PointAbout client featured on CNN

AreYouSafe Atlanta, a PointAbout client, was featured today on CNN in a story titled, “Cities embrace mobile apps, ‘Gov 2.0‘”  The article states, “Are You Safe” uses a person’s GPS location and municipal crime data to tell residents of Atlanta, Georgia, about the crime history in their immediate vicinity.

These sorts of apps tend to pop up only in places where the municipal government has released its data sets in a format that can be easily crunched. That public data is the fuel that makes these applications work.”

Apple Tablet likely coming January 26, 2010

We have it on good authority from various sources in the industry that Apple’s tablet will be unveiled in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on January 26, 2010.

Here are a few great videos of tablet concepts:

• Sports Illustrated Tablet Concept
• Bonnier R&D Tablet Concept

PointAbout is gearing up to make Tablet apps.  If you’d like to discuss this concept, please contact us.

Senior Web Developer

We’re looking for a senior web developer to be deeply involved in the build out of our AppMakr iPhone builder product.

The first step to determine compatibility is to get a bit more information from you. Please fill out the form below and answer the questions. They get progressively harder, so don’t feel bad if you don’t know the answers to all of them, that will just let us gauge your skill level. And in fact, we’re looking for developers at all skill levels, so it’s OK not to know some of this – we’ll teach you a lot!

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 languages can you develop in? // 2. What experience do you have coding in scripting languages like Ruby on Rails, Django/Python, or PHP? // 3. Would you consider yourself a “senior” developer or a “junior” developer? // 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. Do you have examples of other dev work you’ve done? If so, please include a link and/or screenshots. // 9. What are some of the positive and negative qualities of using an abstracted scripting language? // 10. What’s the benefit of using jQuery? // 11. Why is it sometimes not a good idea to use session objects? // 12. Out of these 3 things, which should be server-side and which should be HTML? a) Calculating Cost b) Ordering c) Displaying whether or not a button should appear // 13. Database question: Given this select statement: Select * from people where name=”isaac” and sex=”M”, and given the table is made up of the columns ID, Name, Sex, Weight, Phone, which columns would you index to maximize speed using the appropriate number of indexes, and why? Which columns wouldn’t you index, and why?

Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) leverages PointAbout for iPhone App

ESRB, the Entertainment Software Rating Board that rates video and computer games, wanted a way to give parents more transparency into reasoning behind the ratings of various games.  They already had a great mobile website, http://m.esrb.org, but wanted a way to give parents immediate and offline access to their content.  ESRB consulted PointAbout to better understand their options, and settled on an iPhone application.

ESRB also had an urgent deadline, to get the application approved before the holiday shopping season.

PointAbout provided ESRB with a two-pronged solution:  To accommodate the tight deadline, we embedded the ESRB mobile website into a PointAbout springboard, allowing for the mobile site to be distributed through the iTunes AppStore, and run within a native application frame.  This was approved by Apple and made live, relieving ESRB of the immediate holiday shopping time pressure.  You can download this app in the iTunes App Store, and see screenshots below.  You can also read the ESRB press release about the launch, read a very positive review by news site C-NET here, and read another by PC World here.  The app has gone on to receive excellent press in publications such as TheOnlineMom.com , The Register, Blast Magazine, Animation Magazine,  TMC, Kotaku, and many others.

Now, PointAbout is developing a fully native application for ESRB that will run offline and have the fully functional features of a native iPhone application.  We will update this blog once we release that version.

“The app we developed with PointAbout gives parents access to our rating search and new rating summaries right from the store when they’re buying video games for their child,” said Patricia Vance, president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).  “We set out to create a sleek, user-friendly app in time for the holiday shopping season and PointAbout delivered.  They worked closely with us every step of the way and helped us give parents the gift of a really great tool for making even more informed decisions about video games.”

ESRB has also created a commercial that explains the application.