We are working with a couple of ideas right now. One is an app built by a friend's company. The other is a general app for keeping up on our film on any platform.

The first app will tie the film into physical locations in the world. It's my hope to have some version of it to show in Park City on the 23rd. But no promises as of yet, and I don't want to give a lot away until we know it works. I'll just say that the goal is to connect the real world with the story of the film. This is going to be an important marketing tool for us.

For the info app though, I am actually leaning more toward a mobile version of our site. So much easier to do, esp with the plugins I've found for WP, like WordPress Mobile Leveraging our exiting web platform instead of an app just makes life so much easier, for obvious reasons. It also does not limit any of the shenanegans we want to do, like have our site periodically "hacked" by characters in the film. It allows you to completely customize the mobile version of your site to be whatever you want, and it handles sending all UserAgents to the right place based on device. You can even customize that as well, telling it which devices to serve and which not.

Additionally, going this route, the update process is instant, when you want new features, or to just change things. With an app, not so much. There's approval processes involved that can eat up weeks.

As for starting an app, programming-wise for the iPhone, you need to get their SDK of course, but if you are not a programmer already, you will not just pick it up and start. It's not difficult for experienced programmers, but it's slightly more complicated than say, Java. In addition, you have to be aware of all of the issues regarding limited processor, memory, etc. So you're better off hiring someone who already knows this stuff.

I have not looked into Android yet, but I think it has a Java api. But same thing. You're not just going to come in cold and start making apps.

I saw one service that makes apps for you in an automated fashion, but they only seemed to have a sort of customizable RSS reader. And for the price, I would go back to WP-Mobile for RSS.

I've been encouraging everyone to leverage the WP-Mobile as much as they can, because anyone can get up and running with that with very little effort and time and expertise, if they are on WP.

Just saw Kieran's post. We will likely be looking at SimpleGeo, as well.

First up, yes, I firmly believe that mobile apps have value for filmmakers and, in time, we'd like to help filmmakers and app developers use our data. Almost every piece of data on OpenIndie is being geocoded, in some cases for the future and in some cases because we need that info to do geo-spacial calculations for audience demand etc.

We've just started talking to SimpleGeo.com about being part of their beta and using their cloud based geo-location technologies as part of our build. I'd be really interested to hear from filmmakers who'd be interested in using our data, especially those who'd like to use it as part of their storytelling. Likewise, if anyone has any suggestions of data we might not already be capturing that could be useful to you in either distributing your film or making your story more immersive please contact me: kieran AT openindie DOT com

I've some experience with Objective-C and the iPhone SDK when building a couple of little demonstration apps for previous employers. Nothing that ended up on the store though. There's a couple of "frameworks" out there that are worth noting, they all have varing degrees of complexity and wildly differing definitions of what framework actually means but they're all worth a look if you're interested in this arena:

• PhoneGap build iPhone apps with Javascript.
• Unity3D 3D games development.
• Kyte Commercial "turn-key" solution for mobile application development.
• TapLynx as above, commercial "turn-key"

Finally, here's a blog post I found a while ago about Javascript framework development for the iPhone, again worth a look.

I can't vouch for any of the frameworks or turn-key solutions above, I just thought they would add to this conversation. Mark is most certainly right if you're planning to build a cross-platform mobile app for your project you need to outsource to someone with expertise in the field. Even with software development skills in house that's what OpenIndie will likely be doing.

Mark, perhaps you and I should talk? We're clearly in a similar space i.e. software development and film drop me a line sometime kieran AT openindie DOT com

How do we find out what data you're collecting Kieran? Regarding mobile apps - I think there will be many in the near future. I'm hoping that someone will make an app that lets you put in key words to recommend a film and then it will tell you where you can buy/rent or download it. Also, regarding marketing with mobile apps, we're thinking about making ring tones of lines from our movie that we think will become famous if the film is successful.

First NEW BREED POST about out Transmedia effort and demo of our first iPhone app.