Press Release – Beam It! – Free For iPhone Developers
ArcTouch Releases First Application To Use iPhone OS 3.0 Peer To Peer Game Kit APIs
New “Beam It!” App Sends Contact Information Wirelessly Between iPhones
San Francisco, California (June 4, 2009) — ArcTouch, developers of custom software applications for the iPhone, today released Beam It! This is the first generally available application that uses the new spontaneous peer to peer connectivity features of the iPhone OS 3.0.
Beam It! allows you to wirelessly “beam” your contact information to another iPhone or iPod Touch, and features automatic discovery of other handheld devices near you running Beam It!
“The original Apple Newton and the Palm Pilot had the ability to beam contacts between devices. Now, with Apple’s new iPhone OS 3.0 and Beam It!, we have brought back this fun and useful feature,” said Adam Fingerman, ArcTouch’s VP of Products and Solutions. “This is simply the fastest and easiest way of sharing your contact info with friends or new business associates.”
Truly Wireless with Zero Configuration
Beam It! automatically discovers other nearby iPhone and iPod Touch devices running Beam It!, and then uses Bluetooth to spontaneously create an ad-hoc peer to peer network to share contact information. The automatic discovery and connection is handled seamlessly by Bonjour, without any need to manually set configurations or pair devices.
Free to iPhone Developers
Beam It! is immediately available to iPhone developers at http://arctouch.com/beamit. With over 5000 developers expected at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) next week, these developers will be able to easily exchange their business card contact info wirelessly – without the need to retype names into their iPhones.
“If you’re a developer and planning to attend WWDC, you should download and install Beam It! before you go. At the conference, with everyone running Beam It!, you won’t want to be the only person left out carrying a bunch of business cards,” said ArcTouch’s CEO, Eric N. Shapiro. “We’re excited about the peer to peer connectivity and other new features in iPhone OS 3.0. We’re glad to offer Beam It! free to developers in advance of WWDC so they can use it to easily share their contact information.”
ArcTouch is also providing the full source code with free usage rights to members of the iPhone Developer Program so they can see how to use the new peer to peer APIs in the Game Kit framework. Visit http://arctouch.com/beamit for more information and download instructions.
Availability
The Beam It! source code and Xcode project are available now to iPhone developers at http://arctouch.com/beamit. Consumers will be able to get Beam It! for the iPhone and iPod Touch directly from the App Store soon after iPhone OS 3.0 is released by Apple.
About ArcTouch
ArcTouch, Inc. develops custom applications for the Apple iPhone, RIM BlackBerry, Google Android and Palm Pre. The company was founded by ex-Apple employees and is located in San Francisco.
Tags: Apple WWDC, Beam It!, Developer Events, Game Kit, iPhone Apps, iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone SDK, press release, sample code
Jun 14, 2009
Thanks very much for sharing the code for Beam It. I am a new iPhone developer and it is extremely helpful to see real code written for a meaningful app – not just the proverbial Car or Shapes app commonly used in the books. I’m also glad you chose to publish something that leverages the new Bluetooth peer-to-peer connectivity. There aren’t many good examples of how to leverage this new part of the SDK from what I’ve seen. Much appreciated.
Jun 19, 2009
Thanks a lot for sharing that app and its source code with us, much appreciated.
I really wished that the iPhone’s bluetooth could be used to send vCard to other phones like Nokia but that’s a good start.
Can’t wait to see more of arctouch software, keep up the good work