Written on May 5, 2008 – 10:50 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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The New York Times business section opens today with an interesting story about mobile TV. For those of you who think this is a service born for the niche - except for Asia, you seem to be mistaking. Alright, in the US it is: Verizon Wireless has been offering this service since March 2007, but it has fewer than 100,000 paying viewers. However, some European countries have adopted the service entusiastically — in Switzerland, 40,000 people watch news broadcasts on a daily basis, and a million Italians pay 19 euros a month to watch a dozen mobile TV channels.
Several American and European investors have started to expand the infrastructure on which mobile TV relies, which the New York Times describes as “special transmission towers that beam to tiny receivers in the mobile phones.” In the UK, France and Germany, mobile video services like these are on their way. AT&T is shaking things up in the US by launching a mobile TV service as well.
These rapid developments exceed the expectations of experts. A year ago, research firm Screen Digest predicted that the adoption of mobile TV services in the UK might have to wait until 2012, due to a shortage of spectrum. The new infrastructure might speeds things up.
The big question remains though: who will watch mobile TV? People stuck in traffic jams or public transport? And still, when caught in a situation like this, wouldn’t you prefer an episode of Seinfeld or anything but a news broadcast? I suspect that people have already found their sources for news: the TV bulletin in the morning, mobile news sites, screens in public transport and for that matter, the newspapers. Who would want to pay another 20 euros for 100 seconds of news broadcasts?
Written on May 1, 2008 – 1:54 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.
This time I’m interviewing Pascal Wheeler, founder of British start-up Raffle.it. This is a peer to peer marketplace based on the raffle as the trading mechanism. Although Wheeler and his team are still “stuck on the fund raising roller-coaster”, they’ve soft-launched the service. For now, selling is limited to invite only users as Wheeler wants to avoid unnecessary disappointment. Yet in the near future, Raffle.it could be an interesting new player in the field of online trading. In this edition of Five Questions for Start-ups, Wheeler explains why.
How did you come up with the idea of Raffle.it?
“Raffle.it came from a gut feeling that there was a better way to buy and sell. No science, little research (at that time) and not a great deal of brain time, just one of those ‘there’s a better way’ feelings. Raffles are such a powerful mechanism for channeling common interest but are so often overlooked and underestimated - raffles are for school and village fetes, and for charities to raise a little extra cash. Not so! People that enter a raffle do so because of their interest in the prize or their interest in the beneficiary. With a couple of tweaks Raffle.it was borne to be used by anyone - for good cause, personal gain, or commercial awareness.” (more…)
Written on April 8, 2008 – 5:56 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In a discussion on TechCrunch about where Europe’s own Silicon Valley would emerge, some interesting suggestions were made (warning: many links to specific comments follow). From Moscow to Lisbon and from Estonia to London.
The latter was the most mentioned location, followed by Finland and Switzerland. Finland has an USP that is their biggest pro and con at the same time: Nokia. On the one hand, it’s THE European tech company, on the other: it sucks up all the talent.
Switzerland would be a fair option, since it’s an innovative country and home of some important venture capitalists like Index Ventures. Yet a new development makes the question even more complicated: Nokia has just announced that it would establish a research center in Lausanne. It will be a joint lab with two Swiss federal institutes of technology. It will open its doors in June.
According to All About Symbian, the research agenda will focus on persuasive communications:
- Exploring new interaction experiences and technologies utilizing all the human senses;
- Services and applications based on the user’s context, such as location, and personal preferences, e.g.,
information provided by sensors within a mobile device or in the surrounding world;
- Internet services and technologies - enriching the Internet experience on mobile devices.
Nokia’s Chief Technology Officer Bob Iannucci said to Reuters that Nokia ’sees the fusing of the digital and physical worlds as a key objective in mobility.’
So, will this cause some sort of local brain drain? Kai Lemmetty from Floobs told me during The Next Conference that this is the case in Finland. Nokia just picks out the talent and makes them an offer they can’t refuse. As you can imagine, this is deadly for local start-up action. And a good start-up atmosphere is one of the most important conditions for a Silicon Valley-like area. So all you European start-up experts, please lend me your thought on this matter.
Written on March 27, 2008 – 5:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Yesterday we reported that French railway company SNCF will offer a wireless Internet connection on its trains. A few minutes ago I noticed a story on MobileCrunch saying that the UK will allow mobile calls from aircrafts.
The Office of Communications announced that the UK will allow passengers on a British aircraft to make calls and send text messages once the plan reaches a minimum height of 3,000 meters. During take-offs and landings, calling is still a no-go.
A spokesperson from the Office of Communications said: “The safety of passengers is paramount and mobile systems on aircraft will only be installed when they have secured approval by the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK”. Moreover, they’re in discussions with other countries whether phone calls can be allowed on all European flights.
So being unreachable for a few hours due to some ambiguous ”don’t-use your phone or we will crash’ fear will soon be history. It seems like traveling in Europe becomes more convenient by the day.
[Tipr: Peter Evers]
Written on March 22, 2008 – 3:02 pm
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
As the second of the series ‘Where are the female web heroes?’ I describe the situation in the UK, where as of 2003, a rise in female-owned net ventures have been seen. The government’s newly formed Women’s Enterprise Task Force seeks to encourage female enterprise across the nation to help close the gap in female entrepreneurship between the US and UK. Because, although the number of women-owned businesses has recently topped one million, the rate of female start-ups in the US is much higher. Also, with girls outperforming boys at school some predict that by 2020 the majority of UK millionaires will be female.
The UK female entrepreneur is in her early 30s, tech savvy, well connected and thrives on risk, according to a survey by Aurora, the UK’s largest business women’s network. This network is owned by Glenda Stone, who herself won the Blackberry Best Women in Technology. One of the women who fits this profile is Martha-Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com. As the time she stepped down at 31 years, the share price had recovered from the dotcom crash valuing Lastminute at £667m. In 2005 she sold the company to travelocity.com, of which Michelle Peluso is the CEO. In those days also Julie Pankhurst of Friends Reunited sold her company, to ITV.
For most Internet female entrepreneurs in the UK, entrepreneurship appears to be a mid-life choice. Between the ages of 35 and 50, women leave successful careers to start their businesses. They are driven by innovation, a strong commitment to entrepreneurial ideals and autonomy in their work lives. Examples thereof are Sian Sutherland, founder of Mama Mio, skincare for super mamas, and Marcelle Speller founder of holidayrentals.co.uk, which has in the meantime been sold to Homeaway.Inc. (more…)
Written on January 24, 2008 – 3:02 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Madeleine Moon is a Labour MP in small town in South Wales in the U.K.. In a year’s time, seven young people around her town committed suicide. Seven really disturbing incidents, so no wonder that Moon is looking for a proper explanation and someone to blame. Well, she has found one: children are spending too much time online.
The victims were all very active on social networking sites, and which teenager isn’t? Moon doesn’t like that. “What people need is not to go into a virtual world of the Internet to deal with emotional problems,” she told Reuters. “They need to stay very much in this real world and talk to real people.”
There we go again! Another person who doesn’t think of the digital world as real. Aren’t these kids talking to real people then? I bet there are a lot of depressed children that actually see the Internet as the ONLY way to meet people. They are the kind of people who used to just sit in their room and do nothing. Now there’s the Internet, where they can talk with people and find support.
Moon should embrace that but al she can do is complain about it. And there’s more about the Internet that she doesn’t really care for: memorial sites where people leave messages and pictures for dead friends. According to the MP, these sites are ‘romanticizing death’.
We asked Richard Derks, co-founder of memorial site Respectance.com, what he thinks of this remarkable opinion. “No doubt we’re in a time of breaking down taboos. Especially when it comes to emotions: people are now opening themselves up online like never before. Some British MPs, apparently, notwithstanding - but even the Queen of England now days does her Christmas speech via YouTube! We’ve passed the no-going-back point. It’s the age of emo-social media. Society is defining new traditions now - and, frankly, I think not a moment too soon.”
It’s time to open your eyes Mrs. Moon, you can better use the Internet, instead of fighting it.
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