Overview

Last Wednesday night we kicked off the DotNetNuke Mobile Hackathon in St. Louis.  The focus of this hackathon is developing applications that span the DotNetNuke and mobile application space.  Participants have until the 6PM CST on August 25th to submit their entries.  As we mentioned at the user group meeting, we have been working on a community application that allows DotNetNuke users to stay connected even when they are not in front of their computer.  Starting today we are distributing the source code for DNN Pulse on the DotNetNuke Forge.

DNN Pulse is being built with Appcelerator Titanium and takes advantage of Xmlhttprequests, geolocation and mapping services to connect the user to the DotNetNuke community in their local area and on DotNetNuke.com.  During the coming months we will continue to add new features and functionality to the app so that no matter where you are, you can always stay plugged into the community.  Titanium was a natural fit for us since it allows us to target multiple mobile platforms with a single codebase, and because all of the code is written in Javascript we can re-use our existing coding skills without needing to learn a new language.

The initial code release is still beta quality code.  After the hackathon is complete we will incorporate a few remaining features which are not in the current codebase and clean up some of the error handling.  If you plan to use some of this code in your own app, then keep that in mind and code appropriately.

Last night we held the kick-off for the third in our DotNetNuke Hackathon series of events.  Now that the user group meeting is over and the UStream event is through, we can focus on building some really exciting mobile applications for the actual Hackathon.  The following schedule lays out the timeline for the remainder of this event:

We left plenty of time so that anyone who wants to participate has enough time to come up to speed on mobile app development and still get an awesome app built by the August 27th deadline.  I know that we already have participants talking about all of the great mobile apps they are working on and plan to submit for the contest.  With an iPad and some Android phones up for grabs I am certain we’ll have some really amazing entries, and like all of our community contests, the code for all of these applications will be available in the DotNetNuke Forge.  Even if you don’t win, you are certain to learn a new skill that will come in handy as mobile devices become more ingrained in our day to day lives and mobile application development takes a more prominent place in the software development world.

I am happy to announce the release of DotNetNuke 5.5.  Since we first released Localization support in DotNetNuke 3.0, we have known that the story was not complete.  With DotNetNuke 5.5, I am pleased to say we now have full localization support.  This was one of the main features that we laid out in our DotNetNuke 5.x vision at OpenForce 2007 and was the last major feature missing from our original roadmap for the 5.x platform. 

Content localization in DotNetNuke 5.5 will allow you to easily manage your web pages in a primary language and then utilize translators to keep the content synchronized in multiple secondary languages.  Whether you are maintaining your site in a single language or dozens of languages, the content localization system will help guide your content editors and translators through the process.  Although content localization required extensive changes to the core platform, we have been able to add this new feature while still improving overall system performance.  In addition, with the hundreds of other changes, enhancements and bug fixes, people are already saying that they are finally ready to migrate off the 4.x platform.

DotNetNuke 5.5 also marks another milestone: earlier today we announced the immediate availability of DotNetNuke Enterprise.  DotNetNuke Enterprise adds Content Staging to an already impressive list of features available in the DotNetNuke Professional platform.  As we have done with DotNetNuke Professional since we originally launched it 16 months ago, we will continue to expand and strengthen the features of the DotNetNuke Enterprise platform over the coming months to ensure our customers are receiving a great return on their investment.

Background

In preparation for the upcoming DotNetNuke Hackathon in St. Louis, I have been busy working on a new mobile application for the Android and iPhone platforms.  Nik Kalyani and I have been playing with the Appcelerator Titanium product for the past several months and have been intrigued by it’s promise to allow you to quickly develop mobile applications for multiple platforms using the coding skills that many web developers already possess.  When Nik started planning for the St. Louis Hackathon he decided to focus on building apps which bridge the mobile and DotNetNuke space.  He immediately thought that Appcelerator was a natural tool to use.

What attracted Nik and I to Titanium was the ability to program in JavaScript with a light sprinkling of HTML and CSS to create native iPhone and Android applications.  It also helped that Titanium is an Open Source product which is a big plus for the DotNetNuke community.  The real Titanium magic happens when you compile your application using Titanium Developer.  At that point a native application is generated for either Android or iPhone, and coming soon the BlackBerry as well.  Titanium Developer lets you run your app on the various platform emulators as well as allowing you to push your application directly to a physical device.  As a final step, Titanium Developer even assists with publishing your finished application to the Android Market and the iPhone App store.