At Nitobi, we work in a mixed IT environment and use a wide variety of technologies like Ajax, Flash, Flex, Ruby, etc. We also use the Microsoft .NET Framework because more of our clients are investing in .NET these days.
This month, Microsoft is highlighting Nitobi’s use of .NET in a case study posted on Microsoft’s website. The article focuses on the work we do at Nitobi and discusses why and how we’re using .NET.
Here’s a short excerpt from the case study:
To meet its customer’s technology needs and help deliver rich Internet apps, Nitobi determined that adding Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.5 into its development mix as a way to handle some user interface (UI) technologies would help to improve collaboration and add value to customers already using the .NET Framework.
“Interoperability is something that our customers demand and developers need to boost performance. We felt that including .NET in our development arsenal would help to increase developer collaboration and business agility, which is critical for our success,” says Charland.
Earlier this month we were selected to present at the Web 2.0 Expo’s LaunchPad event, and even better we won the people’s choice award!! I was stoked, the whole team was! It was a big honor. I think my presentation was OK, but it’s really the team, the idea and the community behind PhoneGap that made it a winner!
Here’s my 5 min talk:
Here’s the questions from the judges:
The media, customer and investor interest we’ve had since has been nothing short of amazing.
PhoneGap makes building iPhone and Android applications a snap with regular HTML, CSS and JavaScript. XUI is a nifty javascript microframework designed for building mobile web applications. Avoid the heresy of Objective-C or Java and return to the sanity of the open web. In this talk Brian will guide you through the creation of a mobile web app that is app store ready and talk a little about the future platforms for PhoneGap and XUI.
“Nitobi Inc.’s PhoneGap is catching on with smartphone application developers who want to avoid the pitfalls of writing to different phone platforms. PhoneGap is a development framework that lets HTML and JavaScript developers build native mobile phone apps that take advantage of native capabilities of the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.”
My favorite quote is from a member of the PhoneGap community and developer:
“PhoneGap has cut my iPhone development time in half, which has been good news for my clients.” Nathan Freitas
There was a very nice post by one of InfoWorld’s open source bloggers, Savio Rodriguez, this morning about PhoneGap. It was the last paragraph calling our RIM that really caught my attention though…
“If I worked at RIM, I’d take a trip out to Vancouver to talk to the Nitobi dudes. This framework is exactly what RIM needs to counter the trend of developers targeting the iPhone/iPod as the premier environment for mobile device applications. RIM has the brand and market share to persuade developers that writing once and targeting three key mobile platforms is the best use of a mobile developer’s effort. RIM would need to adopt WebKit as the rendering engine for their browser, but that is going to happen anyway. ;-)”
No doubt Rodriguez! My thoughts exactly. Coincidentally we just got a email from someone at RIM:) We think because easy iPhone/iPod Touch development is the carrot and closs platform is the true long term value in PhoneGap every other mobile platform (Window Mobile, Nokia/Symbian, BlackBerry, Android and Palm Pre) should be bending over backwards to help us get PhoneGap running with their OS and APIs. Maybe they all appear to be laggards today for a reason? ;-) *gloves off*
“Herman Wong will be presenting on PureMVC. PureMVC is a lightweight framework for creating applications based upon the classic Model, View and Controller concept. Herman is a Flex / Air Developer for Nitobi.”
I was recently asked to help out Jiibe, a start up client of ours, with a fun project. They’ve created Jiibe Connection, a video contest where you try to match a job seeker to the appropriate employer. The three employers are from three actual Vancouver companies including (obviously) Nitobi.
Here’s my entire interview with Darren and Julie.
I’m not doing so well in the results, but that’s just because the jobseeker isn’t cool enough to work at Nitobi. What do you think is holding me back as an employer?
a) my beard
b) my sarcasm (notice the interviewers laughing during my interview)
c) the fact Nitobi doesn’t go bowling as company
d) none of the above
Anyway go watch the video and vote for me and Nitobi!
The first PhoneGap sprint wrapped up this weekend. We started Friday with about 15 folks squished into the Nitobi boardroom for Pizza, a quick explanation and game plan delivered by Brock Whitten.
Here’s a quick summary of what we accomplished on the various platforms now in the PhoneGap umbrella.
iPhone
Added network detection
Notify user if no network is detected
Memory clean ups
Made default image/screen more intelligent
Android
Accelerometer
Basic camera support
Offline support
Bugs fixed
Blackberry
GPS is totally working with the W3C API (maybe some error states don’t work but we’ll get there)
Camera works
Mapping works
Phone calls work
Vibration works
*Not all the Blackberry stuff is checked in yet.
We also cleaned up wiki the wiki a bunch. The new PhoneGap site is almost ready to push live too.
What’s next? We need to get all the JavaScript APIs in sync. Check the roadmap for more info. The website will be up shortly. Stay tuned for the Translink case study too.
Duane stopped by the Nitobi Office earlier this year to chat with me about RIAs, what we do and where it’s all going. We also chat a bit about RobotReplay.
I wasn’t sure where it was all heading, but I guess I ended up on the first episode of Duane’s World for Adobe TV. Very cool. If you think you have a topic that would be good for Duane’s show leave me a comment and I’ll put you in touch.
I should call out that Adobe has done a great job with the content and UI of Adobe TV but has failed to provide clean URLs that are actually updated in the address bar. Thus it’s kind of a pain to find and share URLs and impossible to navigate with back button. Too bad it would be so easy to make it a great example of public facing Flex RIA. Someone _high_ and Adobe really needs to start hammering this sort of thing home if Adobe is going to successfully make the leap to Saas and web services. I guess it’s not enough to have Kevin Lynch talking about it. I also can’t resize this video, so it’s best to go to Adobe TV to watch it.
[Disclaimer Duane's a good friend and on Nitobi's Advisory Board]
