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The registration for the fabulous Le Web 3 '07 fourth edition and preliminary program taking place in Paris on Dec 11-12 has opened.
If you are only going to attend one web related event in Europe this year - this is the one!
Hyundai is running quite a cool Mash+Seek contest to promote a new Elantra. 16 people have been picket and split into four groups. The contestants then have to locate three other people in their teams - with only a quarter face as a lead. The first team of four to find each other wins a new Elantra each. Cool. Adverlab thinks that this is a very good way to do consumer-generated content since people have to make themselves visible through blogs, Craighslists, Goolgle Adsense - you name. I agree.
Technorati Tags: Advertising, Hyundai, Mash+Seek, Mash+seek, Locate Three Strangers
Last week I discovered IKEA hacker . And man! It is probably one of the coolest ideas I have seen for a while. Having grown up in the Swedish "Folkhem", been dragged all over year in and year out by my mother to IKEA who religiously reads their catalog like the Bible, I must say that I got an IKEA overdose that lasted many years. Not until the last couple of year I have started to recover from the IKEA blues. Or should I rather say, I didn't really have a choice when IKEA came to Israel to my wife's great excitement...
IKEA IS the Swedish Embassy since it really represents Sweden in the best possible way. Everything is in order, practical, clean and you have to serve-your-self (but also free from excitement) - the true middle way we Swedes call "lagom" (impossible to translate..).
Anyway, IKEA hack suddenly opened up my eyes putting the finger spot on for what IKEA really is. Hackable. What a fantastic idea! Of course, why didn't somebody come up with this long time ago? IKEA is modular by nature - and made for mashing up and hacking.
This is probably one of best possible ways to market IKEA world wide, by inviting people to build, compete and share their IKEA hacks. If IKEA is not actively supporting this blog, I would recommend them to run for it immediately. What a way to leverage on people pure passion and love! I keep watching my feed to see when a new hack drops in.
Way to go! I'm in! Now I am going to have a go on the bookshelf Billy!
See you in IKEA land :)
Technorati Tags: Cosumer Generated, Creative, Great ideas, Hacks, IKEA, Marketing, puppy, Sweden
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
Nova Spivack, the technology visionary and entrepreneur writes that "threshold to the third-generation Web will be crossed in 2007. The focus of innovation will shift back from front-end improvements towards back-end infrastructure level upgrades to the Web. Spivack holds that Web 3.0 might be defined as a third-generation of the Web enabled by the convergence of several key emerging technology trends:
It's interesting to see how the focus is shifting back from front-end to back-end. As for the future role of the browser, I don't think that the browser will disappear but it will definately become more and more an information broker that just a "news paper format reader tool". Thanks to Alan.
Technorati Tags: Browsers, Intelligent Web, Nova Spivack, Technology, the pitc, Third Web, Web 3.0
Tony Perkins has put this confession about what he learned from the fist Internet Bubble Online. I can certainly agree with many of his points. Especially
the only way to create a real company is to have lots of real (that is, paying) customers. More often than not, Internet entrepreneurs design products they like, but forget that the rest of the world isn’t made up of geeks like them. Just because your web-based service is popular on Slashdot doesn’t mean it’s going to hit it big with regular folks.
Although the blogosphere is a great place to evangelize your product and your company - it is not where most of your potential costumers hang out. The fact that your company has received a positive or event great review in Techcrunch does not necessary equal new customers and success. Unless your target audience typically consists of Techcrunch readers.. Moreover, many well know or even less known companies occasionally receive (or constantly) bad reviews throughout the Blogosphere, but they still have millions of customers and are doing very well anyway.
I would add another advice to some start-ups. Don't waste your marketing budget on sponsoring on sponsoring web 2.0 events and conferences, unless (again) that is where the majority of your potential users/consumers hang out. To sponsor these type of event often comes with a very heavy price tag ,a budget that could be better used for actually acquiring and attracting new users - where they actually hang out...
Technorati Tags: AlwaysOn Media, AO, Consumers, Start-ups
I am sitting on the plane between JFK and San Francisco after having attended On Media NYC and am trying to summerize my thoughts about the conference. My overall impression is that its was a great event in terms of networking, speaker line ups and of course the reception. I had a chance to re-connect with old friends, business partners and make new contacts.
Having said that, I felt like in many other conferences: "heard it before, been there, said that and know that". Most of the panelist were all too predictive and didn't really contribute with anything new and refreshing. However, Tony Perkins and Bill Cleary and did a great job setting it all up and with the fantastic backdrop of Central Park and Colombia Circle ! Tony & Bill also showcased their home made videos that triggered many laughs.
