Park It DC, a silver medal winner in Washington, DC’s Apps for Democracy contest, is utilizing PointAbout’s thin-client springboard to create a location-aware downloadable iPhone version of the Park It DC web application.
You can follow its progress on Shaun Farrell’s blog. He is the creator of Park It DC.
How he’s doing it: Since PointAbout wraps a web micro-site with our native thin-client springboard, it’s an easy lift for Shaun to re-code his full-fledged Park It DC website application as a limited-functionality web-based microsite that renders well as a mobile iPhone web application.
Then, PointAbout wraps that microsite with our thin-client native iPhone code and we turn it into a private-labeled iPhone application, complete with its own icon and loading screen.
That application can then be distributed through the iTunes App Store. Anyone who downloads the Park It DC iPhone application will in reality be downloading a private-labeled version of PointAbout that opens directly into Shaun’s web micro-site.
By using PointAbout, Shaun is able to get the mobile user’s location off the phone, and into his site, so he can utilize that location to show the most relevant information to the user. So even though Shaun doesn’t have to do too much, he can still gain the functionality of a full-fledged native iPhone application while still being able to code in HTML standards.
Shaun, we can’t wait to see what you come up with!