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July 09, 2006

Joined FON community - finally!

I just signed up as # 68,163 to Martin Varsavsky's FON community. I waited for a long time as the router seemed with EUR 25.00 plus transportation /VAT not that cheap. With the new pricing of EUR 5.00 plus transportation / VAT - thanks to FON's incredible EUR 18m funding - also I am convinced. Not that I think that the business model will work out to be extremely succesful because for this the FON hotspots so far, such as the 572 in Switzerland, are by far too decentralized - only a few being in city centers -, not easily to detect without a Wifi connection and worldwide too many own city Wifi projects are on their way - without FON. I am still waiting for the big deals with ISPs here in Europe, such as T-Mobile or Swisscom - after FON already announced some in France, Spain and Sweden.

However, I am excited how FON will develop and if they will reach their goal of 1m active hotspots end of 2007. Hopefully, these get more traffic than ours at the office and enough Bills will come up to make the business model work.

Technorati tags: FON Martin Varsavsky Wifi

Sven | 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 08, 2006

Switching incrementally to Zooomr from Flickr

I started online photo sharing in 2001 with Pixum, a German photo service site, after I bought my first digital camera. Missing more contemporary features beyond albums and unlimited storage - as long as you have a look at every album once in a while -, I switched to Flickr mid of last year. From the beginning I tried to avoid the pro account, and thus struggled with limited monthly upload capacity (20 MB) and many other limitations. Of these I did not bore in mind that only the 200 most recent ones are shown in the photostream - hope they do not delete the others after 90 days of inactivity.

However, after recognizing this today I took the decision to look at Zooomr a bit closer again. The team around the 18-year-old Kristopher Tate took the basic ideas of Flickr and all its clones further with many enhancements, such as geotagging, trackbacks for single pictures, etc. They combined these in a very easy to use multilingual user interface. So, my decision to move over to Zooomr was even made easier after having read that they give all bloggers a free pro account.

But beyond all the praise for Zooomr, the site still needs some development when it comes to more user-friendly upload possibilities beside the web-based one, easier to understand geotagging - I still have to figure it out for my pics (too bad it is not yet integrated in Plazes ;) -, and albums. Therefore, I am really looking forward to Zooomr 2.0.

Find below a picture two weeks ago, when my university colleagues Harald and Thomas visited me here in St.Gallen.

Technorati tags: Flickr, Zooomr, web2.0

Sven | 06:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 05, 2006

Plazes Relaunch - enroll now!

Technorati tags: Plazes, MoSoSo, web2.0

Sven | 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 28, 2006

Update on the German Web 2.0 scene

Over a month ago since my last post about German web 2.0 applications a bunch of new ones popped up. Lots of them deal with photo and video sharing and try to find the best way to imitate the success of YouTube and others on the German market and beyond. The same applies to social networking platforms addressing students from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, i.e. at the moment Studiverzeichnis and Studylounge. The German weekly newspaper ZEIT has a current insight on this. However, find below in alphabetical order the new ones - and older ones I missed in the last post.

dialo.de - yellow book with local reviews
DVDSwop - exchange platform for DVDs, etc.
Imagelooop - kind of Slide clone
MyVideo - video sharing platform
lovento - event platform with social networking component
Studylounge - another Facebook imitation
teamslide presentation sharing tool, also featured on TechCrunch
Vloop - video sharing platform (alpha)
zeec - photo and video sharing platofrm

Technorati tags: web2.0

Sven | 06:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 02, 2006

Web 2.0 applications in Germany

In addition to Valerie Thompson's list of web 2.0 services in Germany (see below) with input from Klaas Bollhoefer, I have compiled a few other projects and companies, which have some characterizing elements in their applications. Of course, one could also add all the blog hosting services around, such as blogg.de or myblog.de, but all these would make the list a bit too lengthy.

Though I rather see the term "web 2.0" more as a marketing term, it is interesting to see that many new ideas evolve also in Germany trying to involve the user more. However, what is obvious when looking at the list below is that still too many just imitate successful ones from overseas instead of being innovative. Nevertheless, I am excited about other web 2.0 applications to come from Germany and there are definitely much more to come...

25 peeps - blog promoter
Amiamo - kind of 43 Things
aufeinander.de - flirt and dating service
BlogSearch - kind of Technorati clone
Dilemma5000 - decision making tool
Favoor - personal homepage
Fleavent - event calender with social elements (alpha)
Hitflip - exchange platform for DVDs, audio books, etc.
Magnoto - kind of personal homepage
MeinProf.de - rating professors
oneview 2.0 - social bookmarking (alpha)
Ormigo - performance marketing with social elements
Pageflakes - personal homepage
Spreadshirt - customized clothes, etc.
studivz.net - Facebook clone
WatchMeDoing - video sharing site (alpha)
WebMobs - chat on websites with avatars

[Update from April 11, 2006]
Just a few other services that appeared recently on my screen - I will add new ones here from time to time:

paguna - hotel booking on AJAX
sevenload - the German YouTube with photo albums
seconds11 - podcasting portal

List of Web 2.0 services in Germany [as posted on alarm:clock euro]
Audioclipping Search AV
Bagook News Aggregator
DerWunsch Share a wish.
Dopcast Podcast portal
Ehrensenf The German Rocketboom.
Eventicus Create & share events.
Icio Social bookmarking.
Kulando Blog service.
Largest Online Stadium Place your fan.
Laufrausch Share walks/runs
Leze Online Bookmarking.
Loudblog Manage & create your podcasts in a cms
Lycos IQ Expert Search.
Mabber Unified IM solution, web based.
Miaplaza Community building platform.
Mister Wong Online bookmarking.
Musiclens Music recommendation.
Openbc Business network.
Paguna Hotel reservation on one ajax page.
Photocase Manage & share photos.
Plazes Claim and share your locations.
Qype Find & recommend addresses and services. (alpha)
Read.io Podcast your blog.
Reliwa Manage & share your books.
Romso News search.
Sofortpreis Mobile shopping assistant
Sozeug Buy & sell handmade stuff
Supreme Auction A German Ebay service.
Swabba Online exchange
Taggle Online bookmarking
TVfeed Get TV as RSS.
Typolis Blog platform
Webmontag Web 2.0 meetings using a wik
Wikimatrix Wiki comparison.
Yigg The German digg.com

Technorati tags: web2.0

Sven | 06:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (5)

April 01, 2006

Designklicks

Just discovered Designklicks - a wonderful playground to discover extraordinary photos and other pieces of art from mostly unknown artists (at least to me...).Like the Red Lady above portraying a Chinese model in Shanghai from Irmy Wolz. The tagged photos are rated by users as well as experts, and can also be selected with a tag cloud - really smooth navigation.

Sven | 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

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Sven Eppert | | 2005-12-18