You are here: Home / Archives for BlueVia

BlueVia continues to grow

May 6, 2011 1 Comment

 
 
Following on from BlueVia entering Open Beta last week, we are delighted to let you know the next release of the platform (version 1.2) has gone live today, with new countries and APIs added.

The 1.2 release contains the following enhancements:

  • * Movistar Colombia and Chile added to BlueVia
  • * New Multimedia Messaging (MMS) API added, with a risk free revenue generating business model
  • * The addition of the O2 Germany Application Store, providing you with a frictionless path to reach O2 Germany customers with your apps
  • * Enhancements to the existing Advertising API to ensure customers do not need to authorise the Advertising API via the BlueVia Connect customer facing portal

With the release of 1.1.2, the BlueVia API table is now as follows:

As more countries from across the Telefonica group are integrated into BlueVia, it opens up vast opportunities and markets for developers. Take a look at the current growth of the web and mobile in Latin America for example:

  • * With the addition of Columbia and Chile to the platform you can now reach over 100 million Telefonica customers through BlueVia.
  • * There are an estimated 204,689,836 internet users in Latin America, representing 34.5% of the population (Source: Internet World Stats)
  • * Latin America, as a region, has some of the highest adoption rates of mobile devices in the world and overall mobile phone user penetration of 55.4% (source: eMarketer)
  • * 2011 penetration in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico will be 77%, 54% and 52% respectively (source: eMarketer)
  • * Carriers are beginning to accommodate the need for data by offering users unlimited access at rates between $0.30 and $1 per day (source: eMarketer)

Besides these new features and capabilities, there are also a lot of performance improvements and bug fixes, so your BlueVia experience should me more seamless than ever.

Of course we would love to know what you think of the latest release. Please leave us your thoughts here, by emailing support@bluevia.com or via Twitter on @bluevia.

We’re working hard to bring you even more API goodness in the future, so stay tuned for more.

Filed Under: APIs, Apps, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , ,

New App Challenge Invites You to “Think Green”

May 5, 2011 1 Comment



Do you have an app that is part of the next wave of green innovations? Then take a look at the Green ICT Application Challenge and be in for the chance to win $10,000.

The  brainchild of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and supported by Telefónica and RIM, the aim of the Challenge is to develop applications to turn our activities greener and to protect the environment and the planet through a mobile phone or the web. The apps can be designed for energy efficiency activities or the reduction of CO2 emissions, both in the home and in the workplace.

Not sure where to start with your green app? Then here are some ideas that might get you thinking outside of the box of what issues your green app could address:

  • improve the transport systems in your country
  • identify new ways to turn off the lights in your house
  • establish a way to supervise or measure weather conditions in the area you live
  • create warnings in real time if a hurricane is coming
  • assess the environmental quality in one city compared to others

And if that doesn’t help inspire you, there’s even BlueVia’s very own James Parton’s (@jamesparton) idea of Environmental consumer labelling for mobile apps:

If you think these are good ideas or you’ve got an even better one, then we invite you to “think green” and submit an app for the challenge.

Not only will you receive a $10,000 cash prize if you win, but you will feel the satisfaction of working on something different that will contribute to solve a global problem: climate change.

But that’s not all. The winning developer will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to present their app at the Green Standards Week of ITU that will take place in the Rome, Italy in September 2011.  All the “green” gurus of the ICT sector will meet at the event, giving the app an instant invite to the world stage.

Finally, the winning app  if developed could be presented during the climate change conference COP17 in Durban, South Africa in December 2011. COP is the most important and high-profile climate change event worldwide, where thousands of climate experts come together once a year.

You can take part in the Green App Challenge with apps for any web-based tool, software or game compatible with a computer or mobile device.

The deadline for submissions is 17th June 2011. You can get more information on how to apply for the Green App Challenge and see the rules here.

Good luck to all those who enter – your apps could help change the world!

Filed Under: Events, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , , ,

BlueVia moves into Open Beta

April 20, 2011 1 Comment

 

We are delighted to announce that BlueVia has now moved into Open Beta. This means you can now sign up directly from the site without requesting an invitation.

We have moved onto this next important phase of the project 135 days after the launch of the Closed Beta. This has given us the necessary time to stress test the platform and begin the process of collecting some great feedback from the initial batch of over 600 developers that have been working with the platform.

The initial reaction has been good especially around the recognition of BlueVia’s innovative risk free business models where we pay you to use our API’s. However, we have a lot to do. You can feedback to us directly by completing the developer survey running here.

We have published our first four case studies demonstrating how developers have begun to benefit from BlueVia, and have announced partnerships with Microsoft, The Guardian, TechHub, WIP, IMA, Mobile Industry Review and Dot Open. If you would like to be considered for a future case study, please get in touch.

