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LyteRAD… zero coding Rapid Application Development framework for mobiles & desktops

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For a blog, whose name starts with the word ‘web’, a write-up about a non-web product might seems anti-thetical. Nevertheless this post is a testimony to the “horses for courses approach”. The web is the future, it has just not been evenly distributed as yet.

lyte_logo.jpg LyteRad is a a Rapid Application Development framework for creating light-weight database applications without writing any code. Developers can use this framework to build desktop & mobile database applications- they can create solutions, share or sell them. LyteRad is a product from LyteCube, a microISV based out of Bangalore and it has Maheedhar & Girish as its lead developers & founders.

Built on the Java platform, LyteRad contains all the building blocks to put together a complete application quickly. It minimises the need for database administration and server configuration, so that developers can focus on building applications quickly. It is possible to build complete business solutions with zero code; lightweight applications use embedded databases for simplicity (data is stored as binary files, and it can be migrated into databases anytime); more robust applications can be built using the PRO version that supports major databases (Oracle, Postgres, MySQL). The framework includes features like simple data mining & visualization tools for deeper insights into the data. Some examples of applications built using LyteRAD (these apps are free to download & use or modify as needed)- small business suite (this contains basic financial, CRM & marketing modiules), personal productivity suite (consists of an expense tracker, media/books catalogue etc), healthcare suite for managing clicnical records of a small clicnic & Education Suite (to help a small school manage its records). The pricing is straightforward – the basic edition (called LyteRad CE) is free, while the paid version (called LyteRAD Pro) costs 149$ per license. Go here if you want to check out the documentation.

The company is targeting small businesses in the Indian market who want to build a custom application, but are not willing to spend a lot of money developing it.

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So in the increasingly web-centric world of today, why would people use something like LyteRad in preference to SAAS solutions? The founders believe that many small businesses are not IT savvy and are hesitant to use hosted solutions due to security, privacy & reliability issues. They want something that can be installed on their own machines and needs little administration. That’s their target market.

LyteRad also allows you to create application for the mobile platform. The Pro edition can be used to build mobile RADlets – these are mini applications providing limited functionality of a desktop LyteRAD application on a J2ME enabled mobile device. This is a demo for how to build a mobile RADlet on a mobile device itself.

Tagg… group SMS messaging solution

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tagg.jpgTagg is a free web & mobile based mass messaging platform that you can use for any of your purposes. This could be for (seemingly) noble causes like group SMS, micro-blogging etc, or for less noble ones like spamming users with unsolicited SMS (by users, not by Tagg).

The way it works is fairly simple. You can start a group (called Taggivity) which others can subscribe to. You can send out updates that will get forwarded to all the subscribers. This can be done from the web interface or from the mobile usings SMS. Their revenue model is based on advertising – text/banners ad on the website and a short ad that is appended to SMS’s being sent out.

Group SMS is actually a valuable service. I can imagine lots of people wanting to use this – organisations, schools, teachers, salesmen etc. The ability to send our free SMS to all subscribers (who could be students, employees, friends, family members etc) is fairly useful. Specially when its free. And SMS is a proven winner…. no GPRS, EDGE, 3G hangovers there.

SMSgupshup is a similar service and I believe, it has a fair bit of traction as well. So how is Tagg any different from SMSgupshup? Well the Tagg team insists that they are more focused on user experience- as a result they have a normal number 9980199801 as opposed to a shortcode, which also means its cheaper for user to post through their service. Not entirely convincing, I would say!

The web application could do with better layout & design, specially on the landing page for an individual group.