Mob4Hire wins 2 out of 5 Investor Choice Awards at Vancouver Angel Forum

Last week, we were honored to receive not one, but two, out of the five investor choice awards at the 26th Angel Forum in Vancouver: "Best Company with Revenue" and "Best Presentation." This is great recognition of the journey we've been on, the progress we've made and the opportunity that we have in front of us.

We are, of course, in the middle of raising a private round of financing. If you're interested, please contact investor@mob4hire.com for more details.

During the day, we were treated to several presentations, one of which focused on Investment Trends from V.C.s' and Angels in Canada. The thoughts were encapsulated nicely by Boris Wertz on the Techvibes blog. In fact, in addition to the "re-thinking" of section 118 which makes it more complex for U.S. investors to put money into Canadian, I would also add the challenge of getting B.C. investors to put money into Alberta companies: B.C. investors enjoy a 30% tax credit ... for every $1,000 they put into a B.C. high tech company, they get $300 back on their tax return. I guess that's why us Alberta companies try harder!?

The most human moment of the evening goes to Mike Volker, who won the award for BC Angel Investor of the Year ... speaking about recently departed Don Ricks. Don apparently was a shoe-in for the award ("investing $50K in over 30 startups"), but his biggest legacy was Mike's testament: "When Don was with us, he was a great Angel investor. Now, he's a great Angel."

Thanks to Bob Chaworth-Musters for organizing great day!

The Curse of the One Star

Mob4Hire CEO, Stephen King, spoke at the BlackBerry Developer Conference this week in San Francisco. His topic "User Feedback and It's Role in Making Great Mobile Software" was well received by the audience. CNET Blogger Jessica Dolcourt was in attendance and reflected in her post: "A single-star rating for an application on a review site or storefront can severely limit its chances of getting downloaded, and therefore of making money."

"This is the curse of the one-star," said session speaker Stephen King (not that Stephen King)

In a related article, Stephen's post on market research community site MRWEB.com reiterates "Fear the One Star," correlating customer loyalty to mobile app revenue.

Our preliminary research shows that users are most comfortable with seeing at least 4 star ratings in mobile app stores before downloading

At the end of the day, while user feedback is important, developers shouldn't rely on paying customers to design their application architecture, especially if mistakes are prone to frustrate the user.

Testing software for crashing as well as usability BEFORE the app is released isn't just a "nice to have" ... it's vital in an increasingly crowded app marketplace where discoverability is becoming a big issue.

Mob4Hire and Flurry team up for one-two punch testing and market research

We're excited to announce our new partnership with Flurry Analytics out of San Francisco:

Mob4Hire, the leading crowd-sourced mobile application testing solution, today announced an agreement that combines Flurry mobile application analytics with the Mob4hire global community of testers, making both qualitative and quantitative user behavior data easy to access in order to make mobile software better.

In other words, analytics such as the ones Flurry provides tells mobile app developers and advertisers "what" the user does in your apps. The Mob4Hire community tells them "why" they did what they did (and what else you need in your app / what can you do better?).

Sean Galligan, Flurry vice president of business development has this to say: “We are excited to partner with Mob4Hire to deliver a powerful, joint offering that helps developers improve their applications and grow their mobile business.”

Mob4Hire CTO presents at Symbian SEE 2009

Application Development John Carpenter Mob4Hire

Mob4Hire CTO John Carpenter was in London last week at Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2009 presenting our favorite topic: User Feedback Techniques to Make Great Mobile Software.

In other words: "Don't Crash. Don't Suck. Get Sticky." :)

John says that the room was packed and the talk was well received ... a sure sign that everyone's mobile software is going to starting getting better!

Mob4Hire at CTIA San Diego: "Don't Crash, Don't Suck, Get Sticky"

We're back from the CTIA Wireless show in San Diego last week. We had a GREAT time ... lots of buzz: we're the first of three innovative products from the show on an American Express blog.

