Not that long ago I posted some info about the Ovi App Wizard that Nokia had launched to help mobilise web content into Ovi Store compatible applications. One of the apps that I created with the wizard was for a site called Toy Tragic, and the Calling All Innovators competition has made the app one of the Top 10 finalists. Thanks Nokia!

To celebrate this achievement and to help with driving further usage of the app, Toy Tragic is running a competition for the month of August. Download the FREE Toy Tragic app before August 31st, and you’ll go into the draw to win an exclusive Wolverine Mighty Mugg! Offer is open to anyone who downloads the app, leaves a comment on the Ovi Store, and emails Toy Tragic with their details, so what are you waiting for! Full details here on Toy Tragic.

Winner is announced September 1st, 2010.

It’s always great when you see a new product from your team go live, and today was twice as good with two new iPhone apps from Appland hitting the App Store.

Celebrity Charts is a real-time chart of what the web is talking about when it comes to celebrities in the movie and music industries. Charts are created (using data compiled for us by our partners WeAreHunted.com) by looking at who people are talking about on relevant sites, blogs and tweets, and sorts them into a Top 10 chart that changes as the talk dies down or ramps up. Select a celebrity from the chart to see articles where they’re being talked about, what is being said on Twitter, as well as extra pics. Then to swap from movies to music, simply turn the device! We’re working on a widget/app version of Celebrity Charts for Android too, so watch this space for more news on that. Celebrity Charts is available for AU$2.49 for Australian customers only.

Fan.Cards is a fun new music discovery tool, giving you a way to collect and access all kinds of information on music artists from around the world. By collecting artist “cards”, you are gaining a window into rich media content such as pics, video, music tracks and info, specific to that artist. You can also find related artists and discover music that you may already like but never knew was out there. Fan.Cards is a free app, available globally.

We’ve got some ideas around future updates to these apps, as well as a whole pipeline of new ones coming out across various platforms. To stay up to date, you can follow visitappland on Twitter.

I was having a conversation recently with a colleague around the improvements in Android around mobile to desktop syncing, and where things with Google search could trend with regards to apps. Well, it has begun! Rolling out from the US and then around the world, users of Google on their Android or iPhone devices will be able to find apps in search results that are indexing the Android Marketplace and Apple App Store.

This makes total sense as a mechanism for making apps more discoverable through existing channels for information discovery using the web, and I expect that it’ll have a significant impact on how apps are marketed as well. Check out the Google Mobile Blog for full details.

I’m very pleased to be speaking at the upcoming AIMIA Queensland event, “The Mechanics of Mobile Marketing” on June 17 in Brisbane. The afternoon seminar will be led by a number of speakers from different areas of the mobile market, all looking at how the smartphone/touch device explosion has, and can, impact business. Speakers are:

• Telco – See what Dale Rankine’s team at Vodafone Hutchison Australia recommend when building your mobile platform for device or mobile web.
• Agency – Brett Wiskar, Director of Speedwell eBusiness Solutions, development partner in the delivery of the highly successful Domino’s Pizza iPhone application.
• Publisher – Carl Poplett, Content Relationship Manager for News Digital Media, Australia’s largest news publisher across online and mobile, talks about the mobile explosion, News’ mobile platforms and the opportunities available for brands in the mobile space.

Space is limited so if you’re interested, register now.

So many cool things about this video, but as many people have said, there’s also something a little scary about it too! Anyway … watch and  … wow.

Alessandro and myself were recently speaking with Forum Nokia on their Ovi App Wizard product, and the podcast of that conversation has just been released (Part 1 and Part 2). Thanks to Jason and Ung-Ping for the invitation to give my thoughts.

The Ovi App Wizard has been moved out of private beta and is now open for general use (although still in “beta”). App Wizard is an online service that ties directly into the Nokia Ovi Store, and allows users to create a Java and WRT application for navigating through an RSS or Atom feed from a website. The changes that have happened through the private beta is that now at the end of the app creation process, you can now publish directly to Ovi Store, and in a very short period of time it’ll be moved through QA and into the store (assuming you already have signed up as a publisher for Ovi).

Watch for some demos coming from Forum Nokia shortly, but if you’re new to Ovi Store, I’d suggest giving this a try. It’s not really designed for “developers” to use, but rather publishers of online content who don’t have access to programmers, or who are looking for a quick and low cost entry point to Ovi.

So many uses for this thing that didn’t immediately come to mind … some people will find any way possible to fit this device into their lives!

So as I used to say when I was 13 – skate or die!

It’s that time of year again, where web and digital designers, developers and business-types descend on Sydney for the annual webDU conference! I’ve posted about it many times before but now that it’s here, I wanted to point out some of the highlights I’m looking forward to over the next 2-3 days.

1. Seeing the “two Mikes” – Mike Chambers (Adobe) and Mike Downey (Microsoft) – back presenting at the sane conference again, although this time they’re speaking for different teams!). Mike D has a interesting session on game development on Friday afternoon
2. Catching up with many good friends from the industry, both from locally and overseas
3. Delivering my first webDU session in 6 years that’s NOT specifically about Flash!
4. Seeing if Greg Rewis has mellowed out at all after getting married
5. Seeing some Android action
6. The conference party, the after conference party, and the speaker party

For those of you going, I’ll see you all at Bondi Beach in the morning!

Some posts I found interesting to read this morning, and neither of them got close to talking about what the iPad does or doesn’t run in the browser (well, not in words anyway – there’s a philosophical cross-over in there).

• Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka – “CD-ROMs and iPads“
• Cory Doctorow on Boing Boig – “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)“