Talking Mobile // Tablet // Web Development

On a chilly April Saturday, the American Swedish Institue broke ground for the Nelson Cultural Center, a modern addition to ASI’s existing Turnblad Mansion.  The new center is a state of the art building, with a 325 seat event space , craft workshop, conference room, retail shop and an additional gallery.  The lower level offers more space for collection storage, exhibit prep and a utility tunnel that connects the new building to the Turnblad Mansion.  The Nelson Cultural Center is tracking to be LEED Gold certified, and will achieve this by using sustainable materials, geothermal heating and cooling systems, a green roof, and water conservation strategies.  The Turnblad Mansion will also receive updates as well.  The lower level will be renovated to offer additional storage for Swan Turnblad’s archive.  There will also be new classrooms and a community hall, with kitchen facilities.

Recursive Awesome partnered with Adolfson & Peterson Construction — the general contractors for the project — to develop an iPad app, which allows ASI members, volunteers, and visitors alike to take a virtual tour through new Nelson Cultural Center and Turnblad Mansion renovations.  Not only can you keep up to date with the latest project news, you can learn more about the American Swedish Institute in the ‘ASI Is…’ section.  You can read about the sustainable aspects of the project, and understand what it means to be LEED Gold certified.  There is a ‘Virtual Tour’ that lets you learn more about key areas of the project, just by tapping on the map.  Lastly, you can give & get involved yourself!  The app offers the opportunity to donate, join as a member, volunteer, or sign up for ASI’s Klipp! newsletter.

Kevin Lind (Virtual Construction Manager, A&P) was present at the groundbreaking — and helped visitors use  the app — said “My biggest reflection on the day was the linking of generations. Seeing families sit down together and walk through the app, asking question of each other”.  He went on to say “We had numerous people spend 30 plus minutes sit down and thumb through the content that is good to see.  My favorite part is the virtual tour — Google style maps — but really makes a huge leep in the direction of a new way to view your project”.

The app will be on display in the solarium of the Turnblad Mansion, during construction of the Nelson Cultural Center.  The app also includes a ‘kiosk’ mode — accessible from the iOS settings menu — which will allow every guest to have the same experience.  It will be available in the Apple App Store, for everyone to download and stay up-to-date with the project.

About The American Swedish Institute

The American Swedish Institute, founded in 1929, serves as a gathering place for people to share stories and experiences around universal themes of tradition, migration, craft and the arts, all informed by enduring ties to Sweden.
http://www.americanswedishinst.org/

About Adolfoson & Peterson Construction

A&P is one of the top 50 construction companies in the U.S., providing construction management, design/build and general contracting services to public and private clients. A&P serves the K-12 school, energy, healthcare, higher education, municipal, multi-family, retail, and senior living market segments from its offices in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.
http://www.a-p.com/

About Recursive Awesome

At Recursive Awesome we focus on the design, development, and support of tablet, mobile and web applications. We use Agile software development practices, to create RESTful API’s (Ruby on Rails), as well as mobile (iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7) and web products for ourselves and our clients.
http://www.recursiveawesome.com/

Media Inquiries:

Breon Nagy
Recursive Awesome
breon@recursiveawesome.com
612.399.6626

Good morning!  Google had a busy week, so we dedicated a whole section to them.

Google, Google, and more Google…

The big news is the release of the Nexus S and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).  Leaks and rumors have been circulating about this phone for quite some time.  What makes the Nexus S different from the rest of the Android lineup?  For starters, it’s the only phone with the aforementioned Gingerbread…but that won’t last long.  The real difference is that it has a curved display and includes a Near Field Communications chip.  This will allow a user to tap their phone on a pay station to pay for parking, or tap it on an advertisement to go to a website, or tap it on a map to get directions.  Imagine checking into a restaurant, on Foursquare, simply by placing your phone on the menu.  It will take a bit for developers to add the features to their apps as well as marketing folks to start including NFC technology into their ad campaigns.  But we’re now one step closer to having our digital identity live in our pocket.

• Android Developers Blog: Android 2.3 Platform and Updated SDK Tools
• Official Google Blog: Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread
  • Nexus S – The new Android phone from Google
  • YouTube – googlenexus’s Channel
  • Google Nexus S (at BestBuy.com)
• Google launches largest ebook marketplace; threatens book giants like Barnes and Noble, Borders
• Google Announces Chrome OS Pilot Program, 12.1 Inch Notebook Cr-48

Development

• Where Should Mobile Developers Focus?
• Salesforce.com Buys Heroku For $212 Million In Cash

Devices

• Samsung Galaxy Tab [Verizon]; The good, bad and ugly
• iPad 2 to Ship by End of February 2011?
• iPhone 3GS goes free at Best Buy on December 10th
• Notion Ink Adam tablet available for preorder later today

The OS Battle

• Andy Rubin: 300,000 Android phones activated every day

Apps

• Appletell exclusive: Mac App Store to open December 13th?
• YouTube 2.1 for Android Brings Revamped UI & Smoother Interaction
• Is Foursquare About to Add Photo Sharing?
• Tascam Portastudio for iPad could make you a four-track superstar all over again

Carrier News

• Breon’s experience with Verizon Wireless 4G LTE
• Sprint: “Customers Will Pay a Premium for Simplicity”; No Tiered/Non-Unlimited Data for the Foreseeable Future

Friday Infographic

(click for larger view)

Source: DVICE

Recently, I participated in a unique event entitled the Overnight Web Challenge. The idea is to pair groups of web professionals with non-profits in need of a new or updated website. While the development teams are formed prior to the event, the parings aren’t announced until the very start of the event so no one can get a head start. There’s also a catch; it must be done in 24 hours.

Team Ruby.MN

This year, I captained the Ruby.MN team who was paired with Homeward Bound. Homeward Bound provides group homes, services, resources, and support for those who have a family member with a mental illness. They have lost massive amounts of funding over the past couple of years and have struggled to maintain existing infrastructure and services. Because of this and the fact that many of the people they help aren’t able to use the website, we focused more on the business and bringing some of their paper processes online.

Some of the tools we gave them included the following:

• A fully CMS driven website
• An area to post news and events with custom layouts for their 2 large annual events
• An careers page with an application form and requirement to watch a video beforehand
• A private area for staff
• A private area for board members and board meetings

A before and after (currently viewable at hbimn.org and hbimn.heroku.com)

Being that we were the Ruby team, we chose to use our favorite web framework, Ruby on Rails to build the site in. The base of our project was Refinery CMS. Refinery was a joy to work with and provided much of the back-end admin interface we needed out of the box. Of course we didn’t stop there; many customizations were made. Some of those changes may even make their way back upstream into Refinery itself.

The new website will be hosted on Heroku who graciously donated $300 in credit to Homeward Bound. However, our team kept the project lean enough that they will fit into Heroku’s free hosting plan. We plan to use the credit to pay for add-ons such as Exceptional exception notifications. In addition, a number of online services were leveraged such as Amazon S3, Wufoo, Google Checkout, Google Site Search, Mailchimp, and Flickr.

When the dust settled and judging was complete, our team was awarded second place! A special thanks goes out to Joel and Cathy at Homeward Bound for being well-prepared and providing our team with any resource we needed. Congratulations especially to Team Placeholder and Dakota Wicohan on a well-deserved win and to all the other teams and non-profits who participated.