whiteapp.com

Recently in my search for new and relevant augmented reality use cases, I began to search for white label uses of augmented reality. Like many web application services it is only a matter of time before companies begin to create white label versions of respective applications. This is where whiteapp comes along.

whiteapp has a directory suite of white label mobile applications that they provide for the iPhone, Android OS and Symbian OS. Among them there is the ‘Augmented Reality’ application for the iPhone. The company behind whiteapps is putITout a London based applications development company.

I was extremely intrigued to find out more about this solution so I contacted Charles Cadbury the Founder of whiteapps and Managing Director from putItout to begin to ask some questions to discover what is the strategy and direction of their current white label AR application.

Charles Cadbury – Founder whiteapps.com Interview

AugmentPro – I see that your company Pit It Out is a London based digital development company. Can you tell me a bit more about your company and client base?

Charles Cadbury - Founder whiteapp.com

Charles C - Its putITout.  We set up 3 years ago to fill a skills gap in the London market.  Freelance web developers were charging a great premium for their services and often took a lot of management time in order to get jobs produced to spec.  Our offering centers around project managed development resource (we have grown our own team in Lahore, Pakistan) and manage all projects through a team of project managers and account managers in Russell Square in London.

Our clients tend to be mid sized creative and marketing agencies.  We typically build large, dynamic, websites, Facebook applications and bespoke CMS solutions.  From March this year we started to offer mobile application build to our client base, using a strong network of developers and mobile usability experts.

AugmentPro – What made you decide to launch whiteapp.com?

Charles C – Advertising agencies were coming to us time and time again as they were either being asked for, or wanted to offer applications to their clients.  The cost of designing and building these applications from scratch was proving too expensive for a majority of clients.  The global economic meltdown didn’t help at all…

At the same time I was meeting more and more developers who had built applications, pouring vast amount of sweat and coffee over learning the Apple SDK and not receiving adequate commercial recompense by monetizing through the app store.

whiteapp was a way to offer agencies a “shopping list” of applications they could browse and purchase, we could simply re-skin or make small alterations to these apps in a short period at a far lower cost than bespoke development.  At the same time we shared any money we generated with the developer who created the application which in the most part far exceeded the money they had made through selling the app through the app store.

AugmentPro – whiteapp seems to have a suite of mobile white label applications. Which ones appear to be the popular ones so far with agencies and clients?

Charles C – Due to an October launch the Advent calendar has been the most popular application and used as a simple brand asset for branding campaigns.  The Augmented reality application has come a close second as its an exceedingly hot topic right now and at the right price is a great PR tool to gain column inches and deliver a great experience to the user.

AugmentPro – You appear to currently have one Augmented Reality white label application. Can you please briefly describe its core features?

Charles C – It’s a “finder” application.  It takes geographic locations from a database (held locally or in the cloud) and overlays these data points on the real time video feed from the iPhone’s camera.  If the user does not have an iPhone 3Gs or holds a 3Gs flat the data points are shown as a google maps mashup, giving route finding functionality. Different tabs can be added and managed through a web based CMS that can overlay different datasets on the video feed.  Any level of additional functionality can be added to this application depending on the client’s requirements but starting from an existing product saves production time and subsequently cost.

Why re-invent the wheel – people love it!.

Download complete Augmented Reality white label application Fact Sheet here

AugmentPro – Currently it appears to only support the iPhone 3Gs. Do you have in plan to support the Android and/or other mobile OS’s?

Charles C – We are currently working with an Android developer and hope to list an Android Augmented Reality whiteapp in January 2010.  We are also working on a pitch for a bespoke build of a symbian Augmented reality product that we would like to offer as a whiteapp.  Hopefully this will come off and we will be able to offer that from May 2010.

AugmentPro – From a white label AR standpoint, what are your timeline estimates in order to deliver an AR white label app from initial conversation to final launch?

Charles C – If you hold the dataset, do not mind it being hosted within the application and have all the creative assets to hand we could turn this around within a week.  Usually there are a few iterations of design and bespoke functionality that need to be ironed out and the process can take 2-3 weeks before we submit to the app store.

AugmentPro – Do you have in plan to launch other Augmented Reality white label applications? I would love to see one that allows you to instantly generate a Marker, select from a gallery of predefined elements, then to generate an AR browser app. Is this wishful thinking?

As and when developers create Augmented Reality applications we are more than happy to list and market them  on whiteapp.  So hopefully your readership has this in development and we can all live happily ever after.