Organizations concerned about the growing popularity of bring your own device to work policies may be comforted by the release of RADE3. Retriever Communications, a provider of mobile force field automation, released its newest development environment this week. RADE3, which stands for Retriever Application Development Environment, allows developers to create device-agnostic native applications for a variety of business workflows.

Developers, according to Mary Brittain-White, CEO of Retriever Communications, can create applications on RADE3 without having to go outside of the environment to deploy the code.

RADE3 writes an abstraction lawyer above the OS-specific API and then enables the applications to allow end-users to have full control for editing assets, adding information or receiving notifications, Brittain-White said.

Brittain-White said that Retriever’s write-once, deploy natively approach does not include HTML5 mobile Web-based applications that are wrapped, as many of the other development and deployment tools do. She said it is important for these enterprise applications to have a larger database running in the background to allow full support for in the field workflows, such as a contractor who needs to input data into an insurance claim form. These types of workflows cannot be supported by HTML5 mobile Web-based applications, she said, because they need to work instantly and correctly for each and every transaction. Lag time is not acceptable for many organizations creating business applications at the enterprise level, she said.

RADE3 and the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP), which powers the write-once deploy natively feature, is available as a free download. These applications are built with a GUI interface that delivers a dynamic user experience even when users are offline or in an area with sporadic coverage.

Todd Olson, vice president of products at Rally Software, said the company is hosting a Hackathon -- starting today, April 30 -- to promote innovation around the Rally ALM platform.

Rally's platform has a variety of apps -- ranging from company-specific alterations to the Kanban Board designed by Rally engineers -- and during the Hackathon, the company hopes to contribute a significant amount of new apps to the platform. Developers who use Rally's platform will be able to download anything created at the Hackathon from GitHub, a product of Rally's collaboration with GitHub. Olson said Rally will also make a significant number of its existing applications available on GitHub so developers can tinker with the code and perhaps provide new integrations.

Additionally, the company is announcing a new SDK for the Rally platform, which Olson said will help developers create apps for the platform at an increased rate. Developers at the Hackathon will also have an exclusive preview of Rally's Analytics API which will give them access to all historical data in the platform. Olson said the Analytics API has been requested by customers and will also help developers map data from other applications (through the use of applications, and perhaps by creating their own applications) to get a complete ALM picture.

Sencha Architect 2 is built on EXT Designer and allows developers to not only build user interfaces, but entire mobile applications. This is based on HTML5 and allows for full app development, with Sencha Touch 2 (another portion of the HTML5 development suite) available for mobile applications. 

This is the evolution of Sencha's design tool, according to Aditya Bansod, senior director of product management at Sencha. 

Developers can deploy native applications directly from Architect according to Bansod, as they can with mobile applications in Sencha Touch 2. It supports MVC architecture and can help developers new to HTML5 really get a strong understanding of the platform, he said. 

This is a "rich visual builder," Bansod said, adding that this IDE will truly help developers enhance their Web applications, along with their mobile apps. 

How do you build HTML5 applications? Will you consider using Sencha's tool? 

More reading on Sencha's HTML5 development suite:

Sencha releases cloud development platform

Sencha Touch 2 brings iOS development to the PC

Google Play, a cloud-based Web store, which offers apps, books, movies and music to all Android users and anyone on the Web, has replaced Google’s Android Market, Google announced yesterday. Google Play also includes Google music and the eBookstore. All content formerly available in the Market is now available in Google Play.

According to the blog post on the Android Developers blog, Google said apps and games will remain at the core of the Google Play market. The goal, according to the post, is to expand the “reach, content and monetization opportunities of the Android Market.” End-users can now access their Google Play selections from anywhere on the Web and all apps, music and books will be stored with their individual profiles.

What do you think of this "improvement?" 

CompTIA, a non-profit trade association for the information technology industry, has created a new member community aimed at supporting, and expanding, IT career opportunities for women. 

Called Advancing Women in IT Community, this group is committed to "empowering women with knowledge and skills necessary to help their pursuit of successful IT careers as well as to inspire women to make the IT field their career choice," according to the release announcing the news. 

"Women have realized many breakthroughs in the work place, but the truth is our progress has stalled in IT, " said Nancy Hammervik, senior vice president, industry relations, CompTIA in a statement. 

Hammervik is, in my opinion, correct -- it seems that there aren't many women in the tech field and I'm wondering why that is. What do you think? Do you think we, women of the world, need some more skills? Or do we need the "fun" tech world to understand that it's not all about nerf guns and Nintendos? 

You can learn more about the new community here, and be sure to share your thoughts with us below.

Want a free book? I mean, who doesn't like free things? If you do (and we're thinking you do) and you want to learn more about jQuery, this giveaway is for you. 

Like us on Facebook and share this with your friends on Google+ and Twitter. 

We will pick a winner once we've gotten to 200 likes on Facebook. The book is available on Feb.28 and you can read more information about it here. We've got the first chapter as well. We've also got one more surprise form our Friends at Apress, but you'll have to help us get to 200 likes before we share that. 

So run and like us, and tell your friends to, too. 

Hiring managers often search job boards, read emails and scour resumes to find the perfect candidates. Now, your job may be a little easier with a company called GitHire. 

GitHire offers a Web service -- for $1000 they'll find five engineeres interested in interviewing with your company. According to their website, they scour Git repositories for you in order to find the best and brightest. 

Software engineers are offered an interview with a company they may be a match for and if they say no, they say no -- no strings, no questions. 

The NY Times wrote an extensive piece on the service and we thought it might be interesting to share with you. Would you (or have you) used a headhunter service?

Trade organizations offer professionals a way to meet new colleagues, find out about job opportunities, get discounts and learn more about the field they've chosen. Developers have access to tons of different developer networks -- you've got the Android Developers' blog, the iOS developer network, Windows has one and RIM does too, but wouldn't it be nice to have access to tips and tricks for all those, in one place?

That's the goal of the Application Developers Alliance, a newly formed non-profit trade organization. Their goal, according to Jake Ward, head of communications, is to be the voice of the development industry, agnostic of process/language and platform, globally. The Alliance is free to join (for the time being), has no age restrictions and hopes to offer more discounts beyond the ones they're currently offering, which include some savings on Rackspace hosting and app dev training courses.

Check out the site -- the Alliance Network functions like LinkedIn and allows you to communicate with other developers, share tips, view message boards and search job postings.

Ward said the organization does not aim to discredit any work others have done in the past -- in fact, he said, he starts off most interactions with Meetups and other organizations by acknowledging the great work they've done so far and then asking how the Alliance can help.

As of right now, the Alliance has about 2300 members, many of are based in the US, but approximately 700 are based internationally.

Will you join the Alliance? Do you think there is a need for this?

To learn more visit the website, follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook.

Happy Thursday folks! Hopefully you're settled into the week, and year, and looking for a bit of fun this morning.Prepare to be wowed, and perhaps a bit shocked, by the following YouTube video. Even if you don't code, I think any self-proclaimed geek will enjoy it. Have a better one? Share it with us and we'll tweet it!

Happy Coding!