Lyon Bros. Enterprises

Rally Up team acquired by AOL

andrew — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:14:18 +0000

After a little less than a year of hard work, we’ve finally gotten some notice from a giant. Although the future of Rally Up is unknown, our team (Lyon Bros., 12 Seconds, Nagel Tech, Parachute Creative, Ruby), will be heading up AOL’s mobile division. What does this mean? For Lyon Bros. Entereprises, LLC, it means no more client work. At all. We’ll be finishing up what we’ve started (hopefully by the end of the next week) but after that we’re working for AOL. This is an exciting opportunity for us, and we’re both really happy for the opportunity.

AOL is changing their presence as a company, and they’ve invited us to be a part of that change by heading up their new “Mobile First” division. In other words, we’re going to be using our expertise we’ve gained collectively over the last year to pound out one kickass mobile application after the other.

Lyon Bros. would like to say that without any of the teammates and some of our other friends from the area, this never would have happened. So, a very heartfelt thanks to everyone who was involved, and everyone who supported us along the way. None of us could have done it without all of us, quite literally.

On a side note, beeets.com will still be owned and operated (in our spare time) by Lyon Bros. and having new contacts in the Bay Area gives us a lot of exciting opportunities for expansion.

Here are some other sources to read about the acquisition:

woosterband.com — powered by beeets!

jeff — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:03:08 +0000

Feast your eyes on Wooster’s new web site. Coded by us and designed, once again, by the supremely excellent Parachute Creative, Wooster’s site is powered by beeets.com events!

FacePlant: The FaceTime App

jeff — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:22:36 +0000

One of the magical and revolutionary features of Apple’s new iPhone 4 is its support for FaceTime, a video chat service that lets two iPhone 4 users talk face-to-face using the phone’s front-facing camera. It’s a nifty feature with one major shortcoming: FaceTime video chat only works over WiFi networks, and not over AT&T’s 3G network. Because of this, it’s impossible to know whether any given contact is available for a FaceTime call without first calling/texting and asking. Impossible without FacePlant, that is.

FacePlant is an app that lets you see which of your contacts are on WiFi networks and available for FaceTime calls, while keeping your contacts up-to-date with your status. You can leave video voicemail for any unavailable contacts. It’s very easy to set up: all you do is enter your name and import your contacts list, and you’re good to go. It uses the iPhone’s background multitasking to keep your status updated on the FacePlant service whenever your network connectivity changes, and it’s really that simple. It’s surprising that Apple didn’t think of this for their own device.

We were privileged to collaborate with Nagel Technologies and 12seconds.tv, the same folks we work with on the Rally Up project, to help build the technology behind FacePlant. FacePlant is powered by our A-Frame development framework, with our easy-bake API.

We hope that Apple approves FacePlant. While we’re waiting for that to happen check out the FacePlant site and sign up for our mailing list, or read all about us on TechCrunch, Gizmodo, New York Times, Wired or The Unofficial Apple Weblog (among many others)

Launch party night – a complete success

andrew — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:25:26 +0000

The beeets.com launch party was a complete success. I’ve actually never seen the Crepe Place as packed as it was on party night. Big up for Wooster (website coming soon, courtesy of Lyon Bros.) and Yung Mars. You guys are awesome, talented, and made the party what it was.

Big thanks to Tim Cattera for letting us use these awesome shots.

We’re really happy to have The Crepe Place on board (check out their new site, design by Parachute Creative, and events powered by beeets.com). Adam and Eric from the Crepe Place are a pleasure to work with. They are extremely accommodating and helped us pull everything together. You guys rock.

Thanks everyone involved for an awesome night and an even better morning after (heh). It was epic.

beeets.com launch party tonight! don’t miss it!

jeff — Fri, 14 May 2010 01:56:02 +0000

Come to The Crepe Place tonight for the beeets.com launch party! And be sure to check out their new web site, coded by us, designed by the insanely talented Parachute Creative, and powered by beeets.com!

Local events search engine Beeets.com launches May 13th at The Crepe Place

jeff — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:41:19 +0000

Santa Cruz, CA – April 29th 2010 – Lyon Bros. Enterprises today announced that Beeets.com, the only events search engine powered by your interests, will launch May 13th during a free show at The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz, California. The Beeets launch show is the first stage in the strategic rollout of Beeets.com for the Monterey Bay region.

Beeets.com is a revolutionary new service that allows people to post, search and share events based completely on their interests. Events are “tagged” with descriptive words, allowing people to quickly filter through the local events listing by clicking on one or more interests. This unique interest search makes it easy for people to post and find events that wouldn’t fit into the few pre-defined categories on other events sites. Beeets.com is an ad-free experience that aims to get people off the web, into their communities and having fun with their lives.

Beeets enables local groups, including music venues, sports teams and community organizations, to have a central place to post and manage their events, not only on the Beeets website, but on their own websites as well. Using the simple drop-in Beeets Widget, organizations can pull their events listing from Beeets.com into their own sites. The Beeets Widget makes it easy to maintain an up-to-date list of events on any web site, and also allows people with similar interests to easily find these events on Beeets.com.

The Crepe Place is the first Santa Cruz company to integrate the Beeets Widget into their site, and is also hosting the Beeets.com launch show on May 13th. Featuring local bands Wooster (Santa Cruz) and Yung Mars (San Francisco), the show will be free to the public and include raffle prizes such as iPods and T-shirts. The launch party will coincide with the release of The Crepe Place’s new web site, built by Lyon Bros. Enterprises and powered by Beeets.com events.

Lyon Bros. Enterprises is a privately-funded web enterprise company based at the NextSpace offices in downtown Santa Cruz. Owned and operated by two brothers, Jeff and Andrew Lyon, Lyon Bros. Enterprises builds the technology behind Beeets.com as well as other local web startups such as Rally Up and PrivacyChoice.

For more information, please see http://beeets.com/launchparty

A transition from our normal routine

andrew — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:38:06 +0000

After over a year of doing great business with great people, we’ve hit a point now where we can focus on doing steady work on a handful of projects and focus all of our leftover time on building the products we love: beeets and Rally Up. In so many words, we’re no longer taking on clients and won’t be for a while. We’ve struck a perfect balance between feeding ourselves and spending time on updating and marketing our two love children.

This transition has been hard for us. Closing the doors to new clients (or new projects from old clients) isn’t fun, and has put us in a spot we’d rather not be in more than a few times. We feel the change is ultimately worth it though. Without the sanity that comes from balancing time correctly, we wouldn’t be able to do anybody much good.

So right now, our heads are down and we’ve got a laser focus on our present and our future. Stay tuned as we run more updates about the company and our progress on our projects.