A few speakers and panelist sticked out though:
Oh, and there were some great CEO Showcase presentations as well. Anyway, it was a great event in terms of networking I will definatly come next time too.
I am off to AlwaysOn Media New York, 28-31 to meet with the disrupters of marketing, advertising, branding and PR. Will definitely be fun. Not that I expect to hear anything new, but it looks like a great event and and a good place to catch up with friends, acquaintances and potential Maxthon partners. After that I continue to Palo Alto for partner meetings and some potential hires @ CRV. Finally finishing off with Tomas Wiesel Venture partners Tech2007 conference in San Francisco Feb 6-7. If you want to meet up please feel free to drop me a line or call me on my US cell 650 862 46 56.
Technorati Tags: AlwaysOn, AlwaysOn Media, CRV, Maxthon, Maxthon, Events, puppy, puppy, TWVP
No good excuse to be ignorant anymore. Open Culture explores the best of contemporary cultural and educational life and connects users to free, high-quality cultural media (enriching podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that make learning dynamic and fun. You'll find great lectures in Podcast format from Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Berkley University as well as many other universities, institutes and colleges. Just fill up you iPod with lectures in Psychology, Physics and Art & Humanities and tickle your intellect..
Technorati Tags: Podtech, learning, Openculture, Podcasts, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Education, Lectures
ChinaVenture reports that 17 Chinese Online Video sites got $95.5 million in funding since 2004 with an investment peak of $52.7 million in 2006.
Below is a chart illustrating the investments. As you can see WI Harper invested in Radio.cn but missing from the list is Charles River Ventures investment in Wangyou Media in March 2006.
Technorati Tags: Blogcn, Charles River Ventures, China, CRV, Wangyou media
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!
Technorati Tags: Browser, China, Maxthon 2.0 Beta, Podtech, Web2.0, Robert Scoble, ScobleShow, Technology
In order to reduce the noise, clutter and meaningless posts, I have decided not cover or post anything in 2007 related to:
The reason for this is that I am getting so tired so read the same old story over and over again all over the blogoshpere. Really. How interesting is it to read that Google launched a new service 50 times the same day? Or about which company will acquire Facebook. Vista this and Vista that. Zune here and Ipod there. Alexa this and Digg that? Put a couple of these companies to John Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance" and you''ll get the spirit in which I am writing this ;)
Although I do not believe in New Year resolutions (I'm Jewish) I will try to be more selective about what I am writing from now on, less clutter and try to be more original rather that mirroring all the noise out there.
Disclaimer. I will only write about any of the above if the have anything directly to do with my business or changed something dramatically in my or other peoples life...
Digg it?
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Digg, Facebook, Google, MySpace, Microsoft, Yahoo, YouTube
A few weeks ago at the closing note of Le Web 3 , Yossi Vardi and Loic called for the creation of a new movement, "bloggers for a better world". The idea was that every blogger that joined this new movement would commit themselves to write at least one post on social responsibility and change per week. David Sifry bought the domain and it would be tagged bfbw or b4bw. Every blog part of this Bloggers for a better world movement, would carry a special badge. Shimon Peres also accepted to be on the Board for this movement which obviously added extra weight to it.
Now, I am all for everything that is positive and that would make this world a better place for us all. However, the following questions come to my mind:
I just say like Michael Jackson sings in "The Man in the Mirror":
"If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change" (nana na naa...;)
Technorati Tags: b4bw, bfbw, bloggers for a better world, Leweb3, Loic lemeur, Social responsibiliy, Shimon Peres, Yossi Vardi
Technorati Tags: China, Entreprenurs, Leweb3
In the aftermath of the storm surrounding Le Web 3 it cannot be easy to be Loic Le Meur... More than 1000 bloggers, media people and techies looked forward to the follow-up of last years Les Blogs 2. After having survived a relatively good day 1, the menu being serviced on day two swept us all away. Or what do you say about Shimon Peres for breakfast, François Bayrou for dinner and finally Nicolas Sarkosy for dessert.... As an Israeli, I cannot say I was over excited about Peres sudden appearance. I cannot say I really share his political views but I have tremendous respect for the person. Anyway, it was a nice chit chat and words of wisdom was spoken. Peres even came forward and said hello to me (see image below with David Sifry, Simon Peres and me) and asked who I was which was a nice unexpected surprise. He asked if I was related to the Jacobsson's from Rechovot...;) It seems that the audience liked the fact that Peres appeared, although we all seemed confused about the relevance for the conference. Then is seemed to get out of hand with the presidential candidate François Bayrou and current minister presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkosy. TV, radio and journalists were all over the place and it looked more like a presidential campaign.
