Archive for October, 2008
Friday, October 31st, 2008
On joining Rummble I got to observe the upcoming technology start-up scene here in London. However I was alarmed by the lack of females at some of the tech start-up networking events that I attended. The female sector isn’t well represented within the London tech start-up community.
All of the entrepreneurs I was meeting were male.
It struck me that the women that are running their own technology businesses are a very rare breed indeed. I thought networking for women was bad in Ireland, so was quite disappointed to find the same case scenario here in London.
Earlier last year I completed a commercialization course at the University I attended whilst based at DERI. At the time I wanted to commercialize my research. Commercialization is not an easy process and you need a number of invaluable contacts for networking. Now, that I had moved to the UK, all of a sudden things seemed to be looking a lot harder for me to even possibly consider any commercialization, never mind network with like minded ladies.
Around my third/fourth week here I had a discussion with Zuz from the upstairs office at Huddle. Rummble are also based in the Huddle office on Bermondsey Street.
I was anxious to have some sort of event for women. With numerous women beginning to choose technology as a career there is a need for informal events for them to network properly. At Coffee @ Bermondsey Street I discussed several issues with Zuz and out of our conversation Silicon Stilettos was born.
Zuz ran with the concept and using her PR role at Huddle, quickly setup the Silicon Stilettos Meetup group. Through her efforts she managed to get over 100 women to attend on Wednesday last. The event was held at the LVPO bar in Soho and there was a free bar sponsored by Winston & Strawn lawyers and the Bootlaw creators.
I think Silicon Stilettos is a great start for women to connect and network. I connected with a number of women running their own technology business and spent a while chatting to the QueenBee Louise Campbell from eHive. I look forward to catching up with more technology women at the next event and watching Silicon Stilettos grow.
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Friday, October 31st, 2008
Its not every day that someone steals your company name and makes a breakfast concoction out of it. So I was shocked to find in our local Sainsbury’s, these dodgy looking excuses for a hearty morning indulgence lurking on the shelves.
Very clearly, brand protection is a priority for us at Rummble, so we’ll be using the bulk of our bootstrapping budget to take these imposters to court. The fact they cant spell our name correctly adds to the humiliation – and they dont even have a website up and running in time for their product to hit the shelves!…Call yourselves a real company?
All we can do is apologise to all you real Rummblers out there that this sort of things is allowed to continue in this free country of ours.
STOPRESS! There has been some discussion about whether the timing of Ina’s arrival from Ireland and the subsequent appearance of these Irish snacks has any connection I can confirm of course that any parralells are purely coincidental … although we will be searching her lunch box every day from now on.
Posted in Random Stuff | No Comments »
Friday, October 31st, 2008
Rummble was a finalist at last nights UK Trade and Investment / MOMO London joint event (great to see UKTI working and engaging so closely with our community!)
I thought the pitch was a 6-minute slot, when it was actually 3 minutes; serves me right for not reading the small print. I spoke twice as fast and finished with 10 seconds to spare.
My favourite was of my peers was without question Cute Circuit – my Christmas list has just found its first item! Thankfully, they made it thru as one of the two finalists! The second was something which wont be on my Christmas list but is equally worthy – XYZ .
Although Rummble was not chosen in an officially capacity, the UKTI will be supporting our trip to Mobile World Crongress 08 – the reason being that actually, to demo Rummble and promote it, we dont need a formal static “stand” and instead will be engaging people on the move, with our intrepid team signing up delgates and demonstrating Rummble on live handsets.
Thanks to the UKTI team for supporting us and see everyone at Mobile World Congress!
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Saturday, October 25th, 2008
Google Gears platform takes another leap forward this week as they launch their Location API for the Desktop Browser. Using some cunning technology, if you have Gears installed on your browser (or you’re running Chrome) then setting your location from the Rummble website is now a one-click operation.
“Rummble is really excited to be launching alongside ITN and LastMinute.com, to be the very first service in the world to have Gears Desktop Location API implemented.”
More often than not the Gears Desktop location get my location exactly - we think theres something very cool about that when it involves no Cell ID, no GPS and no clicking around on a map!