In terms of things we are working on in the near term:

1) Expect new API’s with additional revenue share business model
2) More countries where BlueVia will be supported
3) A bunch of improvements to the user experience and our processes.

Our first few months have been a fantastic to say the least, but there is much more to come. So sign up, get involved and help us to make BlueVia even better.

The BlueVia team
@bluevia

Filed Under: Events, News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

BlueVia Partners with AppCircus Madrid

April 11, 2011 Leave a Comment

On Thursday 14th April, App Circus – the global travelling showcase of creative and innovative apps - arrives in Madrid, bringing a great opportunity for Spanish and European developers to present their apps, hosted at the fantastic BBVA Innovation Centre.

BlueVia are delighted to come on board as partners for the Madrid league of the event, so if you’re going along make sure you look out for the BlueVia team to pick up some great merchandise and find out more about the BlueVia platform. You can register your place here.

On the night, 10 apps that will be presented live on stage in front of a great audience. An international Jury will evaluate and select the best apps, with the winning app will be put forward for the Mobile Premiere Awards, which will be held in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress 2012.

You can keep up with all the action on the night over on ReadWriteWeb.

The Madrid App Circus will be the first a number of collaborations between App Circus and BlueVia this year. To celebrate the partnership and let you find out a little more about App Circus, we conducted an interview with Carles Ferreiro, CEO of DotOpen – the man behind App Circus.

Enjoy!

BlueVia (BV): Hi Carles, thanks for taking the time to speak to us. To start off, can you explain what the idea behind App Circus is?

Carles Ferreiro (CF): AppCircus aims to connect the talented developers that are driving app innovation around the world. With over 30 events in the last 10 months, we are a step closer to our goal of bringing an AppCircus to all the major cities around the world.

BV: What has been AppCircus’s greatest achievement to date?

CF: We are happy that developers and platforms find our services so useful. The feedback from the “app artists” is fantastic as we provide them for a chance to gain global visibility, starting in their own city. Being able to gather hundreds of developers in all of these countries is great for platforms as they look get their word out.

BV: How many developers do you reach and how can they get involved?

CF: We reach hundreds of thousands of developers via our channels, our media partners and our participants who on average have hundreds of followers themselves. Through appcircus.com developers can profile and share their apps, submit them to events and competitions and have them reviewed by a jury. For every local event, 10 apps are selected to present and they get 3 minutes to pitch in front of a live audience of 100-300 peers and potential investors, customers, partners and media. A jury on stage give them questions and feedback on the spot. Overall, a great experience for local and global visibility and for getting feedback on their products.

BV: What can BlueVia developers expect to see from the partnershipwith App Circus?

CF: A great chance to get your app more widely known.

BV: What do you think of the BlueVia platform so far?

CF: There are great expectations placed on Bluevia as it is an interesting platform alternative and complementary to what there is out in the mobile space. We are all eager to hear the first success stories.

BV: What is exciting you most in 2011 (either personally or professionally)?

CF: The whole app economy is picking up speed. This new distribution channel, coupled with the development on the platform side and the increasing penetration of affordable devices is going to transform the way we generate, consume and interact with digital media. Tablets are big news at the top of the market, but the accelerating growth of those getting their first smartphone is the real success.

BV: What’s the most important piece of tech you own?

CF: My laptop and my mobile have been personally and professionally key for me for almost 15 years. The interesting thing is that each year they let me do more.

BV: What mobile or tablets do you use?

CF: I have an iPhone4 and I use an iPad sometimes.

BV: What’s your favourite app?

CF: We have seen a couple of interesting startups coming from AppCircus, like Instant Hear Rate, a game for kids called Crazy Weather from Argentina, FlyPost from the UK and Filmaster from Poland.

BV: Which blogs do you read and why?

CF: To keep up with Latin America:

For Europe:

  • Readwriteweb.es, for everything that is happening in the Spanish mobile and tech scene.
  • TheNextWeb, from our good friends from Holland (Boris and Patrick). They have interesting things to say plus they are very entertaining to read.
  • GomoNews, always stay on top of the latest stories coming from the mobile space.

In the USA:

  • AndroidGuys, a great blog for the Android market.
  • Readwriteweb.com, Marshall and all the team have always been on top of the latest trends industry wise.

Filed Under: Apps, Events, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Announcing the BlueVia SDK for .NET, a collaboration with Microsoft

March 28, 2011 2 Comments

 
 

Today we are delighted to announce a groundbreaking partnership with Microsoft to create the BlueVia SDK for .NET. We recognises the need to drive awareness and adoption of the BlueVia platform, and from today, this partnership with Microsoft puts BlueVia in front of Microsoft’s 6 million developers.

