Government, dragons, traffic lights & Mippin?

Mippin is keeping some impressive company this week. Yesterday we were shortlisted by Google for their second Android Developers Challenge. Today we learn we're shortlisted by UK Government no less, for a new technology awards initiative called iAwards.


Okay, so the judging panel might not all be quite government, but iAwards is backed by Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson, plus Dragon's Den star James Caan. There's a real mix of award categories, including Energy and Environment (featuring environmentally friendly traffic lights), Cross-Application of Technology and Next Big Thing; Mippin has made it through to the last three in the Digital Communications category with our Buzz Widgets, so we'll be attending the ceremony next week and hopefully bumping in to some of the great and good from across the UK tech industry. With Mr Caan in tow, we might even see Mippin's "mobile content publishing" pitch on Dragons Den one day! What's really amazing though is how successfully tech is infiltrating all areas of our lives, and it will be great for Mippin and the work we do on mobile to be recognised alongside a wider range of tech development across so many other industries.

ADC2 Round 1 Results Are In

Everyone needs a little good news on Monday morning...

And here it is! A few months back, we entered 3 of our applications into Google's second Android Development Challenge, and we have just been informed that 2 of those have made it to the second (and final) round of judging. Mippin's Fun Buzz Widget (in the entertainment category) and Buzz Deck (in the media category) will be judged in the coming weeks both by the Android community and a team of Google-selected judges -- we've got our fingers crossed, but it's already an honor to make it this far.

Entrants were able to enter apps into 1 of 10 categories, and prizes are awarded to the top 3 in each category as well as the top 3 overall. (The grand prize is a whopping $250,000 -- wonder how many table football tables that could get us?)

Congratulations to the 198 other applications that have made it this far! The competition is certainly fierce. To check out the list of the final 200 apps, just click here.

Mippin's Daily News Pick: Mippin's Daily News Pick

Mippin loves news. It's sort of a given since we work with it every day, and yet its not often that we share our own take on the world with our Mippin fans or users. So starting this week, we'll be endeavoring to share one news item each day which catches our fancy. It won't be particularly serious in nature, but we hope it will be interesting, funny, or a little bit unusual.... definitely plenty of those stories out there and they usually get found by at least one of us here in the office. Now we'll also be letting you know about it too via our Twitter account.


Unless you find the story first? If you do, you can let us know and we'll be sure to share. Either way, hope you enjoy our new Mippin's Daily News Pick over on twitter.com/mippin.

Designing Your App With The Consumer in Mind

Our very own Head of Creative, David Mannl aka Flashy got invited to give a presentation at the Mobile Web Event today (20th October 2009).

The topic (Designing Your App With The Consumer in Mind) couldn't have been better as it is part of our company DNA to always focus on the consumer whilst designing and developing our mobile apps and services.

Your honest feedback helps us to create the apps you love. As it says on the 2nd slide: "Nobody gets it 100% right the 1st time" but with your help we eventually will get it right.

See the presentation embedded below:

Buzz Deck Review on Revision3

We are loving this review of Buzz Deck for Android from Jim Louderback at Revision3. (Of course we love all reviews here at Mippin, but especially the good ones!) The show notes posted on the revision3.com say this:

"Want a neat way to keep up to date with news, sports & weather on your Android? Buzz Deck delivers that, plus links to social networks and more!"

Couldn't have said it better ourselves!



It is worth noting that a few of the 'cons' listed have been changed since the initial launch of Buzz Deck. You can now create your own custom card based on any website! and we're tweaking the content to be more specific to the country. We've also added the card name (like 'Tech' or 'Gadgets') to the stories just to sort out any confusion there.

Christmas in October for Mippin HQ

Not to brag (again...) but here at Mippin we have just fallen into some serious £££. And by "fallen", I mean we brought our A game to the Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators competition a few months back and nabbed a very lovely trophy (and, of course, cash prize).

So, we're spoiling ourselves a bit. We're buying one-eighth of a Porsche and splitting it between all of the employees!

...Kidding. We're just in the market for some office entertainment -- one big toy (and maybe some little ones). There's a Google doc circulating which everyone's adding suggestions to, but I'm pretty sure my suggestion of 'hamster' is a no-go (probable death over the weekend was a good enough reason to nix it). But we do have a more plausible 'ant farm' on the list of potentials so I suppose that would be enough to fulfill my goal in getting a live toy.

But on to the good stuff. The two main contenders right now are table tennis and table football (aka foosball). Very reputable options. Also on the list are a 'Nerf Havok Fire Automatic Blaster,' which does look as cool as it sounds, and a 'Basketball Super Shoot Out'. There's a flatscreen TV on the list as well, but I think that might cross the line from fun toy to serious timewaster, so that's out. And then there's a sofa, but that's like riding the bore-train into Snoozetown, no?


So what should it be? Table tennis? Table football? Nerf Blaster? 7000 of those little cocktail umbrellas? A giant inflatable mobile phone? One very large cake for every day for the rest of the year? Suggestions are welcome.

Introducing Buzz Deck!

Mippin's Android Competition entry (ADC2) makes it's first appearance.


At your fingertips
Flick through your favourite topics and stories with ease.

May we recommend?
Buzz Deck learns quickly and adds recommended content to your experience.

Stay social
Get Twitter and Facebook updates alongside your daily hit of news content.

No fluff
Simple, elegant and fast. No Waiting. Buzz Deck just works.

