We are happy to announce that Strands Social Recommender™ is now powering personalized product recommendations at DollarDays, the online wholesaler and closeout company that hosts a Web-based virtual warehouse at www.dollardays.com.

Business owners and charities shop at DollarDays to find deals on small business-sized orders for more than 30,000 consumer products–from toys and household décor to apparel, electronics and seasonal merchandise.

Strands will also offer a free 30-day trial of Strands Social Recommender™ to DollarDays’ 1.1 million retail customers/members.  Starting October 1st, members will be able to trial the same recommendation and personalization technology powering www.dollardays.com without any setup fees and implementation costs.

DollarDays adds 900 new members each day that include a variety of retailers from convenience stores, medium-sized brick & mortar retailers, shopping mall kiosk companies, discount stores, seasonal shops to large established companies.

Strands Social Recommender™ is a SaaS plug-and-play recommendation engine that can be easily and quickly installed by eCommerce and Media Web sites. The Strands Social Recommender can be installed through the Strands API or by adding personalization widgets to a retailer’s site, and can be up and running in as little as 30 minutes.

We are thrilled to be working with Dollar Days and its network of members!

As you might remember, Strands has organized the Strands Summer 2008 haXe Project (also see the announcement post), an opportunity for students to receive funding for open source development focused on the web based programming language “haXe“. Today, the Strands Summer 2008 haXe Project has officially come to a close

Miguel Serrano Milano stepped up and became our first student project developer.  The main contribution for his project has been the development of a CLI .NET target for haXe.  Yes, that means that haXe can now target .NET platforms.  While the project is still missing some language features, and is in need of some optimization, Franco and I commend Miguel for his hard work and efforts towards implementing the base functionality.  Miguel has provided an overview of his work as a tutorial over at the haXe wiki.  Check it out if you’re interested in how haXe works to target other languages such as PHP, Actionscript, or CLI bytecode.

P.S. Danny Wilson (the other student participant) dropped out early because of a hectic summer work schedule, we still wish him the best of luck!

Test your music knowledge with the latest release from the Mobile team at Strands. Featured by Apple today,  Strands Music Quiz is an addictive game for the iPhone that challenges you with questions relating to your own musical taste. Compete with your friends and see who is the real music expert!

Get your iPhone and start playing here now!

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 Strands Social Player 3.2 (powered by Strands Social Recommender), 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, Nokia’s Mobile Rules! 2008 winning application, 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!