The leading outsourced product development company GoodWorkLabs was featured in the anchor story in The Telegraph, the largest newspaper of the Eastern India. Here are excerpts from the story –

Start young, take risks and break out of the rut! Vishwas Mudagal did just that to have his share of ups and downs before tasting sweet success. Now, the 32-year-old entrepreneur-writer-motivation speaker wants the younger generation in the Northeast to dream big and follow its passion from college itself.

“The idea behind GoodWorkLabs was to provide high-end technology solutions to other companies. Today, we have 20 clients, including Flipkart and Samsung. About 80 per cent of our clients are based outside the country,” he said.

On what makes his firm acceptable in the global market, Mudagal said, “It’s about aesthetic sense, scalability, innovation and the ability to build a product incrementally. We believe we have acquired these traits and our clients have responded well. Not many IT service companies have in-depth knowledge of building a product, as doing that requires going through a gamut of services over a period of time.

The Northeast, he said, has a huge potential for entrepreneurship but needs to have the right momentum. “The impetus on entrepreneurship as of now is not there. There is the need for developing infrastructure and building a marketing campaign. Having said that, the region has abundant human resources. A lot of young people from the Northeast have done well in cities outside the region,” he said.

Read the complete story “Breaking Out Of The Rut Mantra For Success” Story here.

The 2014 Apple Conference near its headquarters in Cupertino, California turned heads by the bunch with new devices, a new payment system and new a smart watch. If you haven’t had the chance to watch it live, here is our lowdown on the key highlights of the glittering events that was as many as 4 launches in one dazzling evening.

#1 – iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – The device every loyal Apple fan has been waiting for was finally announced by Tim Cook, the Chief Executive of Apple. While the basic look of exterior matches the iPhone 5, the slightly rounded corners managed to hold attention. Also prominent was the protrusion of the camera lens out of the phone’s body. While the iPhone 6 sports a 4.7 inch screen, the iPhone 6 Plus boasts of a huge 5.5 inch screen – the biggest screen size on iPhone till date.

Both the phones feature Retina HD display, iOS8 and 20 LTE bands. They run on the proprietary Apple A8 64-bit 2^nd generation SoC that contains a little over two billion transistors built around a 20nM process. Apple claims 25% speedier CPU and 5% boost on graphics. ¹

The price sensitive consumer would be forced to think twice before ordering the new iPhone 6. However, crazy fans around the world will see no problems in shelling out $299 for 16 GB, $399 for 64 GB or $499 for a 128 GB iPhone. The interesting thing here is the increased storage made available in place of the maximum 64GB space in previous iPhones. ²

We are sure that the new editions will be a delight to both the iOS app developers as well as the iPhone users.

#2 – Apple Pay – The conference also marked the debut of Apple Pay, a new payment process that uses NFC and fingerprint-sensing TouchId to enable purchases directly from the phone itself. Users simply have to get a one-time credit card verification done from their bank. They can then use Passbook, Apple’s online merchant services, to make payment at a wireless tap-and-pay terminal. Tim Cook claims Apple Pay to be “an entirely new category of service. And it’s all about the wallet”. ²

#3 – Apple Watch – Apple also officially announced its first Apple Watch at the event. It has an accuracy of +/- 60 milliseconds and comes in six strap styles and 2 metal frames color tones. Some of the key features include Siri integration, touch screen, a gyroscope, a heart monitor and an accelerometer. It also doubles up as a “comprehensive health and fitness device” by using a three-ring system for monitoring physical activity everyday and gauging it against set goals. It will be available from 2015 onwards at a starting price of $349.

Tim Cook’s love for music was evident when he mentioned the iTunes festival in London and the growing fan base of iTunes. He then announced the final performance of the evening by U2 and helped distribute the band’s latest album for free to the participants.

Write in to us and tell us which of the product launches of the evening did you find the most enticing?

1 – http://www.extremetech.com/computing/189787-apples-a8-soc-analyzed-the-iphone-6-chip-is-a-2-billion-transistor-20nm-monster

2 – http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/apple-live-blog-new-iphone/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

3 – Image source – Mashable

CEO of GoodWorkLabs, Vishwas Mudagal on a recent visit to Guwahati spoke to The Assam Tribune (the biggest newspaper in North East) on how to give a push to the economy and IT sector in the North East. Excerpts below –

“Investors want proper infrastructure and investor-friendly atmosphere. But, the State Governments of the region have not been able to provide these to the investors so far,” Mudagal claimed.

