• SeedCamp - Deadline 6th April
• Open Ventures Challenge - Deadline 20th April
• Something Else - Deadline ASAP

Seedcamp

Applications are now open for Mini Seedcamp London which aims to bring together 20 of the best seed stage web tech startups with experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and developers from the UK and all over Europe to participate in a day of intense mentoring, panel discussions and presentations at NESTA’s HQ in central London.

• As a team in Mini Seedcamp London you will:
• Get access to a world-class network of advisors to help you with every aspect of your business
• Be recognised as one of the 20 best startups in the UK
• Open a direct route to seed and venture capital

Apply and find out more information at http://seedcamp.com/pages/london09 now!

Open Ventures Challenge

The Open Ventures Challenge in aid of Cancer Research UK is to “create three new ventures with the potential to generate £10m to help beat cancer”. The OVC is a search for ideas that can make a real difference to the future of Cancer Research UK and the people who can turn those ideas into reality.

All sorts of projects can apply for funding and support. Find out more at: http://ovc.mo.jo/

Something Else

We’ve been exploring a few ideas recently around new approaches for helping technical people like us through the first few months of developing a new product.

We’re interested in creating something that will bring together up to 8 teams, probably based in Brighton, that all have one of two goals they’d like to reach by the end of the year:

1. Raise investment in their product so they can work full time on continued development
2. Generate enough revenue from their product that they can live off the income

If you are interested in getting involved in this please let me know and I’ll provide some more details. We’re most interested in hearing from potential participants with ideas and technical skills.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that we will be running the world’s first event focused on bringing together the Twitter development community. If you are a developer that has built or intends to build a Twitter application, please make sure you grab a ticket for the event which will take place on the evening of the 24th March at the Sun Microsystems Customer Briefing Center in London. Full details at twitterdevelopernest.com

One of the key aspects that Twitter credits with much of its success is its API (Application Programming Interface). Twitter’s API is what has made it possible for so many third party applications to be built that leverage the wealth of data and unique communication capabilities that Twitter provides. You can find out about many of the available applications on the Twitter Wiki. We’ve been using the API internally at Inuda for over 18 months and more and more of the work we do is focused on using it. Members of our team were amongst the first 500 people to use Twitter back in July 2006. We were also recently lucky enough to be chosen as one of just 150 developers given access to their new OAuth beta programme. This provides a new way of using the API that means that users should never again have to share their passwords with third party applications.

We’re hoping the Twitter Developer Nest, inspired by the successful Facebook Developer Garage, leads to some interesting collaborations between developers. Hopefully this will result in even more useful Twitter applications launching to its rapidly growing userbase. We’re very grateful for the support of Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials who are sponsoring the event by providing the venue and food and drink.

A few hours ago Twitter’s OAuth private beta was launched and Inuda was one of the lucky 150 users to be chosen to test it. OAuth is an open protocol that allows secure API authorisation in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications. What it does is allow you to connect your Twitter account to a third party service without you having to share your password with them. This means if you ever suspect an application to be doing something it shouldn’t with your Twitter account you can simply turn off their connection without having to change your password.

We managed to get a prototype up and running within a few minutes with no problems so we think it’s fair to say that you should never give your Twitter password to anyone ever again. In a few weeks all developers of Twitter applications will have access to OAuth and they’ll have no excuse other than laziness for not using it. Instead, when an application requests for access to your Twitter account you should be redirected to a page at http://twitter.com which will look something like the image shown above.

In 2009 as well as continuing to provide our core web application development, coaching and support services, we’re developing a specialist set of services focused on helping people do more with Twitter and related technologies. The last few weeks has seen interest in Twitter skyrocket in the UK, with celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross engaging with tens of thousands of people via the service. Over 2,000 businesses have already been spotted using Twitter and we think there is an opportunity for every organisation to join the conversation.

Many aspects of Twitter are not well suited to business or organisational use. This has resulted in some of the heaviest users such as Zappos (a top US shoe company) and Dell Computers creating their own tools to manage their involvement.

We’ve developed a suite of tools and services to make using Twitter easier for your organisation, without you having to invest in bespoke development. We can help you start by passively monitoring what people are saying about you. We’ll do this through a SocialPlume, a single branded page that allows you to gain a better understanding of the things your customers want by brining all their conversations into one place. You can even take some of those conversations and show them off on your website - you’ll be amazed at how effective live testimonials can be.

