Customer

The customer is a French company that deliver software that helps people express their ideas and share their stories in more exciting, creative and persuasive ways. The company delivers innovative, trusted products that are easier to learn and use, helping people achieve new levels of productivity.

The aim was to create an application that would give the user opportunity to view the albums and acquire new photos for his/her own collection.

We developed the application that made it possible for the user to enlarge his/her own collection of photos. In the basic version it supports only free albums. Each album in the store can be previewed by 5 photos taken from it. In the offline mode the user can look through the downloaded albums collection only. The application resolves store content using custom protocol implementation over HTTP. It can show the most popular albums published by server and allows browsing all albums.

iPad, ObjectiveC, HTTP

Customer

The client is the leading provider of BlackBerry smartphone applications for mobile call recording in the Scandinavian region

The objective was to create an application that would handle creation and routing of calls into one network of local PSTN access numbers. The application was supposed to join a mobile phone user to one or more parties on a voice call, with the opportunity not to use the default address book or call dialing software from the phone vendor. The application was expected to call a local dial in PSTN access telephone number in any country and then to send to a central switching centre a dial string command that then terminated the call to the user's specified destination.

The application was developed to work under BlackBerry OS for Blackberry devices and on MIDP2 phones. The application has the following features:

• easy search for contacts
• ability to copy contacts from phone memory
• data storage management
• set of alerts that will help new users of the application

JWTI (JSR 185), MIDP 2.0 (JSR-118), CLDC 1.0 (JSR-30), RIM API (JSR 75), PIM (JSR 75), Nokia API, RIM, RFC2806.

Customer

Start-up mobile software development company from Sweden.

It was required to develop a mobile application for downloading audio tracks from a certain web site, and further local management of the tracks.

The application was designed and developed for Symbian OS and a set of relevant smart phones.

Our team developed a number of GUI runtime components for the application as well as did final integration of the components into application to support required use-case scenarios. Users were allowed to search music by categories, artist names, albums, similar artists or genres. Before downloading of the whole audio track, audio previews of 30 seconds were available to the users. Current news about artists of interest was available as well.

Symbian OS 7-8, Carbid, Symbian OS Licensee SDKs.

Customer

Manufacturer of optical systems from European Union.

It was required to develop a hardware and software platform for a system of two controlled high-resolution video cameras and set of controlled light sources. Video data are transferred to the user PC where the images are analyzed depending on the parameters of light sources.

A video system was developed and had: video camera board with a digital SXGA CMOS sensor, light sources and video cameras switch board, image capture, storage and transfer (via the ISA bus to the operator's PC) board. Data transfer from the switch board to the video capture board was implemented through a high-speed protocol LVDS (80 Mbps). Image capture and recording are performed in real time at the speed of 12 frames per second.

For an FPGA chip, a set of IP cores was prepared:

• ISA bus controller;
• DMA channel controller;
• SRAM controller;
• CMOS sensor controller.

An ISA device driver under Windows 2000 was developed to transfer data to a PC. System setup, image display, control of video cameras and light sources parameters is done using an especially developed client application.

• High-resolution video capture (1280x1024);
• Simultaneous capture of up to 6 frames within 1/2 second at most;
• Control of 16 programmable light sources;
• ISA interface.

Xilinx ISE foundation, ModelSim, VHDL, ISA, DMA, LVDS, SRAM, Visual C++, MS Windows DDK, Win32 API

Customer

German company, specialized in development of devices for scientific research, laboratories and medicine industry.

To develop tailored Embedded OS Linux distribution for the company products as a special software platform , with hardware platforms on the basis of Advantech PC/104 industrial computers. The distribution should have met the following requirements:

• OS should be based on a Flash Card of up to 64 Mb;
• File system should ensure data security at shutdown;
• File system should ensure a possibility to create, store, change own data during operation of the device;
• OS should support both text and graphics (640X480 16 bit) modes;
• OS should support a possibility to install and uninstall own programs;
• OS should function on the PC/104 and PC/104+ controllers.

A specialized Linux distribution was developed for an industrial PC/104 computer, with support of Ethernet, Web-Server. The distribution was tailored to work on Advantech PC/104 industrial computers - PCM 5820 and PCM 3350 models; on PC/104+ - the PCM3370 model. A BSP to support these hardware platforms was created. Support of the following devices and peripherals was implemented:

• Chipset NS CX5530 core;
• RTL8139 and Intel 82559 ER network Ethernet-adapters;
• 4 COM ports;
• LPT port;
• 4 USB 2.0 High Speed ports;
• LCD, TFT, CRT screens and monitors;
• "mouse" input devices on a PS/2 port;
• keyboard working with at least two languages;
• ISA (PC/104);
• PCI (PC-104+);
• Floppy drive;
• CD-ROM drive;
• HDD drive;
• USB Mass Storage devices;
• DMA-channel of the ISA-bus;
• Possibility to add Ethernet Gigabit support.

• An embedded Linux distribution supporting system utilities on the basis of busybox takes up 6Mb, which resulted in additional 58Mb (on a 64Mb Flash-card) for data storage;
• Linux OS file system is secured against unauthorized copying.

GNU Toolchain (gcc, gdb, binutils, glibc), PC/104, PC/104+, USB, PCI, ISA, IDE, DMA, TFT/STN, CompactFlash II, Ethernet 10/100, C, Shell

Situation

This is a UK client dedicated to providing information for bodybuilding clubs. He had a general idea to motivate the members' passion for bodybuilding which is to combine the PDA/Cell Phone and website together for more convenient data querying.

