Author: Mandakinee

Apple AppStore, Google Play & Revenue Earnings

Posted on by Mandakinee

Apple Store, Google Play StoreWe all know that Google and Apple are the most dominating players in the smartphone industry and they get most of their revenues from their application stores i.e. ‘Google Play’ and ‘App Store’ respectively.

But according to a new study from App Annie Intelligence, both Google and Apple have shown interesting numbers in their respective application stores.

App Annie Intelligence has been monitoring numerous apps from Google Play and App Store to measure their performance based on the volume of apps being downloaded and the revenues being earned from their apps.

According to their report, Google Play has seen phenomenal growth in revenue in October 2012, which has increased by a staggering 311% compared to January 2012, but it’s still unable to match App Store, which attracted four times more revenues despite of growing just 12.9% in the same period.

Since the release of the report, Apple has disagreed App Annie’s numbers by saying that App Store’s revenue grew over 200% and not just 12.9%, but later it was revealed that both companies were right in their own way because the two entities were looking at the growth differently.

Practically Apple has grown around 200% every year, but according to App Annie, Apple’s growth is 12.9% in October 2012 counting from January 2012. So it turned out that both Apple and App Annie were right.

According to other findings from the study, there are other interesting statistics like:

  • 10% more free downloads are available from App Store compared to Google Play
  • Only 3.3% growth in app downloads for App Store whereas 48% growth is seen for Google Play in the last five months

In the recent past USA was listed for the highest iOS app downloads with 26% than the rest of the world and the revenue collected for the same was 33% of the rest of the world.

Whereas for Android 21% of app downloads came from USA and collected around 29% of revenue from Japan. Among the free mobile game apps for iOS, companies like EA, Gameloft and Facebook pulled maximum downloads and for Google Play, the top free app publishers are Google, Facebook, Rovio, Go Launcher.

Taking revenue into consideration the grossing iOS apps were from companies like EA, Zynga, Supercell. For Google Play the leaders were DeNA, COLOPL and GungHo Online.

There are other free iPhone and Android apps which also play a major role in generating revenues and traffic to the application stores. At the same time, iPhone application development and Android application development both are improving day by day.

We at Andolasoft have team of iPhone application developers and Android application developers to provide business solutions. We have developed iOS apps like Orangewall, Andolapic and kurrentjobs and Android apps like Christmas Tree Puzzle which you can download Free from App Store and Google Play.

How to improve your Apache Web server’s performance?

Posted on by Mandakinee

Apache

The performance of web application depends upon the performance of the webserver and the database server.

You can increase your web server’s performance either by adding additional hardware resources such as RAM, faster CPU, etc. or you can get better performance on the same hardware through Cloud Management, by doing some custom configuration to the webserver.

Here are some custom configurations for better performances

  • Load only the required modules:

Apache server is a modular program which includes the functionality of selecting a set of modules. So it’s suggested to run Apache with only the required modules which will reduce the memory footprint and hence the server performance.

  • Choose appropriate MPM:

Apache comes with a number of Multi-Processing Modules (MPMs) which binds the network ports to the machine. But only one MPM can be loaded at a time, so choose the appropriate MPM for your application. It depends on various factors like, whether the OS supports threads, available memory, scalability versus stability, whether non-thread-safe third-party modules are used, etc.

  • DNS lookup:

Keep “HostnameLookups off” to reduce latency to every request since the DNS lookup has to be completed before the request is finished.

  • AllowOverride:

Make “AllowOverride all” to reduce additional file system lookups.

  • FollowSymLinks:

Add the option ‘FollowSymLinks’ to make the server follow the symbolic links in the directory.

  • Content Negotiation:

Option ‘Multiviews’ scans the directory for files, which causes latency.

  • MaxClients:

‘MaxClients’ is the limit on maximum simultaneous requests. It should be set to low so that new connections are put in queue.

  • MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers, and StartServers:

The ‘MinSpareServers’ and ‘MaxSpareServers’ determines how many child processes should be kept waiting for request. Now you can adjust it as your requirement.

