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:

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PointAbout built the official iPhone app for the hugely popular Cars.com company out of Chicago, and we were just notified by this post by Jim Hopkinson, the official marketing guru for WIRED magazine, that it has reached #1 in the iTunes Store for free lifestyle apps, as well as being #3 in “what’s hot”.  You can download the app from iTunes here.  Here’s the screenshot:

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PointAbout’s AppMakr service was featured today by Fed Tech Bisnow in a post titled “Innovation Hotspot.”

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.

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):

Michelle, Dan and Chito, MBA Students from George Washington University, came over to PointAbout’s offices to interview the four co-founders.  The resulting 54 minute interview is below.

The Mobile Pyramid

We recently released a PDF and PowerPoint slides (feel free to repurpose as long as you credit PointAbout) that describe The Mobile Pyramid.  This is how we see the mobile space.  While PointAbout focuses on the top of the pyramid, we also help ensure clients have a strategy for all three components.  Many people often talk about “mobile,” but really,  mobile is comprised of three very distinct components, as evidenced by this pyramid.

PointAbout was recently named one of the Top 100 private companies in the world to watch in 2010 by the OnMedia conference. We didn’t realize what an honor this was until we saw some of the stats: The average Top 100 winner has been in business for 4 years and raised $14MM in venture funding. PointAbout is only 18 months old and we’re completely self-funded.

The keynote speaker at the event was Mark Cuban. He encouraged the audience to take a chance with their content: Try keeping it out of the aggregator’s robots and see if you can monetize it. Here’s the full keynote and part of the panel:

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We’ve uncovered a great piece by Gartner that says Consumers Will Spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010.  That compares to $0.6 Billion worldwide in mobile advertising revenue.  Worldwide app stores brought in $4.2 Bn in 2009, and that number is forecast to balloon to $29.5 Bn by 2013.

Here’s a chart and story by Gigaom showing the power of mobile applications:

This video was created by Jeffrey Fitzgerald.