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Forget about boring PDF browsing. PageGangster takes PDF's to a brand new level. Just upload your existing PDF files here and convert them into a cool looking 3D publication. Browsing traditional media like a magazine or a newspaper is as close as you can come to the real thing Online. PageGangster is a piece of art from the Danish company PG Publications.
I just love Skitch. I have 5 invites if you want one. Just one thing: it's Mac only.
Technorati Tags: Skitch
Features:
Technorati Tags: fretsonfire, games, opensource, guitar hero, music
Last week I meet with Ruper Dolasia CEO and Marcy Keenan, VP Business development of MX Play - a new and very cool music player based in San Francisco. At first I asked myself, who needs another music player? But MX Play is different from other players out there in that they have really emphazised on the audio quality. The founders have a strong background in working with audio codex and technologies - and you can hear that.
MX Play makes you music come alive with 3D audio. For serious music lovers this is music to your ears. But there's more to it than that. MX Play even lets you mash your own music with videos from YouTube and let's you discover new music as well.
In case you missed it yesterday. Here are the slides from Steve Jobs keynote on WWDC2007 courtesy of Guy Kawasaki.
After my blog post followed by my video post on outsourcing my life. Loic responded in a brilliant way. He created a video comment on my video and challenged me to continue the conversation with him and our viewers via video. What a great idea!
As you can see from Loic's comment, he too decided to join the outsourcing my life idea and I connected him with Brickwork as well. We're now both on the way on this experiment and I will update you all tomorrow via video on how it goes.
BTW, check out the great video/TV site vpod.tv - Loic's & my video is now on their front page. Stay tuned - another coming tomorrow.
Technorati Tags: Loic Le Meur, BrickworkIndia, vpodtv, outsourcing, India
Here’s a list of my favorite Mac Apps:
That's it! What are your favorite MacApps? BTW, as for blogging I use Ecto, but I haven't really found any good blog app for Mac. Wish BlogJet ran on Mac..
The ONLY thing I really miss on my Mac is Maxthon..Firefox, Safari and Opera just sucks. The don't even reach the heels of Maxthon. I guess we really have to make a Mac version...
Today I met with Frederik Hermann, responsible for marketing at the cool VoiP company Jajah outside the University Cafe in Palo Alto. Frederik is originally from Germany and is a passionate Maxthon user. He contacted me via Linkedin after I had thrown out the question: What should be Maxthon's EU/US distribution strategy. It's always great to meet new Maxthon user's and hear why they started to use Maxthon and what they think we can improve. Jajah is going to develop a plugin for Maxthon so keep you eyes open. Check out Jajah out!

Faster than a Twitt, Maxthon super plugin developer Neo101, created this cool Twitter toolbar for Maxthon 2.0 The toolbar enables you to post to Twitter straight from Maxthon. Add me as your friend.
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Maxthon, Maxthon 2.0
I often get the question of how I got involved with Maxthon. I mean how does a Swedish/Israeli guy becomes a partner in a Chinese company? The answer is, thorough LinkedIn. Belive it or not. Not directly, but in-directly. Here's the story:
It all started when I was working at ICQ (an AOL subsidary) and was trying to track down Nicklas Zennstrom from Skype for an idea I wanted to explore. I then found that the missing link between be and Niklas Zennstrom was a Danish fellow called Morten Lund (early Skype investor). To get to Morten I had to go through a contact I had at MTV in London, another Danish guy called Henrik Werdelin - now VP at Joost.
Morten was quick to respond, but said that Nicklas was just too busy those days (I doubt it has changed ) so why don't I come by Copenhagen and he would give me a bunch of more interesting deals... I accepted his invitation, went to Copenhagen and then spend a day with Morten discussing Bullguard (his main baby then) and a number of other ventures for ICQ.
Nothing really came out of this meeting, more due to the lack of action from ICQ and less from Morten. However, it was the beginnning of a friendship that led to countless hours of IM chats for over a year. Morten kept pitching me on behalf of all kinds of ventures he was involved in or was planning to get involved in. At that time, I was really fed up with the total incompetence and lack of understanding of what was going on on the Internet at ICQ (and AOL too for that matter) and had started to look around for the next challenge.
