Tech Diary - Part 13

Cordova Plugins: Review Unnecessary Permissions

NG October 9, 2017December 16, 2017 Android, How to, Intel XDK, Plugin

If you went through the article on adding social sharing feature in HTML5 game using Intel XDK, it seemed like a simple plugin which should not require any permission but after adding the plugin and few more other plugins I found that WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission was added in my android app so I checked all plugins one by one to see which plugin is adding what permissions and found out that WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission was being added by social sharing plugin. When I checked developer notes (quoted below) I found that the permission was not required in my case, since I was not fetching any remote images for sharing. For sharing remote images (or other files) on Android, the file needs to be stored locally first, so add this permission to AndroidManifest.xml: <uses-permission android:name=“android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE“ /> In fact it was just a simple play store URL which I was sharing in my app so[…]

WordPress Error: Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute

NG September 14, 2017 How to, WordPress

This error occurs when you try to update something in WordPress site and the update fails for some reason and then your site goes down and following message is displayed Don’t worry. The process to fix this is pretty straight-forward. Go to your blog installation folder and look for .maintenance file. This file is generated by WordPress when the update occurs and then removed after the update finishes. In case update fails and this file could not be removed, then the above error message is displayed. Delete this file and you will be back up.

Four Ways To Develop A Contact List

Simy September 14, 2017November 11, 2017 Digital Marketing, Online Marketing

In order to effectively use email marketing, we need to look at various ways of developing a contacts list. The ultimate goal of developing a contacts list is to enhance the length of prospects. Every email you send to people, has a possibility to get lead and convert those prospects into customers whether it is for the sale of a product/service or for promotional activities to increase traffic for a website/blog. Emails with quality content are the ones that can make a really good impact on the prospects. It doesn’t matter if you send just one or two emails in a month or an email campaigning, it works if you do it right way. In my previous post we talked about one of the ways for building contacts list which was to include a questionnaire form on your website. It is even possible to develop a list without having a website. Let see how: ⇒Sign Up Forms With the[…]

Things To Note For The Best Web Hosting Service !!

Simy September 10, 2017November 11, 2017 Digital Marketing, Online Marketing

If you have registered for an attractive and apt domain; you’re already a step ahead than others who are yet to come up with the idea of being online. Next step is selection of hosting service. Choosing a hosting service for their website has been a difficult task for people. Hosting is about storing and making your web page content accessible on web therefore, it plays a very important role. There are plenty of hosting service providers but not all meet expectations in reality. Also, it is not advisable to go for free hosting. Beware of any of such traps since not only does it come with limitations but also technical problems. Buying hosting from a reliable provider is going to keep you hassle free in future. A Good host is the one which provides quality support along with the hosting services. There are various categories of web hosting and I have come up[…]

How to Choose and Register for Your Domain Name ?

Simy August 31, 2017November 11, 2017 Digital Marketing, Online Marketing

In one of my previous articles we talked about different ways which can be used for building your presence online. One such option was to have a website of your own and for that the first and foremost thing which should strike your mind is “Domain Name”. Domain name is basically an online address of your website. You can also take it as your business identity. Picking a domain name is as important as naming of your offline physical shop to get established in the market. We have variety of extensions available and the most commonly used extensions are .Com, .Org, .Edu etc. Others are .Net, .Co, .Buzz and so on. It also depends on the type of business. In order to choose the most suitable domain we are going to look at following points: ⇒Keywords First You should go for the basic search of keywords that are popular and related to your business to find[…]

