CAMBRIDGE, England & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CSR plc (LSE:CSR) (NASDAQ:CSRE) today announced the winners of its popular Fast-Pitch competition from last week’s Locations and Beyond Summit, held in San Francisco, California, in which six finalist companies – chosen from a large list of applicants – presented innovative new location-aware offerings. The winners are as follows, in three categories: The People’s Choice award, chosen and voted upon by Summit attendees, went to Tagwhat; the runner-up for People’s Choice was DoubleDutch. This year, an additional prize was added: the Investor’s Choice Award, chosen by a panel of investors attending the Summit including Dan Levine of Accel Partners, John Malloy of Blue Run Ventures, and Rakesh Sood of DOCOMO Capital; this award went to Localmind.
The Fast-Pitch presentations are among the most popular sessions at Locations and Beyond Summits, as they showcase novel and creative use-cases of location technology. Several months prior to the Summit, participants applied to be Fast-Pitch finalists; a panel of judges sifted through applications to decide upon the finalists, based upon the level of innovation, functionality, ease of use, and potential impact on the market of the application.
“We received a record number of Fast Pitch nominations this year, reflecting the breadth and diversity of innovative new location-enabled applications and services,” said Kanwar Chadha, chief marketing officer for CSR. “This year’s Fast-Pitch presentations were among the most interesting in the history of the Summit, and illuminated how far the industry has come even in just the past year in terms of delivering truly useful and immersive information to users by adding location context to data in a cloud-connected world.”
About the Fast-Pitch Winners
Tagwhat offers a multimedia location guide that reveals videos, photos, narratives, and audio about the world around people wherever they go, based on their pre-selected, customized interests such as art, food, music, movies, heritage, sports and books, enabling them to see the world through a custom lens.
Localmind is a real-time, location-based Q&A platform that leverages social check-in services, enabling users to ask questions of users checked-in anywhere around the world, such as inquiring if a bar is crowded, what the specials are in a restaurant, or finding out if the local coffee shop WiFi is functioning.
DoubleDutch demonstrated its HYVE Sales mobile social customer relationship management (CRM) tool designed to save salespeople time, increase engagement, and generate real-time analytics from the field. HYVE Sales is the first CRM to be built from the ground up for mobile devices around touch navigation, and includes numerous “mobile-specific” features like location based check-ins, camera integration, and geo-fenced customer sites. HYVE boosts productivity by enabling salespeople to stay connected, log their activity, and get work done - all via their mobile device.
About the Other Fast-Pitch Finalists
Grabio brings location-awareness and transparency to online classifieds by connecting buyers and sellers within their local communities. Grabio features a personal assistant, Wish List, that searches in real-time for items that users wish to purchase, and sends them notifications, simplifying and streamlining the process of buying and selling goods.
Sonar is a mobile application that uncovers the hidden connections that users share with other people nearby, tapping the many connections people miss every day - friends, friends of friends, fellow alumni, and likeminded strangers. The free tool identifies users’ location and identifies people in the room with whom they have most in common. Users can check in on Foursquare using Sonar and scroll through profiles of people in the same location who share the most connections through Facebook and Twitter.
Quipster, offered by Mobilitz Inc., is a location-based social network that lets users share what’s going on around town with their friends and community through contextual icons, called “Quips,” which provide immediate context for what people are doing, as well as their location. Users can also share check-ins on Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, as well as see all the live Quips of everyone in their town or city, filtered by category of interest, enabling them to discover people who share similar interests and build their own communities.
About the Locations and Beyond Summit
For the last five years, the Locations and Beyond Summit has brought together location ecosystem leaders, innovators and developers to help set the agenda for the future of location-enhanced services and technologies. This year’s invitation-only event focused on the ubiquitous and intelligent integration of location technology and its impact upon consumers, enterprises and the location ecosystem.
About CSR
CSR is a global provider of innovative silicon and software solutions for the location-aware, media-rich, cloud-connected world. Our platforms are optimised for the automotive navigation and infotainment, digital cameras and imaging, connected home infotainment and wireless audio markets. We provide solutions to complex problems in the audio-visual, connectivity and location technology domains across a broad range of markets, with a technology portfolio that includes GPS/GNSS systems, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, FM, NFC, aptX and CVC audio codecs, JPEG, MPEG, H.264 imaging, IPS printing, microcontrollers, DSPs and broadband receivers. CSR's technology solutions and market platforms enable its customers to deliver a superior user experience and are adopted by leaders in the auto, computer, home and mobile markets. More information can be found at www.csr.com. Keep up to date with CSR on our blog, or follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/CSR_plc.