Share What’s Up: Nini Invites IDEO’s Tom Kelley to Loopt

We aim to help people discover the world around them – a mission that applies to the whole Loopt community, including our employees. To that end, Loopt has sponsored a lunch series to bring in speakers that will educate and inspire us. Last week we were privileged to have Tom Kelley, the general manager of IDEO, speak to us on innovation. IDEO was recognized as number five in Fast Company’s 2008 list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.

 

Tom’s talk highlighted key roles essential to innovation within an organization, drawing from his book, The Ten Faces of Innovation. The role of the “Anthropologist” was of particular interest to our employees. According to Tom, an “Anthropologist” goes out to the field to observe their customers actually using the product or service - whether it be at home, at school, or on the subway. Don’t be surprised if you get a request from one of us to shadow you while you use Loopt. ;-)

By keeping an open mind toward new ideas, innovation is fostered. We'll continue to invite speakers to educate and inspire us. More importantly, we hope you’ll continue to educate and inspire us with your feedback on the Loopt service. It’s all about innovation.

-Nini

Nini is on the human resources team at Loopt.

Share What’s Up: Ian on Git

One of the great things about working at a startup in Silicon Valley is the plethora of opportunities to learn about new technology and experiment with methodologies to find a good fit for your business and your team. Loopt is particularly encouraging of this sort of exploration of new ideas, sponsoring a series of lunches at which our development team can learn new technologies from local experts. This week we were visited by Scott Chacon of GitHub (http://github.com/), who was kind enough to take time out of his day to do a talk about Git.

Git is an open source, distributed source control system which has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years (a source control system is software that allows several developers to work on the same project/files without destroying one another's work). Git’s software is world-class. Its distributed nature and the ease with which it allows branching and merging of the source tree really lends itself to the kind of development environment in which developers are always experimenting with features and incubating new ideas without adding bugs to the main project.

We’re always looking for technologies that allow us to concentrate on delivering a great experience to the Loopt community rather than fighting with development tools, and, so far, Git looks like it could be a great fit.

-Ian

Ian is on the mobile development team at Loopt.

With Loopt, Never Be Lonely, Bored, or Hungry Again

That’s what I said back in June at the Apple Developer Conference when I introduced the Loopt service on the iPhone. It’s hard to believe that we’re already into February 2009. I want to thank all of you for growing with us as we continue to improve the Loopt service. We remain committed to helping you discover and navigate the ever-changing world around you.

Last year, we made solid progress toward our goal to build a ubiquitous interoperable network so that you can use Loopt with all your friends. To that end, Loopt is now available on more than 100 mobile devices, including the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry, and across all major U.S. carriers (including Sprint, Verizon, Boost, MetroPCS, AT&T, and T-Mobile). In fact, we find that over 50 percent of Loopt friend invites are sent between different phones and networks.

Based on your feedback, we delivered a number of enhancements to the service including the integration of content from Yelp to help you make plans with friends on the go. We introduced new features like Loopt Mix to help you meet and connect with new people nearby. We’ve also added tools like Loopt Link that can simultaneously update and share your Loopt experience with all your social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Over the next few months, look for more service enhancements and new features as we continue to build upon and expand the service to meet your needs for actionable, real-world information.

Noted above are just a few of the milestones that we reached over the last year. However, what I’m most excited to share is the growth and activity we experienced in the Loopt community. Last year, we saw the community grow to more than 1 million users. These include people that have used Loopt to find surfing buddies, reunite with long lost friends, keep in touch with family while on the road, share historical experiences, enhance their blog with location updates, and more.

We love hearing stories like these from the Loopt community. It really makes the long hours our team spends working on the service worth it. And please, as always, continue to let us know what you’d like to see with regard to new features, privacy controls, and advertising. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us improve Loopt so keep it coming. We look forward to meeting more of you and continuing to build a robust and vibrant community.

-Sam Altman

Founder & CEO

Friday Photo Ops!

Fridays are fun days at the Loopt office. We have our all hands lunch at noon and Katie and Nini always manage to get treats for us (like Jamba Juice this time!), in addition to deli sandwiches and yummy cookies and brownies.

We had another treat today -- company photos! Eric, our location technologies guru, and savvy photographer, snapped some great shots of us:

All hands on board!

Silly geese!

How could we resist?

Loopt as Baby Shower Central

What do you get when you add a 9 month pregnant woman, her husband, cupcakes and the movie "Knocked Up" together?" Lots of belly laughs!

Last night we hosted a small baby Shower for Heine and his lovely (and happily pregnant) wife, Karina. The whole office came down to help them celebrate this wonderful occasion. Max's Opera Cafe set the mood for food and Sibby's Cupcakery provided the delicious and adorable treats! Yumm!

These heavenly creations will be welcome at our office anytime!

Here at Loopt, we like to make sure there are always sweets and other lovely confections around the office. Tony, from our QA team, likes to make decadent chocolate mousse. Personally I like cookies dipped in the chocolate mousse, but we usually run out of cookies quickly. I think we need a sign that says "will program for delicious desserts..."

While everyone enjoyed dinner, only a handful of people stayed for the movie. Too bad for those who left early, because "Knocked Up" was a great movie full of awkward moments and tear inducing laughs. We're hoping to get more laughs with next month's movie night... though we're not sure what could top Knocked Up. I'm thinking Monty Python and the Holy Grail (your mother smelled of elderberry...), or Talladega Nights (Woo!), either one works.

That's about it for the office happenings. We're all ready for the weekend and hopefully so are you!

Your resident cookie connoisseur,
Katie

Around the World

The Loopt shirt is a pretty sweet item around the office, and some fellow Loopters decided to take it with them on their travels!

Alok built the pyramid with his own two hands!

Chelsea loves the hats in Disneyland

Wendy in Japan, chillaxin with the Japanese students!

Tony is freeeezing in Chi-town. (but still able to muster a smile)

Will knew those shorts would fit in with the gorgeous blue that is Palm Beach, Florida!

Leo, very content in Hawaii. He's considering starting a Loopt office there.

 

We are Everywhere!

Happy Holidays and many wishes for a fantastic 2008 from Loopt!

The office is feeling a bit lonely these days, but if you look on the map, we certainly are out and about!

Ricky is 1709.4 miles away from Loopt, Mountain View, and out and about town in St. Louis.
Brian was taking a Bikram yoga class in upstate New York, and later flew out to Wisconsin, to Sheb..what? to endure more winter temperatures. Yikes! Brian must be missing Cali.
Will, on the other hand, is having a grand time in West Palm Beach, Florida. From his status messages, yup, he's defffinitely partying it up!
Evan just flew out to Chi-town, to watch some mean games of ping pong!
And Shari went from warm and wonderful Miami to Albuquerque. Noting from her status message, she puts the 'h' in hard core!

Back in the Bay Area, Nini's finding the perfect paint color for her new apartment in SF, and hunting down a delicious cake from one of Loopt's favorite bakeries, the Prolific Oven (happy birthday, Aroon!):

.

All in all, a very happy holiday season. Can't wait for 2008!

Our Lunch 2.0 -- that was Crazy!

One small "Great Room".
350 attendants.
Wow.

Thanks to all of you who attended and made the event a success. And thanks to all the Loopters who pitched in before, during, and after the party!
If you liked Tom & Ricky's songs, please subscribe to their mailing list.

For pictures, see our flickr set.

Loopt Celebrates Diwali

Neeraja, Vanaja, Ragini, and Rama -- four wonderful people representing 4/5 of the QA team -- and of course,  Nini, put on a fantastic Diwali celebration for us last week.

Here are some highlights:

photo credits to alok:

For more photos, see the full set.

Where Lunch 2.0's AT!

Loopt is happy to announce its first Lunch 2.0 on Friday, Dec. 7th at the Loopt HQ.

There will be good food, good company, and great music from Tom and Ricky.

This event is not to be missed. RSVP on facebook or upcoming.