A lot of people got really upset it seems. I personally didn't mind since it spiced up the other would-have-been-predicted conference. It is true that the schedule was totally re-arranged, speakers were interrupted and the panelist got too little time. So what? Big deal. I can understand that people felt like Loic went to far, and I can to a certain degree agree with that. However, the following public lynch was really an over reaction in my view. I know Loic and the team had worked really heard and I think they deserve better.
Having said that, I must add that I feel these type of conferences has lost their momentum (read: web 2.0 conference etc). Even the so-called unconferences have failed. Does this prove that blogs, Vlogs and the social media bag are already passe' ? Or perhaps everything that can be said about it has already been said?
I personally just regret that the China panel (once more like last year) never got passed the discussion about democracy and censorship. I know that there were people in the audience that really wanted to hear about what we can learn from the Internet in China. Talking about freedom of speech and censorship - I just learned that Sam Sethi was fired from Techcrunch UK for expressing his point of view. Shame!
Conclusion: you don't have to be a government to exercise censorship...Serves us all as a good lesson about freedom of speech in the "free" world.
My five cent for next event would be to hold a separate Les Politics - a focused event on social media and its role in politics (not joking). I also believe that the true place for discussions about blogs are on the Net alone. Perhaps some spontaneous gathering there and there for the social side. Personally I prefer to move these type of events to a much smaller bistro like setting. Good wine has the unique capacity to feed conversations - or at least make them more interesting..
Anyway, hang on in there Loic and ride out the storm. You are a nice guy and I enjoyed the show. Politicians and mainstream media disrupting the disruptors ;) It certainly added some spice to the soup. There are more important things in life....I think people really have over reacted. Good thing that we don't live in the Middle Ages anymore - I guess you would have been on your way to the guillotine by now then...One thing is sure, this Blogosphere is an uncontrolable animal...
Technorati Tags: puppy
There certainly was lot's of laughter and energy today at the Stanford Campus when 60 Stanford MBA students made their pitches to CRV on the CRV Entrepreneur Idol contest. As yet another creative idea from the guys at CRV. George, Bill and Susan let 56 Standford MBA students and potential entrepreneurs-to-be, pitch in 60 seconds. I watched in the background as George, Bill, Susan and Matt Marshall from VentureBeat listened to 56 pitches in 60 minutes...
Afterwards, George made a short presentation of CRV and its' new exciting initiative - QuickStart. Maxthon and Skyrider, was presented as two very exciting and promising companies in the CRV portofolio with a particularily explosive growth and potential.
After the presentation, 5 lucky pitchers where chosen by the panel. Two received honorary mention and collected $100 each. The remaining 3 pitched again in front of the whole audience, and the audience then voted for the best pitch by applause volume...(and it was high :)
The winner (image below) won $2000 and the other two each $1000 - not back for a 60 minutes appearance...Needless to say it was very funny, sort of Ido-meets-stand-up-meets-VC. You could really feel the excitement among the MBA students and you could see that George, Bill and Susan really enjoyed it too.
John Furrier and Valerie Cunningham from Podtech.Net made sure that it was all documented so tune into Podtech.Net for full video coverage on the event.
CRV is definitely disrupting the traditional VC business model and seem to be enjoying the ride too.
For me it was all clear after having watching 60 pitches. It is the way you frame your pitch that makes the big difference. Energy and
presence is king - just like in IDOL - but it obviously has to be accompanied by a good ideas too of course.
Thanks to George, Bill and Susan for dragging me along. You guys are winners!
See my Flickr for more pics of the event and others here. Susan Wu and Matt Marshall should soon have some posts up covering the event with more details.
Now I'm off to Mayfiels Holiday Party and tomorrow I will talking at Asian Ventures. Man I am jet lagged and the week has only just begun...
Technorati Tags: Bill Tai, Charles River Ventures, CRV, George Zachary, Podtechnet, Stanford, Susan Wu, Valerie Cunningham, VC, Venture Capital
I have just barely been home for a week but it's time again for yet another trip. This time in the other direction, but under the same theme - China. I'm off to San Jose on Sunday to talk about Maxthon at Dow Jones Asian Ventures on Dec. 5th. It will be a good opportunity to meet with Chinese entrepreneurs and exchange experiences. Time permitting I will try to make some Vlogs with interesting companies.
After that I will be working out of Palo Alto for the rest of the week (we will probably be making a major announcement next week..) until Sunday, and then directly off to Paris to participate in a panel at Le Web 3, named " The Dragon's Web - What can we learn from the Internet in China?" Dec 11-12. Man I'm slowly turning slightly yellow...
