Only 6% of the Brazil population have broadband in their home. However, ownership of mobile phones is at 115% of the population (more than one per person), of which 82% are “feature phones” rather than smartphones. There is a big need to create services and opportunities for this audience.

To make progress toward this goal, BlueVia has organized a hackathon with Evernote and Wayra to generate new ideas and services, specially focused in feature phones users. Bluevia and Evernote will be present on the day to help with the hacking.

The Hackathon will be organized around these two services that BlueVia and Evernote offer, and projects will have to integrate both to compete.

If you want to participate, you can gather a 3 people (max) group , click on the link below and send us your proposal. Hackathon will take place 26th and 27th of May. Wayra academy in Sao Paulo will host the event.

Awards will be delivered for people with the best ideas but the most important thing for the developer is that he’ll be able to make that service accessible to millions of people and make them able to access to all the information that’s on the internet that they can’t access right now.

Join the event following this link: http://bit.ly/Kr2Q7M

For more live information in the build-up and during the event, follow our official feed at @bluevia_es and our organiser Andrés on @davilagrau.

*If you want to find out about Brazil figures and data, you can register at the Bluevia website and download country-specific data for free.

More about Evernote

Evernote, the global platform for human memory, offers web APIs and access for mobile clients to record ideas, and BlueVia offers simple web APIs that allow developers connect faster to powerful services of mobile network with messaging and payment.

Mobilism 2012 is a three day conference starting today about one of our favourite topics – mobile web design and development. Dan Appelquist from BlueVia will be speaking on a panel on Friday (‘Device and network APIs’) and listening in to what other speakers have to say about mobile web design right now.

In the words of organisers PPK, Krijn Hoetmer and Stephen Hay: “Nowadays most web conferences feature a mobile session, and most mobile conferences a web session. The obvious next step is Mobilism: a conference wholly dedicated to mobile web design and development.”

If you can’t make it you can view the Livestream for free online on Friday 13:00 CET. If you’re attending, then keep an eye out for Dan and say hello if you can.

Last weekend Pinewood Studios welcomed 150 eager coders into it’s famous corridors for the first ever GameHack.

GameHack was the first (we hope) of many game jams from TIGA and BlueVia. We got involved both to support independent developers and to introduce new people to our APIs (like the in-app payments API which is ideal for monetizing games).

37 teams formed with the aim of putting together a complete game from start to finish within 24 hours. As you’d expect there was plenty of wifi, pizza, energy drinks but not a lot of sleep.

Entrants picked a category to compete in from five options: mobile, web, cross platform, flash and procedural generation. There was hot competition but mobile was most popular in the end with half the teams entering the category (second most popular was web).

It was a great experience for the BlueVia team and Tom in particular, who worked closely with Nisha from TIGA to put the event together. Although they weren’t coding themselves they both stayed up through the night with the teams to make sure power, food and drink were plentiful.

There were a range of awards, based on category but also some special prizes from the judging panel:

• Adobe Best Flash Game for iOS Winner: The Super Flash Bros
• Antix Labs Procedural Generation Challenge Winner: Vegitects
• BlueVia Best Use of Mobile Winner: Lightwood Games
• Getty Images/Pinewood Studios/Centroid 3D Games Trailer Challenge Winner: Knightshade
• Marmalade Best Cross Platform Mobile Application Winner: Smoking Games
• Turbulenz/Mozilla HTML5 Games Category Winner: Hack FM
• Papaya Mobile Social Game Hack Winner: Placeholder Games
• SCEE Best Game Award Winner: The Super Flash Bros
• TechHub Most Innovative Idea Award Winner: Lightwood Games
• TIGA Most Awesome Game Award Winner: Team Coderunner

BlueVia sponsored the “Best use of mobile” award which was won by Lightroom Games.

As this was our first gaming event we wanted to have a flexible but testing category, the challenge was simple: Create a game that defies what we think is possible with a  mobile device. This could mean integrating accelerometer, gyroscopic, light sensor data, messaging, location, WiFi or Bluetooth to enhance the gaming experience. There is huge potential for immersive games that go beyond what occurs on the device, which is why when we saw Lightwood Games submission Plasmafest we knew it was the clear winner.

Plasmafest is all about bringing people together and having a group experience and most importantly it was a beautifully simple idea ‘lights out’ for the mobile age. Players connect their device over bluetooth and then race against each other to touch all of the lights in their assigned colour. What we really liked was that the game board covered all devices, players are not restricted to their own screen making it a messy but fun tangle to touch all your lights on everyone else’s device.

We are incredibly excited that they are launching the game, now titled Plasma Party this week on iOS and is a testament to the talent within the UK games industry and the potential of hackathons to create amazing ideas. The guys also liveblogged the experience which makes for a fun and fascinating read after the event.

It was our first gaming hackathon and we wanted to say thanks to everyone who turned out to make it such a fun weekend and brought their amazing ideas to life.