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.

Rummble for Android Fixes Ahoy!

Rummble for Android was released a little over two weeks ago and we have been delighted with the response – including high praise and constructive feedback on how we can improve. Thanks to the Rummble community – new and old – for making yourself heard and being an important part of the development process.

Since launch we’ve made five small bug fix releases, and as of today are rolling with Rummble for Android v1.04.1 – we urge all Android users to upgrade for an optimal Rummble experience!

If you downloaded the APK directly from a tweet or previous blog post, then we also recommend that you upgrade via Android Market.

To download, simply zap the above QR code or visit Android Market from your handset.

So, what’s changed? Based on your feedback, we have fixed several bugs and issues:

• Improved user-interface performance and usability, with bug fixes on the UI – as mentioned by Top Rummbler Emma last week
• Fixed ‘Force Closes’
• Improved sorting in the Rummble’s ‘People and Friends’ view
• Added miles support throughout the UI – as requested by user Brian using the Android Market!
• Fixed map marker function in the ‘Add a new Rummble’ option
• Improved search bar usability
• Fixed distance bug
• Added ‘Settings Menu’
• Added customisability to the Rummble home screen
• Improved overall performance

Rummble Acquires Global WiFi Community

Click here for the official press release

Rummble are today announcing the acquisition of Total Hotspots, the global WiFi community. This deal brings a global WiFi database to all Rummble users, along with an active community and partnerships.

I met Andrew Scott and the Rummble team on a bus at FOWA London 2008. After mad dash to Scotland to face-off against 3G at Hadrians Wall on the Gadget Show, we launched Total Hotspots for iPhone which combines Rummble’s mobile platform and a rich database of global WiFi hotspots.

WiFi provides a better mobile data experience and usage has increased by around 50% in 2009, with over a billion public connections. This is the most advanced app of its type, not only telling you where the nearest paid and free hotspots are around the world, but also providing personalised recommendations for those venues. To celebrate the acquisition, Total Hotspots for iPhone has been reduced from £2.99 to just £0.59 over Christmas (iTunes link).

I have joined Rummble’s founding team as VP Business, to help drive service development and key partnerships. Total Hotspots was created in 2004, while studying Business and Computing at City University, London, helping more than a million people find WiFi on the way.

Alex Housley | alex.housley [at] rummble.com | @ahousley

Join us for the ‘12 Days of Rummblmas’

Celebrate (and win) with The Rummble 12 Days of Christmas

We’ll be posting interim results on our blog here throughout the 12 days, so keep checking back to find out where you stand on our Rummble 12 Days of Rummblmas leader-board.

Competition will end on December 25th, and the winner will be announced on December 26th. Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@Rummble) and become a fan of us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/rummble) to get the latest updates during the competition.

Happy Rummbling!

 - Cait and The Rummble Team

The Rummble Word Spreads!

We’re very excited about the Rummble ‘buzz’ going around with the recent launches of Rummble for Windows Phone, Rummble for Android, and Rummble for iPhone v1.5! So, we’d thought we’d share some of the exciting Rummble coverage going on this past week…

Rummble for Android is now in the market and a big highlight was TechCrunch’s article written by Mike Butcher. “Rummble is starting to feed pure ‘check-in-like’ data’ direct from Twitter with its Tremor’s app, potentially making it quite powerful as a way to rate both places and people.” Thanks Mike, we’re excited about these new features, too!

Rummble was also recently featured in VentureBeat.  VentureBeat is popular U.S. blog whose mission is to provide news about innovation; in 2008, the New York Times called it one of the “best blogs on the Web.”  The article featured Rummble for Windows Phone functionality and discussed our ability to personalise content based on a person’s unique trust network. Read the full article here.

Rummble for Windows Phone also grabbed coverage on Mobile Entertainment News, whose total monthly audience across print, online, digital and mobile tops 73,000 people worldwide!  Find the full article here.

Finally, our very own Alex Housley was interviewed with GoMo News!  GoMo is a site dedicated to providing breaking, strategic news in the mobile industry.  Alex gives a live demo of  how easy it is to Rummble on your Windows Phone.  Watch the full length interview here.

We appreciate all the recent coverage, but would like to remind you that your feedback is the one way we can truly improve our apps to better benefit you - so don’t be shy!

Rummble Opens New Doors For Windows® Phone

Lets Anyone Find People and Places Nearby on Windows Mobile 6.1+

LONDON, UK, December 7, 2009 - Rummble, the easiest way to find people and places nearby you love, today announced the public availability of Rummble for Windows^® Phone at Heroes of the Mobile Screen event in London (http://www.mobileheroes.net/). With this launch, Rummble is set to open new doors for Windows Phone, making its unique personalised real-time recommendations platform available for the first time on Windows® Marketplace for Mobile. using a touch-optimised interface compatible with Windows Mobile 6.5 & 6.1

“We are excited to be working closely with Rummble, and by having their latest and most up-to-date release on our Marketplace, our Windows Phone customers will have access to one of the best and most powerful location based services available today” said David Weeks, the Marketing Manager for Windows Phone.