Le Web 3 is going to be jammed packed with bloggers, media people, entrepreneurs and VCs. Many are old friends and familiar faces so its going to be a great opportunity to catch up. I must say I have neglected Europe lately...Looks like its going to be a great event. I will also keep an eye open for new interesting start-ups looking for funding and potential Maxthon partners.
BTW, if you are Chinese and read this, what do you think we can learn from the Internet in China?
If you want to meet up in Palo Alto 4–9 or in Paris 11-13, feel free to ping me.
After this trip I am going to take a break. Chanukah is knocking on the door..
Technorati Tags: Asian Ventures 2006, Blogging, China, CRV, Israel, Leweb3, Maxthon, Social Media, Venture Capital, Web 2.0
Danwei has a good updated list on Chinese Online Video sites. For a very good comparison of the services see here. 6rooms is almost identical with YouTube, even their logo is a rip-off.
With more than 150 sites (and still counting), the Chinese Online video market is a jungle. It is hardly likely that any of them will become the next YouTube or become aquiered by any of the big Chinese companies any time soon since they can easily create their own service. CWR also points out that none of these sites are very good at SEM. If you run a query on Baidu (Chinas biggest search engine) no videos show up in the search result. The same query on Google will mostly bring up YouTube results.
I will ask Buddy Ling from WangYou when we meet in San Jose next week what his take on this is. Hopefully we will have time to make a Vlog it too. Anything you would like to ask about Online Video in China?
Technorati Tags: 6rooms, Asian Ventures 2006, Charles River Ventures, China, China Web2.0 Review, Danwei, SEM, Google, Baidu, Video, Videoblog, Vlog, Wangyou, Web 2.0, YouTube
I just came back from a very cold Beijing and had the pleasure to meet up with an old Maxthon friend and fan - Kaiser Kuo, China Bureau Chief for Red Herring. Kaiser also co-founded China's first heavy metal band - Tang Dynasty and is still very active on the music scene with his new band, Spring and Autumn.
Kaiser talks about how his then 70-year old father introduced him to Maxthon, why he likes Maxthon and shows us his set up of Maxthon 2.0 Beta.
If you like the music and wants to get your hands on it - please let us know and we will connect you with Kaiser. I love the Chinese feel on his heavy metal.
Technorati Tags: China, Heavy Metal, Kaiser Kuo, Red Herring, Tang Dynasty, Vlog
Today I had the pleasure to have lunch with Tangos (aka Chen Huan), the editor of the Chinese “Techcrunch” (but without the commercial tags
) China Web 2.0 Review in Beijing. Chen is a product manager at the Chinese Web 2.0 search engine/portal Qihoo (that just raised $25M from US investors) at day and blogger by night. I have been following the development of his blog ever since it’s inception and it has become an important source of information for me on what is cooking on the Chinese Web scene.
Except that it is always nice to meet up with a fellow blogger it was great to hear Tangos view on what’s hot and what’s not on the Chinese Web scene. When I asked Tangos what if there was anything new he found particularity interesting right now, the answer was no. In fact, although Web2.0 companies are mushrooming all over in China, it seems that there is nothing really new happening this year as opposed to last year. That very much seems to echo the sentiments back in the Valley and outside China at large.
When I asked him what he personally found most exciting, he mentioned Douban – the book, music, movie, travel and blog review site.
I know I have mentioned it several times before but I can warmly recommend China Web2.0 Review.
I'm off to Beijing again on Sunday. I am starting to like China more and more even though koscher food it had to find..Besides a couple of intensive days of internal Maxthon meetings (and hopefully shoot some Vlogs with the Maxthon team in action). I also will our meet with and Vlog with our great friend Kaiser Kuo, Red Herring China Bureau Chief, and co-founder of Chinas first real heavy metal band - Tang Dynasty. Tangos, the editior of China Web2.0 Review is somebody I have wanted to meet up with for a long time to learn more about what is going on on the Chinese Web2.0 scene so that will be very interesting.
Time permitted I would love to see some serious Qi Gong Masters and Shaolin performances as well.
If you want to meet up in Beijing please let me know, if not there is always Asian Ventures 2006 in San Jose on December 5-6.
BTW, anybody that can recommend a really good online or CD - course in Chinese?
Technorati Tags: Asian Ventures 2006, Beijing, China, China Web2.0 Review, Kaiser Kuo, puppy, Qi Gong, Shaolin, Tang Dynasty, Vlog
Last year. when I worked on the Anyfilms.net campaign together with Hyper Happen for Samsung Mobile, I covered how the new vide enabled cellphones is changing or is going to change the way movies & videos are produced and consumed. Now PSFK, is reporting about how singer Robert Dickinson, has made a music video of his song "Oceans" on a Nokia N93 phone.
