Valentine’s Day

In honor of lovers everywhere celebrating Valentine’s day, we decided to throw in a bit of an Easter egg for our users. Here’s a screenshot:

Use the Micello App to find gifts (flowers, chocolates or jewelry) for your significant other.

VentureBeat has a great article today summarizing our effort so far and bringing up some of the challenges inherent in this space.

Micello for iPhone is here!

We’re proud to announce that our first consumer product is now available for free download on Apple’s AppStore. Check out the press release, then go download it!

The Micello App is the very first location-based application to provide geo-coded maps that are dynamic, scalable and information rich. You can find your way around over 250 malls (with many more to come) and the app already supports integrated product search.

From our press release:

“‘We wanted to give users a product they would fall in love with – what we refer to as The Micello Experience. We got a great design team from Inedible Software to build our iPhone application while we focused on our core DNA – mapping technology and innovation. We have built an architecture that would scale not just to thousands of indoor places like shopping malls and airports, but would also allow for navigation all the way inside a department store,’ said Ankit Agarwal, Founder & CEO of Micello. ‘Since announcing our application, we have seen a couple of companies in this space offering shopping mall application using static image files as maps. With Micello, you get a geo-coded map that is seamlessly integrated with outdoor maps,’ he added.

‘We have partners and application developers calling us to provide them our indoor maps for their applications’, said Prakash Narayan, CTO at Micello. “We are developing the Micello platform for our partners to access our maps and other features easily. We are really excited to be a cornerstone in this emerging ecosystem of indoor location based services’, he added.

Make sure to read ReadWriteWeb’s detailed write-up, there’s much more there. And check out this video example of Ankit exploring Ikea. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Micello: S.J. Biz Journal’s “Emerging Technology” Winner, Mobile

We’re not done yet! With our iPhone app launch just around the corner (keep an eye out), we were pleased ecstatic to learn that the San Jose Business Journal had chosen Micello as their pick for best emerging technology in the mobile space. Here’s what the Business Journal had to say about the contest:

“The Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s 2008 Emerging Tech award winners were named Thursday night at the Computer History Museum. The winners were chosen from a record number of nominations, showing the depth of the valley’s innovation even during rough economic times.

‘Among the things we considered in this year’s nominees include the potential viability of the company and the ‘wow’ factor that clearly sets something apart,’ said Publisher James MacGregor. ‘We were ultimately looking for companies that could completely change technology in their sectors, not just advance it a step or two.’ ”

Here is their full write-up about Micello. We could get used to this winning thing.

Micello is the AT&T FastPitch Platinum Runner Up

We were down in San Diego for the Fall CTIA  from Oct. 7-8. One of the events we participated in was AT&T’s DevCentral FastPitch competition. There were a total of 60 pitches, with only 6 getting a share of the prize. Micello was a runner up  for AT&T’s FastPitch Platinum consumer award, along with startup Evernote. This is our first (and — we’re confident — not last) award! Check out the contest details as well as our pitch here.

In addition, the folks over at Sun Microsystems blog, Essential Startups, were kind enough to feature us as their “Startup of the Day”!

More coverage of Micello

There have been several additional posts on Micello in the blog-o-sphere. Rather than update the previous entry on Micello’s launch at DEMOfall ’09, we wanted to post another entry with a collection of links to these posts.

• geek.com
• ComputerWorld – Why B2B Start-ups shine
• InformationWeek
• Bloomberg
• TheStreet
• TheIndustryNews
• TechnologyMagazineNews
• iPhonebuzz
• Your Next App
• GPS Business News
• Middle East Maps
• AltSearchEngines
• My Digital Life
• BusinessTravelRx
• TheTelecomBlog
• San Diego Daily Transcript
• Top iPhone News
• Techzilla
• voxy.co.nz

Micello Launches at DEMOfall ’09

If, due to some strange disruption of the space-time continuum, you did not happen to hear about our company  launch on Tuesday at DEMO ‘09 in San Diego, well… we did. “Why would I have heard?” you might ask. Well, because we picked up some pretty serious media buzz from tech heavyweights such as TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and VentureBeat – among dozens of others. In short, things went very, very well.Here are some media tidbits that make us feel particularly fuzzy:

“Looking for a new company to get excited about? Look no further than mobile mapping startup, Micello.” -ReadWriteWeb

“The Micello iPhone app demonstration was greeted with oohs and aahs by the DEMO audience because they impressively showed off the ability to do a detailed search of an actual mall with impressive accuracy. The inside mall view mapped out the entire interior landscape, with store names, and integrated user-generated social media content on stores.” -Mashable

“Google Maps is great for helping route cars places, but when it comes to navigating a large area with many points of interest by foot, it can fall short. So Micello offers a much more detailed perspective, outlining the stores that are in your vicinity. It works as you’d expect, with a look that’s similar to the maps you find inside of shopping malls. Even better: the site allows you to search for whatever product or service you’re looking for, with results appearing directly on the map.” -TechCrunch

We have other articles of note archived on our media page. Our tagline of “Google Maps for the indoors” seems to have carried really well.

We hope to have our iPhone application out fairly soon. Are you excited? Of course you are.

Here is a link to the video of the presentation. This is a link to the press release that we issued. And here is a list of journal articles / blog posts that were written about Micello:

• TechCrunch
• Mashable
• ReadWriteWeb
• cnet News
• Financial Times (Top picks from DemoFall ’09)
• USA Today
• Washington Post
• ComputerWorld
• NetworkWorld (Features a Q&A with Micello CEO, Ankit Agarwal)
• DemoPit (Features a video of Micello CEO, Ankit Agarwal)
• San Diego News Network
• EarthTimes, London, U.K.
• ubergizmo
• The Good Net Guide
• Popular Tech News
• We love Crowds
• IntoMobile
• nuze.me
• Technologizer
• MobileTor
• CellPhone Markets
• AlphaTrade Finance
• Zikkir World

Micello on Mobile Developer TV

Ankit Agarwal (Micello’s CEO) was interviewed by Mobile Developer TV after his presentation at Mobile Monday on June 1, 2009.

You can view the video by clicking here.

Micello Featured in JavaOne Live Radio

Prakash Narayan (Micello’s CTO) was featured on JavaOne Live Radio on Wednesday, June 3rd. He spoke about the Micello solution and the vision. You can listen to it here.

JavaOne Talk

Ankit Agarwal (CEO) and Prakash Narayan (CTO) spoke on the Micello solution at a “Lightning Talks” JavaOne session – organized by Sun’s Startup Essentials group. Here is a link to the video of their talk:

Launched!

Micello was officially launched at JavaOne at ~ 8:40 am on Tuesday, June 2nd at JavaOne by Chris Melissinos, the host of JavaOne 2009.

After many a late night toiling to bring our idea to (virtual) reality, we were excited to unveil the fruits of our labor at the Sun JavaOne conference. And here it is: the Micello App —  a revolutionary Blackberry and iPhone application that takes you to the final frontier of mobile mapping: inside buildings. Think convention centers, universities and malls and you’ll get a good idea of what we’re working to do. Our database allows users to access, navigate, and explore these types of places on their phone. You can download the app at get.micello.com.

And, for the unlucky ones who weren’t at JavaOne, we’ve got you covered. You can watch a video of the launch here; watch our Founder and CEO, Ankit Agarwal, speak about Micello here and here; listen to CTO Prakash Narayan speak with BlogTalkRadio here; and read about the launch here.

A sigh of relief and a whoop of excitement have accompanied what we believe to be the first of many milestones. Stay tuned for more. Great things are on the horizon!