When you are ready, we can assist you in joining the conversation and encouraging more people to talk about you in a well thought-out and controlled manner that needn’t take up all your time. We can also help you spread the work of managing your presence on Twitter throughout your whole team.

Our pilot programme is starting to fill up with organisations ranging from small local businesses to worldwide events communities. Organisations that signup now during our pilot will always be kept one step ahead of users of our public service launching in a few weeks time. Please get in touch if you’d like to get involved by emailing twitter@inuda.com

In January…

Web engineer Kevin and Inuda Network member Mark went on the Enterprisers programme at the University of Durham, along with our Managing Director Jon, who acts as a a regular facilitator for the programme. The course helped both of them to develop their entrepreneurial confidence, meet a range of other participants and organisers and become inspired to make a difference and create value.

Jon mentored a Flux team at the University of Sussex, with teams of five or six students taking part in the competition, going through the process of planning and growing an imaginary business. Jon’s team won the competition at Sussex and went on to reach the national finals.

In February…

Jon gave a careers talk at in the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex, talking to students about the path they could take in starting a business after graduation.

February also saw the first Enterprising Engineers event, in conjunction with the University of Sussex’s Regional Development Office and the IET. As part of the RDO’s regular programme of Enterprise Thursday events, The Inuda Network hosted a panel of local entrepreneurs working in technology, with Jon chairing the event. It was a great success and has gone on to become a regular fixture in the Enterprise Thursday series. The speakers were Ian Ozsvald from ShowMeDo, Lincoln Smith from iolab, Neil Purssey from FireCo and Raj Anand from Kwiqq.

In March…

Following the resounding success of the first BarCamp to be held in Brighton in September 2007, members of Inuda attended and helped to organise BarCampBrighton2, which was held in Falmer House at the University of Sussex. The weekend saw a huge range of talks by people from the “geek” community of Brighton, as well as people from as far away as Germany!

In April…

Jon and Kev took a trip to explore the way things work in Silicon Valley. Staying in the San Francisco and Mountain View areas they were able to meet and experience living with various start up businesses working on things they hoped would be the next big thing. These included: Snaptalent, GroupSpaces, 8aweek, SocialBrowse and Scoopler.

They attended Startup School and the Web 2.0 Expo giving them the chance to hear directly from people that have shaped the internet we know and use today, including Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Max Levchin, founder of PayPal, Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator and David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Basecamp and Ruby on Rails.

They also experienced some of the process involved in raising early stage funding, through an investment interview with the team at YCombinator. Although they were unsuccessful in gaining funding, the first-hand insight into the process is something they know they will be able to draw upon in the future.

In May…

Members of Inuda attended the Enterprise Thursday Grand Finale, to celebrate the end of a successful academic year of enterprising events.

Jon returned to facilitate at Enterprisers, this time held at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Working with the 800 strong alumni community of the Enterprisers programme, Inuda launched the Enterprisers Alumni Application on Facebook. This enables previous participants of the programme to continue to keep in touch and carry on receiving inspiration from their time at Enterprisers within a closed environment.

May also saw the launch of HowSociable, Inuda’s brand monitoring tool. Developed over the course of a week (with a few tweaks later on!) by the web development team, HowSociable provides a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web. Over 15,000 people went on to use the tool over the next 6 months, drawing a great deal of attention to Inuda’s services.

In June…

Jon (along with a crowd of fellow Brightonians) went to London to attend the regular MeasurementCamp meetup organised by the people at NixonMcInnes to develop a set of open source tools for people looking to measure their impact on the social web.

OpenCoffeeSussex celebrated its first birthday and continues provide an opportunity for people interested in conversations about business and technology to meet up for a casual chat twice per month at the Sussex Innovation Centre.

Kev went to Mashed, hosted by the BBC at Alexandra Palace and spent 24 hours working on a project to make it easy for parents to find fun and educational events for their children to attend.

In July…

Inuda took on two summer interns through the Shell STEP scheme. Greg worked as a web engineer on an internal project aimed at automatically generating client proposals. Ollie worked as a sales and marketing intern, with the aim of promoting Inuda Signals to some new groups of customers.

