Some new great things for the Strands community. An awesome new community blog, the YourStrands show, and Strandups!

We just started a community blog, community.strands.com, where we’ll talk about what’s new on Strands, the things we’re doing in our communities, and most importantly… you!

YourStrands is our new community show all about you, the cool stuff you share, the things you do in your communities, and what’s hot on Strands. We’ll also be having guest appearances, so give it a look!

Lastly, we’re hosting a series of informal townhall style events called Strandups. Take a minute, talk about what makes you you, and why your fans follow you online. Kind of like “speed friending”, but more friendly The first Strandup is tonight at Gnomedex ‘08, and we hope to see you there.

After almost a year of permanent presence in Finland thanks to our VP of Mobile Oliver Bremer, and several years of many many trips across the Atlantic, Strands has finally opened an office in Helsinki!

Why?

Because Finland = Mobile. Around 92% of Finland’s population has a mobile phone, and it is home to the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile telephones, Nokia. We have a lot to do in Finland!

Drop us a line if you are visiting and want to meet, and check out our job openings in Helsinki:

• Senior Business Development Manager
• (Senior) Mobile User Experience / Interaction Designer

Yes, everybody knows it by now. Drew is a Strander.

Drew is joining Strands as Community Manager / Evangelist, his job is to increase the number of Strands enthusiasts and to spread Strands awesomeness. Easy

For the entire Strands team and for me personally, this is very exciting. I’ve known Drew for almost a year since Marshall (thanks!) connected both of us, and I am convinced we will have a lot of fun while doing a great job. Very interesting times ahead for all of us… welcome to the team Drew!

We have just released an improved version of Nokia’s Mobile Rules! 2008 winning application, Strands Social Player 3.2, for Symbian S60 3rd Edition and J2ME (optimized for Nokia S40) devices (download for S60 devices here and for S40 devices here).

What is new in the new Strands Social Player 3.2?:

• UI improvements
• Bug fixes
• Reduced application size
• Improved playlist management
• Support for English, Spanish and Finnish
• Auto check for future updates
• Help file
• Rebranding to Strands Social Player (from MyStrands Social Player)

As you know, the Strands Social Player is a music player for mobile devices that lets you discover new music, connect with people, and share your tastes with friends. Version 3.2 works with Nokia S60 3rd edition or S40 devices (optimized for most recent Nokia S40 devices), which brings the Strands Social Player not only to 10s of millions of smart phones but to the true mass market of 100s of millions of Java devices.

Powered by Strands Social Recommender, Strands Social Player provides artist and song recommendations from over 6 million songs, automatically shows cover art and fully integrates with a social network of music enthusiasts.

The “Who’s Listening” feature lets you discover like-minded people who are listening to the same songs you are playing. You can send messages, see the listening histories of your friends, and keep an ear on what’s hot.

Strands Social Player allows you to scrobble tracks to Last.fm as you play music on your Symbian S60 3rd Edition and J2ME (optimized for Nokia S40) devices. Recently listened tracks on your mobile device will now be available on your Last.fm profile.

Earlier versions of the Strands Social Player have won Nokia’s Mobile Rules 2008! Award as the Best Multimedia Application and have received great reviews by many users.

If you are a music / ring tone service provider and looking for a new distribution channel, Strands Social Player might be your new web & mobile community business generator. Get in touch with us!

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Back in March we announced the “Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-Ups“, the Fastest Path to Fund your Project. Now that we are getting closer to the end of the submission period, next September 15th, we’d love to receive your proposal!

As you know, the Call is open to individuals or sole proprietors and privately held businesses throughout the world, and five Finalists will be invited to present their projects during the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys08) next October 23rd to 25th, 2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Winner will receive a commemorative plaque and an offer of a $100,000 investment in the form of a convertible loan.

For further information, please visit http://recommender-startups.strands.com or contact the Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups organizers at recommender-startups@strands.com.

Important dates:
September 15th: Proposal submission period ends
October 6th: Five Finalists are announced
October 23rd-25th: Presentations of Finalists at RecSys08
October 25th: Winner Announced

Contact and updates:
Email proposal to: recommender-startups@strands.com
http://recommender-startups.strands.com
http://blog.Strands.com
http://recsys.acm.org

We are happy to announce today that Strands will be powering the online personal finance tool that BBVA, one of the world’s largest retail banks, will be offering its customers (see BBVA press release here).

