Back in December 2008 we wrote about the launch of Everypoint, a Boston startup working on a platform that makes it easy for developers to write cool iPhone-like applications for Java-capable phones, which includes most feature phones (i.e. non-smartphones) these days. To seed developer efforts, Everypoint started out by releasing a few of its own apps for its so-called Nemo platform, including a stock ticker and a few basic games. Today Everypoint released its most sophisticated Nemo app yet, a news reader program, and said that the number of third-party developers writing applications for Nemo is “exploding.”
The news reader, which is designed conserve battery life and bandwidth, allows feature-phone owners to access any feed in a standard format such as RSS or XML (see screen shots below). It also supports “push” notification, meaning updates supplied automatically by a server rather than requested by the user. As with all of the mobile applications built by Everypoint, the source code for the news reader is available free to Nemo developers, who can adapt it or incorporate it into their own applications. Applications developed on the platform then get wrapped back into the catalog distributed with the Nemo software.
The size of Everypoint’s Nemo Preview Beta developer program has tripled in the last two months, according to Allan Mackinnon, Everypoint’s founder, president, and chief technology officer. “We’re excited by this momentum and we look forward to working closely with the mobile application development community to unlock the advanced capabilities of feature phones that consumers already own,” Mackinnon said in a statement released today.
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One of the companies participating in the program is Pongr, a Boston startup with server-based image-recognition systems that help people with camera phones get price comparisons for items they find in stores. Pongr has applications that run on the Apple iPhone, Blackberry phones, and Android phones, and it’s using Nemo to create a version that will run on Java-enabled phones. “We are excited about the opportunity to make Pongr available to an even larger audience of mobile users than currently available with other application stores,” Jamie Thompson, Pongr’s CEO and co-founder, said in Everypoint’s statement.
Thompson will be on hand to demonstrate Pongr at tomorrow’s Xconomy Forum on the Future of Mobile Innovation in New England. And both Everypoint and Pongr are participants in the Xconomy Mobile Showcase, an online supplement to the event.
