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Pulver's Israeli Facebook Party

Although I really didn't have time to go Jeff Pulver's Facebook party given my new job, new child and relocation errands, I'm glad that I stepped by. Letting your Facebook friends connect with each other over free drinks is definitely a great idea. Everyone was wearing stickers with their name, company and tagline. Anyway, I made some new acquaintances and had a chance to catch up with some old friends. Kudos to Jeff for inviting me and for the great idea.  I wonder if there are any other Facebook networking events like this around the world? (In the picture Jeff, me and Ouriel).

Golden Gate RunCast with Guest's

Yesterday Loic and I took our RunCast (or should I call it a FogCast?) to a new level: The Golden Gate RunCast featuring guests: Bill Tai, General Partner with Charles River Ventures (and on the Maxthon board) and Konstantin Othmer,CEO and founder of Coremobility. It was a great run on a bridge over troubled water and can bee seen as bridging the gab between Europe and the US ;)

Technorati Tags: billtai, goldengate, loiclemeur, coremobility, crv, storyboards

Storyboarders - Now On Facebook

Since the feedback on my idea of using storyboards to develop business plans have been very positive, I decided to create a Facebook group dedicated to the topic. Enter Storyboarders. Drop your word-based business plans & burn those power points. Enter the storyboards! We are the storyboarders, creating conversations - not just presentations!  Feel free to join in & let's crowdsource it to the next level. Who knows, perhaps this group will give birth to a new business plan format better suited for humans including VCs?

Technorati Tags: businessplans, creativeprocess, crowdsourcing, Facebook, storyboards, tools

iDrink06 - The Comic

I had a really good time yesterday hanging out with fellow israeli entrepreneurs and VC's at Herzeliya beach yesterday evening. To my surprise was Om Malik and Andrew Barton (Rocketboom) who I recently spend a few days with at the CRV summit in Phoenix there too. Great vibes, beers and cigars. Networking Israeli style. This is how I really would arrange a conference - By the beach, informal, no stage, no power point,drinks, cigars and cool music. Kudos to my buddy Ouriel and Sagi, Orly and Eyal for arranging it all.

Technorati Tags: idrink, idrink06, Israel

Skitch - My New Favorite Snap-Draw & Share Application

I just love Skitch. I have 5 invites if you want one. Just one thing: it's Mac only.

Technorati Tags: Skitch

Frets On Fire - Open Source Guitar Hero

This is just awesome! Frets on Fire is a game about musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible. It's an open-source project with hundreds of songs composed by the community and supports multi platform. In short it is open source guitar hero! How cool is that!

Features: 

• Unique inverted keyboard gameplay style
• Song editor  form making your own tunes
• Compete iwth others on the World Charts
• Supports importing Guitar Hero I-II songs
• Multiplatform
• Open source

Technorati Tags: fretsonfire, games, opensource, guitar hero, music

Are Virtual Goods the Next Big Business Model?

Last week I attended the First Virtual Goods Summit at Stanford University, organized by CRV's Susan Wu and Charles Hudson
and reported about it here. On the panel "Are virtual goods the next big business model?" I realized that I this really might be the case. 

Accel's, Kevin Efrussy who invested in Facebook, got a lot of question about Facebook's introduction of virtual gifts. Kevin said that if he who is a pretty boring non-cool person with pictures of his kids on his profile got gifts that people have paid $ for - then imagine what people (read attractive girls) who are cool & in receives! 

Susan Wu also reported that prior to the panel she got a virtual pizza thrown in here face by somebody she didn't even knew. And this person paid for that. How weird is that? Although virtual goods is extremely popular in Asia and a huge revenue generator the uptake in the US and Europe has been very slow. Enter Facbook. Min Kim from Nexon, added that Facebooks introduction of virtual goods is paving the way for a general acceptance of virtual goods outside of China, and in particular in the US. Judging from the popularity of virtual goods on Facebook - he just might be right.

But why on earth are people buying bikini's to their girlfriends avatar or virtual flowers that dies after two weeks?

According to Doppelganger's Tim Steven, its a real expression of affection, identity and emotion. People really feel just as proud wearing a pair of branded jeans in a virtual world as in real life walking across the school yard. It's the expression of the same thing. Moderating the panel Susan Wu, clearly stated that she would invest in a company selling virtual goods on Facebook! We have just got used to all the applications being launched on Facebook by companies hoping to gain distribution like a Trojan horse, now be prepared for the same companies getting ready to sell virtual bikinis, pizzas and why on iPhones to make some money too.

So are virtual goods the next big business model? Probably. If Habbo hotel make 90% of their revenues on virtual goods, they sell more furniture than IKEA and girls in Korea spends more money on their virtual haircut than on their real - there must be something in it...

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Nexon, vgsummit, virtual goods, virtual worlds

Outsourcing My Life # 5

Here's a new episode of outsourcing my life. New experiment: To outsource the building of a new business. Comments welcome!

Technorati Tags: outsourcing timferris 4hourworkweek

Piclens A Really Cool Way of Browsing Pictures

I have been following the guys from Cooliris for a bit more than a year now and today they came to see me and demonstrated their new product: Piclens. Piclens delivers an immersive and full-screen experience for viewing photos on the Web. By downloading a browser plugin, you can search and browser images from Google, Flickr, Yahoo, Friendster and more in full-screen theater like mode. I think it really rocks and totally changes the way images can be experienced on the Web. Download Piclens here!

Technorati Tags: piclens

Ideas for the Next Le Web 3

Here are some additional thoughts I have for the next Le Web 3.

1. Lifehacker competition
2. Virtual goods, world & economy panel/speakers
3. Bootstrapping - building the most effective and cheapest bootstrapping budget

Technorati Tags: bootstrapping, leweb3, lifehacking, Lifehacks, vgsummit2007, virtualworld