Happy Holidays from the Rummble Team

We think that the holidays are about spending time with the people who mean the most to you… so, a Rummble holiday get-together was a must this year!

People are now Rummbling in 193 countries, many of which have very different traditions to us here in Europe. Our team is multinational too, with English, American, Russian, Italian and an Indian. For our holiday celebration, the team recently went ice skating at Somerset House.

Was it a good laugh?

We’ll let you decide!

We’d like to thank all of you in the Rummble community for continuing to support us, provide feedback, and keeping the Rummble dream alive. The Rummble team wishes you a Happy Holiday season, wherever you are and whatever you may celebrate this year.

Don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for footage from this ice skating adventure on Rummble.tv’s Christmas Special, premiering this Wednesday, Dec. 23rd.

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Clerkenwell.. Rummble’s ‘Home Sweet Home’

It has been a little over a week since the Rummble team relocated to an office building next to Farringdon station.

We’ve been enjoying our time in the new area and have been Rummbling along the way!  Some of our new favourite spots include ‘Meze Meze Juice Bar‘, a new lunch spot that serves grilled paninis, bagel sandwiches, and specialies in falafel wraps.

Damir, Rummble’s iPhone developer, tagged the venue under ‘drink, juice bars, food’ and rated the venue quite highly based on his delicious lunch there last week… we’ll definitely be back soon!

Another Clerkenwell ‘hotspot’ are the shops and market stalls along Leather Lane.  From a Pret a Manger, to fresh fruit/veg, to vintage clothes, or random household nick-knacks, Leather Lane has it all. One of the area’s infamous lunch stalls is Daddy Donkey, a local Mexican takeaway stand. Daddy Donkey queues can get up to 30 minutes waiting time during the lunch rush!

Although one of our staff members had a some bad side-effects from the infamous burrito one afternoon, plenty of us still think that the average waiting time speaks for itself…

We’re looking forward to plenty more adventures on Clerkenwell Road, so keep your eye out for new Rummbling around the area.

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Rummble Loves Using MS BizSpark

Recently, our Rummble team joined the Microsoft BizSpark network and has been taking advantage of all the great services on offer.  BizSpark is an innovative service that provides software and support to online start-ups. Some of the main perks of joining include:

• Access to all Microsoft software, including Windows 7 (yet to be released on the market, we might add!) & all of their development suites.
• Professional support from community forums & unique MS training tools.
• Access to the BizSpark Network Partner Directory that’s full of entrepreneurial experts, whom are willing to give advice/mentor young start-ups through the many obstacles they may face.

After some encouragement from our friend Bindi, Rummble couldn’t resist the opportunity to join such an invaluable program.  We’re really excited about the service and would suggest it to any new start-ups out there that are looking for some guidance or support and cool software perks you won’t find anywhere else!  It may be love at first site…

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Back from the Land of the Pharaohs

After riding through the deserts of Sinai on a Quad Bike dressed up as a Bedouin, swimming with some amazingly colourful fish in Ras Mohamed and suffering some extreme sun burns as a result of forgetting his Sun Block on a Yacht trip, Tamer is back (hard at work, we might add!) in Rummble’s London office from his holiday in Egypt…  Only to be welcomed with a good ol’ rainy London day,  which actually never felt better after all the heat he’s been through. 

If you’re ever in Egypt or plan to visit Alexandria, Cairo or Sharm El Sheikh then check out Tamer’s rummbles for some local recommendations.

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Rummblers tackle the 3 Peaks Challenge

What do you get when you combine:  1 tuk-tuk, 3 peaks, and an iPhone?  An infinite number of Rummbles, of course!

At this year’s ‘National Three Peaks Challenge’, an adventurous and daring group are Rummbling their way through the extraordinarily long race.  For those who are unaware, this challenge takes place every year and is a 450 mile, long distance  trip from Ben Nevis, Scotland (1344 metres), Scafell Pike, England (978 metres) and Snowdon, Wales (1085 metres); the challenge thus is to climb, and travel between, the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales within a continuous period.   Participants all began during the early hours of Saturday morning and must pass through certain designated points on route to collect a ‘proof’ of passage through each of the 3 points, with goal in mind to arrive at the last peak after camping and travelling through the various en-route locations.  The team  hopes to arrive to the final point by Wednesday evening.

This year, our fellow Rummbler, Anton, is travelling the distance with a team of rugged adventurers, including Big Earth’s Russ Malkin, who is traveling the challenge in  a single LPG tuk-tuk vehicle (a motorized version of the traditional 3 wheeled rickshaw); Russ’s tuk-tuk travels are on behalf of the charity UNICEF. 

Interestingly enough, their entire 3 peaks trip can be fully traced through Rummbles, as Anton has already identified some of the his top-chosen locations along the way.  One of their stops was the waterfall at Ben Nevis, which the team Rummbled Monday afternoon and  tagged it under ‘peaceful’/’stunning‘; Anton rated this spot a 7.5 out of 10.   The waterfall also counted as the team’s halfway point, which I’m sure he was very relieved to finally reach!

Along with this, Anton Rummbled some restaurants and pubs along the way including a cool Japanese eatery and vintage whiskey drinking spot.  Look’s like the next time our users decide to take up the 3 peaks challenge, Rummble definitely has their back!

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The Problem With Recommendations

Andrew (Rummbles CEO) has today written a post on his personal blog discussing the problems with recommendation services. Prompted by an article on the Telegraph website, perhaps not surprisingly Andrew is arguing that in the enthusiasm for getting recommendations from your peers, we’ve forgotten that it is not whether you know the person that defines a good recommendation, it is whether you trust understand their tastes or trust their opinion.

