Did you hear that? That’s the whooshing sound of 2008 running out of the door and slamming it on its way out.

Does anyone else feel like this year has flown by at the speed of a Peregrine falcon*?

For us at Taptu, it’s been a very eventful year with the key releases of Deadly Dart, Electric Eel and the imminent release of Frisky Fire (yes, we name our releases after fish…) and many other interesting moments in between.

Talking of interesting… At the end of 2007, Marc, one of our designers, admitted his favourite film was Titanic. He topped that this Christmas by announcing that his favourite band is Take That. We’re very impressed with Marc’s taste in music and movies (and are very grateful he’s not picking what gets added to the Taptu index!)

Our office manager Celia spent the year playing tricks on the designers by putting packing tape on the underside of their computer mouse, leaving them baffled for quite some time. We wonder what shenanigans she’ll get up to next year!

Now for the real events of 2008…

• In January, we launched the sharing functionality, letting you send results you find by email, Twitter and SMS as well as adding a heap of new channels to the search engine.
• In February, we were awarded the Mobile Monday Global Community Award at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
• In April, our first partner, Moblr, went live with Taptu powering the search on their site.
• In May, we launched Electric Eel, adding human-assisted results, the “I’m Bored” and received the MEX Design Award.
• September was an eventful month mainly because it’s my birthday with two more awards and Steve making himself pretty for the Sky Technofile cameras
• In October, we released the Series 60 quicklaunch widget, enabling Symbian S60 users to get to Taptu in a single click.
• We added itsmy.com, the mobile social network, as second search partner in November.
• And finally, things didn’t exactly slow down in December, with Wapedia for iPhone going live and shooting to #1 in the French iTunes App Store, closing Series B funding last week, and today, putting out our last release of the year, called FriskyFire!

Phew, what a year it was, and it wouldn’t have been the same without all the wonderful people we’ve met and received feedback from. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts for coming along for the ride this year, and we’re gearing up for an even better 2009!

[* The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest flying bird on Earth, with a recorded flight of over 200 mph. After much discussion, we're quite sure that 2008 has flown by faster than a swallow; African, European or otherwise.]

W00t! Yeah! Hooray! Awesome!

As you might have guessed we’re in high spirits at Taptu towers this week, having picked up another award last night. We were honored to receive ‘Best Search Engine Provider 2008′ at the Mobile Entertainment Awards. The ME awards are one of the most prestigious events in the mobile calendar with 400 of the industry’s movers and shakers in attendance.  We faced stiff competition from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Jumptap and MCN so we’re over-the-moon to win.

Our ambassadors for the evening were Lynsey and Conor who collected the award, posed for the photos and were reportedly seen celebrating into the wee hours – but they did ensure safe delivery of the trophy to the office, and to a very happy Taptu team.

Congratulations to all the other winners and also to Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Markets, at Nokia who received a special award for outstanding contribution to the mobile entertainment content industry.

Full list of winners and further details can be found at Mobile Entertainment magazine’s site.

We were chuffed to bits to pick up ‘Overall Mobile Search Company of the Year 2008′ at the VisionGain Search Awards in London the other evening.

A very happy Bob

The award was presented to Bob Last , our SVP of Business Development by Jussi-Pekka Partanen of Nokia. Apparently, we pipped our rivals at the post due to the speed of Taptu search, innovative social scoring, and our user experience. To say we were pleased is perhaps an under-statement, thanks everyone that’s helped us get to where we are now, and especially to all our users who have provided us with such valuable feedback. Congrats to all the other winners too.

The full list of winners can be found in the MarketWatch story here, as well as on MSearchGroove.

Now where’s that fizzy pop…

The 4th annual MEX conference opened in London yesterday morning, with a packed house of the leading thinkers in the mobile business. Operators, handset manufacturers, media companies, software developers and user experience consultants from 21 countries filled WallaceSpace, bringing with them a diverse range of views and a wealth of new ideas.

In the afternoon, Steve presented, following Scott Jensen from Google, discussing how search requires a radically different approach in the mobile environment. Later on, it’s with great excitement that we received the Commercial MEX Design Award (Check out the smile on Conor’s face, on the right!)

Marek covered the first day’s events in greater details and announced the Design Award winners on the official MEX blog. Today, the conference continues, with tons of insightful presentations.

If you didn’t make it to MEX, we’ll also be attending Mobile Monday London next week, Being-Digital on the 10th and Fuel Conference on 13th June, so we hope to meet you there!