Developed by BBVA and Strands, BBVA Tú cuentas (You count, in Spanish) is an innovative personal finance tool that allows online users to manage their personal finances better, offering friendly analysis tools to better understand spending and savings. A 100% customizable interface, personalized suggestions, and versions for the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia phones are some of the unique characteristics of BBVA Tú cuentas, being offered to BBVA customers.

BBVA has 4.1 million online customers performing over 1.3 billion annual online transactions. Strands Social Recommender, a key component in the solution, will help BBVA better understand its customers’ needs and behavior, offering them personalized suggestions of financial and non-financial products.

BBVA Tú cuentas is launched today in private beta with the following features:

- Analysis of personal financial information. BBVA Tú cuentas displays a graphical representation of the customers’ financial health, break-down of their income and expenses, as well as their evolution through time. Charts help customers better understand their finances and see whether they have done better or worse than planned over time.

- Categorization of transactions. BBVA Tú cuentas organizes all transactions into a series of categories, and customers can also use personal tags if they prefer them. Having data well organized can help customers make better financial decisions.

- Comparison tools. Customers can tag themselves and BBVA Tú cuentas will compare them to similar customers. Offering meaningful comparisons with similar customers will help people better understand their personal finances and put them into context.

- Budget Goals. BBVA customers can set up their budget and keep their spending within the limits of what they can realistically afford. Additionally, they can choose to be notified if they happen to go over their set budget.

- Alerts. Customers can configure their own financial alerts and BBVA Tú cuentas will notify clients whenever they cross predefined limits. To round things off, customers can also combine these Alerts with their Budget Goals.

- Just for me. The collective knowledge of BBVA user base allows for BBVA Tú cuentas to offer an automatic selection of personalized suggestions for customers to make better decisions. (1) Practical financial and consumer tips to inform customers before they make money choices; (2) short list of most liked products matching each customer spending patterns; (3) financial products and services that may better address customer needs; (4) relevant facts and insightful aggregate stats based on community behavior.

- Aggregation of accounts. BBVA Tú cuentas allows BBVA clients to keep all of their financial data conveniently in one place. In addition to aggregating their BBVA accounts, customers can automatically add any other bank and utility accounts they may have.

Other key characteristics of the Strands personal finance solution are:

1.- A powerful widget platform enables maximum customization with minimum set-up time. Each of our 20 widgets is a little application that performs a specific feature. Clients can personalize each tab with the widgets they choose, to view the content they need.

2.- Powered by Strands Social Recommender, BBVA Tú cuentas provides users with the best personalized suggestions possible, helping them find new ways to save money and invest.

3.- It comes with tailored versions for Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia (S60) browsers, so that the service can be used on mobile devices just as easily as it can be used on computers.

BBVA is a financial services group with more than $783 billion in total assets, 42 million customers in 40 countries and a market capitalization of approximately $85 billion.

We are thrilled to be working with them in this amazing solution!

Will our online activities affect our real life social interactions? asks Corvida.

Well, we certainly think so. And this is precisely the topic of our next event Proactive Displays: Bridging the Gaps between Online Social Networks and Shared Physical Spaces, to be held at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona, next Friday June 27th.

The Strands innovation team in Seattle, lead by our Principal Instigator Joe McCarthy, works on developing technologies that bridge the gaps between the digital and physical world.

The focus is on creating large displays applications that can sense the people and activities taking place nearby and show content relating to those people, activities and place. Proactive displays enable people to share the richness of their online lives with others in physical contexts in which they feel – or want to feel – a sense of community and connection, bringing the benefits of virtual communities into the real world.

Some of the possibilities envisioned by science fiction movies are a bit disturbing (see this provocative picture from the film Minority Report). However, we believe that if users have total control to opt in - and out - from being exposed to things that might be relevant to them, these technologies can be friendly and useful.

We’ll leave for another post a description of some of the applications of these technologies, its evolution and challenges.