Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on March 25, 2008 – 9:50 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
As I’ve promised you last week, I will interview the start-ups who participated in the start-up rally of PLUGG 2008. This time I’m interviewing Joonas Pekkanen from Floobs. That’s a Finnish start-up which enables anyone to setup their own live internet and mobile TV Channel. The advantage of this streaming video service, compared to competitors like Qik, is that it’s Java-based. So theoretically, the Java client is easily exported to a large number of mobile devices. Our WebTipr from Finland, Timo Paloheimo, has written a good overview of this promising start-up. Here’s their own story.
How did you come up with the idea of Floobs?
“We had been discussing different ideas with my co-founder Kai Lemmetty since the end of summer 2006. By winter we found ourselves discussing more and more often on the subject of live video and its possibilities. One evening we just suddenly realized that everyone will be carrying a video production tools in their pockets in the form of smart phones very soon. In the end of January we set-up the company and started working on the first draft of the business plan, recruiting key people and looking for seed funding. Our idea is to allow anyone to set-up their own live mobile Internet TV channels – streaming live content from mobile phones, web cams, DV cameras and mixing that with pre-recorded content.” (more…)
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Written on March 24, 2008 – 2:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our Next Web Tipr in Israel, Yaniv Solnik, is a great guy. He sends us many tips and is generally very nice. Today however, he seems a bit angry. He’s talking about an Israeli company that is ‘bound to crash big time and make many investors loose their money’. What’s going on here?
Yaniv discusses Modu, a very ambitious venture that has developed a mobile phone that consists of one smart CPU and many totally different and good-looking covers - or jackets. So these three different-looking phones have the same CPU with all their personal and mobile info stored on it:
It’s an idea of the well known and successful entrepreneur Dov Moran. Before Modu, he was the founder, Chairman and CEO of msystems. A company that invented USB Flash Drive and FlashDisk amongst other things. From scratch, Moran build a 1 billion dollar company in 18 years. It was acquired by Sandisk for 1.6 billion dollars. So to say the least, Moran has an impressive track record.
That probably helped when he was looking for some funding. So far he has received investment funding from SanDisk, Genesis Capital, and Gemini Capital Fund Management totaling 20 million dollars. Moran hopes to secure another $100 million this year and he probably will. He’ll start selling his product in October with three service providers in Russia, Italy and Israel.
So the investors really fancy his phone-morphing idea. It doesn’t really surprise me, since it’s a trendy product that looks astonishing. And of course, the business model is also pretty simple: Moran expects consumers to keep buying new jackets. Yet isn’t the product launch five years too late? The mobile world is raving about new smart phones, the iPhone and the all-in-one Nokia N95. Why would people walk around with these little and cheap devices?
Dov Moran
Moreover, according to my loyal WebTipr, this is not the first time that an Israeli company is trying to pull this kind of mobile centric device. “A quick look at IXI Mobile, another Israeli venture that burned millions trying to do the exact same thing with a bluetooth centric device, gave up long time ago and is now focusing on a ’smartphone for kids’ named Ogo.”
While we are being very negative here, Mr. Moran himself thinks he’s working on a revolution. “It’s not like the top five companies where everybody makes devices similar to the others, we’re going to change the cellular market,” he said to Reuters. Guess I would say the same thing when I was in it for 5 million dollars.
[WebTipr: Yaniv Solnik, Israel]
Written on March 22, 2008 – 2:05 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
As I’ve promised you last week, I will interview the start-ups who participated in the start-up rally of PLUGG 2008/ This time we’re interviewing Alberto Naranjo Galet from Tagmore. This is a company that focuses on connection online content with off line content by using a mobile device. As our WebTipr from Japan reported, this is normal in Japan and other Asian countries. Yet in the US and Europe there’s a whole lot to do before it gets common. Tagmore is one of the pioneers that are ahead of a new trend. If you want to know more about the technology, I suggest you read this thorough post by Mike Butcher.
How did you come up with the idea of Tagmore?
“I think it was a thinking process that lasted 10 years. I have always dreamed with the idea of linking the physical world with the “virtual one”, under the influence of William Gibson’s novels and the virtual/expanded reality concepts. Thanks to the Tagmore architecture a physical object is the object itself, plus dynamic rich data, plus communities and networks of real people around the physical object. So we basically hyperlink this physical object in a secure way, and offer services around it. We can issue secure mobile tickets and coupons, enable smart shopping or launch mobile marketing campaigns with 2D barcodes and RFID based technology. That’s bringing the future to present in a way that’s usable for businesses, don’t you think so?” (more…)
Written on March 21, 2008 – 12:13 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
As I’ve promised you two days ago, I will interview the start-ups who participated in the start-up rally of PLUGG 2008/ This time we’re interviewing David Whitewood, co-founder and VP Business Development of Trutap Limited. His colleague Carl Uminski presented Trutap for the audience in Brussels.
