Jonathan Cusick

Digital Robot Software: Learning From The Manual

Jonathan Cusick — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:55:14 +0000

I am thinking about writing and teaching course later this summer entitled ‘Digital Robot Software: Learning from the manual’ (The manual of course being the company blog).

This will be a free course for people interested in software development (even if you haven’t done any before, so everyone is welcome) and will aim to tech people the basics of software development and build on these foundations, so by the end of the course you should be able to build basic iPhone applications.

If this goes well I can also extend the course to cover more advanced concepts but I just want to get an idea of who might be interested.

Please drop me an email at jon@digitalrobotsoftware.com or leave a comment if this would interest you.

Thanks!

DigitalRobotSoftware.com

Jonathan Cusick — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:59:30 +0000

After 6 months, we are finally live!

Since November last year I have been working hard to establish Digital Robot Software as a new software development studio in Belfast. During this time I have been hard at work developing a wide range of applications for the iPhone, iPad, Mac while also investigating the Android platform.

In addition to this we have also been through a significant branding process, thanks to the creative talent of Davy Mac a strong logo was produced which can be seen predominantly on our website and applications.

After the Digital Robot initial branding was completed we were off to SXSW in order to meet other developers and also clients. This proved to be a very successful trip for us and we are currently working with a number of US clients in order to develop creative solutions in order to meet their requirements.

After SXSW we were happy to announce a new member to the team, Adrian Hanna joined us as our Principal Enterprise Architect. Adie is our lead Android developer and a master of scaling backend systems for our enterprise solutions.

We are also extremely fortunate to announce another member to the team, Adam McAllister has joined us as our in house UI designer. Adam produces extremely high end quality design work and is welcomed addition to the team.

We will be talking to a few more people about intern positions later this month and will hopefully have some more good news to announce.

I am sure most of you will have noticed that we are now rocking a ground breaking website. This is down to the creative genius of Mr Andy Good (McMillan). When not running world class design conferences he is putting his mad skills into practice with great results.

We will be regularly updating our blog ‘The Manual’ with development news, research and tutorials.

Keep an eye on the main sections of our site as well in order to see the latest applications that we produce.

Please feel free to say hello! jon@digitalrobotsoftware.com

Digital Robot Software: WWDC 2010

Jonathan Cusick — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:57:02 +0000

I am pleased to announce that Digital Robot Software will be attending this years World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco which begins on June 7th and continues until June 11th.

As WWDC is an Apple conference it is focused on iPhone, iPad and Mac development and this will be an amazing opportunity for us to meet the Apple engineers and learn a wide array of new SDK features, that we will be implementing into our applications over the next year.

We are working hard at the moment in order to get the new Digital Robot Software website online and it will be live by 18:00 GMT tomorrow (Monday May 17th) – be sure to check it out!

iPhone Development: Google Maps/Pathfinding Algorithms

Jonathan Cusick — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:20:49 +0000

Developing for the iPhone can be a very rewarding experience as the Software Development Kit (SDK) and range of development tools which Apple provide are extremely comprehensive.

The following are the main tools which I use when developing for the iPhone:

iPhone SDK – Provides the framework for building the iPhone applications through a wide range of classes provided from Apple through the Objective-C programming language.

Simulator – Enables you to compile and test code locally on your machine.

Interface builder – Enables you to add the graphical elements to you application and hook them up to your code using the MVC design pattern.

Instruments – Allows you to analyse your application code for memory leaks and ensures your code will give the best possible response time on the device.

One of the most interesting things about developing for the iPhone is working out how achieving various tasks can be approached. In a project I was working on recently I was presented with the task of implementing maps which would provide directions to an end point based on a certain set of parameters.

In a lot of development environments this would be an extremely difficult task which would involve implementing a form of custom pathfinding algorithm which is not easy and can take a long time to fully test and implement.

Google have created an API (Application Programming Interface) that has been designed in order to enable developers to embed Google Maps on web pages and customise these in a variety of ways such as adding locations, street views, directions in addition to much more. This is important as it means that when combined with an Objective-C Webview in the iPhone SDK we can harness the resources of the Google Maps API in this particular case directions in order to for the pathfinding to take place on the map.

If we were not able to integrate with these new technologies on the iPhone it would mean that we would have to design an algorithm in order to deal with the directions, this can be quite a complex task and will add a lot of extra cost to the development in terms of planning, design and development time. This could potentially be achieved by using a method such as the Dijkstra Algorithm in order to work out the shortest paths between two points based on a wide range of rules.

The Google Maps API makes this very simple:

The following example has been taken from the Google Maps API documentation and is JS (JavaScript) based code which will be implemented through an Objective-C based Webveiew.

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------- // Create a directions object and register a map and DIV to hold the // resulting computed directions


var map;

var directionsPanel;

var directions;
function initialize() {

                 map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas"));

                 directionsPanel = document.getElementById("my_textual_div");

                 map.setCenter(new GLatLng(49.496675,-102.65625), 3);

                 directions = new GDirections(map, directionsPanel);

                 directions.load("from: 500 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA to: 4 Yawkey Way, Boston,

                 MA 02215 (Fenway Park)");

}

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From here we can see that we just have to utilise the parameters for the actual address data and pass this into the methods encapsulated in the API. Once this has been achieved Google Maps takes care of the rest so for us, this is a fantastic way to go and enables the rapid development development of applications.

Since working on the iPhone in terms of development, working with a wide range of frameworks is such a strong factor in being able to produce quality applications quickly and making them cost effective for clients.

