Piclens makes Flash slideshows look like something from the last decade

Every so often you bump into something on the web and you just think “wow, thats really cool” shortly in my case followed by “damn I’d really like to hire the developer who created that!”. This was exactly my reaction on installing Piclens fantastic add-on to Firefox.

It even runs OK on my 4 year old Pentium M 1.6 Thinkpad (which I might add despite being shortly replaced by a Thinkpad X300 is probably the most sturdy reliable piece of hardware I have ever owned – I cannot compliment it enough, no wonder IBM Thinkpads have such a reputation with serious computer users). Anyway, back to Piclens. Rather than me waffle on trying to describe it, I suggest you simply install it and try it out.

Why are mobile social networks not as popular as their online cousins?

I recently rote a post to the MomoLondon in reply to Paul Walsh from Segala’s post about Mobile Social Networks; and thought I’d share my reply here:

Rummble is a service which incorporates all aspects of a mobile social network which you mention; although to describe it as a social network would be inaccurate as that is not our core proposition.

Having starting building Europe’s first mobile social network (playtxt back in 2002) we soon realised that any big consumer “mobile” social network would have to offer something more pervasive than just location based messaging and “who’s nearby” functionality, in order to become valuable. That is unless you serve a specific vertical (e.g. Mark Curtis’ Flirtomatic which is doing very well).

Rummble focuses on making it easy to find things nearby that you will like – i.e. location based content from within your extended social network. However, by nature of knowing the users location, we also tell you which of your friends are nearby, which are going to be and also the ability to message those who are nearby you don’t know, without revealing your or their mobile number.

Dopplr is trying to build an entire service around saying whether your friends are going to be in a location or not; where as we believe this is a natural function of something more pervasive and have offered this functionality since our playtxt platform.

What is changing now, is the ubiquity of location information and user uptake of it.

We believe GPS will become the next defacto addition to mobiles (as the camera was) and in anycase there are other ways to find location without paying the operators for it . The iphone uses SkyHooks technology (wifi positioning and I believe also cellID) and there are other options out there (Googles MyLocation is another good example which 70% of the time locates me perfectly – despite the log-in disclaimer stating “This service is reliable to within 4000 metres”

Rummble supports GPS, we’ll support Yahoo’s Fire Eagle API by next week, we’ll soon have an iphone app out and we’ll support Google’s Android when it arrives. (btw, if people don’t know Tom Coates‘ FireEagle then check it out – its an extremely important step toward distributing your location reliably to services and will raise awareness of LBS outside of geekville. They recently launched Fire Eagle at E-tech but there is already a fervent and growing developer community).

You do raise a very valid point about having a decent and simple UI. This is actually our current battle and having built a bullet-proof backend its the GUI we’re going through iterations on to get right. As all developers on this list will know, its an annoying and costly process to get even your mobile XHTML looking good on multiple devices, let alone a Java app with its archaic high-level restrictions or having to write native apps for Symbian and soon Android to get something looking good.

There is a reason why its taken until the woolly world of Web 2.0 and cheap hi-res TFTs for us to get easy, attractive and people friendly web applications and interfaces on the desktop – Browsers are pretty much consistent (within reason) and broadband enables UI lovelies such as AJAX for asynchronous saves without page reloads and lots of colourful gradients (too many some might say!).

We’re a world away from all that with mobile. And there in lies the problem. We can produce a wonderful UI for the iphone -but that’s a drop in the ocean. The resources and time it takes to guarantee are fantastic mobile user experience are too high for many start-ups. And the user does expect a slick easy experience because that’s what they are used to on the broadband web.

Can you imagine the step-change even if simply all phone browsers supported AJAX; even on EDGE/GPRS the lack of need for an XHTML page load would revolutionise the user experience.

At Plugg in Brussels yesterday Rudy de Waele sited Buzzd (which won some momo awards) as a popular mobile social site – but its interface is pretty practical and for good reason.

We think Rummble provides pervasive functionality – the challenge for us is to make that usable for the majority of users who dont have an iphone or the equivalent shiny new HTC.

The cost to start-ups of providing slick UI across so many screen sizes is frustrating for us and gives users a nasty surprise; but ultimately we’ve got time for these things to change, as until MNO’s bundle flat rate data with every single tariff they offer, we wont see the hockey stick curve of mobile internet take up by Joe Bloggs what we all crave.

Person Rudy de Wael

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

My best in show for Plugg: Viewdle

Plugg has been a nice little event; as noted at the Rummble official blog, we also hosted the unofficial after party (OK, so a bunch of people in a bar with a modest float! In anycase, the startup showcase has pop-idol style remote control radio voting for attendees for its Startup show, and I think its safe to say it was popular and a resounding success. My favourite? These guys: http://www.viewdle.com/. And lastly, well done Robin for organizing the conference.

