Developer Tip: Yahoo Pipes Make You Expert-in-a-Minute

So the developers here at PointAbout found an awesome new tool this week that has some really useful applications. It’s called Yahoo Pipes, and there’s a demo video below that shows you how to use it do do all kinds of RSS-enabling things to make your content more versatile than ever. For example, AppMakr is all about RSS. But, regular RSS– not Atom. If this was a problem before, it definitely isn’t any longer, thanks to Yahoo Pipes.

And, did you know that you can use Pipes to “mash-up” RSS feeds– that is, get a single, combined feed from multiple sources? Now think of how much better that’ll make your finished product inAppMakr!

Project Manager

There are good project managers, and there are bad project managers. We’re looking for that rare stellar project manager that can work with the biggest brands & events on the plant (like Burger King and the Obama Inauguration) and still relate to the most technical developers on the planet (ours!). If you think you have the skills & qualifications, we’d love to know about you.

Tell us about yourself:

First Name
Last Name
Email Address
Street
City
State
Zip
Your Website (if none write “none”)
A Few Questions…	**** Tell us more about yourself: **** // 1. What project management experience do you have? // 2. How comfortable are you with development languages on a scale of one (none) to ten (expert), and which ones: // 3. What project management best practices and software do you use? // 4. Are you currently employed? If so, how much notice would you have to give your employer before you could start? // 5. What are your salary requirements? Please be as specific as possible. // 6. What else should we know about you? // 7. What other questions do you have for us? // **** Please Answer These Dev Questions (it’s OK if you don’t know all the answers, just do your best) **** // 8. What strategies do you employ to prioritize & allocate dev resources to multiple projects? // 9. What’s the one thing that most project managers get wrong? // 10. Have you ever used Basecamp or Unfuddle? // 11. Can you send us a sample Software Requirements Document that you’ve been involved in creating?

Did Anyone Listen? Has Anyone Watched? How the Pros Measure Online Audio & Video Engagement.

PointAbout recently attended the Web Manager’s Roundtable at NPR and captured the following presentation on Analytics & Tracking: How the Pros Measure Online Audio & Video Engagement.

Analytics & Tracking – Web Manager’s Roundtable from Daniel R. Odio on Vimeo.

Here is the audio:

RSS-ify Your Site: Tips from an iPhone Application Developer

Don’t have an RSS feed? Hate coding?  Get an RSS feed in minutes using these great (free!) tools.

Maybe you’ve read a little about RSS, and you know you can do awesome things with it. Or maybe you’re just getting started. Either way, here’s how to get yourself an RSS feed in no time without having to worry about coding it yourself. Depending on how comfortable you feel getting into the technical side of your feed, there are easy, medium, and hard options.

Option #1 : Word Press. Easy.

Step 1: Set yourself up with a WordPress  account.

If you don’t already have one, follow the link below to sign up.

Step 2: Create content.

WordPress is designed to help you organize your content. It’ll also automatically make your content RSS-ready so you don’t have to worry about any pesky hand-coding. Below are some sample blog posts created in WordPress.

Step 3: Grab your feed!

Want to see what your feed looks like? Just head over to http://[your WordPress URL here]/feed and take a look! You should see something that looks like this:

Scroll down to see what happens to this content when you build an app with us!

Option #2: Dapp Factory. Medium Difficulty.

If you already have a website, or you’re not interested in putting up new content on WordPress, Dapper’s Dapp Factory might be for you. This will take a little time, but it’s all point-and-click, and there are demos to guide you through every step, so it’s not too scary. If you’re running Firefox 2.0 or higher, you can even download their widget, DapperFox, which sits in your address bar and looks like this:

Dapper basically allows you to “build” a customized RSS feed out of the content on your website, specifying what information to pull (like articles, titles, dates, and times), and lets you pick what to call these elements.The first step is to specify what kind of feed you want to create, and where the content is coming from.

Next, choose  pages with the content you’re after.

Then click within each page to select the content you want your RSS feed to pull– like text, titles, dates, and times.

After previewing, organizing, and naming  your feed, you’ll see your feed URL in a little box like this:

And that’s all there is to it!

Option #3: FEED43 (Feed for Free). Hard.

With Feed43, you pick a site, it’s readied for RSS (with the coding displayed right in front of you), you define parameters, and the RSS feed and corresponding URL are generated automatically. It’s a good way to get a very focused, specific feed that pulls only the data you’re interested in. And, it doesn’t require you to sign up. But setting parameters can be tricky, so it’s not recommended for people who are averse to coding.

If you’re interested in other RSS feed creators, you can also check out this article from Profy.com that lists  super-simple ones to pull generalized feeds from basic sites, as well as more complicated ones for specific, custom-designed feeds.

If you are going to be doing any formatting by hand, be sure to read up on how to format your feed for PointAbout.

IMPORTANT: Once you have an RSS feed, be sure to validate it here .

Here’s where PointAbout comes in.

We take your RSS feed and use it to pull relevant, functional content from your site. In seconds, the data from your RSS feed gets plugged into an app so that people can browse your content on the go. You could have an iPhone-ready application in 27 seconds using AppMakr. The basic app you can create on your own will look clean, but straightforward. If you want it to look snazzier or “feel” more like your brand or company, talk to us about customizing it!

And here’s the basic app you can make using AppMakr when you pull an RSS feed from content you’ve already created (or are continuing to update), like a WordPress blog.

Keep it Simple, Syndication: Using RSS for high ROI Mobile Apps

Here at PointAbout, we love RSS because it helps you build great apps yourself!

Here’s what RSS does, in plain English:

AppMakr compiles your existing RSS feeds into a tidy little app with graphics and icons you customize yourself. This can be done in under a minute, with the option to purchase the app you’ve just built for a fraction of the average market cost– you can even start using it right away. Here’s the basic app you can make using AppMakr when you pull an RSS feed from content you’ve already created (or are continuing to update), like a WordPress blog.

On top of this, if you meet with us on a consulting basis, we’ll charge an hourly rate and our development team can customize your app to taste with graphics, colors, and even unique functions you request.

At PointAbout, our goal is to mobilize the web using AppMakr. It’s simpler than ever to harness the power of RSS and build brand presence across mobile platforms like iPhone and Android.

Want to learn more about RSS? Check out these great PointAbout articles!

• An Intro to RSS and How You Can Use it To Do Awesome Things With Mobile

We often get clients who want to create mobile applications such as walking tours, location-sensitive audio tours, or the like. In this post, we show you how your site + RSS + AppMakr can bring that killer app to life. Think of RSS as the “telephone line” that’s going to transport your data from a computer server to the phone. It keeps you from having to cram your whole site into a tiny mobile browser by letting us extract all the relevant information.

• Learn how we mobilize your content via feeds you already publish.

PointAbout has developed a way for you to mobilize your content quickly, using feeds you already publish, such as RSS or XML feeds. Check out the video, plus screenshots of other apps we’ve published using this method.

• Don’t publish feeds yet? Here’s a guide to the Easy, Medium, and Difficult ways to RSS-ify your website.

Did you know creating a feed is as simple as signing up for a WordPress account? Or, if you’d rather, pick from several other options– there are plenty of ways to pull an RSS feed out of existing content online!

• Using GeoRSS in PointAbout apps

PointAbout utilizes GeoRSS to create location-aware RSS feeds. The best way to set a GeoRSS feed up is to have the mobile app (i.e., the iPhone app) send its lat + long coordinates to a server, and have the server crunch the data– here’s how.

• Here’s what the future of GeoRSS apps might look like.

Welcome to the future, where a metatagged, “augmented reality” you can only see through your iPhone could guide you to the nearest subway stop, or into the waiting arms of your future spouse.

• Pricing for RSS Native “Mashup” Apps

Make a native “Mashup” app using content you’re already publishing, like RSS & other XML feeds, Flickr photo feeds, YouTube feeds & more.

Turn any API into an RSS feed using XSLT and Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Pipes gives users the ability to turn an API call or regular XML into an RSS feed, which can then be embedded into our multi-feed RSS reader template.  This allows any API to be mashed up and displayed as a mobile application using PointAbout – a very powerful combination!   If you’ve never heard of XSLT, here’s a great whitepaper by IBM on it.

A picture of Yahoo Pipes at work, at left.