Blogs

Today we’re launching a new PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin. With more than 250 million people accessing Facebook on their phone each month, this is sure to be a popular plugin. Here’s the news:

PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin Polishes Log In Experience for Mobile Users

Vancouver, BC—August 30, 2011—Nitobi Inc., the creators of the popular PhoneGap mobile app development framework, announce today the launch of the PhoneGap Facebook Platform plugin. The new plugin makes it easy for developers building mobile apps with PhoneGap to simplify the log in process for apps that retrieve and use Facebook data.

The Facebook Platform lets users log in to a web page or mobile app using their Facebook login credentials. An example of a popular website that uses this single sign-on functionality is The New York Times. Users can log in to The New York Times website by using the “Login with Facebook” button, after which the application uses Facebook identity data to verify the user.

Facebook provides a JavaScript software development kit (SDK) that makes it possible for web developers to implement “Login with Facebook”. However, the SDK poses a challenge for PhoneGap developers because the Facebook sign on process uses the OAuth 2.0 standard, which doesn’t always translate gracefully for their apps.

“We got working on a Facebook plugin because we’re user experience advocates,” said Dave Johnson, CTO at Nitobi Inc. “The OAuth authentication workflow for a mobile app isn’t ideal so we created the PhoneGap Facebook plugin as a way to streamline that process and improve the experience for the end user.”

The plugin uses the same application programming interface (API) as Facebook’s JavaScript SDK. But, instead of replicating the workflow users are accustomed to in desktop web browsers it works with the native Facebook application installed on many iOS and Android smartphones. The end result is a more streamlined and graceful log in experience. Plus, it’s easy to implement. Developers wrap their web app in PhoneGap and this plugin, add one line of code, and single sign-on automatically works.

Creating a better user experience was the inspiration for the Facebook plugin, but the PhoneGap community’s enthusiasm for plugins drove the project. “The PhoneGap community is really behind plugins, which is why it was a major focus in the recent PhoneGap 1.0 release. Continuing to improve and expand PhoneGap plugins is a big part of the PhoneGap agenda,” said Brian LeRoux, Senior Vice President of Software Development and Director of Developer Relations at Nitobi, and PhoneGap Evangelist.

You can download the Facebook plugin for a PhoneGap app here.

About Nitobi
Nitobi is the creator of PhoneGap an open source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that take advantage of core features of Apple iOS, Google Android, HP webOS, Nokia Symbian, Samsung Bada and BlackBerry SDKs. The open source code has been downloaded more than 600,000 times and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories.

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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.”

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.

Guy Kawasaki just posted an interesting article that contradicts conventional wisdom on which entrepreneurs are your best bet for success, old or new. Based on some of the companies and founders I’ve seen going around Web 2.0 I’d tend to agree with a bunch of his points, some seem a bit harsh and may only apply in certain situations;-)

How to Change the World: In Search of Inexperience

Superficially, it’s hard to fault this ”back the proven entrepreneur“ theory. For one thing, from a venture capitalist’s point of view, if you fund a serial entrepreneur and she succeeds, you “knew” that she was proven. If she fails, at least you backed someone for a good reason—that is, she was proven—so your limited partners shouldn’t get too bent out of shape.

That’s a lot better than backing a first-time entrepreneur who fails—then you are just stupid. (Also, if you back a first-time entrepeneur, and she’s successful, you take the credit: “It’s because of my hands-on coaching and guidance.”) But, just as Glenn wrote, if you think about it, great, world-changing companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple, eBay, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and YouTube were zero for three according to the official venture-capitalist spec sheet: Proven team, proven technology, and proven business model.

I could see slipping into the comfort zone of pas success being one of the biggest reason’s a second time entrepreneur would work as hard and might not make it:)

Just read this hype infested load of nonsense.

“We think all of these Google Apps as social apps”

Uh ya right. “Hey dude want to come socialize with me in this word processor?”, response: “Get lost geek let’s go to the bar for a pint”. Everything is social now I guess…come on!!!

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.

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.

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.

I’ll be giving a quick overview of developing with AIR Jan 30th at WDN 08. Should be a blast.

Web Directions North - Crash Course in AIR
There comes a time when web developers need to reach beyond the browser to allow users to go offline, use local files or get rid of the hideous browser chrome. The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is an up an coming runtime technology that allows desktop applications to be developed with HTML, JavaScript, Flash or Flex. The AIR runtime and SDK are completely free so anyone can get started immediately.

Andre Charland will will give an overview or AIR, the APIs you get access to and how to build a simple Flex and HTML application with it. From there we will explore some of the tools available to make AIR development easier and faster. We’ll finish up with a few important usability guidelines and real world case studies of AIR projects.

Oh ya there’s a ski trip included in the conference so it’s probably worth dropping everything else in life to attend:)