Our correspondents interview MTV’s Laura Whitmore, Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey and others.
Archive for April, 2009
The Scene – MTV, Twitter Co-Founder By on Tuesday April 14th, 2009 1 comment
Techfluff.TV Headlines – QuickTV, Billy Bragg, Babbel By on Tuesday April 14th, 2009 No comments
News about Red Herring winners QuickTV; Billy Bragg has a dig at Google, and Babbel releases its first premium product.
Photofunia- fun, fun, funia! By on Monday April 13th, 2009 9 comments
Thanks to Olly Barrett aka @dailynetworker i found my self uploading pictures to http://www.photofunia.com …a site that takes your photos and puts them on the covers of magazines, billboards, art galleries etc..
I’ve played with sites like this before, but nothing that has as good a facial recognition feature as this one. Plus there is loads of ‘places’ to choose from including Vogue magazine and David Beckham’s body!
For best results upload a close face picture
This ones a little pixellated
He paid me a billion dollars:)
Gisele
Think it all happens in Silicon Valley? You’re totally wrong! My list of Europe’s hottest startups in 2009! By on Sunday April 12th, 2009 38 comments
I love Internet startups. Why? Because they solve problems, often
creating innovative products and services enabling us to live our lives
in an easier and far more enriched way. All this, whilst trying to find
a revenue model that actually makes money- a hard thing to do a) on the
Internet and b) in the current economic climate.
There are loads of great startups coming out of the USA, but loads
more coming out of Europe. The tech world doesn’t revolve around
Silicon Vally you know?!
I’ve been lucky enough to hang out with some of these great
companies over the past few months and just been having a read of some
of the amazing startups pitching on stage at The Next Web conference in
Amsterdam next week …So i thought i would share and compile a little
list of some of the hottest startups in Europe right now…
I have put them in a few catagories- Seedcamp winners, Digital
Mission companies, Web Mission companies and friends’ companies- As you
can see the list is very long and that shows just how many great
start-ups there are coming out of Europe right now- Move over America
we are catching up and coming to get you!
Seedcamp 09 winners. (sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials)
About: “At Seedcamp, we believe Europe has the talent, the role
models, and the capital founders need to succeed. We want to provide a
catalyst for the next generation of great entrepreneurs and help you
take risks, think big, and succeed. Participating in Seedcamp will give
you enormous validation and access to a world-class network of advisors
to help you with every aspect of your business, plus a direct route to
seed and venture capital.”
uberVU: Tracking comments on your social media content
Kyko: Casual gaming inside MSN / Live Messenger
Basekit – Make building complex webapplications easy.
Soup.io – Personal publishing on the web made easy
Toksta – Provide instant messaging systems for social networks
Mobclix – iPhone analytics
StupeFlix – Smart video slideshows from photographs
Pitching at The Next Web 09 (sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials)
About: The Next Web 2009 is the fourth edition of the conference
that began in 2006. 900+ Internet professionals gather for 3 days to
enjoy Amsterdam, the conference and to do business.
yellowBird
Yellow Birds don’t have wings but they fly to make you experience a 3D reality. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Contextured
Contextured is the pain free SEO and SEM solution search marketers have been waiting for.
Prezi
Create stunning presentations that helps you to move beyond the slide
E
E connects people to people and people to services, all in real
life. It’s like having all your online identities in your pocket.
Launching at The Next Web Conference
Aroxo
Name your own price on thousands of items then negotiate! Launching at The Next Web Conference
Silentale
With Silentale, store all your personal conversations in one place
and access them from anywhere. Time travel through your message history.
Klomptek
Remote Device Management solution for mobile business phones. Monitor,
access, synchronise and control employees mobile phones via RCM Web
(administrator) panel.
Launching at The Next Web Conference
ShoutEm
Roll your own Microblogging or Mobile Social Network!
Quick TV
We provide revolutionary online tools & accountable video play-out
to media publishers looking to give their videos the interactive edge.
Launching at The Next Web Conference
Mimic Media
MimicMe enables online shoppers to fit clothes online with a
personalized 3d model and shop real time together with their friends.
Launching at The Next Web Conference
Yourtour
YourTour is a unique online solution for tailor-made holidays.
Plista
Personalize your internet experience. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Yunoo
Yunoo is a personal finance application where users can get insight
into their personal finance, discuss financial topics and save money.
Mendeley
Mendeley: Free academic software to manage & share research
papers and a network to discover research trends and like-minded
researchers
Huddle.net
Huddle is the world’s greatest collaboration app – beautiful, so
usable, open API and fully integrated with Linkedin, Facebook and more
Connect
IRL is the first visual social network on the web to map where your
friends are & what they are saying. See your social network on a
map. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Visibuild
Bring your architectural 3d to life in an online, interactive 3d
project environment. Create a true architectural experience with
Visibuild. Launching at The Next Web Conference
Tarpipe
Tarpipe makes it easy to share content across different social media applications.
