EU VAT check Mobile Web Application (mowapp)

Posted in: Android, Mobile, Mobile Web Applications, iPhone by openhanced on April 2, 2010

Click here for the URL.

All companies in Europe officially need to check the VAT id of the partners/suppliers they work with, till now that has been difficult to do.

That changes from now on, we just have released a Mobile Web Application to check VAT numbers for the following countries:

• Netherlands
• Austria
• Belgium
• Bulgaria
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Germany
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Spain
• Finland
• France
• Great Britain
• Greece
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Latvia
• Malta
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Sweden
• Slovenia
• Slovakia

The mobile browser based application is usable on the Android an iPhone devices but you can also use it on the desktop on a Safari browser.

It is our aim to provide businesses worldwide with vertical applications on mobile devices.

The data is provided by the EU and a wrapper web service is developed by http://isvat.appspot.com/

The status of HTML5 for mobile devices

Posted in: Android, Blog, iPhone by openhanced on January 29, 2010

After doing some work on cross platform web app deployment (Hybrid Mobile) the conclusion is that it isn’t easy to do but doable with a few workarounds. As anyone knows Google has pushed Google Gears for a while and did not support HTML5 in the Android 1.5 and 1.6 (not 100% sure of this last one). Apple with the iPod, iPhone and iPad however does support HTML5 for the features that mobile developers need.

As a web app. developer that brings in a few difficulties. Probably you would prefer local storage of private information (possible in HTML5) and that works for Android 2.x, and all Apple devices. However, this rules out the G1 and Hero (HTC refuses to release the update till now). In practice this means you have to either use Google Gears (lof of problems till now) or stick to the cookie solution or live SQL storage (slower). A cookie solution is ok but has some security issues if not programmed in a decent way.

That basically means your web apps. have to support two methods till every Android device is upgraded to version 2.x. Luckily Google is now giving heavy support to HTML5.

Till that moment Openhanced and other developers have to stick to both above described solutions