What was Renu’s recipe for success? Take a large measure of passion and add two gigantic heaps of crisp strategic thinking. Then stir in a collaborative effort from an experienced staff that’s one of the most talented mobile dev teams on the planet. Let simmer for a short time, then gently reduce to the essence of powerful concepts. Simultaneously, keep an eye on the back burner for anything that could possibly go wrong in the highly fragmented, rapidly changing mobile world. Now present to really great Clients who have the vision and courage it takes to lead their industry. Top off with superb execution.

That’s what we’re cookin’ up at Renu Mobile. Expect more great things to come in 2011.

This begins to demonstrate that health industry resource providers – along with health IT companies and healthcare providers – have a unique and urgent opportunity to capture the attention of their customers. This opportunity, and the best practices for fully leveraging that opportunity, is detailed in a new report, Mobile Health 2010. Developed by Mary Cronin, PhD and provided as a resource by Renu Mobile, the report is a must-have for those interested in implementing effective mobile health strategies that meet consumer needs and improve patient outcomes.

Highlights of the resource include:

Best Practices: Smartphone Health Apps
* Clarify the intended use and target user of the application to provide integration with relevant mobile heath resources and options to extend the value of the app.
* Design apps with a keen eye toward user safety and health care data security.
* Example: Healthagen’s iTriage App allows access to prescription information and a history of previous care for keeping track of multiple prescriptions and care providers for their family members.

Best Practices: Mobile Web Design
* Make it easy for mobile web users with smaller screens to navigate for site information and services by limiting large graphics and animations.
* Provide a prominent search box and provide search results in a quick review with clear descriptions of each link.
* Example: The Mayo Clinic is targeting all mobile consumers by developing mobile browser compatible web sites that highlight most-used resources.

Download the whitepaper here.

Check back with us here in the comings months as we’ll be posting more interviews like this one with featured artists. Enjoy!

Our most recent collaborator is Jen Baer, a talented photographer from New York, who grew up on weekend visits to New England. We liked Jen’s work so much, we decided to put her photos on the backs of our newest business cards. Jen was gracious enough to take a few minutes out of her hectic schedule to talk about her work.

Renu: Hi Jen! How would you describe your style to someone who hasn’t seen your photography before?

Jen: I describe my work as “artful documentary”. Many of my interiors and abstracts tout super vibrant colors and hard lines, but the common thread in most of my personal work is a muted palette. Especially while editing images of people, I find myself turning down the volume in order to hear what they want to say. I am really drawn to monotone traditional portraiture for that reason. Printing can be like painting for me. I prefer a hands-on workflow, in order to maintain the intended subtleties of an image. Cabin Archives is a digital artisan print house within Baer Studio; a revival of my early days of printing for artists with archival pigments and fine art papers. “The Cabin” is a great option for other artists/photographers who want to collaborate with an artisan printer in creating small editions.

Renu: What was the impetus for picking up a camera in the first place? Was there a defining moment when you decided to start taking photos?

Jen: When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time exploring the woods in New England. There was a lot of solitude and naturally curious, I think I just grew an attachment to looking. Looking under, around and into… I was very affected by my surroundings. I think I first made use of my father’s cameras around the age of nine – polaroids and canons – and now I carry one of those same cameras in my everyday bag. Becoming adept with digital equipment was pulling me off a creative path for a time. Handling a film camera with a fixed lens has brought me back to that “just go and see” experience. Less brain, more heart. There is a bucket of film at home that needs developing. I want to see how much they do or don’t resemble those first rolls.

Renu: Has there been a project or a subject that’s been particularly important and memorable?

