Android O App Development - Get Your Apps Ready

The final developer preview of Android O, Google’s latest version of the mobile operating system is out. Even though there are no major changes noticed with this release, app developers should start testing their apps on Android O at the earliest. To do so, they should download a device system image, install their app, test for its performance, and update the codes if necessary for publishing, using the app’s existing platform targeting.

Android O Preview:

It is a program that gives you access to the tools to make your apps compatible with the latest version of Android. And the best part is, it’s free! You can get it for your Google’s Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus5X, Nexus 6P and the Nexus Player( Yes, that’s the list for now ), by following some simple steps. The preview includes everything you need to check the performance of your existing app on a variety of screen sizes, network technologies, CPU/GPU chipsets, and hardware structures.

Accessing Android Developer Preview:

The first step to access the preview is to update to the latest version of Android Studio. It allows you to get the following through the SDK manager:

• Developer preview SDK and Tools
• Developer preview Emulator System Image
• Developer preview Emulator Image for Android TV and
• Developer preview support libraries.

The preview also includes hardware images that can be downloaded for different devices for testing and developing apps on physical devices. These images can be downloaded and flashed to your test devices manually, as many times as needed.

Build An Android Application Compatible with Android

Getting your apps compatible with the new Android O is what all app developers are concerned about right now. The following steps will guide you to make sure that your app words as-is Android O.

Read More https://www.solutionanalysts.com/blog/get-your-apps-ready-for-android-o/

Read More

Threats to Enterprise Mobile App Security

Mobile communication is integral to the digitally driven world. You must be using mobile for communication, entertainment and work related purposes. Mobile has increased accessibility for the consumers, and it has made things easy & convenient for them. Along with the convenience, it has also managed to increase the security threats to the devices. The vulnerabilities in the devices are something that the hackers can cash in on, causing major issues within these devices.

Most of the devices are detected by malware programs as they can access the Internet and download a number of things. Recently, we had heard of the Judy malware which attacked close to 36 Mn Android based devices, most of which were handsets. This is a huge thing, one that the operating system is planning to avoid. Google has, in fact, planned to reward people who can identify the bugs and tell the company about it. Similarly, there is a reported increase in the bugs reported in iOS based devices as well.

Here we will discuss the threats to mobile security that lead to an increased level of opportunity for the hackers.

App Security

Haven’t you often heard that the data got leaked owing to malware that bugged the mobile app? Enterprise appsspecifically are a wealth of data. Any bug affecting them can prove to be a major issue for the users. You ask for app permissions, which the user gives away freely. In the course of these permissions, malware attacks the user’s devices, compromising the information stored on them. A lot of personal as well as official data gets stolen owing to a compromised app security. It is always a good idea to give permissions that you believe are necessary for your app usage.

Mobile Ransomware

Ransomware is one of the biggest security threats that your device faces. It started with websites hacking into your desktop to steal important information so that it can be held for ransom. Today, the vulnerabilities within the mobile devices is a dead giveaway to the people asking for ransom. You will see a lot of secure data, such as the bank account passwords, your personal information, your social security number, etc. are being held for ransom after the bugs are exploited to attack your device and steal some valuable information.

SMS –based Attacks

Have you ever faced attacks via SMS? This is pretty common. You get links that you need to open to authenticate certain information. Typically, the links and the sender seem genuine. From the email world, the phishing has evolved to the SMS world. By clicking on these links, you make your device vulnerable to the attacks, and in turn, give away the information. This is a growing security threat for your mobile device.

Insecure Data Storage

Enterprise apps are most vulnerable in this matter. If you store information in these apps, and the app has an unresolved bug, then your data is in danger. The chances are that the data stored will be hacked, or there would be an inevitable misuse of this data by advertisers and others. Insecure data storage is also another threat that mobile devices face.

Insufficient Cryptography

If the app you have installed has a weak encryption algorithm, you will face the vulnerabilities that accompany it. Either the crypto-algorithm is the one that has vulnerabilities or, the algorithm is incomplete. Either way, it can cause malfunctioning in your device and make it the best opportunity for the hacker.

Insecure Communications

The networks that you use to communicate are never full-proof, making your device vulnerable to attacks from malware. There are chances that the hackers tend to set-up fake access points when you access WiFi in public places such as coffee shops, airports, etc. The access points are named using generic names, which can fool even the best of the people. It is always good to be cautious when connecting to public WiFi.

