Thanks to all 2,733 developers who participated in the June 2010 mobile developer survey. These surveys help us stay focused on the platforms, technologies and services you need to build great mobile apps. They inform our product road map and they help us better serve your needs.

Check out survey results which were published today. Key findings from the survey include:

• Interest in tablet application development has spiked since Apple‟s iPad debut in April.
• When stack ranking platform potential, developers give the long-term edge to Google.
• While iOS and Android maintained a high level of interest, second tier platforms lost ground.
• Large organizations are expressing even more interest in mobile than smaller ones.
• Porting applications across platforms is the number one developer pain.
• Multitasking tops the list of iPhone 4 features.

We’re not the only ones who value your perspective on mobile technologies. News organizations from BusinessWeek and Fortune to InformationWeek, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and many others reported on the survey results in their publications.

There was also a fun side to the survey. We raffled off a few great prizes to Titanium community members who participated in the survey. The raffle winners are (drum roll please):

Congratulations Chris and Fumiki!

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How would you like to learn more about developing Titanium Mobile applications while contributing to Gulf Oil Spill disaster relief at the same time?

As a result of an April 20th oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of barrels of oil are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico every day, causing a severe environmental and economic crisis across the Gulf region. Today we are announcing that Crisis Commons, Intridea and Appcelerator are working together to provide Titanium-based applications that support the Gulf recovery effort. The first two applications are now available through oilreporter.org:

• Oil Reporter is a data collection application for iPhone, Android, and iPad that enables collection of time-stamped and geo-tagged eyewitness accounts of oil sightings and injured or dead wildlife. Users can also attach a photo or video and tweet their sightings.
• Oil Tracker, a complementary heat map app available for iPhone, Android and iPad, leverages Google Maps and Oil Reporter data to show where there is the greatest concentration of dead or dying wildlife.

Oil Reporter and Oil Tracker are open sourced, with source code available on github. The Oil Reporter APIs are documented at oilreporter.org so you can get to work building mashup applications using the data.

Attend the Tuesday June 1 Webcast "How Intridea Built Oil Reporter and How You Can Extend Oil Tracker" to learn more about building mobile apps with Titanium and working with Oil Reporter data.

You Can Help

There is much more to do, which is why we are reaching out to the community of more than 45,000 Titanium Developers to participate in several ways:

1. Attend the Tuesday June 1 Webcast "How Intridea Built Oil Reporter and How You Can Extend Oil Tracker" to learn more about building mobile apps with Oil Reporter data.
2. Volunteer to Develop New Apps. Recruited developers will be matched with government agencies and animal rescue organizations for a coordinated effort to better identify hotspots for crisis mitigation and protection of the natural environment, wildlife, etc. Upon registering for an Oil Reporter API key, you’ll be given the option to volunteer to customize an application for a response organization.
3. Get Oil Reporter and Tweet your support for the initiative. "RT @appcelerator Announcing OilReporter: How Developers Can Aid Gulf #OilSpill Recovery http://bit.ly/9WMoRa". Live in the Gulf Region? Volunteer as a data collector through the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.
4. Donate the proceeds from a Titanium Professional subscription. Through June 30th, with your new Titanium Professional subscription, Appcelerator will donate the 100% of the first month’s proceeds to the National Wildlife Federation.

Please visit www.appcelerator.com/save-the-gulf/ to learn more.

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Increasingly, we’re seeing cooler and cooler apps built on Titanium.  And, every once-in-a-while we see an app that just makes us the whole Appcelerator office go “WOW!”

Below is a video of an iPad controlled video blimp that you just have to watch to get the idea. The app-part of the setup uses sockets to stream video to an iPad application that doubles as a controller for the blimp using left/right accelerometer. Check it out:

More info on the whole experience is here: http://breakfastny.com/2010/05/ipad-controlled-video-blimp/

Developer Mattias Gunneras sent us the following additional detail on how it was built and what Titanium features were used:

The whole thing started with a Design Week event for an exhibition of 23 custom designed KidRobot Munny sculptures. 23 of the top industrial designers in the New York area was given a blank munny figure to customize for the show. At the event there was a silent auction where people could bid for the sculptures.

Our job was to figure out a fun and cool way to show off the munnys to the guests. Since the munnys were small and the guest list was large, our first ideas circulated around large projections. We kept on refining that idea and ultimately decided to put a camera on a blimp and fly it over the crowd. Rather than just project the blimp’s video feed, we used openframeworks and opencv to do basic facial detection, and then swapped people’s faces for those of the exhibited munnys. So we had a projection in another room with the view from the cockpit with some guests sporting the munny heads. We also wanted a fun and simple interface to control the blimp so that everyone could participate and interact with it more – an iPad control was the perfect fit.

We built the iPad app using Titanium mobile SDK 1.2. Mostly what we used were some basic UI components such as buttons and textfields. But the TCPSocket API together with the accelerometer for basic right and left navigation is what makes the core functionality with the app. We’re communicating from the iPad app to the blimp via a laptop running a tcp-to-serial bridge and the laptop speaks to the blimp via an xbee chip (serial).

For the video we actually used a webcontrol in which we’re drawing the video (motion jpeg) using server push. We found that using this technique over quicktime stream had a considerable benefit in terms of lag. Our quicktime stream using Darwin streaming server had a lag of up to 10 seconds at times, completely unusable. Using server push we got it down to a reasonably acceptable 100-200 milliseconds.

This project was done on short notice, everything from concept to finished event launch was only a few weeks. I’d say active development time with Titanium was only about 2-3 days for one person.

Read more about the exhibition here: http://munnyexhibit.com/

Nice job, Mattias!

As featured on Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/05/ipad-blimp/

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First, and most important: we value each and every one of you. As always, we will do everything within our power to ensure that Appcelerator Titanium remains the best platform to enable each of you to develop mobile and desktop applications on. Should any issue arise that may affect our community, you can expect that we will be as proactive, transparent, and forthcoming as possible.

Now to the issue at hand. As part of its announcement this morning, Apple proposed updating its Terms of Service for iPhone OS 4.0. Since iPhone 4.0 is still in beta, both the APIs and the Terms of Service are covered under NDA, so we cannot speak to specifics or Apple’s intent with its proposed language. However, these terms are subject to clarification and change by Apple up through its official launch, which looks to be mid-summer. Until iPhone 4.0 is actually released, we will work with Apple to ensure that we abide by any updates to its Terms of Service, just as we have done successfully in the past.

We know that you put a lot of trust in Appcelerator and effort into your applications. You have our commitment that we will do everything possible to ensure that Titanium remains the outstanding platform for cross-platform application development for years to come. We will update you with more information as soon as we gain a clearer understanding of today’s announcement. Until that time, iPhone OS 3.2 remains the officially released SDK and 3.2 is still the official Terms of Service. All apps written under 3.2 are in accordance with these terms and all apps written to date for 3.2 have been approved.

Please feel free to reach out to us on our blog, via Twitter, or via email with any questions. Thanks for everyone’s support and well wishes today.

Best Regards,
Jeff Haynie
CEO
Appcelerator, Inc.

(NOTE: this was a cross post from the official Appcelerator Developer Blog).

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We’re pleased to announce a special 2-day Titanium deep-dive training session on April 24-25 at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, GA.  This highly interactive event will get you from zero-to-app-to-Titan.  Kevin Whinnery, our illustrious Lead Evangelist, will be headlining the event.  Here’s an overview of what you can expect:

Day 1

Zero-to-App
Welcome to Titanium, Platform Architecture
Preparing for Mobile Development
Getting Started and the Development Workflow
Debugging your App
Packaging for Distribution to the App Store or Marketplace

On the road to Titanhood
UI Fundamentals
Working with local data
Working with remote data

Day 2

Killer App Scenarios
Using Rich Media
Social Networking Integration
Location Aware Applications
Developing iPad Applications

Register Now and save over 10%
Includes continental breakfast and networking lunch for both days and all materials.

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Are you new to Titanium? Do you want to develop your first app before dinner? Well, you’re in luck. As part of the introduction of Titanium 1.0 on March 8, we’ve updated the Titanium documentation and developed new training videos.

These materials are great for users who are getting started (or re-started) with Titanium now that the platform is out of Beta and Version 1.0 is shipping. Familiarize yourself with the Titanium documentation at the Appcelerator Developer Center (developer.appcelerator.com) and step through the Appcelerator University 100-series video tutorials below. Getting started with Titanium is that easy!

1. Learn About The Titanium Platform

Learn about Titanium’s architecture and features. In the “Welcome to Titanium!” video we’ll also show off a few demo apps and introduce you to the range of resources available to you as a Titanium developer.

Video: App U 101: Welcome To Titanium!

2. Install Titanium and Mobile SDKs

Load Titanium Developer and configure your development environment. The “Preparing for Mobile Development” video explains the requirements for mobile app development and helps you configure Titanium with the iPhone (Mac only) and/or Android (PC, Mac or Linux) SDKs.

Video: App U 102: Preparing for Mobile Development

3. Create and Code Your First Project

Learn how to use the Titanium Developer to to build, test and run applications. The “Getting Started and the Development Workflow” video explains the files and tools for Titanium development and explores the “Kitchen Sink” app which includes code examples for all of the Titanium mobile APIs.

Video: App U 103: Getting Started and the Development Workflow

Remember that helpful resources are only a mouse-click away…

Developer Center

At the Developer Center you’ll find a wealth of developer resources: API documentation, sample code, getting started guides, a community-driven Q&A forum and more!

Titanium Professional

For developers building a business on Titanium, Titanium Professional gets you access to premium support, application analytics and early access to the latest functionality.