Listed below are some tweaks to help you around

StartServers—2

MinSpareServers—2

MaxSpareServers—5

ServerLimit—100

MaxClients—100

MaxRequestsPerChild—4000

  • KeepAlive and KeepAliveTimeout:

The ‘KeepAlive’ directive allows multiple requests to be sent over the same TCP connection. This is useful when HTML pages use a lot of images.

KeepAlive–on

Timeout–20

  • HTTP Compression & Caching:

Use mod_deflate module for HTTP Compression. Most of the browsers are supporting it.

  • Separate server for static and dynamic content:

For dynamic contents Apache server needs 3M to 20M of RAM, while for the static contents it consumes only 1M. To reduce latency use separate servers for static and dynamic contents.

  • Reducing network load:

Use ‘mod_gzip’ to compress the data in order to reduce bandwidth. Most of the browsers are supporting it.

Whats are the Differences in Community and Enterprise Editions

Posted on by Mandakinee

Since Magentoits mid-quarter release in 2008, Magento has been the first choice for E-commerce development and it still prevails the same effect.

Magento development is the most secure, flexible and customizable solution for business who are new to e-commerce or switching to this niche.

Upon its popularity and evolution, Magento Inc. has released two editions for Magento, the Community edition and the Enterprise edition. There is still some confusion among developers or users about these editions and their usability.

Let’s have a look at some differences between these two:

Advantages of Advanced Features and Functionality

Since its launch, Magento is open source and both editions are targeted to different audiences.

The community edition is meant for small startup e-commerce business with basic yet powerful solutions. At the same time, the Enterprise edition is meant for those retailers who require more advanced features, customization, and functionality to their e-commerce business.

Magento Team Support

With the Enterprise edition, the retailer signs a Service Level Aggrievement(SLA) with Magento support and will be having the advantage agents development team support for tiniest issues.

Neither the agreement nor the service is available to Community users. They can take care of support issues with their own development team or through Community discussion forums.

Efficient Bug Tracking

The bug Fixing service is provided to both of editions users which comes to act when you report a bug in your Magento platform to the Magento team.

Although the bug resolution service is available to both user types, however sometimes the Magento development team gives much priority to Enterprise edition users as compared to Community edition users due to SLAs.

If you’re a small startup you can manage with the Community edition, but if you’re a large retailer and switching for Magento then you got to choose the Enterprise or Enterprise Premium Edition.

With much more competition on retailing and so many new functionalities to count in for your business, you need to choose the right Magento edition.

Recently Magento also launched the Magento Go feature, where a non-techno buff can also create an e-commerce web app.

At Andolasoft, we always try to build a high quality e-commerce web app with a much higher quality interface, scalability, and customization. Magento development is one of our major expertise and we’ve developed many custom Magento based e-commerce applications, modules, and other extensions.

Whether you’re a startup e-commerce business or a large retailer switching to e-commerce, we can help you by building search friendly and secure websites as per your requirements. We’ve expert Magento developers who can provide top-notch year-round service for your e-commerce solution.

Kick off Your Small Business with Magento Go

Posted on by Mandakinee

With internet prevailing its effect on every corner, businesses got the chance to spread across the world.

Once a small cotton factory is now the biggest ready-made clothing supplier of the world and this is not a single instance as there are millions like this.

Keeping that legacy alive, Magento development platform launched the online eCommerce building platform Magento Go. It lets you develop an online store for your small business with very much less investment.

And the best thing is you don’t need to be a techno-buff for this due to its simplest operations and easy learning interface.

Magento introduced a SaaS (software-as-a-service) version of its e-commerce platform named Magento Go. It allows small businesses or merchants to build easy-to-use shopping portals for customers around the world.

If you’re thinking of setting up an online store for your various product ranges, then it can help you build your store with your designs.

Magento Go include some basic features like Order Management, Customer Analytics and some cool features like Coupons and Gift Cards, which were not available in the Magento Community edition.

The designs, impressive templates, product flexibility, and search engine friendliness are some of the major features in Magento Go.

Magneto Development team recently updated additional features to Magento Go for merchants of the United Kingdom like Royal Mail Shipping, UK Cookie law compliance, improved PayPal payments, VATs and many more.

