Dev Central: Developer Resources

• Developer Training 101: Getting to Know PointAbout
• View currently available PointAbout Springboards and feature set

• Visit our Developer & Support Forum for FAQs and other help.
  • iPhone Developer questions
  • BlackBerry Developer questions
• Visit our Developer Blog for up-to-date information on our development efforts.

PointAbout has the expertise and resources to help you devise and implement your entire mobile strategy, but if you’re a developer, you might want to do some of the work yourself.  We’re happy to help.  Here’s what you need:

If you can code HTML, you can code a native application with PointAbout (and if you can’t code HTML, we can do it for you on a consulting basis).

Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Decide which phones you want to focus on.  We recommend starting with iPhone, since it has a robust, full web browser (Safari) and the development environment is almost identical to the PC-based browser (the main difference is the lack of Flash on the iPhone).
2. Assuming you’re starting with iPhone, you should go through our Dev 101 training, read our FAQs on developing to the iPhone and read our developer’s blog for general tips & tricks
3. Here is a typical development schedule when working with PointAbout:
   1. You sign a simple contract with us, indicating what pricing level you want
   2. You give us your media assets & other required items
   3. You give us a list of Device IDs of phones you want to use for testing purposes
   4. You create a “version 1.0″ of your web application for us to serve in our thin-client springboard (alternately, you can contract with us to make your entire application)
   5. Usually within 24 hours of receipt of the first 4 items above, we send you the application to install on your test phones
   6. We both verify that the application is functioning as expected, and that there are no bugs. This typically takes 1 to 3 days, depending on how quickly you can test the application
   7. Once verified, we will submit the application to Apple. They typically approve within 5 to 10 business days.
4. You can keep working on your application during the Apple review process, and since the PointAbout approach allows you to serve the application as a web page, you can keep updating the application over time, even after it’s already live in the iTunes App Store.