Add AdMob Ads to HTML5 Game using Intel XDK

NG July 28, 2017July 29, 2017 Android, HTML5, Intel XDK, Plugin

The steps are as following Open your app in Intel XDK and go to CORDOVA HYBRID MOBILE APP SETTINGS section Click on “Add Plugins to this project” and search for the plugin “cordova-plugin-admob-free” in npm. Click “Add Plugin” which adds plugin to the project. Open your index.html and add following code <script> document.addEventListener(“deviceready”, onDeviceReady, false); function onDeviceReady() { initAd(); showBannerFunc(); } //initialize the goodies function initAd(){ admob.banner.config({ id: ‘ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/6300978111’, adSize: window.plugins.AdMob.AD_SIZE.BANNER }); admob.interstitial.config({ id: ‘ca-app-pub-3940256099942544/1033173712’, autoShow: false }); // Create banner admob.banner.prepare() } //display the banner function showBannerFunc(){ admob.banner.show(); } //prepare the interstitial function prepareInterstitialFunc(){ admob.interstitial.prepare(); } //display the interstitial function showInterstitialFunc(){ admob.interstitial.show(); } </script> Replace banner and interstitial ad code id with yours. The code in the example is given by Google to test the ads which displays placeholder ads for testing. This can be used during development and testing. Replace it with your ad codes for release. Another thing to note here[…]

Add Social Sharing Feature to HTML5 Game using Intel XDK

NG July 28, 2017July 28, 2017 Android, HTML5, Intel XDK, Plugin

If you have gone through previous post in which we discussed about using Intel XDK to compile HTML5 games to Android apps, next steps are to add features which are quite necessary for every Android app such Social Sharing option. There are many open source plugins available to add Social Sharing feature to your app and it takes no more than a few minutes of effort to integrate this feature and get it working. The steps are as following Open your app in Intel XDK and go to CORDOVA HYBRID MOBILE APP SETTINGS section Click on “Add Plugins to this project” and search for the plugin “cordova-plugin-x-socialsharing” in npm. Click “Add Plugin” which adds plugin to the project. Open your index.html and add following code <script> function share(){ window.plugins.socialsharing.share(‘Sample’, null, null, ‘https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.html5games.sample’); } </script> Replace title and URL of the Android app in the code. And that is it. Now the share[…]

How Email Marketing Can Help Your Business Grow?

Simy July 28, 2017November 11, 2017 Digital Marketing, Online Marketing

Email marketing is one of very effective ways to hit the mind of existing as well as prospective customers in building relationship with them and get them engaged with your products or services. We will go over certain things which should be done in order to achieve desired results: ◊ Set goals It is really important to decide the purpose of sending emails. For ex. you want to promote your products or services and bring traffic to your website; or you want to use it for sending exclusive offers to new or existing customers in order to increase sales. ◊ Develop a contacts list So how can you find email ids of people? You can include a questionnaire form on your website and also encourage your customers to subscribe online for receiving updates and newsletters. Make sure you get their consent to send commercial emails as different countries can have law restrictions. ◊ Speak to prospects and[…]

Four Most Important Ways To Build Your Web Presence

Simy July 19, 2017November 11, 2017 Digital Marketing, Online Marketing

Now a days approximately half of the world is getting online to find information. The amount of potential customers has expanded because more and more people are browsing the web from so many different types of devices. With such a big change we can’t ignore its worth to tap for promoting our business online and also the access to global market. It is like extending your business as a brand globally. You can also take it as improved customer experience. In fact you are not only providing better experience to existing customers but also making more people aware about and reach to your products or services. It is not an overnight task rather it does take time and continuous effort to build web presence and become recognizable. There are certain ways to start with your online activities: • Websites • Local Business listings and review sites • Social media •[…]

Compile Phaser Games (or any other HTML5 Game) as Android Store App using Intel XDK

NG July 10, 2017November 11, 2017 Android, HTML5, Intel XDK, Phaser

Intel XDK has long supported development and compilation of HTML5 games for Android, iOS and Windows store. It even provided a cloud based build system which took care of preparation of final packages which could be directly published to respective Android, iOS and Windows stores but starting from July 2017, Intel XDK build system has been shut down and new versions of Intel XDK do not have Game templates anymore. Still the tool is very useful for compiling your HTML5 games for Android, iOS and Windows stores. We are going to look at steps to compile HTML5 game for Android in this tutorial. Step 1 – Download and install Intel XDK. Step 2 – Create a new project using Blank HTML5 + Cordova template. Select “HTML5 + Cordova” and Click “Continue” which open a dialog box for specifying Project Name and Directory. We are going to use Dice Roller example code[…]

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