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AppCircus busca apps innovadoras en México DF

May 14th, 2012
AppCircus, la competición itinerante de apps más grande del mundo, se celebrará el próximo 13 de junio en el Anexo de Ingeniería de la Ciudad Universitaria de la UNAM. AppCircus en México DF será una gran ocasión para incentivar el talento que concentra la comunidad universitaria en el desarrollo de apps.
Tras el éxito de AppCircus Villahermosa el pasado mes de abril, AppCircus en México DF será la segunda cita de AppCircus con México en 2012. AppCircus 2012 apuesta de forma muy clara por Latinoamérica. Según Francis Casado, Business Developer Manager de AppCircus, “Latinoamérica es una potencia emergente en cuanto al crecimiento, tanto en el desarrollo como en el consumo de aplicaciones para Smartphones. En muchos de países latinoamericanos, la ausencia o la precariedad de las infraestructuras físicas hace que el parque móvil ofrezca un sinfín de posibilidades que de otro modo no existirían.”
Con motivo de la celebración de AppCircus, a partir de las 10am tendrá lugar el seminario "Introducción al desarrollo para BlackBerry Playbook en Adobe AIR", cuya inscripción será gratuita, con la única limitación del aforo máximo de la sala. Se trata de un taller enfocado a aprender los fundamentos de la tecnología Flex para desarrollar aplicaciones nativas para BlackBerry Tablet OS mediante Adobe AIR. Con esta tecnología se aprovecha el poder de la Plataforma Flash para construir aplicaciones que se comuniquen con diferentes características de PlayBook como la cámara, la geolocalización y el almacenamiento local, entre otros. Este taller dará paso a la competición AppCircus, que dará comienzo a las 11.45 h.
Para participar en AppCircus sólo hay que registrar online la app en la web hasta el día 30 de mayo (registro aquí). De entre todas las apps registradas, se elegirán las 10 mejores aplicaciones, que van a tener 3 minutos para darse a conocer desde el escenario, ante un jurado experto y el público.
La app ganadora de este Top 10 podrá ser nominada para participar en los Mobile Premier Awards que se celebrarán en febrero de 2013 en Barcelona, paralelamente al Mobile World Congress.

Dónde y cuándo se celebra AppCircus México, DF se celebrará el miércoles 13 de junio, de las 10am a la 1.45 pm en el Auditorio Sotero Prieto del Anexo de Ingeniería de la Ciudad Universitaria de la UNAM (Av. Ural, 04510)


AppCircus Newsletter #38 – Join our online competitions and get more votes!

May 14th, 2012
Welcome to the AppCircus!!!
Howdy!

Check out this week's headlines and find out more about our online app competitions, about a new exciting AppCircus in Mexico DF and about the latest winning apps in AppCircus events!
In this edition:
- Join Nokia App Champions powered by AppCircus and win free Nokia devices every month!
- Join the Opencities App Challenge: 3.000 Euro are at stake!
- AppCircus in México DF announcement
- Winning apps at AppCircus Villahermosa and AppCircus @ Blackberry 10 Jam

Join Nokia App Champions powered by AppCircus and win free Nokia devices every month!

Nokia App Champions powered by AppCircus is a monthly app competition that will run from May until November 2012. The contest is open to all developers with an app, based on either Windows Phone or Java/Qt S40 platforms, and will have two winners a month for each category! Nokia is giving away a FREE Nokia Lumia 800 (Windows Phone category) and Nokia 808 Pureview (Java/Qt S40 category) to each monthly winner. And if you become the Nokia App Champion you get a direct slot to pitch at next year’s Mobile Premier Awards!
Submit your app, vote for your app, and get your friends and family to vote. Your fans can vote for you via Twitter or Facebook. More votes means more virality and more chances to win. Remember the winning apps are chosen by the audience, so make sure to tell all your tweeps by quoting #nokia #champions #appcircus!
And if you don’t win one month, try again! You can always resubmit your app again the following month. More info on dates, prizes, process and rules on the Nokia App Champions website (also available in English)!

Join the Opencities App Challenge: EUR 3.000 are at stake!

The Open Cities App Challenge powered by AppCircus has 47 more days to go! As part of the EU-funded Open Cities project, the challenge is a free online competition that is open to everyone, and that involves the creation and design of apps which use Open Data. The winner will receive the Best Open Cities App and a prize of EUR 3.000! So what are you waiting for? Submit your app by June 30th 2012 and get votes from your fans!
Open Cities aims to improve the quality of city-life and the use of urban spaces, advance network ideas and involve residents in the creation of the smart cities of tomorrow. The Open Data is provided by eight participating European cities: Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, London and Bologna, all cities that have opened their data for private and commercial use, making them available through the projects Open Data and Open Sensor Networks platforms.

OpenCityGuide is a nice example of an app built from open data. It is a city guide that uses several sources of open data from the seven cities that have participated offering their data on touristic attractions. It may be checked on a PC although it looks better on your phone or tablet browser!

