My Parx App Update (v1.0.5)
We’ve been hard at work on an update for the My Parx iPhone App, and we’re happy to announce that the new update is now available for download. The latest version of the My Parx iPhone App a number of improvements including:
- TOUR PHOTO THUMBNAILS: Tour map now shows thumbnails of photos in point icons. This makes it much easier to distinguish tour points. The points are also larger now, so it is easier to tap them.
- BETTER SEARCHING: Keyword search for parks now extends beyond park title only. You can now find parks by searching for suburb, country and agency name as well.
- BETTER TOUR PROMOTION: The ”View Interactive Tour” link has been moved to the top of the park info page, so now users can easily find and launch your tours.
- HIDE UNUSED POINTS: If a tour point is unpublished, or has no published cards then it is no longer shown on the tour map, and point numbers update automatically in the app.
- MORE COMFORTABLE TOUR ZOOM: Tour map now displays with max possible zoom to show all tour points without bunching them up too closely.
- MORE TOUR CARDS: On points with multiple cards, you can now see part of the next card to better indicate there are more cards to view by swiping left/right.
- DISTANCES IN YOUR LANGUAGE: All distances are now displayed as miles or kilometres depending on the language setting of your device. We also now display distances to far away parks, and format these big distances nicely with commas and shrinking text as needed.
- SEE YOURSELF IN PARK MAPS: Park GPS maps now zoom to show the park as well as your current location in one screen. This let you see how far away the park is from you. Of course, you can still zoom right in to the park to view its points of interest in great detail.
You can download the My Parx app on the App Store. An Android fans – stay tuned, we’ll have an announcement for your shortly.
About My Parx:
My Parx is a mobile app that lets you find and explore parks that interest you. Discover the secrets of your favourite parks through exploring up-to-date information, interactive maps, and personal guided tours – produced by those who know the parks best. My Parx is location-aware, so you can discover nearby parks or take interactive guided tours right on your iPhone.
For Park Managers:
The My Parx platform provides a new form of interactive information to park users. Promote your parks by providing quality information across all of your parks. Easily create interactive audio, picture and video tours to educate and engage visitors. Develop interactive maps of your parks highlighting key features and amenities. Add your parks (it’s free!) and purchase extra tours for a low annual fee.
Korea: Three Conferences in a Week!
We’re in Seoul, Korea this week attending the Korea Australia New Zealand (KANZ) Broadband Summit, along with the World IT Show and Korea Communications Conference (yes – three events at once!). With 100% mobile broadband penetration across the population, its a hugely relevant location to hold these events.
Senator Stephen Conroy (Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) opened the conference along with his counterparts from Korea and New Zealand, talking up Australia’s NBN.
We’ve also been hearing from Suk-Chae Lee the CEO of KT, Korea’s largest Telecommunications Company, and Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks. Key messages from their keynote’s include:
- By 2015 mobile data traffic is estimated to increase 10 fold from 0.6 million TB/month in 2011 to 6.9 million TB/month.
- By 2015 the estimated market size for mobile Apps will grow to $55B, Digital Content $105B, Virtual Goods $160B+.
- By 2020 mobile payments will become the dominant mechanism for payment. The need for credit cards and coins will be no longer relevant.
- By 2020 networks will need to be able to supply on average 1GB of data per user, per day.
Meeting Local Businesses
While attending the conferences here in Seoul, we’ve been meeting with local telecomunications companies including SK Telecom, and hearing from partners of HP (Korea) - local Korean business who are creating cutting edge mobile application, gaming, IPTV and entertainment solutions leveraging the massive penetration that broadband has in Korea.
As the NBN is rolled out in Australia, huge opportunities exist as this technology comes to Australia via the NBN. Areas like IPTV which has significant penetration in Korea with companies already providing interactive and on-demand IP based Television, Gaming and n-Screen services.
More to come.
Software Engineer – Django/Python (New York)
Specialising in cutting edge mobile development, Two Bulls are a creative, business-aware and technically agile production team. We love incorporating technologies like immersive UX, Augmented Reality (AR), location-based services and social networking to produce engaging mobile experiences.
We are seeking a talented and passionate Django Software Engineer to help grow our New York team! The successful applicant will work on an award-winning team in development and support of high-use commercial apps and web-based back-ends for major clients around the world.
The successful candidate will be flown to Australia to receive on-site training in our Melbourne (Australia) office, then work from New York as part of the wider development team.
Relevant Experience:
We’d love you to have experience with one or more of the following:
- Python/Django
- Mysql
- Production Environments
- Enterprise System Experience
- Scalable cloud infrastructures (RightScale, Amazon Web Services)
- Database performance optimization
Experience in the following will be viewed favourably:
- Linux Administration, Shell Scripting
- Experience with Point-of-Sale systems
- eCommerce/Credit Card Gateway integration experience
- Apache configuration for high-volume websites
- iOS Development
- CouchDB/MapReduce/NoSQL
- C++ or Java Experience
The successful candidate will have:
- The ability to work autonomously
- An interest in design patterns and software architecture
- Excellent written and personal communication skills
- A passion for the latest technologies, mobile in particular
- Experience in delivery of high quality results against deadlines in a commercial environment
We are looking for candidates with a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering or equivalent experience.