There was another fantastic FivePoundApp event, this time sponsored by top mobile designers ribot. Jon spoke about the development of HowSociable and an interesting discussion was had about Inuda Engineering’s alternative approach to web development.

Kev started work on a project with New Bamboo and Clearleft, adding his expertise in Ruby on Rails to the development of Tourdust, a website to help people discover and share authentic travel experiences.

Jon joined the MDHub, the premier business club for leading Managing Directors, giving him the chance to share experiences with of other business leaders in the region.

Inuda celebrated its 2nd birthday with some yummy Spanish food - celebrating the fact that the company had still failed to live up to its name’s Spanish meaning (”inundar” being the Spanish word for “sink”).

In August…

Greg and Ollie gave their Shell STEP presentations and project reports to a panel of judges. Greg stayed on as a part-time Web Engineer, while Ollie returned to Manchester to complete the final year of his degree.

Jon spoke at SPRU for an international summer school class learning about entrepreneurship.

Inuda Signals launched client project Feel the Dream, an online community created to celebrate the anniversary of the Summer of Love and the life and words of Martin Luther King.

In September…

The whole of Inuda made the trip to the Brighton Dome for dContruct08, the annual conference for people designing and building the latest generation of social web applications. Hearing about the attention to detail of the developers of Dopplr was particularly inspiring.

Seeing as March’s BCB2 was such a success, the decision was made to host another BarCampBrighton, again at the University of Sussex. Over 100 people attended to give talks on subjects as diverse as improvisational comedy and yoga for geeks.

Jon and Greg attended the first TechCrunchTalk in London, hearing from and meeting a wide range of entrepreneurs and developers involved in the London’s technology industry.

Inuda was a finalist in the BAHBAs (Brighton and Hove Business Awards), in the category of “Best Place to Work”. The judges were particularly impressed with our approach to work balancing every team members time between Exploring, Delivering and Enjoying.

In October…

Jon helped give freshers at the University of Sussex a taste of the programme of extra-curricular student enterprise activities ahead of them by speaking at a Mini Enterprise Thursday.

We launched a Facebook application with Oxfam focused on raising funding for the World Food Crisis Appeal, to complement our other work for the international charity.

Inuda recruited another student web engineer, Michal, who started working on an internal project we hope to launch later in 2009.

Working with celebrity vet Marc Abraham and Andrew Seel of Qube we launched ThePet.net a site dedicated to making the world a better place for pets by connecting pet owners with pet friendly services.

Jon and Kev attended FOWA Expo, where Inuda ran a session about how building HowSociable had helped speared the word about Inuda, essentially concluding that useful web apps are the new ads. They also heard from speakers such as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com and Blaine Cook, one of the developers of Twitter.

Inuda Signals launched ecoConnect, a network and site focused on connecting the green technology community.

In November…

Huge changes were abound at Inuda, as we moved from our old offices at the Sussex Innovation Centre to The Skiff - our new premises and co-working space in North Laine, at the heart of Brighton. After a gruelling week of furniture assembly and white van driving, we quickly established The Skiff as a fantastic space to work and meet during the day, as well as a great space for community events and workshops.

Jon went to Yahoo! BOSS hack evening in London giving him the chance to grill the developers about the internal workings of one of HowSociable’s key sources of information.

We launched the first version of a new website for The New Product Network a community created by the Sussex Innovation Centre to connect entrepreneurs and product developers with investors and corporate customers.

The Inuda Network held another Enterprising Engineers with the IET, with three local entrepreneurs talking about starting their tech business - Glenn Jones from Madgex, Dan Glegg from Angry Amoeba and Tom Hume from Future Platforms.

We attended DiMAS (Digital Media Awards South), where BarCampBrighton was nominated in the category of Best Digital Collaboration. A fun night of pie-eating and glowstick-waving was had by all.

In December…

To welcome the Brighton community to The Skiff, Inuda held a Skiff warming party, providing thirsty geeks with barrels of cider and crates of local Sussex beer. There was live music, pork scratchings and much conversation, with over 80 people squeezing into our office, co-working and meeting spaces.

The Skiff held its first event, the Future Platforms Learning Lunch, where around 25 people heard all about Rapid Testing from Dave Shorter.

