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developerWorks: This is the developerWorks podcast. I'm Scott Laningham. Today Ami Dewar, who is design lead for developerWorks, and Nick Poore, developerWorks community architect, join me to talk about the new developerWorks iPhone app.
(Editor: To discover what new resources are available this week in developerWorks and My developerWorks, jump to the end of this interview.)
developerWorks: How are you doing today?
Dewar: Great, how are you?
Poore: Doing good.
developerWorks: Good to have you guys here. And I've been looking forward to having this conversation about the iPhone app. I haven't seen it yet which is bad for me as the host, but I will get around to that.
But Ami, first thing I wanted to ask you ... I mean, this may seem like a silly question since people seem to be creating iPhone apps for everything out there. I mean, I think the virtual cigarette lighter maybe was one of the weirder ones I've heard of. But why does an iPhone app make sense for developerWorks right now?
Dewar: I mean, honestly, we really thought that the timing was ideal right now for an iPhone app given how well our community has grown in the last year and a half since we launched our most cohesive community based on Lotus® Connections. So right now, it's at nearly half a million users strong and it's using Lotus Connections 2.5 [software | Lotus at developerWorks] which that really offers us some great features to draw upon.
We have like the river of news which shows the users activity in real time as it's happening, which is very similar to what you see with some of the other popular social networking apps such as Twitter and Facebook.
And then, we also have a great community search across all the networking tools which includes some integration of our own technical content. And we have an enhanced user's profile.
So we thought that adding or creating a mobile application, given the popularity of the Apple iPhone at this point would be a great way for our users to collaborate and connect with others while on the go.
developerWorks: Right. So it's beyond the novelty phase, obviously, with iPhone and iPhone apps now where this is just about enhancing the normal experience that people expect to the level that it should be, right?
Dewar: Right. Absolutely.
developerWorks: Nick, talk about developing the app if you would. And also, Ami mentioned Lotus Connections and I know there's also some kind of tie-in there too, right?
Poore: Yes. So obviously we developed the iPhone app with Xcode which is the developer IDE that Apple requires to you use.
developerWorks: Right.
Poore: And I'm fairly familiar with Lotus Connections. I've done a lot of work on getting Lotus Connections running on developerWorks, so I knew a lot of the APIs, the public APIs that Lotus Connections provides. And so that allowed me to just basically take those APIs and start running on developing the app and getting the data that we need out of the platform so that the users could use it on their iPhone.
developerWorks: How long does it take to build something like this? I mean, what was the timeframe involved?
Poore: For our first release it was a good about 50 days of development, roughly. I did some early prototyping to kind of show off a little bit, but the core of the app, the development, took about 50 days.
developerWorks: So what does it do? Talk about what the app does.
Poore: Yes, so we basically really based it off of the river of news or the my home part of the application. So as a user starts up the app, first thing they see is public updates and this allows the users basically to see real-time data coming from My developerWorks.
From this view, users can select an individual event or a story and look at a more detailed view. And from there, they can click onto the user's profile that just contributed that data. And from that user's profile, they can see the board messages from the user's profile. You can respond to the board messages. You can look at the user's interests. You can look at the recent activity.
developerWorks: Very good.
Poore: You could also search My developerWorks by profile, by keyword, or by tags. And then you can also see your individual profile once you've logged in. And once you get to use your individual profile, you can post a message to your board or it might be better known as posting a status. And then finally, you can also view your network of colleagues that you've already built up.
Dewar: So it really takes, Scott, a lot of those tasks that you might do on a regular basis and we can now kind of do that while you're out and about and, you know, update your stats or see who else is posting to your board or do a quick search and actually save the search results for later when you're back at your computer ... that sort of thing. So hopefully the ease of use with some of these tasks makes users more inclined to dig deeper into developerWorks.
developerWorks: Yes. And if you're really going to be a viable social network destination, then you need to have these kind of tools available for people because so many people do this stuff through their phones now, right?
Dewar: Right. It really seems like ... I mean, I think I do more social networking via my phone than I truly do on my computer.
developerWorks: Is there any plan for an Android or BlackBerry or any other platform apps eventually?
