Now in their second year, the Media Vanguard Awards honor next-gen media and draw hundreds of submissions in a wide variety of fields.  This year the MVAs have honored publishers and broadcasters like time.com, HBO and other highly respected brands.  SPIN Media, NPR and other MVA winners were honored at the Media Vanguard Awards, which is part of the ME: Media Evolved conference, on November 15th in Manhattan.

SPIN Play for iPad and NPR’s suite of apps have been featured on the iTunes App Store countless times, are included in Apple’s iTunes App Store iPad Hall of Fame and have received extensive critical acclaim.  SPIN and NPR have shown that print and other traditional media outlets can have a nice home on mobile devices, if they embrace the platform.

SPIN Play for iPad is free to download from the AppStore and includes a daily feed of news and reviews from SPIN.com.  SPIN Play also offers users access to premium issues which feature SPIN’s industry leading editorial content, as well as 60+ steaming songs and 30+ streaming videos each month.  Each issue allows users to connect with their favorite artist in a way never before possible on any medium.

NPR’s suite of apps include NPR for iPad, NPR News for iPhone/iPod Touch and Android and NPR Music for iPhone/iPod Touch and all are free to download.  NPR’s apps offer a deep variety of content in News, Music, Arts and Lifestyle.  The apps also provide access to NPR’s award winning content via podcasts, programs and thousands of streaming radio stations.  This is the second year in a row that NPR’s apps have won the MVA in their category.

SPIN Play can be downloaded free at spin.com/ipad.  An annual subscription is available for $7.99 via In-App purchase and single issues can be purchased for $1.99 each.  All NPR apps can be found in the mobile section of NPR.org.

Congratulations to Bottle Rocket’s partners at NPR and SPIN Magazine for this tremendous honor!

If you haven’t heard of Bottle Rocket, we are a rapidly growing mobile development company at the forefront of the mobile app revolution. We have developed and released over 50 high profile, interesting apps for companies like NPR, PBS, Discovery Channel, Disney, American Express, AARP, Bravo, ESPN, SPIN Magazine, BET, History Channel, as well as extremely popular games such as Doodle Bomb and Annoying Orange Kitchen Carnage. Our apps are regularly featured by Apple, included in their national advertising campaigns, used in Apple Retail Stores on demo equipment and many have been awarded Apple’s coveted App of the Week. We estimate that over 15 million people use the apps we have built. These apps are just the tip of the iceberg. We continue to push the envelope of design and architecture and have literally dozens of new projects you may find very interesting.

We will be covering the basics of iOS development in Objective-C using XCode 4. This 6 hour bootcamp will begin at 10 am, and last until 4 pm. Lunch will be provided free of charge. If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro, please bring it pre-installed with XCode 4. If not, we will have a limited number of computers on-hand for your use. We will be combining classroom instruction with hands-on development. We are only interested in serious candidates, and will be using our interaction and observations of you during this session to select the top candidates for our summer internship program.

If you are serious about a paid iOS development internship this summer, please respond to bootcamp@bottlerocketapps.com by Thursday, April 28th 2011.

• Live video feeds from around the country
• Streaming shows on-demand
• Ability to save your favorite songs
• Create playlists

These features and more make NPR for iPad “the most customizable” of all the public radio apps.

Guess what app is the only one appearing on the mobile twice?

DALLAS, TEXAS (January 17, 2011) — All three of the apps developed by Bottle Rocket Apps for NPR have been nominated for the Third Annual Best App Ever Awards. Sponsored by 148Apps, the annual competition recognizes the best iPhone and iPad apps in the iTunes App Store in 2010. Also seen as the People’s Choice awards of the App Store, the goal of the awards is to help publicize the very best apps available, not just the best-selling apps.

NPR News for iPhone and iPod touch, NPR for iPad and NPR Music were all nominated in the Best News App category.  The nomination process lasted just under a month and saw 87,138 nominations–three times the number from last year–for 2,891 different apps submitted to the site. Each award category has 10 nominees for iPhone and iPad applications.

The winning app will be determined by public vote. Votes in the Best News App category can be cast at http://bestappever.com/v/news through January 25th, 2011.  The winners will be announced at the 2011 Macworld Expo in San Francisco, CA and will be posted to the Best App Ever site shortly thereafter.