Jon, Greg and Kev headed up to London again for TechCrunchTalk and ChristmasCrunch party, mingling with Europe’s technology entrepreneurs to learn how they intend to approach the financially uncertain times ahead.

Jon was invited to an evening at the NCGE’s Software Entrepreneurs Flying Start programme and met an energetic bunch of recent graduates taking their first steps into business.

We’ve already got lots of projects and events lined up for 2009, so keep watching this space!

We decided to spend the last week building our own simple but useful web application. “HowSociable”:http://howsociable.com provides an easy way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web.

You can try it right now here: “http://howsociable.com”:http://howsociable.com

We took the same development approach that we take with our “Inuda Engineering”:http://www.inuda.com/engineering client work, with just a couple of exceptions:

1. We don’t ever recommend that our clients take the risk of making an application public after just one iteration

2. We don’t usually do design work

We’ll be sharing more about the approach we’ve taken over the next couple of weeks.

We’ve got loads of ideas about how we can improve HowSociable, but we think the best way to shape a web app into something really useful is through user feedback. You can share your ideas here: “http://feedback.howsociable.com”:http://feedback.howsociable.com and vote on suggestions made by other users.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be adding more information so you can drill right down into the things we do.

Check it out now:

p=. !http://inudian.com/assets/2008/5/20/inuda_logo.png(Inuda Logo)!:http://www.inuda.com

We’ll also be bringing this blog’s style up to date to match and hopefully providing you with a little more content too.

h3. OpenCoffeeSussex

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/opencoffeesussex.png!:http://www.opencoffeesussex.com

Continuing to run 9am every other Thursday at the Sussex Innovation Centre. Don’t miss the next opportunity for a casual business meets technology conversation on the 14th February.

More information here:
“OpenCoffeeSussex”:http://www.opencoffeesussex.com

h3. Enterprising Engineers

Thursday 21st February, 17:30 for 18:00 start at the University of Sussex’s Medical School Lecture Theatre

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/iet.png!:http://www.ietsussex.org

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/5/universityofsussex.gif!:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise

We’re bringing together engineering interest from the “IET in Sussex”:http://www.ietsussex.org with the entrepreneurial inspiration of the University of Sussex’s “Enterprise Thursdays”:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise.

A panel discussion between four technologists that have taken differing approaches to creating enterprising ventures from their
software, electronic and mechanical engineering skills. Each of them has found a way to make money while doing what they enjoy.
They provide people around the world with useful devices and web services and get to work with a rich mix of exciting technologies.

Ian Ozsvald - “ShowMeDo”:http://www.ShowMeDo.com - Online Video Tutotials

Lincoln Smith - “iolab”:http://www.iolab.co.uk - Response Time Measurement
Devices

Neil Purssey - “FireCo”:http://www.firecoltd.com/ - Fire Safety Equipment

Raj Anand - “Kwiqq”:http://www.kwiqq.com - Social Networking Services

A selection of FOOD and BEER will be provided from Harvey’s Brewery and Forfars Bakery

Booking:

Please register to attend this event using the following form:
“http://www.sussex.ac.uk/business/1-3-1-1-3.html”:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/business/1-3-1-1-3.html

h3. BarCampBrighton2

Weekend of the 15th and 16th March at the University of Sussex

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/2/8/BarCampBrighton2sm.png!:http://www.barcampbrighton.org

Last year’s 100 tickets sold out in just 22 minutes. This year’s gathering of 150 technologists is already set to be a huge success, hosted at the University of Sussex with sponsorship from businesses including “Amazon”:http://aws.amazon.com and “Yahoo!”:http://developer.yahoo.com. BarCamp is very different from your average conference. It’s known as an ‘unconference’ because the attendees set the agenda when they arrive and everyone must participate in some way.

Keep an eye out for ticket releases on the “BarCampBrighton2 blog”:http://www.barcampbrighton.org

If you’ve never visited a BarCamp before “email me”:mailto:j.l.markwell@inuda.com for a first-timer ticket

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/sussexdigital.png!:http://www.sussexdigital.com

For us, the best thing about 2007 has been being in Brighton. The technology community here has really flourished over the last 12 months and it has been an incredible thing to be a part of. The range of events we’ve been involved in on a weekly basis are too numerous to do justice to here, but you can find out about most of them at “SussexDigital.com”:http://sussexdigital.com.

