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Monday, August 24, 2009

Screen Sharing, Desktop Sharing Software's and Tools

Hi there, we are developing some screen sharing software. In this regard I did technical evaluation on the available software’s in the market.


Screen Sharing is a concept related to the online collaboration tools that enable you to share/ broadcast your computer screen as continues live stream to the clients connected over the internet. This feature allows multiple audiences to see in real time what ever you will be showing on your system and also it provides an opportunity for the client to take control over your PC. This is the best way to present your business applications for the clients and they can directly interact with the applications ported on your servers. If your organizing an online sessions or explaining your desktop application to the client, you can interact with the client and share your ideas and also the clients opinion. In most of the cases if we are connected locally, our administrator can take control over our PC and resolve any software issue. Screen sharing is the feature which allows you as a presenter to create a session which is associated to a specific url and optional password. You have to share this credentials with the clients your going top invite on your web session. They have to login to the system and authorized to view your presentation, they can view your screen in a real time.










Screen Sharing Software


Software

Cost

Remote Access

Platform

Users

Yuuguu

Free

X

Windows/Mac/Linux

30

GoToMeeting

49$/mnth

X

Windows/Mac

15

ConferencingNow

Free

X

Windows

10

Mikogo

Free

X

Windows

10

SharedView

Free

X

Windows

15

Yugma Skype

Free

X

Windows/Mac/Linux

10

ShowMyPC

Free

X

Windows/Mac/Linux

1-n

TeamViewer

Free

X

Windows/Mac

1-1

Glance

49$/mnth

X

Windows/Mac

100

Persony

Free

X

Windows

25

eBLVD

29mnth

X

Windows

5

GatherPlace

29$/mnth

X

Windows

5

Spreed

Free for 3

X

Windows/Mac/Linux

3


Desktop sharing software



Application/Tool

Cost

Screen Sharing

Remote Access

Instant Messaging

Share Control

Video Conferencing

File Transfer

Cross Loop

Free

X

X

X



X

TeamViewer

Free for private users

X

X

X

X


X

Yuuguu

Free

X

X

X

X



Festoon

Free

X

X

X


X

X

GoToMyPC

$19.95/month

X

X


X


X

Webex

45 cents per minute/per user

X

X

X

X

X

X

IBM Lotus Sametime

$338.00 annual

X

X

X

X

X

X

Oneeko

$72 annual

X

X


X


X

Mikogo

Free

X

X


X


X

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro

$39/month

X

X

X

X

X

X

PocketMeeting

$5 per day

X

X





ScreenStream

Free

X

X





Wednesday, August 19, 2009

How To Install & Run Java On iPhone


iPhone is a great phone to develop applications for. Unfortunately Apple decided to restrict developing iPhone applications in a less known language called Objective C, which is used pretty much within Apple (and by Apple developers) and almost nowhere else. Only Steve Jobs knows the reason behind this strange decision. Java (J2ME) is the most popular language & platform for mobile development. So Java developers need a way to develop applications for iPhone too by leveraging their core competency.


Apple's SDK for the iPhone, as you know, is based on Objective-C as the development language as well as Cocoa for the GUI.

Unfortunately Apple's super-restrictive license agreement for the iPhone SDK prohibits the porting of the Java virtual machine to the iPhone. Today we will talk about how we can use Open Source Java to run applications which will run on Apple's iPhone. The open source project by Arno Puder, Associate Professor at the San Francisco State University, uses a cross-compiler to convert Open Source Java code to Objective-C and provide a Java-based implementation of the Cocoa library. With the help of these tools, iPhone applications can be written in pure Java.

Using the Java version of Cocoa, it is possible to run a Java-based iPhone application as a Java desktop/applet application that can be cross-compiled to run natively on the iPhone.






AlcheMo-for-iPhone - Automated J2ME to iPhone porting solution
alcheMo for iPhone contains translator to convert J2ME application source code to equivalent C++ source code for iPhone.

No manual adjustments to the translated source code are required. Compiled using the standard Xcode toolchain and linked with alcheMo's optimized run-time library, a native iPhone application is produced.

alcheMo for iPhone is capable of converting J2ME applications utilizing an extensive subset of Java ME CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0 (including touch screen support) and supports several JSR extension APIs including the JSR-256 mobile sensor API. This automatic translation process is instantaneous, repeatable and doesn't require iPhone specific experience.

Garbage collection and automatic memory management is one of the strengths of the J2ME environment. Unlike on Macintosh OS X, Objective C on iPhone does not support garbage collection. By incorporating an advanced garbage collector, alcheMo eliminates the need for manual memory management. Whole classes of common programming errors such as dangling pointers are thus prevented.

The initial version of alcheMo for iPhone is optimized for mobile games.

The bad news is that their beta program has closed on April 24th, while they are preparing for commercial release. alcheMo for iPhone has backing from Sun Microsystems.

BTW: During Java One 2008, Sun officials repeatedly mentioned that they successfully ran Java on iPhone but are thwarted only by Apple's licensing restrictions in publicly announcing it. alcheMo circumvents Apple's licensing restrictions with their language translator.

Using Java on Unlocked & Jailbraked iPhone with Installer

Note: The legality of the procedure below is dubious. IANAL.










First you need to unlock and jailbrake you iPhone. You can use the windows user interface for ZiPhone to jailbreak, unlock and activate any verion of iPhone.

Then you need to have the installer app on iPhone. Installer.app is a UIKit based package manager for the iPhone. It works by downloading packages over WiFi (wireless networking) or EDGE. It supports installing, updating and uninstalling applications from multiple sources.

winpwn can simplify the above steps for you.

Now go to Installer and install Mobile Terminal and Cydia Installer. Restart iPhone.

Run Cydia Installer and go to Java section and select iPhone/Java which will install the virtual machine, libraries etc. Then install Jikes (java compiler). Now restart iPhone again.

That's it, you are done.

How to load, compile & run Java applications on iPhone
First install Java on iPhone following instructions in the section above before reading this.

You can upload Java files to iPhone using iPhone Browser.





You can run the class file as usual:
java MyFirstJavaProgramForIPhone

Java on iPhone - Concluding thoughts
The second method (using jailbraked iPhone) suffers from three major problems.
1. To use your Java applications, your user will also have to jailbrake their iPhone. As such its usage will be limited to highly technical people who are not afraid of tinkering with their costly iPhone and potentially even risk damaging it permanently!

2. While it may be fine for experimenting, the legality is dubious. You may run into problem with Apple for selling or even distributing such applications.

3. The jailbraked versions of iPhone may not be compatible with future firmware updates, and Apple will try their best to disable them at every opportunity and had done so in the past.

All of the above makes method 2 unsuitable for commercial use.

Commercial J2ME developers have to wait for commercial release of alcheMo-for-iPhone. Innaworks is well known for porting standards compliant J2ME to BREW mobile platform. I expect their solution to be ready in 2-3 months time. If you do not have the time then download Apple's iPhone SDK and start coding in Objective C.
BTW: Make sure you read the iPhone SDK agreement carefully before you invest huge sums in iPhone development.








Run Terminal (installed above) and use java (jikes) compiler to compiler your program. For example:
jikes -cp /usr/lib/rt.jar MyFirstJavaProgramForIPhone.java