Of all the ventures Morten and I discussed, nothing really seemed attractive to me at that time. Partly because I didnt want to relocate from Israel and partly becasue it just didn't make me excited. But things changed.
One early morning in late November 2005 Morten Skyped me from the Arab Emirates and asked me to have a look at a new browser he had stumbled upon. He was quite excited. 20 Million download in a year! And it was created by a Chinese developer living in Hong Kong!
Since I just had downloaded and converted to Firefox, my inital reaction was" Who needs another browser" ? But Morten just said: "Just download it and you will see.." Said and done, I did. I was converted - again! Maxthon was so cool, and they story behind so fantastic that I agreed to take on the challenge.
Morten wanted me to become a business partner and take the company to the next level. How could I refuse? After I made up my mind I spend the 4 months in endless IM conversations with BloodChen - Mr. Maxthon himself a.k.a. Jeff Chen. It was my first experience in Chinese psychology and negotiations. It taught me a lot of patience..
Jeff and I finally reached an agreement and signed it off - without ever having met...Talking about an original start of a new venture. Two years has passed since I joined and I haven't regretted it for a second. Maxthon is an amazing piece of software, but more than that, Maxthon is more like a movement of passionate fans and co-developers all over the world. We have actually become the only Chinese Internet/Software company with a true global footprint. And we keep on growing like crazy.
That was my little LinkedIn story. Hope you liked it. What is yours?
Technorati Tags: Maxthon, China, LinkedIn, Morten Lund, Skype , China, Joost, icq
| Here is a very interesting video from the Google Tech Talks series where Mike Pinkerton discussed the past, present and future of Camino development (Mac browser) together with lessons learned from Mozilla and the open source community. | |
I am very delighted to announce that I just joined Plymedia's Advisory Board. Plymedia is a great Israeli start-up and behind the super cool site BubblePly , that let's you add bubbles, callouts', sub-titles, links, - you name it, to any video you like and share it with the world.
The viral power of BubblyPly is staggering. People are uploading their videos, or adding bubble's, comments and links to other people videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Naturally most people like to turn videos more into more funny and entertaining by adding all kinds of comments. But it has also become very popular for people to translate videos and create sub-titles to foreign language movies as well.
Another interesting usage of the Ply's (that is what the bubbles or video layers are called) is for educational purposes. Personally I love the concept and can easily see how this will become very popular. As with all user-generated stuff, the users will show us best the way for how BubblePly should be used.
Plymedia was founded by Ben Enosh (serial entrepreneur, and amongst other things, co-founded Cyota Inc - an Internet security company that was sold last year to RSA for $145 million) Yuval Klein, David Markowitz, Yoni Silberberg and Miki Dotan. I was first introduced to them by Gil Dibner from Genesis Partners and was really impressed by their product, great team and vision.
Although the Online video space is getting really crowded, I believe that PlyMedia has a very good chance turn this into something very exciting.
Business model? Advertising my friends - advertising! I can definitely see how advertisers could flock to this..
And by the way, Plymedia is raising financing, so if you are a interested - feel free to get in touch with me to learn more.
Tags: Plymedia, BubblePly, YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Video, Genesis Partners, VC, Venture Capital , Israel , Start-ups
Kaiser reports that the "Chinese Joost" UUSee, just received $23.5 in VC funding from DFJ's Growth Fund, Highland Capital Partners and Steamboat Ventures. P2P is really flourishing in China with such players as Google invested Xunlei - a Maxthon partner, PPLive and PPStream. I agree with Kaiser's prediction that it is only a matter of 3G time until we will see mobile P2P services popping up all over China
Update: Talking about the future of video & P2P, there is an interersting article on Technology Review by Hui Zhang called "Peering into Video's Future".
Technorati Tags: China, Joost, Maxthon, p2p, PPLive, PPStream, UUSee, VC, Venture Capital, Xunlei
After a very good board meeting with Maxthon, I paid a visit to HiPiHi - Chinas answer to Second Life. This came about after I had written a short post on them earlier and got an invitation to swing by their office. Kaiser Kuo (Ogilvy) and Xinhua Liu (early investor in HipiHi & Technology Director at Burson-Marsteller).. also joined me.