*The following are just some of our highlights of the year:*

h3. January

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/enterprisers.jpg!:http://www.enterprisers.org.uk

*”ESRC Enterprisers”:http://www.enterprisers.org.uk*

We worked with the “University of Cambridge”:http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk to deliver entrepreneurship training to “Economic and Social Research Council”:http://www.esrc.ac.uk funded PhD students and employees from “Microsoft Research”:http://research.microsoft.com/ and “American Express Technologies”:http://www.americanexpress.co.uk.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/5/universityofsussex.gif!:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise

*”Entrepreneurs for Tomorrow”:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise*

We worked with the “Univeristy of Sussex”:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise to support the entrepreneurial development of secondary school students from around the Sussex area by supporting a team in the Entrepreneurs for Tomorrow programme.

h3. February

!http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/barcamplondon2.jpg!:http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon2

*”BarCampLondon2″:http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon2*

We attended our first ‘unconference’ at BT’s London headquarters and were blown away by how much we learnt and how many great connections we made over one weekend.

*”Shell Step Interns”:http://www.shellstep.org.uk*

We took on two “University of Sussex informatics”:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics students through the Shell Step programme to work as web developer interns.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/fowa.png!:http://www.futureofwebapps.com

*”Future of Web Apps”:http://www.futureofwebapps.com*

We attended the Future of Web Apps, which among other insightful presentations included a high profile panel discussion entitled “European start-up culture: playing catch-up to the US”.

*”OpenCoffeeClub”:www.opencoffeeclub.org*

“Saul Klein started”:http://localglobe.blogspot.com/2007/02/opencoffee-club.html the movement that continues to create excellent opportunities for start-ups, helping them grow from casual conversations between business people and technology people.

h3. March

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/sinc.jpg!:http://www.sinc.co.uk

*”Sussex Innovation Centre”:http://www.sinc.co.uk*

We moved into offices at the Sussex Innovation Centre, joining over 70 other start-up businesses working alongside the University of Sussex on their wonderful campus in the South Downs.

*Art Exhibitions 2.0*

We started working with a bootstrapped start-up, developing a web application that will provide a more social experience to people visiting art exhibitions and museums.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/iet.png!:http://www.ietsussex.org

*”IET Egg Race”:http://www.ietsussex.org*

We supported the annual IET Egg Race, challenging A Level students to build an electro-mechanical device in just a few hours that could safely deliver an egg into a particular position.

h3. April

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/rpsgb.gif!:http://www.rpsgb.org

*”Royal Pharmaceutical Society”:http://www.rpsgb.org*

We delivered our first large-scale project, a web-based collaboration system used by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to edit an electronic version of the “British National Formulary”:http://www.bnf.org - a publication used by every doctor in the UK and many more around the world.

*Healthcare 2.0*

We began working with an angel funded start-up, developing a social networking system exclusively for doctors.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/fowd.png!:http://www.futureofwebdesign.com

*”Future of Web Design”:http://www.futureofwebdesign.com*

We attended “Carsonified’s”:http://www.carsonified.com first web design focused event and brought back a host of new ideas and techniques

h3. May

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/enterprisethursday.jpg!:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise

*”Enterprise Thursday”:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/enterprise*

We spoke at the University of Sussex’s Enterprise Thursday Celebration Evening 2006/2007 and shared our experience of starting a business after University.

*”The Inuda Network”:http://www.inuda.net*

We launched The Inuda Network as a community of people with a passion for making a difference through technology innovation. The aim of the community is to create an environment which helps more people explore, deliver and enjoy while working in technology development.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/facebook.jpg!:http://developers.facebook.com

*”Facebook Platform Launch”:http://developers.facebook.com*

Facebook launched their internet changing platform; recognising the opportunity we immediately made it a focus area for us to become proficient in developing applications for.

*”Microsoft Enterprisers”:http://www.enterprisers.org.uk*

We worked again with the University of Cambridge to deliver entrepreneurship training, this time exclusively to 32 Microsoft employees.

h3. June

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/opencoffeesussex.png!:http://www.opencoffeesussex.com

*”Open Coffee Sussex”:http://www.opencoffeesussex.com*

We launched a Sussex version of the “Open Coffee Club”:http://www.opencoffeesussex.org which continues to run every fortnight on Thursday mornings in the Café at the “Sussex Innovation Centre”:http://www.sinc.co.uk.

