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.
Last week we were at Web 2.0 Expo in NYC where we were part of an exciting announcement with Sony Ericsson, the release of the Sony Ericsson WebSDK. The WebSDK is an open source tool created in collaboration with the PhoneGap open source community. With the Sony Ericsson WebSDK, web and mobile developers can create mobile apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript that access platform features and data including accelerometer, GPS, camera and contacts. Sony Ericsson Web SDK initially supports Android (e.g. XPERIA) and Symbian (Satio) platforms.
“With the Sony Ericsson WebSDK our focus is on bringing all the capabilities of web technologies to mobile applications and giving web developers wide access to easy-to-use tools and mobile phone platforms.” says Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson. “We are driving this initiative together with the PhoneGap open source community and invite developers to join us as we offer advanced mobile devices and a clear monetization path.”
If you want to find out more about the Sony Ericcson WebSDK, check out the official announcement from Web 2.0 Expo.
“Mobile development is increasingly no different from Web development, but proprietary hooks remain.” said James Governor, RedMonk industry analyst, “By building on Phonegap, Sony Ericcson can grow its developer community and allow the apps built to take advantage of native platform functionality.”
Some of the crew here at Nitobi has been carefully grooming moustaches this Movember in an attempt to raise money and awareness for breast cancer. Please chip and donate a couple dollars to our team.
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.
The whole team at Nitobi is honored to have been picked as one of 5 companies out of 80 to present at the Launch Pad event at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I get 5 minutes to convince a panel of judges and the crowd (voting in real-time with sms) that PhoneGap is the hottest technology product launching at the event. It’s described as “American Idol” for business…no pressure;-)
“For 2009, we continue the tradition of showcasing innovative and promising new companies at Web 2.0 Expo. While the definition of a launch has gotten cloudy in this age of public betas, we’re looking for new companies or products that make us take notice. And while venture capital has been the focus in past years, the reality of the market is that companies must gain the attention of customers. So our judging panel and criteria this year focus more on what is essential and transformational in today’s market than on ability to get funded. Along the way, we’re sure the VCs in the crowd will find several startups they’d like to talk to!”
Good luck to the other presenter and I hope we all manage to provide some value or at least entertainment to the crowd.
The event is at 1:15-2:15pm Thursday April 2nd in the Keynote Room (Ballroom – 3rd Level).
I have 2 free passes is anyone is interested. Just leave a comment or email me.
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*
Some of the crew here at Nitobi has been carefully grooming moustaches this Movember in an attempt to raise money and awareness for breast cancer. Please chip and 
The whole team at Nitobi is honored to have been 
