Part of i/o Ventures first cohort, Pieceable is launching its first product today, the Pieceable Viewer. As you can see above with the Yelp app or here with apps like Hipmunk or Foodspotting, the viewer allows you to run and test out embeddable iPhone apps from your web browser.
Developers can publish their apps directly to the service and the Pieceable team will create a web page that displays a fully functional copy of the app. Developers or anyone who needs to share an app can then send a link to whomever they’d like to give the demo to.
“It ends up being the easiest way ever to share an iPhone app on the web,” CEO Fred Potter tells me. “There’s no UDID exchange, there’s no worry about the 100-device limit Apple places on dev accounts – it’s zero friction and hassle.”
Using Flash to simulate the app’s functionality, Pieceable Viewer works without any code modifications on the developer’s side, “It’s literally a one line command to publish an existing app to the viewer service,” says Potter.
But Pieceable Viewer isn’t Pieceable’s core product. The company itself, in the same space as Mobile Roadie and AppMakr, aims to be a WordPress for mobile platforms, helping people write apps even if they don’t know how to code.
Potter explains, “We’re focusing a lot on making sure people can build rich apps that have a very custom look and feel. But at the same time, we’re trying to make app creation as easy as it can be (on the same level as setting up something like a blog).” The company should be fully launching in the next couple of months.
Helping non-techies make apps is cool and all but I’m pretty satisfied with just the Pieceable Viewer, which should also support Android in the coming weeks. My grand vision for this is that tech reporters can use the service to include working app demos along with app reviews. Imagine how cool it would be if readers could actually try out the app while reading about it?
Currently the Viewer has a tiered-pricing plan, with Free getting you 1 simultaneous viewer, 1 app and a link that expires, $30 getting you 3 simultaneous viewers and 5 iPhone apps, and $60 getting you 10 viewers, unlimited apps in addition to app links that never expire.
Pieceable’s Viewer product enables native iOS apps to be run from within a web browser. The service is largely used by developers and marketers as a no-hassle way to demonstrate apps over the web.
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