*”Higher Education Entrepreneurship Group”:http://www.heeg.co.uk*

We spoke at this conference held at the University of Reading, which was backed by the “South East England Development Agency,”:http://www.seeda.co.uk sharing our perspective on enterprise and entrepreneurship training with educators.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/iphone.jpg!:http://www.apple.com/webapps/whatarewebapps.html

*”iPhone Released”:http://www.apple.com/webapps/whatarewebapps.html*

Apple released the iPhone with web applications as the primary way by which to develop 3rd party tools and services.

*”SeedCamp Announced”:http://www.seedcamp.com*

SeedCamp was announced, inspired by the excellent “Y Combinator”:http://www.ycombinator.com, as a way for web start ups to get early stage funding and high profile support.

h3. July

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/nabaztag.jpg!:http://www.nabaztag.com

*1 Year of Inuda*

We celebrated one year of Inuda by buying a “Nabaztag Rabbit”:http://www.nabaztag.com, giving us a fun and physical web presence in our office.

*Employee #4*

Rob Watson joined us as an employee after completing his Shell Step internship with us.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/shellstep.jpg!:http://www.shellstep.org.uk

*”Shell Step Midterm”:http://www.shellstep.org.uk*

We spoke at the midterm event for the Shell Step summer programme, sharing with participants how our ideas for going into business had started with a Shell Step placement.

h3. August

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/seedcamp.png!:http://www.seedcamp.com

*SeedCamp*

We applied to SeedCamp with a rather radical idea; too radical for us to get funding this time around, but we continue to work on it between client projects.

*Enjoyed the Sun*

We enjoyed another summer in Brighton, even doing a little work on the beach with the free Pier-to-Pier WiFi.

h3. September

!http://inudian.com/assets/2007/8/7/barcampbrighton-logo.png!:http://www.barcampbrighton.org

*”BarCampBrighton”:http://www.barcampbrighton.org*

We sponsored and participated in Brighton’s first BarCamp, which brought together over 100 people interested in technology from around Europe.

*Employee #5*

Kevin Edwards joined the team as a full-time developer, enabling us to expand the number of client projects we take on.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/dconstruct.png!:http://2007.dconstruct.org

*”d.Construct”:http://2007.dconstruct.org*

We attended d.Construct, the original grass roots event for web developers in the UK - in Brighton, of course.

*”Argus”:http://www.theargus.co.uk*

We were covered in Brighton and Hove’s local paper, The Argus, giving insight into our approach to business.

h3. October

!http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/makeyourmark.jpg!:http://apps.facebook.com/makeyourmark/

*”Make Your Mark”:http://apps.facebook.com/makeyourmark/*

We developed a Facebook application to support the Make Your Mark campaign and Enterprise Week 2007. It quickly gained momentum, helping hundreds of people makes their ideas happen.

*The Online Opportunity*

We were invited by the “National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship”:http://www.ncge.org.uk to attend this event at Microsoft’s London headquarters. We took the opportunity to ask CEO, Steve Ballmer, if some of their powerful new web development tools would be coming to other platforms. Despite at least 60% of the developers at conferences we’ve been to this year having Macs rather than PCs, Steve made it clear that Microsoft are not yet ready to stop locking people into Windows.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/leopard.jpg!:http://www.apple.com/macosx/

*”Apple Released Leopard”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/*

With a great deal more success than Microsoft’s launch of Vista, Apple launched a fantastic new version of OS X and it’s purred along nicely for us.

*”Future of Web Apps Expo”:http://www.futureofwebapps.com*

We popped along to to the Future of Web Apps Expo and said hello to number of exciting new web start-ups.

h3. November

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/rails.png!:http://www.rubyonrails.org

*”Rails 2.0 Released”:http://www.rubyonrails.org*

Version numbers aren’t everything, but our development platform of choice, Ruby on Rails, reached version 2.0, bringing in features that instantly made us more productive.

*”Digital Festival”:http://www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/*

Brighton enjoyed its annual Digital Festival, and we particularly enjoyed sharing our thoughts on the latest developments in social media at the “Five Pound App Day”:http://fivepoundapp.com/meetup/8/ event.