Jen: Bears. Ok, I haven’t shot bears, or wolves just yet, but I think the idea of it kind of defines me. Adventuring while helping important causes is the most satisfying formula for me. I may not have been conscious of the possibilities when I first picked up a camera but it certainly is what keeps me from abandoning this work for something more stable and less physically demanding. There is always potential for something great. In the coming year, I am planning to work with some rainforest inhabitants of both human and crawly kind in South America. The objective is to document a teaching fellowship and help ensure its success…which can help ensure longevity of the communities and the rain forests. See what I mean? Then there is the obvious bonus of hanging out in astounding beauty and bringing some of it back to share.

Renu: Do you have a favorite location to shoot? Your “it” place?

Jen: The next one is always the most exciting. Often, the draw to a new place is it’s structural presence – that first big impression of urban or natural landscape. Then shortly after comes seeing the forest for the trees and getting swept away by the reality of the life that exists there. My favorite place is the one that I get to stay in for a while before shooting. It makes a huge difference to the trueness of the photos if I’ve made that connection with people and place.

Renu: What kind of impression do you hope to leave upon viewers of your work?

Jen: Much of the work that I do is about accuracy and much about art. I would love to leave behind heirloom books that tell stories of where we lived and the conditions of our lives. But also work, so full of “life”, that it makes viewers want to review it time and again – images that remind us to embrace and reflect upon, with emotion, whatever it is that we value most deeply. That is always the hope I have for my art.

All of us here at Renu Mobile are proud to be providing mobile solutions for this organization as it kicks off this wonderful new initiative.

One Too Many: One million Voices Against Prostate Cancer will officially launch the first of many planned campaigns this Friday, the 18^th and run through Sunday, the 20^th, at Minor League Fathers Day games across the country.

The effort is lead by Ed Randall’s Bat for the Cure, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about prostate cancer. The campaign enables Minor League Baseball fans – and fans of men everywhere – to add their personal information to a simple web based form on their mobile phones starting this Father’s day weekend at 26 ball parks across the country.

The campaign’s ultimate objective is to collect 1,000,000 “voices” by Father’s Day 2011 and send those voices to Washington D.C. to make it clear that men, women, and children are demanding sweeping policy changes and governmental action that promotes prostate cancer awareness, detection, treatment, and ongoing research.

One Too Many is a joint effort between Ed Randall’s Bat for the Cure and the team here at Renu. We were fortunate enough to work with Bat For the Cure to provide them with creation and management of this powerful mobile campaign and to donate a short code for SMS messaging.

Smartphone users can use this Mobile Barcode to access videos, mobile petition sign ups, a live twitter feed (follow @batforthecure now!) and a donations space.

“We are thrilled that now, fans of Bat For the Cure can immediately – at the ball field, using their mobile phone – contribute to our effort to make sure every man on this Earth who is over thirty knows that taking this simple blood test – and more importantly, taking ownership of their health – can keep them alive longer for the wives, partners, children, and friends who love them,” said Bat For the Cure’s CEO and founder Ed Randall.

Carol Glennon, our CEO, on the partnership, “When we learned about what Ed and his team were doing, we immediately decided to help. We wanted to make it possible for every person moved by the work Bat For the Cure is doing to be able to add their voice. In the future, we will be delivering more applications, including a look-up for clinics where the PSA blood tests can be taken, and many other innovations that break down the barriers so that after a man is educated, he or his friends and family can easily act. Ed Randall has already saved lives – and it is an honor for us to help him save many more.”

To find more information about Ed Randall’s Bat For the Cure and the One Too Many campaign, visit http://www.erbatforthecure.org or scan the Mobile Barcode above!

If your phone does not have the capability to scan a barcode, you can text CURE to 69740 to receive a link to the mobile site via text message!

The Team at Renu deeply believes in this initiative and we’d like to encourage all of you to visit the sites and get involved!

Renu: Hi Jesse! Could you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?

Jesse: Yes, I’m one of the Co-Founders of MSKYNET. We specialize in helping companies integrate with SPARQCodes™ (Mobile Barcodes) and figure out cool and interesting ways that this technology can help elevate their mobile friendly campaign experience.