Interested? Send your resume and cover letter to: jobs@two-bulls.com
RMIT Mobile Strategy Presentations
Members of the Two Bulls Melbourne team were on hand yesterday as students from RMIT presented their mobile strategy and pitch presentation for the Two Bulls brief for “Bob Fossil’s Furry Funimals” (a make-believe zoo that needed help with its mobile strategy).
It was great to see the creative and thoughtful work the students had put into their presentations and the team was very impressed with the quality and innovative designs that were presented. Great work all!
Virgil Cameron and Aaron Vernon (Two Bulls) with students from RMIT
Two Bulls is proud to be an industry partner of RMIT University – we participate in a number of subjects and are involved in industry presentations throughout the semester.
CatchOfTheDay: iPhone App of the Week!
We’re very excited to announce that the Catch of the Day iPhone App is currently featured as the iPhone App of the week on the App Store!
Being featured alongside Mass Effect, iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band is a great honor and we couldn’t be more proud!
Thanks to everyone who’s downloaded the app and made us #1 in Lifestyle and #2 overall on the app store!
Launching the CatchOfTheDay iPhone App
CatchOfTheDay.com.au is the flagship product of Catch Group, Australia’s leading online retailer and we’re very excited to announce that the CatchOfTheDay iPhone app is now available for download from the iTunes App Store!
We’ve worked hard to bring the CatchOfTheDay.com.au experience to the small screen - as regular visitors to the Catch website would be aware, there are often hundreds of amazing deals listed at once – so making them available to users in an easy to use and accessible manner was key when designing the app.
The app provides everything you need to access the CatchOfTheDay.com.au deals from your iPhone or iPod Touch:
- Access to all Catch Events and Products
- Live updating of product availability
- Full product details and image gallery
- Daily deal push notifications
- Coupon Redemptions and App Only Specials!
- Credit Card and mobile PayPal payments
- Stored Credit Card details for easy purchasing – just need your CCV!
- Access to SOS (Subscriber only specials)
- Address book management
- Facebook and Twitter integration
With a super-streamlined checkout process, it is frighteningly easy to soak up Catch’s awesome daily deals. We have looked far and wide for great examples of an iPhone-friendly e-commerce examples and were somewhat disappointed, so our design team wrote the rules from the ground up. Let us know how you like it!
Our office now has CatchOfTheDay.com.au Laptops, Monitors, Head Phones, Snacks, Alarm Systems (the list goes on) adorning its walls, desks and staff. Who says QA’ing a product isn’t productive (and no we didn’t get special rates – the deals are that good we couldn’t help ourselves)!
We hope you enjoy using the app as much as we had designing and building it! It’s time to go shopping!
Contract Mobile Designer (UI/UX)
Specialising in cutting edge mobile development, Two Bulls are a creative, business-aware and technically agile production team. We love incorporating technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), location-based services and social networking to produce engaging mobile experiences for some of the worlds largest organisations.
We are seeking an experienced, talented and enthusiastic designer to join us for immediate start. You will be given the opportunity to work in a small, award-winning team developing cutting-edge mobile apps for leading global brands and proprietary products.
Reporting to our Lead Designer, you will be responsible for creating highly usable and technically feasible app designs, from wire-frame prototypes through to finished artwork mock-ups and provision of sliced assets.
To be successful in this role you will require:
- Extensive experience in the Adobe Creative Suite, particularly Photoshop
- Demonstrated skills in UX/interface/visual design for mobile/web
- Excellent written and personal communication skills
- A passion for latest technologies, standards and best practices (iOS HIG, Andriod, CSS3/HTML5)
- Understanding of graphic design and software usability principles
In addition, it is an advantage if you have:
- Experience in delivery of high quality results against deadlines in a commercial environment
- Experience working in a mac environment
- Business analyst, client scope definition and business development experience
- Artistic/illustration skills covering design, typography, iconography and branding
Please include a portfolio or links to samples of your previous design work in your application.
If you’re interested in this position, please email us at jobs@two-bulls.com
Augmented Reality
We’re always getting asked by clients about Augmented Reality. What is it? How can we use it? How have we used it? Well, today we’ve added a dedicated section to our website to try and help answer those questions.
Given the processing power of devices in 2012, we’ve added a selection of videos that showcase whats possible with the technology available. These showcase different ways you can augmented the ‘digital world’ on top of the ‘real world’ – the effects you can create really are amazing, and the technology is being used in new and creative ways everyday!
Market Garden: Coming Soon in 2012
So, while everyone was off on their holiday breaks the past few weeks, much of the Two Bulls team spent the period busily working away on our latest project: Market Garden. Coming soon to your iOS device in 2012 - MarketGardenHQ.com is your one-stop-shop for Market Garden previews and information.
We’re not giving much away just yet… but stayed tuned! Signup to keep updated, and follow us at @two_bulls for more information.
Seasons Greetings
As 2011 wraps up and we start looking forward to 2012, it’s amazing to reflect on what a big year it’s been for everyone in the mobile industry.
And it’s certainly been a huge 2011 here at Two Bulls – a few highlights include a brand new office for our Australian team, the release of the My Parx network, joining forces with our great friends at Sullivan, the team presenting at conferences all over the globe, winning the Coca-Cola Brand App Challenge and being nominated for Meffys and Create awards!
Phew.
We’ve also had enormous fun working with great clients like Sesame Workshop, Deloitte, Sportsbet.com.au, Schweppes, Big Spaceship, Parks Forum, CatchOfTheDay.com.au, NetCom and many others!
We’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season. We look very much forward to seeing you all in 2012.
