Strands Social Player, powered by Strands Social Recommender, has won the Mobile Rules! Award 2008 as the Best Multimedia Application!! Mobile Rules! competition is the world’s leading awards for innovative mobile business plans and cuttin-edge applications services and technologies from developers and entrepreneurs from around the globe. This is great news!

See Mobile Rules! Award 2008 press release here.

Strands Social Player (download here) is a music player for mobile devices (Symbian Series 60, 3rd edition. Also available for Java) with two main characteristics: it lets you discover new music and has a built-in social network. You can meet people who like the same songs you play, send messages, see others’ listening histories, and much more… It has received great reviews so far and the best is yet to come.

Watch the video then try it yourself.

Stay tuned for our next release at the beginning of April at CTIA in Las Vegas with some pretty exciting features.

If you are there, make sure to come by and visit us at CTIA for a demo / conversation about what MyStrands Recommender Technology and the Social Player can do for your business. Booth #4855 in Hall N4, within the Enterprise Mobility Pavilion, Las Vegas Convention Center.

We are looking for distribution and music / ring tone service partners to integrate with for wireless music purchasing and to distribute the Social Player. Get in touch with us!

Update (04/28/08): Strands Social Player now with Last.fm scrobbling for Nokia S60 and S40 devices!

MyStrands is announcing today the “Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups“.

We seek to identify the best early-stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project (without limitations as to which field the technology is applied).

The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands, Inc. the parent company of MyStrands.

Candidates should submit a one-slide presentation in quad-chart format (example, more examples) by September 15th, 2008 to recommender-startups@strands.com, together with the team bios (in addition to this, an optional 2-minute video uploaded to YouTube describing the start-up enterprise would be highly appreciated).

Eligibility: The Call is open to individuals or sole proprietors and privately held businesses throughout the world.

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. Finalists will be announced on October 6th. All Proposals will be judged using the following judging criteria: (a) implementation and integration of recommendation technologies, (b) originality and creativity, (c) likelihood of long-term success and scalability, (d) effectiveness in addressing a need in the marketplace, and (e) team bios.

Five grants. Each Finalist will obtain a $1,500 travel grant to attend RecSys08; Strands, Inc. will also cover the registration fees for the Conference, for one person per Finalist.

The final selection process will include on-site presentations of each project during RecSys08. Finalists will make three presentations of 5 minutes each (focused on technology, business and the team respectively) in front of the Jury and the attendees of the Conference.

The Jury will be composed of renowned experts in the academic, industry and venture capital communities.

The Winner will be announced on October 25th, 2008 during the Gala Dinner at RecSys08. The Winner will receive a commemorative plaque and an offer of a $100,000 investment in the form of a convertible loan.

Proposal submission period begins on March 12th and ends on September 15th, 2008.

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:
March 12th: Proposal submission period begins
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.MyStrands.com
http://recsys.acm.org