Mint Digital

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.

It's the WebApp Weekender 2010! Except, it's not on a weekend and we're not building web apps...

Benetton's IT'S MY TIME launched just over 48 hours ago and we couldn't be happier with the response. So, we thought we'd share some statistics with you.

Buon giorno! For the past few months, Mint Digital has been collaborating with a great team to create a unique global casting competition. We're buzzing with excitement as we near 8 February, the launch date.

For now, check out the teaser.

We are looking for a couple of outstanding individuals.

HTML/CSS/JS developer who wants to learn Rails (London or New York)

Football3s Marketing Intern (London)

I know I'm talking our own book but Mint is a great place to work. Everyone gets involved in brainstorms. Every February, we head off to the WebApp Weekender. Our London office has a pub built-in called 'The Open Sauce'. We pretend we're squires.

The details to apply are on the job listings. Don't hesitate to get in touch!

Last night saw 120 people cram into Hoxton Hall to see if TV & web could make a baby. OK, so there was no actual baby-making, but there was plenty of ideas and discussion on how we can seize the opportunity this new kind of user behaviour presents.

It's been a long time coming. We've talked a lot about it, we've even teased a little bit, but we're finally there. Today marks the initial release of Hemlock, Mint's real-time web framework, to the public. The open source code is hosted over at GitHub and is available via hemlock-kills.com.

We are extremely happy to finally be able to share Hemlock with you and can't wait to see what you guys build with it.

(Photo by Gary Simmons)

For the third year running, the Mints descended on Corfe Castle, Dorset for four days of drinking, feasting and robe-wearing. Oh, and we also split into three teams and competed to build web apps. The brief was "create something cool with Hemlock".

Hemlock is a new framework from Mint, due to be released, open source, in late March. It facilitates building real-time, multi-user web applications. Hemlock is also the driving technology behind Football3s, our exciting new game.

Here's what we built:

Team M: What The Tweet

What The Tweet is a guessing game built around Twitter. Random tweets from celebrities are pulled in but have a word missing from them. Players get points for guessing the missing word. The game also features power-ups, so you can mess with other players' game screens.

Team N: Go With The Flo

Go With The Flo is a rhythm game that maps keystrokes to videos. In theory, it can be used to turn any video into an interactive game. For the weekender, the concept was applied to an '80s aerobic video. Players emulate the moves of the aerobic video on their keyboards and compete for the most points.

Team P: Juked.it

Juked.it is a jukebox with a difference; whether you're sitting in the same office or halfway across the world, you can listen to music simultaneously. Users upload tracks to the playlist, vote tracks up or down and chat about the music they're listening to.

Results

Teams presented their apps on Sunday night to judges Alexis d'Amecourt (19 Entertainment), Jemima Kiss (MediaGuardian.co.uk) and Paul Fisher (Advent Venture Partners). After the unmissable spectacle that was the presentations, the Mints and the judges headed down to The Jolly Gardeners for the wrap party and the winner announcement. The best app of WebApp Weekender 2009 as chosen by the judges was...

Juked.it!

Congratulations to Team P; André, Andy, Dean, John, Kejia and Thomas.

Wrap-Up

As well as being a great bonding experience for a company that is split across two continents, the WebApp Weekender is a showcase of Mint's technical capabilities. The quality of the applications to come out from just four days of work is incredible. This year was also a credit to Hemlock, proving it as a platform for rapid development. If we can build three applications in four days, imagine what you could build with it.

Thanks

We couldn't do the WebApp Weekender without these people. Thanks to the judges for joining us on a school night, we hope you had a great time. Thanks to Imane, Safia and Amal for looking after us for four days. And thanks to the inimitable Belinda and Peter Bell for having us at Scoles for another year.

Watch this space for screencasts and more about What The Tweet, Go With The Flo and Juked.it. We look forward to seeing where we can take these applications. After some sleep that is...