mobeedo.
Role: Software Engineer Android & Frontend
In the Beginning...
In 2006, sengaro GmbH was founded with a grand vision: To bring the internet’s wealth of knowledge to your fingertips – on your phone. This was the time b the first iPhones and Androids were released and our app „mobeedo“ was one of the first location based services ever to be built for smartphones.
It was an exciting time, and I am deeply grateful to have been a part of the journey as employee #1.
mobeedo
mobeedo was a location based service that used geo-fencing and points of interest, which could be curated by the community (much like Wikipedia) on a web site called „mobeedo cockpit“ built using Google Web Toolkit. Users would basically draw polygons on a map and add a title, an URL as well as some conditions (for example: categories, opening hours).
The smartphone app would show the URL once you entered the polygon in real life (and if other conditions were met, think: category filter). For example, when you would walk through Innsbruck’s old Town, the app would display Goldenes Dachl and it would lead you to the Wikipedia page.
Unfortunately, mobeedo never became a commercial success, but it laid the foundation for what would come next.
Also, the project didn’t go completely unnoticed:
- The mobeedo Android made it among the top 50 submissions in Google’s very first Android Developer Challenge in 2008.
- In 2010, we won 7th place in a ranking of Austrian young entrepreneurs by the economic magazine GEWINN.
Apps, Apps, Apps
Apps were all the rage at the time, and the company pivoted to become a successful agency for mobile development. I’ve had the pleasure of working on a variety of great people and great projects, some of which I found particularly interesting:
- Android App for an Italian publisher of hiking maps (among other things) that has a custom map view (much like Google’s own MapView) which displays hiking map tiles and points of interest.
- Android App for German Facebook competitor VZ Netzwerke, who had approx. 16 million users at its peak.
- Android App for a Silicon Valley startup that specializes on indoor maps. The app displays custom indoor map tiles overlayed with routes to guide the user through malls and the like.
The Exit
In 2011, sengaro was acquired by Rebate Networks. As the company’s focus shifted to new challenges, I took off to work in the Silicon Valley for a brief period of time.