Rob brings to the team his expert understanding of the user experience, usability testing and his great Kiwi accent!

Some words from the man himself:

“Dead excited to be working as part of the Ribot family – as we explore new concepts, interactions and experiences in what is an incredibly personal context. I believe in designing not just for users but with users, imbuing interfaces with a sense of ease-of-use, empathy and delight.”

Fundamentally though, he’s also a really nice guy, and the team are all very happy to have him on board.

Follow his thoughts on twitter (@anucreative)

If you’re in the mobile industry, are interested in the future of mobile or involved in one of the crossover industries, it’s a must-attend event for you. With a great selection of speakers (including Doug Richard and Harald Neidhardt) and a selection of themes to provide focus. We’re counting down the days…

For more information, visit the mobile heroes site.

Later on in the day, we are providing one-to-one advice and feedback at the Wired Sussex and Brighton University Portfolio Clinic.

We’re looking forward to seeing you all there!

Ideally, we’re looking for people who have an N-Series Nokia phone (e.g. N95, N86, N78…), an iPhone or an iPodTouch. If you don’t have any other these devices, don’t worry. Sign up and we’ll notify you of additional handset support.

So, if you’re interested, do pop along to HeyLittleSpender.com and say hello.

If you’re on twitter, follow the team at @little_spender.

Ben graduated from UCA Maidstone as a graphic designer. A few words from the talented Mr Breckler:

“From my very first experiences as a designer, I have felt the urge to observe and understand the world that surrounds me. I consider design a vital aspect to improve quality of life in society. I therefore stand for functionality, purpose, and simplicity, which are reflected in my work and style.”

Great to have you on board Ben!

We’re extremely happy that a product as simple as little spender has been chosen as a finalist in the Smaato Mobile Advertising Awards 2009. Little spender is a fun and playful way to track your spending through mobile micro-experiences. Behind the scenes, there’s some “spending magic” going on, which in turn allows for contextually-relevant services to be offered to users.

As a finalist we have won a Dot.mobi Device Atlas license, which we’ll be putting to use very shortly.

To find out more about little spender, please take your seats, for the grand curtain is about to open at heyLittleSpender.com very shortly.

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in San Francisco, on the evening of the 15th October (tonight, as of writing this). We’d like to thank all the people behind the scenes of these awards. We can only try and imagine how much work has gone into this (We’re looking at you, Harald and team!).

Congratulations to all the other award winners too! There’s some great things going on in the Flash Lite world at the moment. Thank you to all who supported us and voted for us too.

Voting is now open to the public (quick registration required) and the winners will be announced on Wednesday 17th June (next week!). Good luck to all the nominees!

“The MEX Awards recognise the very best in customer-centred mobile design. With Little Spender, the Ribot team have innovated through simplicity and creativity, producing a tool ideally suited to the needs of their target users.” — Marek Pawlowski, Founder, MEX.

For more details about the awards, visit the MEX awards site.

This is great news for us, having put so much effort into designing and building an app that revolves around ease of use, longevity and playfulness. What one might have otherwise seen as a chore is, at least in this example, a satisfying and valuable consumer experience.

For more details, including a motion demo of little spender, check out our entry. The awards ceremony takes place on the evening of Tuesday 19th May after the first day of the MEX Mobile User Experience conference in London.

There are many components in the toolkit, and ribot focused on the look and feel of the “mobile blog”, supplying a number of default themes. These will hopefully provide you with a lovely starting-point for your new-look, Wordpressed-up mobile site.

For more details, see the official dotMobi Wordpress mobile pack article.

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.

“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).

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…

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.

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.

O2 Litmus Video Tour from O2 Litmus on Vimeo.

There was a good mix of attendees, with o2 employees, sponsors and third party companies each sharing the presence. Looking back at only a year ago, the same event was restricted to internal o2 employees and we have Sandy Hammer of Conference-Art to thank for the progress made in the last 12 months.

I was half-expecting a day of back-patting and marketing spiel, but was actually very pleasantly surprised by the level of the panel discussions and general conversations. Also, importantly for us, key senior people from o2 were available and more than happy to chat with us about our experience with o2 Litmus and the opportunities for the application we were exhibiting – little spender.

Overall, a very positive and exciting day and it’s great to hear an operator talking openly about the state of the industry and the future direction. We’re looking forward to all the follow-up discussions.

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).

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.