MoMo Ann Arbor – Sept. 4th – Xamarin: Native AND Cross-Platform?
Posted on: August 23, 2013 – Filed under: Ann Arbor
Is Xamarin the best of both worlds? Native AND cross-platform at the same time?
Come and learn about the latest Xamarin features and how to create iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows Phone apps in C#. Reuse code, and leverage existing .NET libraries and frameworks, while applying the same C# skillset everywhere to create truly native apps across mobile platforms. This session looks at why you’ll love using Xamarin’s popular mobile development tools to create native applications to increase productivity, while creating a first class native user experience across the most popular mobile platforms.
Featured App: Menuvative – Menuvative® is two part application that delivers an interactive, tablet-based platform for restaurant menus. The first part of the platform is a cloud-based, subscription licensed CMS that allows restaurants to create and manage rich content menus. The items stored in the account can include photos, detailed dish descriptions, allergy and nutritional information, beverage pairings, and numerical values for the primary pairing components in food or wine items so that wine pairings can be automatically generated by Pairing Pro®, a patented algorithm that mimics a sommelier’s food & wine pairing logic. The cloud based access allows the restaurant the ability to manage the menu from anywhere.
The second part of the Menuvative® platform is an Android application installed on 10” Android tablets. The app connects each tablet to the restaurant account via the CMS generated registration keys that are assigned to unique MAC addresses. Once a tablet running the Menuvative App is connected to the account, all the account’s item and menu data are synchronized on user defined update intervals via WiFi, allowing unlimited modifications to the menu on the fly. The application also completely locks out all functionality of the Android tablet, requiring a unique touch pattern and password entry to leave the application. The Menuvative App also presents the menu in a very simple to use page flip format with single tap popup interactivity for items on the menu. These pop-ups can contain the images, descriptions and/or educational information, nutritional information, and wine and beverage pairings. A restaurant’s wine list is automatically added to the end of the menu in a scrollable database presentation that allows multiple levels of filtering and sorting based on user preference.
Presenters
Jonathan Dick – Jonathan is a DBA/Developer by day and a Xamarin Insider by night. He’s been working with .NET since its beta days, and now focuses on writing C# mobile applications for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Jonathan co-authored the Wrox title ‘Professional Android Programming with Mono for Android and .NET/C#’ and currently maintains PushSharp(), an open source library for sending push notifications to multiple platforms, as well asZXing.Net.Mobile( ), a mobile Barcode scanning library.
Eric Arsenault – Eric is a certified Sommelier and the Director of Wine & Spirits for the 15 unit Ann Arbor restaurant group Mainstreet Ventures, Inc. In 2008, after seeing a man reading an iPad at a restaurant table, Eric began developing the concept of replacing the paper menu medium with a real-time, cloud base, interactive menu platform. In July of 2011, Eric co-founded Interactive Menu Technologies, LLC (Imenutech). As President of Imenutech, Eric oversees the conception and development of Pairing Pro®, the only logic based food and wine pairing application (US Patent #US8364545) and the Menuvative® interactive menu platform which is now used by a rapidly growing number of restaurants in 11 states. To lower the barrier to entry and establish Menuvative® as the leading digital menu platform for restaurants of all concepts, Eric now also handles the overseas manufacturing of Imenutech’s proprietary Android tablets in an aggressive effort to provide a direct cost savings over the traditional paper menu medium. Menuvative® recently won the Innovative Solutions Award at 2013 Retail Now in Las Vegas and was a finalist for the Operator Innovations Award at the 2013 National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago.