Just a few days after its launch, RTL interactive’s Pop Idol application for the iPhone (direct iTunes link) climbs to be the second most downloaded free application in the App Store and is now headed to lead the charts as a #1.

Pop Idol – or in German “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” (DSDS) – is one of the most successful and important television entertainment shows in the market.

The accompanying DSDS iPhone application features tons of on-demand videos, the latest and greatest news, interactive elements and a 360° panorama view of the production arena. Users can move through, zoom in and out of the studio and get full access to all casting videos and highlights.

In addition all of the Pop Idol TV events are broadcast live to the iPhone and iPod touch audience.

With DSDS RTL interactive leads the German market providing mobile users with a rich, engaging and feature complete interactive television solution. The offering is free for its users. Production and operation costs are ads supported.

DSDS for the iPhone has been created by GrandCentrix for RTL interactive.

Based on an intense briefing GrandCentrix delivered the user interface design, all artwork and the client application. The solution is based on our platform for mobile services and leverages many of its core elements for Media Participation Solutions.

It features a tight integration into RTL’s content management systems, dynamically configurable menus, a freely configurable, diverse mix of ad slots, stats integration into German AGOF and IVW and scheduled Push Notifications.

RTL’s product managers can change many aspects of the offering themselves through the Web based service administration. The solution has also been prepared to leverage our upcoming Mobile Analytics offering.

The GrandCentrix team congratulates RTL interactive on the success of this second service we’ve done together and wants to say thank your for the continuous support.

Today, we are excited to announce the immediate availability of the World’s first Mobility Rewards Program:

iMiles for the iPhone (direct iTunes link).

As you might be aware, we’re sponsoring Germany’s biggest independent iPhone Developer Conference, taking place in Cologne’s beautiful Wasserturm today and tomorrow.

During the conference we announced the public availability of the first mobile service we run under our own brand.

Please head over to the iMiles blog for all the juicy details!

So, what is iMiles?

Unlike airline frequent flyer programs that only reward you when you fly, iMiles participants earn miles for travel in any form, be it flying, driving, walking, using a bike or traveling by train. Using the iMiles application on their iPhone, participants earn miles as soon as they start moving.

The program comprises four different status levels ranging from Blue, the entry level, to Silver, Gold and the ultimate Black membership status.

Signing up involves simply installing the iMiles application and registering directly from your iPhone.

Once your account has been activated you start collecting miles by swiping your virtual iMiles membership card whenever you’re on the go.

Integration with Facebook and Twitter let you compete with friends and colleagues.

iMiles will be redeemable for exclusive promotions, special offers and more. Details will be available on the program blog at www.planetimiles.com.

iMiles rewards mobility in the truest sense of the word. The power of the iPhone application platform lets us harness location information to help iPhone users earn rewards for just doing what they would be doing anyway – traveling.

The idea of leveraging location in mobile apps in itself is an absolute no-brainer. We’re currently seeing lots of services that tie location to social networks, nearby friends and so on. Brightkite and Foursquare are two very popular examples. Though iMiles integrates with Facebook and Twitter, it’s not another social network. The program’s fundamental idea is to give something real valuable back to its users – and we are not thinking ads here.

A Developer API, which will facilitate integration between the iMiles platform and third party services is currently in private beta. If you’re interested: get in touch! We will be more than happy to discuss partnering options.

Help spreading the word!

If you want to blog, write or otherwise help spreading the word about iMiles, the official press release might help you with the details. High-quality images are also available. Feel free to use wherever you want!

Further reading

• The iMiles Program Site
• The iMiles Blog
• iMiles on Twitter: @planetimiles
• iMiles on Facebook

It’s a bit more than a week to go until Germany’s iPhone developer conference will open its doors in the Cologne Wasserturm on December 1st and 2nd, 2009.

Not only are we a proud sponsor of this independent event which sold out immediately after opening ticket sales, we will also unveil two new fantastic GrandCentrix services!

The first is targeted at the growing number of iPhone users globally and will reward mobility in the true sense of the word. It’s a unique location based offering and we can’t wait to start talking publicly about it.

The second will simplify the lives of iPhone developers by providing them a piece of the GrandCentrix Platform for free.

The announcements made during the conference will be covered here shortly thereafter.

Besides the launch of these amazing new services our VP Sales and Marketing, Martin Willnow, will talk about Mobile Media Participation and how monetizing mobile services requires more than just a well designed iPhone application.

He’ll touch upon cross-services customer management and how the GrandCentrix technology solves payment, analytics and large scale messaging.

We’re looking very much forward seeing you there.

Tonight, our own Martin Willnow will answer a question we get asked quite frequently: Will 2010 be the year of the Android?

Join the discussion and don’t miss the Mobile Market Outlook 2010 organized by MobileMonday Germany.

The event will take place November 23rd, 2009 from 6pm to 10pm (CET) in a spectacular loft office built on top of an old bunker, in the middle of an industrial area – really unique.

The address: Schickstrasse 18, 60314 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Tonight’s Agenda:

I. Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt am Main
Dr. Michael Klein – Direktor INM
Review, Panorama, Outlook – 20 Years INM and upcoming trends like “Mixed Reality”!

II. “Battle of the App-Stores: Is 2010 the year of the Androids?”
Bernhard Steimel, Chief of Mind Business Consultants
Martin Willnow, GrandCentrix GmbH

III. Developer hot topics 2010
Jarkko Tolvi, Forum Nokia
Nokia’s Music and Maps integration, Opportunity for 3rd party developers, as well as info on Qt Technology and Ovi store business opportunities.

What a tremendous ride it has been:

After weeks of intensive work under the radar, and with great support from Cologne based media experts digame mobile, RTLinteractive has released Supertalent (iTunes link), powered by our GrandCentrix Platform.

Das Supertalent is Germany’s version of the famous Simon Cowell TV format known as <Your Country here>’s Got Talent in many countries across the globe.

The free iPhone application features live TV broadcasting of all shows, an unparalleled video on demand section, multi-media image galleries, up-to-date news and also allows its users to cast their votes straight from their iPhone – without the need to switch channels.

We believe it clearly sets the stage for the future of TV!

Supertalent is the first public service based on our Media Participation offering for the Media Industry and among many other GrandCentrix Platform features leverages advanced caching for occasionally connected devices, rich multi-media capabilities, a native but highly dynamic UI and Scheduled Push Notification broadcasts.

We are delighted that Apple recognizes the unique set of features and the combination of a platform driven mobile service along with a fantastic media format and decided to massively feature the application across the App Stores in which it is available.

Please stay tuned (RSS/Twitter) for the official press announcement and a more in-depth coverage of the technology behind Supertalent!

We are feeling honored for being nominated as one of the five finalists for the LIVE Contest at this year’s VOICE Days plus (October 6th/7h 2009, Nürnberg, Germany).

Under leadership of the renowned Fraunhofer Institute a team of experts handpicked five innovations that have the potential to change how customers will experience service today and in the future.

Traditionally the event heavily focused on speech enabled innovations, Interactive Voice Response solutions and voice enabled hardware. The “plus” in “VOICE Days plus” stands for a broadened scope, now touching upon all-things-customer care. It’s our great pleasure to be the only finalist, who will not present yet another application of speech technologies but demo a completely new way of leveraging existing VoiceXML applications to create a visually appealing, native smartphone services world.

Besides our contest participation we will also contribute to the conference, deep diving into why we believe that true customer service needs a face and not only a voice and showcasing real-world applications of our Solutions for Mobile Customer Care.

We’re looking forward to meeting you in Nürnberg!

The GrandCentrix Management Team is attending dmexco Cologne.

From the dmexco Website:

Europe’s top congress for digital marketing offers a unique abundance of over 100 high-profile and renowned top level speakers from the USA, Asia, Europe and of course Germany – all speeches will be simultaneously translated in two languages (German, English) for the trade visitors free of charge. You will be presented with all important branch themes in a total of four programme formats – the Congress Hall, the Debate Hall, the Seminars and the Speakers’ Corner.

