Category — Books

Publisher: O’Reilly
Title: Mobile Design and Development (paperback)
Author: Brian Fling
Copyright: 2009
Rating: 4/5 stars

Brian Fling has written a very engaging overview of mobile design and development. For anyone looking for background into the dynamic and rapidly expanding mobile industry, this book provides a strong primer despite its release over a year ago.  Much has occurred since the publication – Android 2.2 (Froyo) has been released, Android 2.1 has already shown significant growth in the U.S., Windows Phone 7 may be coming out at the end of this year, and iPhone4 with OS4 is picking up market share outside the U.S. (over 70% in Japan?).  Still, Fling’s book provides the basics needed to understand many of the linked resources above; opening up review with a more global vision of developing markets outside of the U.S., and explaining the potential for significant growth given the lack of established infrastructure in those areas. [Read more →]

I’m about 70 pages into Brian Fling’s, “Mobile Design and Development” book published by O’Reilly, and so far its not only enjoyable, but very down to earth.  Sad to say, but Cormac McCarthy’s, “The Road” is taking a back seat until I’m done with Fling.  I’ll save all of my feedback for the final review, but I’ll say now, he seems to know the reader, or at least this reader.

He knows I’m interested in learning more about the world of mobile applications and infrastructure, but he doesn’t let that get to his head and go off in a techno-babble tangent.  He builds a foundation that should, even to the most oblivious mobile amateur, help one understand why this is an important endeavor.   And, soon after the graphs and charts of global statistics begin to explain how we’re just in the beginning of something big, he clearly, if too clearly, explains why we should be cautious of the current fragmentation in the mobile ecosystem.  A brief review of the Table of Contents under Chapter 2′s sub-chapter, “Application Frameworks” alone should give the reader a clue that its a wide, wide world of sports out there.  Since I already know that I’m developing my first project for the iPhone, I think I have my bases covered, but there’s no way I would have skipped that chapter.  Highly recommended start into the basics that compliments articles like this one from Robin Wauters at TechCrunch. [Read more →]