In the latest release of ARO (version 2.2) we have added several new great features.  Read on and watch the video for all the details!

No, not the wee folk. Let them stay in the forest.  However CSS image sprites can magically speed up your site by reducing the number of requests and the amount of data used. To better understand spprites, I added them to a popular mobile news site; and I saw a 33% improvement in download speed! Interested in an easy fix that can really speed up your app?  Read on!!

The AT&T Developer Program is sponsoring VisionMobile’s Developer Economics 2013 report and portal.  Now in its 4th year, Developer Economics 2013 is the de facto research report and portal on the app economy.  This year will be focused on recommended best practices for the tools, services, and APIs that developers use to build, market, and monetize their apps.

Last week we discussed some surprising results that were found in the Q1 2012 Appcelerator/IDC Mobile Developer Report: Seventy-nine percent of mobile developers reported they will integrate HTML5 in their apps this year. According to Fierce Developer author, Jason Ankeny, that's significantly higher than many industry observers anticipated even as recently as late 2011.

Ankeny recently wrote an article about developers giving up on Android. The Q1 Appcelerator/IDC report found that 78.6 percent of developers expressed interest in building apps for Google, down from 87 percent a year ago. According to Ankeny, the reason for this isn’t that people aren’t buying Android devices, it’s that there is an increasing amount of fragmentation in the mobile app market.

Drop In Media has benefitted from the use of HTML5 mobile web and the AT&T API Catalog in the creation of the news aggregation app 1^st to Know™.  By using the AT&T API Platform and resources, Drop In Media quickly completed its development and was ready to distribute its new application in record time.

Could a mobile app help boost your new venture?  Are you planning on building a business around a mobile app?  AT&T Mobile App Hackathons are geared towards getting your app, business or idea venture to market! 

Join us for the Dallas Mobile App Hackathon next Friday and Saturday, Feb 17-18, at the AT&T Foundry.

Freemium games command an ARPU up to 4X standard games, and have longer revenue cycles.  But they can be more expensive to develop, and require back-end systems and a commitment well beyond launch.

Members of the AT&T Developer Program can listen to this archived webcast anytime, or download the video and slides.  If you’re not a member, sign up for free!

PlayPhone Gives Games an Extra Life (login required)

Simon (Darkside) Jackson presents a series of three Mobile 101 podcasts.  If you want to learn about mobile app development, user experience, marketing, and WP7 Mango, this is a great place to start.

The podcasts are available to members of the AT&T Developer Program.

If you’re building an Android app that uses wireless, you know how important optimizing network traffic, reducing battery drain, and lowering server loads are. 

The AT&T Application Resource Optimizer (ARO) is a free diagnostic tool for analyzing the performance of your mobile applications.

Doug Sillars, PhD, recently presented a session at the AT&T Developer Summit outlining how to use ARO.  His slides can be found on the AT&T Developer Program website. 

In a recent webcast, “Best Practices for Building Energy Efficient Apps, Doug Sillars shares tips on making your mobile application use less bandwidth, reduce server load, while making it perform better and reduce handset battery drain.  Watch the free replay to learn how mobile wireless networks are different than wired networks, and how simple changes to your app can work WITH the network to improve your application's efficiency.

In this part, I’ll explain how you can store basic data on the phone from within your application. Start by creating a new Silverlight for Windows Phone Application project as described in Part 1.