This year’s dmexco Conference is focusing on the central motto “Create Effects”. Since the results of creativity can be measured more directly and faster in the digital marketing sector than in almost any other area. This means that the creative heads, the marketers in the companies, and also the advertisers are faced with high demands. Efficiency and effectiveness are the big advantages of the media, Internet, which in turn results in the established media of the marketing mix having to concede more and more share of the budget to the digital channels.

If you’re a Media Industry Pro, go find us and let’s discuss GrandCentrix Solutions for the Media Industry. You can either DM us @GrandCentrix or contact us directly via any of the channels outlined here.

Looking forward to a fantastic conference!

We are proud to announce two fantastic additions to the GrandCentrix team: Please give a very warm welcome to Filips Kokorevs and Andrejs Cernikovs.

Fil and Andrejs are going to support our engineering team with a focus on expanding platform services and backend architecture. Both have a great background in bringing to life scalable enterprise service architectures and integrating those into complex environments.

Prior to joining GrandCentrix Fil and Andrejs have been working on a web-based multi-tenant customer interaction platform, which is used by Fortune 500 customers around the globe. The code and rights of the software have passed Alcatel-Lucent’s due diligence and ultimately got acquired.

Fil: “Developing concepts and implementing them has always been an enjoyable challenge for me, especially when it makes someone happy in the end. GrandCentrix gives me the great opportunity to do both.”

You can email Fil at fk@grandcentrix.com.

Andrejs: “I love making software. Doesn’t matter if I just develop a small idea, design whole architectures or study a new language. For me the art of software development is not only knowing the technologies, it’s also understanding the user behind.”

You can email Andrejs at ac@grandcentrix.com.

We are extremely happy having both on board. Fil and Andrejs work out of Berlin and we hope that forcing them to leave Germany’s capital for our occasional team gatherings in Dortmund doesn’t hurt too much .

We are pleased to attend New York (NY) SpeechTEK, taking place August 24-26, 2009 in the Marriott Marquis hotel.

Not only is our partner Voxeo Inc. the world’s largest hosting provider for VoiceXML applications but also the ultimate leader in providing speech self services solutions. The Voxeo folks are showcasing how to seamlessly transform existing voice self services into visual smartphone experiences – based on our GrandCentrix Platform.

Are you already using an IVR to automate parts of your Customer Care processes? You should definitely check out how you can easily extend your existing invest to provide emotionally engaging and sticky user experiences to highly valued smartphone customers.

Voxeo is a world-wide reseller of our Solutions for Mobile Customer Care and our very own Martin Willnow, VP Sales & Marketing, is looking forward to meeting you in New York.

In case you’re around, give Martin a ring at +49-160-785-56-66 or send your tweet to @grandcentrix in order for us to arrange a meeting.

The first post is always the hardest.

You have to set the tone of your blog, you have to say why you’re here or what you’re going to write about. You have to choose your words carefully and you have to know where you’re heading. Then again, maybe it’s totally different.

To make life a little easier for us, we decided to go with a post that simply welcomes you and thanks you for visiting GrandCentrix. While the other parts of our website should provide you with a great overview of who we are and what we do in a pretty “corporate style”, the GrandCentrix team will leverage this blog to publish way more informal.

We will shortly begin with an article outlining the wild ride we’ve been on during the last couple of months, setting up GrandCentrix, winning our first definitional customers and getting some fantastic investors on board.

We believe that social media will help us to always stay very close to our customers and partners. Listening to your feedback is super important for everybody working at GrandCentrix. I’d like to encourage you to start following us at Twitter, subscribe to our FriendFeed and our RSS feed. That way you’ll always be up to date with the latest news from our side. Feel free to comment, respond or send us direct message. We love to hear more from you!

Did you see the little Feedback handle at the left side of the screen? That’s kind of the “official way” to provide feedback. We are leveraging the great customer community features provided by Get Satisfaction to allow our customers and partners to communicate with us and with each others.

We are excited to work with you and will always do our best to make GrandCentrix a great service provider and a fun place to work.

So enjoy and see you around soon!