Our booth was packed from beginning to end. It was great to see so much interest and "light bulbs going on over heads" as attendees realized that Mob4Hire gives the mobile community access to users for feedback during the product development cycle; "I've been waiting for a service like this for years" was an oft-heard comment!

We got a great write up in the Day 2 Show Daily of Wireless Week ... Check out page 12.

Our latest marketing gizmos ... buttons with "Don't Crash. Don't Suck. Get Sticky." were a hit ... they were almost all gone by end of day 1. Not surprisingly, the "Don't Suck" button ran out first. :)

At the conference, we were pleased to "soft-launch" our new crowd-sourced products:

-MobTest
-MobSurvey
-MobExperience
-MobAccelerator

All of which are still in private alpha testing (so you won't see them on our main website ... yet). You'll hear more about as we ramp up to our soon-to-be-released Version 3.0 of Mob4Hire later this fall. We received a tremendous amount of good feedback from attendees at the conference ... it was great to meet everyone! Stay tuned.

P.S. For those that asked, here's our "10 Steps of the Mobile Development Cycle" process chart that we had displayed at the booth. Click on the image to get a higher resolution chart (or, right-click and "Save as").

P.P.S. Here's the CTIA San Diego 2009 post show highlights on the CTIA Wrap up website: http://daily.ctia.org/wireless2009/ And, the rest of Wireless Week Daily Show Daily's: http://www.wirelessweek.com/News/2009/10/CTIA-Official-Show-Daily/

Mobile Developer's Guide to the Galaxy

I came across this little publication called "Mobile Developer's Guide to the Galaxy" at CTIA San Diego last week. It's a quick and knowledgeable read for anyone trying to understand the difference between programming for different mobile platforms. Mob4Hire got a nice mention on page 24 (thx!). Kudos to the authors Robert Virkus (Enough Software), Roland Gulle (Sevenval), Thibaut Roufiineau (WIP), Michel Shuqair (24Access Solutions) and Alexander Repty (Enough Software).

I was lucky enough to pick up a hard copy (fitting nicely in the front pocket of my dress shirt), but you can get your own .PDF version at Enough Software's website.

As Douglas Adams would say ... "So long and thanks for all the fish"

Motorola Summit rocks Android

Mob4Hire was at the Motorola Summit in San Diego last week, just before the CTIA Conference. Motorola impressed me for three reasons: the new Android CLIQ is killer kewl, their strategic focus as a company on wide Android deployment is obviously making a difference and they've embraced the developers in their developer network community (MotoDev): better tools, better processes and, if the Summit was any indiciation, a sincere comittment to working together.

We were there as a fast track partner and also felt very much a part of the community. We were in the middle of the action all day, too ... sporting our new "Mob4Hire" attire and getting feedback on the upcoming launch of our new platform, Mob4Hire V3.0.

LOVED the little touches, like chocolates, an unending assortment of drinks and treats, lotsa free CLIQs and last but not least, clay Android robots, proving once and for all that developers have unusually high creativity! And, to finish things off, we hit the top of the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego for a pool party. We met a lot of great people all throughout the day. Nice! Congrats to Motorola.

Mob4Hire: Putting Apps to the Test

Andrew Berg wrote a great article about "Putting Apps to the Test" as the cover story of the Sept/Oct issue of Wireless Week; in which he looks at the difficult task of making great mobile software in a fragmented mobile ecosystem. (As u and I know, bad software = bad reviews = no word of mouth = no revenue!). Great comparison of the similarities and differences of Mob4Hire, DeviceAnywhere, and AT&T Apps Beta progam.

http://wirelessweek.com/Articles/2009/10/Putting-Apps-to-Test/

Another article of note in our home country of Canada: http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20091007/OTT_mob4hire_091008/20091008/?hub=OttawaHome

Mob4Hire turns 20,000

20,000 testers, that is. In 105 countries on 330 carriers! We had a news conference yesterday to announce it ... old school traditional media like TV and papers along with blogosphere (e.g. "Mob4Hire doubles testing community in four months" Techvibes) and Tweeting. Thanks to Calgary Technologies Inc in Calgary for hosting the event in their space ... they are doing great things for the bursting high-tech scene.

