i attended the under the radar conference on wednesday, met a lot of friends and made great new connections. i was impressed again by all the innovative ideas and startups presenting their services and products for the first time. i don't want to go into detail about all of them, you can find some more info at www.undertheradar.com but two of them really stood out for me.



my6sense - bringing sense to your digital life

my6sense ranks content from your different information streams based on what matters to you the most and allows you to interact in one click, it is focused on solving the 'firehose effect' of information deluge on mobile handsets.

"the amount of information that flows into our lives daily is growing rapidly. not only that, each information stream includes many pieces of content. the volume of information leads to lack of attention. the situation is getting worse with mobile. with our first consumer product, my6sense, we are aiming to solve a very big problem in a unique way — by presenting consumers information they need most"

"starting with cutting-edge machine learning technology, my6sense found an ingenious way to elicit the relevant variables needed for effective personalization. what is remarkable is that my6sense avoids added burden to the users and dramatically enhances the quality of their experience. the result is a groundbreaking solution for the mobile user."

you can sign up to become an alpha user at www.my6sense.com / twitter.

soocial - online address book done right

soocial provides a one address book solution to contact management. no matter where you add or change a contact, it will be changed in your other connected devices or web applications. a problem that most of us are facing everyday and soocial is providing a solution for it, hassle-free contacts across different platforms, computers, mobile devices and online address books.

"our philosophy is that there is no good hassle-free solution yet to the contact management problem. we aim to link all currently disconnected address books to each other. a change in one of these address books will result in a change in all your connected devices."

read more about their approach here, soocial is available at www.soocial.com / twitter.

dialplus won most of the jury and audience votings - "dialplus enriches the standard phone call experience by automatically and simultaneously providing dynamic, contextually relevant visual information about the called or calling party before the call is answered, during the call and after the call is over". two friends and jajah partner companies announced their new services, iotum with calliflower going mobile and mobivox.

keep it going kristie, avinoam, barak, daniel, stefan and alec, it was great to see you!

[tags: under the radar, conference, my6sense, soocial, dialplus, iotum, mobivox]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 23:51 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

mashable just kicked off the 2nd annual open web awards, an international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. through an online nominating and voting process, the open web awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. this year, mashable is partnering with over 100 blog partners and i am one of them. the first open web awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between mashable and 50 international blog partners.

now it is time for your nomination, the open web awards are now accepting nominations in 26 categories via the widget below. you may nominate a site/company in as many categories as you see fit. however, there is only one nomination per category per e-mail address, so choose wisely.



nominations will be held from november 5th till sunday, november 16th 2008. the voting round will be held from november 19th till december 15th and winners will be announced on december 16th.

if you want to support your favorite service/company, here is how to grab the widget and preset the category and company name.

please find all the info at 2nd annual open web awards

[tags: mashable, open web awards, nomination, voting, innovation, web technology]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 19:57 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

the upcoming election won't be decided by tv ads, news cycles, or the polls - it will be decided by you! voting is absolutely crucial, important and every single vote counts! 537 people decided the 2000 election so yes, every vote counts! here is a great customizable viral video that you can send to your friends to make sure they'll go and vote.



and if you still have the feeling you don't know enough about barack obama, here is a great 3 dimensional timeline about his life provided by kronomy, with news clips, pictures and a lot of background information. you can share this timeline via www.fight4obama.com

"we're coming around the turn. america recognizes that at this time in history, with so much at stake, with the economy nose-diving, with two wars and the threat of terrorism, the threat of climate change, we need to do something fundamentally different. and all of you are the shock troops." - barack obama

only seven days out - so please vote on november 4th!

