This article is cross-posted from my DotNetNuke blog.

On August 18th we kicked off the Mobile DotNetNuke Hackathon at the St. Louis DotNetNuke User Group. ...

This article is cross-posted from my company blog.



Last...

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.

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.