This was just a high level overview but I just wanted to try and show how technology is progressing in the mobile market and how utilising a wide range of technologies we can rapidly produce applications that do rather complex tasks.

With organisations such as Google producing new APIs on a regular basis I really can’t wait to see what else we can bring to mobile devices in the coming months/years in a manner that will not take developers years to implement through an array of complex custom algorithms for each application.

Crazy Codes & Computer Stuff: DRS Update

Jonathan Cusick — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:10:41 +0000

After spending a lot of time on client work after SXSW, I am just going to provide a couple of updates on some interesting Digital Robot Software developments.

A complete Digital Robot Software (.com) site will be launching in May which will have the following features:

Company Blog

Company Overview – This will contain the history for Digital Robot Software and individual profiles for the team.

Portfolio – An area with a list of clients and an in depth analysis of the applications that have been designed and developed by Digital Robot Software.

Services – This section will provide details of all the services we offer from consultancy to design and development.

Support – At Digital Robot Software one of our key areas is offering a top class level of support, from here we will provide all support details for our customers.

Contacting Us – As always we can be contacted by phone and email, but in addition to this we feel that it is important to utilise a wide range of social networks so we are always just a click away. In this section we will provide a list of everywhere you can find us.

In May we will also be announcing a couple of new and exciting projects which I have a feeling will raise some interest and I am looking forward to announcing them.

Digital Robot Software will also be offering a couple of intern positions this summer, if you are interested in working with state of the art technology in a creative environment with software development or design please feel free to contact us. More details about these positions will be available soon.

After working on some GPS location based DRS projects, next week I will provide a post about path finding algorithms and how Google Maps can be easily integrated into applications.

Photography Experiment #21 – Zilker Botanical Garden

Jonathan Cusick — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:31:27 +0000

Once SXSW 2010 was over I was lucky enough to get a tour of some pretty cool places around Austin, one of which was the Zilker Botanical Garden. It is a really great place and I hope to visit it again next year.

SXSW 2010 #4 – Learning From The Best

Jonathan Cusick — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:50:27 +0000

The interactive side of SXSW is now drawing to a close and I have had some time this morning to reflect on some of the things I have learned from some of the companies, developers and designers that have been involved at the conference.

One of the most important things I have learned was from a group of freelance developers and also from Gary Vaynerchuk which is really about providing a world class level of customer service. Often when developing you are mainly focused on delivering the end product and the next extension of that product so customer service can often be made a secondary objective.

I have heard this a few times during the conference and actually saw some examples of great products which where not offering much in the way of customer service or support, mainly just a contact e-mail address. From my personal experience with other big companies such as PayPal and Ebay it can be nearly impossible to contact them and a considerable amount of time to get a reply.

If the big companies don’t fix this it does mean that the smaller developers can capitalise on this and set a high standard which hopefully will be replicated throughout the industry.

On another note the SXSWNI guys have all been working hard throughout the trip even if there are no desks or chairs.

David Rice hacking away during SXSW

Lee Munroe has also been giving a series of updates on are trade trip to SXSW which can be found on his blog and also on his Posterous.

SXSW 2010 #3 – Developers, Developers, Developers

Jonathan Cusick — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:44:32 +0000

We are now on day 5 of our epic adventure in Austin, and have managed to speak to pretty much every company that had a presence on the trade floor.

From my perspective even though I am mainly focused on Mac and iPhone development I was very keen to meet the Microsoft guys to discuss Windows Phone 7 and WebSiteSpark.

I was lucky enough to be interviewed in a commercial for Microsoft discussing the benefits of the WebSiteSpark service and what this would mean for a development studio work flow – this was a great experience and they even gave me a 16GB Zune HD for taking the time to work with them.

I also managed to bump into a few of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders who where promoting WebSiteSpark this was pretty cool!

This has been a great day and I am looking forward until tomorrow where hopefully I will learn more about the underlying technologies behind Windows Phone 7.

SXSW 2010 #2 – The Story So Far

Jonathan Cusick — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:06:21 +0000

As we enter day 4 of our SXSW trade mission so far the journey has surpassed all expectations.

The presentations are all world class and are happening all throughout the day, the trade hall is full of well established companies such as Microsoft, Veer, LaCie, Sony and many others all displaying state of the art technologies.

From a business perspective many leads have already been uncovered, just by having a quick chat with other companies and explaining what Digital Robot Software offer, I have already had several e-mails looking to follow up on possible projects which at this stage is fantastic.

It is great to be able to network and learn from the other Northern Ireland based companies on the SXSW trip who combined have a wealth of experience which is providing a strong foothold for Digital Robot Software and establishing a presence at the conference.

SXSW 2010: Digital Robot Software

Jonathan Cusick — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:02:56 +0000

I have been working hard over the last few months establishing a small iPhone and Mac development studio called Digital Robot Software.

Digital Robot Software will be going live on March 10th with a website launch which will contain details of current and future projects. I have also been working closely with an extremely talented designer who is doing the branding for the company which should give it a strong presence.

Digital Robot Software will also be at this years SXSW conference with 11 other Northern Ireland based companies who I am sure many of you will be familiar with:

Frank Design & Communications Ltd

This is great news for Digital Robot Software as it will enable a wide exposure of the companies services and will hopefully produce a range of clients and new skills from the available workshops and presentations.

A NISXSW Ning network has been established so all participating companies can easily communicate and so that others can follow us during the conference.

Another site niatsxsw.com has also been established to give complete profiles of the 12 companies including podcasts company backgrounds and will also be updated regularly.

If you are interested in following us on our journey to SXSW you can follow the websites and also the hastag #NISXSW on Twitter.