Mint Digital

Last summer was the inaugural year of the Foundry, our graduate scheme. Their brief was 'create something connected to the internet that doesn't live on screens'. In response, they came up with Olly, the web connected smelly robot. It turns your online notifications into smell.

Hello and happy new year from Mint!

On January 1st, we launched New Year Revolution for Channel 4.

The starting point for New Year Revolution was the observation that most of us make new year's resolutions, but few of us keep them. The ambition is that by harnessing faces of Channel 4 and the collective willpower of the social web, we might help people keep the resolutions, and have some fun along the way.

In the first five days alone, we had over 20,000 join the revolution, and it is still gathering pace.

Update: The interaction designer position has now been filled. We are still looking for our visual designer!

We are looking to grow the Mint Studio by adding two new designers to the team.

We think designing here at Mint has to be one of the most exciting jobs around. Just in the last year, we launched Speedo Pace Club, the very magnetic Stickygram, "the award-winning"* Sexperience 1000, ran 2Screen 2011, launched Olly, the list continues...

If you want to join this small team making big things, head over to jobs, take a look at the visual and interaction designer positions and drop us a line.

We look forward to talking.

* I always wanted to say that.

Last night we were at The BIMA Awards 2011, where The Sexperience 1000 picked up the award for 'Best use of Data, Mashups & Data-Visualisation'. We were also delighted to be nominated for the 2011 Grand Prix award!

Thanks go to all the Mints who worked on it, our tech partners for the project LingoBee, Ipsos MORI, Endemol and of course, Adam Gee and all at Channel 4 for allowing us to keep making great work.

On 8 August 2011, we launched Mint Foundry, our first ever graduate scheme. We set four makers the brief: Make something connected to the Internet that doesn't live on a screen.

Sadly, their three month tenure with us is coming to an end. As a final farewell, we are hosting an informal presentation by our four graduates on what they've been up to, followed by some drinks. There will be a bit of a grand unveil, and hopefully a chance to play with what they've made.

It is this Thursday, 27 October at the Mint Offices at Exmouth Market. You can book yourself a spot on the event page.

Hope to see you there!

Our tribute, made from the parts of a MacBook Pro. By Mint Foundry.

Click to see large version

We found a beautiful venue, confirmed the first bunch of speakers and finalised the booze order. 2Screen 2011 is set for 29 September 2011 at London's Finsbury Town Hall.

We launched Sexperience, the web partner to The Sex Education Show on Channel 4 back in September 2008. In time for Season 5, we undertook the most major overhaul of Sexperience since launch.

With a new site architecture and codebase, complete content reorganisation and refreshed interaction and visual design, this is the best Sexperience has ever worked and looked. Do check it out.

But as Steve would say, 'There's one more thing…' Alongside the site re-design, we have been working on another product to add to the Sexperience family.

We started 2Screen in 2009 with the question 'Can TV & the web make a baby?'. We returned in 2010 to explore what was by then becoming a mainstream trend.

Now, 2Screen is coming back for a third year on 29 September 2011. We're putting together an exciting line-up to discuss the intersection of TV and the social web.

We're going to be announcing more details in a couple of weeks time. If you'd like to receive an update when we do, leave your email address on the 2Screen site.

Mint Foundry is our brand new graduate scheme. This first year tasks four makers for three months with the brief:

Make something connected to the Internet that doesn't live on a screen.

Last week, Ed was at Lebowski Fest with the Mint Conference Policy. While we await completion of his illustration so he can post as himself, here are his impressions.

Of all the events in the world that hold a cultural or spiritual significance to you, which would you choose to visit? Perhaps the Hajj in Mecca if you are Muslim, or maybe Kumbh Mela if Hindu. Perhaps the World Expo is more up your street, which when held in Shanghai last year gained the status of the largest peaceful gathering in history.

Last week, I made my own pilgrimage. Travelling from London, England all the way to Louisville, Kentucky to an event they call Lebowski Fest.

On 19 June, eight cycling rock stars from Mint Digital - Team Extra Strong Mints - will be throwing their legs over their bikes to ride the 54 miles from London to Brighton.

They're doing it in aid of the British Heart Foundation. Please help them reach their target on the JustGiving page. All sponsorship appreciated.

Go Adam, Andy, Colin, David, Edd, Paul, Kejia, Tom!

After a search that began in April last year, a spat with the Crown over a potential property and a two-month build, this has been a long time coming. But here we are. Last week saw Mint London move into its fancy new digs in Exmouth Market.

We had an idea, so we quickly gave it a go. Version II coming soon.

UPDATE: If you like this, we've got a couple of other Instagram experiments: Quotagram and Stickygram

André put together a lovely video of this lunchtime's snowball fight.

(I feel the video may have been edited to make me look like the instigator, which is in no way true.)

You may recall we asked our designers to each develop a concept for an Android app.

We've got back four really strong ones which we've put together a little showcase for.

If you are curious about the processes of these, keep an eye on this blog through the week. Each concept will have a making of posted by its designer.

One of these concepts will get made into an app. We'll announce which one soon.

Check out the Android Challenge showcase at http://androidchallenge.mintdigital.com.

On 14 October, London's Conway Hall was the setting for the return of 2Screen, our conference that explores the opportunities of TV and web working together.

Just over a month ago, we wrote about a concept World Cup real-time visualiser for the iPad. We had some tremendous feedback since then, so thank you for your interest. Over the course of the month, we have been working hard to build that application.

I'm delighted to announce LivePitch is now available, for free, on the App Store!

We are fascinated with data and what you can do with it.

We are fascinated with '2Screen'. People using a second device to augment TV is increasingly common.

We are fascinated with the real-time web. Information delivered to you, as it happens, opens a world of possibilities. 

We have combined these passions before. Picklive Football, our two screen, real-time game, has been spun out as a separate start-up.

Lately, there's something else we've been fascinated with. It's the iPad. It's one of the most exciting canvases us digital folk have ever had a chance to build stuff on.

Picklive captures a whole load of data during every football match they cover. For the World Cup, they'll be covering every single match. We always thought there were other things to do with this data. The World Cup and the iPad turned out to be the catalysts we needed to put things into gear, and we think we may be onto something quite special...

We never did report on the Web App Weekender 2010. Here's the 3 apps we created.