Cross-Platform and the Network Effect

Recently, I got the chance to catch up with LiveProfile CEO Phil Karl, whose messaging app recently managed to rack up approximately 1 million new users in just five days. The secret sauce that led to the app’s rapid growth? LiveProfile is available on all major U.S. smartphone platforms, including iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and it can operate between and on all three platforms, allowing platform-agnostic messaging.

Users in distributed teams want collaborative apps that work well on their preferred smartphone platform, but that also allow them to work with friends and colleagues using different devices; multi-protocol IM clients tend to do better in the App Store than do single-service offerings, for example. Many developers will be focusing on Android or iOS, but those that target BlackBerry (which, despite relatively flat growth, still commands a very large user base, particularly in the enterprise space) in addition to the newer entrants stand to gain the most traction now, even if only because BlackBerry users will become their most vocal supporters among other device owners in their circle.

UI and UX Are the Keys to the Kingdom

Once upon a time, you could get away with making an ugly app for enterprise use. As app selection moves from the hands of corporate IT to the general worker population, user interface and user experience design become much more central to an app’s likelihood of adoption. When a user isn’t just assigned a tool and given a certain number of hours training on that program, they’ll lean instead towards the apps that are most intuitive, and that require the least time investment on their own part to complete the task.

User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are no longer things developers can take for granted. If I’m faced with a choice between four spreadsheet apps, all of which use the same universally-accepted document formats, and all of which can get the job done, UI/UX is going to be a (if not the) key differentiator. App developers should recognize this and invest resources accordingly.

A Smart Web App Is a Safe Bet

Web apps may not have the same sex appeal as a native app, but a well-designed one that’s customized for the various smartphone platforms is a good bet. It’ll help you cast widest possible net in terms of device compatibility; it future-proofs your app against the whims and dangers OS platforms are subject to. Apple can’t reject a web app, for instance, and investment isn’t lost if, say, Windows Phone 7 gets axed by Microsoft.

That’s not to say going with a web app is easy, however. Building a good app that provides a solid experience no matter what platform it’s being used on is a challenge that can exceed platform-specific development in terms of degree of difficulty pretty easily. But making something like Facebook’s new mobile site, that intelligently monitors and responds to visitors’ hardware choices, will eventually pay off in terms of long-term development costs and user satisfaction.

Making apps that people want to take to work with them is the new backdoor to widespread enterprise adoption. It’s exciting, because it means even the smallest development studios can potentially compete with major publishers, but it also means competition will be fierce. But if you can strike a chord early with users by beating the competition in ways that are most appealing to the remote workforce of tomorrow, you’ll be ahead of the game.

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However, despite Apple’s restrictions on third-party development kits — notoriously codified in clause 3.3.1 of iPhone’s developer terms — there are toolkits available for layman app developers.

One of the most popular is the web-based Appmakr; though designed for simplicity, large brands including Newsweek, the US Army and AllTop have all utilised the service to create and publish their official iPhone apps.

AppMakr is really designed for packaging RSS-driven sites into standard iPhone interfaces, breaking the development process down into seven steps:

1. Art – name your app, upload a splash screen and a home screen icon.
2. Tabs – import RSS feeds into individual tabs of content – feeds can formatted as video, text and photos and includes hooks into podcasts, Twitter, Youtube, Blogger and iTunes.
3. Customise – add header images to the app’s interface as well as the enabling users to share content via email, Facebook or Twitter.
4. Notifications – creators can manually send ‘push notifications’ from AppMakr to all downloaded instances of the app.
5. App Info – describe how the app will appear in the iTunes App Store.
6. Monetize – advertising from several third-party networks can be incorporated into your app.
7. Publish – the final step, complies and builds your app ready for testing or distribution via the App Store.

AppMakr includes an integrated iPhone simulator, so you can effectively test the app as you move through the seven steps.

With no prior knowledge of AppMakr, I managed to build a basic app that aggregated mainstream news, local and social media in around an hour. Indeed, half of this time was spent creating icons, headers and other screen furniture for the app.

If you’re already a member of Apple’s iPhone developer programme, you can link your Apple account credentials with AppMakr and publish your app with no charge to AppMakr using your own brand. If you’re not a member, you’ll need to publish under AppMakr’s brand with a charge of $999. That may sound expensive, but it’s likely less than the cost of hiring a competent iPhone developer for a day’s development work.

AppMakr’s not suited to anything that needs specific hardware functions such as the iPhone’s camera, GPS, accelerometer or microphone, so you won’t be creating games or productivity apps!

However, it’s a great tool for packaging a website as an iPhone app; whether that’s for a client or your own content.

Like Google Labs and Facebook Prototypes before it, Twitter Labs will allow developers to test out new features for the site with a voluntary beta community prior to their official release. Not only that, but Labs would allow outside developers to create and work on add-ons and other features that could then become deeply integrated with Twitter itself, instead of just being relegated to external clients that use the API.

The news comes via the Future of Web Apps conference currently taking place in London, where Twitter engineer Britt Selvitelle made the announcement earlier today. Based on the announcement, it sounds like Twitter is planning something in between Mozilla’s Firefox add-ons and Google’s Labs playground for experimental features.

While this is undoubtedly good news for people looking to get something more out of Twitter, I’m wondering if it doesn’t run counter to the core idea behind the service’s success to date. What I like about Twitter is its simplicity, as opposed to the layers and complexity of Facebook. While browsing Facebook is a time-consuming, involved process for me, it’s easy to keep Twitter active in the background all day, popping in and out when the mood strikes while still easily disengaging when necessary.

Twitter add-ons and apps threaten to complicate the process. I dread the day when my tweet timeline is cluttered with survey results and invitations to try out such-and-such disguised personal data mining application. Perhaps I’m being overly fatalistic, but Facebook’s track record shows that such things are possible.

