If you've attended any of the MongoDB conferences that 10Gen has put on in the last few months, you hopefully got a chance to check out two fun OpenShift talks: Grant Shipley's "Mobilize MongoDB! - Developing iPhone and Android Apps using Appcelerator and OpenShift" and Steve Citron-Pousty's "Get Your Spatial On with MongoDB in the Cloud."

For those of you who haven't caught Grant's talk, he's serialized it in a four part blog series on 10gen.com. But, in case you are just too damn lazy to read the blog posts, 10Gen will be hosting a webinar version of the "Mobilize MongoDB!" talk on Tuesday, August 28th at 1 PM Eastern. You can sign up here to reserve your spot.

In the blog series, Grant walks you through how to build a mobile application from scratch using a sample application he wrote called "BeerShift." Grant came up with the idea for the application while preparing for a speaking gig at MongoDB Brussels. He was looking for an app that would allow him to make informed decisions about the beers he might order in Belgium. He was also interested in being able to quickly get a description of the beer, the location of the brewery in was brewed at and any taste ratings. Like any application design, there was some feature creep before it was completed. Everyone wanted a social element added to it, so that other folks using BeerShift could rate beers, note the location in which they drank them and track each others consumption.

In Part 1 of the blog series Grant kicks it off with an overview of what the BeerShift application is and what it's going to take to develop it. Part 2 details the required components and software that are going to be required to get BeerShift to run on iPhone and Android. He also shows you how to get the backend systems up and running, including MongoDB. Part 3 covers the development of the backend REST services and getting everything running on OpenShift. He also shows you how to register for the brewerydb.com API key so that the backend can make remote REST calls to look up beer and brewery information. He concludes the series with Part 4 by walking thorugh the application code in Appcelerator's Titanium Studio.

The other great talk that's not to be missed if you get a chance to hear it is Steve's "Get Your Spatial On!" Using the command line and a fair bit of chutzpah he shows you how to build your own version of FourSquare in the cloud using MongoDB's spatial functionality. If didn't make it out to MongoSF this year, you can check out the recording of the talk here.

And by the way, if haven't already signed up for OpenShift, boy are you are missing out! Specifically on 1.5 GB of RAM and 3 GB of Storage to run MongoDB and your apps. All it takes is an email address and a few clicks to get MongoDB and your app in the cloud. Looking for additional resources on how to make the most of MongoDB in the cloud? Check out these handy links and the OpenShift docs. Got questions? We have answers! Post them in the OpenShift forums so we can help you out!