Research In Motion has made another acquisition-mobile development company TinyHippos. In an announcement on both RIM’s development blog and TinyHippos blog, the BlackBerry manufacturer said that it bought the Waterloo-based development team (RIM is also based in Waterloo) for their extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development. Terms of the deal are not disclosed.
TinyHippos develops Ripple, a multi-platform mobile environment emulator that runs in a web browser and is custom-tailored to HTML5 mobile application testing (we’ve embedded a demo video below). It essentially allows developers to “look under the hood” of mobile applications to see how the apps are performing in a variety of mobile environments.
Ripple, which was launched in 2009, also offers the ability to test and debug HTML5 mobile apps and offers multiple device and screen resolution emulation in real-time without having to redeploy the mobile application or restart the emulator. Ripple is actually built as a Chrome extension, running as part of the Chrome browser.
RIM says it will use the technology to offer a mobile environment simulator to the developers building apps for the BlackBerry platform. Apparently, Ripple will continue to be offered for download to the public as well. And the TinyHippos team will be working to bring BlackBerry support to the Ripple product.
RIM also recently purchased professional contact manager Gist, and UI development team The Astonishing Tribe.
BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion) is a Canadian designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless devices and solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. The company is best known as the developer of the BlackBerry smart phone. Blackberry technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data. Blackberry was founded in 1984. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific....
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