Net

Register for Le Web 3'07 Fourth Edition


 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 & Locate Three Strangers Contest

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

IKEA Hacker - Genius!

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

Second Life & Anthropology

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

The Third Generation Web Coming

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:

• Ubiquitous Connectivity - Broadband adoption, Mobile Internet Access & Mobile Devices
• Network Computing - Software-as-a-service business models, Web services interoperability, Distributed Computing (P2P, grid computing, hosted "cloud computing" server farms like Amazon S3)
• Open Technologies -  Open API's & protocols, Open Data Formats, Open-source software platforms, Open Data (Creative Commons, Open Data Licence, et.)
• Open Identity - OpenID, Open Reputation, Portable Identity & personal data (the ability to port your user account & search history from one service to another)
• The Intelligent Web - Semantic Web Technologies (RDF, OWL, SWRL, SPARQL, Semantic Application Platforms etc)
• Distributed databases - (wide-area distributed database interoperability enabled by Semantic Web technologies)
• Intelligent Applications - (natural language processing, machine learning, machine reasoning, autonomous agents)

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's Lessons Learned during the First Bubble

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

On Media NYC Wrap Up

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:

• Peter Hirshberg, Technorati's Chairman did a great and entertaining presentation.

• Can Brands Get Away with "Buzz Marketing" in the Blogosphere? With Jeff Jarvis, David Weinberger, Rich Murray, Gordon Gould and  Barry Reicherter. Funny enough the only thing I can remember from this panel was Davids' attach on Pay Per Post, and the word "lubricant..".

• Workshop: Venture and Angel Financing for Private Companies with Sam Angus, partner Fenwick & West, Ron Conway, Angel Investors, Garry Kitchen, CEO Skyworks,  Howard Morgan Idealab (very funny guy) and Mark Stevens, partner, Fenwick & West. It was the first time I attended a workshop at a conference and really felt that I learned something new and useful. Compared to other lame workshops (especially the one on how to become a power blogger - most bloggers are better Online than Offline..). This workshop was well prepared, provided the audience with a great hands on advice, very helpful hand outs out and really offered some very valueable advice to start ups about raising angel/seed or venture capital and what a kind of template for how a well balanced deal should look like.. What I didn't understand is why Mark Steves several times ditched CRV's Quick  Start program. Do I sense some kind of fear of loosing fees...?

  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.

Technorati Tags: Alwayson, Media, OnMedia

Pandora, Last.fm & Maxthon

We just released some great music plugins at Maxthon. One for Pandora and one for Last.fm . Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Last.fm, Maxthon, Pandora, Music, Radio

Off to New York & San Francisco

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 Excuse To Be Ignorant Anymore With Open Culture

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