Irish technology company HeyStaks – which has created a disruptive mobile social search technology – has made it into the top 7 out of 35 international entries for the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 competition.
HeyStaks, which has offices in NovaUCD and San Francisco, allows you to collaborate anonymously with friends and people of like-minded interest as you search, to get better, more relevant results recommended by people you trust around topics that matter to you. It works with your favourite search engine so you continue searching as normal.
The seven winners will now be invited to represent their countries in the live final at the PICNIC Festival in the Netherlands on 15-16 September 2011, where the overall winner will be chosen by a panel of mobile industry experts. Judges include Rudy de Waele, founder of Mobile 2.0 Europe and dotopen; Peter Barry, Vodafone Ventures; Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners; Reshma Sohoni, partner at Seedcamp and Lee Epting, Vodafone Group.
Ahead of the PICNIC presentations in Amsterdam, members of the public are invited to cast their votes for the winner of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011. At the live final, the overall result of the public vote will be counted alongside the votes of panel members to decide the overall winner. To vote, visit the website.
“We are always excited to see the tremendous innovation coming through our Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition each year,” said Lee Epting, director of Content Services at Vodafone Group.
“It’s the perfect launch pad for start-ups, but it’s always challenging to pick winners because we receive so many superb entries. Through both rounds, our country winners demonstrated not only creativity and innovation, but also the value-add to customers, which really made them stand out from the competition. We’re delighted to have them all on board and we look forward to seeing what they bring to the table in this final stage.”
The seven companies listed for the final leg of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 competition are:
Republic of Ireland: HeyStaks is a one-stop mobile social search solution, combining the best of community and search engine recommendations to get you more personalised and relevant results.
Germany: Wunderlist is the first cross-platform task-management app that supports over-the-air sync and unlimited sharing for free.
Netherlands: Skylines offers a search platform for real-time images. Combining data from social media sites like Instagram, and Yfrog Twitpic, Skylines indexes more than 1m photos a day.
Portugal: Hole19 is a complete mobile and web performance optimisation platform for golfers, connecting them to golf instructors and golf courses.
Spain: Frogtek is an app that allows shopkeepers in the developing world to set up a financial system to run their business easily and quickly.
Turkey: BillGastro offers restaurant owners an affordable point of sale solution for a unique mobile restaurant app for their customers to reserve tables, to order food online and post news and events easily.
UK: ParcelGenie is the world’s first instant gift messaging service that makes sending real gifts to friends and family almost as simple as sending an email or a text message.
Photo: Prof Barry Smyth and Dr Maurice Coyle, HeyStaks Technologies; Leo Hamill, NCB Partners; and Dr Peter Briggs, HeyStaks Technologies