Click here for press release.

Got a nice writeup in the Calgary Herald, the local paper where we live: "mob4hire Ceo stephen King, left, and paul poutanen, president and founder, use crowd sourcing to recruit people to test applications for mobile devices such as the iphone and blackberry. Photograph by: Dean Bicknell, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald"

Thank you to all the testers in our community who make Mob4Hire what it is; your excellent work providing testing and usability services to Mobile Developers around the world is helping make mobile software better. As you can see from our prior blogposts, we're spreading the word in the mobile developer community ... so be ready for lots more projects!

Trust in the Mob!

Stephen King,
CEO, Mob4Hire

Mob4Hire at Banff Venture Forum, CTIA San Diego and Motorola MotoDev Summit

Preparations are underway for an exciting beginning of October for Mob4Hire ... come and say hi if you're coming to any of these events!

On the 1st and 2nd, we're one of the 35 select companies who are presenting at the Banff Venture Forum.

Then, we're winging our way to CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment 2009 in San Diego on Oct 7 through 9th.

Our booth # is 106, just across from the WIP booth in the Developer Pavilion. We're excited to be presenting the next generation platform of Mob4Hire!

But, before we get on the floor at CTIA, we're spending October 6th at the Motorola MotoDev Summit at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego. Motorola has been a good partner, and we're super excited to be involved as they launch their new handsets, including the Android Based Cliq.

We'll see you there (and there and there)!

Stephen King to speak at Blackberry Developer Conference

Mob4Hire CEO, Stephen King, is pleased to be selected to speak at the Blackberry Developer Conference in San Francisco on November 9-12, 2009. His session COM15 is titled "User Feedback Techniques to Make Great Mobile Software."

"69% of mobile users discover apps based on top store rankings, user reviews and recommendations from friends. Great software is your best marketing strategy. In order to make great software, you need to include user feedback in the development process, during the alpha cycle to optimize the user experience, during beta testing and post release to assess the application in real-world situations. This session will look at two software product feedback techniques: Townhalls and Customer Loyalty 2.0. Users will come away with ideas for gaining the best sources of end user impressions of their applications."

We're happy to going down to the conference with another Calgary success story, Kryos.com, who is the Gold Sponsor of the Blackberry Developer Conference (they've got a fantastic product, "Velocity" that allows for rapid development on the Blackberry platform).

John Carpenter from Mob4Hire to speak at "Wavefront presents NAVTEQ"

Mob4Hire's intrepid CTO, John Carpenter will be sharing the stage when Mob4Hire partners Wavefront and NAVTEQ come to Calgary to present "How to Drive Development and Visibility of Your Innovative Location Based Apps" (a.k.a. LBS apps are cool). John will be explaining how testing and deploying LBS apps differs versus standard mobile apps and requires a whole new approach.

Sept. 16, from 8:00 am to 10:30 am at the Sheraton Cavalier Calgary Hotel, Sheraton East Room, 2620 32 Ave NE, Calgary, AB. Click here to register.

Full details are here: http://www.wavefrontac.com/news-events/waveguide-training/NAVTEQ_Sep16_2009/seminar-2009-09-16

Stephen King to speak at Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2009

Mob4Hire CEO, Stephen King, has been selected to speak at the Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2009 in London on Oct 27 and 28th.

Stephen draws on his 25 years of software development experience to apply traditional software user feedback techniques to mobile development. His topic "From Concept to Commercialization," is all about making great software. Great software leads to “stickiness”; increased customer loyalty to your brand (also known as "going viral"). In a world where developers have limited marketing budgets, they must rely on a great user experience so that people will tell their friends and post great reviews.

In short, you can't make great software without users!

Celebrating Wavefront's Grand Opening!

