it and will be prompted to update their firmware in order to do so.

There are still some issues that you might want to keep in mind:

• If you are not building against the latest SDK, make sure that you are testing the application on devices with previous versions
• There are bugs fixed/introduced in each new version. A few that I’ve run into include:
  − the list of supported fonts is different from version 2.0 and 2.1. I believe some fonts were taken out or the name was changed. My font selection dialog was crashing after updating to the new version.
• There used to be a way to provide a transparent background for a UIWebView in firmware version 2.1…. unfortunately this appears to have been removed
• See the links for additional changes: 2.0 to 2.1 2.1 to 2.2

3. Fragmentation between Apple devices

From a device fragmentation perspective, one should consider the three different versions of devices that Apple supports: iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iTouch.

When designing your application you have to carefully choose your feature set based on the targeted audience.

Some additions items you should take into consideration when developing your applications:

iPhone 2G vs iPhone 3G

• Because of the network speed, iPhone 2G is not suitable for streaming applications

iPhone vs iPod Touch

• There is no camera on the iPod Touch
• There is no sound recording mechanism on the iPod Touch
• Location information is limited when using the iPod Touch, and is only available when the device is connected to a WiFi network
• The iPod Touch does support any phone functions
• The 2nd generation of iPod Touch introduced a faster processor: 532MHz (up from 412MHz). This has an impact on applications which are dependent on the CPU speed (mostly games).

4. The Future

It will be interesting to see how Apple tackles the fragmentation problem as they release additional versions of their platforms. The rumored 3rd generation of the platform has quite a few enhancements that will allow for more interesting applications to be created, but may cause issues for existing verisons to run on the handsets. I believe Apple will control this by releasing new versions on a controlled basis and ensuring hardware changes are ramped up over time.

The challenge all developers will face is ensuring that there is both portable and future proof at the same time.

Check back soon for additional iPhone development tips and tricks!