The IT Expert, however, said that his company is willing to invest in the North East especially in the software and mobile applications. “We need to conduct a feasibility study on the North-east to carry forward our plans,” he informed. The Bangalore-based IT company has been providing IT solutions to several leading companies, including Samsung, Flipkart and Klub Hub.

Mudagal also appealed to the youth to start business by utilizing available resources. “The region has vast resources, so the younger generation should start business instead of Government’s jobs. But at the same time the banks and other financial institutions should also play a key role in extending their credit support to youth,” he observed.

Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs, was invited for an exclusive event by CII Young Indians Jaipur chapter to address the members and also students of ICG – IIS University at Jaipur. Vishwas address a large audience on key aspects of entrepreneurship, building path breaking products that can change the world, innovation, writing and so on, encouraging young women to dream big and take up entrepreneurship during the college time. According to him “College is the best time to experiment and understand what you are passionate about. This is when you can start your first company. Success or failure doesn’t matter, what matters is you take the first step.”

Vishwas who is also a best-selling author encouraged everyone to take up writing and storytelling, saying “The only way to live several lifespans in one lifetime is by writing stories.”

Young Indians team is doing a great job in encouraging youngsters and creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and business growth.

Here are a few pics from the event –

Vishwas Mudagal with CII – Young Indians leadership team – Jaipur co-chair Abhinav Bhantia, Jaipur chair Abhishek Mishra, Northern Region Chair Rohit, Ashish Maheshwari, Ashish Modi, Nivedita and everyone.

Vishwas with students of ICG College, Jaipur. The future women entrepreneurs, authors, and game changers!

This is Part 2 of the iOS8: Amazing New Features series. You can read Part 1 here.

With the release of the new iOS 8 SDK (Software Development Kit) in June 2014, the app developers are in for some really good news. This Developer’s kit includes 4000 new APIs (Application Programming Interface), which will help the developers to add new features and capabilities to their apps that will assist in enhancing the apps’ performance.

Following is a list of the various new kits and/or features that come with iOS 8 SDK.

Advantages of iOS 8 v/s iOS 7 Features:

Games:

Technology improvements in iOS 8 make it easy for iOS game developers to implement their game’s graphics and audio. 

• SceneKit helps create 3D animated effects and scenes into apps.
• SceneKit integrated with SpriteKit helps create high-performing and battery-efficient 2D games.
• Metal offers streamlined API, a unified graphics and shading language. Modern architectural considerations, such as multiprocessing and shared memory, make it easy to parallelize the creation of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) commands.

App Extensions:

App extensions lets the developers create actions or buttons separately, which can be used in other apps as well.

• Your app can now share photos, videos, files and website links with social networking sites and other such websites.
• You can also customise your own action buttons to help users complete various functions like translating text into another language or editing documents, and so on.
• Developers can now get their apps to display widgets such as news stories, in the ‘Today’ section of the Notifications centre.
• Also, your apps can provide storage location which other apps can also access. This helps users to edit one file using several apps.
• Create custom keyboards that users can install and use universally.

CloudKit:

• Developers can now store and retrieve their app data in a more structured, secured and efficient manner directly on the iCloud.
• They can also make the users anonymously log in to their apps with their iCloud Apple IDs.
• Now there is no need to write server-side application logic. With CloudKit, developers can solely concentrate on client-side app development.

Touch ID:

• Developers can now make use of Touch ID, the way User IDs were used to gain access to certain contents in the app.
• Touch ID cannot be accessed by iOS or any other app, and is well protected.

PhotoKit:

• Now create apps that can directly edit photos in the camera roll. Previously, users had to first import the photos.
• Other attributes include fetching objects and requesting changes, thread-safe architecture for caching and loading thumbnails, and knowledge of changes made by other apps.

Manual Camera Controls:

• Now users can use your apps and directly control the exposure settings, camera focus and white balance.
• Also, they can click pictures with different exposure settings with the help of ‘bracketed exposure captures’.

HealthKit:

• With HealthKit, all health-related information shared by the users is stored in one secured location.
• iPhone or iPad App Developers can gain access to all the information as soon as the users share them with their app. This helps the developers to provide users with a complete health-report instantly.