We've been a partner with Wavefront (http://www.wavefrontac.com) for awhile, and we couldn't be happier than to congratulate them on the grand opening of their new facility in Vancouver. It's a great focal point for the thriving mobile scene in Vancouver, and should be a good thing to check out in 2010 at Mobile Monday's global conference in May.

A couple great blogs popped up on the announcement regarding the Wavefront announcement (and Mob4Hire partnership):

http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/money/story.html?id=734cd099-6c50-41ba-b2a4-4e8b62cba889

http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?aid=1000338220

"Wavefront is developing partnerships to address the spectrum of testing scenarios which differ for each developer based on their stage in the mobile development process," said James Maynard, President of Wavefront. "Our partnership with Mob4Hire is giving developers a way to test their mobile applications, leveraging location and language specific data."

"As part of the Wavefront community, mobile developers in B.C. can work with Mob4Hire to assess how their application performs on live operator networks during peak usage times. Although developers can access many solutions that simulate these network conditions, testing on a live network and gaining real user feedback is invaluable in determining the technical capabilities of an application," said Stephen King, CEO at Mob4Hire.

Congrats to James Maynard and his whole team on the new 7,000 sq ft. digs!

5 Million Mobile Apps by 2014

Apple iPhone app store has over 1.5 billion downloads. Android is on fire and gaining on new apps (2,300 as of March). All the big handset players, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, Nokia, Apple, RIM are trying to make it easier for developers to get apps to their handsets. Operating systems like Symbian and Microsoft Mobile are pushing ahead to make themselves better and easier. External data suppliers like NAVTEQ are doing very well and have their own developer communities.

A new report from Frost and Sullivan predicts the number of downloads of apps is 6.67 Billion downloads by 2014 ( I think this is conservative).

But even at this early stage of mobile apps, discoverability is a big problem. This means that it's not only the number of downloads that's interesting, but it's also the number of apps.

I saw online an interesting site recently that could make things even more interesting for mobile apps.

iLike will generate apps for bands. These iphone apps will allow bands to show their blog, band pictures and allow fans to download their music via iTunes.

Think about it… Your own personalized app available from the app store.

Hmmmmm

Apple has around 65,000 apps right now (I estimate 100,000 by the end of the year).

It is hard right now to think about not just about the number of downloads but the number of individual apps that will be available.

With services like iLike, I believe that their will be many millions of individualized apps available within the next few years.

I am going to stick my neck out here.

I believe there will be approximately 5 million individual mobile apps by 2014.

Apps will follow the rule of the Long Tail

The apps that will win will have big marketing budgets behind them and they will be excellent apps in regards to UI and usability. There will many small apps out there with niches. Those apps will rely on word-of-mouth, and the best way for that is to make an excellent mobile app.

How do you make an excellent mobile app? You need to ask people … lots of people what they think. You need to listen to people and get their feedback.

And you need to find this out before you launch the app. If you have a bad app, people will rank your app very poorly and all the work you put in will be lost. People will not download a badly ranked app. Best to find out at the alpha (pre porting stage) and Beta (post porting stage) before you launch.

I look forward to my own personal app. And I bet you do too.

Paul

P.S. BTW, we' at booth 106 at the CTIA San Diego show in October in the Developer's Pavillion ... come by and see us!

Meet Shaun ... our new Community Manager

Hi everyone:

It happens in the evolution of all successful online communities ... a person who is solely dedicated to managing the community. Answering questions. Providing resources. Helping out with recruiting. Making sure everyone feels welcome. Now that we've reached 17,000 testers and over 600+ mobile developers in the community, it's time!

We're excited to welcome Shaun King to our team as Community Manager. Email info@mob4hire.com if you want to say hi! Shaun's got a background in both computer science as well as business and marketing.

In addition to all the above, he'll also be reviewing Test Plans posted by Developers to help them get the best results, and generally making the community run smoothly.

Welcome to the Mob, Shaun!

Exciting things happening for Mob4Hire this fall; we're hard at work this summer! Stay tuned ...

