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We are glad to announce that SubMate’s team just welcomed a new member: Amokrane.

Amokrane is a RoR and Android dev. He will help Clement implement new features on SubMate and will start working on an Android version of SubMate!

We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up and Amokrane will help us release them faster!

Finally, the new version of SubMate iPhone app is available in the App Store!! 

You can download it for free:

Kevin, our iPhone dev, did a great job and this update contains a lot a new features/improvements:

• new signup form using facebook connect
• the app is faster and smoother
• the design has also been improved
• we fixed Bugs and known Issues
• and we also changed how the app is interacting with our server so that we can update the database easily.

We are very proud of our new version, and already hard-working on SubMate 2.0 for iPhone :)

Please give us your feedback on that new version!

Some bonus screenshots after the jump:

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In short…
A few weeks from now, we’ll be releasing the new, improved version of SubMate. The real vision, the real v1.

We would like to share the love with startups or media outlets. So we’re glad to announce the SubMate Launch Partners program. 

Become a launch partner, and be a sponsor of SubMate in your city(ies). We’ll get feedback and use cases on our platform. You’ll get some exposure.
It’s free, it’s simple, check it out.

 More info
When we launched the prototype of SubMate last May in London, Paris and New York, we got an amazing feedback by the users and press. Not only did we get some coverage in tech media (like TechCrunch and Business Insider), we got an amazing response by mainstream media. And when we say amazing, we mean it: on Saturday following the Thursday launch we made the freaking page 3 of the NY Post, in full page. Page 3 of the NY Post! Talk about mainstream! 

We’ve also been covered on the NBC, the BBC radio in the UK, the Daily Telegraph, the Gothamist, the Huff Post, LCI, … We also managed to get in a few conferences as finalists or winners.

All this effort got us some great traffic. In the first few weeks after the opening of the prototype, the app attracted about 30,000 uniques and over 100,000 page views. 

Ok - it might just not work as expected, we know it. But we’ll work our asses off to make it happen again, but this time, we aim at making it bigger. We got a brand new website with a cool, sexy design, a great iPhone app coming up, and we got amazing features lined up. We already cover 8 cities, and aim at 30 to 40 new cities before spring.

This time around, we want to partner with great startups or media outlets who would like to get on board. We will win the feedback and use cases on our platform. You will get some (more) visibility and exposure.

Of course, we cannot promise anything, but it’s worth the try, don’t you think? So get on board now, so we won’t have to say (finger crossed): “we told you so!”.

Wanna know more? Check the details out!

What better way to start a week than to welcome a new member in the team. We are pleased to welcome Axel Vergult (@episko on twitter) our second RoR developper and the 5th member of SubMate’s team.

He will work on the website’s frontend/backend and you should quickly see some of his work. 

You should also have the opportunity to read him pretty quickly, as he told us that he is wanting to share some of the technical challenges behind SubMate on the blog :)

We are very excited to see the team grow and very happy to be surrounded by such high quality people.

We are slowing down the recruitment but if you think that you are a great fit for SubMate you can always shoot us an email (ninja_at_submate.com)!

posted by Clément

Hey! 

I’ve been working at SubMate for a month and a half (ouch! time flies!) and proud to announce my first *significant* release. Amongst the numerous small tasks and updates on the web site and the API (private for the moment), here is a big change coming.

Well… you don’t see anything different? Happy to hear it! Indeed, most of the work isn’t visible. I dealt with authentication, security and data integrity.
This current release is still far from being technically perfect, but it’s a much better foundation to work on. As a background, I suggested the use of an agile methodology (eXtreme Programming), with TDD (Test Driven Development) and BDD (Behavior Driven Development).I’ve been encouraged early on to work this way, and it was great news! So, we are now almost ready to adopt continuous integration which will allow you to discover cool new features very frequently. 
Here are some technical details:

Your information is stored in a safer manner, all authentication needs are delegated to the Authlogic gem.Indeed, I recommend that library which provides a clear structure for authentication purpose. I tried the Devise gem which seems to be very nice, but for now I’m not very familiar with the deeper abstraction it provides.
100% of the data resources are now restful. This architecture allows a simpler global application design, a simpler code (using conventions). That will allow us to improve speed development and release a rock-solid API.

Data flow and feeds are now super flexible, allowing us to provide you very soon with amazing interactivity and information you are waiting for.

A little word about the platform we use (Heroku): I never saw such a great service. With Heroku, deployment is just one tiny step in the workflow. No disappointment except two downtimes (couple of hours for each) in two months.We may soon use background workers in order to treat long-running tasks (like sending e-mails, storing pics, fetching external API data, …) without blocking your experience on the website.

Received an unpleasant message on SubMate? Check the “report abuse” link soon.

So much to come: stay tuned! It’s time for me to go back working on it!

Great great day for SubMate ! After an amazing presentation by Laurent, SubMate has been designated the winner of Startup 2.0 :)

Oh and by the way, we launched SubMate in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia for the occasion !

We told you to stay tuned ;)

(if you are a journalist or a blogger and you are looking for info about SubMate you can find the PR of our launch here: http://submate.pressdoc.com/1901-submate-launches-its-public-beta-at-the-next-web)

After Plugg and TheNextWeb we have been selected among the semi-finalists for Innovate!100 Paris .

We are very very happy and excited !

The pitch slam is next week so it’s gonna be a huge week for SubMate (The Next Web is the following day) !

Innovate100 is a great opportunity for us and we plan to do our best (as always) to rock that “pitch slam” and be in the final list !!

If you are also going, leave a comment so we can meet.

 After Plugg last month, we have been selected among the 20 finalists for “The Next Web Paypal X Startup Rally” !

We are soooooooooo happy ! It’s a huge conference, where we gonna have the opportunity to make a huuuggeeeeeee announcement !

The process has been pretty tough (250 startups applied) , and we are honored that Patrick and Zee picked us :)

We have huge amounts of work to do to be ready for the conference !! We are, as you can certainly guess, very very excited :)

We hope to see you there !

In the past few days, commuting stress has been a big issue here in France. A recent report, from Technologia, outlined that commuting was one of the biggest cause of stress for employees.

We think that everyone who’s ever been in a commute understands that.

It’s not a french issue. It’s an international issue. A society issue.

We also think SubMate can be a part of the solution. Stress can be solved. One of the best treatment is to not stay alone, in life like in commutes.

We are going to roll out SubMate.com in a couple of weeks and the ultimate goal of SubMate is to connect a big community of commuters so that you dont have to travel alone EVER AGAIN !

We hope we gonna help lots of you to improve their daily commute.

Till then, dont forget to give us your email to receive a private beta invite on http://submate.com

Source of the photo: B.D. Colen