Andre’s Blog

May 13th, 2008

BlackBerry announced a new fund to encourage mobile applicationand development.

Research In Motion (RIM) (TSX: RIM; NASDAQ: RIMM), RBC (RY: TSX; RY: NYSE) and Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI; TSX: TRI; LSE: TRIL; NASDAQ: TRIN), today announced plans to launch the BlackBerry® Partners Fund, a US$150 million venture capital fund, to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry® platform and other mobile platforms. The Fund is to be co-managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners.

Agnostic to both stage and balance sheet, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will not restrict the development of mobile applications and services to any single mobile platform or any specific industry segment. The Fund will be designed to advance the industry by fostering development and driving the entrepreneurial spirit to create the most innovative mobile offerings for customers.

There’s not much more than that. The have official site with a link to the press release and an email address. I sent them a message about a cool project we’re working on here but haven’t heard anything yet.

[Update] Rick from JLA (VC involved in the fund) they will support biz plans focused on any mobile platform and they are getting a lot interest, 845 msgs to date! I’m stoked Rick’s blogging about this, it just went from a weird big co blank page plus press release shutting me out to a human on the inside with a blog talking to me.

Posted in Software Development, Business, startup, mobile, blackberry | No Comments »

March 13th, 2008

We’re pretty excited to be starting a new project that allows users to make low cost calls and sms with their existing phones over VOIP. The client is Verb Exchange another Vancouver startup that specializes in VOIP. They originally went down the .Net path but have now selected Flex/AIR for the user experience and platform portability.

Verb Exchange and Nitobi Partner on Tabrio; Application Built in Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR

With Tabrio, users choose from web, desktop or mobile access to place high-quality long distance calls or send and receive SMS text messages to anywhere in the world. It utilizes existing networks to provide best-of-breed call quality, while still offering VoIP’s significant cost savings. Additional features allow users to synchronize their contacts, send instant messages, and perform web searches from directly within the application.

“Tabrio targets the millions of people around the world who need a better way to stay in touch. Our goal is for those people to download Tabrio and understand it immediately,” says Christian Jensen, VP, Products and Services, Verb Exchange. “That’s where Nitobi excels. Their work will translate directly to more users, higher customer satisfaction, and increased profits.”

The interactive UI is being developed with Adobe Flex, a Flash-based rich Internet application (RIA) development framework, and the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a platform that enables RIAs to run on the desktop. Flex and AIR were chosen for the ability to deliver highly interactive applications that deploy consistently in all major browsers on Mac and PC.

I’m in a rush to get out the door to NY and Europe…but stay for more updates on this exciting app.

Posted in Software Development, Usability - HCI, nitobi, design, Flex, Flash, AIR, startup, vancouver, xmpp, voip | No Comments »

February 26th, 2008

The Adobe on AIR Tour is Headed to Europe And I’m on board to talk up Ajax development in AIR, our Dreamweaver Extensions and some usability topics.
Here’s the schedule:

* Madrid - March 31
* Paris - April 2
* Amsterdam - April 4
* Brussels - April 7
* London - April 9
* Dublin - April 11
* Stockholm - June 2
* Berlin - June 4
* Warsaw - June 6
* Prague - June 9
* Munich - June 11
* Milan - June 13

Please let me if you’re in any of these cities and would me to buy you a beer;-) Also would love to get some recommendations of stuff to do an check out.

Posted in Software Development, AJAX, Usability - HCI, nitobi, events, Flex, Flash, ria, AIR, dreamweaver | No Comments »

February 12th, 2008

User experience you can take to the bank! VanUE » HSBC User Centered Design Group

HSBC is a global bank with over 100 million customers in 83 countries worldwide. As a global team dedicated to championing the needs of all of HSBC’s customers, HSBC User Centered Design (UCD) views the customer experience as one that has no borders. With user research and user interface design teams worldwide, UCD has the ability to meet the needs of an ever-changing world. UCD projects range from intranet designs and applications for internal staff to innovative engagements with ATMs and mobile banking. Join UCD as the team shares some of its memorable experiences setting the bar for the “World’s Local Bank.”

