Objective C Developer (Junior or Senior)

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:

Intern (Manage Twitter & other new media)

We’re looking for an intern who can help us get a lot of stuff done. While we can’t pay you for the internship, we may be able to pay your travel expenses. And if you’re really good at what you do, you might end up like our last intern – she was so good that we ended up promoting her into a paying project management job within her first 3 months with us.

Specifically, we need someone to handle Twitter, Facebook, and other new media for our app making service, www.AppMakr.com. There’s lots more to be done, though, so if you’re not well versed in social media, that’s OK too. The most important thing is that you’re really motivated to get involved with a hot mobile company (we were picked as one of the top 100 private companies in the world to watch by OnMedia, you can see details here) and you’re really good at getting things done.

We’re located in great offices at 1410 Q st NW in downtown DC. You can learn more about the space at www.1410Q.com.

Cars.com, Created by PointAbout, Launches with Super Bowl Ad

PointAbout created the Cars.com app, which was launched on Sunday by Cars.com with a Super Bowl ad.  MobileMarketer reports that the ad generated 6,500 downloads immediately after the ad aired.

MobileMarketer goes on to state, “Cars.com tapped PointAbout to create the application for the iPhone and iPod touch as a complement to its mobile Web site, which was created by Crisp Wireless. General Motors, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and Ford have all bought display advertising on the mobile site for 2010.”

MobileMarketer continues, “We wanted to be available to all consumers, so we have to be device- and carrier-agnostic, so that if you have a mobile device, you can access all of the tools and the 2 million-plus listings on Cars.com using your handset,” said Sharon Knitter, senior director of consumer products at Cars.com, Chicago.

“About 30 percent of our mobile content is coming from the iPhone, and we have folks that have an iPhone that look at our mobile site, but we wanted to also give them the opportunity to download an app,” she said. “We decided to start with a mobile Web site and add on device-specific apps as the market warrants—Android and BlackBerrry are on our radar.

“Mobile will continue to evolve, and we’ll continue to assess the layout of the marketplace, watch market share and adapt accordingly.”

Here is the SuperBowl Cars.com ad, which includes the app (although the ad used a generic phone for licensing purposes):

Customer Service Reps

We’re looking for 3 to 5 really great customer service reps. This is an immediate opening! Pay is $10/hr.

If you have great customer service and writing skills, and experience with websites like Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc., and you’re comfortable navigating around in a browser, then you’ll enjoy this job. Bonus points if you own an iPhone, know Macs, and/or own a Mac laptop you can bring to work.

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 customer service or retail work have you done in the past? // 2. How are your typing skills? Have you ever used keyboard shortcuts? If so, name a few of your favorites. // 3. How quickly can you start? // 4. Are you comfortable commuting to downtown DC (14th & Q NW)? // 5. What else should we know about you?

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.

HCPLive To Go, Available in the iTunes App Store

HCPLive To Go, created by PointAbout’s AppMakr.com service, is now available in the iTunes App Store.  Screenshots below.

Cambridge’s ClareAlumni iPhone App Launched

PointAbout today announced the launch of an iPhone application for Cambridge’s Clare College.  The College was founded in 1326 and was the first of the Oxford and Cambridge foundations to provide for a Master, Fellows and Scholars in a single community.

Johnny Langridge of Clare College writes,

“PointAbout’s AppMakr service has allowed us to do something amazing:  Leverage RSS content we were already publishing, and turn it into a great iPhone application.  This means we can get our content into people’s hands when they’re on the go using the RSS feeds we’re already publishing to the web.  It’s a win-win.  No extra work was required on our part, because AppMakr handled the entire app creation and submission process.

The service they provide is gold standard and we can’t thank them enough. The level of customer service is exemplary, the speed of response / delivery and attention to detail are faultless – they are a total pleasure to work with and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

Kohls, Published by ShopLocal, Powered by PointAbout

Kohls is a new application by PointAbout’s client, ShopLocal (owned by Gannett).  It was designed by ShopLocal and built by PointAbout.  We created a custom template for this application, which we then loaded into AppMakr.com for ShopLocal to access.  Now, ShopLocal can quickly make applications for all its other clients using this custom template and AppMakr’s proprietary compiling and building engine.  PointAbout has given ShopLocal the ability to offer its clients a native iPhone application in days, without ShopLocal having to do the work.  To learn more about leveraging your own custom template with AppMakr, contact us at right or call 202.391.0347.

GuardFit available in the iTunes AppStore

GuardFit, produced by Rock Creek Strategic Marketing utilizing PointAbout, is available in the iTunes AppStore.  Screenshots are below.

Next Page »