Top 10 Most Welcomed IT Professions 2012

Despite the doubts in stability of the American economy in 2012, the research has showed that American companies are going to expand their IT staff. Analytics have found out what IT professions will be called for. The results of the annual research organized by Computerworld showed that 29% out of 353 IT-executive managers are planning to increase the number of their departments by the summer 2012.

‘The demand for IT-specialists in companies of all types and sizes is constantly growing’, says Mike McBrierty, the executive director of one of the biggest recruiting agencies the Eliassen Group. Moreover, according to his own words, the companies are planning to update the infrastructure and restart the realization of the projects postponed for the last 3 years.

As Computerworld claims, in 2012 the directors of IT departments have set teeth for implementing innovations and that’s why the most relevant for future employees will be the following nine main skills.

•    web and mobile application development skills
•    project management skills
•    technical support and maintenance skills
•    network technologies skills
•    business analysis skills
•    Web 2.0 technologies skills – more and more companies are planning to implement these technologies and the demand for php/java/.net software developers won’t decrease in 2012. Also there will be a big demand for Ajax GWT professional web developers as well as the specialists in .Net, PHP, HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript.

Web App: Android Application Development Tool

At present the range of IT development services has expanded a lot: from simple web applications to video mobile apps. There are several tools for including video into Android applications: Native App, Web App, and AIR video player compiled in the Flash App. Now, let’s talk a bit about the Web App.

Web App is a special way of developing and deploying Android applications. The main idea of this method is in creating the application cover reflecting specially prepared web content. The Web App is a special browser based on the WebView element, the logic of the browser performance and its layout are defined by mobile application development.

The possibility of introducing HTML5 and Flash video player into the user’s interface is an important peculiarity of Android video application development. If you already have a video player already used on the website, you can easily adapt it according to the screen size of the Android device. Although, one shouldn’t forget about the adaptation of the control tools to the capabilities of various devices – smartphone and tablet user’s apply fingers for managing the device and not the mouse.

Using web applications is a very effective way of supporting all the range of new platforms (smartphones, tablets and even TV). One should mention one difficulty – the necessity of time-consuming optimization of web applications for more convenient usage of the application by users in case of slow Internet connection (dynamic content upload).

Advantages:
•    Speed and simplicity of development
•    Using existing web development experience
•    Application interface flexibility – server HTML makeup
•    Continuity of video player design
•    Effective usage of the existing video library
•    Additional cross-platform character of HTML

Disadvantages:
•    Peculiarities of Flash Player performance under Android OS
•    A user may not have Flash Player
•    Limitation of the supported video formats

Apple Launched iCloud.com

Nowadays software development services have received another one. Starting the launch of the iOS 5 platform and the iCloud service deeply integrated into it, Apple set up a special website iCloud.com. Now users can enter the new iCloud.com and create an iCloud account using their own Apple ID, the identifier used for purchasing in the Apple App Store.
After entering the system, the user will be offered to choose a language and a time zone, then they will have to choose from five options. A user can check its mail, view his contacts, calendars, use the function «Find My iPhone» and get the access to the web version of iWork.

With starting iCloud, the documents from the Apple iWork application for iOS (page layouts, tables, presentations) will be stored online and will be constantly updated. Thanks to this, users will be able to get access to the latest versions of documents irrespective of the device they are using at the moment.

The iCloud service will replace its predecessor MobileMe. In comparison with MobileMe, the usage of iCloud will be free for all iOS 5 and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion users who will be offered 5 5GB of free ‘cloud space’ (additional space is paid).

Software developers have been testing iCloud together with the apps for iOS 5 and Lion for the last several months. At present iCloud is available for wide usage.

The debut of iCloud took place simultaneously with the release of the iOS 5, however, iCloud started functioning a few hours earlier. The new operation system iOS 5 is available for downloading for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.

BlueStacks App Player: Launching Mobile Android Apps on Windows Devices

BlueStacks Systems has presented a free alpha-version of its new solution for convenient launching mobile applications, originally intended for Android mobile devices, on the computers with the Windows operating system. The alpha-version of BlueStacks App Player allows launching Android applications on any Windows machines including personal computers, laptops, netbooks and tablets. In fact, using BlueStacks App Player users can launch Android apps without any additional efforts and modifications.
Apart from the direct benefit for Android app developers, end-users and corporate customers will also benefit from using BlueStacks App Player. The potential field of application of this technology covers practically all spheres of activity – from educational application development for children to corporate mobile applications at any available computer.

According to the representatives of the company BlueStacks, the openness of the Android platform gives an impulse for innovations – this openness has helped to create the solution for launching these apps on ‘non-native’ platform. To some extent, such openness removes the inequality between the people from developed countries and the Third World countries – now even those who can’t afford a smartphone in the nearest future will be able to get acquainted with mobile applications.

Apart from the BlueStacks App Player, the company BlueStacks has presented the Cloud Connect Technology – a special service that lets a Windows device become the continuation of the mobile device. Using the Cloud Connect Technology, the Android application can be moved on the screen of the Windows device in three simple steps: choose, click and synchronize.

The alpha-version of the BlueStacks App Player can be downloaded for free from the site of the producer.