Rummble empowers people to become an influencer among their own social circle. Anyone using Rummble can, rate, share, & review any location, and with Rummble’s patent pending technology, the service delivers personalised results to users learning their tastes as they go.

Most services re-publish directories containing the same bars, restaurants and hotels where as Rummble is designed to help you create and share the “long tail” of local content in the physical world; be that a museum, a favourite park bench, meeting place, salon, dog walk, public art or hiking spot.

Features in version one of Rummble for Windows Phone include:

• Discover personalised recommendations nearby, quickly and easily
• Check-in to any venue and notify your group of friends instantly
• Show the buzz from specific venues in real-time from the twittersphere
• Find out where your friends are and what they are doing
• Connect Rummble to Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and Linked-In
• Fast and accurate location lookups with Skyhook Wireless

Rummble for Windows Phone fits neatly into anyone’s business and personal life, whether you’re looking for a meeting spot with colleagues at a conference or hoping for serendipitous meeting with friends while out on the tiles.

“Windows Mobile has always been one of the most capable mobile platforms available, but there is no question new entrants have increased competition in the market” said Andrew J Scott, Rummble Founder “Windows Phone 6.5 is an important upgrade and with over 30 new handsets launching in 2010 that is many millions of people who we want to be Rummbling around the world!”

To download Rummble for Windows Phone search ‘Rummble’ in the Windows Marketplace installed on your handset.  Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 users can install Marketplace here.

About Rummble

Rummble makes it as easy to find people and places nearby you’ll love. As a location based social search and discovery tool, Rummbles enables users to find personalised recommendations for a location very quickly. Instead of a traditional search, Rummble uses an algorithm that creates a personal ‘trust network’ for each user by calculating who they trust for different types of content. Rummble is built by a small but passionate team based in London, England. The award winning start-up was Founded by serial entrepreneur Andrew J Scott and CTO Clive Cox.

You can find more information on Rummble’s blog http://blog.rummble.com or follow them on Twitter @Rummble or business@rummble.com

About Windows Phone

Information about the latest updates and new Windows phones is available at: http://www.windowsphone.co.uk

Additional information about Windows phones can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/mobile/default.mspx.

Contacts:

Andrew Scott, Founder & CEO, Rummble

Email: business@rummble.com

David Weeks, Windows Phone Marketing Manager

Phone: +44 118 909 3320

Email: david.weeks@microsoft.com

Rummble The Road Less Travelled ..only with Rummble for Android

LONDON, UK, December 2nd, 2009 – Rummble, the easiest way to find people and places nearby you love, today announced version 1.0 of Rummble for Android, the Google backed smartphone O/S. The launch brings Rummbles unique personalised real-time recommendations platform to users who don’t own an iPhone, for the first time.

Most services re-publish directories containing the same bars, restaurants and hotels where as Rummble is designed to help you create and share the “long tail” of local content in the physical world. That could be a museum, a favourite park bench, salon, dog walk, public art or hiking spot. Rummble empowers people to become an influencer among their own social circle. Anyone using Rummble can, rate, share & review any location and with Rummbles patent pending technology, the service delivers personalised results to users, learning their tastes as they go.

Rummble for Android offers lots of ways for users to interact and mold their social life more easily, rather than jumping through hoops to do so. Features in this first beta version of Rummble for Android include:

• Finding recommendations nearby, personalised to you, quickly and easily
• Check-in to any venue in the world and notify your group of friends in real-time
• See how buzzing a venue is and view the Tweets coming from that actual place
• Connect Rummble to Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and Linked In

“Android phones are going to be a serious force in the market, as one of the most advanced mobile operating systems it was an obvious next step for Rummble” said Andrew J. Scott, CEO & Founder of Rummble “..it’s very much a version 1 and still has a few bugs, but we think Android owners are going to love it”.

(This is a QR code. In order to download Rummble for Android to your Android handset, find the ‘Barcode Scanner’ application, then simply tap to scan this QR code within the red guideline boxes, the phone will then take you to the Rummble for Android download!)

About Rummble

Rummble makes it as easy to find people and places nearby you’ll love. As a location based social search and discovery tool, Rummbles enables users to find personalised recommendations for a location very quickly. Instead of a traditional search, Rummble uses an algorithm that creates a personal ‘trust network’ for each user by calculating who they trust for different types of content. Rummble is built by a small but passionate team based in London, England. The award winning start-up was started by Founder and serial entrepreneur Andrew J Scott and CTO Clive Cox.

