How to convert a website into an iPhone or Android App

Recently a friend asked if I know how to create an iPhone or Android app for the purpose of promoting his blog within these two mobile platforms.

He mentioned that more and more celebrities and businesses are tapping into the mobile market by offering paid / free apps about themselves or their associated companies.

Since he’s got quite a number of fans on his health and fitness-related blog, he’s now wondering if he could somehow put together an iPhone or Android app which consists of some of the following content/features:

• News
• Events
• Articles
• Videos
• Gym recommendations
• Social networking within the mobile app

I told him that in order to create an iPhone app, he should learn Cocoa with Objective C to program the app and this is just one of the many requirements. I sent him this article on how to create your first iPhone application.

After going through the article, he mentioned that he needed something simpler. Something that allows him to focus on generating content such as those listed above without having to worry about all the technical stuff like programming and designing.

So I searched around and found one which fits his requirements – ShoutEm.

ShoutEm allows you to build a mobile application without the hassle of coding and designing.

Basically, it allows you to integrate and convert all your website content through RSS right into the iPhone or Android App and upon completion helps you publish the application into iTunes AppStore and Android Marketplace.

I tried the mobile app maker by registering for a ShoutEm account. If you too would like to give ShoutEm a try, use this beta code: aseasyasitgets

Creating the app is as simple as a three-step process:

Adding Content

The various types of content that you can add to your app include:

• News
• Places
• Events
• Photos
• Videos
• Community
• Audio Podcasts
• Radio Streaming

Note that most of the above content is probably available on your website already so all you need to do is simply specify the website URL or RSS feed where your content is.

Something that differentiates ShoutEm from its competitors has to be its community feature which allows your fans/users to interact and stay in touch the social networking way.

Designing the App

Giving your app some design is really simple. All you need to do is to cut out or resize your logo or images according to the specified sizes followed by uploading them all.

You can also specify the main brand color which will be used in many places throughout the application.

Test and publish the App

When you’re done adding content and designing your app, you can now test it by downloading ShoutEm Mobilizer iPhone App from the AppStore.

Basically, it lets you test drive your app from within a real iPhone so you can ensure that everything works well before it is published to iTunes.

As for testing on Android devices, I didn’t see any way to do this so I guess you’ll need to publish it first followed by downloading the app from Android Marketplace.

I hope today’s post shows you a way how to easily convert your website content into an iPhone or Android app.

For more details do check out ShoutEm today.