“We are deeply honored to have our work with NPR nominated not just once, but three times for this prestigious award,” said Calvin Carter, Bottle Rocket’s president.  “We hope that the millions of loyal NPR fans who rely on these apps daily will support them by casting their votes for these top-class apps.”

About Bottle Rocket Apps

Bottle Rocket Apps (www.bottlerocketapps.com) is a full-service mobile app development firm, focused on creating mission-critical, premium brand experiences for the Apple iPhone and iPad and Android devices.  In just over two years, Bottle Rocket has completed more than 40 iPhone and iPad apps for leading brands such as NPR, PBS, Disney, ESPN, The Seattle Times, American Express and AARP.  The company’s apps have won numerous industry accolades for innovative and user-centered design, and frequently appear at the top of their categories on the iTunes App Store.  The Bottle Rocket team of senior strategists, architects, developers and artists work their magic from the company’s offices in Dallas, Texas.

By the end of 2010 Apple’s iOS is far from slowing down. Out of the 400,000 apps crowding the iOS App Store, Wired recommends the NPR iPhone and iPad apps as two out of the recommended few worth downloading from 2010. (And why not? They’re free!)

Wired calls out the NPR app as not “just a speedier version of its website; it’s actually better.” Tap an article and an embedded player pops up below so you can listen to an audio reading or supplementary material while you read. A Share tab enables you to share an article by Twitter, Facebook or e-mail.

Right up there on Wired’s list with Twitter and Netflix, the NPR iPad app utilizes the iPad’s ability for an enhanced interactive reading experience and the NPR iPhone app continues to keep top reviews among its audiences.

Bottle Rocket is excited to continue into 2011 with newer and even more exciting apps. And hey, we can’t lie and say we’re not looking forward to seeing NPR’s award-winning apps on more of Wired’s Best Of lists this coming year. Here’s to 2011!

NPR’s news and music apps for iPhone and iPad, developed for NPR by Bottle Rocket Apps, have snagged recognition by Advertising Age with a 2010 Media Vanguard Award for the Best Broadcaster iPhone/iPad/Android Apps.

The award, announced at Advertising Age’s 2011 conference in New York, recognizes NPR’s reputation as a leading news and music source in the mobile media sector. Advertising Age created the Media Vanguard Awards to honor transformative, next-generation media. The awards, bestowed for the first time this year, drew hundreds of entries from major media companies (broadcasters, newspapers, magazines and digital natives) and marketers.

iPhone and iPad Apps Transform NPR’s Broadcast Business
A staggering 40% of NPR’s internet traffic can be traced back to its mobile platforms. Bottle Rocket partnered with NPR to provide strategic concept, user interface design and application development for NPR News for iPhone, NPR for iPad, and NPR Music for iPhone.

NPR’s apps craftily expand on their already thriving website, providing the end-user an interactive experience for consuming content and streaming associated stations. The NPR News for iPhone app, first launched in 2009, alone drives 20% of all NPR online pageviews and, according to Advertising Age, “provides a top-class experience” for users on the go. Advertising Age termed the sister NPR Music app, launched in the spring of 2010, a “runaway success”. That app offers an extensive library of music tracks and streaming audio, and allows users to customize their listening experiences with saved playlists.

When Apple launched the iPad this past April, Bottle Rocket enabled NPR to be “ready at the gate, offering a full-screen experience of everything it has to offer on the web, beautifully assembled for the tablet,” according to Advertising Age.

“NPR’s move to frontline the digital sphere with new concepts and technology-driven innovation has completely transformed the traditional consumer expectation of broadcast,” said Calvin Carter, president of Bottle Rocket Apps. “We are honored to have been NPR’s partner on the journey to winning this prestigious industry award,” he added.

Dan Frakes explains why NPR News for iPad is an essential free favorite:

Who said Internet audio killed radio? NPR for iPad proves that networks can embrace the Internet to make their radio and Web offerings even more compelling. Like NPR’s iPhone app, the free iPad version lets you browse NPR news, shows, and podcasts; you can read or listen immediately, or save audio programs to a playlist you can listen to at any time. The app also lets you listen to streaming audio of many NPR-affiliate stations across the country. But the iPad app adds emphases on the multimedia-friendly areas of NPR’s coverage—Arts & Life and Music topics—and takes advantage of the iPad’s larger screen to make it easier to find content and more enjoyable to consume it. It’s public radio on-demand, and it makes NPR appealing even to the NPR-agnostic among us.