We've just released version 2.0 of betavine.net. In December 2007 we decided to re-write the whole platform using standard open source components. This gives us greater flexibility, allowing us to develop new site features for you to use.


Some of the new features included in this release are:

• Open ID login. You can now use and Open ID for registration and associate your betavine.net user with an Open ID server.
  
• Search by application title on the applications page. With hundreds of applications now online we've made it easier to find the one you want.
  
• Tagging of blog posts. You can now tag your blog posts, which will link them to applications featuring that tag.
  
• Embedded YouTube videos in your application profile page. This allows you to demonstrate your application visually.
  
• More of our content can be better syndicated than ever before. Check out the
  Betavine API Reference Guide.

We hope you enjoy using the new features of the Betavine web site.

The Betavine team are now fully recovered from the Over The Air festival of fun! A 2 day event held in London at Imperial College. Approx 300 Mobile developers, designers and technologists attended the event.

Almost the whole betavine team got involved in some way during the event. Right from registration, through to development of widgets.

Short of a 'Fire Alarm' event going off in the afternoon everything ran smoothly for the whole two days. Hacking started late evening and a core set of developers worked through the night letting their imagination run free.

There was 'master classes' held for multiple technologies run by many different companies which encompassed the whole mobile space ranging from flashing a linux mobile to user interface design. If you wanted to learn and know more about developing and designing for mobiles this was definitely the place to be.

The event was so successful that plans are afoot to do the same thing in other European city's.



Things note worthy: One of our top developers even managed to win a prize after developing a firefox plugin which allows you to create your own RSS feed widget and send to your mobile! When asked about his prize he kindly gave it to his young sister as a gift. Well done to Owen Griffin!

The Brief

Redesign a technical mobile website into a consumer friendly mobile website.

Description

betavine.mobi was originally designed to profile mobile applications uploaded by members of Betavine to a community of tech-savvy developers, but would like to become a channel for distributing a mix of finished and work-in-progress applications directly to consumers. Betavine is looking for a new way of showcasing these applications in a user-friendly way, while keeping the overall "look & feel" of the original site www.betavine.net, which is still oriented towards the developer community. It should be easy and fun to find new applications and download them.

We have partnered with RedesignMe to host this competition. The goal of RedesignMe is to improve the products and services around us by collectively rethinking bad products into better products and good ideas into great ideas. RedesignMe collects the best product improvements and communicates them back to the original designers & producers. The new Pro Challenges are not initiated by end-users but by companies. Companies that want to involve their customers into their product design process. People are rewarded for their input. Visit both sites and make your own creative analysis. Start Redesigning today and get rewarded for your creativity!

The Prizes

RedesignMe and Betavine will give away 3 iPods Nano for the most creative feedback. This can be in form of a well thought-out comment, wish-list, sketch, mobile web design, or prototype.

How to Enter

To enter the competition, simply go to the Betavine PRO Challenge redesignme hosted on RedesignMe and either add a redesign or add a comment.

Deadline

The deadline for this Redesign PRO Challenge is Monday April 21, 2008.

The Betavine team recently had the opportunity to demonstrate Betavine at CeBIT 2008. CeBIT (Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik; German for "Centre of Office and Information technology") is held annually in Hanover, Germany and is the world's largest computer expo with 5845 exhibitors and 495,000 visitors.

This 6 day event provided us with a fantastic opportunity to chat to a range of people from individual developers, founders of new companies through to executives of huge multi-national businesses.

We received some very positive feedback on the site and also lots of questions. There were 2 main things we took away from the event:

• Quite a few people loved the Betavine concept but had never heard of it until they saw it at CeBIT. Over the next few months we plan to expand our advertising compaign to make more people across the globe aware of Betavine and the services it provides. This will include attending more developer-focused events such as the Over-the-air event in London
• People want a clear picture of 'What happens next?' if their application proves popular with the Betavine community. Understanding exactly how we can support our developers in the longer term is something we are currently looking at and we welcome any feedback or ideas you have on this via the forums.

Pete

We are really pleased to be able to announce the second student competition for 2008, which is being sponsored by Forum Nokia.

We look forward to seeing some great entries to this competition, because we have a particular interest in widgets - both PC and mobile.

Do let us know your thoughts about how the widget environment will evolve on the mobile phone, and what platforms or browsers you think are particularly well suited to deliver all of that widgety good stuff.