(via guy kawasaki)

more material: 5 friends, matt damon about palin and the official www.barackobama.com

[tags: election, vote, voting, usa, barack obama, obama, kronomy, timeline, cnnbc]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 23:59 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

good friend and jajah iphone interface designer thomas marban just launched the first twitter client for the t-mobile g1 google android mobile phone called twidroid.



it's the first twitter app for android mobiles. some of the highlights of twidroid's feature set are: fully featured twitter client (postings, replies and direct messages), user detail information, follow/unfollow a user, auto-completion of your contact names, secured operation via ssl, directly integrated photo-posting from cam or disk via phodroid.com, directly integrated search through all public tweets, background notifications for replies and direct messages, auto layout for landscape and portrait mode.

i just installed it on my t-mobile g1 and it works like a charm. i always admired thomas' taste for great ui design, creative skills and eye for details and this is a great piece of work. so if you twitter and have a g1, go to 'android market - applications - communication - twidroid' and get the app, you'll love it.

(via thomas marban at tombot)

[tags: twidroid, twitter, thomas marban, google, android, t-mobile, g1, app, client]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 16:12 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

product placement is not a new way in advertising products and services, it has been around for centuries and is known from many movies. we got used to it, just spend enough dollars and james bond will drive a bmw or will smith an audi - cell phones, laptops, furniture, tobacco, deodorant, food, all sorts of consumer electronics, you name it.

now the industry seems to have taken this approach a step further and professionalized 'brand dropping' in songs of popular music artists, simply selling elements of their songs to the highest bidder.

"that's the news from wired who shows how artists are approached by agencies to include brand placements in their songs. and if you check out the opening flash sequence for the kluger agency there's a couple of product placement jingles that will sound mighty familiar."

"things have gotten so weird in the music business that high-profile acts are inserting ads into their song lyrics. the next time you hear a brand mentioned in a song, it could be due to a paid product placement. and unlike magazines, songs are not required to point out which words are part of an advertisement."

i appreciate that artists need to embrace a variety of revenue opportunities to make it today, but selling song lyrics seems to go over the line.

a further spin to the story is how a sales rep of adam kluger of the kluger agency tried to pitch jeff crouse of the anti-advertising agency and double happiness jeans, probably the last people on earth who kluger would want to receive the pitch e-mail, now threatening him with lawyers because he published the story on his blog - the whole story at wired.

(via mandy de waal, jeff crouse and wired)

[tags: product placement, brand dropping, the kluger agency, adam kluger, jeff crouse]

Posted by netzkobold in advertising at 00:47 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

two days ago i blogged about the eloquently captured two word cover of the economist describing how we are all feeling about the current state of the financial markets. today i read thomas' comment over at basic thinking pointing to the german answer - der spiegel's (the mirror) most recent cover - the price of arrogance (der preis der ueberheblichkeit) and i think that this is how many people outside of the united states feel about what the us has gotten themselves into - affecting many others.



('ueberheblichkeit' could also be translated as 'presumptuousness')

(via der spiegel)

[tags: der spiegel, the economist, oh fuck, cover, ueberheblichkeit, financial markets]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 18:33 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

thanks to anya i recently discovered budurl, a great service to measure the power or reach of social networks, email campaigns, blog posts or simply giving you a short url and providing some great detailed metrics about when and from where people clicked on your url (referrer), budurl makes link tracking amazingly simple.

"what kind of power would you have if you could not only shrink a long url, but also add notes and tags along with detailed analytics like you have on your website? detailed statistics is marketing nirvana, but your website statistics only cover your website. what about social networks, emails, print marketing materials, presentations, etc. the list goes on and on! budurl gives you the power to quantify this traffic and make decisions that were once a shot in the dark."

especially in combination with a service like ping.fm you can measure which of your social networks have any reach and which ones don't. shorten the link, put it somewhere, watch it grow and measure the results. check it out at budurl.com

[tags: budurl, budurl.com, ping.fm, shorten links, tinyurl, shrink url, url, twiturl]

Posted by netzkobold in marketing at 19:01 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

hats off to the uber-intelligent folks at 'the economist' who have, in just two words, so eloquently captured how we are all feeling about the current state of the financial markets.