The MEX Mobile User Experience Awards shortlist was unveiled yesterday, and we’re thrilled to bits to hear we’ve been shortlisted in both the Commercial category and the Innovator of the Year one.

We’re shortlisted alongside some very cool companies, like Vuzix, who make virtual reality glasses – which friends of ours have been known to use to marvel at the back of their own heads – as well as Mobyko and Zeemote.

The winners will be officially announced at a special evening reception in London on 27th May, the opening night of the 4th annual MEX conference, and we’ll be there with our fingers crossed!

We’re excited and honoured to have been selected by Red Herring as one of the Top 100 European Tech Startups this year.

Past winners have included some of the most successful and innovative companies out there, such as Google, YouTube, Skype and Netscape, and the Top 100 falls under the theme “Europe 08: Ahead of the Curve”, so it’s great to be included in such hot company!

Following the warm reception we received at Mobile World Congress in February, where we received the Mobile Monday Peer Award’s Community vote in the Emerging Startups category, we’re very grateful for the recognition our users and industry colleagues have given us.

The Red Herring site contains the full list of companies in the Top 100.

We’re now all home after an eventful week at Mobile World Congress, spent meeting new and interesting people who love the mobile web as much as we do, looking out for new phones and services, and eating great Spanish tapas.

Since launching many new features on Monday, we’ve made the news a few times.

TechDigest says “We’ve been getting excited about Taptu for months now, so it’s fantastic to see they won the Global Community Award at the MoMo Peer Awards last night at the Mobile World Congress, rewarding our confidence in this small English start-up to no end.”

Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK agreed that “if the future is social search – as many think it is – then the future must also be mobile social search, since the mobile is such a social device.”

Fritz Nelson from Information Week writes about MWC and the lack of innovation since last year. However, he highlights Taptu as one of the mobile service that have caught his attention. “Taptu, a startup based in the U.K., also has a compelling story — perhaps even more so. It builds not only relevance into its results, it brings those results to within a click of accessing. It presents results based on a ranking of social popularity, provides categories (like blogs, news stories, videos), a nifty little summary of the item, and then a one-click way to share it.”

Susi Weaser from Shiny Shiny, writes “It’s good to see that there are people out there who haven’t just accepted Google as the only option when it comes to internet searches. In particular, Taptu have vowed to take on mobile searching, with their easy peasy service.”

Peggy Ann Salz from MSearchGroove posted an article on the new features we launched at MWC, but also interviewed Steve, our CEO, in a podcast about where he thinks mobile search is heading.

The Dutch Cowboys interviewed Steve at the stand, also capturing a bit of the atmosphere of the conference in their video, and Heise Online congratulated us on the Mobile Monday award we received and are very excited about!

Here’s a translation of the Dutch Cowboys’ text for those who, like me, may be Dutch-impaired (kindly provided by Raimo from Mobile Monday Amsterdam)

“The readers of Dutchcowboys know that Search is one of our favourite things. Moreover web 2.0 and Social media play more and more an important role in things we are involved in. For this reason it is a pleasure to hear an entrepreneur and visionary talk about all this even more so that it is happening on your mobile. Closer it cannot get.

Some will think that this is however the millionth promise that search on a cellphone will make it entirely. While the device manufacturers still struggle with the (business)model around mobile search Taptu might have the correct answer. Listen to the passionate Steve Ives who speaks about his social mobile search application Taptu.”

Last night, we were invited to the MoMo Peer Awards, as we had been nominated to represent the London chapter in the Emerging Startups category. I’m thrilled to say that we won the Global Community Award, which Jari Tammisto, CEO of Mobile Monday, handed to Bob who’s our Biz Dev guy.

We’re chuffed to bits about the reception we’re getting here, and we’ve met some really lovely people since we’ve been here. If you’re also at MWC, come say hi at the stand!

This morning, votes have opened for the Mobile Monday Peer Awards for the London area. We’ve been put forward as one of the companies for which you can vote.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon/surveys?id=1986312

For those who aren’t familiar with the awards, it’s a great opportunity to give Taptu some visibility since colleagues and press will be at Mobile World Congress when the awards are handed out. Got friends who are also part of MoMo? Why not point them to this link and get them to support us? And if you’re at Mobile World Congress, why not pop by our stand since we’ll have a fabulous pink and white bar in Hall 7!

Fingers crossed!

Vero
Chief “Drum up some love for Taptu” Officer