“Viewdle is a facial recognition powered digital media platform for easily indexing, searching & monetizing video assets”

The big fat UK investment “equity-gap-elephant-in-the-living-room” that nobody wants to mention

In reply to a post that someone replied to on Robert Scobles blog, saying that there was no issue with VC tech funding in Europe and that there was plenty money for startups and suggesting that it was just as easy to fund a company to build a multi-billion dollar business in Europe as the U.S. (the persons comments in italics), I recently wrote this response…

“There’s really no shortage of venture capital in Europe.”

Not true. There is no shortage of growth capital. There is no shortage of seed capital. There is a major shortage of Venture Capital for Series A with early stage companies. I dont know if you have raised capital for an early stage company in Europe, but if you have tried you’ll know there are literally only a handful of VCs who understand the tech ecosystem fully AND are prepared to invest early stage.

“If you want to build a billion dollar software tech company in Europe by using European VC money, it’s perfectly possible to do it”

I’d challenge you to give me 5 companies in this category who have grown to a billion dollar company, purely on European VC money (let alone UK), other than rolling out the usual suspects such as Skype et al. In contrast, I can probably name you 20 U.S. in the consumer internet sector, without breaking a sweat.

There is problem in Europe – its the equity gap. And its big. There are of course always exceptions to the rule, but in general U.S. seed investment is larger, and VC investment is earlier. In contrast, seed investment in the UK/Europe is smaller and VCs invest much later. That leaves a gaping hole between around £250,000 and £2m ($500k and $4m U.S.)

Everyone knows this, everyone will discuss it private, but nobody wants to spoil the party at European conferences by saying it. Which is a pity, as it needs to be said; because there is so much good stuff going on in Europe in the startup scene, thats its a disgrace that more support and more risk capital is not made available early enough.

Europeans (of which I am one) sometimes ask why there is no Yahoo, Google, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace etc etc of Europe; I believe the reason is what I have just described. Sadly, the same fate awaits us again in 4 years time when the consumer mobile internet services mature, and the same conversation will be had again.

The U.S. is now heavily investing in mobile startups and I believe has every chance to over take Europe in mobile services and take up, within 18 to 24 months. You read it here first.

The European tech sector needs to wake up to this reality and do something about it; until it does the U.S. will continue to dominate North American and European markets with web and mobile consumer brands, because they invest earlier and more aggressively, in more companies.

That was the gospel according to St. Andrew.

The Innovation and Growth Awards 2008

Our neighbors in Cambridge, Library House have taken over the running of the Price Waterhouse Coopers sponsored and lengthily named Innovation and Growth Awards this year. Speaking to John Owen (CEO Library House) he explained to me that they were keeping the format similar this year as the previous year before making changes based upon feedback and experiences.

Held at the Hilton Metropole, the food was good and the venue OK. The major disgrace was -as with so many UK conferences- there was no ubiquitous free Wifi. Talking to an unnamed source it was apparently because The Hilton Hotel wanted £10,000 ($20,000!) to provide wifi access to all conference attendees. That is truly insane in this day and age.

Moving on from that, I didn’t get to attend much of the conference as I had too many other meetings; there was a company Showcase that I caught some of – which included Mark’s Flirtomatic which is going well by all accounts. Outside of that I was invited by the very good legal chaps at Winston & Strawn to the Awards dinner (and they even treated us to an ipod Shuffle!) . After utilising a Hilton toilet to change in to my penguin outfit, the awards were certainly focused on growth -i.e. there were no startups in evidence (not in my idea of the word anyway).

However, I was on a table with some startups – Huddle and my friends at Trusted Places. I had to get a train at stupid-oclock in the morning to get to Brussels for Plugg, so I had to leave the fun early. Not too bad as I’ll be seeing the gang soon enough at their Drinktank later this month which I’m very much looking forward to! Sounds like the type of thing I would organise! [stoppress: that gives me an idea!]

The highlight of the evening was not the over-enthusiastic Lucy Alexander of Sky News who was MC, but rather the 72 years old Trevor Baylis (the inventor of the wind-up clock radio) who echoed my own frustration at Britains appalling treating of its inventors and general disregard or apparent allergy to fantastic innovation … You know, nothing significant – things like the jet engine for example, which the UK government ignored for the first 10 years of development.

Some pics of the event below, including Trevor in action. Maybe see you at Drinktank!