You can try it out now! Just install Gears for your browser (it takes 2 minutes) and then click to set your location in Rummble .. and as if by magic, your location appears!
This post was written while recovering from LateCrunch, in Sonntag im August in Berlin, so the location the screen shot shows, was completely accurate!
Rummble is looking forward to supporting all the future implementations of the Gears API as it extends on to other handsets and platforms .
These new technologies add to our already comprehensive list of supported technologies, including SkyHooks Wireless, Cell ID, J2ME phones GPS, Yahoo’s FireEagle, plus manually triggered SMS location set, futures trips and location scheduling – which in turn update your other favourite services, including Facebook and Twitter …all making it as easy as possible to keep your digital life in sync with reality!
Posted in News, Rummble Announcements | No Comments »
Saturday, October 25th, 2008
Google Gears for Windows Mobile launches today and Rummble is excited to be a launch partner with Google. Gears represents and exciting next step in the evolution of the mobile internet. It will eventually give mobile developers access to all the really useful functionality of mobile handsets which cant currently be utilised from mobile phone web browsers – including camera, file system, address book, etc.
Gears launches on Windows Mobile with Googles superb Location API, which delivers Rummble users automated location detection on any modern Windows Mobile device – even if the handset itself doesn’t have GPS. Using the same magic which sits behind Googles really useful My Location maps service on mobile, the Location API uses CellID and other technology to detect where the user is and communicates that to Rummble.
Until now, there was no sensible way to get automated location updates from within the mobile browser. Gears solves that problem. As Google releases more APIs into the Gears platform, we’ll be adding these to the Rummble mobile website functionality.
Gears will be launched on other major mobile platforms in the future and Rummble will be supporting them, so watch this space!
- Find out more about Google Gears here
- The Rummble for Gears mobile website is here
NB: Rummble for Windows Mobile uses version 1.5 of our Rummble mobile site, which sports a brand new interface and UI, more along the lines of our soon to launch Rummble iphone application; we’ll be hoping to roll out this version to other versions of the mobile website, asap.
Posted in News, Rummble Announcements, Rummble Developer Blog | No Comments »
Monday, October 13th, 2008
Rummble attended this years Future of Web Apps or FOWA ‘08 in London. Held at London’s ExCel in the heart of London’s Royal Docks. As part of a Rummble promotion campaign our Rummble Letters got to escape and run amok with the crowd attending this years Expo.
Highlights of the conference included guest speakers Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Kathy Sierra, Blaine Cook of Twitter, Kevin Rose of Digg and Tim Bray amongst several others.
Some of the highlights of the Expo can be found here on video.
After all the hard and thirsty work running around, the Rummble letters eventually managed to board the MySpace bus, where they were sponsored by Google Beers.
Posted in Events, News | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
Chinwag Live was held in The Slug and Lettuce on Wardour Street in Soho, Andrew sat on the panel at Chinwag chaired by Jo Rabin of Mobile Monday.
For those that missed the Chinwag Live: Search & Location Based Services on 7th Oct 2008, the PODCAST is now online, so if you missed it you can listen to myself and these other purveyors of all this locational, at via Feedburner, and also on iTunes. (in 3 parts) RSS & iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/57wuqh
The main discussion was about mobile’s unique ability to be the ultra portable information tool and what this means for the digital industry.
Chinwag Live is a new series of events founded to cast light on trends in the digital media and marketing industry. The basement of The Slug and Lettuce was attended by a whole host of people in the industry. Several issues and potential opportunities within the industry were openly discussed and debated.
In order, left to right on the photo:-
Felix Petersen – Co-founder, Plazes / Head of Product Management, Social Activities, Nokia
Adrian Drury – Head of Commercial Strategy & Business Development, The Cloud
Chris Moisan – Product & Market Development Manager, Taptu / blog
Andrew Scott – Co-founder, Rummble
Peggy-Anne Salz – Chief Analyst & Producer, MSearchGroove
CHAIR: Jo Rabin – Consultant & Co-Founder of MoMo London
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