Join AppCircus in México DF!

We’re excited to announce that next 13 of June, AppCircus is making a stopover at the Engineering campus of UNAM, a hundred-year-old university, and one of the most emblematic institutions in Mexico from an educational, scientific, cultural and social perspective.

AppCircus in México DF will be a great opportunity to encourage the potential and talent for the development of innovative apps among the academic community.

10 developers can pitch in front of an international jury, formed by industry experts, and get an opportunity to be nominated for theMobile Premier Awards 2013, which are to be held during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Furthermore, an “Introduction on development for Blackberry Playbook in Adobe AIR” will be offered as a free workshop, focusing on the basics of Flex technology to develop native BlackBerry Tablet OS apps with Adobe AIR. This technology takes advantage of the power of the Flash Platform to build apps that communicate with different Playbook functions such as the camera, geolocalization, and local storage among others.
AppCircus in México DF will start at 10am at the Auditorio Sotero Prieto of UNAM. App sumission is open until 30th of May. Submit your app!

AppCircus in México DF is sponsored by:

Awesome winner apps at AppCircus @ Blackberry 10 Jam!

BlackBerry® 10 Jam is where app developers met in early May in Orlando, Florida to learn about the innovations coming to the BlackBerry 10 developer platform. Take a fabulous venue, add some fascinating announcements for RIM developers, top it off with an AppCircus, and get one of the most amazing events for app developers! The lucky winners of the AppCircus @ Blackberry 10 Jam got $25,000 to see their favorite bands and they could be nominated for the Mobile Premier Awards. Want to know it all about the winner apps and their creators’ motivations? Read our blog post!

That's it for this week. More news coming soon!

The AppCircus Team.

Upcoming AppCircus events:

AppCircus in México DF
México DF, Mexico - 13.06

AppCircus @ Content & Apps LATAM
Miami, Florida, USA - 13.06

Follow AppCircus!
AppCircus Twitter in English!AppCircus on Facebook!AppCircus LinkedIn GroupAppCircus RSS feed


Totally awesome winner apps at AppCircus @ Blackberry 10 Jam!

May 8th, 2012
BlackBerry® 10 Jam is where app developers met last week in Orlando, Florida to learn about the innovations coming to the BlackBerry 10 developer platform.
Take a fabulous venue, add some fascinating announcements for RIM developers, top it off with an AppCircus, and get one of the most amazing events for app developers!
Developers were asked to bring their app on-site and work with RIM experts to port it to the BlackBerry 10 Platform, through a Blackberry 10 dev Alpha device. Developers then pitched their app to a jury of industry experts, got valuable feedback and nine of them (three per category) were selected to go to the finals.

The lucky winners of the AppCircus @ Blackberry 10 Jam got $25,000 to see their favorite bands and they could be nominated for the Mobile Premier Awards. The jury chose:

B'Giftee as the Best BlackBerry® WebWorks™ / HTML5 app.

According to Wes Worsfold, the President at Motek, the Canadian company that created B’Giftee, "This app is inspired by how people share all sorts of things: photos, documents, check-ins… But they have no real way of sharing real-world things such as a beer or a hamburger." B’Giftee is a very social app, it is a whole new way to recommend things to friends, to make the “I know some people that would love this...” come true! B’Giftee will be launched on the market next month as almost everything is set to go. It will be available in Blackberry, Android and IOS.

For Wes Worsfold AppCircus was a great experience. He and his team are used to pitching but AppCircus was different as they were pitching in front of other developers and people who know the app industry. The valuable feedback they got from jury members, as well as the final prize make a nice recognition for the company: they intend to spend the $25,000 USD worth of concerts in a couple e of very special events!
Wes Worsfold found that the BlackBerry® 10 Jam event was really useful because thanks to the Blackberry 10 dev Alpha device his app could be ported to the Blackberry 10 platform in a couple of hours, whereas this sort of migration would normally take several weeks.
Motek Mobile focuses in HTML5 development and has built 20 apps, that have 7 million unique daily users altogether.

The best app in the Adobe® AIR®  category was Cooklet

With more than 400.000 downloads since October 2011,  it contains tons of recipes and tools (unit converter, timer, shopping list), cookbooks, a community of international foodies - it's all one needs to cook! In addition, the app actually responds to the users' gestures if the device camera is switched on. In order to avoid touching the phone with wet hands in the kitchen, the users just need to make the gesture of swiping in the air and the app moves on to the next page of the recipe!