*”Facebook Social Ads”:http://www.facebook.com/ads*

Facebook launched Social Ads, creating a new way for advertisers to precisely target their messages. Some people found aspects of this a little creepy, causing Facebook to back-peddle on certain features.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/opensocial.jpg!:http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

*”OpenSocial Launch”:http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/*

Google released Open Social as a way for to social networks to compete directly against Facebook’s highly successful applications platform. Unfortunately, it still has a long way to go before it will be as useful and usable as Facebook’s.

*”IET Careers”:http://www.ietsussex.org*

We shared our approach to a career in technology with Brighton and Sussex University students.

*”BarCamp London 3″:http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon3*

We spent the weekend at Google’s London HQ to participate in BarCampLondon3. Among many other things, we found out first hand how amazingly well Googlers are fed by their employer.

h3. December

!http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/oxfamunwrapped_1.jpg!:http://apps.facebook.com/unwrapped/

*”Oxfam Unwrapped”:http://apps.facebook.com/unwrapped/*

We worked with Oxfam to launch a Facebook application that would tie into their high profile campaign against rubbish presents. The application helped hundreds of people tell their friends they wanted decent presents for Christmas while raising money to support the campaign against against poverty around the world.

*”The Werks”:http://www.werkshop.org.uk/*

We were the first company to take a place at The Werks, Brighton & Hove’s newest co-working environment for creative businesses.

!>http://inudian.com/assets/2008/1/2/widgetygoodness.jpg!:http://www.widgetygoodness.com

*”Widgety Goodness”:http://www.widgetygoodness.com*

We attended Europe’s first conference dedicated to exploring the Widgetisation of the web and heard a wide range of approaches being taken by agencies and platform providers.

*”Amazon Simple DB”:http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=342335011*

We got early access to Amazon’s exciting new web service for safely storing structured information across their world class infrastructure at low cost.

*Many Christmas Celebrations*

We got involved in a host of Brighton’s ‘geek’ community Christmas celebrations, bringing an excellent end to a fantastic year.

For a refresh on our Explore-Deliver-Enjoy approach to technology development, take a look at our web site: “www.inuda.net”:http://www.inuda.net

h3. Over the past 4 months we have:

*Grown to over 120 members!*
With a good selection of techies and non-techies alike, some on entrepreneurial ventures of their own, others creating great
things within existing organisations.

*Supported BarCampBrighton!*
We supplied 500 pieces of fruit along with snacks and drinks to 100 geeks participating in wide range of geeky activities at
Sussex’s ‘unconference’ of the year - “BarCampBrighton”:http://www.barcampbrighton.org

*Launched OpenCoffeeSussex!*
We’ve run 7 bi-weekly coffee mornings at the “Sussex Innovation Centre”:http://www.sinc.co.uk, open to anyone that wants to have a casual Thursday morning chat about business and technology.
“Click here to find out more and come along”:http://www.opencoffeesussex.com/

h3. Get involved

We’ve got some great events and activities coming up in the months ahead and we know that many of you are working on some fantastic projects.

If you would like to share something with the network please email “inudanetwork@inuda.com”:mailto:inudanetwork@inuda.com or post it to the “Facebook group”:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2267319186, we’ll pick it up and include it in our next mailout.

*NEW: LinkedIn Group*
“Click here to join”:http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/25628/2182910F6EAB

We think this is going to be particularly useful for connecting with new people, in a professional context. You might be surprised at just how closely connected you are to some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and engineers.

*Facebook Group*
“Click here to join”:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2267319186

This group continues to grow. It’s a more casual environment than LinkedIn, please feel free to post anything you think is relevant to the group’s wall or discussion boards.

h2. Who are Inuda Innovations

The Inuda Network’s primary sponsor is “Inuda Innovations Ltd.”:http://www.inuda.com Inuda Innovations is a technology business with the Explore-Deliver-Enjoy philosophy at its heart. We founded the Inuda Network because we knew we couldn’t build everything ourselves. Instead we decided invest a little of our time and money in helping others that want to have loads of fun whilst making new discoveries and creating all sorts of useful things.

*KEEP EXPLORING! KEEP DELIVERING! KEEP ENJOYING!*