Net

The9 Invests in AuroraFeint

 The Chinese Gaming company The9 has invested in AuroraFeint - makers of the OpenFeint platform to bring OpenFeint to China & Android. Very exciting times for Jason & the team. I first got involved with OpenFeint as and advisor last year after I left Facebook & have been very impressed by the speed Jason Citron & his team have executed on their vision under the guiding star of Peter Relan, founder of YouWeb who incubated the company. OpenFeint has over 2,200 live games for the iPhone, and will soon have publishers such as Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, Hudson Soft and others onboard. With both Chinese and Japanese investors onboard (the Japanese gaming giant DeNA invested in the company last year) AuroraFeint is set up for a strong future presence  in Asia. Very excited to see how the how the story unfolds. 

Disclaimer: I'm a former advisor & a small shareholder in AuroraFeint.

CrowdStar's Happy Aquarium & Happy Pets

Big congratulations to the CrowdStar team on the successfully launch of Happy Pets, yet another great social game on Facebook. In just a week Happy Pets went from 0 to 890,000 Monthly active users. Amazing.  Following Happy Aquarium's tremendous success not long ago, this is just shows that it wasn't a one off only. Keep a close eye on these guys - they are going to go far. Social gaming have just started to take off, and it is definitely not the-winner-takes-it-all market. There is plenty of room for new companies in this space. The key thing for all social games though, is to convert active users to active paying users. My advice: focus on optimizing mobile payments to a more salient place in the UI. 

Disclaimer: I sit on CrowdStar's advisory board.

A Conversation About Le Web 3

Here is Loic's answer to my suggestions on Le Web 3. This is getting more and more interesting. I like this format. Don't forget to swing by the new group leweb3 group on Facebook to leave your comments and suggestions.

Technorati Tags: leweb3, leweb3.1, loiclemeur.facebook

Outsourcing My Life Part 3 - The RunCast

Here's the 3rd episode of Outsourcing my life. This time in RunCast formate. Very shaky but not stirred. Unfortunately the battery died halfway through in parallel with me reaching 90% of my heart capacity. Now I'm off to Rhodes and the greek island called Symi to focus and get things done. I'll be back with a new episode (GreekCast ?) later this week and some more thoughts about global entrepreneurship & ideas for Loic's Le Web 3.1.

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, loiclemeur, netaneljacobsson, runcast, leweb3

Outsourcing My Life

Inspired by Timothy Ferris book "The 4 Hour Workweek" and AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, I have just taken the first steps to outsource my life. Being a Swede/Israeli living in Israel, running the business of Maxthon, based in China while spending lots of time on the road especially in the US and running Mashup Media can be quite a challenge. 

So when I heard Timothy Ferriss speak at the Web 2.0 Expo last month I got inspired. I have always been of the opinion that you don't need to run around, answer all your emails and talk on the phone all the time to get real results. I never picked up the book, but today I stumbled upon Timothy's website and read the account of how AJ Jacobs outsourced his life.

This is music to my ears! I just know that this is the right thing todo. I immediately contacted Brickwork
, and now I am sitting here all excited waiting to take the first step in oursourcing my life. I already work on a daily basis with China, US and Europe, so why not add India to the sauce as well? I've always loved a good curry.

I will let you know how it goes as the story develops..

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

Tao Te Ching

Let the story begin..

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, Timothy Ferris, 4 hour week, AJ Jacobs, Esquire, Brickwork, Maxthon, Mashupmedia, Lifehacks, India

Create Your Own Subtitles To Any Video with SubPly

The guys at Plymedia just launched SubPLY. SubPLY allows anyone to create and add subtitles to any video from any site enabled by PLYmedia and post it anywhere they wish.  Disclaimer: I site on Plymedia's Advisory Board.

Technorati Tags: Plymedia, Subply, Video, Subtitles, YouTube, Metacafe,

Maxthon Fans: Frederik Hermann from Jajah

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!

Web 2.0 Expo Next Week

I am going to be at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF all next week and I am going to bring with me two developers from Maxthon as well to the show. My schedule is jammed packed but if you would like to meet up April 15-22 at the show or on Thursday/Friday in Palo Alto - please let me know.

Technorati Tags: Web2.0expo, Maxthon

Matzah: What's Up With It?

Passover is getting closer and it's once more time to get ready for that Matzah. Here is a great and funny video on Matzah: What's Up With It? Or what about this one? Rapping the sea where Jono and G-fish sing a song of praise, using the timeless Jewish folk tradition of Rap Music (about the Exodus), or this one: The school of Gefilte fish?

Tags: Matzah Tags: Passover Tags: Pesach Tags: Jewish Tags: Chabad Tags: Gefilte Fish Tags: Torah Tags: Judaism Tags: Video Tags: Media

Guy Kawasaki "The Art of the Start"

Here's a great video with Guy Kawasaki talking about The Art of the Start at TiECon, May 13, 2006. I read his book and I can warmly recommend it for any entrepreneur or entrepreneurs to be. Filled with a lot of truths, killing many illusions (probably based on learning a lot from his mistakes) about how to run a start-up. I met with Guy 1 1/2 year ago when he recently got into blogging. I remember how he told me that he really invests a lot of time and thinking behind every blogpost that he writes. You can definately see that. He loves the "10" points format which is reflected in many of his posts. This video is a nice summary of the book.