Archive for October, 2010

Robin Goldberg of Blurb.com buzzes about the publishing world at The Hive Melbourne

A one woman show with a passion to spread the word about a publishing company is what drew the crowd in at the latest Hive Event.

With a role combining a love of travel and creativity, Robin Goldberg is part of the executive team of Blurb which is a publishing platform enabling anyone to design, market, share and sell bookstore quality books.

Robin says she enjoys working with creative entrepreneurs every day around the world.

“I love to travel my job is international growth what that means is every time I do my bit- I start from scratch I start a new business every single time,” she says.

Robin says it was not easy to start expanding Blurb to Australia.

“The first thing we had to do was figure out who do we know in the market, I got on a plane and started meeting people,’’she says.

“I had about four names when I got off at Sydney and by the time I left after being in Sydney and Melbourne for two weeks I had about 200 people,

“I tell people to get out of offices and go meet people because you have no idea what is even out there.”

One of the important lessons Robin learnt was it is ok to say no.

“It is hard as you don’t want to miss an opportunity, you are always afraid that it could be the one- but you know what focus on the things that really matter- focus on the big things – no regrets just let it go,’’ she says.

Robin says for those wanting to start a new business it is important to know your strengths.

“Figure out what is easy for you to do with people, it is nice to go out with a little bit of currency, for me books are a currency to share,” she says.

“For your business discover what is your currency, your currency may not be books it may be you can do introductions, whatever it is have it on hand.”

Robin looks out at the audience and smiles when reflecting on her job.

“I love what I do, when I’m travelling and they ask is it work or play I think of it as play, if you think about what you do as fun, it is one more way to go nuts every day,”she says.

You can watch some of her presentation below:

Get some no bulls**t business tips from serial entrepreneur and Dragon, Doug Richard at our party!

Fantastic news for those of you who have already bought a ticket to the Newspepper relaunch party, Dragons’ Den Doug Richard, will be speaking about his biggest successes and fails at our sister company Newspepper.com’s relaunch party.

His latest venture, School for Startups , has been active in supporting entrepreneurship in the UK and puts on brilliant events where the man himself speaks openly and candidly about his experiences in business. His seminars are always entertaining, allowing for much audience participation who respond well to his straightforward, no bulls**t style.

If you haven’t already got a ticket get one now HERE, as there are only a few left and it’s going to be a fantastic night with performances from Curious Generation and some drinks sponsored by TNW.

In the mean time please follow our new NewspepperHQ Twitter account for latest updates on jobs with Newspepper and video and Internet news!

Doug No Bulls**t Richard in action on Dragon’s Den:

Interested in being a video sponsor for a not for profit tech conference?

We’ve got a fantastic opportunity for a company to gain exposure through sponsoring a great not for profit event! Our sister company, Newspepper.com, is looking for a sponsor for the upcoming Not For Profit Summit 2010 Technology For Good event to be held on Monday, the 15th November 2010 at The Albany Conference Centre. Hosted by the guys at wearetechMAP, the conference will cover a range of fresh and relevant content and topics include:

- Social Media, a cultural shift ‘inside’ your organisation

- ‘Word of Mouth for Good’, Harnessing the power of peer-to-peer conversation
for charities, causes and campaigns

- How organisations can punch above their weight

- How to make the most of little or no budget with social media

- Turn supporters into advocates with social media

- Bringing together your community online to amplify your message

As a video sponsor, here’s what you’ll get:

- Your company branding at the beginning, middle and end of the video, including branding on the mic

- On camera announcement eg. ‘Thanks to Viadeo we are here at the London Social Media Media Summit

- Promotion of the final cut of the video to the event’s networks and embedded on event’s website

- Promotional of the video to Techfluff.tv networks and social media channels on YouTube/Twitter/Facebook/Vimeo

- You will also receive a high copy version of the video you can put on your website/YouTube channel

Being a video sponsor for this event will give you the valuable opportunity to get your name out there in connection with a not for profit event, which, in turn, will shine a great light on your company.

If you are interested in sponsoring please email chloenicholls@newspepper.com

Winner of the Shell LiveWIRE Awards 2010 has been announced!

