On August 18th we kicked off the Mobile DotNetNuke Hackathon at the St. Louis DotNetNuke User Group.  During the kick-off we had a great demonstration of Appcelerator Titanium from Kevin Whinnery.  Kevin is an Appcelerator Engineer and Product Evangelist and it was clear from his presentation that he was both passionate and knowledgeable about Titanium.  Almost everyone we spoke with was extremely interested in giving Titanium a try and the Hackathon was the perfect opportunity to kick the tires and build a great mobile application.

If you have been following the voting this last week, you know that we had 5 great Hackathon entries, 4 of which were built with Titanium.  The voting has ended and Scott Willhite should be announcing the results shortly.  Regardless of which mobile app is declared the Hackathon winner, the real winner is the entire DotNetNuke community.  We have gained valuable knowledge about a great tool that can aid in extending the reach of websites and web applications that we all build.  We have also added 6 more Open Source applications to the DotNetNuke forge which will provide great starting points when developing new mobile applications.

Last week we challenged DotNetNuke developers to create and submit applications for the latest DotNetNuke Mobile Hackathon.  Entries had to have a mobile application component and a DotNetNuke component that allowed the mobile application and a DotNetNuke website to work together to provide a compelling mobile DotNetNuke experience for the user.  Because the mobile development space is a bit new to many of us, we enlisted the aid of Appcelerator in sponsoring the event and giving a short demo of their Titanium Mobile product to the Hackathon kickoff event attendees.  Titanium simplifies mobile development and allows developers to target several mobile platforms using a single code base.  Apparently our developer community liked Titanium as well, since 4 of the 5 entries were created using the Titanium Mobile SDK.

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.

This article is cross-posted from my personal blog.

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.