The BlueVia SDK for .NET is a set of drag and drop controls and templates for Microsoft’s Visual Studio, making BlueVia powered app development super simple for any.NET developer who wants to build applications for Windows Phone 7, Windows, Internet Explorer or Xbox. The BlueVia SDK for .NET also enables real-time, programmable voice and data communications that can connect applications to social-networking capabilities. Core to this concept will be the creation of controls that tap into Windows Live Services for key functionality, including user identity, network presence and contacts.

As well as collaboration at a technical level to create the BlueVia SDK for .NET, the partnership will see joint developer outreach between Microsoft and BlueVia. One of these developers is Medianet, who were excited to announce integration of the BlueVia.NET APIs within their TAXISTOP application to ensure non-smart devices can take part in the TAXISTOP transport revolution: Gideon Clifton, CEO, Medianet said: “Developers have been waiting for an opportunity to integrate network operator services within our apps in a robust and seamless way for over a decade. Third party solutions have never delivered due to the historic lack of understanding by operators of the Developer opportunity. Telefonica and Microsoft have corrected this and we are excited to integrate their tools to deliver our TAXISTOP application to millions of feature phone passengers who would not have been able to access TAXISTOP had it not been for the BlueVia SDK for .NET.”

At the launch event today, Tony Mestres (VP Microsoft Communications Sector) had this to say:

“This relationship with Telefonica is an incredible opportunity for our worldwide community of developers to build mobile applications that serve millions of customers. Given the combined capabilities of Visual Studio, Silverlight, Internet Explorer 9, Azure, Windows Phone 7, Windows 7 and Windows Live Services, we think there are huge prospects for innovation in connected consumer experiences and the Cloud. We can’t wait to see what our developer community comes up with.”

Download the BlueVia SDK for .NET here.

Filed Under: APIs, Apps, Events, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Entries Open for the 2011 Meffys Awards

March 23, 2011 Leave a Comment

Our friends over at the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) have just launched the 8th annual Meffys awards.

The Meffys categories span the entire mobile content & commerce ecosystem, from Best Game to Best Music Service to Best Content, so there’s something for everyone and we encourage you to enter any apps or projects that would be suitable.

This year, MEF is also offering a special developer rate of £75 per entry, so there’s no excuse not to enter and we’d love to see BlueVia powered apps up for some of the awards.

There’s more details over on Meffys website and here’s the full run down of Meffys categories for 2011:

  • Best Game
  • Best Music Service
  • Best TV & Video Service
  • Best Content
  • Best Content Discovery & Personalisation Service
  • Best Social Media Service
  • Best Ad Campaign
  • Best Brand on Mobile
  • Best Mobile Website
  • Best Blockbuster App
  • Best Innovative App
  • Best Technology Innovation
  • Best Innovative Business Model
  • Best Innovation in a Mobile First Market
  • Best M-Commerce Service
  • Best Business Intelligence
  • Best Mobile Connected Device
  • Outstanding Contribution Award

You can enter by visiting www.meffys.com, just submit your entries by 26th April 2011. The winners will be announced at a Gala dinner on 7th July at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London’s Covent Garden.

Good luck!

Filed Under: Events, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Event Report: The Big M

March 22, 2011 2 Comments

 
 

This week, the BlueVia team headed down to The Big M conference in Bath, “a brand new independent mobile focused event aimed at those who want to learn from and connect with the very best people in the industry.”

Day one kicked off with Raam Thakrar (@raamthakrar) talking about app distribution and monetisation, both subjects that BlueVia are familiar with. Ramm’s main point was to make sure that developers needed to move on from a “hobbiest mentality” and make sure they sort out the product proposition and find distribution channels that will really scale. More notes from this talk over at It’s Developmental.

Ramm was followed by Arel Balkan (@aral), who gave another of his inspiring and speeches on UX, titled “Beyond Usability”. Bruce Lawson (@brucel) from Opera came next, and gave the following presentation on “Web Anywhere”:

Web Anywhere: Mobile Optimisation With HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

View more presentations from brucelawson

Ewan MacLeod, editor of Mobile Industry Review, was next up and always makes things interesting. This time round he spoke about what frustrates him about mobile and how operators and hand set manufactures should be help fix the problems of connecting services. We’re aware that we operators haven’t got a good track record of working with developers (watch Ewan’s  interview with BlueVia’s Jose Valles for more on this), but he did mention that BlueVia is the start of operators doing things right and mentioned the user context API as an example of this.