Solution

Since there was no detailed requirement specification, We initially focused on requirement gathering, keeping frequent communication with the client by phone, MSN, and email, then detailed the requirement, and designed a suitable system architecture.

We recommended the technology of Remote Web Service with the view to keeping the data synchronization between the PDA/Cell Phone and the website. It is a popular and effective combination of PDA/Cell Phone + Website + Web Service, which features for the stability, flexibility, more convenient and friendly operation. The suggestion received a favorable report from the client.

This is a services platform dedicated to bodybuilding clubs. It consists of three parts:

• PDA/Cell Phone Application
  The main functions of the application are to collect the training data, make the effect statistic, gather the goal of bodybuilding and so on.

  The technologies we used in this part are J2ME MIIDP 2.0, and K-Soap allows the Web service access from the smart mobile client end.

• Web Site
  The website allows for various operations such as comparing of the profile and the fitness effect, making friends, etc.

  The classical architecture of Struts + Hibernate + Spring + JSTL was adopted in the website design to ensure a stable system.

• Web Service
  Through Web Service, the remote database can be accessed by the PDA/Cell Phone application and the Web site application, and the third party company as well.

  In addition, XFire as a high performance, multi-support, and friendly used Java SOAP framework was adopted for higher security and efficiency.

• Cross-platform
  We identified JAVA as the main development language, thus allowing for cross-platform running of the system which was also what the client required.

• Compatibility
  During the development, we found that the same Java program running on different PDAs and Cell Phones brought the different results. It is necessary for us to have a special widget to resolve the problem of incompatibility. But the project schedule and the budget is not affordable for us to develop a new J2ME widget, so lots of open source widgets were analyzed and evaluated to achieve the maximize compatibility and reduce the cost as well.

• Data synchronization
  The data can be obtained and managed by logging on the website application, while the PDA/Cell Phone application enables users to take the data offline, and update them locally. The operations will lead to data conflict and confusion if it could not keep synchronizing for the remote database and the local database resided in the PDA/Cell Phone application.

• We added the corresponding condition for the updating of each piece of data to ensure the PDA data integrality when offline.

• On the side of the data facticity and validity, a special program which is almost 3000 lines was written to ensure that all data is the latest.

Results

The project was delivered on time and within budget. It has been marketed as a standard software solution for the health industry, and has been used by several bodybuilding clubs.

The client

The client is a big Residential and Commercial Property Company in American, focusing on assisting its customers in simplifying their property maintenance, repair tasks management and consequently reducing associated costs.

What the client wanted

The client hoped that their service technicians can easily generate Estimates and Invoices at the client site. And data synchronization between Pocket PC and back office server should be realized.

Technicians can get their daily work at home, with their Pocket PCs synchronizing with remote server, so that they don't need to go to the office.

On customer's site, technicians can work with Pocket PCs in both online and offline modes. They show customer the products or services and capture customer's signature after getting his approval. Finally the Estimate and Invoice/PO can be printed on site.

After a whole day work, technicians can synch-up the completed works to the back office server.

Approach

Most of current solutions are based on laptop PC or Tablet PC, but they are too cumbersome, bulky and inconvenient. Now with the efforts of our .NET technical team, another solution based on Pocket PC is becoming possible. The Pocket PC can provide the similar capabilities to what laptop PC or Tablet PC can do.

Our team helped the client realize the following functions:

• Bidirectional Data Synchronization with remote server through web service.

• Multimode Data Synchronization.

• Data that should be synchronized can be customized.

• Technician can work in both Online and Offline mode.

• Technician can login the system through web service.

• Role-based permissions.

• Signature can be captured.

• Printing enabled on Pocket PC.

The client

The client is a construction company based in Belgium. It provides housing services, such as house decoration, maintaining, repair, etc.

What the Client Wanted

The client wanted an application with which its service technicians should be able to generate requests to back office when they have troubles with their work on the customer side by using PDA.

Upon receipt of the requests, the server side application will assign them to other PDA-equipped technicians who will provide help to the technicians sent the requests. Employees in back office can also send requests and answers to technicians.

Approach

Todo-List was an enterprise solution developed for this construction company. It consisted of three parts that separately ran on PDA, PC and server. The part ran on PDA could synchronize data with the one ran on server side through web services, and it realized the technicians' featured needs of getting their work done.

The part ran on PCs in back office interacted with server to maintain requests and answers as well as the staffing information.

We utilized .NET Compact Framework, SQL-Server CE, etc for the development.

In addition, the following functionalities were achieved.

• By using SMS (system management server), a specified technician could be notified to receive latest requests in order to synchronize with the remote server.

• Bidirectional Data Synchronization with remote server.

• Technicians can work on Online or Offline mode.

The Client

The client is a full service Internet solutions provider that focuses on custom web sites and web-based applications. It delivers professional results through a full range of design and consulting services.

What the client wanted

The Pocket PC application would allow automobile dealers to know the markets by displaying their inventory. It was a read only program:

• The application came with a desktop syncing application and the Pocket PC viewing module. The user could be able to select a text delimited data file from their desktop computer and synchronize the data with the Pocket PC.
• The Pocket PC application would contain a search form to find individual records or a list view of the complete inventory. Upon selecting an individual record the user can see details of the selected record.
• The user can view the category details by clicking on the appropriate button.

Approach

We helped the client realize its goal by implementing three main functions of this application:

• The synchronization between desktop computer and the Pocket PC.
• The different format of data transformation.
• The end data displayed on the Pocket PC.

The application environment consisted of Visual Studio .NET 2003 using C# and the .NET 1.1 framework.

We optimized and separated the business logics from the business presentation, making the management more flexible and more scalable.