Bidirectional Communication Between An Apple Watch Extension and the Host App

In this entry we’re going to focus on building Apple Watch apps that can communicate back and forth with the host application running on the iPhone.  This is extremely important since the Apple Watch provides a second screen/peripheral complimentary experience to the main app running on the iOS device – be it a remote control, or quick view/glance […]

Powering Apple Watch Apps with IBM MobileFirst – Part 1

This is the first entry in a multipart series on powering native iPhone and Apple Watch apps using the IBM MobileFirst Platform.  In this entry we will cover how to setup the MobileFirst Platform for use within Apple WatchKit apps and leverage the operational analytics and remote logging features. So, let’s first take a look […]

Complete Walkthrough and Source Code for “Building Offline Apps”

I recently put together some content on building “Apps that Work as Well Offline as they do Online” using IBM MobileFirst and Bluemix (cloud services).  There was the original blog post, I used the content in a presentation at ApacheCon, and now I’ve opened everything up for anyone use or learn from. The content now lives […]

Data Management for Apps that Work as Well Offline as They Do Online

Earlier this week I had the privilege of speaking at ApacheCon in Austin, TX on the topic of data management for apps that work as well offline as they do online.  This is an important topic for mobile apps, since, as we all painfully know already, there is never a case when you are always online […]

GeoPix: A sample iOS app powered by IBM MobileFirst for Bluemix

In this post I’d like to show a fairly simple application that I put together which shows off some of the rich capabilities for IBM MobileFirst for Bluemix that you get out of the box – All with an absolute minimal amount of your own developer effort.  Bluemix, of course, being IBM’s platform as a […]

Why Your Enterprise Needs To Be Ready For Mobile

I recently attended the IBM InterConnect conference, and it was great to be there presenting IBM MobileFirst and engaging with our clients and partners.  While there, I also took part in the “Ignite” presentation series. If you aren’t familar with Ignite, each presenter has 20 slides, with the slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds. That gives […]

Video: MobileFirst for Bluemix (MBaaS)

Last week I gave a presentation to the NYC Bluemix Meetup Group on IBM MobileFirst for Bluemix. Not familiar with the branding and have no idea what that means?  It is a mobile backend as a service, which gives you analytics, remote logging, user auth, data persistence & offline synch, push notification management, and more […]

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix Mobile Services (MBaaS)

I recently wrote an overview of IBM Bluemix’s Mobile Back-end as a Service offerings. I wanted to elaborate on the offerings, plus provide in-depth technical and implementation details, so I decided to produce this 5 part video series on Getting Started with IBM Bluemix Mobile Services. This post specifically covers native iOS, though there are also Android and […]

MBaaS – IBM Mobile Cloud Services, Bluemix & MobileFirst

MBaaS, or Mobile Backend as a Service, seems to be a particularly hot topic these days. MBaaS generally refers to backend services for mobile applications that provides data storage, user management, push notifications, and other pertinent mobile APIs.   This is more than just “Cloud Services” which more generally refer to a scalable virtual cluster of computing […]

IBM MobileFirst & Remote Client Side Logging in Mobile Apps

One of the many popular feature of IBM MobileFirst SDK is the ability to capture client-side logs from mobile devices out in the wild in a central location (on the server).  That means you can capture information from devices *after* you have deployed your app into production.  If you are trying to track down or recreate […]