You can find more information on Rummble’s blog http://blog.rummble.com or follow them on Twitter @Rummble or business@rummble.com

Help Feed Your Social Media Addiction with Rummble for iPhone v1.5

As Rummble has been growing on the service side (translation: all the gritty technology which does the heavy lifting) our mobile applications have been rather left behind as we hire some new mobile engineers. We’ve also had feedback from our Rummble for iPhone v1.0 users. So today to answer your prayers we’ve released an interim Rummble for iPhone v1.5 (rather than make you all wait until 2010 for version 2.0!) It’s bristling with lots of new functionality and social sharing features! Spanking new features in v1.5 include:

• Log in using Facebook Connect for iPhone
• Just slide across a Rummble in the list, for a quick one-touch button to Check-in to any venue/Rummble



• Get instant notifications of where anyone is, based on the real-time public Twitter stream



• Shows what all your friends are up to as it’s happening nearby
  • Activity stream for your Rummble friends
  • Sort by “smart sort” (a combination of nearby and how recently)
  • Sory by “Distance only” or “Check-in only”
  • Message another Rummble user
  • View a Rummblers profile, recent activity
  • Access your Rummble inbox and edit your profile’s basic details

Download Rummble for iPhone v1.5 here all free, as usual of course!

Is This A World First? Rummble for Vodafone360 widget Beta available

Some say, the Rummble for VF360 widget is the worlds first location aware JIL widget (seriously, it really might be!). Some say the widget is the most useful widget ever deployed on a Samsung H1 handset… All we know is that it is in Beta, it is available now and if you’ve got one of Vodafone’s shiny new @vodafone360 handsets then you’re going to want to download it right now from here: http://bit.ly/rumbeta360

Rummble for VF360 is a JIL widget optimised for the Samsung H1 and the Vodafone widget platform and API. It uses Vodafones own Location API to locate where you are (although it can be a little slow to attach to GPS) and then give you all the rich content of Rummble at your H1 fingertips!

It is just a version 1.0 but we’ll be rolling out new features and polishing the remaining UI over the coming days… User feedback is the only real way we can improve the widget – so please speak your mind feedback

Who’s The Fastest Rummbler in the East?

Welcome to the first installment Rummble’s 60 Seconds With.. each month we’ll be interviewing different top Rummblers from the Rummble community for a quick minute & posting them on the blog.

This month we are featuring Jennifer, who after just 14 days had over 80 Rummbles!

Who? JenniferAngela

Profession: Graduate Student

Hometown: Cambridge, Massachusetts USA

How are you finding your experience with Rummble so far?

Since I live in a small town in the US that that doesn’t have many Rummbles yet, I use Rummble  to find new places to go on vacation. I also use Rummble to keep in touch with friends. Recently a good friend of mine went away for the weekend and Rummble let me keep up with her on her trip as she was traveling!  Every time she uploaded a new photo or review, I’d log-in and see what she was up to. It was really cool because I almost felt like I was traveling with her, too!

What is your  favourite personal Rummble?

Definitely where I had my best family vacation in Corsica last summer.

What do you find Rummble most useful for?

I love Rummble from the perspective of being able to keep track of every place I have been.   I always used to struggle remembering the exact name or location of venues I visited, but now I can use Rummble to keep track and record them all in one place.  So, when friends ask for tips on ‘where to go’ in a certain area, I tell them they have to join Rummble to see! I also work with a lot of foreigners and they’re always asking me where to go in town for dinner and fun experiences.  Instead of writing it all down in a lengthy email and having to include directions, etc… I tell them to Rummble me!

Whats your most recent Rummble?

Well just last weekend I went on a hiking trip in the Wachusett Mountains.  My legs were killing me after that hike!

(Don’t forget to check out this Rummble featured on the 3rd episode of Rummble.tv!)

Would you recommend Rummble to your friends in Cambridge?

YES, I already have.  At first, a lot of my friends are hesitant to join because they think it can be ‘overly addictive’ like Facebook or Twitter, but when they start using and find out how useful it is to record personal and travel information, they’re hooked like I am! Just the other day my friend was trying to describe a nice hotel she recently stayed in for a work trip in Chicago.  After a few minutes of her trying to verbally explain its location and details, I finally said:  ’Can’t you just Rummble it?!’

A big thanks to Jennifer for taking the time to chat with us!  If you’d like to be featured on one of our upcoming interviews contact Cait or Tweet us @Rummble.

Can you beat Jennifers record..?