The video is very good actually. This will certainly not be the last one produced by a mobile. Check out the Anyfilms Blog I ran (no longer active though) for more on coverage on the cross-over between movie making and cellphones..
Do you know of other music videos or movie shot on cellphones?
Technorati Tags: Anyfilms, Hyper Happen, Mobile, Movies, N93, Nokia, Rob Dickinson, Spreadsheets
It seems that News Corp. is in early talks with Bokee and Blogcn in order to bring MySpace to China. Some think that MySpace should forget about a China presence.
Sohu is also reported partnering with Nokia for blog contest. Again, it seems that only Nokia understands how connect with social media sites and social media in general. Samsung? SonyEricsson? Motorola? Hallo...?
Tallking about China, VentureBeat reports that venture capital investments in mainland China companies rose 47 percent in the quarter, compared to the same quarter last year -- and total investments for the year should easily break a record. Venture capitalists pumped $361.1 million into 54 companies during the quarter, according to Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureOne.
Not bad...
Technorati Tags: Blogcn, Blogging, Bokee, China, Internet, MySpace, News Corp, Nokia, Sohu, venture capital
A month ago I had the pleasure to meet with Susan Wu, new associate with CRV. Today I noticed that she started to blog too. Susan is really bright and I especially paid attention to a blog post she made on StartCamp: the Art of the Pitch.
Susan highlights two key takeaways on "How to pitch to VCs"
I could not agree more with her. I think many entrepreneurs many times forget that at the end of the day, we are all human beings - sharing the same basic needs, fears and prone to err.
Susan urges entrepreneurs to "help" VC to help them frame their thinking. I think this is a very important lesson. Since I have a deep background in Psychology (before I defected to business ;), I know how important it is to frame thinking.
You can have the most brilliant idea or technology, but if you can't make others understand it - what good will it do?
I really recommend anybody, to learn about framing, in order to learn how to facilitate the thinking process. A basic course in Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) will can also be extremely helpful for this purpose. It's money well spend and will be helpful in many other areas besides pitching to VCs.
Great post Susan - keep the coming! :) BTW, thanks to Susan's blog I learned about Snowcrash, a book I will pick-up on my next trip.
Technorati Tags: Charles River Ventures, CRV, Framing, NLP, Susan Wu, Quickstart, Snowcrash, StartupCamp, the art of the pitc, Venture Capital
Technorati Tags: Browsers, Gemini Israel, Israel, LGi Lab, Lightspeed, Maxthon, Maxthon Fans, Community, Videoblog, Techcrunch, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0
I really like Topix. I find myself fetching a big part of my daily news feeds from there. I especially like their directory, were you can subscribe to quite specialized topics from many categories. Topix also has the most complete news source aggregation around.
Two weeks ago, I met with Topix CEO, Rich Skrenta and VP Biz.Dev Michael Markson in Palo Alto. Both very sharp and smart guys. I like the direction they are going in and I don't really see any reason for using Google New, Yahoo News or any other news aggregator either. They also seems to be very good at monetizing on it as well.
The original founders were the creators of the Open Directory Project he first open development directory for the Internet, and now the largest human-edited web directory. This project is now a property of AOL and is the source from which many of the current web directories, including Google Directory, derive their information.
Technorati Tags: Google Directory, Open Directory Project, News, puppy, Search, Topix, Topix
My good friend George Zachary, General Partner @ Charles River Ventures have just joined the the train of VC bloggers. George writes on his blog "Sense and Cents" that the purpose of the blog is
to explore and discuss all facets of this so-called "human". What drives a human. What motivates a human. What they do. What they construct. What they communicate. What they consumer.
Since George have strong background in VR and games - expect to see some very interesting exlporation of what it is to be a human in this Virtual Age.
Like the song goes: Virtual Insanity is what we living for...but it's alright..
Welcome to Blogland George!
Technorati Tags: George Zachary, CRV, Blogs, VR, VC, games, Virtual Age
We just came back from a wonderful vacation in north Israel and we are just about to throw ourselves into yet another Jewish holiday (and there are many this time of the year...). After that I am off to California again for a jammed packed 10 days. I will also kick off my career as a Vlogger there and participate on the Scoble Show among other things. Will definately be fun. I will take the oppertunity to ask Scoble for some hot Vlog advice. So if you are in the Palo Alto area and wanna meet up. Feel free to get in touch.
Technorati Tags: Scoble Show, Podtechnet, PodTech, Maxthon
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