One of the nice things about this job is that I’m meeting lots of interesting startups who are doing mobile apps. My fave so far is Bump.

The idea is simple: I bump your phone with mine, and the result is that I transfer something to you; say, a phone number, or a picture, or, of course, money.

A good place to start getting the picture would be their FAQ. This is the kind of technology I like; a simple effect, instantly understandable, that requires rocket science under the covers to pull off.

Bump and Android · There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that they’re running on Android (very nicely) and shipping an Android API. You can bump an iPhone and an Android together and it Just Works, no problemo.

In fact, there are a couple of things they can do in Android that are harder on other platforms; for example, because of the Android Intent feature, you can register Bump to, for example, share pictures.

Of course, nothing’s perfect. The Bump guys had run across a couple of issues which were causing them extra work at release time, and really shouldn’t have. So I visited them to look at the source code so we can figure out how to set things up so that particular bug doesn’t bite anyone else.

Any other startups reading this, I’d be happy to get pitches. But I probably won’t write you up here unless I’m actually going to use your app myself.