Armed with camcorders, cameras and curious minds, we invaded HiPiHi physically and virtually. I must say that I was really impressed. I always felt like Second Life was too geeky and to inaccessible, and therefore had only signed in a couple of times and flied around out of boredom.
Not so at HiPiHi. They have been smart enough to realize that most of us deadly are not geeks and need a more user-friendly user-interface to motivate us enough to play around in this virtual world. Although they are just in private alpha, they have come along way with a team of just 60. The user is offered a bunch of pre-fabricated avatars, buildings, hills, rocks, objects and event water to furnish their own worlds. Should they feel for it later, the user can always customize or create any object from scratch as they see fit.
It is clear that HiPiHi has given much thought into making the virtual world more user-friendly. HiPiHi's CEO Hui Xu (beside me on the picture above) explained to us that the service will be launched in four stages based on traditional Chinese creational mythology (read Kaisers summary for an expansion on this).
Revenues will come from virtual property sales and advertising. And I can definitely see how advertisers will love this. Especially since HiPiHi is targeting the young and cool rather than a bunch of geeks in pajamas or "social media stars".
I shot a couple of short clips of a walk-through in HipiHi-land with a simple digital camera. Comments are both in Chinese & English. More clips here.
I have a very good feeling about HiPiHi and am waiting eagerly for the public launch.

(Image above: Sunset in HiPiHi-land).
My good friend Kaiser Kuo, made me aware of a Chinese Second Life wanna be called HiPiHi. It is still in private beta, but there is a demo video on the site that you can download. What I find interesting here is that as Kaiser points out, there is a female element here which seems to indicate that the site is going after female gamers: female narrator and avatar, emphasis on the outfits, the landscaping and the houses.
I agree with Kaiser that it would be interesting to see if they will give HiPiHi a more Chinese touch. I personally would find it much more compelling wandering around in a Chinese environment with a Chinese architecture, marble lions guarding my house entrance etc. And here is my personal advice: Why not offering foreigners like me wandering around in HiPiHi to learn Chinese? I could not think of any better way to learn and practice a new language in a virtual world. Just imagine, taking a taxi from the airport, telling the driver where you want to go., going shopping at the market, or join a Chi Gong class? The reverse could also be a great way for Chinese locals to learn English. I would definately be the first to sign up for such an opportunity.
Finally, Kaiser asks if we are going to see advertisers lining up, companies building themselves a presence there just like in SL? I definatley think that can become very big. Just considering the Olympics 2--8 around the corner. Creating a virtual olympic inside HiPHi could be great fun, enabling you to run with the stars. Then, arrange competitions live that could be broadcasted live as well with prices... The site should obviously implement a full mobile payment mechanism so you can by avatars, apparel and real-estate on the fly. Oh, and HiPiHi should definately provide a mobile version as well.
China is such a huge country with so many opportunities, so why should a virtual China world be a success?
Technorati Tags: Avatars, China, Second Life, Virtual Worlds
The guys at Bunchball have just launched this really cool project with Toyota. Its a fully immersive world around Toyotas Scion xB. Bunchball customized all their games and integrated them into a flash world.
I must say this is really cool and the idea of integrating their games into a immersive world rocks! It's quite addictive too which is probably very good for brand association and should work well for Toyota.
I met Rajat Paharia Bunchball's CEO and founder and was very impressed of how fast he managed to launch Bunchball and the quality of the games. When we met a year ago, the business model wasn't very clear, but with customized games like this, it seems that Bunchball is on the right track.
Check out the game here!
Technorati Tags: Branded games, Bunchball, Games, Gamevertising, puppy, Rajat Paharia, Toyota
Thanks to Kaiser's new blog I came across anthropologist Grant Brackens great insightful post on "Second Life the New Disney of Vaporville?" Its alwasy great to find some real thinkers up in the cloud (too many linkers and not many thinkers..). I often get a lot of questions about Second Life. And to their surprise I am not all that excited about it. Sure, I have a SL identity : Net Nakamura, I have been been flying around, waded the deep waters around SL islands - but from this to open to buy and island, open a radio station, buy a building or launch a company? Please - get a life!
Grant holds that SL is really a stage without actors, and with no people - no anthropology. I couldn't agree more. Most of the time you just find yourself walking around alone, until finally you run into some geek either insulting you, leaving crytical comments or some gal' that is trying to get a hold on flying..