Stephen

Mob4Hire Collaborates with NAVTEQ to Help Mobile Developers Test LBS Applications

Wow ... it's been a little while since our last blog post. Just indicative of us being super busy with a number of projects; there's lots of great news for you Mobsters coming, including new features, new partnerships and new ... stuff. Thanks for being part of the Mob ... we had a record June for test projects with a wide range of functionality testing (VOIP testing seems to be popular ...).

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about latest partnership agreement with NAVTEQ. They do a great job with LBS developers, and a relationship with Mob4Hire is a natural fit. Thanks to everyone at NAVTEQ ... awesome team to work with. You can read the whole announcement at: http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2668364.htm

Ok ... 'nuff said for now. I hope you're enjoying your summer and stay tuned for some exciting announcements.

Stephen

P.S. BTW, we' at booth 106 at the CTIA San Diego show in October in the Developer's Pavillion ... come by and see us!

Mob4Hire Selected to Present at Global Tech Showcase 2009

We're priveledged to have been selected and confirmed to participate to the Global Tech Showcase (GTS 2009, www.GlobalTechShowcase.com) being held in conjunction with the World Investment Conference in La Baule, France, June 3th to June 5th 2009.

Mob4Hire is one of the 50 companies chosen to be showcased in this corporate matchmaking conference where we'll be meeting with Europe's top operators, partners, investors and clients.

Chantelle Hyde-Lewis, Mob4Hire's Director, Business Development, UK&EMEA will be demonstrating how integrating the customer into their mobile developer partners' development cycles is helping Telefonica division, O2, bring better mobile applications to market with their O2 Litmus community.

Mob4Hire joins Twitter as one of the Red Herring 100 top technology firms!

Wow ... we won a Red Herring 100 award in San Diego on Wednesday! Knowing that Twitter is on the same list as us this year is a wonderful accomplishment, and is great recognition for the progress we've made at Mob4Hire. Thanks, Red Herring judges!

Read more: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/mob4hire-wins-red-herring-top-100-award

What do we think separated Mob4Hire from the other 1200 applicants?

"I think that we have an elegant solution to a large problem in a massive industry. There is really no one else doing what we do in the same way. There are 3 billion mobile phones in use today and a massive amount of software being written for those handsets. The problem of fragmentation in the mobile industry is huge - currently estimated at $3 billion. There is no effective way to test on a foreign network unless you are on that network. It is a location specific problem which plays perfectly to the strengths of our crowd-sourced methodology." says Paul Poutanen, President and Founder of Mob4Hire (pictured here with Alex Vieux, CEO, Red Herring).

Mob4Hire selected as Finalist for Red Herring top 100

The industry recognition keeps on happening; we've just been named as a finalist for the Red Herring North America award ... "a prestigious list honoring the year’s most promising private technology ventures in North America." The Red Herring editorial team selected the most innovative companies from a pool of 1,200, so we're already very honoured to make that cut! Paul Poutanen (prez and founder of Mob4Hire) will be in San Diego next week presenting at the Red Herring event.

O2 Litmus Testing Community is live!

We couldn't be more thrilled to be a partner with O2 Litmus (subsidiary of Telefonica) ... our Mob4Hire testing community is now incorporated into the main site http://www.o2litmus.co.uk (our part is in the "Application" area, where people can test and purchase beta applications):


O2 Litmus Video Tour from O2 Litmus on Vimeo.

Apart from having a great customer like O2, the thing I love about this project is that we were able to utilize web API's to completely maintain O2's branding while running on "Mob4Hire as a Platform."

“O2 Litmus ground breaking partnership with multi-award winning Mob4hire” 

O2 Litmus press release: http://www.ixplora.com/?p=3593



“O2 Litmus is Better than Apple AppStore!” http://www.telco2.net/blog/2009/02/getting_developer_communities.html

Commercialization Challenges of Software Development in a Fragmented Mobile Ecosystem

I had the privilege of speaking at the WiTec Connections 2009 conference in Banff Alberta last week. Great conference ... and while like most I've been to lately where the attendance is a bit down, there is still great conversations, optimism and business being done.