CoTweet
CoTweet powers your brand on Twitter. Engage people across your
organization to tweet through your brand’s Twitter account as a team.
Yubby.com
Find, collect and publish from 30+ video sites
Kimengi.com
Advanced Recommendation Technology
Citisins.com
Personalized city guides with customized information.
Companies on Digital Mission 09. (sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials)
About: Specifically this is the “Digital Mission” – a kind of trade
mission, but with more sex appeal – to Austin, Texas for the South by
South West Interactive (SXSWi) conference from 12-18 March this year.
* AMEE
* Best Before
* BookingBug
* Ceros
* cxpartners
* dpivision
* ensembli
* Facultas
* Harvest Digital
* Hubdub
* Infurious
* Mixcloud
* Mobile Pie
* Mydex
* Myrl
* NixonMcInnes
* Plebble
* ProofHQ
* Rummble
* School of Everything
* Six to Start
* skive
* Short Fuze (Moviestorm)
* Snagsta
* Splendid
* Tactile CRM
* The Filter
* The iPlatform
* Traffic Digital
* Vizimo
* We7
* we are social
* Workhound
* Worldeka
* Yiibu
Companies on Web Mission 09. (Sun Startup Essentials Partner)
About: The Web Mission represents an amazing opportunity for the
best of entrepreneurial UK talent to visit Silicon Valley and learn for
themselves the differences that make the US a breeding ground for
innovation and, more importantly, successful execution of ideas.
* www.artesiansolutions.com
* www.businessitonline.com
* www.cereproc.com
* www.coclarity.com
* www.complianceandrisks.com
* www.concrete-media.com
* www.corebridge.com
* www.freshnetworks.com
* www.mtivity.com
* www.proofhq.com
* www.replify.com
* www.sift.com
* www.sosius.com
* www.tactilecrm.com
* www.viapost.com
* www.yuuguu.com
* www.zemanta.com
Two alumni from Web Mission 2008
* www.huddle.net
* www.trampolinesystems.com
Friend’s companies:
Some friend’s companies are already in the above lists!
Alex Tew- PopJam
Paul Walsh- Wubud
Robert Loch- Pureescapes
Michael Smith- MindCandy
David Langer- GroupSpaces
Joshua March- iPlatform
Sophie and Charlie Cox- Worldeka
kieran O’Neill- Playfire
Lucian Tarnowski- Brave New Talent
Michell Dewberry- Chiconomise
Geoff Hughes- Funditfrog
David Hathiramani – Asuitthatfits
Caroline Whitmey- MsBond
Anthony Eskinazi – Parkatmyhouse.com
Louise Campbell- http://www.myehive.com
Michele Obi- MyFashionLife
Michelle Gibs- Pout
Steve Kennedy- Talklets
Sam Mathews- UGame
Nick Halstead tweetmeme.com
Fabio De Bernardi -Ilikeucoz
Renate Nyborg- Madhousecollective
Simon Campbell- Viapost
Techfluff.tv on Pop17 with Sarah Austin By on Sunday April 12th, 2009 1 comment
At SXSW i met the famous Internet life caster Sarah Austin from POP17. She interviewed me, I look like a bit of a hobo as i had just got loads of freebies from one of the events!
Hermione Way
Why my love for Spotify goes deeper than just a great service. By on Saturday April 11th, 2009 15 comments
It’s no wonder artists are backing Spotify when other Internet music services are short-changing them. This week Google walked out of negotiations to pay royalties to songwriters in Britain on YouTube and iTunes and Amazon are in a track price war, with the latter selling tracks for as little as 29p. But Spotify’s revenue model of selling advertising between songs, (like a personalized radio station) has given artists and labels a new revenue stream in an industry where revenue tributaries are drying up.
By having a huge music library of pretty much everything at the click of a button, the service also discourages illegal music downloads which takes more clicks of a button and has the guilt factor, not to mention illegal – so artists and labels are happy with Spotify, but users are smiling too because the service is just damn good; the interface is just like an iTunes library where you can search easily for tracks and every item (artists, tracks, albums and playlists) in Spotify has a URL associated with it which makes it easy to share with others by being able to import others’ play lists into your library in a couple of seconds.
