What is Dribbble?

You’re probably not a designer if asking this. Anyway, Dribbble.com is one of the most popular and visited web community discovering and connecting designers from all over the world. It is a place with friendly and creative atmosphere to present and discuss, discover, promote and explore design.

What are you working on?

This is the question answered daily by the members of Dribbble. On this “show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives” they publish screenshots of their projects, works and ingenious ideas in the design area. In return users receive feedback from their colleagues, which fosters cooperation, inspires to go extra mile in your beginnings and reach even greater creativeness and originality.

Firstly founded as a tiny side project Dribbble has grown into a profitable company and the most popular web resource helping the design talent worldwide share their creations and get hired. With headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts this humble project now has conquered the world, the world of design.

Here at Intellectsoft we have the same goals (we mean taking over the world of course) and therefore couldn’t but join this community. Besides we do have stuff to share. Just take a look at our portfolio, we cannot keep such great projects hidden from others. Thus you can find our dribbble account here.

The meet-up

Web designers, graphic designers, illustrators, icon artists, typographers, logo designers, and other creative people all gathered up for one day which they spent sharing ingenious ideas, presenting brand new projects and discussing the past, present and future of design.

The highlight of the conference featured such topics as: «Trends in design: who sets them?»; «iOS apps trade: look at it from new angle»; «The process of developing new application»; presentations of new apps and projects, etc.

Looking forward to learn more about the conference? Check out the photos on our Flickr account! Don’t forget to take a look at our portfolio, as there is loads of fascinating apps and projects there!

Actually, the global statistics draw rather bright future for mobile applications turning them into a very promising advertising platform.

According to global mobile statistics 300,000 mobile apps have been released within these three years. Experts from IDC on the basis of research revealing 10.9 billion apps downloads in 2010 predict that by 2014 users will increase this number to 76.9 billion. What a business would not like to be part of this statistics? The overall audience using mobile apps is immense thus the promotion opportunities are infinite. By the way, the biggest mobile audience dwells in Japan (53.3% of all mobile users worldwide), the USA goes second with 34.4% and Europe takes the third place with 28%. The most popular categories of downloaded apps are games; news; maps; social networking and music and I just cannot help mentioning that Intellectsoft is sound on each mentioned category and even more. As for mobile platforms, iOS is still streets ahead of its competitors with more than 300,000 applications on App Store.

This year apps downloads are about to reach 32 billion with advertising spending set to increase to £1.79 billion.

David MacQueen, wireless media strategies director at Strategy Analytics, said that the tendency to spend more money on in-app ads is an inevitable result of increasing demand for mobile apps. Thus the more consumers will use their mobile devices the more advertisers will go mobile.

Though each coin has two sides. In the chase for profit some companies get overwhelmed by monetisation of mobile apps and forget about end-users. There have been calls for companies to reduce the amount of spending that can be done on an app after Apple was sued over in-game charges by a number of parents. Just like people say, too much water drowned the miller.

On the 26th of April 2012 Radisson Blu Portman Hotel, London will host Ciklum Seminar dedicated to ideas, trends and concerns of moving to the cloud. This seminar sets-out to deliver a hype-free conversation among CTOs, Chief Technical Architects and other key executives grappling with this journey to the cloud.

Ciklum Seminar organised by a Danish innovative IT outsourcing company will feature lectures from the top dogs of the industry:

• Melissa Di Donato, salesforce.com Managing Director EMEA ISV and OEM
• Jimmy Gasteen, Precursive, CEO/ Co-founder
• David Terrar, Intellect, Chair, SaaS Group, Intellect and many others.

The Intellectsoft CTO Max Mironchik will also be there bursting with new ingenious ideas of optimisation and development and overwhelming with enthusiasm as always. Alas, Intellectsoft is not listed among the speakers this time, thus our CTO will simply take the best of others’ knowledge and experience.

Ciklum Seminar is a great event to visit indeed providing its audience with a marvellous chance to meet with colleagues from many other ISVs and share your ideas, thoughts and concerns directly related to both strategic and everyday business challenges.

The following topics will be highlighted at the seminar:

• «5 Key Challenges for the ISV CTO and How to Beat Them!»
• «Managing Cloud App Development Across Multiple Locations»
• «Our Direction to the Cloud with Microsoft Windows Azure»
• Keynote: «Why All Cloud Apps Should Be Social Apps»
• «Cloud2.0 — moving from online storage to real productivity gains» and much more yet unrevealed.

Stay tuned for more news and details about Ciklum Seminar coming up shortly!