As a matter of fact, when I think about it - its a totally dead place, no action, full of emptyness and geeks dreaming of flying around. Don't know about you, but I prefer REAL life - life is with people.
Having said that, I believe that SL will pave the way for more entertaining and accessable virtual worlds in the years to come. Its a nice experiment, but to appeal to real people - there has to be more meat on the bone..The more I think about it, I think Virtual Worlds have to be more similar to a good gaming platform
I promised never to cover Google here anymore unless it has anything to do with Maxthon or Mashup Media. However, since it has, I cannot help to mention it. The Bloggers are buzzing around the Web now for the release of Google Apps. See stories here, here , here and here for more in-depht info.
Why do I mention it here then? Well, one for that I already tried to sign-up putting all of Mashup Media on Google Apps, but failed since Israel did not appear in the countries listed when you register. Please fix it Google! I am eager to spend $50 + ..
Second, some voices has been raised that it is still lacking enough compelling features and products like Jotspot, CRM tool etc. However since I know the people behind these products I know that the fun has just begun.. I wonder what one could do with this in a browser?
Something on M comes to my mind..Oh enough said already - time for a falafel..
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Apps, Maxthon, Office, Mashup Media
Today the Swedish city of Malmo is in the news not only for because of a terrible snow storm (thank G-d I moved to Israel..), but also because today Bambuser goes live. Bambuser is the world first TV-program shot entirely from camera enabled mobile phones. Today they are kicking off with a 48 hour non-stop TV-show from Swedish TV-s Malmo studios, were anybody can drop in and do their own show.
Måns Adler, Alexander Fölsch and Rebecca Kopelman, entrepreneurs and students at Kaospiloterna in Arhus, Denmark says that everybody has been thinking about how to send TV programs to the mobile phones, but nobody seems to have though about doing it the other way. True or not, this looks like a really cool project.
To be able to send TV directly from your mobile, you will need a special program developed by a company in Malmo that you will be able to download for free. At this stage the business model seems unclear, but I guess licensing in out to Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola and Samsung might be one way.
Good to see some promising entrepreneurship from my old country. For more mobile, movie and TV related stuff visit the Anyfilms blog I ran for Samsung Mobile last year.
See article in Sydsvenskan (sorry in Swedish..).
Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurs, Mobile phones, Bambuser, Sweden, Television, TV
Hyper Happen is letting us know that Bandwagon is about to launch (February 22). Bandwagon offers online iTunes backup (something I have long been waiting for). An in a smart marketing move to get bloggers onboard to spread the message, bandwagon is offering all bloggers who link to them a free one-year account! Very smart. And judging from the comments their blog has generated, they will have to give away quite some number of free accounts.
I think this is an excellent marketing strategy that others should follow. The key thing of course, is to really offer something of value for free with no strings attached. The upside for bandwagon except all the buzz it will create, is that once you have backed up your iTunes library, you are probably very willing to pay the subscription fee ;).
Oh, and bandwagon is currently only available for Mac.
Technorati Tags: backup, backup, bandwagon, hyperhappen, iTunes, mac, marketing, blogmarketing, puppy, puppy, puppy
Since I have been working together with the London-based interactive agency Hyper Happen on a number of projects, and been loosely involved as an advisor on this one, I've got an exclusive preview of Nokia's new ground-breaking piece of marketing.
In the passenger, Nokia shows a new way for users to control video on the web. To support its push to be part of the growing in-car communications market, Nokia has released a super cool site which has been developed to take interactive video to the next level.
The story:
A mysterious woman is in need of your services. She needs to reach three addresses in Paris in a short amount of time. It is going to take all your driving talents to get her to her destinations.
‘The Passenger’ experience sets the viewer in the murky ‘film noir’ world of night time Paris. The video is superb, fun and coupled with great interaction.
Along the way, you have to utilise the functions of the Nokia Multimedia Car Kit CK-20W in order to reach the destination and get the pay-off of the final scene. And if you drive the wrong way, you'll find yourself insulted by the the rude Femme Fatal in your back seat. Who reminds me of Meryl Streep in the Devil wears Prada..
The driving footage was shot with a car-mounted camera in all the streets of the iIle de St. Louis over 3 nights in November 2006, with additional scenes filmed at the Tour Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe and the Heliport de Paris.
