Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The new Funambol Forge
It took us way too long, but finally the Funambol Forge has been launched.At the new Funambol Forge, developers and other community members can work on mobile projects, share technical tips, and download software and documentation. The new forge houses source and binary code for the open source Funambol Community Edition and many Funambol-based community projects. It incorporates a new Discussion Services area that provides both mailing lists and online forums, as well as a new online support forum for the myFUNAMBOL portal. It is also the access point for all of Funambol's community programs, such as the Code Sniper and Phone Sniper programs.In a nutshell, it is the site where you find everything Funambol Community, from the core software to all the projects around it (there are a lot, dispersed over many different sites...), plus the mailing lists and the forums. All in one place.
Our Community Manager Stefano Maffulli is the guy that made it happen. Yesterday, he fought the daemons of Internet Explorer in an epic battle, beat them and delivered a first release of the Forge (more will follow, the interface needs work). The Forge was with him. I hope it was the lady displayed in Roberto's post...
Posted by Fabrizio at 11:58
2 Comments:
Stefano Maffulli said...
LOL, no, it wasn't the lady in Roberto's post... you'd have never seen the forge live if that was the case :)
PS my wife helped though :)
Comment Posted at 02:24
Gene Vayngrib said...
Fabrizio,
I have been following your blog for a year now, and when I read that you launched Funambol Forge and were considering expanding it beyond Funambol family of products, I thought it was time to connect. Our company is approaching mobile space from a completely different angle than Funambol, and this may create some mutual opportunities.
In your blog you often express an idea that Mobile 2.0 is more about messaging, than the Web. It is of course true, at least it is still true in 2008. Funambol addresses the real pain now, has great community, tons of downloads and seems unstoppable. Yet, it is not a Web story. And Web has consistently made other approaches obsolete, sooner or later - and as you know of course - its march on mobiles has already begun.
But what if all the messaging is done as a browser-based app? Not just Email, all of them - IM, SMS, Contacts, Schedules, LBS, Camera, Voice, etc. What if it is done in such a way that Web app is indistinguishable from the native app, and is a true first class citizen on the device? What if every new Web app was born in the cloud and instantly expose the one common and simple Web API? What if a new Web app could be written 10-100x faster than it is possible now in any existing framework? What if every new Web app had instantly two faces - for mobile and the desktop? What if all the current messaging features were part of every new Web app, right off the bat?
This is approach we our company (http://lablz.com) is taking. We are not there yet fully, but it begins to materialize. Check out our recent (open source) submission to Android Developer Challenge I. It is called Browser Bhoost (http://bhoost.com). I feel there may be interesting synergy between Lablz and Funambol products. Care to explore? Do you plan to be any time soon in the NY area?
Gene Vayngrib
CEO Lablz
