Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Nemo gives Java phones a touch of iPhone-like UI

Not everyone are thinking to create an "iPhone-killer" of their own, and Everypoint has think out of the box: if you can't kill it, then join with it. Everypoint is bringing iPhone to Java phones, and the reason is simple yet hit the spot: because Java as well as Flash are still shut out from the iPhone.

And so on Monday, Everypoint launched a mobile application platform Monday called Nemo, which basically make standard Java-enabled MIDP 2.X mobile devices to have iPhone-like UI (User Interface). Nemo applications do not add touch capabilities similar to iPhone but can leverage touch capabilities if these already exists on a particular phone. And Everypoint doesn't even shy to acknowledge that they're copying the famous iPhone UI:

"The visual look and feel has parity with the iPhone," said Allan MacKinnon, president, founder and CTO at Everypoint. "It's a vector graphics engine so that we can draw applications, we can display applications that look very polished, and that was a feature that was never before available on mass-market devices," MacKinnon said.

Nemo is a new approach to mobile application development that is built on three core technologies:

  • Nemo Cloud Services, a patent-pending high-performance real-time push-sync database
  • Nemo Mobile Runtime, a scriptable small-footprint client with a high performance vector graphics engine
  • Nemo Developer Environment, an integrated set of tools for developing, testing, distributing and managing mobile applications.

Everypoint believes aside from the high-performance vector graphics as Nemo's key to success, Everypoint also use "push-sync" capabilities to deliver Nemo and apps over the air (OTA). Mobile users simply download the Nemo Mobile Runtime client and get access to an entire catalog of applications; an application store.

A push and sync database is featured in the Nemo runtime for delivering data to Nemo-enabled phones in real time. Data updates are provided via Everypoint cloud servers on the Internet. An example of an application enabled by the database would be a stock-checking system in which only data that has changed is delivered.

Applications developed using Nemo sit on top of the Everypoint runtime, which links to the Everypoint cloud system. Applications are free to download and hosted by Everypoint.

According to Paul Krill from Inforworld; developers who want to distribute applications commercially enter into an agreement with Everypoint, which takes 10 cents per copy of each application sold or 10 percent of the sale price of the application, whichever figure is higher.

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