Oh… and there’s more… Spotify has, this week, opened up their API to third-party developers, meaning we’ll able to access our whole library of our favourite songs on mobiles and other devices very soon. But my love for Spotify goes deeper than just a great service, for me it’s about how we look at ownership of music. I moved around a lot as a kid. I’d moved house 19 times by the age of 18 and attended 11 different schools. Moving meant getting pretty good at being able to get rid of stuff easily without feeling the need to horde items in case of needed them again in the future, which subsequently means I don’t have a strong sense of ownership over possessions. Music has been a passion of mine from a young age, but unlike some of my friends, I never owned a collection of CDs or tapes. What was the point? I would have to lug them to each new house, loosing a few of my favorites on the way.
Then along came iTunes, but my taste in music is huge and eclectic (everything from Van Morrison to Britney and The Rolling Stones to Michael Jackson). To buy all my favourite songs would cost a fortune – I could have bought a few tracks each week, but that would have taken years. So i ended up downloading friend’s entire iTunes libraries which meant i had to wipe the entire iPod if I wanted new songs – frustrating!
This week i read an article on TechCrunch about how The Cloud (virtualised resources) will enable us to have every song ever made in the palm of your hand by using services like Spotify, hang on let me just repeat that – Every song EVER made?! And all just for a few adverts or a small subscription, which by the way, I would be more than happy to pay. And that’s when I realized why I love Spotify: it has enabled me have my passion, music, with me wherever I go, no more lugging boxes, no more fear of loss, no more friend’s crap libraries… it’s up there in The Cloud whenever I need it. I know I don’t ‘own’ it in the flesh like a CD or LP, but I don’t want to, it just doesn’t matter… after all, what do we really ever truly own?
Ok..gone a bit deep there, even by my standards…anyway you can see the TechCrunch story here:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/23/how-will-the-cloud-change-the-way-we-think-about-music-ownership/
And check out my Spotify favorites here: spotify:user:hermione:playlist:7r9yzc1fZ5N5PA1MZ5hEN3
And can someone please use the API to build a ‘Spotimix’ app- Spotify is great for ‘Spotifying’ (DJing + Spotify) at parties but there is no feature which allows you to mix tracks yet.
- Me
Interesting revenue model for UK bands. By on Saturday April 11th, 2009 No comments
On Wednesday I was at Sky news…right before the other guests and I were about to go on, they told us they were going to run with the foiled terrorism plot story (fair enough!).
The other guests included a band, Honey Ryders, who were talking about how YouTube (Google) pulled UK artist’s content off the site because the are unwilling to pay artist’s fees.
It was a shame for us to go all the way to Sky for nothing, so i whipped out my Flip and did a little interview…
…Turns out they’ve got an interesting revenue model by selling shares in their band.
(and they’re Spotify fans-Wooohooo)
Flip HD Mino compared with the Flip Ultra By on Monday April 6th, 2009 3 comments
The Flip Ultra
HD Mino Flip Review from hermioneway on Vimeo.
The Flip HD Mino
Flip Mino HD review from hermioneway on Vimeo.
Graham Norton launches talent website. By on Monday April 6th, 2009 No comments
I do an interview with some of the managers at Noostar…
Noostar.com is a revolutionary web site that uses video to reveal users’ talents to the world. Launched in November 2008 by Graham Norton and founded by Alex Morrison and Graham Stuart in 2007, their idea has quickly shot up to become the number one online entertainment site. Their innovative site allows performers to showcase their talent for the world to see in order to jump-start their careers.
The technique is simple. Users can upload as many videos as they wish that show off what talented individuals they are, while the rest of the world gets to watch and vote. The acts include singers, dancers, comedy, musicians, actors, sports, circus, magic and more.
Calling all women in tech…you get discount…forever! By on Monday April 6th, 2009 1 comment
Women on The Next Web Conference 2009
One of the things we did was lend a hand during the launch of The Next Women by Simone Brummelhuis who also blogs at The Next Web blog regularly about women in technology. Simone also hosted a Women on The Next Web meeting at last years conference and is planning The Next Women OpenCoffee at this years conference on Friday from 9am till 11am.
And we want to do more. We all know events and conversations are more interesting, and productive, if women participate. So how can we attract more women to our events? For this year we decided to actively start positively discriminating and offer all women a 20% discount. Yes that is correct; being a female gets you 20% off the normal price.
We hope this incentive will attract more female visitors who in turn will attract more female speakers. Here are a few female speakers we would be very interested in hearing from:Arianna Huffington, Catherine Fake, Esther Dyson, Gina Bianchini, Anne Wojciki, Kim Polese, Marissa Mayer, Meg Whitman, Carol Bartz.
Don’t know some of those names? Why not? They are some of the most important people in the technology industry!
Who would you like to see on stage at The Next Web Conference 2010?
This is great news for women in tech and I can’t wait to co host The Next Web.