Daniel Goodall, Digital Marketing Manager for Enhancement Products at Nokia says that “The Passenger’ mixes video and gameplay in a way that we don’t think has happened before. All the driving is real video, real streets and fully controlled by the user”. I find it really a creative way of promoting a mobile GPS device since it puts you in the right context immediately and is fun at the same time.
‘The Passenger’ concept has been developed in conjunction with digital strategy agency Hyper Happen, working with Fuel Industries & Karbon Arc on the game engine build and video production.This is actually the phone I have been waiting for since I all the time find myself renting a Garmin GPS every time I travel to California. With this kit, it's just plug and play :)
Nokia - you know how to reach me...;)
Technorati Tags: Advertising, CK-20W, Fuel Industries, GPS, Hyper Happen, Karbon Arc, Nokia, Paris, Mobile , The Passenger
I really believe that games are excellent for learning and practicing new tasks, but to making peace in the Middle East? Impact Games have just released PeaceMaker, a video game to promote peace. PeaceMaker is a role-playing game were the goal of the player is to establish a stable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and win the Nobel Prize before his/her term in office ends.
I find this a very creative approach to problem solving. While the game starts as a zero-sum game, the key to success is to gain momentum and create a win-win scenario. Now that is great - win by create a win-win scenario! Although I don't believe the game will have any impact what so ever on our daily affairs here in Israel, I support anything that can make even one person change his or her mind.
What I especially like is that the game encourages players to play on both sides of the conflict, thus being forced to see and experience the other side. I can imagine how this could be applied in other areas as well such as business, intercultural communications, politics, relationships and psychology in general.
Or what about role-play games for :
Technorati Tags: Games, PeaceMaker, Israel, Peace, Impactgames
Torrentfreak has published a great round up of BitTorrent related tutorials:. It's so good that I have published it here in its entirety:
The Basics
Torrents are great, they are the best way to share large files with your friends, or even with people you don’t know at all. But surprisingly enough, not many people create torrents when they need to share something.
10 Great Torrent Sites + Firefox Search Plugins.
3. How To Encrypt BitTorrent Traffic
More and more ISP’s are limiting and throttling BitTorrent traffic on their networks. By throttling BitTorrent traffic the speed of BitTorrent downloads decreases, and high speed downloads are out of the question.
Speed Up Your BitTorrent Downloads
4. How to Optimize Your BitTorrent Download Speed
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current speeds? These suggestions might help yo optimize your download pleasure.
5. How to Speed Up Bitcomet and uTorrent
90% off all people use the default settings on their client, and that’s a problem.
6. How to Protect Your Torrent From Failing Trackers
Nothing is more frustrating than your download getting stuck. The fact that a torrent has stopped downloading can have several reasons.
Technorati Tags: Bittorrent, howto, p2p, tutorial, uTorrent, puppy, puppy, Torrentfreak
The New York Times have a good story today about how emergency numbers 911 and non-emergency number 311 will start accepting digital photos and images from callers. Mayor Bloomberg calls it 'a revolutionary innovation in crime fighting" and I couldn't agree more. Pictures definately speaks louder than words.
The question is just how 911 and other services will be able to process all the images? The need for a very smart image and video search engine just keeps growing stronger..
Technorati Tags: 911, 311, emergency numbers, digital images, images, crime prevention, technolgy
Finally the perfect browser have landed. MicrosoftFirefox 2007professional edition is now available for download! Thanks to the merger of Mozilla and Microsoft the next generation browser is already here. Or what do you say about:
Thanks to Martin for making me loose my concentration
Technorati Tags: Akobe Phlash, Browser, Fun, MicrosoftFirefox
A few days ago I was interviewed about Maxthon by Gang Lu, a very nice guy I met at Le Web 3 a couple of weeks ago. The interview was published in Read Write Web today.
>Technorati Tags: Maxthon, ReadWriteWeb, Leweb3, Gang Lu, Netanel Jacobsson, China, Web 2.0
Robert Scoble interviewed me about Maxthon on the Scoble Show. In the first interview I talk about Maxthon and give a little background on its history, philosophy and we are all about. In the second part I demonstrate Maxthon 2.0 Beta and show some of the new cool features in it. Enjoy!
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