Powered by XL Magic, BNN Mobile delivers on-demand clips for shows such as MarketSense, Headline, Market Call and Market Call Tonight.  In addition, you can also find blogs by prominent BNN personalities and up-to-date schedule information.

Offering a streamlined experience on multiple devices including iPhone, Android Phone and BlackBerry, BNN mobile is your destination for business news. Check it out today by clicking here but we encourage you to experience it in your mobile web browser.

• Resize. Mobile devices don’t have the power of desktops so you have to reign in the size and complexity of your DOM and the javascript that makes it work. If you do the simplest things that get the job done, you’ll find your site performs well not just on the latest and greatest devices, but for the other 80 per cent of people that haven’t upgraded yet.
• Keep the UI simple. Your device is a lot smaller than a desktop. You can only really lay things out vertically; so if you try to cram the same amount of information that you can find on a desktop page into a mobile device, your eyes and thumbs will get tired quickly.
• Keep the code simple. This applies to both the back and front end. When you need to make things behave differently to provide better support for a different class of devices, it’s a lot easier to change the behaviour of a simple codebase than something that’s over-engineered.

But let’s be honest; not ALL mobile browsing experiences are pleasant. Isn’t it annoying when it’s difficult to navigate an unfriendly website from inside your mobile browser? You have to deal with slow loading times, the unscaled photos and text, and not to mention the endless scrolling to find what you’re looking for.

Well Xtreme Labs gets this, so you can breathe a sigh of relief! The new MuchMusic, MTV and Virgin Live mobile sites offer their latest content to keep you up-to-date through a mobile optimized site designed for your mobile devices.

Now, all this info is great but you may be asking yourselves: “how did they do it?”  What’s special about these mobile websites from a development perspective?

MuchMusic, MTV and Virgin Live Mobile were all built on XL Magic; our very own web platform. XL Magic truly is magical as it enables the sites to repurpose components, reducing time to market.

Here’s a breakdown to help you understand how XL Magic works:

• We built the framework for the mobile website.
• MuchMusic, MTV and Virgin Live teams plug in the content, make adjustments, easily change the layout.
• Content gets displayed.

XL Magic allows for easy site navigation, content display, and increased usability. For the user, this means the mobile websites are engaging, interactive, and a pleasure to use. You can focus on the content without the headaches of dealing with long loading times and scalability issues.

Here’s what you can seamlessly browse on your mobile device from MuchMusic and MTV:

• clips from the latest shows like New Music Live, MTV Live and more;
• movie and music news;
• fashion news highlights; and
• access to exclusive contests.

Virgin Mobile utilizes the XL Magic platform as well for excellent content display and to provide users with a seamless browsing experience.  When users open their browser, Virgin Mobile Members see the latest and greatest content from MuchMusic and MTV and get access to exclusive Member Benefits.

Check out the mobile sites through the links below but in order to really appreciate them, we encourage you to experience them using your mobile web browser.  

• MuchMusic
• MTV
• Virgin Live

To learn more about the mobile websites click here. To talk to us about XL Magic and how it can transform your mobile site contact us here!

Farhan, our VP of Engineering, greeted and toured them around our four floors here at 69 Yonge Street. The group travelled all the way to Toronto from Whitby early that morning to see what Xtreme Labs is all about.

After a tour of our digs, they headed to our app lounge where we demoed some of our top-notch apps. All that coding is awesome, but there’s nothing like experiencing the final product that code creates.

Finally the group got some candid one-on-one time with five of our Agile engineers, Boris, Greg B., Hannah, Graham M., and Peter. Boris shared his inspiring “Stay Young, Live Different” talk with the group and other Xtremer’s spoke candidly about how they became developers and what it was like working at Xtreme Labs. After a pizza lunch and some Q&A, it was time for the group to head back to school.

We really enjoyed having the group visit the Labs to hangout with us for the day. We wish all these soon-graduated high school kids all the best in their future endeavors!

Thanks for coming by Xtreme Labs Donald A. Wilson S.S!

Our long-time friend and partner, RIM, allowed us early access to the Cascades UI platform that later became known as BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha. The wait was finally over! We knew we were given the right tools to build astonishing apps. This platform is extremely developer friendly. Here’s why we like it:

• The UI libraries (Cascades/QT/QML) are very rich and show great potential in rapidly creating applications. Laying out views is extremely simple, especially for multiple screen resolutions.  This is one feature our developers rave about.
• The new platform tools are way better than the older generation of BB platform, they are approaching similar levels to the iOS and Android.
• C/C++ has many rich libraries (e.g. Boost), and it’s the full language with familiar industry tools (e.g. gcc). There are lots of resources online for C/C++.
• Developer support and relations has been active and extremely helpful.
• The BB10 still in beta and maturing, but we see lots of potential. Our devs believe that BB10 will allow for apps to be built that will exceed current expectations of what most people think a mobile app can do.
• The skillset is very useful, UNIX C/C++ is never is out of style.

Time and time again during our stay in Orlando, we were approached by industry influencers and experts alike sharing remarks of excitement for the new Cascades platform.

Prior to the BlackBerry Jam, AccuWeather partnered with Xtreme Labs to build the coolest app presented at the conference. We asked our designers to go wild with their imagination and our engineers to put on their hacker hats. The result was an elegant combination of art and engineering; an app that is both aesthetically pleasing and comprehensive. The bonus? We completed AccuWeather for BB 10 ahead of schedule.