080318 Innovation and Growth Conference

Mobile Phone Etiquette

I’m seriously behind on my blog posting. I’ve been to 5 conferences in the last 2 weeks and am exhausted and not surprisingly behind with a stack of work. To keep the 1000’s of my blog followers <sic> content meanwhile, here is some light relief, demonstrating the way one should conduct oneself on this modern marvel of wireless technology…

Thoughts on Fire Eagle from Yahoo

In Fire Eagles inaugural TechCrunch review, the line that jumped out was the terribly misguided leader “Fire Eagle launches with near zero functionality”. Were Fire Eagle a traditional location based service, this would likely be fair; but surely TC is missing the point. FE sits at the apex of services, providing a consistent route and API so that whichever consumer service a users uses, they can consequently propagate that update (at their discretion and convenience) to all the other services. In a nutshell this can be done:

* Directly at the FE website / direct via SMS etc
* via an FE compatible app
* or via a future FE social app

The 3rd option is my concern; if only because users need to be very clear where FE primarily sits as a service. I’d even say there was a potential argument against FE producing a (e.g.Facebook) app because it should be the FE application developers who develop the apps and services which then utilise FE as the location propagator between them. This then retains value for the app developers in having their users interface directly with them. In this respect TC seemed to miss the point and failed to focus heavily enough on why IMHO FE is an important catalyst for all of us working in LBS.

This leads me to a final point, which is are there any plans to support signup of users to FE via the API (I haven’t checked so if it does apologies) in parallel and at the time of signup, e.g. when they signup to Rummble they become a member of FE by default? Likewise combining this with FE Support for OpenID would further accelerate FE’s chance of survival and acceptance as a defacto location propagation tool, and hopefully ensure users understand FE’s remit as primarily being the glue between services not a service itself (assuming of course that last point is true!

Oh, and whoever said to TC that Fire Eagle is like “Twitter with location” should be shot — its a bad comparison for all sorts of reasons, not least because Blaine & co are still struggling to keep their services reliable, but mostly because it completely undersells the effect that an industry wide propagation service for LBS may have.

If the woman sitting next to me on this flight to SXSW doesn’t stop making deafening suction sounds chewing her boiled sweet … there will be blood.

Andrew.

Fire Eagle open location API Launches (E-Tech 2008)

E-Tech, San Diego – The first major development in a while that may help the Location Based Services out there realize their true potential. Sorry the video is poor quality; and the sound may be pretty dodgy too!

SocialNetwork Apps and Widgets – Notes from the Social Graphing Patterns West 2008

These are my snippets from the sessions about developing Social Networking apps and widgets.

Rock You – Jia Shen, CTO

FB Young, and women

Newsfeeds, Notifications, Invites – most important marketing elements

Which channel does it fit in? (Rummble is probably in Content or Self Expression – clarifying this might increase our conversion rate and usage)

What are the call to actions?

Do users like it? (break viral barrier)

Tune growth (install vs uninstall)

Viral multiplier – 1users causes atleast 1 other install

Tune – track everything. Rock You built a tracking system that tracks all input and output. Track spam blocking of notifications – work out what works.

Non-user pages are now more important; better contact as people check app before install

Open Social

Do not miss this opportunity – HUGE audience

Promiscuity factor – different audience

Myspace, Orkut, Hi5 – will all be there at launch in March

Practise agile development – APIs are changing almost daily. Built quick, role out quick.

 

 

R. Tyler Balance @ Slide

Utilise the things available – FBML, Mock AJAX, FQL, Mobile, etc.

Widgets are not applications

 

Kevin Marks @ Google

Stop planning, start developing on 0.7

Hi5 and Myspace will be active within a month

If you’re an application provider, get writing

If you’re a social site, implement Shindig/Opensocial

Viral Marketing & SEO: Blogging your company or startup

There are probably many better resources out there than my blog to give you the low down on the 101 best ways to blog about your company; but some of my team recently wanted a few pointers – specifically how to find blogs relevant without wasting a lot of time. So I fired off this email to them, which I then thought other might find useful

The obvious are:

• social networks
• do a Google search (or be wild and try a difference search engine, like MS Live)
• industry forums
• industry groups on social media
• social software sites
• people you know who have blogs
• your OWN blog

Further to our conversation about spreading the word via blogs (but without spamming) One little trick I use is Google Alerts for certain keywords to draw my attention to blogs and articles that I can comment on; this serves the dual purpose of keeping me aware of the industry. Ive got quite a few keywords I keep track of using Google Alerts (e.g. mobile social networks, rummble, lbs, mobile advertising etc etc). You could just pick something that interests you.

Clearly the comments have to be relevant when you post, but you should pick a topic and become an expert in that area -

It doesn’t have to be a technical topic if you’re not a developer; it could be privacy, or safety online, or mobile marketing. You can then:

• comment with authority (so its not spam on blogs / articles)
• become an ambassador for your startup in that area
• converse with confidence at events on that subject
• evangelize your startup as best practice in that area

Doesn’t matter if there is overlap with other people; and you dont have to spend hours and hours. Even just 5 or 10 minutes each day to put a blog post or a link and if possible get it back to your startup, or atleast put it in your signature; thats 7 a week, times by however many people in your team do it (in my view, all should!) by 4 weeks a month — thats a lot of references and eyeballs……