FlorianDargel

More European VCs blogging

Slowly the VCs are coming out of the woodwork, funny considering that they are all meant to be early adopters. The lastest I discovered is May Bleyleben, with the added benefit that he can write well, having been a journalist/researcher in an earlier life.

Link: Technofile

Going to Reboot8

Yea. my favorite tech (un) conference Just surfing around the participants I notice this beautiful google maps mashup:

DaylightMap Beta

I'm looking forward to discovering more cool stuff over the next few days than during the past few months taken together.


Technorati Tags: reboot8 copenhagen

Innovation in telephony

In the category "duh, why didn't I think of that!" is the Rebtel service, live from today. Rebtel enables you to give your friends abroad a local number in their own country to ring you at local rates and

"call anyone in the world using a local number and only pay your carrier for the local call, plus a small per-minute fee to Rebtel to cover the interconnect charges for the international part of the call."

Moreover, you can also use a kind of callback service that is even cheaper.

I'm looking forward to using that service, combined with free minuted/mobile flat rates this could be really cool. Btw, the team behind it has a pretty impressive trackrecord, and the company is completely self-financed, nor do they hope to raise any money externally.

Rebtel: Local numbers, global friends


Technorati Tags: innovateeurope06 rebtel

buy aapl, msft, short goog

Quote of note from the Web2.0 panel yesterday, Mike Arrington argued that in this Web2.0 world the desktop is actually become more important, not less:

"buy aapl, msft, short goog"



Technorati Tags: innovateeurope06, techcrunch

Cool innovate products

I never managed to blog much about Les Blogs or reboot, because I didn't do it at the time, so instead I'll try to do some more impressionistic notes as and when I see stuff.

Something cool I saw over lunch was mobease - effectively a command line for your symbian/pocketpc mobile. I used active words for a while but found it too clunky for me; however the productivity gains were palpable. On a mobile this is even more needed, and I look forward to the release of the first version. Go Florent!

Wee-Me $15m B-Round

just casually mentioned by Judy Gibbons of Accel, presenting the Wee-Me company at innovate06 europe.

Glasgow based, the company's mission is to provide a virtual identity for people. Apparently it's the fastest growing virtual identity company in the world. Of course you can splash on virtual extras not available as standard, like in habbo hotel or Second Life.

I have no doubt this sort of service will become more important in the future, combined with presence management and generally managing your online identity.

WeeWorld - Home of the WeeMee

Technorati Tags: weeme innovateeurope06

innovate!europe

Just arrived, a little late thanks to the trains. My first time in Spain, with my rusty spanish from two seasons snowboarding in Chile and Argentina coming in more than handy. At least people say they speak English, even if they then don't understand a word ;-). Here's hoping the conference wifi keeps working.


Technorati Tags: innovateeurope06

Gdansk Trip

Spent this weekend in , or 'Danzig' to Germans. A present to my father, who was born there. Interesting city, heavily destroyed in WWII and parts of it were then painstakingly rebuilt after the war, which is surprisingly convincing (Some buildings in Munich are not as successful in that). Customs was scary, the officers completely unflinching in the polish way. In fact the strongest impressions are a curious mix of new style entrepreneurial activity and communist hangovers (if you enter a shop it's often the sign for assistants "head down, customer approaching" so cruising the shops was rather relaxed.  At the same time, somebody sold us a 'cruise' on his private yacht around the harbour, complete with sailor's shanties, which suited us better than the longer trips with bigger, official boats. Mindful of the history, it is perhaps not surprising that people (admit anyway) to speaking more English rather than German.

Very helpful was the local travelguide, www.inyourpocket.com which appears to be domiciled in Poland, but operates across CEE and even branched out into Germany in anticipation of the World Cup (who doesn't?). It has everything you would expect from a proper travel guide, but is free (ie adsupported), focussed on a given city/region and much more current and with fresh writing. I didn't have time to buy a guide at the airport (none available) and now I'm glad I didn't. Interesting business that, I didn't think you could do something new in travel guides.


Technorati Tags: gdansk danzig