On the other hand, with enough oversight on the part of Twitter, and with responsible API usage, Twitter Labs could open the door to making the service perfectly suited for each individual user. Until evidence proves otherwise, though, I remain skeptical.

What do you think of this announcement?

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I recently had the opportunity to talk with two Intuit staff members to talk about Thumbstrips, Fashion Your Firefox, developing for Mozilla, and Intuit Labs.

Tara Tarapata, Group Manager for the Intuit Innovation Lab, and Scott Williamson, Software Engineer and an early developer of Thumbstrips, both gave me the impression that Intuit is an organization staffed by passionate people who are trying to shake things up in software development.

While I did not mention Thumbstrips by name in my initial overview of Fashion Your Firefox, I’ve since come to regret the omission. Since downloading the add-on, it’s become an integral part of my Firefox browsing experience.

Put simply, it allows you to view your history as a visual filmstrip of thumbnails in a pane at the bottom of your browser window. Definitely saves you time time digging for that page you forgot to bookmark when you’re involved in a deep dive and can’t be expected to keep track of every little link that might prove useful. Tara pointed out other uses, including comparison shopping, bug-testing for web developers, and as a live screenshot demo reel for giving presentations.

The add-on itself is only the beginning of the story. If you’re involved in developing apps for Mozilla, a behind the scenes peek at how Thumbstrips became one of the most-downloaded add-ons available is particularly illuminating.

Thumbstrips took its first steps in the Intuit Innovation Labs, a breeding and testing ground for promising ideas and applications in development at Intuit. The Labs allow software end-users to become an integral part of the development community. According to Tara, the purpose of the space is to make sure that the applications that end up in the hands of users has the functionality that they actually need. Using the website’s “Count Me In” feature, you can sign up to become even more involved. You’ll get access to new ideas as they arrive, interact with Intuit software engineers in the development process, and help guide the future of Intuit Labs itself.

From the labs, Scott said the next step was getting listed on the official Mozilla add-ons page. Once they were listed, download numbers skyrocketed. Eventually, Thumbstrips became so popular that the Intuit team decided to apply to become a Recommended app. Yes, that is a developer-initiated process. Thumbstrips was accepted, and now enjoys regular rotation in and out of Mozilla’s Recommended apps.

The last step, the actual inclusion of Thumbstrips in the list of apps featured on Fashion Your Firefox, came as something of a surprise to the add-on’s development team. They’d heard about the launch of the new web app, and were curious to see what was available. Scott actually discovered Thumbstrips’ inclusion when he clicked to expand the “Digital Pack Rat” category. Since its inclusion, downloads of Thumbstrips have gone up 200-300%, up to 400+ daily. Clearly Mozilla’s initiative is sparking some interest.

What’s ahead for Thumbstrips?

Tara says they unfortunately can’t devote much more of their internal team’s time to the add-on, but that’s where the beauty of the Intuit Labs community lies. They hope to open source the software soon, handing it over to interested developers so that it will continue to grow thanks to the efforts of those who helped maked it a reality to begin with. And Thumbstrips is just the beginning. Tara, Scott, and the rest of the Intuit team hope to break new ground in allowing as much of their catalogue as possible to become open source once in-house development stops. With the help of the Intuit Labs community, this could ensure that applications live on, evolving to meet user needs well beyond the lifespan of traditional, privately developed software.

Thumbstrips is available as a free download here. To learn more about or become a part of Intuit Labs, visit intuitlabs.com.

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You could have it custom programmed or even develop it yourself but that takes coding skills, as well as a considerable investment of time and money. Imagine if there was a free tool you could use to visually draw out your business process and an application would automatically be created to manage it – no coding required.

That’s the premise behind the newly released Iceberg 2 Development Platform from the folks at Dublin based Iceberg.

Iceberg has been on the WWD radar for a while now, and why not – a web based platform for building and distributing applications is right up our alley.

Iceberg provides a drag and drop form builder which makes creating your data entry points simple and the workflow and process generation tool (pictured below) uses a visual flowchart like interface to create decision trees and other action and event triggers automatically.

I’ve had a couple of hours of hands on time with Iceberg and it really is remarkably easy to put together a functional application in a very short period of time. Iceberg has built in modules for calendaring, reporting, email integration, file management and more to tap into which really streamlines development.

While it is true that there is no visible code, some familiarity with programming concepts is required, or at least very helpful. As easy as the visual process editor is to use, it still helps to understand how pieces fit together and how data flows through your app. The online help is good and the video tutorials are plentiful and they give you a good overview of how Iceberg works. Developers will pick it up easily, others may need a bit of ramp-up time to learn how to create an application.

This video shows a vacation application being built in Iceberg. It’s sped up but the real time development time was about an hour.

An Iceberg app can work independently or they can be linked together for greater interaction. Soon users will be able to submit their own creations to the Application Directory / Exchange to share or sell. I am eager to see what folks come up with.

As exciting as all this is, what really appeals to me as a Web Worker is how Iceberg can interact with other applications using web services. Use Iceberg as an intermediary between your CRM and your billing for example. Let it mash together your data, create additional processes, generate reports, email results – the possibilities are endless.

Iceberg is a downloadable web based platform that installs on a Windows machine for development or on an IIS server for deployment. In an age where ‘Software as a Service’ is becoming the new standard, it is interesting to see this being released as stand alone software. A hosted solution is apparently in the works.

Iceberg is a free download for the first 5 users with a $200 per user add-on charge above that which makes it quite affordable for small team use. It’s also available for free for non-profit use.

Is there a place for DIY application development? Could Iceberg be the platform for your next Enterprise App?

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