About Ciklum

Ciklum is a Danish innovative IT outsourcing company specializing in software development in Europe. Breaking the mould of traditional IT outsourcing model of project-based services, they offer clients unique opportunities of establishing their own dedicated IT department in one of their nearshore and/or offshore development centres. This is equivalent to having your in-house IT specialists, but for a significantly lower cost and less administrative nuisances.

According to the recent research conducted by the road safety charity Brake and insurance company Direct Line you probably do just like tens of thousands of us. Despite of the risk involved 48% of drivers text and make calls while driving. The addiction to smartphones is evident and ominous, as nor dangers, neither sky-high fines and penalty points cannot stop us.

What is more, of this 48% of irresponsible drivers, 2 in 3 still use hand-held mobile devices increasing the risk and danger of a road accident.

The young are more likely to offend according to the above-mentioned research. On comparison among young drivers there are 17% more of offenders who text while driving than among the old. Moreover 21% of young people email, use Internet and apps at the wheel while only 9% of the old do the same.

Using phone while driving doesn’t differ much from drink-driving

According to Julie Townsend deputy chief executive at Brake using a phone at the wheel you are taking a horrendous risk with your own life and the lives of others. Many drivers who wouldn't dream of drink-driving are using phones at the wheel, oblivious that the effect on your reaction times is actually the same.

Director of motor underwriting and pricing at Direct Line Andy Goldby is of the same opinion: "Much more needs to be done to deter motorists from the dangers of using mobile phones whilst driving, as any action that involves taking your eyes off the road or your mind from the task increases your chance of a collision. Too many people are either still unaware that using a mobile phone can be a major distraction to their concentration while driving, or are simply ignoring the rules of the road.”

The Intellectsoft team would highly recommend all the drivers young and older be cautious and sensible at the wheel if not for yourself at least for the others. We also recommend checking our portfolio featuring loads of handy apps for drivers. In case you didn’t follow the charity Brake’s and our advice and got into a car accident the GEM Motoring Assist app would be extremely useful for you. Actually this app developed for the app’s eponymous company is an invaluable helping hand for the drivers and GEM members.

Experts and researches compared the two platforms once again: which one is more exposed to hacker’s attacks iOS or Android? According to the researchers from Black Hat Europe the latter appeared to be more vulnerable, thus extremely attractive for wicked hackers.

As in any activity in malware making the revenue should outstrip the cost of the system exploiting. Otherwise there is no point in doing it. Besides, hackers prefer easy and not too risky attacks.

Let’s take iOS for instance, being a closed and highly secured system it makes downloading hostile applications quite a challenge. Firstly, to load anything to App Store one has to pay 99 USA dollars. Secondly, a proper registration is required: hackers will have to identify themselves and give personal information which is not what they usually do. Thirdly, the risks are sky-high: at App store they review the code of each and every application submitted. Surely failures happen even at Apple, but if the wrong app gets through the initial review it will be detected within one week by the monitoring system.

As for Android it is not so protected. With only 25 USA dollars you are welcome to load apps to Android Market. Moreover the submission process is as easy as a pie: only online form is required. Provided we are all not so honest when filling out such forms, it’s obvious hackers may lie to Google too. Last but not least apart from the iOS platform Android makes possible runtime modifications.

We at Intellectsoft respect and work with both platforms – iOS and Android. Besides, we are sure that users jailbreaking their mobile phones and devices (and loads of peeps do that) are the most attractive for hackers regardless of the platform they use.

By the way free apps especially from third party app stores may harm mobile device in other way. Even if they do not embody some dangerous virus, they may simply steal your battery charge. Adds in such kind of applications are the great battery bandits indeed. According to the research carried out by Abhinav Pathak (a computer scientist from Purdue University in Indiana) free applications like Angry Birds for e.g. need not more than 10 — 30% of overall app battery consumption to run their core function. The report claims that approximately 75% of the remaining battery consumption from the app goes to collecting and transmitting information like GPS location back to the advertisers of the used application. One should be careful, as another time killer may turn out to be the phone battery killer as well.

Top of the agenda this year was the benefits and possibilities of mobile applications in the business sphere. MBLT12 brought together some really big fish of the industry (well, as usual): Ola Larsén, Head of Alliance and Developer relations at BlackBerry; Head of R&D at Yota Group Dmitry Gorilovsky; the Opera Marketing Coordinator Ilya Shpankov, Dmitry Satin — CEO at UsabilityLab, Academic Developer Evangelist from Microsoft — Konstantin Kichinskiy and many other business celebs. Without false modesty we have to admit (and all the peeps who were there) that the Intellectsoft CTO Mr. Mironchik was the leader among the experts of the Mobile Development panel.

With his strong technical skill base, deep knowledge and grand expertise including but not limited to enterprise architecture Max Mironchik was streets ahead of other experts on the panel. It’s not like we’re boasting, but Intellectsoft has had a resounding success which makes us reasonably proud and extremely happy.

