January 11th 2012 saw the launch of the new Waracle website, with a new emphasis on developing social and online games. In late 2011, Waracle began work on a Facebook game for The European Nature Trust. The European Nature Trust (TENT) has embarked upon an exciting new project with Waracle to design, develop and support a unique and innovative Facebook game that promotes conservation. TENT leverage funding into conservation projects across Europe and are using the development of their Facebook game to help raise awareness of their cause and to generate revenue to re-invest in conservation activities. This is a great example of how brands and businesses can establish...

Read More

Waracle are pleased to announce the release of the Public Contracts Scotland iPhone app.  Commissioned by Millstream, an Aberdeen based e-procurement company, on behalf of the Scottish Government, Waracle developed the Public Contracts Scotland iPhone app which allows businesses to access public contract information quickly, easily and on the move.

http://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/news/news_article.aspx?ID=482

A couple of weeks back I was asked by the Scottish Government to help launch the app at Procurex, an international procurement conference, alongside Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s Deputy First Minister. She credited the app for “playing a key role in achieving efficiency improvements” within the public sector. The video below...

Read More

Waracle are delighted to announce that as of today, all of our web applications and client sites will be moved onto the Rackspace cloud. This will be an ongoing process over the next few months whereby we start to move all existing applications onto the Cloud, which offers a greater degree of flexibility and scalability than traditional server solutions.

So what exactly is cloud computing? According to Wikipedia: “Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided by computers and other devices on-demand, like the electricity grid”.  Waracle are now equipped to provide servers on-demand that are...

Read More

The hype surrounding the release of the Apple iPad has been cranked up a notch with some iTunes tweaking. The Cupertino wonder kids have released version 9.1 of iTunes and included some changes that provide a teaser in anticipation of the iPad’s official launch in the UK next month.  These changes come in the form of some features that will enable iPad owners to manage their book collection within iTunes.

Before anyone gets too excited, these changes are largely cosmetic ahead of the iPad’s USA launch this Saturday and provide only a slight alteration when compared with the previous software update. ...

Read More

The Apple iPad looks set to continue the theme developed by the iPhone, with a number of game developers set to enter the market. A survey from Flurry Analytics has revealed a detailed breakdown of the types of apps likely to be available when the iPad is released in April 2010 including entertainment, social networking and sports.  One clear advantage the iPad has when compared with the iPhone is its sheer size. In order to convert popular web based games to the iPhone, developers have cleverly utilised a somewhat restrictive touchscreen interface and screen size. The iPad offers additional screen...

Read More

If you haven’t already read my previous post regarding my iPhone battery experiment, for one weekend (Fri, Sat, Sunday) I reduced my iPhone to the simple role of making phone calls and receiving SMS messages. The task was to see if I could get the device to last a weekend of normal phone use without needing re-charged.

Today, I’ll summarize the results and talk about some great battery saving tips for those of you with iPhones that may occasionally require long-distance trips between charges.

Firstly, the phone made it.  By 10:30pm on Sunday night I was left with 19% charge....

Read More

Before owning an iPhone, I was always somewhat concerned by the apparent lack of long term battery life that the phone, in normal use, provides. As much as I understand this isn’t the fault of the phone – as just calling this device a phone is inaccurate, as it isn’t really a phone. it’s a portable device music playing web surfing app running social networking sort of thing – it’s an iPhone.

So, what about battery life then? What if I reduce the iPhone to merely just a phone, how long will the battery survive?

To find out, starting this morning and...

Read More

Causing something of a stir when it appeared on Slashdot yesterday evening, the news that a talented JavaScript developer at http://paulirish.com/ had built an rendering engine that can play simple Flash movies  is bound to get some people thinking.

Anyone with an iPhone will know that the built in browser, Safari, has no flash support. This is by design and is as such for a number of reasons. Some beneficial to the user others beneficial to Apple.

Steve Job’s has always said that the lack of Flash support on the iPhone was purely because the device wasn’t fast enough to render...

Read More

The much loved Ruby-on-Rails web application development platform has approached a beta of version 3. The most streamlined and powerful version to date. We can expect to see this some time around late January. To add to the good news, the final version is expected to shuffle out during the first quarter of 2010.

Ruby-on-Rails is loved by developers worldwide, given its ability to let developers simply bash out applications rather than requiring they focusing on actual software architecture. This makes great use of developer time, but poor use of the hardware resources required to run such an application.

To address this,...

Read More

The Apple tablet/slate/pad rumor mill has gone into overdrive in the early part of 2010.  Early indications would suggest that Apple is gearing up for a massive product launch, similar to the introduction of the iPhone before the end of January.  Today sees the birth of two interesting rumors to fuel existing speculation.

Publishers TG Daily have printed a quote from a ‘anonymous designer’, suggesting that it is virtually impossible to order a 10.1 inch screen from any Chinese manufacturer. One plausible explanation to this unusual shortage in supply is that Apple has already purchased them all. The idea being that...

Read More