2011 has been a wonderful year for all of us, and what better way to celebrate the holidays but to throw a party? Loopt held its company holiday party at Yoshi’s in San Francisco on Thursday night. With a private area reserved, overlooking the restaurant and jazz stage, what more could we ask for? Apparently, so much more…

Check out some of the pictures from our holiday celebration!

Amongst all the fun, wine, sushi and hors d’oeuvres, this company party had our very first annual awards ceremony, The Loopties! Each member of the Loopt family received their very own certificate (featuring an Elf-Yourself portrait) in honor of their hard work and contribution to the company. Check out the elfed Loopters.

Happy Holidays, from the Loopt fam to your fam.

I’ve met a lot of impressive people in the course of Loopt, but I’ve only been intimidated once.

Before James Howard and I presented on stage at WWDC in 2008, we had to audition with some people at Apple, culminating with Steve in the Apple Town Hall.

James and I were standing around outside waiting and I remember thinking “wow, I’m about to go present a product to the best presenter and product designer in the world”.  I had idolized Steve Jobs since before I got an LC II for my 8^th birthday, which is what got me into computers and startups in the first place.

So I walked into the room thinking about how excited I was finally going to get a chance to meet my hero.  And then, looking out into a dark auditorium and only seeing two round pieces of glass glowing back, I froze up for the first and so far only time in my life.

I recovered after 5 or 10 seconds stumbled through the presentation, there were a few seconds of silence, and then Steve said “Cool, thanks”.  I usually present pretty well but this one was terrible, and I left the room sure that any chance of presenting at WWDC was over, and that I had disappointed one of the few people I cared about not disappointing.

The story has a happy ending, and we ended up getting to present at WWDC in what turned out to be a hugely important moment for Loopt.

I’ve thought a lot about that moment in the time since.  I’d know what to say to Barack Obama, I’m sure.   And I’ve never been quite sure what was so overpowering about talking to Steve until right now, as I sit typing this on my Macbook Air, running a company that basically exists because of a market created by the iPhone, listening to the Beatles on iTunes, iMessaging with friends about how sad this is, and emailing my Grandma the news, which she’ll read on her iPad (she never did manage to figure out any other computer).  I didn’t know how to talk to the guy that made everything I do now possible.

– Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO, Loopt

Robert Scoble stopped by Loopt HQ today to chat with Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Loopt. He recorded this podcast, give it a listen!

Do you like making movies? Do you like Loopt Star? Do you like money? Then we have a contest for you.

Show off your video-production moves in a contest we’re running with Tongal. You already helped us think of some cool concepts to work off, now take those concepts and create a 30-second spot showing off Loopt Star and all the cool things you can do with it.

Here’s the best part: there’s $7500 in cash and prizes that you’ll be competing for.

The contest closes on August 9, so you’ve only got a little bit of time left to show us your best work. Visit www.tongal.com/looptstar for more contest rules and information. We’ll see you in Cannes?

Loopt has always been about discovering the world around you. With the Loopt app, we help you immediately connect to the friends, places, and events that matter the most to you while you’re on the go. With the Loopt Mix app, we introduce you to the people nearby that you wish you knew so you can make new friends. With the brand new Loopt Pulse app for the iPad, we’re now letting you explore places to go and things to do with your friends in beautiful photo and map views before you even step out the door. 

As Sam says, “[The iPad] is the first device with an interface that makes photos the natural way to interact with information…it will sit somewhere between the mobility of a cell phone and a laptop and so we tried to design Loopt Pulse to fit that mode of functionality. [Loopt Pulse] is a great experience when you’re sitting at home on a couch, it’s a great experience when you’re sitting at Starbucks trying to figure out where you’re going to go next…” 

Watch this demo of Loopt Pulse for the iPad with Alok and Sam for more: 

Go to www.loopt.com/looptpulse to learn more about Loopt Pulse on the iPad. 

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.

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.

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<HTTP: loopt-mix-in-action-surfin.html="loopt-mix-in-action-surfin.html" 12="12" 2008="2008" www.looptblog.com="www.looptblog.com" <http:=", reunite with long lost friends, keep in touch with family while on the road<HTTP: www.looptblog.com="www.looptblog.com" <http:=", share historical experiences<HTTP: www.looptblog.com="www.looptblog.com" <http:=", 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

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?

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