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 from arctouch.com/beamit. With over 5000 attendees 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.
Availability
The Beam It! source code and Xcode project are available now to iPhone developers.
About ArcTouch
ArcTouch develops custom apps 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.