(via the economist)

[tags: economist, the economist, oh fuck, cover, financial crisis, financial markets]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 01:09 | Permalink | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (4) | Bookmark

i just downloaded the most recent album of my favorite dj duo - thievery corporation - called radio retaliation via amazon music. i have been to their 'richest man in babylon' tour concert in berlin, germany and was blown away - it's electronic music, downbeat with elements of dub, reggae, rap, triphop, brazilian, house, indian sounds, lounge-jazz, bossa, global beats and a bit of percussion boldly yet smoothly combined. but simply check it out yourself, this is my 8th thievery album and i'm sure you'll enjoy it too.





get the new 'radio retaliation' album via amazon music or via itunes.

more about thievery corporation and on wikipedia.

(via jeremiah owyang)

[tags: thievery corporation, radio retaliation, downbeat, thievery, electronic music]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 01:20 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

this morning google and t-mobile launched the first android-powered handset manufactured by htc. this largely anticipated device comes with a big touchscreen and a slide-open full keyboard. it's a 3g phone, wifi enabled, built-in gps, drm-free amazon mp3 music store, android market app store, 1gb storage, copy and paste and a chrome-lite browser. it will be available october 22, 2008 at $179.

i had the chance to play around with it for a while and i have to say it is better than i expected. the touchscreen functionality competes with the apple iphone, design and look and feel are pretty good (despite what i expected from google), the htc device itself is bulkier, thicker and heavier than the iphone but still competes in a market where blackberry's and sidekicks are popular devices. there are already tons of fun and helpful applications available and based on it's open google android platform i'm sure there is way more to come. congrats to t-mobile and google, great move.



for more information check out walt mossberg's first impressions or simply techmeme.

[tags: google, android, t-mobile, htc, g1, apple, iphone, sidekick, platform, amazon mp3]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 20:23 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

for the weekend, cern's 27 km large hadron collider explained in a rap.



experiments at cern help us understand the world we live in by the telegraph

(via tom foremski / silicon valley watcher)

[tags: cern, rap, physics, alpinekat, hadron collider, geneva, proton, accelerator]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 02:25 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

a little while back i received an invite for ping.fm from ryan merket, who i worked with before. in short ping.fm is a status update tool that sends your updates to a bunch of your favorite microblogging services like bebo, blogger, facebook, hi5, jaiku, linkedin, livejournal, myspace, pownce, tumblr and twitter and there are more to follow. you publish your update at ping.fm and within seconds all services are updated with your message.

"ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap."

"ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. now you don't have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once, and be done with it. the idea came about when making some posts to twitter and tumblr. the idea of posting the exact same information in two places seemed a bit tedious, so ping.fm was born.

you can update your status through the ping.fm website or a number of other tools like instant messengers or mobile email/sms, i usually use the iphone interface at ping.fm/iphone/.

this is an extremely handy tool and i love it. if you wanna check it out, just use the invite code "dreamofping" while signing up.

update : ping.fm just redesigned their ui (courtesy of jyoseph and it looks great) and added more services like plaxo pulse, plurk, brightkite, mashable and xanga.

[tags: ping.fm, ping, ryan merket, status, updates, lifestream, facebook, twitter]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 20:54 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (1) | Bookmark

a couple of weeks ago rainer invited me to the firefox 3 download day - guinness world record which is taking place today until tomorrow 17:00 utc, june 18, 2008.

"join us in our mission to set a guinness world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours! set a guinness world record, enjoy a better web. sounds like a good deal, right? all you have to do to help us set the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours is get firefox 3 now – it’s that easy. we're not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome. please download firefox 3 by 17:00 utc on june 18, 2008. that's 10:00 a.m. in mountain view, 1:00 p.m. in toronto, 2:00 p.m. in rio de janeiro, 7:00 p.m. in paris, madrid, berlin, rome and warsaw, 9:00 p.m. in moscow, and June 19, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. in beijing and 2:00 a.m. in tokyo."

i wrote about the incredible customer evangelism around firefox earlier and the spread firefox initiative when it was launched in 2004. firefox 3 download day - guinness world record is part of spreadfirefox.com, an amazing community driven word-of-mouth marketing force spreading the word about the world's best web-browser.