The winner of the Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneurs of the Year Award 2010 has just been announced and we were there to capture all the action! Eight finalists were chosen out of a pool of hundreds of contestants. Judges included Dragon’s Den Duncan Bannatyne and our very own Hermione Way!

During the day, over 100 young entrepreneurs came together to learn how to start up a new business and during the evening,was the inaugural awards ceremony. It was great to see Shell LiveWIRE giving a new businesses the chance of exposure, plus some cash they need to make their business idea a reality.

Jessica Grosvenor, founder of Freelance Training and Consultancy was named the winner of this year’s award! Her business provides work based learning to private and public sectors and individuals in a variety of sectors including apprenticeship programs, pre employment programs and upscaling the workforce. Congratulations!

You can watch our video report of the awards below:

Think it all happens in Silicon Valley? You’re wrong! – Kaggle and QMCODES

Australia; it’s not just about sandy beaches, beers and bbqs, Melbourne (and Sydney) have thriving digital and tech communities and this month, entrepreneur and technology journalist Hermione Way and her team at Techflufftv will be exploring the startup scene interviewing the hottest startups for The Next Web Australia’s Melbourne Silicon Beach Series. Sponsored by KodakSilicon Beach Australia and The Next Web, Techfluff.tv decided to delve a little deeper into Melbourne’s startup scene and video interviewed ten of these companies. We caught up with Anthony Goldbloom from Kaggle – a new startup that is bringing crowd sourcing to data analytics and predictions. It’s an interesting application of the crowd sourcing model and well worth hearing Anthony talk about it. We also caught up with Antony McGregor Dey from QMCODES. Antony talks to us about some of the challenges of being a young startup in Melbourne and their technology platform that links consumers with content using 2D barcodes and QRcodes; Link.Me.

Real World Awards 2010 winner announced!

Last month, we were invited to cover the sixth annual Real World Awards 2010 at Real World Push’s new development centre, The Spring, where Jack Smith, CEO of Media Roots was crowned the Enterprising Student of the Year Award.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car has been a long term supporter of the Real World Awards, and it was great to see a massive global company supporting these initiatives and encouraging young entrepreneurs to follow their dreams, and to receive recognition not just from their peers but also the opportunity to celebrate with their family and friends too.

You can watch the full video report below:

Celebrate Vente-privee’s Second Birthday in the UK!

To celebrate its second birthday in the UK, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to travel to Paris to get an exclusive, behind the scenes peek at the running and brains behind the French online private sales club, vente-privee.com!

Vente-privee, (private sale) is an easy-to-use site which produces online sale events lasting 2-4 days and offering a 50-70% discount for the end of line brands. The site is friendly and beautifully finished to provide online shoppers with a sophisticated and satisfactory shopping style to bag all those bargains. Remember, the early bird catches the worm – vente-privee sales events start at 6am during the week and 8am at the weekend!

Vente-privee works with more than a thousand different fashion and other brands to deliver the best bargains to online shoppers. The company has even won awards for its impressive customer care.

The tour round the headquarters provided a huge sense of passion from the staff and excitement about each stage of the massive operation; from the production of the salubrious-looking trailer (created in house), to the customer’s click of the ‘buy’ button and finally the slick and ordered organisation of the warehouse team.

For each online flash sale, vente-privee creates its own chic trailer and specialised musical accompaniment. Their team of six musicians were even asked to create their own CD called ‘VP Sound’ which is an eclectic mix of all musical genres!

Most interestingly, although vente-privee’s main sector is fashion flash sales, the company also sells anything from home wear to electricals and, in France, swimming pools, cars and even apartments have been sold!

Watch my video of the tour round the vente-privee offices and my interview with the UK Country Sales Manager, Bunty Stokes!

The Club Med of eco-tourism? Tibewanted:Sierra Leone

Tribewanted: Sierra Leone is an ecotourism project set up by British entrepreneur Ben Keene, It is an online community that helps makes decisions to build an offline community, working with indigenous people to build a sustainable tourism model. Launched by Keene in Fiji 5-years-ago on Vorovoro island, the project gained world-wide media attention, was made into a BBC documentary and published in a book written by Keene called My Adventure on Paradise or Bust.

I was invited to cover the launch in John Obey Beach on the 1st October, It was an absolutely incredible, life changing experience you can see what I experienced in the video below:

If you like adventure would strongly suggest you book your place in the tribe here now!