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This week featured three webcasts on Titanium 1.0.  Below are the links to the recorded sessions to review on demand:

Titanium for New Developers:
Link: http://vimeo.com/9961576

New to Appcelerator Titanium?  We’ll give you a high-level overview of the Titanium Architecture, run through the major APIs for both mobile and desktop application development, and show lots of demos to get you up and running fast.

Pre-requisites: none, but to get the most value out of this webcast, we suggest downloading Titanium and installing the latest version of Kitchen Sink.

What’s New in Titanium Mobile 1.0 (Note: the audio gets choppy in the middle for about 15 minutes):
Link: http://vimeo.com/9953236

Learn more about the performance improvements and support for new features like streaming audio and Augmented Reality that come in Titanium 1.0.  Packed with lots of demos from Kitchen Sink, this webcast will give you a solid understanding of the newly refactored Titanium Mobile platform.  Highly recommended for any Titanium developer.

Requirements: should have a basic understanding of developing a mobile app in Titanium.

Migrating your mobile app from 0.8 to 1.0:
Link: http://vimeo.com/9960118

This webcast will focus squarely on getting your application migrated quickly from 0.8 to 1.0.  Many apps will not require significant changes, but we do suggest any developer who is actively working on an app attend this webcast.

Requirements: this will be more of an advanced training for developers who have already built a mobile app on Titanium.

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This morning, Snapost - the Twitpic/photo mobile app - went live in the App Store (link).  This is the first 0.9 app released that we know of, and it’s a great example of the end result of the Titanium refactoring.  Kevin Whinnery, our lead evangelist who created the app, has posted the source code for Snapost here.  Things to notice:

- Load time has decreased from 10 seconds in 0.8 to 1.5 seconds on a 3G
- Transition time between pages is now instantaneous
- Kevin’s added some 3D transform transitions to showcase native animations now available with 0.9
- A couple sound effects thrown in for good measure…

Kevin will be walking through how he upgraded this app from 0.8 to 0.9 next Friday during our migration webcast:

Date: Friday, March 5th
Time: 8am-10am PST
Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/585483120

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*Updated February 22 – webcasts pushed out 1 week*

Some of you may have read Jeff’s recent blog post about the upcoming 0.9 / 1.0 Titanium release (click here to watch the pre-release 0.9 webcast).  The team is working around the clock to get out our biggest release to date.  As most of you have heard by now, the focus is squarely on performance, but there are quite a few new features like Augmented Reality, camera overlays, and audio streaming as well.  Since improving performance means some changes may be involved in your apps, we’ve added a special session on migrating applications from 0.8 to 0.9/1.0.  Here’s what we have lined up:

Titanium for New Developers:

Date: Wednesday, March 3rd
Time: 8am – 9am PST
Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/575968864

New to Appcelerator Titanium?  We’ll give you a high-level overview of the Titanium Architecture, run through the major APIs for both mobile and desktop application development, and show lots of demos to get you up and running fast.

Pre-requisites: none, but to get the most value out of this webcast, we suggest downloading Titanium and installing the latest version of Kitchen Sink.

What’s New in Titanium Mobile 1.0:

Date: Thursday, March 4th
Time: 8am – 9am PST
Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/502287688

Learn more about the performance improvements and support for new features like streaming audio and Augmented Reality that come in Titanium 1.0.  Packed with lots of demos from Kitchen Sink, this webcast will give you a solid understanding of the newly refactored Titanium Mobile platform.  Highly recommended for any Titanium developer.

Requirements: should have a basic understanding of developing a mobile app in Titanium.

Migrating your mobile app from 0.8 to 1.0:

Date: Friday, March 5th
Time: 8am-10am PST
Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/585483120

This webcast will focus squarely on getting your application migrated quickly from 0.8 to 1.0.  Many apps will not require significant changes, but we do suggest any developer who is actively working on an app attend this webcast.

Requirements: this will be more of an advanced training for developers who have already built a mobile app on Titanium.

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If you missed yesterday’s webcast, here’s your chance to pick it up via recording on Vimeo. In this webcast, Marshall covers everything that’s new in 0.8:

http://bit.ly/d6AMID

• New Windows Installer: MSI packaging provides a more stable and more robust installation experience.
• Transparent windows: Microsoft Windows apps look fantastic with customizable opacity.
• Improved font rendering: cleaner, crisper native fonts for Windows
• New support for 64-bit Linux: run Titanium apps without 32-bit emulation
• MySQL support for PHP: embed this popular database in your app.
• Improved proxy support: better access behind proxies
• Upgrades to newer Webkit: update to the recent release keeps Titanium on the leading edge for desktop app development.

Attention: Windows Developers: To upgrade to 0.8 on windows you need to re-install Titanium. Click here to get the latest bits. On Linux and Mac OS, update to 0.8  from within Titanium Developer.

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