Cooklet’s creator, Grzegorz Trubilowicz, is a 28-year old Polish developer who started his own company ten years ago doing design and programming services. In 2006 he won the International Mobile Gaming Awards with the game Crazy Matches. "I was doing well with this kind of agency but I wanted a product of my own, one that I could influence all the way. I chose cooking because it is creative and social. I want to create something that people love." Grzegorz also chose Adobe Air because it is cross platform.
On AppCircus and Mobile Premier Awards: "I have been to a couple of Mobile Premier Awards and I liked it a lot. It was a very international and cool experience." MPA is the reason he joined AppCircus at BB10Jam. "It's always very important to talk about your product and AppCircus is great for that!"
As for the next steps for his app, Grzegorz said they want to become a platform for publishers to push content through their app. This step is planned for Q4.
The winning Native Gaming app was Training with Messi, an intense, arcade soccer experience featuring the superstar soccer player, Lionel Messi.
Ezequiel D'Amico is a 25-year old Argentinian developer who has an app development agency called Rock n Roll Game Studio: "We wanted to make a big soccer game for mobile. We love soccer -everyone in Argentina does. Making a mobile game with 11 players vs 11 players is difficult because of the screen size, so we came up with the singler soccer-player training game."
Training with Messi so far has had some seed investment by RIM and some more money and time has been provided by Ezequiel and his colleagues. Next step is launching! And after that? "We want to create more games!"
Other apps that were selected to pitch at AppCircus @ Blackberry 10 am were:
Best BlackBerry® WebWorks™ / HTML5 category:
Adobe® AIR®  category
Native Gaming category:Preview

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more info and upcoming events


Join the Nokia App Champions powered by App Circus and win free Nokia Lumia devices every month!

May 3rd, 2012

If you have developed, or if you are planning to develop an app on Java or Windows Phone, Nokia App Champions powered by AppCircus is made for you! Nokia App Champions is a monthly app competition that will run from May until November 2012 (with a break in August). The online contest is open to all developers with a Nokia app, based on either Windows Phone or Java platforms, that will have two winners a month for each category!

Nokia is giving away FREE Lumia 800 and Lumia 808 to each monthly winner. If you don’t win one month, try again! You have plenty of chances as you can always re-submit your app again the following month.

Furthermore, if you become the Nokia App Champion you get a direct slot to pitch at next year’s Mobile Premier Awards!

Submit your app, vote for your app and get your friends and fans to vote via Twitter and Facebook, let other people know about the online competition, get virality and become a Nokia App Champion! Remember the best app is chosen by the audience.

Apps need to be available at Nokia Spain store or Marketplace in order to be eligible as a winner . To find out more details about the Nokia App Champions, to get some info on how to submit your app to the Nokia store or Marketplace and to view the full the full terms and conditions please visit nokiachampions.appcircus.com

Follow @appcircus_ESP and @appcircus or hashtags #appcircus and #nokia #champions on Twitter for latest updates and information.


¡Bit Draw y Pet Mate, apps ganadora y Runner-up en el grandioso AppCircus Villahermosa!

April 30th, 2012

Tras el concurrido workshop de Blackberry “Introducción al desarrollo para BlackBerry Playbook en Adobe AIR”, impartido por el instructor Edgar Parada de forma muy didáctica frente a más de 200 personas, ¡dio inicio el AppCircus entre payasos y malabaristas, y con David Ochoa (Bytepodcast) como maestro de ceremonias!

Los miembros de jurado estaban listos para escuchar a los desarrolladores que tenían tres minutos para presentar sus apps en el escenario. Y al acabar cada presentación podían hacer sus preguntas para valorar determinadas características de la app.  Entre las apps seleccionadas, muchas estaban destinadas a facilitar la vida en las ciudades. También concurrieron apps para cuidar mascotas, para crear arte, para monitorear nuestro karma, para crear encuestas y para hablar el lenguaje de señas mexicano.
Y tras casi 90 minutos de presentaciones y 15 minutos de deliberación, el jurado resolvió los siguientes ganadores:
Runner-up: Pet Mate,  una aplicación que permite buscar veterinarios, salones de belleza o tiendas de mascotas, guardar el historial médico del animal y recibir notificaciones sobre vacunas y citas con el veterinario, y tejer una red social entre dueños de mascotas.
Ganador de AppCircus Villahermosa:  Bitdraw, una app creada por la empresa Touchtastic para crear pixel art, una forma de arte digital que se hace mediante ilustraciones en bitmap, colocando un pixel tras otro. Esta app ya está disponible en el AppStore.
El creador de Bitdraw, Ricardo Hernández, que acudió a AppCircus con sus compañeros de Touchtastic, se vuelve a su ciudad de Mérida con:
-una entrada gratis a Content & Apps Latam, un evento que se realizará en Miami, Florida, los próximos 13 y 14 de junio y donde AppCircus también estará presente,
-la posibilidad de ser nominada para los Mobile Premier Awards 2013 en Barcelona.
-mucha motivación para seguir creando y una impresión muy positiva al ver todo el talento que se ha presentado en AppCircus Villahermosa.
-una gran experiencia como empresa. Touchtastic ya participó en otro AppCircus con la app De a litro, y estos son sus consejos para quien quiera participar en AppCircus.
¡Enhorabuena y gracias a los ganadores, a los participantes, al CITI Tabasco de Villahermosa, a los sponsors, a los presentadores, a los asistentes y a los sponsors!
¡La gira mexicana de AppCircus no ha hecho más que empezar!