BeMyApp is hosting Tizen Hack Competition alongside the fist Tizen Developer Conference. So it is your chance to get in early. We will have developer devices for all attendees to use.
What is Tizen?
Tizen is a new operating system. Samsung Electronics and Intel (among others) are launching it. You can use web technologies to write applications that run across multiple device segments. Phones will be released in Q2/Q3 this year.
Tizen feels a lot like Android with some of the design sensibility of webOS. The round icons, gray backgrounds, and slightly cartoonish aesthetic bring back memories of the Pre and Pixi. From the sliding lock screen to the pull-down windowshade and menus, it’s a nice-looking operating system.
If you’re ready to jump into the new, join us for #tizenhack in San Francisco:
Hard to believe it’s been more than a month since the AppOlympics! We hope the apps everyone built are growing and flourishing… and we can’t wait to hear how some of them take the world by storm!
February 24-26 marked the first annual BeMyApp event here in Dallas, hosted by Tech Wildcatters in Uptown. BeMyApp is a mobile app design & development competition, where idea generators, developers, and designers of all ages and skill levels come together to create a functioning app in just 48 hours. This weekend the competition was help simultaneously in Dallas, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, London, and Paris.
Ben Morrow had attended last year’s BeMyApp in San Francisco,
“I watched the Namerick team build their app during the weekend, release it, and get coverage in blogs. I wanted so badly to bring the event to Dallas. When the idea for the App Olympics came, it was the perfect chance for our local developers and designers to compete globally.”
Ben was a fantastic host, and he pulled together the sponsors and competitors to make the inaugural BeMyApp Dallas a success. His day job is cofounder of Liquid, a Dallas startup that has designed a new touch interface for personal finance. As part of the closing ceremonies of the competition, he announced the official launch and availability of their eponymous app in the Apple App Store.
App Olympics Weekend
On Friday evening, 18 idea generators had 60 seconds to pitch their products to the designers and developers. Out of those ideas, the top 6 were chosen by vote and thus began the race to complete the apps. The ideas were varied in premise, complexity, and execution; including mobile games, health analytics, and music and news aggregators with heavy social media components. The teams developed their ideas on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone until Sunday evening, when they gave their final presentations to a panel of judges.
The winning ideas were a mix of beautiful design and execution. Third place went to Fambli, a tool to help families define and internalize their values. Second place went to That Day When, which allowed users to aggregate their stories and sentiments about days and events in history. The first place winner, HaikuBrew, created a sleek interface for creating haikus using Facebook social integration. The HaikuBrew team includes Nick Gottlieb, Brian Ellison, Robert Prottorff, John Watson, and Rodivic (Rudi) Garcia. John graduated UT Dallas in 2005 with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, while Rudi is a graduate student in Arts & Technology.
After the winner from each city was picked, they then were pitted against each other in a 48-hour online vote for the winner of the 2012 Mobile App Olympics. Dallas’s HaikuBrew earned silver in the global competition, with first place going to Kinvolved from NYC. The top three winning teams were rewarded with prizes and are expected to have apps available shortly.
BeMyApp attracts those who are truly passionate about ideas and flawless execution. Amidst the chaos and the pressure to complete a working app in such a small amount of time, those involved are dedicated to the cause they chose, and to their practiced discipline; whether it be design or development or leadership.
More information on the mobile olympics competition is available on BeMyApp.com. Photos of the Dallas event are available on my Flickr set.
Author: Madelynn Martiniere is a serial web-centric entrepreneur in Dallas, TX. She works as a freelance agent for digital media and entertainment industries and social media consultant. She is currently a senior Arts & Technology student at University of Texas at Dallas.
On February 24th, 700 creatives, doers and makers got together in 6 cities to build mobile applications as part of the Mobile App Olympics 2012 – the latest BeMyApp WeekEnd edition.
Forty-one projects were built throughout the course of the weekend and long-lasting collaboration was sparked. The event brought together people with diverse expertise and skills, and the variety of apps developed is remarkable – from musical text messaging through an app that helps you remember your favorite joint to a sticky, speed texting hamster game.
After each city nominated its Best Local App on Sunday, the 6 finalists from Paris, London, Berlin, NYC, Dallas, and San Francisco entered the 48hrs online competition for the public vote. Their goal was to mobilize the community, upload unique content about their app project and show the world how much could be achieved in 2 days of collaboration.
Today, we are stoked to announce the results of the global vote. A total of 3422 people voted for their favorite app:
Congratulations to the winners and everyone who took part in the App Olympics! We will be following everyone’s progress and make sure to make a big splash when these projects are live.
In the meantime, you can check out videos and pictures from the Olympics, more are coming up this week.
About a year ago I decided to move from Amsterdam, The Netherlands to Silicon Valley. I had tried to start my previous tech company HelloInbox in Amsterdam and that was hard. Nobody was doing startups, there were no investors that were willing to take risk so I and my co-founders were on our own. After having spent a week here I already knew I had to move to Silicon Valley if I wanted to succeed. Everywhere I went I ran into entrepreneurs starting new companies, everybody was really open about how and what, and totally willing to help out. I heard about numerous early stage investors that understand startups, know the chance of succeeding is much smaller than failing, and still are more than willing to invest in you.
When we first got RockIT on board as a sponsor of the last BeMyApp WeekEnd in SF I was quite frankly a bit nervous. Recruiting for tech companies has become a touchy subject in the Bay Area due to the high demand for engineers, product managers, etc. (and in my opinion, as a result of the utterly wrong choice of recruiters sometimes). I didn’t want our attendees to be a moving target for some pushy recruiter while they were at the event to hack and launch their own product.
Then I met with Cody and Jane and from then on I knew everything will be just fine! They were with us for the whole weekend, being co-workers at the venue the event was held, and not one time I regretted partnering with them. As they are going to be with us for the App Olympics in SF, I invited Cody to share their vision and what makes them different from the bunch.
I had just finished a consulting job in May analyzing pricing and quantity data for an anti-trust case. I always wanted to start my own business and the mobile space looked like a great place to start. In the beginning I reached out to friends and family members asking if they knew any programmers that were willing to build my idea, but all the good programmers were either already hired or didn’t want to take a risk of starting a business. Continue reading →
BeMyApp is launching another kickass event, this time with an international twist. After 18 editions that took place in 4 different countries in the past year, we’ve decided it’s about time to put together the first ever Mobile App Olympics – open to app-athletes from all walks of code, native app champs and web app mavericks.
The App Olympics weekend will kick off February 24th in 7 different cities: Paris, London, Berlin, Zurich, New York, Dallas, and San Francisco. A panel of VC’s and bloggers in each city will nominate the best app on Sunday, February 26th. All the runners will continue in the competition and a 48 hrs worldwide vote will determine the ultimate global app winner.
Registration is now open, check out the homepage to get your spot!
February 24-26 marked the first annual 
