Kinvey Content Audit as of 08-11-2013

This March, our in-house Android experts Ed Fleming, Michael Salinger and Morgan Bickle taught a 2-day class at Intelligent.ly in Boston. The class, titled "Intermediate Android App Development," gave developers the skills and knowledge needed to take their app to the next level.

HTML5 programs consist of three main components: the HTML text markup language for page layout, CSS3 for style, and JavaScript for in-browser execution of program code. And although it is possible to sit down at a text editor and just write your code, there are tools that streamline the process considerably.

A few weeks ago, Kinvey had its first internal hackathon. I built MarkMyRun, an app which proposes a run in a city based on points of interest you select. The motivation behind the creation of this app came from my personal frustration about the difficulties of combining sport and travel.

Recently, we launched the new Kinvey Timeline in an effort to be more transparent about important updates to our console as well as to enhance the developer experience. Think of it as a set of continually evolving release notes for our platform, nicely color-coded in chronological order.

This post originally appeared on the AT&T Developer Program Blog. Check out some upcoming AT&T events, including the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon in Palo Alto next month. RunKeeper was one of the first apps to hit the Apple App Store back in 2008 and its success-14 million users and counting-proved to be an early validation that social and fitness go hand-in-hand.

Probably the biggest question facing the mobile enterprise over the past several years is BYOD. The introduction of the iPhone, which finally gave workers better technology from their personal device than they were getting from their employer-issued BlackBerrys, opened up a Pandora's box for IT managers.

This June, we announced an integration with Google App Engine that makes it easy for mobile developers to consume Google App Engine's built-in APIs and tap into a nearly unlimited set of enterprise backend systems. This integration allows developers to write code in multiple languages on App Engine and have that code run seamlessly as part of their Kinvey backend.

Last week, our super talented developers were given free reign to build anything they wanted. Be it a game, a tool, or an app, they had half a week to ideate, prototype and create their innovative idea. We called it the Kinvey Internal Hackathon, and it was a ton of fun.

The following is a guest post by Stephen Brown. Stephen leads mobile strategy at Mutual Mobile (www.mutualmobile.com). He's spent over 10 years in consulting and management, and has experience in design, coding and testing. Where should you begin? Google's Eric Schmidt once said, "If you don't have a mobile strategy, you don't have a future strategy."

Mobile user experience mistakes are easy to make, but luckily most are easy to fix as well. It takes attention to detail throughout every step of the app creation process to finish with a great UX. Try the application with the mindset of a new user.

Everyone likes a battle, and Apple's App Store vs. Google Play is one of the more popular showdowns in tech. Every threshold crossed triggers a flurry of articles that pit one marketplace against the other.

This March, our in-house Android experts Ed Fleming, Michael Salinger and Morgan Bickle taught a 2-day class at Intelligent.ly in Boston. The class, titled "Intermediate Android App Development," gave developers the skills and knowledge needed to take their app to the next level.

We were stoked to release our animated 90 second video a couple weeks ago to explain what Backend as a Service is all about. The Kinvey team loved hearing your feedback and we received a few requests for a written transcript of the video.

Today, we've released a free eBook titled "How to Build an App: HTML5 Mobile Edition." We aim to provide content that helps make your app development process easier, faster, and better overall.

It takes nothing away from these brilliant apps to say that Songza, TripAdvisor and RunKeeper have advantages that most developers don't. In the case of Songza and RunKeeper, it's venture backing. In TripAdvisor's case it's a long history. By the time mobile was an issue for the 13-year-old company, it already had a loyal user base built on the web.

The historic rap against IT is that it's more focused on its own backlog than on shaping experiences that truly resonate with users, whether consumers or a workforce. In the mobile age, that's just not acceptable. As Ovum analyst Richard Absalom has written, "every employee is first and foremost a consumer.

When was the last time you watched, much less shared, a startup's demo video? Unless you've been checking out Airbnb, Dollar Shave Club or Spotify, you likely can't remember. And if you were asked about an enterprise startup's video, the answer probably is, "Never."

Why iOS? Besides the features and design of your first app, there's one more decision you need to make before you start actual development - whether to deploy on Apple's iOS platform or on Google's Android platform. Reasons to develop for iOS include: Xcode.

"Enterprise mobility" is a red hot term these days. Organizations are increasingly prioritizing the need to mobilize their workforce, their websites and their services. Yet because enterprise mobility is a relatively new topic, the perceived needs themselves are constantly evolving.

Periodically, we'll highlight killer apps that are backed by Kinvey. Today we're showcasing Beerdog, an iOS app that's dedicated to craft beer drinkers. The app offers two killer features - by far the easiest and most fun way to capture and share great beer and bar finds.

It has been officially announced that Savvis, a data center operator, acquired Platform as a Service (PaaS) company AppFog. This move lands Savvis its very own Cloud Foundry-based PaaS to run on top of its existing infrastructure.

The Kinvey team is excited to unveil our integration with OpenShift and collaboration with the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network! We're exhibiting in the Partner Pavilion at Hynes; we'd love for you to stop by and see us.

This March, our in-house Android experts Ed Fleming, Michael Salinger and Morgan Bickle taught a 2-day class at Intelligent.ly in Boston. The class, titled "Intermediate Android App Development," gave developers the skills and knowledge needed to take their app to the next level.

Communicating regularly with current users should be a top priority for companies. Yet, many fail to realize that effective engagement goes beyond the initial "thanks for signing up!" communication. We truly value our users above all else, but recognized a crucial gap in user communication ourselves.

It's June 14, 2013 and welcome to this week's issue of The App Ecosystem Weekly. This week's update is all about acquisitions and partnerships in the mobile and web sector from Google, Yahoo, Savvis and HP. Savvis, a data center operator, has alleged plans to buy Platform as a Service provider AppFog.