We’re quite glad he thinks that, because that is what Rummble is all about: not your social network, but your trust network!

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Rummble is selected by Microsoft for its Mobile Innovation Week

The Rummble team are encamped at Microsoft HQ in London this weeks for Microsofts first Mobile Innovation week EMEA.
Hand picked by Microsoft along with seven other European startups (including our friends at Wubud) the week is designed to assist us in polishing the native version of our Rummble for Windows Mobile 6.5 .

Bindi and her team have put together a fantastic week of support and insight into their plans for Windows Mobile and the Windows Mobile Marketplace – set to launch in the near future.

The Rummble team at work at Microsoft London HQ (Left to right: Ben, Tamer, and Alex - Total Hotspots)

We’re working closely again with TotalHotspots and look forward to launching a couple of exciting applications in the not very distant future!

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Crash Course in Marketing a Start-up: Lesson 1: Rummbling OpenSoho

With Andrew on the wagon this week, Tamer waved the Rummble flag at OpenSoho#3 which was held in Floridita yesterday. It was so busy even going to the lavatories was an adventure in itself, although it’s not necessarily great to bump into chatty people along the way to the toilets when your bladder’s about to explode!

Overall the event was great, lots of professional and friendly people from all sorts of different IT backgrounds, lots of different conversations going on from deep technical discussions about the alleged superiority of Ruby on Rails over Java (yeah right!) all the way to business discussions about how best to start your own startup company.

Floridita was a perfect getaway from the grey London weather into a Latin American setting with a live band and people showing off their Salsa skills. Eventually I jumped in only to find out I should’ve trusted my gut instincts telling me I’m a bad dancer! (I blame the rum and cubanero)

Recipes from a Rummbler: Marketing stunt #1

What you’ll need:

1. Lots of IT guys who’ve had a bit too much to drink
2. A couple of girls who have nothing to do with IT
3. A couple of T-shirts with your company’s name on them

What to do:

1. Get the girls to wear your T-shirts
2. Make a scene by laughing way too loud
3. Sit back and watch as the guys are slowly drawn towards the girls like bees to honey
4. Take photos (free brand coverage!) and shout your company’s name out loud for everyone to remember afterwards in the cloudiness of their hangover
5. Make sure to have the girls say they work for your company, so guys will be more likely to check out your company’s website afterwards to try and find contact links leading back to the girls!

Obviously, if you’re a geek girl this can work in reverse, providing you find some cute guys willing to swap their clothing. Guys willing to remove clothing for girls shouldn’t be a problem, judging by OpenSoho attendees, “cute guys” might have to remain in the eye of the beholder.

Don’t forget to tune in for more of our crash course lessons in start-up marketing, in the near future: Subscribe by RSS or our Twitter feed www.twitter.com/rummble

Posted in Events, Random Stuff, Running a Startup | 5 Comments »

FireEagle Beta Tests “Friends on Fire” for Facebook

Not a new way to inflict pain on your best mates, but yet another entrant into the already fraught and busy “who’s nearby” space. I’ve pontificated often about how this is no basis for a business, but with Tom and his gang at FireEagle it makes perfect sense as aggregation of location is their business.

I’m unconvinced of the UI they’ve built for this iteration – but who are we to talk when our Web UI still needs it new upgrade rolled out   and essentially this is a technology beta, so I’ve on doubt they will do some polishing.

The biggest complaint I have is that after choosing who to share my location with from my FB fiends list, I then had to go through the process again, to invite them to use it and of course hit the stupid Facebook 20 invites limit. I simply don’t have time to go back and do it all again with the invites (requiring me to do it 10 times to invite the 200 I wanted to of my circa 300 friends). The biggest annoyance is that this limit doesn’t seem to have affected the number of crappy notifications I get for rubbish apps … my personal profile currently sits at 262 requests since my last purge a few months ago; but I digress.

This can only be good to accelerate take up of location based services and therefore we’re all fully behind it at Rummble;  just those startups focusing on “whos nearby” as a core service, unless they have an existing big userbase (such as people like WAYN for whom its an obvious value add), should think carefully about where they are excerpting their efforts – but again, I’ve been preaching this for 3 years already and so I have little sympathy … a quick look at Loopts -lack- of progress, should give you any answer you need; and they have blown $15m+ up the wall trying to do so, with precious little traction to show for it. Still, we wish Loopt all the best and maybe they will yet rise from the ashes like a Phoenix … but then again, some other bods have a rather more appropriate name to achieve that particular feat…

• Rummble for Facebook
  Dont forget you can install the Rummble app to update and sync your status with Rummble (and SMS in from Rummble which changes your FB, Bebo and Twitter status) and will also publish your Trips and your new Rummbles to your newsfeed. Install here: apps.facebook.com/rummble or read more about our Rummble for Facebook here ..but dont read, install!
• Friends on Fire for Facebook, from FireEagle
  You can signup to the Friends on Fire beta here at: http://apps.new.facebook.com/on-fire/

Andrew, Founder, Rummble.

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The Crunchies

The Crunchie nominations are fast approaching! The Crunchie awards nominate the companies and products you believe most deserve industry recognition for achievements made in the past year, 2008 from now through midnight, PST Wednesday, December 10. We believe that Rummble deserves your vote.You can cast your vote over at the Crunchies page.

Join GigaOm, VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch as co-hosts and masters in ceremonies on Friday January 9, 2009 at 7:30 pm the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

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