User & Device Authentication

Most mailing apps have donned the user & device authentication, which has allowed the user to store passwords, and their data on the devices. If the device is stolen, your authentication and the data therein is at risk. This is one of the major threats to mobile devices, as they contain valuable information.

Timed Sessions

In banking apps, timed sessions make you log out of the app if you don’t process the information on time. This is not the case with most other apps, which leads to the secure information being leaked. With timed sessions, you can prevent misuse of confidential information.

Security is a great deal with mobile devices, especially with apps becoming an integral part of your mobility. With enterprise apps, BYOD and other technological evolution, it is a given that you need to protect your mobile handsets with a password so that ransomware and other attackers don’t get into your app.

Solution Analysts offers complete web and mobile solutions to help today’s businesses get the competitive edge. We enable safety and security in our solutions without compromising on quality. Our solutions undergo multitudes of tests before they are released to the market.

Read More

Must-consider criteria for Evaluating and Choosing an IoT Solution Provider

It won’t be long before Internet of Things evolves from being an emerging technology to being a need of the hour. After all, it becomes highly convenient for the consumer if they can control their devices using the Internet. People tend to forget to switch off their appliances before setting off for work. If you happen to be one of them, you would surely like something that can help switch it off while you are away from home. Internet of Things promises to be just that. Not only commercially but also in industries and elsewhere, the Internet of Things aims to improve how you connect and communicate.

Having said this, the IoT landscape is quite fragmented and humungous in nature. This is one of the fastest-evolving technologies, which is why you need someone who can offer you the best-in-class solutions with the ideal framework. Choosing the IoT solution provider requires an understanding of your solution, and what you aim to achieve from it. The fragmented and ever-evolving nature of the framework and the multitude of vendors available in the market makes you want to choose the right one, who can offer you the right solution.

Stability of the business

You will need to check the vendor’s security as the first criterion to see if they are best-fit for your Internet of Things needs. The reason being, an Internet of Things project is huge, and you would want that vendor to stay with you for the entire duration. Changing vendors in between can prove to be a loss to your project.

Standards for IoT solutions

The next step is to understand the technology the provider uses, the standards the technology holds, and if they are using propriety IoT technology or not. You will need to think of the future while adopting the technology. The technology should make scaling the solution in the future easy and should allow access to the future markets.

Choose your hosting server

What hosting option do they choose to ensure the IoT solution is made available to the customers? The idea is to see if the providers opt for public or private cloud options. What kind of hosting infrastructure does the vendor offer? This is what you will need to consider at this point choosing the right vendor for your solution.

Read More https://www.solutionanalysts.com/blog/must-consider-criteria-for-evaluating-and-choosing-an-iot-solution-provider/

Read More

how IoT technology may reshape the insurance industry

left many personal and commercial lines to compete primarily on price rather than coverage differentiation or customer service. For example, an insurer might use IoT technology to directly augment profitability by transforming the income statement’s loss component. IoT-based data, carefully gathered and analyzed, might help insurers evolve from a defensive posture—spreading risk among policyholders and compensating them for losses— to an offensive posture: helping policyholders prevent losses and insurers avoid claims in the first place. And by avoiding claims, insurers could not only reap the rewards of increased profitability, but also reduce premiums and aim to improve customer retention rates. Several examples, both speculative and reallife, include:

• Sensors embedded in commercial infrastructure can monitor safety breaches such as smoke, mold, or toxic fumes, allowing for adjustments to the environment to head off or at least mitigate a potentially hazardous event.
• Wearable sensors could monitor employee movements in high-risk areas and transmit data to employers in real time to warn the wearer of potential danger as well as decrease fraud related to workplace accidents.  
• Smart home sensors could detect moisture in a wall from pipe leakage and alert a homeowner to the issue prior to the pipe bursting. This might save the insurer from a large claim and the homeowner from both considerable inconvenience and losing irreplaceable valuables. The same can be said for placing IoT sensors in business properties and commercial machinery, mitigating property damage and injuries to workers and customers, as well as business interruption losses. 
• Socks and shoes that can alert diabetics early on to potential foot ulcers, odd joint angles, excessive pressure, and how well blood is pumping through capillaries are now entering the market, helping to avoid costly medical and disability claims as well as potentially life-altering amputations.