Future of Web Apps Conference 2010 Round up!

The Future of Webs Apps Conference was in London on the 4-6 of October and the Techfluff.tv crew was there to capture all the action!

FOWA is a conference for web developers and entrepreneurs, where you can learn about cutting-edge technology and the latest exciting news and ideas for both technical and non-technical apps. Ryan Carson, founder of Carsonified, started the conference back in 2006 in an effort to get people in the UK more excited about web apps and startups. Favorite talks featured Ryan Singer of 37Signals and Jason Calacanis talk on business and the internet.

So what is the future of web apps? Many thought that the the line between browser and mobile apps is becoming blurred, and that HTML5 ‘is king’! With web apps becoming part of everyday life, it was interesting to see where the best entrepreneurs are taking their latest ideas.

Our own Chloe Nicholls was at the conference, getting feedback from presenters and audience members. Check out the video!

What’s the secret to making your web app successful? Sara Allison of ubelly.com talked to some of today’s most successful web app experts to find out:

At the conference, Microsoft launched their latest Microsoft UK Canvas printer. The printer supports both HTML5 and the Canvas Tag. At FOWA, Microsoft set up their printer to print guests’ tweets onto canvas to take away with them. In this video, Microsoft UK’s Andrew Spooner shows us how it all works!

Eurogamer Expo 2010 visits London and throws its fanbase into euphory!

Last week, George Chubinidze visited Eurogamer Expo 2010 to get the latest in the gaming world. You can read his full report below.

Last weekend, I went to the highly-anticipated Eurogamer Expo 2010 at Brompton Hall, in Earls Court.  As I was entering the show I was met by mix of bass beat, terrifying shots from weaponry and the overall buzz of hundreds of gaming-enthusiasts.

Innovation-wise these were the stars that stole the show: PlayStation Move for PS3 and Kinect for Xbox. Move is a black, plastic, motion-sensitive stick that resembles a microphone in shape and size, but has illuminating orb on top. It allows you to play numerous sport games involving boxing, archery and even shooter, like SOCOM: Special Forces. Essentially, Move is much-evolved version of Sixaxis controller that PS3 fans are familiar with, but this time there three units combined together: motion controller or Move itself, Navigation Controller (similar to Move device but with analogue stick and buttons instead of colourful sphere) and PlayStation Eye.

Whatever Move is for PS3, Kinect is Xbox’s answer to it, but this time around with hands-free gaming.  Kinect uses RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and a custom processor running proprietary software. Once it scans you, you are in (to the game).

Having played both of the systems, I have to say that even though they are innovative and huge fun, they are too energy-consuming. After 3 laps of some funny game on Kinect I was more than happy to offer my spot to the next guy waiting in the queue as my hand muscles started aching and I already knew that I would not be able to finish the next round (given that possibility). The same can be said about boxing game on Move: after round or two you become so exhausted that prospect of throwing in the towel on the ring, does not seem that distant chance to surrender. Not-so-great news for the hardcore gamers, who enjoy continuous gaming for hours. You may call me old-fashioned, but all after all, the whole concept of console gaming is to play through the controller and not to hug the air. Don’t you agree?

There was also the “Forbidden City Over 18 Only” section of the floor with security guards closely monitoring your face. Though I did wondered why Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was allowed to play in the main hall of the Expo as slashing the throat is closely and in detail rendered in this game. Anyway, Crysis 2, Dead Space 2, MAFIA II, Killzone 3 (in 3D) and Medal Of Honor among others were all there, with MOH rightfully considered the be the most sought-after game. It was impressive to see 16 trigger-happy players sitting next to each other and mercilessly shooting opponents. And for this title, queue did not show any signs of decreasing for the last 5 hours I was there.

Some titles were presented in 3D, and while it is really exiting experience, if you really want to immerse yourself in this world you have to shell out considerable amount of money. Quality 3D glasses alone cost around £100, nothing saying about 3D TV’s (starting from £1500) that are a must component of 3D gaming.

Overall, Eurogamer Expo 2010 was massive and extremely successful, a real ‘gaming paradise’ for hardcore gamers. If you are still interested in the full list of presented games, you can find it here!
To see some photos and videos, please follow the link here.

So, see you next year and happy gaming!

George