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Wow, we won a Mobile Premier Award « flook
We are feeling very un-Mondayish today, even though it is in fact Monday, the 15th of February. In fact, we%u2019re feeling positively %u201CFriday at the start of a long weekend%u201D! That%u2019s because the kind people at the Mobile Premier Awards, organized by dotopen, have just this minute awarded us the %u201CBest Startup in Mobile Experience%u201D, out of 115 other entries in that category!
This award was sponsored by MEX, whose founder Marek Pawlowski said:
%u201CInvesting in truly user-centered design is essential for a successful mobile service and goes far beyond creating a pretty UI for your app. Flook has embedded great user experience in the heart of its product through clever interaction flow, interesting visual metaphors, customer involvement and attention to detail. It is a deserving winner of this Award and a great example for other start-ups to invest in user experience from an early stage.%u201D
All our robots wholeheartedly agree with Marek%u2019s words. They%u2019d like to point out that user experience was the initial inspiration for flook, when we thought that swiping cards would be a much more mobile-friendly interface for location-based discovery than maps and pins.
We%u2019d like to thank dotopen and MEX for choosing flook, and Andy Chung of Eden Ventures for accepting the award on our behalf.
Jane of the silly hats did (and does) much of the design work on flook, but we%u2019d be very remiss if we didn%u2019t also thank Nick Healey of Slash Design and Pete Borlace of pbdesignsolutions for their massive contributions. Nick is our user experience guru and is a real person not a robot called Robert. Pete is our graphic designer and he dreamt up our rainbow of robots. I%u2019m not sure if he really does wear tin hats.
Yay for more well deserved awesome praise of Flook which rocks socks and generally shows how you should check out of checking in and start location browsing :)
Checking out of checking in... I checked out
UPDATE
So in the last 24 hours I made a conscious effort to use and fall in love with Foursquare... I didn't. I became a mayor and got some more badges.... Yay...
The thing is badges just aren't anywhere near the social currency of a card in Flook for example... My friend @reyes said it best:
"Finding myself learning more and more about London as I hunt out the perfect flook" - http://twitter.com/reyes/status/7786945085
Also theres this from @nicolariordan - "I've found some great hidden pubs and restaurant near me with it"
Flook cards are more analogous to the human conversation around location... I don't ever remember texting or calling people to "checkin" and if I did I'm pretty sure they'd respond "are you drunk and / or why do I care?"
And so today, despite me picking up another snazzy badge from Foursquare (http://foursquare. com/user/danwtmoon/badges/506207), I'm deleting the app and focusing on location browsing.
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Being going through an early spring clean across all areas of life recently... I've previously blogged about my app cleanup on iPhone taking me down to ~50 from ~120... Since then I've been in the frame of mind of only retaining apps that I am actually using most, if not all, days for more value than just because I can... Today Foursquare is under close scrutiny... I've previously had Brightkite, Rummble, Gowalla, Foursqaure and Flook all on my iPhone. today I have only Flook and Foursqaure. Short background of the others history is that Rummble has a UI that causes me tears and is too buggy (shame as having met @andrewjscott, I know the guy is smart and passionate but unfortunately doesn't have an infinite army of developers to execute what on paper is a good product); Brightkite has gone the way of the dodo given I don't see value of pure checking in and so Gowalla / Foursquare killed it; Gowalla was preferred over 4sq until they went *everywhere*... Flook has been omni-present on my iPhone since being on the beta. So 4sq is under scrutiny today.. I'm going to take extra care to checkin everywhere and look for tips... At the end of the day if I feel better for it then it will stay... If not it goes and leaves on Flook. I found it interesting that @scobleizer seemed to praise 4sq becuase of tips... Well with 4sq, at least in LDN, there's very little tipping and if that's what floats your boat Robert then Flook is just the tip part of 4sq minus the novelty of checking in.. Flook FYI is under no threat at all. It's the perfect location app and the reason I state this as fact is that it has no hype.. You know what I mean? All the hyped products suffer because actually their biggest selling point was promise from the hype not the *actual* product.
Looking at my twitter stream I see people like @reyes flooking away and genuinely getting value of the awesome location browser. Do I see love for the novelty of checking in and being a mayor? No So Flook rocks (if you have iPhone get from app store / http://flook.it and 4sq is under threat...
I'm checking out of checking in
Mobile music discovery service Shazam joins the (PRODUCT) RED campaign
[UK] Mobile music discovery service Shazam has joined the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, with a specially branded iPhone app – the first mobile app provider to have done so. The campaign raises funds and awareness in fighting AIDS in Africa.
Joining (PRODUCT) RED is an especially good fit for London-based Shazam’s music-oriented iPhone app, the (RED) brand will be familiar to many iPhone users since Apple is one of the high profile companies to already sell products that support the program – currently the iPod nano – along with other big names including American Express, Bugaboo, Converse, Dell, Emporio Armani, Gap, Hallmark and Starbucks.
A new special edition of the company’s recently revamped iPhone app branded (SHAZAM)RED is now available from Apple’s App Store and costs £2.99/€3.99/$4.99, with 20% of proceeds going to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Although (RED) funds are specifically directed to HIV and AIDS programs in Africa.
iPhone (and iPod touch) users who purchase the (SHAZAM)RED app, or existing users who upgrade, are promised the same music discovery features of the recently launched Shazam Encore app, along with updated content specifically related to the (RED) campaign.
Website: shazam.com Shazam has built a technology that catalogs and identifies music and songs. Shazam is the world’s leading mobile music discovery application - enabling consumers to experience and share music with others across mobile devices and the internet. Since… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBase
Woohoo for more (RED) goodness, especially happy to see it coming from the UK...
As you may know I'm very much into (RED) with a (RED) wardrobe from GAP / Armani, Shoes from Converse, iPod, and Starbucks reward card and tumbler... Therefore no surprises for which I'm now downloading from the App Store ;)
Boo or Posterous?
I've been thinking about AudioBoo and more over the rich functionality of Posterous... AudioBoo is of course fantastic for quick, simple podcasting from a mobile device... But then I was thinking I can do that easily too with posterous... I can record a voice memo and email it in from my iPhone... Actually given AudioBoo is currently only an iPhone app the use of Posterous is better as there are more devices than the one type which can record audio and share it via email... So I'm thinking will I Boo again or just use Voice Recorder > Posterous...
Espresso App for iPhone
I like many things Italian. I intend to reside there at some point.
One of the loves I have for the place is their coffee.
For me, personally, the best coffee I've had outside of my home has
been in Italy.
At home, being Eco minded, I use a hand grinder for the beans and a
Presso hand powered "machine" for infusing the ground coffee with hot
water. All very simple but all very effective.
So you get I am "in" to my coffee.
Great to see therefore this Espresso graphic as an app for iPhone. It's free from the iTunes App Store and is basically
as per the image attached.
The image is a great piece of design work in itself. Now it's on my
iPhone and serves as a handy stylish portable menu for guests wishing
to sample my awesome blends.
Getting in to iPhoneography
I've always liked the idea if being in to photography but actually am
not very good at putting the effort in to actually doing it...
Having the iPhone means I can ride the iPhoneography wave of taking
pics and dressing them up using the editing apps..
Here's an arty (it's black and white you see) pic taken and edited
with the PhotoGene app.
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