Latest news and goings-on at ribot

On April 28th and 29th we’ll be attending the very first Nokia Developer Summit. Set amongst lavish boats and generously-sized langoustines, the conference takes place in the heart of Monaco at the Grimaldi Forum.

If you’re attending, we’d be more than happy to meet up and chat with you about mobile design and all the other lovely things to do with mobile. Follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/ribot or send us a txt on +447882 569299.

For more information about the event: Nokia Developer Summit 2009.

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As one of the attendees of this month’s Mobile Design UK event, we were asked by the organising team and Marek Pawlowski, organiser of MEX the following competition question:

“What is the biggest challenge faced by designers trying to improve the mobile user experience?”

To which we responded with:

“The awareness in knowing what is actually possible and not to assume that what has been created in the past sets unbreakable rules which should be abided by. Ask questions and don’t be just a ‘designer’; be aware of other people’s roles and make the most of them.”

To our surprise, this response was chosen as the winning answer, awarded with a scholarship place at this year’s MEX conference! MEX – the Mobile User Experience conference will be celebrating its 5th year in May and we’re extremely happy to have the chance to mingle and learn from 100 of the industry’s most creative thinkers.

The conference is a sell-out every year and there’s still a few remaining places available (as of 27th April 2009).

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Yay! We are very pleased to announce that one of the mobile applications we designed won an award! The Rough Guides Mobile Travel Guide won its category (Entertainment & Leisure) in the Navteq challenge in the US. The award was announced at a ceremony during CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas.

The Rough Guides Mobile Travel Guide is a location-aware city guide with all the lovely user-generated content and social networking features we’ve come to expect in this day and age, and a little more…

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Our very own little spender and co-founder Antony Ribot feature in the official O2 Innovation Day video.

O2 Innovation day from ribot on Vimeo.

The video also contains an interview with James Parton, head of O2 Litmus, on what the day entailed and O2’s forward-thinking strategy.

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It’s certainly a sign of the times when UK design magazine, Computer Arts publishes a 36 page guide to mobile design.

As part of the guide, we’ve provided a short step-by-step process for mobilising your desktop sites. Some general tips combined with sample code help provide some guidelines for the building process.

The April issue (#160) of Computer Arts is out now.

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We’re very happy to see the wonderful fruits of labour by the talented team at myagency. They’ve worked closely with O2 Litmus to release an introductory video as part of the promotional tour and little spender has been cast in a starring role!

O2 Litmus Video Tour from O2 Litmus on Vimeo.

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Microsoft’s MIX09 event starts on March 18th (finishing on the 20th) at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and we’ll be listening closely to the announcements made whilst attending the 3 days of sessions.

It’s certainly quite an interesting conference as each consecutive year has brought with it a heavier dose of design-related sessions and conversation, and this year is no different. With Bill Buxton as one of the headline keynoters, Loke Uei Tan (@lokeuei on twitter) covering the new user interface for Window Mobile 6.5, and various sessions of rapid prototyping, wire-framing and one on C# for designers, it looks like a lot of sketches, notes and photos will be taken.

If you’d like to meet up with us for a snack and/or drink and chat mobile user interfaces and general mobile technology ping us by email (contact at ribot.co.uk) or twitter (@ribot or @ribotminimus).

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After winning the O2 Hackday back in December, we’re very happy to announce another win, this time for our expense tracking application – little spender. The competition was run by the people behind O2 Litmus, a mobile development community featuring app store functionality to monetise your apps.

Little spender was selected for its simplicity and richness of UI, showcasing how an application that’s been taken through a user-centered design process can lead to an efficient, functional and easy-to-use end product. It’s also a showcase of an innovative application and quite topical for the current economic climate.

Ribot will now be exhibiting little spender on the 16th March at the O2 Innovation day in The O2. We’re looking forward to a busy and exciting day and we’ll write up a review in the coming week.

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Reporting back after the most wonderful of events last night.

We decided to sponsor local event: £5 apps for the Christmas festive edition (video). The event is loosely based around the promotion and furthering of ideas formed in peoples’ bedrooms. It exists to help lead them down the wonderfully-mysterious path of research, collaborative feedback, company formation, monetisation and future growth. The event aims to inform and inspire those that attend by showcasing a selection of informal presentations and demos, most of which are given by Brighton’s local talent.

The mid-December event was based around the theme of “gaming” with Aleks Krotoski (video) speaking about her Spaceship, Ben Rubinstein (video) of CogApp with eye-pong, Emily (video) and her sumo-robot friends, Seb (video) and his magical Flash particles and augmented reality system and of course the lastminute.com labs team (video) entertaining the crowd with mobile accelerometer pong and multiplayer lightsaber bluetooth duels on N95 devices.

To feed and water the masses, ribot provided festive treats in the form of mince pies and homemade (by @ribotminimus and @markirby) super-tasty mulled wine (with extra special ingredients, to give the audience that extra kick).

Wishing you all a happy festive period,

Team ribot

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Mobile ideas lab and design house ribot are today announcing a partnership with mobile development specialists Mobbu.

The companies will share a unique glass-fronted four-floor building in the heart of Brighton, minutes away from the railway station (and a 15 min walk from the sea, should you fancy a dip).

The new office space will form a hub of innovation between the two mobile teams, providing plenty of room for thinking environments, collaborations and idea-development.

This announcement brings 2008 to a splendid end, and we’re looking forward to an exciting 2009, with a strong collective push to establish Brighton as the new mobile epicentre of the UK.

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