Renu: Can you talk about creating the barcode wall for your grandmother?

Jesse: Gladly! It started when I was on a trip to visit my Grandparents in Montreal. I was having dinner with my cousin and he asked me if I had heard the latest news and that was my Grandma had just got a cell phone. Intrigued, I couldn’t believe it, my Grandma is in her 80′s! When I finally met with her later that evening she shared with me that she wasn’t that thrilled about her mobile experience because of her arthritis and in general those small buttons and complicated menus were not easy to navigate. In her opinion, smartphones are not really all that smart. THis immediately sparked a vision in my mind and that was to create a large poster with pictures of my cousins, family, urgent contacts and below each picture would be a Mobile Barcode for that specific contact. All she had to do was snap a picture of the person that she wanted to call and boom, instant-dialing.

Renu: What was her reaction to the project?

Jesse: She was initially very skeptical. Being more on the traditional side, she didn’t want to learn how to use anything new and she was already frustrated enough with just trying to make a simple phone call with her existing handset. So, I tried to reset her complete mobile experience by saying, “please forget all that you know about cell phones and let’s start over.” I configured one of the side hot keys on her phone to immediately invoke the scanning app when pressed and I turned off all the confirmation settings such that as soon as the scanning software decodes a SPARQcode it will immediately invoke the call-to-action.

I demonstrated to my Grandma the following:

1. Hit the side hot key button and the scanning app is automatically launched in to scanning mode. 2. Aim the mobile phone camera at the code below the picture of the person that you want to call. 3. Hold the phone for a second in front of the picture and the call is immediately made (scanner works in video mode, so no need to click any more buttons, and it works great with jittery hands). 4. My phone started to ring immediately and my Grandma had a smile that will last me a lifetime.

Renu: We’ve seen some great use of Mobile Barcodes commercially, do you think in the neat future we’ll see more applications like your wall? Barcodes for social change, personal artifacts and the like?

Jesse: We are definitely seeing glimpses of the amazing potential for the different uses of codes. Being from Seattle, we love the coffee shop setting and a big eye sore that I commonly see are some beautiful artworks on display that have a Sharpie’d label that is not worthy. Artists spend so much time on their works, and I feel that it does not do it justice to have a small label scratched with basic information. I want to know the name of the art piece, the reason for it and maybe even pricing information if it were for sale. We have partnered with Gallerish and are now piloting a free service where artists can get custom labels made for each of their artworks. We print each of the labels on a business card form factor and on it is not only specific information but they also have a unique SPARQCode such that a customer who is interested in a specific art piece can scan and be immediately taken to a microsite where they can get more information about the piece and other artworks by the same artist. This is also a great way for people to tag artworks that they might want to purchase later.

Renu: How do you see Mobile Barcodes factoring in to the future of our day to day lives?

Jesse: I think that the great thing about this technology is that it not only makes traditional things easier (phone calls, loading webpages) but it also makes things that were traditionally infeasible to be extremely convenient. I have no doubt that we are going to start seeing barcodes everywhere but what I look forward to most are the ingenious new ways that they are going to be used and how they can have a positive impact on our daily lives.

Jetpack owner Ralph DiBernardo is excited about the competition, “Jetpack Comics has always supported the vast local creative community. Teaming with Renu Mobile is allowing us the chance to bring the community together and to recognize and reward a handful of them.”

Renu Mobile is very proud to support 1GOAL, a FIFA backed initiative designed to ensure education for all children. Utilizing the global power of soccer/football/futbol to engage young people worldwide, 1GOAL has partnered with players, fans, charities and organizations around the globe to work together to make education a reality for 72 million children by the year 2015.

The entire team at Renu is exceedingly happy to be able to offer mobile support to this wonderful (and necessary) initiative in 2010, the year of the 19th World Cup in South Africa.

Learn more about 1GOAL by visiting 1gol.mobi on your mobile phone or www.join1goal.com on your computer’s browser.