Food Drive Success!

Diane ran a Give-Back-This-Holiday-Season sprint with our team. It was as simple and fun as it was meaningful---we got to vote on our favorite consensus, which turned out to be the Food Bank of the Bay Area.

We collected donations, which was matched 1:1 from company coffers, then went shopping at Costco. This is something Alan E. does annually with the team at Google, too.

We chatted with Tometrius P. (pictured below) who runs the Second Harvest Food Bank center in San Carlos. The need is up sharply this year, which was expected. Somewhat unexpected was that donations were down. So please pass the word---you can truly make a real difference.

iTunes App Store Reaches 10k Apps

Wow, Apple has just reached the 10,000 iPhone/iPod-touch application mark!

To celebrate, taptap has created this mosaic of all the apps, can you find Bluepulse in there? (click to see full-size version)

Bluepulse, iPhone and Google's G1

A friend over at Cast.tv (they're doing awesome things with video search) just Bluepulsed me that her phone contract is nearly up and is torn between getting Apple's iPhone or Google's soon to be released G1.

Given that every man and his blog are talking about the G1 today, here's a comparison with as few stats as possible.

• GPS: Both have it, the G1 has compass based street view as well.
• App stores: iPhone is approval based (ie: higher quality apps), G1 is open slather (ie: more cool stuff for us nerds)
• Music: iPhone has ITMS, G1 has Amazon. Amazon music will be cheaper and starts with 6M DRM free tracks.
• Video: ITMS has video, Amazon doesn't (at launch anyway)
• Keyboard: iPhone has its touchscreen, G1 has a slider qwerty keyboard
• Camera: 2Mp on iPhone, 3Mp on G1
  
• Sync: iPhone has iTunes, G1 has no desktop sync
• Storage: iPhone has 8/16GB with no expansion, G1 has 1GB with microSD
• Screen: iPhone=3.5" 480X320 , G1=3.17" 480X320 (Sorry, tried to steer clear of numbers)
  
• O/S: iPhone is pretty slick, G1 seems not as slick, both seem functionally similar though.
• Form factor: G1 is bigger due to the keyboard
  
• Sexiness factor: 12 months ago you could just about pick up having an iPhone. This will NEVER happen with a G1 ;)
• Bluepulse: The Bluepulse iPhone app is available today. For now, G1'ers would be headed to bluepulse.com in their browser.

HTC Dream, AKA T-Mobile G1

So, if regular-phone-user 'I' were in the market for a phone what would I get? Given that the G1 is the first Android device to ship there are bound to be a few kinks, such as (cr)app overload due to the lack of an approval process in their app store, or frustration from the lack of desktop syncing. Coming from a Motorola/Nokia/Sony-Ericsson my bug threshold is pretty low, so while I'm sure these things will get fixed over time, let me know when it's done.

Compare that with the relatively tight controls over the iPhone features/apps and beautifully simple UI. That makes it a great intro to mobile internet, much the same as what Apple did with the desktop a quarter century ago. The iPhone is the way to go for now... unless of course you want some serious quality.

As for what Bluepulse is doing with Android, it's essentially the same as what I wrote a last year - If Android gets good traction and provides a way for us to give our users an even better Bluepulse experience, we're there!

Why so quiet? [Building cool stuff]

The standard question on everyone's lips at last nights TechCrunch50 party

A challenge for all you people out there!