HomeKit:

• Developers can now create apps that will help users to locate other iOS devices in their house, for quicker configuration.
• Your apps can also control the devices with the help of certain actions.

Handoff:

• iOS 8 can make users continue using an app on another device, from right where it left off on the previous one.
• Your apps also have the option of doing the same.

Swift:

• Swift, as the name suggests, is the new fast programming language which is highly secured and interactive.
• It is used for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
• Writing Swift code within Xcode 6 shows immediate results before compilation into native machine code.
• Code your apps in playgrounds before moving it into projects.

Here’s part 1 of the iOS: Amazing New Features series.

(image source: Any Geo blog)

Here’s a 2 part series to get a glimpse of the amazing new features Apple has come up with for iOS8 over iOS7.

Part 1 – Differences between iOS 8  v/s iOS 7  

On June 2, 2014, at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014, Apple Inc. announced the eighth major release of its iOS mobile operating system. It has succeeded iOS 7, which was released in September 2013. There are some exciting new features for both iPhone users and iPhone mobile app developers.

The new iOS is an improved and advanced version of the previous operating system. Following is an overview of the different new features of iOS 8, in comparison with iOS 7.

Keyboard Difference between iOS 8 and iOS 7:

• The new QuickType feature helps in typing faster by providing word suggestions in iOS 8.
• It suggests what word to type next in accordance with the people you are interacting with, whether they are friends or colleagues or a complete stranger.
• Users can now also install a third-party keyboard, like Swype or Swiftkey.

Interactive Notifications:

• Now reply to a message without leaving the app you were using. This is also possible for third-party apps like facebook, where you can like or comment through the notification without opening facebook at all.
• This also works on the lock-screen.
• In iOS 7, double-tap could only get you in touch with the opened apps. In iOS 8, the same option can now get you in touch with your favourite contacts instantly.

Health Kit:

• iOS 7 had separate apps to measure blood pressure, heart rate, calories burnt, diabetes and other such metrics. With the new Health Kit in iOS 8, now keep all these measurements in one place.
• It’s personalised as well! The kit recognises your readings and acts accordingly. For instance, if your blood pressure is higher than what it usually is, or your heart rate has increased abnormally without having done any activity, it will instantly notify a hospital, and a doctor will contact you immediately.
• For this, Apple has also tied up with Mayo Clinic and several other hospitals.

Spotlight:

• Spotlight is enhanced, providing you with results from multiple sources. For instance, if you search for a movie, you will get results from iTunes, as well as its current running show-time in theatres.

Mail:

• Delete mails, mark as unread, or flag, by simply swiping the mail in the inbox.
• While composing emails, if you want to access other emails, you could now just swipe down the composing mail and check your inbox.

Safari:

• This app has become tidier, as you can now choose to hide the sidebar containing bookmarks, shared links and reading lists.
• It also provides a bird’s eye view of all the websites that you have opened, grouping the tabs which are from the same site.
• Scanning the credit card and make purchases without entering your details.
• By holding the ‘+’ icon, open a recently closed tab.
• Now enter into privacy mode for only select sites, unlike previously, when under privacy mode, all opened tabs went into that mode.

Enterprise:

• Configuring your device in accordance with your organisation has become as simple as it can be.
• Also, there is better privacy option with passcode protection for all apps – calendar, contacts, mail, messages, notes, reminders, third-party apps (eg. fb).

Siri:

• If you now say ‘Hey Siri’, the Siri is activated right away. You don’t even need to touch the phone at all.
• It even recognises songs playing in the background.
• Ask it to purchase that song for you, and it will take you to the iTunes store.
• It also supports 22 new dictation languages.

Continuity:

• With iOS 8, you can now have all Apple products synced together.
• Switch between devices and pick up from where you left off, and that too, without manual configuration.
• You can now also Airdrop files between Mac and iOS devices.

iCloud Drive:

• In iOS 8, if you make any changes on the documents that are saved in the iCloud drive, you instantly have it on all your synced devices.
• You also get the first 5GB data storage for free.

Messaging:

• In iOS 8, now share audio and video files instantly and also share locations.
• Have group conversations, add or remove people, and switch to ‘do not disturb’ mode to mute a conversation, or leave the group entirely.

