The Roundarch Labs team has been working on some really impressive projects for mobile development.  Roundarch had previously released the Avis iPhone app which fully integrates directly with the Avis reservations system.  It was the first fully integrated mobile application for a rental car company. Building on this success we developed and helped the band release the Wilco iPhone app.

The project was such an exciting opportunity for Roundarch because so many on the team are Wilco fans.  What better than to be working on a mobile app for one of your favorite Grammy Award winning bands?  We were able to design the app based on the functionality we would love to use ourselves.

The functionality includes:

• Up to the minute news and complete tour listings including pre-sales, maps to venues, requests, ridesharing, etc.
• Ability to listen to your favorite Wilco tracks from their discography, including Ashes to American Flags, as well as the Wilco Podcast.
• Ability to watch videos.
• View photos published live from the road.

The Wilco app was developed using our “Mobile Web Enabler Proxy.”
  This allows the app to work more like a Web application utilizing an Adobe AIR-like framework that utilizes webkit.  This framework contains a Request Translator and Content Transformation layer, and is designed to provide a standards-based mechanism for the delivery of content to a number of webkit based smart phones in the marketplace.

The team at wilcoworld.net has a ton of excellent content so we decided to use the Wilco app to test the web layer out. It works amazingly well and we are all quite happy with the result.  The major milestone of the app was developing a media streaming solution that worked with our web-based front end, which will enable us to migrate to other platforms with relative ease.

I’m extremely happy to say that the Wilco mobile application hit the iTunes App Store last month.  The Roundarch Labs team is excited to help give Wilco fans a chance to have a little bit of the band in their pocket.  Wilco is set to release their seventh studio album Wilco (The Album) on June 30th, 2009.