Awesome Apps This week

I've been in India this week, and I've included a little of the Indian seasoning into my Awesome Apps roundup for this week:

• Flipkart - Amazon.com but India style!  Next day delivery if its in stock.  You see a lot of motorcycles flinging themselves around Bangalore doing deliveries for these guys.
• Mpowa - Mobile payments for SMEs - UK.  Little adaptor and you can take card transactions :)  Featured in Sunday times last week.  
• Yepme - Fashion, e-commerce - Indian style!  So similar to US and UK and yet so different!

The Indian start up market is going crazy.  E-commerce is being fuelled by a wonderful obsession with mobile devices - particularly android devices.  Access is easy and the physical infrastructure and location issues experienced sometimes in India are overcome by the mobile device.





More awesome apps next week :)

Hackney House II

So, a lot has been happening at the Olympics and East London has been going through a fantastic regeneration as a function of this.

Alongside it, has been a conscious and deliberate investment in 'Tech City' by the Mayor of London and 10 Downing street - striving to make London the go to place for Tech Start ups in Europe.

As part of this, the Hackney House technology showcase venue has been running a lot of stuff, and we've been lucky enough to be part of it.  In particular the race for apps side of things has been a key area of fun for us.

Take a look at this film that tells the story...


We loved being involved with this.  It was a real win-win.  Met some very interesting people, got inspired by some great ideas, made some new friends and some new customers too!  Most importantly for us, we started to get right in the middle of the East London Startup vibe - which is pretty cool indeed :)

Big thanks to everyone who got involved and who made this so much fun.  Special thanks go to Duncan Ray and Andrew Sissons.

Awesome Apps this week - 07/08/12

Here are the three apps / sites that have tickled me this week, in the wibbly wobbly world that is testing, TCL and other stuff:

• Deliverance - a great app if you want take out in London.  It's not to be confused in any way with the movie!  Wonderful mobile version.  Interfaces with mobank for the payment.  Simple, easy and I love the bit on the site that tells you where your order is in the process.
• Rated People - find trades people.  Very handy way to get things done.  Nice interface on the rating side.  Makes life easy.
• Museum of Science - Love this place!  love this site!  Become a member and explore this museum more.  I go there every time we visit Boston.

That's my list for this week.  Hope that you enjoy visiting these as much as I have.  Look out for more Awesome Apps in future weeks.

3 Apps I think are great :)

With all the work we do at uTest UK, and with my general nature of wanting to try new things, I tend to see lots of interesting new apps as they come to the market.  Sometimes, of course, they have been there for a while and I've only just spotted them.  This is a frenetic market place that I don't think even the likes of Mashable can do much more than keep up with - let alone be ahead of.

This week, I've found / started using three apps which I think are great and wanted to share them with the world!
Here they are:
Ringgo - solving my parking needs and giving me a very nice PDF receipt that I don't lose and can pass on for expenses purposes.  As well as making the parking conundrum (do I have the change in the car, how long will I actually be here etc) much easier, it is also taking pain out of my world and putting money back in my wallet.  From me, you get 5 stars!!

Biximo - Started using this in Boston with regards to their Hubway bike system.   It also covers the Barclays bikes here in London.  Nice little app.  Works well.  Keeps things simple.  Shows you in easy graphical form which stations have bikes and which have spaces.  V Handy!

LoYakk - These guys have put together a really nice app, which recently won our Usability prize in the Race for Apps in Hackney.  Love their approach and the way they've made a way for people to collaborate and comment in streams around venues, that can be kept private to the venue or shared more widely.  We're working with them now to set up a special feed for our next event in September to enable real time collaboration between everyone at the event and also to make a record of all the collaborations that can be shared amongst everyone afterwards.

We're involved with Hackney House over the Olympics period and meeting lots of new startups, trying lots of apps and I'll post anything here that I find really cool.

Happy Wednesday! 

Zap Zap Zap!

Hello and greetings from Boston!

I'm out here for a couple of weeks to do a number of things for work (in the first week) and then to have a week of welcome vacation with Lisa and Sofia. It's been nearly 7 months since Sofia was born and we're very much looking forward to some quality down time! Maybe, just maybe even some sleep.

In coming out here last week, and joining several of my TCL colleagues who are here on assignment, we decided to take advantage of the timing to run a Zappers in Boston. These don't happen very much nowadays and it seemed like a good idea to give it another try. After all the ones in London and Bangalore are going strong - and the record attendance for any one event now stands at 102 (set in February in Bangalore).

So, together with our friends at uTest, we set about putting together a quickly set up Zappers event. Some tweeting and inviting, some pizza ordering, setting up some space at uTest HQ and getting some laptops together. Picking some apps to test and generally pinging around we managed as a team to put it all together in just under 2 weeks as well as our normal day jobs of course. So how did it go? Well, it was a little smaller than the last Bangalore event, but there was a good vibe and some healthy competition. Certainly all the pizzas were devoured too :)

And the best bit for me -> well that was meeting Suresh. He'd driven down from Nashua with two friends to take part in the event. Sounds motivated, eh? Well that's not the least of it! He had been to two Zappers events in Bangalore as well, and upon hearing from a friend that one was being run in Boston he made the effort while on assignment here to come along. What a great chap. Oh yes, and did I mention that he and his team won the event? Obviously he'd gotten the inside track from his previous experience. It was great to see.

I love Zappers as an event. Its a competition and its a bit of fun of course, but most importantly its a social experience of like minded people. In Bangalore we experienced the first impromptu singing and open mic stuff - a great evolution, and a great example of people bringing their passion to the event.

It is my hope that these events will continue to evolve, and as we strive to be as inclusive as possible - inviting testers from far and wide, and engaging with subject experts to bring their experience to share with others around the globe I hope that we see a great deal more of what I have recently witnessed in Boston, Bangalore and London.

Zap, Zap, Zap .....www.Zappers-Community.com