Trutap is an easy-to-use free mobile service that combines all the elements of a young person’s social life into one application. It sort of turns a phone into a platform for social media . You can send SMS and email from your mobile phone for free. You can also chat with your friends on IM and post to blogs, photo-sharing accounts and social networks.
How did you come up with the idea of Trutap?
“It was back in 2004. There was a great scandal across the UK news when David Beckham was accused of having an affair with Rebbecca Loos. Apparently they had been having text sex with each other. At the same time the Mobile Data Association were reporting record texting figures for the New Year and Valentines day and there were reports of text bullying causing problems at school. Texting was going thru exponential growth, yet it lacked the basic privacy and control options that are found in email and IM. I saw a mismatch and knew that my phone had GPRS data & Java capabilities and spotted a huge opportunity. And the more I looked at it, the bigger it became.” (more…)
Written on March 18, 2008 – 11:28 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
This weekend, fun avatar service Gizmoz dominated the tech blogosphere for a while because they raised 6.5 million dollars Series B financing from a round led by a subsidiary of the largest cell phone operator in Japan, DoCoMo Capital. Moreover, they announced new compatibility with AIM. TechCrunch, Mashable and VentureBeat were all eager to cover the news from this Israel-based company.
I thought this story could use a little background, so I’ve interviewed Gizmoz’s Founder and CEO Eyal Gever. First question that comes to mind: is Gizmoz going to focus on Japan and other Asian countries now?
Gever: “We think the US and European market are also very interesting to approach. Asia is an extremely advance market compared to the US and Europe in terms of Mobile entertainment and we therefore believe that Asia has a huge addressable market for our services. So focusing on the Asian market makes a lot of sense as they have clear and established business models of advertising and digital goods. Also, self-expression and consumption of digital goods have been extremely popular in Asia both on the web and mobile.”
“Japan represents a large and strategic market for Gizmoz”
“Specifically, Japan represents a large and strategic market for Gizmoz. The country is a world-leader in mobile adoption and Japanese consumers are eager to embrace innovative content and offerings. DoCoMo is a subsidiary of Japan’s largest cellular phone service operator, and NGI capital is a leading VC firm in Japan. As strategic partners, they can help us navigate and launch our services in the Asian social entertainment market in ways that would be much more difficult to do by ourselves. Details of our expansion plans remain confidential at this time, but in short we see an opportunity partnering both with media companies, mobile content aggregators as well as mobile operators.”
Gever also announced that they’ll soon introduce a full set of mobile services. (more…)
Written on March 14, 2008 – 9:18 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
I was tipped off via Peter at Bubblefoundry and an article over at CScout Japan about a magazine that is out currently here in Japan that is filled with pretty much only free things that you can download from QRcodes with your mobile phone.
The Magazine is called Tada Gets (site is made for mobile and is all in Japanese), which basically means “get it free”. The pages are filled with a little text and/or image explaining what you can get and then the QR code that will get you to a mobile website where you can download the free content.
I mentioned earlier that the use of 2D codes in Japan was already a reality and this is just one example of how they are tightly integrated into the lives of Japanese people on a daily basis.
Here’s the QR Code for The Next Web Blog URL. You can get your free QR code for
your URL from the great guys at
mofuse.com
If you liked reading this post, you might want to subscribe to our RSS feed to read more news about mobile. Like this cool Starbucks/ iPhone mock-up.
Written on March 13, 2008 – 12:34 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In the beginning of December I celebrated ‘a revolution in mobile video‘. I was talking about Qik.com. The popular service that allows you to stream live from your phone. And oh, they’re also having a love affair with Robert Scoble. If you’ve visited a tech or web conference lately, chances are high that Scoble dragged you in front of his N95 to ask some questions. It also happened to us.
Yet there’s one problem with Qik. They seem to be a bit lazy since they still only support Nokia phones. Sure, the FAQ says ‘We are continuously adding support for phones’, yet all those people out there without a Nokia can still only dream about using Qik.
But now there’s the Swedish start-up Bambuser! I won’t call it another revolution, but it sure looks like a good Qik-alternative. Just like Qik, it differs from other services like Seesmic and Kyte with the good usability. It’s a little like the Twitter philosophy: leave out the unnecessary extras. So that’s great news for Sony Ericsson and Samsung adapts, you can all start your own video shows now too.
