appcelerator - ReadWriteWeb

Cross-Platform App Dev Startup Appcelerator Now Fuels 4,000 Apps

Chris Cameron — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:10:00 -0800

Though Mountain View-based startup Appcelerator has been working together for roughly 3 years, it wasn't until this past March when the venture-backed company launched Titanium to the general public. Appcelerator's flagship product, Titanium offers a platform on which Web developers can build native mobile applications that are easily portable from one platform to another. Today Appcelerator announced the passing of several milestones as thousands of apps have been built by over 65,000 developers - including many well-known name-brand clients.

]]> Appcelerator's platform is responsible for aiding the development of over 4,000 applications across the App Store and Android Market. The company also expects to break 10,000 applications by the end of the year.

"Since the release of Appcelerator's all native platform in March, we have seen an exponential increase in the pace of application development," says CEO Jeff Haynie. "Some developers are on their sixth app in just a few months, and several have seen their applications hit the top of the charts."

Companies like eBay, NBC and Budweiser have made both inward-facing enterprise apps, and outward-facing consumer apps using Titanium. Smaller startups, like GetGlue, have also used the platform to expand their offerings to mobile devices across several platforms.

The Next Steps

Appcelerator's Scott Schwarzhoff told ReadWriteWeb that the company plans to begin bundling additional packaged features into its SDK that aren't natively provided on various mobile platforms. Many app developers want features like barcode scanners or augmented reality functionality, but these features aren't natively available across all platforms.

Boulder-based image-recognition company Occipital is working on tools like these in the augmented reality space, and recently sold it's popular barcode scanning iPhone app RedLaser to eBay. Appcelerator says it will be looking to package features like barcodes and AR into its SDK for platform agnostic development.

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Appcelerator Launches Titanium Mobile Beta

Dana Oshiro — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:30:00 -0800

More and more web developers are earning their mobile wings. Mountain View-based Appcelerator just announced their beta release of Titanium Mobile - an open source, open standards tool that lets developers build applications with native UI elements, code compilation, device storage and geo-location APIs on both the iPhone and Android.

With Appcelerator's new mobile offerings, web programmers can avoid the pitfalls of Objective-C or Java, and use basic Javascript, HTML, and CSS to build their apps.

]]> Pending app store approval processes, this means companies will be faster to market as programmers are no longer required to learn new languages. Similar to the original Titanium framework, the mobile framework gives developers easy access to multiple platforms.

Unlike competitor PhoneGap, Titanium claims it is better equipped to gain entry into the iPhone and Android app stores. The company believes its tools create applications that behave, look and feel identical to native iPhone applications. The idea is that Apple will be less likely to cast Titanium applications from the garden of appland after being made in the image of its predecessors.

To request access to Titanium's mobile beta fill out the form.

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Lifestreaming Comes to Yahoo! with MyBlogLog Overhaul

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:58:12 -0800

Yahoo! owned MyBlogLog flipped the switch tonight on a major overhaul of user profile pages and now integrates activity data from other services around the web.

Less than a week after a small investment in the ex-Googler founded FriendFeed put lifestreaming on a lot of peoples' maps - the entry of a Yahoo! property could be a game changer in a market full of startups.

]]> The smartly reorganized profiles let you look at an individual's opt-in exposed activity on sites like Del.icio.us, Last.fm, YouTube and LinkedIn or click over to a view of all their friends' recent activities as well. From your profile page it's easy to see what your own friends in this distributed social network for blog readers are doing on other social networks. It's a very different experience and a lot like other players in the increasingly popular lifestreaming market.

MyBlogLog will be experimenting with different ping rates to refresh data from the other services and it isn't intended for minute-by-minute scanning, but for most people updates of their friends' activities every few hours will be more than sufficient.

Here's my profile page, if you'd like to be friends. I wish Ma.gnolia were a supported service, but more on MBL's shortcomings below.

[Story continued below screenshot]

MyBlogLog still has a ways to go before it can be as good a lifestreaming service as several others available, but it is becoming a more and more useful way to keep track of part of your community all the time.

The community view consists of the activities of people you have friended in MyBlogLog, and there's little prompting to add new friends. (Two weeks ago MyBlogLog did add XFN support, so there's certainly some standards based work going on there.) Every social app on the market, though, should look at how FriendFeed recommends friend additions, it's a very pleasing experience that's leading to really fast uptake this week.

Meanwhile, the MyBlogLog API is creeping closer to general public availability, the company says. Aggregate friend-streams, if you will (your friends' activities elsewhere in one feed), have been added to the API. When that API was first announced we said it was going to be a big deal. Tonight's overhaul of profile pages is just one more example of ways this service inside Yahoo! is quickly bringing to market technologies that a long list of startups still have behind closed beta walls. Up for sale or not, look out for the best parts of Yahoo!

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