Dewar: We're certainly investigating that because we have gotten a lot of feedback that our users would like those kind of apps. So we're definitely going down the path to consider what it would take to emulate a similar model on those other platforms.
developerWorks: That or we're going to have to have lots of easy contests where we give away a lot of iPhones, right? [LAUGHTER]
Dewar: I like that idea too.
developerWorks: Well ... and the last thing we should say: For people to find the developerWorks iPhone app, do they just go to the iPhone app store, or what DO they do, Ami?
Dewar: It's very easy. If you just search under developerWorks, under dW if you know us better by that, IBM or Lotus Connections it's ... the application comes up pretty near the top. You can also look under Apple's broader category of social networking, I think it is, to find the application.
developerWorks: Very cool. developerWorks Ami Dewar and Nick Poore. Thank you both for your time.
Poore: Thanks.
Dewar: Thanks, Scott.
developerWorks: We're going to put one more plug in this week for the Information On Demand Global Conference coming up October 24 through 28 in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the Mandalay Bay resort. If you're not registered, you can still register to attend. And if you can't go, you can follow us on live streaming video from the conference. Both the keynotes every day in the morning will be live streamed as well as a couple of hours every day of interviews from the expo. We'll be talking to IBM execs, Business Partners, attendees, all kinds of people. So you can find that on the developerWorks homepage or on the podcast blog. And that will be again October 24th through 28.
This is the developerWorks podcast. I'm Scott Laningham. Talk to you next time.
What's new in the developerWorks community?
developerWorks: John Swanson is here with the Swanson minute. Hey, John.
Swanson: Hey, Scott Laningham.
developerWorks: How are you doing?
Swanson: Not too bad. Hard at work on the newsletter.
developerWorks: Absolutely. And I bet you're talking about this same topic, aren't you, this week?
Swanson: Well, we're ... you know, the whole place, the whole team is abuzz about this new developerWorks iPhone app which makes perfect sense that you're talking to Ami and Nick about it.
And I won't go into too much detail about it, but the newsletter, of course, is giving it the appropriate focus. In addition to the ... you know, we're launching this developerWorks app on the iPhone, of course, and Nick and Ami have authored an article on how to use Lotus Connections 2.5 APIs to create a simple iPhone app.
developerWorks: Very cool.
Swanson: And it's kind of neat. And it's always fun when we get something topical like that on the site. And so it gives me something to talk about and it gives us all something to get excited about.
developerWorks: Did you get your free iPhone yet to test the app out?
Swanson: It hasn't reached me yet. I think it's hung up in transit.
developerWorks: I think mine is too, sadly. [LAUGHTER] John, what are the highlights on the developerWorks homepage this week?
Swanson: Well, let's see here. On the ... let's go alphabetically here.
- On the AIX and UNIX zone, we've got "Bash scripting for beginning system administrators: A hands-on approach."
- Over in information management, we've got "IBM Optim Development Studio: Routine development simplified."
- In the Java zone, the Java technology zone, the feature is "Bonita for business process management, Part 1: Configure a simple workflow."
- Open source zone has "Hibernate Framework-based database sharding for SaaS applications; that's software as a service application.
- In the Web development arena, we've got "Using Ext.Direct in Ajax applications:Streamline client-side and server-side Ajax development using PHP."
In WebSphere, we're always excited to get a new version, a new update to the WebSphere Developer Technical Journal [10-06-2010 issue | current issue] and this round is no exception ... so that's full of all kinds of great resources and that's worth checking out all by itself.
So that's what we've got going on. And you know, we're in high gear. This time of year, it's always pretty busy.
developerWorks: Fantastic. John Swanson, editor of developerWorks newsletters. Thanks, John.
Swanson: Thanks, Scott.
Scott Laningham, host of developerWorks podcasts, was previously editor of developerWorks newsletters. Prior to IBM, he was an award-winning reporter and director for news programming featured on Public Radio International, a freelance writer for the American Communications Foundation and CBS Radio, and a songwriter/musician.
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