Intuit Partner Platform team blog

Chance to Win $12,500! Contest for Location-Aware Apps

The Intuit Partner Platform has recently partnered with Xtify Inc. to incorporate mobile phone location technologies into Intuit Partner Platform applications. By building and publishing a location-aware business application using the Intuit Partner Platform Flex SDK, plus the Xtify Flex API, you’ll be eligible to win up to $12,500 in cash prizes.

Three Prizes

• Grand prize: $7,000
• First place: $4,000
• Second place: $1,500

Key Contest Dates

• Contest begins: 4/23/09
• Application publishing deadline:6/23/09
• Panel judging date:6/25/09
• Contest ends (Workplace users counted):8/05/09

The Judges

• Ed Zander, recent CEO and chairman of Motorola
• Jeff Samberg,managing director of Acadia Woods Partners, LLC
• Alex Chriss,business leader of Intuit Partner Platform
• Andrew Weinreich, CEO of Xtify, Inc.

Watch the Sample App in Action

 

Check out all of the contest details here.

Thanks,
—The Intuit Partner Platform Team

Prototyping and Wireframing - Getting Everyone on the Same Page

Communicating ideas visually and getting everyone on the same page (literally) when you are designing or modifying user interfaces is a critical step in the overall development process and ending up with a great user experience. And doing so earlier and often, the better...without this you'll end up here :-)

There are many ways to do this and quite a few tools that make this a speedy and simple task.

Of course, Flex is a great tool for developers already familiar with the tool, but there are lots of different options for those with varying skills - this article provides a review of 16 Design Tools for Prototyping and Wireframing.

One of my favorite is Balsamiq Mockups - an Adobe AIR app, great for communicating the concepts of a proposed interface via wireframing.

Do you use tools to prototype and develop wireframes? Which tools do you use, and why? How do you communicate your ideas?

Flex 3 in Action: Ch. 23 Debugging, Functional and Unit Testing in Flex

Manning Publications has posted a free pdf of Chapter 23 from their book called "Flex 3 in Action". Chapter 23 includes Debugging, profiling, 3rd party tools, unit testing, and functional testing of Flex Applications.

Flex 3 in Action
Chapter 23
Manning Publishing
http://www.manning.com/ahmed/Flex3-sample-chapter-23.pdf

From the author's blog

Happy Coding,

Jarred

Now Available: IPP V1.2

IPP version 1.2 is now available. It contains several significant developer productivity enhancements. We’ve made additional changes to address known issues.

DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCEMENTS

Deploy application updates that include schema changes

Developers can now publish application updates that include database schema changes, including new tables, fields, relationships, roles, etc. as long as the change preserves existing user data. The Intuit Partner Platform Flex SDK Plug-in Tools have also been updated to include enhancements that help development teams manage different database schema versions, test application upgrades that involve schema changes, and automatically publish application updates to all subscribers.

Learn more about these schema update capabilities.

Support for application-specific beta programs

Developers who want to market test their applications before commercially releasing them may now create “beta plans.” Beta plans are application entitlements that allow users to use applications for free for a fixed period of time. Beta plans allow developers to specify the number of users who can share a particular beta program subscription and a specific target date when the Beta period will end. Once the beta program ends, application subscribers are prompted to select a pricing plan so they can continue to use the application.

Follow this link for more information on defining application-specific beta programs.

Additional reports: settlement failures and beta plan tracking

The Settlement Failures Report presents a list of application subscribers (and their contact info) for whom the IPP Billing service could not collect the monthly subscription fee. This information helps developers work through collection issues with their subscribers.

The Developer Free Trial Usage report has been extended to list subscribers who have signed up for beta programs as well as free trials. The report includes user contact information along with the dates upon which each subscriber‘s beta plan or free trial will expire.

Click here for more information on these additional developer reporting capabilities.

SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES

For the complete list of software updates and fixes included in IPP v1.2, please review the release notes located here.

Thanks,

—The Intuit Partner Platform Team