Photos:

• Editing features for photos in iOS 8 has become smarter than before.
• Also, photos can now be easily searched for by typing their timeline, location or name of albums.

Family Sharing:

• With this new feature, add up to six members sharing the same credit card.
• Share as many photos, movies, songs, documents, lists or calendar reminders with family.

End of part 1. In part 2 we will discuss the Developer’s Kit. 

Update: Read the Part 2 – iOS8 versus iOS7 Developer’s Kit here

(image source – IBNlive.com)

The Nasscom Product Conclave 2014 Kolkata, the mega event conducted by the IT-BPO body Nasscom, was a great success and has given a push to the IT industry in Kolkata, especially the startups from the region. Vishwas Mudagal, the CEO of GoodWorklabs, spoke about Lean Startups at the event. He highlighted the growing popularity of Lean Startup philosophy, the need to build products iteratively using the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) model, acquiring ‘validating learning’, experimenting with pivots and various other tricks entrepreneurs could use while starting up or scaling companies.

Below are few pics from the event –

Vishwas Mudagal in a panel discussion on Lean Startups.

‘Losing My Religion,’ the best-selling novel written by Vishwas Mudagal was showcased at the event. It is now seen as a book that is a preamble to entrepreneurship and startups, as it exposes the reader to the life of entrepreneurs, and their struggles and glory.

Let’s begin with a simple definition of what Cross Platform Mobile Development is. It is a manner of writing single codebase for applications, which could be used on different operating systems. It is a known fact how difficult Multi-Platform Mobile App Formatting can be. Each platform functions differently and is unique in its own way. However, one could say that Cross-platform apps are the “in-thing” today. So as a developer, it is essential to develop best cross-formatted apps. Fortunately, there are some really good Cross Platform Mobile Development tools / platforms / frameworks in the market today (they have for sure evolved quite a bit). We bring to you the Top 5.

#1 – PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an award-winning Mobile Development Cross Platform that is capable of creating applications for Symbian, Android, Blackberry, Palm, iOS (iPhone and iPads) and Windows. These developers write their applications based on web shortcuts such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS3. It is also open source and free, so there are no licensing costs. PhoneGap works systematically, and provides developers an easy access to hardware components. Like the accelerometer, camera, sound, GPS tracker and many more which are quite advanced in nature. In addition, PhoneGaps also conducts training to developers for free who are willing to make it big in this industry.

#2 – Appcelerator

Appcelerator creates Cross Platform Mobile Apps through Web Programming languages such as PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Python and Ruby. One of the best things about Appcelerator is that it provides its users with more than 300 API’s and location information to access easily. It is known to power over 1000 native apps in a month. For the 3rd Party Components, it provides value-adds such as Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), app analytics and a marketplace.

#3 – Sencha Touch

Sencha Touch as a Cross Platform Mobile Development tool is a HTML5 mobile application framework for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. Sencha Touch can be used to develop UI’s for mobile web applications that have a look and feel like those of native applications on the supported mobile devices.

#4 – Whoop

This is a very interesting tool for Cross Platform Mobile Development. Whoop claims that they are “the one-stop mobile app publishing platform for non-developers.” They state that they are suitable for even non developers. This is considered one of the best ways to go for beginners in Mobile Development. Although, there is an ease in its use, it does not possess many important requirements for the latest features on hardware. It consists of a WYSIWYG interface which allows the developers to easily drop app elements to attain the desired result.

#5 – MoSync

MoSync is an advanced SDK for Cross Platform Mobile Development. This SDK provides the developers with many useful tools such as runtimes, libraries, integrated compilers and more. It includes Eclipse based IDE and supports C/C++, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Java. MoSync supports OS’ such as Android, Windows Mobile, Moblin, Symbian, Mobile Linux distro. The release of MoSync 2.4, will allow support for iPhone OS and BlackBerry.

#6 – RhoMobile

It offers Rhodes, an open source integrated framework based on Ruby. This is basically used to develop applications that can be used on several other mobile OS’. It allows native applications to be developed for Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, iOS and RIM. RhoMobile provides a framework, which needs the developer to just code once. This same code can be used to develop apps for different OS’.

Cross Platform Mobile Development tools are in huge demand today. We hope these are able to help you in developing an awesome app!

For consultation and development of cross platform mobile apps, connect with GoodWorkLabs, the experts in cross platform mobile and HTML5 development.