Written on February 28, 2008 – 4:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
This week we’re interviewing Dan Field from Twit+. A new service that works on top of Twitter that makes it possible to Twitter with pictures or video and moreover, allows you to privately send files to your Twitter friends. They got some pretty good coverage last week. TechCrunch UK called it ‘worth checking out‘ and KillerStartups reviewed the site, saying the service is ‘useful for those who use Twitter frequently‘. Now we bring you the story behind this new application.
How did you come up with the idea of Twit+?
“Well, it took me a while to get into Twitter. I had looked at it a months ago but didn’t really ‘get it’. Started using again a couple of months ago and then started playing around with the API.
Twit+ really came about by accident. We have been working on a lot of mobile stuff for ClearMyMail and I noticed a few others offering photo sharing through twitter and thought it would be great to do more than just photos. So the aim of Twit+ is to allow easy sharing of all types of files, photos and videos.
On top of the standard “Post to my Twitter” type features we added a private file share system, which when we implemented it turned out really easy to use. No need to register more accounts – just use your standard Twitter account to securely send files, pics and video to your friends.” (more…)
Written on February 22, 2008 – 6:02 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Virtual worlds are big business. They’re here for 13 years now and will only get more realistic, sensational and more intense. A timeline of virtual worlds, ripped from a Dutch presentation, shows the developments of the last decade:
Now there’s a new chapter: a virtual world on your mobile phone. In December 2007, the Finnish company Sulake launched a miniature virtual world that works on Nokia Series 60 phones. The new world is called MiniFriday. The makers are trying to find out if real-time virtual worlds make sense on mobile devices and consider MiniFriday to be a ‘research project’.
Well, this research project has enjoyed quite a nice viral boost after the launch with already 300.000 registered users. Next Web WebTipr Timo Paloheimo told me that besides the Nordic countries many of the users come from Russia and Indonesia.
The success of MiniFriday doesn’t surprise me though, since Sulake is also the company behind Habbo. The ‘hangout for teens’ that allegedly generates a huge amount of cash by selling virtual objects. It operates in 31 markets globally and has sustained up to 100,000 users concurrently, said Habbo lead designer Sulka Haro at the 2008 Worlds in Motion Summit.
Critics of virtual worlds often say that people who ‘live’ in virtual worlds are actually just running away from daily reality. If this were true, those virtual citizens can now escape to their second life wherever and whenever they want. The question is whether the less-complex world of MiniFriday is captive enough. Is ordering beers and having short chats enough to get people hooked up? Judge for yourself:
[WebTipr: Timo Paloheimo, Finland]
Written on February 22, 2008 – 1:18 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Mobile internet is hot - we all know that - and one of the rising stars in the mobile world is Taptu, a social mobile search engine. They won the Global Community Award at the MoMo Peer Awards on February 13 at the Mobile World Congress and Robert Scoble proved on PodTech that it comes up with better results than Google does. Officiously, it seems like Taptu has the potential to become a big player in mobile search. So it’s about time that we hear the story behind this UK-based start-up. After a nice and interesting email conversation with the Taptu team, CEO Steve Ives told us where he got the guts from to challenge Google and what the social aspect of Taptu is.
First of all, the Google Question. Every time a new search engine sprouts, this is the first question critics try to answer. Ives: “A Nokia guy I met at a party confided to me that he thought Google still hadn’t yet cracked mobile search properly, and some fresh thinking was needed in this market. We started to look at it, and the more we looked, the more ideas we came up with. It became a bit of an obsession after a while. We pestered the VCs constantly after that, eventually they gave in and invested in us.”
When moving a service to mobile, something gets lost in the translation.
Google’s position seems untouchable when it comes to desktop search, but challenging the giant on the mobile phone might work. Ives explains why: “Services like Google were born on the desktop and then moved later to mobile. When moving the service to mobile, something gets lost in the translation. A desktop user will use search 5 times a day or more, but a mobile user that discovers Google Mobile or Yahoo OneSearch typically only searches once every 5 to 7 days. We believe that to get people to use mobile search 5 times a day or more - in other words, to make mobile search a mass market service rather than a niche service - then you have to give it a social context. Mobiles are supersocial devices, so if your service isn’t relevant to you in a social way it won’t get used that often.”
Next to a Google-challenger, Taptu is also a social search engine. Jimmy Wales plugged this term in January when he launched Wikia Search. During an interview I had with him, he said: “One of the weaknesses of current search engines is that their algorithms take a long time picking up new good sites. (..) It takes only one community member that finds a good new site and lets the community know.” What does Ives thinks of Wikia Search? “We’ve been watching Search Wikia quite closely. They have some similar ideas to us about how to improve the quality of search results through social interactions. But we are totally focused on mobile, which is a completely different medium to the desktop, so the dynamics of sharing are rather different also.” (more…)
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