Sounds interesting. Some of the best talks on usability I’ve been have been from experts working directly for business or product as opposed to outside consultants (not trash talking, ’cause I’m one of em). I’m also very interested in usability and ux in the banking world since so many Nitobi customers are large financial institutions. Banks also have to deal with other issues like large data sets, privacy, security and accessibility more diligently than many businesses so it’s neat to understand how they balance everything. Incidentally many big banks were *very* early adopters of Ajax…before we even had this clever little term:)

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Business, Usability - HCI, events, Enterprise Ajax | No Comments »

February 3rd, 2008

Here’s a little clip of me talking about AIR on the Lab with Leo Laporte show.

We talked a little bit about what AIR is and then checked out some demos including Pownce, a Google Analytics app (correction there is no API for Google Analytics) and our SalesForce demo.

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Web 2.0, nitobi, Flex, Flash, ria, AIR, Enterprise Ajax | No Comments »

January 29th, 2008

The second Nitobi Hack Day is coming up Feb 9th at our office. Doors open at 9am, Hacking Starts at 10am and Judging will be at 6pm. There’s an iPod Nano Video up for the best app. Sign up on upcoming. You can hack on whatever you want Ajax, Rails, Python, AIR…it’s all free game. Lunch will be provided.

Posted in Technology, Software Development, Web 2.0, nitobi, events, hackday | No Comments »

January 21st, 2008

InsideRIA is now officially live! I’m really stoked to be a part of this joint effort by O’reilly and Adobe. We’re going to be covering a wide range of topics including design, development and standards for RIAs. Even though Adobe is sponsoring this portal no technology is off limits so Ajax, Silverlight, Google Gears, Prism, etc are all in bounds. Of course there will be a healthy amount of chatter about Flash, Flex and AIR as these key tools in the RIA kit. I personally hope learn and share a lot about user experience, user interface patterns and new forms of analytics we’re going to need a world with more and more RIAs.

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Web 2.0, Usability - HCI, ria, AIR | No Comments »

January 21st, 2008

We’re
running a survey this month to gather information from web
designers and developers about the tools and platforms they’re using. It’s quite focused on development of Ajax user interfaces.

If you can spare three minutes, I’d appreciate it if you href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bpDcVkz3gpWM1sBwcNAAMg_3d_3d">completed
the survey. It’s pretty brief–14 multiple choice and short answer
questions. One person who does will win an iPod Nano. We’ll be
publishing the survey results in February. So everyone wins really:)

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Business, design, Enterprise Ajax | No Comments »

January 10th, 2008

I’m going to be talking at Ajax World East in New York this March 18-20th. Here’s the deal:
AJAX for the Masses: Building Rich User Interfaces in Dreamweaver

Web application developers and designers often give up on building rich, interactive user interfaces because they lack the JavaScript skills to make it happen. AJAX development power tools–including Dreamweaver, Spry and off-the-shelf AJAX components–make it easy to build rich user interfaces in AJAX with no JavaScript coding.
Andre Charland will demonstrate how to install, set up and configure extensions to Dreamweaver, and will use them to build simple, rich interface AJAX apps. After this session, even beginner developers will be able to add AJAX interactions to web applications. This session is a must for ambitious, novice and intermediate designers anxious to use AJAX in their applications.

Drop me a line if you’ve going to be there and would like to meet up.

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Usability - HCI, nitobi, ria, Enterprise Ajax, dreamweaver | No Comments »

January 10th, 2008

I was recently invited by my good friends Ryan Stewart and Cote to participate in their weekly podcast about Rich Internet Applications. Episode 3 is up on Redmonk’s Podcast.

We covered quite a range of topics:
* Usability, User Experience
* Designer/Developers and Workflow
* BlazeDS
* 2008 RIA Predictions - Ajax all the way baby!

Download the the MP3 here.

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Usability - HCI, Podcast, Flex, ria | No Comments »