BlueVia then took to the stage for our 5 minutes of fame, talking about BlueVia and getting people ready for the developer connect sessions later in the day. There were lots of positive vibes about BlueVia on the day, so if you want to follow up and find out more, take a look at BlueVia.com or get in touch with Elayne Checketts at elayne@bluevia.com

Our very own Paul Golding (@pgolding) gave the closing keynote on “Future Mobile Innovations”:

Big M Conference – Future Mobile Innovations

The event continues today, so make sure you keep updated by following the hashtag on Twitter #bigmconf or follow @bigmconf

Filed Under: Events, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Jose Valles interviewed on the background to BlueVia

March 21, 2011 Leave a Comment

 
 
The third episode of the BlueVia video interview series is up on Mobile Industry Review, this time with an exclusive interview with the head of BlueVia, José Valles (@josevalles49).

Jose discusses how mobile operators have a poor track record when it comes to working with mobile developers, then goes on to explain how BlueVia is set to change this and Telefonica’s thinking behind the initiative.

It’s an enlightening interview if you want to find out more about BlueVia. As Ewan MacLeod, editor of Mobile Industry Review, says: “The most exciting element of the interview was the refreshingly direct and hugely enthusiastic manner in which José presented BlueVia”

You can watch all previous interviews and keep updated on the next set of interviews by visiting the BlueVia series on Mobile Industry Review.

Filed Under: APIs, Apps, Events, Mobile, News Tagged With: , , , ,

Founder of Twitea.me interviewed on Mobile Industry Review about BlueVia

March 16, 2011 1 Comment

 
 
We blogged recently about the BlueVia video series on Mobile Industry Review, which was introduced with a video interview with James Parton (@jamesparton) about BlueVia.

The next interview in the series is with Arturo Garrido, the founder of Twitea.me and a mobile developer who’s already using BlueVia.

We’ll let Ewan MacLeod (@ew4n), editor of Mobile Industry Review, explain the rest:

“Arturo’s service is a Twitter-by-SMS service for Mexico where there’s a high proliferation of feature phones, but also high demand for services such as Twitter. Arturo’s service enables consumers to use Twitter via SMS. All well and good. The problem for him used to be the business model. Sending and receiving SMS used to cost him a lot of money and Arturo used to have to support the service with advertising (or, in some cases, pay for it himself). That’s until Telefonica’s BlueVia came along and changed his world for the better.”

Watch the video interview with Arturo below to find out how he is now generating revenue instead of losing it, has now got carrier-class reliability and the capability to launch into lots of other countries using BlueVia’s APIs:

You can watch the full series of video interviews over on Mobile Industry Review.

Filed Under: APIs, Apps, Case Study, Events, Mobile Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Jose Valles speaking at Mobile Apps 2.0 conference

March 16, 2011 Leave a Comment

 

 
If you want to see what the Head of BlueVia, Jose Valles (@JoseValles49) has to say about where and how Telcos can add value in the new app economy, then get yourself along to the Apps 2.0 Conference, taking place 6th April in Palo Alto, California, organised by Telco 2.0.

Part of the New Digital Economics Americas Executive Brainstorm and Developer Forum, the Apps 2.0 conference explores what needs to be done to build a more sustainable mobile-tablet-TV apps ecosystem that benefits all parties.

Jose will be speaking on a panel titled “Telcos’ New Role in the App Economy”, along with Laurent Therivel, AVP of Corporate Strategy at AT&T, and Peters Suh, CEO at WAC:

“Most operators are struggling to gain traction with their current API offerings and developer programmes.  The use of APIs for ‘core’ products and capabilities such as voice, messaging, location and payments has been poor.  At the same time, operators are struggling to gain a foothold in apps and app stores beyond connectivity as Google, Apple and the handset manufacturers have attracted the vast majority of developers.”
(Quote from the Apps 2.0 conference site)

The session will be looking at how operators could tackle these business challenges by seeking to make APIs for products and services available within applications and app stores, such as BlueVia.

Jose will be speaking on how developing a suite of valuable APIs supported by viable business models will be critical if operators are to develop a sustainable position in this market:

“ Telefonica, with BlueVia, is currently demonstrating the most innovative approaches to ‘API business models’ and similar creative activity is required by the operator community. How important a blue print is BlueVia in developing a sustainable approach to telco APIs and how these APIs?”
(Quote from the Apps 2.0 conference site)

Find out more about the Apps 2.0 Conference or keep up to date with where the BlueVia team will be appearing by following us on PlanCast.

Filed Under: APIs, Apps, Events, News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »
BlueVia - Facebook BlueVia - Twitter BlueVia - Vimeo BlueVia - SlideShare BlueVia - LinkedIn