- Rhodes is a mobile application development framework that allows developers to write once and deploy applications to multiple smartphone platforms like iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Symbian using HTML, CSS, and Ruby. - It provides components like Rhodes for building native apps and RhoSync for syncing local and cloud data across devices. - The company is working on expanding device capabilities, improving sync performance, and hosting development and application runtime on their RhoHub platform.

1. Adam Blum
adam@rhomobile.com

2. Future of Mobile Programming
 Declarative and tag-based development is
unbeatably productive
 “Occasional disconnectedness” will always be there
 When you need procedural code languages like Ruby
are good
 Leverage web standards & ubiquity of browsers
wherever possible
 But …exposing rapidly changing capabilities by
waiting for standards bodies (e.g. W3C) doesn’t work
 But where it does that’s good

3. What’s Going On Now
 Smartphone sales are exploding
 Five major smartphone operating systems: iPhone,
BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android
 Growth leaders are installed base laggards
 “native apps” have won the day
 1 billion iPhone app downloads on a platform with great
browser installed (as of April 23, 2009)
But …how do you write an app for all popular
devices?

4. So What is Rhodes?
 Build the app quickly in HTML and Ruby
 Write it once and it runs on all smartphones:
iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry,
Android, Symbian
 Work with synchronized local data
 Exploit device capabilities (GPS, PIM data,
camera, push/SMS)
 http://www.github.com/rhomobile

5. The Rhomobile Components
 Rhodes
 “microframework” for building locally executing natively
optimized mobile apps
 Developers run app generator for their objects of interest and
then edit HTML templates
 Contains first mobile Ruby implementation
 RhoSync
 Sync focused on web service data (needed in the age of SaaS)
 Handles keeping your data local and currenton the device
 First mobile sync server to leverage current native smartphone
push (iPhone, BES)

6. Rhodes Architecture
You
write:
Rhodes app
model model
HTML source
controller Backend
rhogen templates adapter app
model model
HTML
controller source Backend
templates
adapter app
RhoSync
Rhodes runtime Server
Ruby
ORM (Rhom)
executor
We provide:
RhoSync
client
mobile device

7. What We Spend Time Doing
 Sync (server and client)
 Ruby on device
 Device capabilities
 Via Ruby calls
 Via tags
 RhoHub
All this could be potentially be used
alongside/simultaneously with other frameworks

8. Write An App
 Rhogen app
 Rhogen model
 (all your models)
 Edit your HTML templates
 Rake –T
 Rake run:iphone:app

9. RhoHub
 First “Development as a Service for mobile” (DaaSM?)
 Public beta announced May 20th
 950 developers signed up since then
 Production release in August
 Hosted development
 IDE to integrate command line tools (client/server generation
simultaneously)
 Build for all smartphones online
 Hosted runtime
 OTA provisioning (user downloading from URL)
 Sync server
 Others? (advertising, analytics, you tell us)
Register at http://rhohub.com

10. Roadmap and Pricing
 1.2 (current master) – next week
 BlackBerry and iPhone push
 Much faster database/sync
 1.4
 Audio/video capture
 Pricing
 GPL your app – free (send us the URL for your source)
 commercial ISV license
 Was 5% of revenue (will still be available by application)
 Rhodes only - $500 per app
 RhoSync server – scaled based on numbers of users
 RhoHub – per month charge
 sales@rhomobile.com

11. Call to Action
 Write an app today!
 Gem install rhodes
 Rhogen app
 Rake build:iphone:app - submit to iPhone appstore
 Repeat: Rake build:bb:app
 Let us help you!
 Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/rhomobile
 IRC: #rhomobile
 Tell us about it!
 We have lots of queued up referrals for demonstrated Rhodes
developers: adam@rhomobile.com