As promised, this post will cover the intricacies of How to Plan a Bluepulse Scavenger Hunt. In tandem with the contest, we at Bluepulse would like to challenge everyone to top this story with one of their own! The following is a faithful representation of what transpired on the fateful Friday of July 25th, and we would love to hear YOUR stories and share it with everyone else, with your permission. So, US residents (sorry to everyone else!) sign up 5 or more of your friends onto Bluepulse, plan some crazy event and tell us all about it! A chance at a $250 Apple Gift Card AND a cool story to share - what more could you ask for? :)

How to plan a Bluepulse Scavenger Hunt:

Aim: To have fun and experience Bluepulse in action
Materials: 9 Bluepulsers with mobile phones and Bluepulse accounts
Method:

Thursday

• Create a group on Bluepulse and invite Bluepulsers to join it

Friday afternoon

• Receive a message from Ben in Bluepulse with information on our first meeting place

Friday evening:

• Arrive at the meeting place via various modes of transport (Christopher biked [from the Caltrain station]!!! in hilly SF!!! I am in awe.)
• Ben leaves with Pete and plans on messaging us on Bluepulse to tell us where to go next
• We turn the tables on Ben & Pete and tell them where to meet us
• Use the Urban Spoon on Veera's iPhone to decide on a dinner place
• Use the compass on Luke's watch to figure out which direction to walk (I have no idea why we weren't using the iPhone GPS function)
• Realize that the restaurant was three doors down from the bar we were originally at (we overshot without realizing)
• Order dinner by messaging Christopher with our choice of dish so he has the entire list on his phone and can rattle it off to the waitress

Monday morning:

• Do a post-mortem where Ben asks, "What was the most memorable thing that annoyed you?"
• Understand problems that users have, such as:
• Not being able to search for a private group
• Lost group invitations
• Confusion between group messages and status updates
• But also acknowledging the good parts!
• Having a threaded group conversation while out and about
• Updating statuses to reflect where people are
• Being able to go back and look at those messages later on (yay inside jokes!)

There you have it, the epic Friday night that Bluepulsers spent in the city. Now, it's your turn! Remember to share that cool story and begin your own adventure by signing up those 5 friends and getting a chance to win $250 to spend at Apple. More details on the contest here.

Best unboxing ever? [Must be hump-day]

Yes, I know I've been suckered in to a viral ad campaign, but you have to give cred where due. Here's the unboxing of the Samsung Omnia i900:



[via Unpluggd]

The Atmosphere [Interns dishing dirt]

Clarissa's at it again, telling it how it is as Bluepulse's first intern...

It's the 11am Monday meeting where everyone gathers for the weekly briefing. The first thing I notice is the jovial atmosphere - people joke before, during and after the meeting. Bluepulse IS dry wit. The next thing I realize is how international the team is - there are 6 Australians, 1 Peruvian (Rodrigo), 1 Indian (Veera), 1 Swedish (Tina), and I'm Singaporean (no, that is not in China).

Anyway, after we're done with the updates, Ben asks Lou to start writing a "Cool/Uncool/Normal" table on the whiteboard. Intriguing. It's a pretty good way of getting updates from people, whether on personal lives or on Bluepulse stuff. For the first week, things on the 'cool' side include me (yay), scavenger hunt (this I will elaborate on later), and one of the 'uncool' things was Diane's jury duty - she was most unfortunately spirited away by the Superior Court of California on my second day of work.

There are points during the day when the office is really really quiet. I was initially actually rather confused because I thought a startup should be really busy and bustling, but later I realized that everyone IMs in this office. GTalk is the order of the day. or MSN. or Adium. One of those. People still walk around and talk to one another, but this excerpt of a GTalk conversation between Bec and myself proves my point:

me: :p i have to say i find it vaguely amusing that we're sitting about 5m away from each other and IMing
Rebecca: hahah - now you know why it's always so quiet in the office
me: ohhhhhh O.o
Rebecca: and you'll also know why you'll suddenly hear 2 or 3 people around you all laugh at once :p
me: techy pple... sigh.

The truth of said prevalence of technology in Bluepulsers' lives is reinforced when we go off to SF on Friday for our scavenger hunt. More on that in the next post! Stay tuned:)

P.S. Special announcement: Pete's fish had a little fish! Okay, I just googled, it's called a fry. Please excuse my ignorance.
P.P.S. When asked what a baby fish was called, Luke suggested, "Fishy?"