Tag : mobile

Have you ever read Fuck My Life? If you haven’t, you really should stop by at least once a month. It’s a continuous stream of everyday stories in which people share the shitty moments that ruined their day. The stories are often hilarious or eye-watering, sometimes both at the same time. A heavy sense of irony is essential.

It was in this mindset that I opened the site on my mobile phone this morning and saw this ad banner at the top of the page:

I didn't?

Okay. Well, it's safe to say I am obsessed with this app and its precious, awesome community. In next to no time, all my base are belong to Instagram. It has stealthily taken apart and re-made my online life in the course of a few weeks. And it's mobile: it's an on-the-go service, not something I have to sit down and use at a desktop - so I AM talking about my *whole* life, much to the chagrin of my wife and child :)

This weekend Instagram passed 3 million users. This is massive because we're talking about 3 million iPhone users only (you can't currently add photos any other way), and in recognition of the total hotness, co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were interviewed by TechCrunch about their plans and what they think Instagram means.

Hint: it's not a mobile photo-sharing service 

With the advent of NFC and a wave of new mobile phones supporting this new technology will it improve the shopping experience for us consumers or will it be another failed attempt by banks, operators and others to create another "eWallet"? 

Continuing with our mobile theme this week, here are a few videos from Google's Think Mobile conference last month which touch on different aspects of mobile: its use in marketing, the development of mobile technologies such as near-field communication and so on.  

As part of our focus on mobile this week, here's an interview with Ivo Jansch, the founder of mobile technology startup Egeniq. We featured one of his presentations in one of our 'Slideshares of the week' posts not too long ago. Ivo is also an author and speaker, and is a PHP/iPad/iPhone/Android developer. Previously, he was CTO of ibuildings, a PHP development agency, for 10 years. 

The SXSW posts will no doubt continue to pour in in bits and pieces, but it's time to go back to the curated weekly data. This week, we'll be looking at mobile. Made by Many recently obtained a presence in Sweden to focus specifically on mobile, so it's a good time to focus on the topic. 

We're very pleased to be able to announce the launch of Made by Many in Sweden, where we are  developing a special practice focus on mobile products and services. It's a very natural extension of what we're doing in London and there's a short deck below to explain a little of the rationale. Stockholm is a great place with a deep pool of talent, and we love Swedes and all things Swedish (apart from chewing tobacco and salty liquorish).

Say "hej" to Patrik Falk who's coming out to Austin for SXSWi with us tomorrow - find out more below.

I recently watched the utterly fantastic TED talk ‘The Happy Planet Index’ by Nic Marks. The talk covers a lot of sensible ground including why the environmental movement needs to shift their tactics as well as the quite stunning results from his research on measuring countries’ happiness in relation to life expectancy, contentment and ecological efficiency (hint: the results will surprise you).

It’s well worth 17 minutes of your time.

However it was his concluding comments about the key ingredients driving people’s happiness that really caught my attention. The principles, which Marks only had time to race through, came out of some research by the New Economics Foundation (nef) in 2008:

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Keep learning
• Give

Transport for London (TfL) have put out a call for apps to promote London’s new cycle hire scheme which launches at the end of July.

This immediately caught my eye as it mixes two things that I love. Technology and cycling.

TfL opened up their cycle hire API earlier this month to allow access to information around bike hire locations and pricing.

I think this, mashed up with a few of TfL’s other APIs and a bit of smart phone magic would create an amazing mobile app service. It could help promote the scheme, encourage adoption and, vitally, aid TfL in defining future hire station locations and in adjusting and augmenting their current cycle path network.

Whilst wandering around an unfamiliar supermarket at the weekend (looking for Cous Cous) an idea for a mobile app suddenly hit me.

How about a store-based product finder?

It would work like this:

• Fire it up;
• the app knows what supermarket I’m in via GPS;
• I start to type in a product name, the predictive search autocompletes my request; and
• the app tells me which aisle the product is in.