After our Keynote a viewer summed up our presentation nicely for us with this notable comment: “There is substance in Cascades [as a platform], and I believe [RIM] is committed to BB10.”

Needless to say we are incredibly excited about the BB10 platform.

To ensure that we created the best user experience possible, this app was built alongside a beta group of Android users.  Their feedback was invaluable to the development process, allowing us to avoid common Android UX pitfalls.  After reading through the feedback from the beta testers, it helped us to understand the features in demand and helped us prioritize features much better.

Besides the seamlessly integrated reading experience, the Globe News content is updated throughout the day as the news becomes available. Similar to the iOS and BB, the Globe News Android application has several features that readers have come to expect. For example, now you can:

• Custom curate your content

In this day and age, everything is customizable.  From salads, to phone plans, to your car; the standard is that you should get what you want, how you want it.  With Globe News for Android, it is no different.  When we say that it was developed to be “the app that provides the best news reading experience”, we meant it.  Users can customize the application based on their preferences.  The app allows users to curate the home screen content by adding/removing and reordering the content sections.   Users can also adjust the font size of the headlines as well as the article content that suits your need.

• Offline reading for users on-the-go

Gone are the days where you have to wait for an above ground subway station to retrieve your next article.  For those of you who commute, or for those early morning business flights, the news is now accessible offline. Users can now select any of the major content sections they wish to read later on, press save, and all article content from the selected sections would be downloaded in advance.   Users can either choose to manually fetch for offline content or configure a setting to enable the device to automatically download the content at any specified time.  The device will only automatically download content if the device is connected via WIFI to prevent eating away your 3G data usage.

Want to get it? “Globe News” is now available as a free download in Google Play for all devices running Android 2.2 and up:

Globe News Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theglobeandmail.headliner

Globe News iPhone and iPad
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/the-globe-and-mail-news/id429228415

Globe News BlackBerry and PlayBook
appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/39629/?lang=en 

Those familiar green boxes that you see scattered around your city are coming to your iPhone, iPad, and Android devices in a whole new way. Xtreme Labs partnered with Metro News to reinvent and rebrand their existing mobile apps to a richer, redesigned reading experience for commuters on the go.

The new rich design includes a mosaic screen for those who want to quickly digest top stories in a visual way. However, we were also cognizant of the typical linear reading experience that most readers love, so we also included a more traditional view for full content consumption.

Metro’s content is updated periodically throughout the day as the latest news becomes available.  Read up on your favorite news categories, horoscopes, weather, and more.

The new Metro News app also has offline reading available, so you can read on the subway or other areas without connectivity, just like its paper counterpart.

And for all of you Android users out there, you’ll be happy to know that this app was designed with native Andorid conventions in mind.  Now you’ll have an Android app, built for an Android phone.

One app works for all of Metro’s cities: Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Windsor, London, Kitchener, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal (en francais), and Halifax.  Just let the Metro app find your location and you’re ready to read!

Want to get it?  Click here.

Metro’s press release here.

Similar to its smaller counterpart, the iPhone 4 and 4S, the new iPad has a beautiful high resolution Retina Display that has resulted in a 4x increase in pixels, at 2048 x 1536 pixels per inch. That’s a million more pixels than an HDTV. Unfortunately, users can’t take full advantage of the retina display until apps are updated to support this high resolution.

To update your app to support the new iPad Retina Display you need to supply specially designed images for the higher resolution retina display. Icons, buttons, spinners, checkboxes and list selectors are affected as well, so extra development time is required to create and add these new images.

For an estimate on the time required for Xtreme Labs to update your app to be retina display ready, please contact us at sales@xtremelabs.com.

For each quarterly event our founders, Amar and Sunny, come in and give us a rundown on company highlights from the past couple of months.  The best part about this company-wide forum is the closing Q&A session, where employees come loaded with their most brain-busting questions.

This Q&A session holds the most value for our employees because it allows for more transparency between the various departments within Xtreme Labs.

The cherry on the top of the sundae?  Apple TVs for all!  Just a little way to show that we care.  I wonder what’s next….

With these findings, it’s no wonder Canada’s largest film exhibitor company, Cineplex, turned to Xtreme Labs to develop its mobile strategy. The Cineplex app was created in HTML5 and can be used across all major platforms including iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android.

Not only can users purchase tickets right from inside the app, it also has excellent functionality. It features
• a Cineplex and non-Cineplex brand theatre locator;
• a SCENE Points Balance tracker, complete with a barcode that allows users to scan and collect points from their phone; and
• connects movie goers to Facebook making their movie experience social.

The creation of the app has helped Cineplex leverage its online presence and develop an integrative social-mobile strategy. The app uses Facebook’s Open Graph, which is responsible for enabling the experience of using the app to become social. Open Graph allows third party websites and pages that people have ‘liked’ throughout the web to be included on Facebook’s site as an extension of its social graph. Users can instantly update friends by using Facebook actions found inside the app. Users can let friends know what movie their seeing with the “I’m Going” button, which posts a movie title with a theatre location; they can share movie information via the “Tell Friends” button and “Like” different movies.

Cineplex has experienced a surge of engagement online as a result of the creation of this fantastic application. Having successfully found a comprehensive way to search for movie information, the Cineplex app makes going to the movies even more social.