Beyond minimizing losses, IoT applications could also potentially help insurers resolve the dilemma with which many have long wrestled: how to improve the customer experience, and therefore loyalty and retention, while still satisfying the unrelenting market demand for lower pricing. Until now, insurers have generally struggled to cultivate strong client relationships, both personal and commercial, given the infrequency of interactions throughout the insurance life cycle from policy sale to renewal—and the fact that most of those interactions entail unpleasant circumstances: either deductible payments or, worse, claims. This dynamic is even more pronounced in the independent agency model, in which the intermediary, not the carrier, usually dominates the relationship with the client. 

The emerging technology intrinsic to the IoT that can potentially monitor and measure each insured’s behavioral and property footprint across an array of activities could turn out to be an insurer’s holy grail, as IoT applications can offer tangible benefits for valueconscious consumers while allowing carriers to remain connected to their policyholders’ everyday lives. While currently, people likely want as few associations with their insurers as possible, the IoT can potentially make insurers a desirable point of contact. The IoT’s true staying power will be manifested in the technology’s ability to create value for both the insurer and the policyholder, thereby strengthening their bond. And while thefrequency of engagement shifts to the carrier, the independent agency channel will still likely remain relevant through the traditional client touchpoints.

By harnessing continuously streaming “quantified self ” data, using advanced sensor connectivity devices, insurers could theoretically capture a vast variety of personal data and use it to analyze a policyholder’s movement, environment, location, health, and psychological and physical state. This could provide innovative opportunities for insurersto better understand, serve, and connect with policyholders—as well as insulate companies against client attrition to lower-priced competitors. Indeed, if an insurer can demonstrate how repurposing data collected for insurance considerations might help a carrier offer valuable ancillary non-insurance services, customers may be more likely to opt in to share further data, more closely binding insurer and customer. 

Leveraging IoT technologies may also have the peripheral advantage of resuscitating the industry’s brand, making insurance more enticing to the relatively small pool of skilled professionals needed to put these strategies in play. And such a shift would be welcome, considering that Deloitte’s Talent in Insurance Survey revealed that the tech-savvy Millennial generation generally considers a career in the insurance industry “boring.”4 Such a reputational challenge clearly creates a daunting obstacle for insurance executives and HR professionals, particularly given the dearth of employees with necessary skill sets to successfully enable and systematize IoT strategies, set against a backdrop of intense competition from many other industries. Implementing cuttingedge IoT strategies could boost the “hip factor” that the industry currently lacks. 

Referance : Deloitte University Press

Read More

All the Cool New Features Coming in iOS 10.3 for iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch

Apple just seeded the fifth 10.3 beta out to all supported iOS devices enrolled in the Apple Beta Software Program. It’s been a little over a week since the fourth 10.3 beta was pushed out, so this can only be a clear indicator of the latest iOS upgrade being finalized and prepared for a public rollout.

iOS 10.3 is a fairly major update, and will succeed iOS 10.2.1 on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. From the changes we can see so far, iOS 10.3 is dedicated to enhancing the overall user experience, and will probably be the last major iOS 10 upgrade to get released (there has only been one X.4 version in iOS’s history).

For the most part, updated iOS devices should be faster after the 10.3 upgrade, will have more free storage space, and will enjoy a whole lot of refinement to features that we’ve seen lingering around for a while now, not to mention the new additions.

Apple File System (APFS)
Perhaps the biggest and most welcome change to 10.3 will be a new file system, called APFS, or Apple File System. It’s not something that users will get to play around with, but they certainly will appreciate it. APFS should free up some storage space and improve performance, as users playing with the latest beta have reported up to an additional five gigabytes of storage availability.

This upgrade will be most appreciated on older devices (such as the iPhone 5s) that seem to have been slowed or bogged down after receiving iOS 10. While the file system is brand new, you won’t have to worry about losing any of your data as you would while changing the file system type on Android. The transition to APFS is practically seamless.

Siri, Now a Fan of Cricket

Cricket is a fairly popular sport played in many countries all over the world, but Siri was never able to give you results on cricket games—until now. It’s a welcome addition in countries such as Australia, England, and India. It’s also another notch for Siri to tick off, adding cricket to the already useful feature of game results from other sports such as basketball and hockey. Scores come from the Indian Premier League and International Cricket Council.