My topic was one that's near and dear to our hearts here at Mob4Hire: how hard it is to develop mobile software due to the fragmented ecosystem (and, of course, how Mob4Hire makes it easier and less expensive!). Many people asked for a copy, so I'm happy to upload and share it.

Commercialization Challenges Of Mobile Software Development In A Fragmented Mobile Ecosystem (Stephen King Mob4Hire @ WiTec)

View more presentations from Stephen King.

I was also on a panel with some very smart and animated people ... a shout out to: Perry Kinkaide, President Alberta Council of Technologies www.ABCTech.ca, Harold Horgen, President, The York Group www.theyorkgroup.com, Kevin Wong, LL.B. at www.Stonecracker.com; experts at SRED credits, and Steve Morley, former VP, Qualcomm. Thanks for the great discussion, guys!

Chantelle Hyde-Lewis joins Mob4Hire as Director, Business Development, UK and EMEA

I'm really excited to welcome Chantelle Hyde-Lewis to our team, based in the U.K. She has a unique understanding of what Mob4Hire can do for developer networks and app stores; not only has she been in the industry for a long time, but while working for the operator O2, she helped spearhead the O2 Litmus developer community / app store.

As we mention in the press release, she helped negotiate our contract with O2, and liked us so much she joined the company.

Chantelle joins Allen Poutanen, our VP Business Development, in helping developer networks and app stores use "Mob4Hire as a Platform" to create their own branded testing communities, which in turn helps their developers bring better mobile software to market!

Welcome Chantelle!

Gamelion joins Mob4Hire as a "MobPro"

One more announcement as we head down to CTIA Las Vegas!

One of the great things about the Mob4Hire testing community is that it includes both tech-savvy mobile phone users (who we affectionately call "Mobsters") as well as professional testing houses ("MobPro's"). Professional testing houses include companies who's primary focus is mobile testing as well as other mobile developers who have large inventories of mobile handsets that can be used to generate an additional revenue stream in their "off time." MobPro's typically have deeper functional testing expertise, since they've developed in-house processes and reporting.

Such is the case of our latest press release: Mob4Hire Signs Mobile Testing Marketing Deal with Gamelion.

Anton Gauffin, CEO of Gamelion told us that "Mob4Hire acts as a marketing arm for our mobile testing services while increasing our return on investment with this large, but depreciating capital asset, but the real winner will be the mobile developer who will be able to access quality testing services faster and less expensively."

In fact, the addition of Gamelion's handsets to the Mob4Hire database greatly expands European coverage of The Mob: there's now more than 8,000 handsets on over 250 carriers in over 90 countries to choose from!

Welcome to Anton and the team at Gamelion!

We'll be at CTIA Las Vegas all this week, starting at the AT&T Developer Summit: "Addressing Platform Diversity & Tackling Fragmentation" ... a topic that is near and dear to our hearts, since we help solve for this fragmentation with the Mob4Hire community!

Email us at info@mob4hire.com if you're attending CTIA and want to meet up. Viva Las Vegas!

Mob4Hire and Wavefront join forces to "accelerate commercialization"

The world just got a little smaller for developers registered with Wavefront! We're really pleased to announce our partnership with Wavefront (www.wavefrontac.com) out of Vancouver, B.C. Their mantra is ""Accelerating commercialization of wireless products and services," and as James Maynard, CEO and I have discussed, he not only views Wavefront's mission as helping the 1,000 or so local mobile developers compete on a global scale, but Wavefront also serves as a great entry point for the rest of the world to access North America.

The Wavefront team is awesome to work with and certainly share our passion in helping mobile developers make sense of the fragmented mobile landscape. With over 8,000 handsets now in 90+ countries, we offer the developers registered with Wavefront immediate access to markets and user feedback that was previously inaccessible. That's exciting stuff!

We're headed to CTIA Las Vegas next week ... see you there!

Stephen