Mobile Apps for Mobile Dolphin in a Mobile World

Zarcon posted 1st of November 2011 in Community Voice. 2 comments.

We are all witnessing the world become more and more mobile. You can do just about everything from your mobile devicesexcept set the alarm on your house from 100s of miles away.. wait.. you CAN do that. We have all heard the saying 'There is an app for that'

 

I would like to know is where Dolphin (Boonex) is headed when it comes to the 'mobile world'. With the hundreds of Android and Apple smartphones, IPads, tablet PCs powered by Android etc, it seems that the majority of people are going for 'mobile'. I know quite a few people who don't even have internet at their homes anymore since you can do just about anything from your smart device now, that you can on a home PC. Scary isnt it..

 

So now that Dolphin gives 3rd party developers the ability to intergrate their modules within the Boonex mobile apps, here are a few questions that I have for Boonex and it developers (including 3rd party developers)

 

Boonex:

- What kind of time do you plan spending on the development of the Boonex mobile app?

- Do you plan on making the experience as close to the actual site as possible (with all the default features of Dolphin)

- What kind of time frame are we looking at for the mobile apps to be updated?

 

3rd Party Developers:

- Do any of you plan on making integrated mobile versions of your products? I have seen 2 so far

  1. Mobile Wall
  2. Event/Locations

- As a 3rd party developer, do you even see the need for developing a mobile version of the modules you already offer?  Maybe later?

 

Whether we know it or not, the mobile industry is booming like crazy. There are more people using their smart devices than people using computers now-a-days (just an opinion). Why not adapt to the 'mobile world'?

 

Your thoughts?

 

 
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Andrew Boon
BoonEx vision goes well beyond accepting "mobile" as a complimentary medium. Instead we see it as an eventual successor to desktop browsing experience. With that said, it is important to understand that we talk about "mobile" as a broad shift of technologies, and not just smartphones. BoonEx Mobile, in that sense, includes mobile phones, tablets, ultraportables and basically even desktops that start to move towards touch interfaces and simplification of UI.

- So, to answer see more your first question - we already spend about 80% of our development time on transforming Dolphin into "mobile" platform, and that doesn't end at our mobile apps - we want to go much farther and cover the whole scope of the ongoing technological mutation. Dolphin 8 is being designed with "mobile" DNA built-in; Dolphin 7 is getting more tools for extending it via mobile apps and mobile apps are being turned into development platforms.

- Second question, about matching mobile and desktop functionality... we are certainly adding a lot to mobile apps, but general strategy is to try to converge both worlds into one. It's hard to imagine now, but it's how we will be perceiving computers in the future - we will see no difference between our iPhones and desktops where software is concerned. See how Apple started to merge OSX with iOS gradually? That's where Dolphin is heading, too.

- We're releasing a big update to both iPhone and Android apps today and you will see many more updates coming. Other OSs still show little traction to develop for, though.

I am happy to see how Unity web-masters start to feel the transformation of the tech-world. Indeed, it may not feel like mobile is a big deal until/unless you start catering for mobile specifically. There' SO much opportunity there. Competition is still scarce and potential market is tremendous. Remember, when you reach people, you target their browsing time, their "online availability". With desktop it's normally limited to a fraction of a day, while with mobile it can be pretty much full-time. Add advantages of portability and location-tracking and you got yourself a technology that will quickly replace desktop computers as a #1 web-browsing medium. It may, actually, kill PCs altogether, in time, making them something akin of massive servers from sixties-severties used only by scientists and geeks. Dolphin, however, will surely be where the best waves are (and where they will be).
tomakali
I see the Boonex Unity has to evolve more...
There are No engagements between Webmasters[members on unity] with boonex other than Blogs,Forum,tickets.
I remember the days back when boonex blogs was so so active which was restricted for good and bad reasons.
Anyway, i FEEL, that boonex is putting so much effort into development to produce the best quality product
1.for the webmasters
2.for the boonex community
where as the development of Dolphin as a product should not be intended to the mass see more market[end users] of some webmaster.
So, boonex should consider webmasters,webmaster's inputs, reactions etc and work with modders to produce output.

the overview is, developers,modders should be a team and work together for webmasters inputs and interests.
As Microsoft,Apple work with OEMs and bring out their product.

for that forum,blogs is just not enough...
forum might be active but very boring... i like(my opinion) http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/category/windowsapps

Boonex should crowdsource ideas from webmasters in Unity
There should be a poll/voting up/down ideas and dreams page in Unity like http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_install

and it should allow idea picking by modders and boonex team.
say, if points system is a popular idea and AntonL and Modzzz picks the idea and reserves it. No other modders should be able to submit same product. otherwise there would be 100s of crap mods from 100s of developers.
Even if the mods are voted down that should be removed from market.

@Andrew if there is any "Boonex vision" please publish a whitepaper/video etc on your vision for next 10 years.i doubt no one in unity know anything about boonex vision.eager to know.

finally, @Zarcon I have 10 ideas out of which 2 ideas would be a hit for your website. would you like to know what are the features in a Unity WebMaster Poll?

i need ideas, if someone was proposing an idea "analytics for Dolphin" i definitely would "Vote Up" until or otherwise someone comes up with this idea... its never known :(
This kind of interactions will for sure improve Dolphin and developer and webmaster relationship. Boonex should make this happen

@Zarcon 100Votes for starting this post
 
 
Below is the legacy version of the Boonex site, maintained for Dolphin.Pro 7.x support.
The new Dolphin solution is powered by UNA Community Management System.
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