A couple of other noteworthy improvements to Siri include booking Uber and Lyft rides for later, and being able to assist you with paying your bills.

App Store Improvements (About Time)

The App Store has been around for long enough, so it’s about time a couple new features were added to it. The main feature being that developers can now reply to comments left on their applications (something developers have been able to do on the Google Play Store for what feels like ages). This will not only help developers follow up on complaints or suggestions, but will make users feel more engaged as well.

Another handy feature is the ability for developers to change app icons without having to push an update to the application itself. From the sounds of it, installed app icons will be stored in a cache that gets updated whenever the App Store is opened.

There’s also another new feature which will allow users to disable in-app purchases and rating popups within apps themselves—very handy and neat.

Redesigned Settings Page & New Profile Section

The Settings app will also be getting a makeover in iOS 10.3, notably the addition of a “Profile” section. This new section will contain all of your personal information for easy access, much like the “Accounts” section on Android. Your name, email(s), phone number(s), and iCloud and iTunes information, all in one easily accessible area.

Find My AirPods

You already have Find my iPhone installed on your iOS device, so why not add a little more functionality to it? Find my iPhone will now be able to help locate your AirPods if you’ve misplaced them. This will only work if your AirPods are in the vicinity of your device’s Bluetooth connection, otherwise it’ll simply say that your AirPods are not in range. You can also initiate playing a sound on your AirPods to help locate them faster.

Pretty useful for locating them in your bedroom or apartment, but not so useful if you forgot them at work or on the subway.

Hourly Weather Forecasts in Maps
Since iOS 10.0.1, we’ve had the ability to see the current weather for the viewed location in Maps. But now, if you have a newer iPhone, you can use 3D Touch to see an hourly forecast of the area. Just hard-press to view it, then press harder to jump right into the Weather app.

Viewing 3D Globe in Maps Is Different

Before, all you would have to do is make sure you’re in Satellite view, the zoom all the way out to see the world as a 3D globe. If you were to do that now, it would just be a flat 2D representation. To get the 3D globe back, when viewing an area in Satellite mode, select “3D” from the menu, then zoom all of the way out. If you don’t see the “3D” option, zoom in a little until you do.

(1) New flat look. (2) Zoom in a little, then hit “3D” button. (3) 3D globe is back!

Littler Changes in iOS 10.3

The big user-facing changes are all listed above, but there are a handful of smaller tweaks and updates in iOS 10.3 that are worth mentioning:

• UI changes, such as new animations for opening and closing apps.
• Podcasts now has its own widget.
• HomeKit can now dim your lights for you.
• CarPlay has improved multitasking and app switching.
• In Mail, the back button in an email now shows you how many unread messages you have in that mailbox.
• An alert on the “Event Details” screen in Calendar lets you report unknown senders as junk.
• Reduce Motion is supported in Safari for webpages.
• You can rearrange songs on repeat in Music.

There are a lot of minor tweaks and updates not worth going into detail with, as you’ll barely notice them, like the new border around Spotlight Search Suggestions, but we’re keeping an eye out for all the big ones.

What do you guys think? Is iOS 10.3 something you’re looking forward to installing, or have you already decided to skip the wait and join the beta program? Let us hear your thoughts on iOS 10.3 in the comments section below.

Hire iOS Developers from us and Save Up To 60% with Our Developer Billing Model.

BY KEVIN M. Source: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/news/all-cool-new-features-coming-ios-10-3-for-ipad-iphone-ipod-touch-0176466/

Read More

Connecting the IoT: The Road to Success

Digital transformation (DX) is a trend that continues to sweep across industry sectors, supporting the shift from physical to digital assets and the adoption of new data-driven business models. Countless internet brands — including Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb and Uber — have already redefined business models in their respective industries, and organizations around the globe are moving towards new approaches to compete with these agile market entrants in order to meet the evolving needs of their customers.

Alongside this transformation has been the rapid proliferation of connected devices, with IDC predicting there will be a staggering 30 billion connected “things” in use by 2020.

Image Credit : This infographic original published by IDC research team.

Solution Analysts’ IoT services

If you want to create value for your organization by automatizing tasks, business process, and customer management intelligently, Solution Analysts is the best choice. We have handpicked programmers experienced in DC, CT, IoT, and CIoT. Our hiring models will offer you to choose the best option to develop customized solutions with great return on investment. http://www.solutionanalysts.com/

Read More