We are excited to share with you his most tweeted comments:

• «If you want attention — use Android, if you want money — use iOS» – answering the question about choosing between Android and iOS.
• «You can drop a bomb from the sky and cover only some territory, or you can blast from inside the cave... and kill... all the terrorists.» – said Mr. Mironchik about guerrilla marketing, its strategies and advantages. He insists that when you influence the targeted audience from the inside the results are surplus to requirements.
• «What's so special about HTML5? Well, yes, there are loads of web developers with knowledge and expertise in HTML5, but are you sure they are high quality developers?» – speaking about ambiguous advantages of HTML5. Mr. Mironchik insists that principle “the more the better” is not applicable to the development cycle, as wider number of available developers doesn’t necessarily lead to instant decrease in the price of a project for SMEs, Privateers and Startups.

About MBLT12

MBLT12 is famed for breaking the mould of such conferences with its unusual and unconventional format. It is an annual conference gathering true market leaders to have a beneficial discussion about mobile development. You can read more about the conference on our blog or on its official website.

MBLT12 is marked out for both bringing together the key players of the sphere and the unconventional format of the event. It differs greatly from conferences of such scale: it is a live open discussion divided into panels to facilitate the process and additionally motivate participants to look at breathtaking innovations in mobile development offered by worldwide leaders from unusual angles.

MBLT12 will feature such sections like Mobile Manufacturers, Mobile Marketing, Social Services, Game Development, Mobile Development and many others. Each panel will include a moderator and experts among whom we may find such business celebs as Ola Larsén — Head of Alliance and Developer relations in BlackBerry, Dmitry Gorilovsky — Head of R&D in Yota Group, the Opera Marketing Coordinator Ilya Shpankov, Dmitry Satin — CEO in UsabilityLab, Academic Developer Evangelist from Microsoft — Konstantin Kichinskiy and many others. We are very honoured but not at all surprised to be representing Mobile Development panel, as the Intellectsoft CTO Mr. Mironchik is a true expert in the area having accumulated grand expertise and diverse knowledge for the years of efficient work.

This conference is targeted at top managers, directors, marketing managers and developers, although MBLT12 will be extremely interesting for anyone who is involved in mobile application development.

We have chosen this very office as it is modern, comfortable and extremely convenient being situated at the financial centre of London.

Our clients come first in everything we do and moving to the new office we aim to facilitate our interaction with the corporate clients and boost exciting prospects of further business development. Our leading position on the market, continuous development and expansion oblige us not only to improve the working conditions but to keep enhancing the work on the new projects as well.

We have written before about the series of IT lectures opened at Intellectsoft. The first one was about Building Reusable Code Libraries (PHP department); the present lecture has been dedicated to the Adobe After Effects (Design department).

 What is Adobe After Effects?

It is a digital motion graphics and compositing software published by Adobe Systems. This program is used in the post-production process of filmmaking and television production for creating sophisticated motion graphics and cinematic visual effects. With Adobe After Effects (AAE) specialists can transform moving images for delivery to theaters, living rooms, personal computers, and mobile devices. Quite fascinating, isn’t it?

What have we learned?

The lecture included the following sub-topics:

• The basics of Adobe After Effects: purpose, usage and interface;
• Working with AAE: project, composition, layers, the export and import of files, files sequences;
• How to use various effects on the example of the project “Guinness Quiz”: CC piwel poly, star burst, radial blur, glow;
• Animation tricks; transformation of the layer;
• The concept of adjustment layer and mask;
• Questions.

The lecture turned to be extremely interesting, as all the listeners were all ears even those who haven’t had the foggiest idea of basics and subtleties of designer's work.

You see, Intellectsoft boasts lots of highly-qualified, genius and top-notch specialists and most of them are men. Once we came up with a brilliant idea: why not congratulate our men on how great they are? After all nothing boosts motivation and work performance like praise, encouragement and lovely ladies.

No sooner said than done – the ladies of Intellectsoft congratulated all men and prepared some pleasant surprises to lighten their mood by the end of the day. Firstly, they all put on gorgeous smiles and the same clothes.

Secondly, they prepared a creative and memorable contest in the treasure-island style: for a short while at the end of a hard working day the Intellectsoft office turned into a treasure island and the brave men had to find hidden clues to get the treasure. It was extremely entertaining and exciting!

We, at Intellectsoft, are absolutely sure that such amusing events benefit the corporate spirit and team building greatly helping team to relax, bond and 'think outside the box'. With a refreshed view and sweet memories of the last party we are ready to keep excelling ourselves in everything we do!