sprout

Facebook has acquired Strobe, a startup focused on the open-source SproutCore software--but CNET has learned that a new startup called Tilde looks to be picking up where Strobe is leaving off.

SproutCore is a package of prebuilt JavaScript code designed to ease the creation of Web sites and Web apps, including those that work on mobile devices. Charles Jolley has worked on SproutCore for years, including for a period of time at Apple where SproutCore was used in MobileMe services, before striking off on his own to form Strobe.

Several programmers left Strobe in October to begin a new start-up … Read more

Strobe, a start-up focusing on publishing tools that employ a new generation of Web standards, has secured first-round funding.

Chief Executive and co-founder Charles Jolley announced the move today but declined to share exactly how much Hummer-Winblad and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures bestowed upon his company. The company's technology is based on a project called SproutCore that Jolley has been working on for years, including several while at Apple. Jolley left Apple in July.

SproutCore uses JavaScript and other Web tools to endow Web pages with user interfaces more like what one would expect of a native application. It … Read more

Charles Jolley, one of the primary creators of the SproutCore programming tools for building rich Web applications, has left Apple and struck off on his own to start a new company based on the technology.

Jolley announced the new start-up, Strobe Digital Publishing, in a blog post last week, saying the new company will continue to develop SproutCore, offer SproutCore training, and focus on publishing.

"Every so often a few technology trends converge that yield results much greater than their individual parts. I think we have reached one of those moments with mobile devices (like the iPad) and HTML5,&… Read more

If you think getting your teenage or preteen kid an iPhone will spoil them, you are right. It sure will! But if you have a preschooler, there's now a good excuse to spoil yourself with one.

An excuse of possible better parenting, that is.

PBS Kids Sprout, the on-demand TV channel and online service for kids ages 2-5 and their parents, announced Thursday its two iPhone applications for preschoolers on the go, called Sprout Player and Dress Chica. These applications are the result of the collaboration between PBS Kids Sprout and New Wave Entertainment studio.

The Sprout Player is a video player application that streams 3- to 4-minute Sprout shows. The player offers simple audio instructions voiced by Kelly Vrooman, one of the hosts of Sprout's "Sunny Side Up Show" that airs every weekday morning.

The Player also includes an area where parents can view Sprout's programming schedule for upcoming events.

The Dress Chica application, on the other hand, is an extension of a popular online game currently featured on Sprout Online's Web site. The iPhone app allows you to touch and drag items of clothing onto Chica, the bird mascot of Sprout, to get her dressed. … Read more

Apple, continuing its reliance on open-source technologies, is using an open-source project called SproutCore to provide rich Internet applications like its new MobileMe service.

The idea is to use to keep Apple from being "locked into the browser plug-ins for...one particular standard."

What is SproutCore? From the SproutCore Web site:

SproutCore is a framework for building applications in JavaScript with remarkably little amounts of code. It can help you build full "thick" client applications in the Web browser that can create and modify data, often completely independent of your Web server, communicating with your server via Ajax only when they need to save or load data.

SproutCore gives Apple a way to enrich its Web experience without locking itself into any other vendor's technology, as the SproutCore site notes:… Read more

Apple may be looking at an open-source solution as a way to get around Adobe Systems' Flash technology.

Roughly Drafted was able to find a developer willing to talk about last week's Worldwide Developers Conference sessions, which are supposed to be confidential. But these things have a way of coming to light, and one session on Friday apparently covered a technology called SproutCore that could give Apple a way to get its Cocoa development frameworks into the hearts and minds of Web developers.

Web applications are big these days, and developers are continuously looking for ways to improve the … Read more

Sprout is a Flash authoring environment that puts the two Flash authoring environments I just covered to shame. Completely Flash based, it lets you put all your media into a Flash app that's easily pushed into widgets.

Spout widgets also let viewers subscribe to updates to a presentation via RSS, share them, and so on.

In the demo the CEO showed Spout's clear and capable authoring environment. Unfortunately I can't show you the authoring environment because it's not yet live on the site. There's a video of the authoring environment here. And here's a … Read more

This seems like a lot of money to do some time-lapse photography, but if you're an aspiring science teacher it will undoubtedly produce better footage of plants growing than the reel-to-reel films we were subjected to in grade school. This all-in-one system from Harbortronics can also provide a lesson in alternative energy because it runs on solar power.

The package includes a Pentax K110D Digital SLR, two 2GB memory cards and an automatic shutter controller for $2,300, according to Uncrate. Let's hope the photos look better than the system itself, which resembles a camera stuck in a … Read more