TapLynx

Brent Simmons, the brainchild behind TapLynx and NetNewsWire, has been named to the MachTech 25.  This is includes “the most influential Rock Stars, MVPs, Prophets, and Pundits in the Apple Technical Community.”  While we didn’t need anyone to tell us how visionary Brent has been in the space, it’s a huge achievement for him to be on this prestigious list.

About Brent they say he is “a tireless promoter of the Mac platform, but is perhaps best known as the author of NetNewsWire, the wildly popular RSS news aggregator for Mac OS X, and the founder of Ranchero Software, which was acquired by NewsGator Technologies.”

They add, he is also the brains behind TapLynx, which lets you create iPhone and iPad applications with your content.”

Congrats, Brent

You can see the whole list here.

Walker Fenton, GM of NewsGator’s Media and Data Services, the umbrella under which TapLynx resides, talks with Matt Solmon, a project manager at Stratfor, for this month’s webinar.  They talk about Stratfor, the iPhone app they built with TapLynx, in-app purchasing, and more!  If you’re currently using TapLynx to create apps, or interested in using TapLynx, I’m sure you’ll find this webinar quite useful.

TapLynx Webinar with Stratfor from TapLynx on Vimeo.

This week Brent Simmons and I were in San Jose, California for the 360iDev conference. Big thank you to John, Tom, and Nicole for organizing a great event and just being awesome in general. It was all very productive (partying), with a lot of networking (drinking beers with fellow Mac nerds), team building (playing Rock Band) and fostering of friendly competition (throwing each other to the ground in oversized sumo-suits). Overall it was a solid conference and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone at Voices that Matter next week!

Brent gave a great speech about behind the scenes stuff that drives content based apps. Here are the slides: http://ranchero.com/downloads/BrentSimmons-ContentApps-360iDev.key.zip

We got interviewed by TUAW: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/13/360idev-brent-simmons-on-netnewswire-for-ipad-and-iphone-os-4-0/

A couple of my favorite quotes from the whole event:

    ”Yeah, we’re going to sex this bitch up.” – Brad Ellis on incorporating sexy design ideas into NetNewsWire

    ”I would rather have spent those 6 years on a beach in Hawaii… or just being flogged.” – Brent Simmons, on all the time he spent writing syncing code

    ”Me-arrrrr!” – Me and Joe Pezzillo, thinking that pirate kitties was somehow a funny idea (hint: beers were involved)

    ”A perk of being one of a handful of female attendees at a male-dominated tech conference: no waiting line at the restroom!” – @hubflanger Amen, sister!!

In the interest of complete self-deprecation, here are embarrassing videos from the event (Brent don’t kill me for posting your rendition of “Under the Bridge”):

    Rock Band: Jenny sings Alive (hey I’m like a barotone, give me a break): http://vimeo.com/10877784

    Rock Band: Brent sings Under the Bridge, Jenny on the drums: http://vimeo.com/10877548

    Sumo fight for an iPad, Rana vs Jenny to the death: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG57p49SlS4 The funny thing about our match was a lot of people were all, “ZOMG two chicks are fighting!!” Really? you can tell that we’re women once the suits are on?

And lastly, it should be noted that the guys from 360iDev will be posting session videos at some point, which we’ll retweet. Thanks everyone for a great time!

Exciting news to report: NewsGator’s NetNewsWire app is now available on the iPad!  Our award-winning feed reader has been fully re-engineered by its creator, Brent Simmons, to take the advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen real estate and fast processing power.

NetNewsWire for iPad allows users to automatically capture blog posts, podcasts, and other syndicated content from across the web and includes a new split-screen view that shows subscriptions on one side, with articles and web pages on the other.

Brent explains that we could have simply repackaged our iPhone app, but we recognized the value in re-designing NetNewsWire from the ground up for the iPad.  The extra screen real estate means that users can do more things, and the faster CPU and additional memory means the code can do more too.

If you’ve got an iPad, download the brand new NetNewsWire app here!