More info at http://mippin.com/buzzdeck

CelebriTweets: Your Newest Guilty Pleasure

Do you want to know what MC Hammer ate for breakfast this morning?

Do you want to see first-hand who Lily Allen is antagonizing today?

Do you want to read about Jessica Simpson's dog being eaten by a coyote?

Well, I sure do. (And I bet you do, too -- even if you won't admit it.)

With Mippin's newest channel, CelebriTweets, you can keep up to date with all of your favorite celebrity Twitter accounts. We've got everyone from Snoop Dogg and Kim Kardashian to Paris Hilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, so all of the bases are covered when it comes to your guilty pleasures. You can catch up with the whole group (there's over 100 and counting) just by checking out the latest stories stream, or subscribe to your favorite celebs individually and get their Twitter feeds right on your homepage.


Both TwitPics and TweetPhotos show up in the story itself (without having to click on any additonal links) and all of the @usernames are clickable as well. (Which is always helpful when trying to find out how Sam Ronson replied to Lindsay Lohan's desperate tweets -- or, how she didn't reply, as has been the case recently. Oh the drama!)

So go on, check out what the celebs are celebritweeting... (You know you want to.)

Running rings around donut - Android 1.6 SDK Screen Sizes

Over the past couple of weeks Motorola, SonyEricsson, INQ, LG, GeekPhone ONE, Samsung, Archos and HTC have all make Android related announcements. For an Android fan like myself that is big. Now to top it all off the announcement of the Android 1.6 SDK makes it a pretty good week.

After a few hours hands on, here is what it means to us.

There are new screen sizes supported. In addtion to the regular 320x480px HVGA screen resolution there are now QVGA (240x320), WVGA800 (800x480) and WVGA854 (854x480). But what does that mean for applications? will developers have to update their apps to support the new sizes? Well I've tested all of our Android applications out and the news is good, here are the results:

News Buzz Widget WVGA_856px on left, QVGA on right:

Somehow Google/Android have managed to get the scaling algorithms to work like magic, they maintain aspect ratios where necessary and scale to fill as much of the screen as they can whenever possible. This knocks a big worry on the head for me, I was concerned about the fragmentation problems of different screen sizes. Of course there are still issues, but they are minimal and most importantly the apps are still perfectly useable and 100% functional.

Good job, well done.

Extra! Extra!

Mippin has been selected as one of the Tech Media Invest Top 100 companies in the UK, which was published in today's Guardian (sponsored by Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Kemp Little). According to the website, the 100 companies were "picked for their innovation and creativity over the past year in areas as diverse as mobile applications, racing games and music recognition." We're blushing!


It's such an honor to be on the list with other companies whose products we use/enjoy/admire (Getjar, Spotify, AudioBoo, etc). And, of course, it's always nice to be rewarded for hard work!

So pick up a copy of today's Guardian while you still can and check it out for yourself! (Personally, I might laminate a copy and send it to my parents. Just an idea.)

May We Recommend...

Mippin's not just about accessing the content you already know you like -- it's also about discovering the content you didn't even know you'd like. For example, without Mippin I'd never have found gems like Lifehacker (and Hollywood Backwash, I admit). If only she had the time, Mippin's own Teri would be happy to recommend excellent new sites to each and every Mippin user personally. But fortunately the machinery at Mippin comes through with tips of its own: on your My Sites page, notice that "Sites you might also like" section?

Using the same bag of tricks that Amazon uses to recommend books or DVDs based on past purchases, known in the biz as "collaborative filtering", Mippin can likewise guess at sites you will like to read, based on past visits. Sometimes they're like the sites you already read -- sometimes it gets daring and recommends a couple sites you might not normally consider reading. Try it. The more you read, the more Mippin can help, and the more quality articles will live in your Mippin homepage.

How's it done? Mippin uses software from Apache's open-source "Mahout" machine learning project (http://lucene.apache.org/mahout) to figure out what you might be interested in. I am in the fortunate position of being a part of both Mahout and Mippin, and have guided some big updates to the recommender system. Expect better and more frequent suggestions from Mippin shortly as we roll this out.

Machine learning techniques, once the territory of rocket scientists and PhDs, have become quite accessible these days through projects like Mahout. These techniques are essential to building competitive, intelligent services. Watch for recommendations to figure prominently in some next-generation projects in the works over here at Mippin.

Sean

And on to the main event - Nokia World '09

As the dust settles this afternoon (after Mippin's big win in Stuttgart), we thought it might be nice to mention a few of the blogs / sites who are now reporting from Nokia World and / or have been supporting Mippin in the last few days.

First up is Forum Nokia's own blog, newly launched at http://blogs.nokia.com/mydailyapp. It's going to be providing some great reviews of upcoming Ovi Store apps from now on and is definitely worth checking out for its first article alone (about Mippin Buzz Widget actually - we'll stop milking the win tomorrow!) You can also find the Forum Nokia My Daily App blog on Mippin too, click here

Second up we have Mobile Entertainment, also available on Mippin. For their PC site review click here or head over to their mobilized version on Mippin by clicking here. They're in and around Nokia World with all the latest goings on so definitely worth a look.

Lastly we'd like to point you to Symbian Guru, who with a love of all things Symbian will be providing their insight on Nokia World, as well as the obligatory write up of the Awards. You can catch their mobile site on Mippin too, here.