A trial out period of 30 days is available which can be then subscribed with fewer cost plans to run your e-commerce business. Customer engagement majors like assisted shopping, product comparisons, and wish lists are also taken to make the interactions more useful.

It Connect which is a market for a place for other Magento Go plug-ins is available for merchants who want to add additional features to their stores.

It is really going to kick off your small business if you know optimal utilization of the resources available to reach the maximum number of people.

At Andolasoft we’ve got expert developers on Magento development who have broad experience over handling individual projects on Magento. We have been developing the best quality, highly scalable websites for small to large scale enterprises.

Whether you’re a start-up eCommerce business or a large retailer switching to eCommerce, we can help you by building search friendly and secure websites as per your requirements.

 

Integration of Google reCaptcha with Rails application

Posted on by Mandakinee

ReCaptcha is a powerful captcha service to be use with a form to stop spam. This blog demonstrates the use of reCaptcha in rails application. Here I have used the ruby version 1.9.3 and Rails version 3.2.8.

Environment

  • Ruby version – 1.9.3
  • Rails – 3.2.8

Step#1

Create an account with Recaptcha “http://www.google.com/recaptcha” and register your site name with your google account to retrieve the public and private key that will be used later on the application

Step#2 

Installation of Recaptcha

  • Gem
  • Open your Gemfile and add this code
gem 'recaptcha', :require => 'recaptcha/rails'
  • Plugin
  • rails plugin install git://github.com/ambethia/recaptcha.git

Step#3

Create a file named recaptcha.rb in RAILS_ROOT/config/initializer and fill it with these codes

ENV['RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY'] = 'youractualpublickey' ENV['RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY'] = 'youractualprivatekey'

Step#4

Usages Open your views file and add this code

<%= recaptcha_tags %>

Step#5

Validation In controller, you can check the captcha validation by the following

if @model.save && verify_recaptcha(:model => @developer, :message => "Oh! It's error with reCAPTCHA!") #captcha is valid else #captcha is invalid end

Samsung Galaxy S3 or iPhone 5 – Which one to pick?

Posted on by Mandakinee

Now iPhone 5 has been launched and available for sale, people swarm to the Apple Stores all over to buy this new iPhone. There is also Samsung Galaxy S3 which was launched recently in May 2012 and available at most of the Smartphone vendors. So which one are you choosing? Apple has witnessed doubled pre-orders for its new iPhone after the launch although critics don’t think Apple came up with a revolutionary iPhone as expected. Rather they praise the Galaxy S3 which has some improved features as compared to iPhone 5. So let’s make a comparison between the two and you judge.

Here you go:

Processor And Memory:

Galaxy S3:

1.4 GHz Quad core Exynos processor; 16/32 GB, extendible to 64GB

iPhone 5:

A6 dual-core processor- clocked with 1GHz;  16/32/64 GB

OS:

Galaxy S3:

Android Ice Cream Sandwich, soon to be updated to Jelly Bean

iPhone 5:

iOS 6; expected to be the best platform for iPhone developers

Screen:

Galaxy S3:

4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED screen with max resolution of 720 x 1280

iPhone 5:

4 inchHD LCD display screen with 640 x 1136 maximum resolution

P.S: iPhone 5 screens looks pretty big with quality media playback and gaming. Apple once stated that its iPhone size is the standard size for a Smartphone. But later proved wrong by companies like Samsung and HTC, Apple itself increased the size of its iPhone.

Size and Weight:

Galaxy S3:

4.69 ounces(133 grams); 8.6 mm thick

iPhone 5:

20 grams lighter weighing 3.95 ounces (112 grams); 7.6 mm thick

Camera:

Galaxy S3:

8MP Rear Face Camera; 1.9 MP Front Facing Camera

iPhone 5:

8MP Rear Face Camera; 0.9 MP Front Facing Camera

NFC(Near Field Communication): A technology to enable fast radio communication between two devices.
Galaxy S3: YES;           iPhone 5: NO

In summary, both the devices are competitive and possess different advantages.  Users need to match their needs and pick accordingly. At the same time, iPhone application development and Android application development both are improving day by day.