"welcome to spread firefox. you are our marketing department, a diverse community of people tired of swatting popups, chasing spyware, combatting identity theft and installing security updates you could set your watch to. You have a vision of the 21st century web and are ready to push it to the world, wresting control from a monopoly that has let it stagnate [...] as a small, non-profit organization, the mozilla foundation has very limited resources at its disposal to market firefox to the world. spreadfirefox was created to fill this void, and was founded on the same principles of community involvement that drive the development and testing of firefox. we believe there is nothing that a large community of enthusiastic volunteers can't accomplish, and this site exists to unite the community into one cohesive marketing force that even competitors with unlimited resources can't compete with."

i'm one of these enthusiastic firefox fans and happy to spread the word about the world's best web-browser, the tool i use the most everyday. so far and within just a couple of hours firefox 3 has already surpassed 2,3 million downloads ...



join the firefox 3 download day - guinness world record and enjoy the best firefox yet.

[tags: firefox, firefox 3, mozilla, mozilla foundation, spreadfirefox, guinness world record]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 02:34 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

this morning steve jobs held his keynote address at the worldwide developers conference in san francisco's moscone west unveiling the new apple iphone 3g to be available on july 11th 2008 at $199 (with a two-year at&t contract of course).

"apple iphone 3g - twice as fast. half the price."

some of the new features are: 3g broadband wireless connectivity, built-in gps and a couple of great location-based services like loopt, contact search, full iwork document support, microsoft powerpoint support, bulk delete and move, saving email image attachments, scientific calculator, parental controls (mainly for youtube/itunes), many more languages supported (on the fly switching), plastic back and thinner edges, the new apple appstore and many more. the new iphone 3g is now also more enterprise-ready by supporting microsoft exchange activesync - push email, calendar and contacts - "the power of a laptop into the size of a smartphone" - more ... but i'm actually most excited about mobileme, which is "exchange for the rest of us".



i'm already a sync fanatic, all my phones (including my iphone), my two laptops (mac and pc) and my desktop at home are synced with each other and with multiple online address books through plaxo, but so far it only syncs my contacts, calendar and notes. mobileme takes this two steps further.

"access and manage your email, contacts, calendar, photos, and files at me.com. All with amazing applications that are so feature-rich and easy to use, you may end up preferring them to your regular desktop applications."

this is not only an even nicer, more structured and more instant contacts, calendar and notes sync, i can even access my picture gallery and idisk from wherever i am, either through my iphone, my macbook pro (pc's are supported too) and any web-browser through a feature-rich desktop-application-like web interface at me.com. changes on your iphone for instance will will take immediate effect on your computer, you can access the same files, folders, pictures wherever you are.

i love it, i'll get the new iphone 3g on july 11th and you can watch the whole keynote here.

[tags: apple, iphone, keynote, steve jobs, wwdc 2008, microsoft exchange, mobileme]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 02:38 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

i'm following the live wwdc 2008 steve jobs keynote updates via macworld right now and reading

"iphone 2.0 software has three parts to it: enterprise support, the sdk, and some new end-user features. 'let me start with the enterprise. customers have demanded microsoft exchange, so they've built it in out of the box for 2.0 software: push email, push contacts, push calendar, auto-discovery of exchange severes, global address lookup, and remote wipe security feature. all built in to iphone 2.0 software. they've added secure vpn services from cisco and other network service demanded by the enterprise market. everything that apple was told enterprise users want, they've built in."

reminded me of a conversation which i had with my brother in law regarding the enterprise capabilities of the iphone and that at that point it wasn't quite ready for enterprises' security and exchange requirements. in a later interview with business week's olga kharif i have been quoted

"if things like this are available, companies will give employees a choice of an iphone vs. the blackberry," says frederik hermann, director of global marketing at jajah.

so i guess now enterprises will seriously consider to replace the old rubbish blackberries against apple iphones

read on the live notes at macworld.com

[tags: apple, iphone, keynote, steve jobs, wwdc 2008, wwdc, san francisco, developer]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 21:08 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark