Posted by Tattletech on Jul 20, 2012 in
Apps,
Art and technology,
Design,
Entertainment,
Go Bag,
Good things,
Innovation,
Media,
New things,
Online Advertising,
PR,
Technology,
What makes good news 
Necomimi Plush Cat Ears React By ‘Reading’ Wearer’s Mind – Where would your ears be pointing to today??
Here’s how you can make your infographics suck less: Make them smarter – A small step (and not a complete solution) towards a brighter future.
Experience the Mars Rover Landing on Xbox – Got to experience that
15 ridiculous new terms that might make the dictionary - Want to know what is a Mantyhose? Check this out!
Hands-On With Organic Transit’s Pedal-Solar Electric Hybrid Vehicle, “The Elf” - The cleanest most efficient vehicle on the planet – this is so cool!!
When a Social Media Crisis Goes Viral #articready – How does a company prepare for this type of situation?
Diana
Posted by Tattletech on Jan 6, 2012 in
Stats,
Tablets,
What makes good news 
Posted by Tattletech on Aug 7, 2011 in
Augmented reality,
Conferences,
Content,
Cool stuff,
Deep thinking,
Emerging tech,
Entrepreneurs,
Hep Guest Blogger,
Media,
Sexy tech guys,
social media,
Start ups,
What makes good news,
Wise philosophical words 
Maisa Dabus, @maydbs
I say “Sweden”, you say..? Yeah, I thought so… Let me stop you right there!
Forget all about the obvious keywords popping up in your mind about this country as you knew: a lot has been happening in Sweden and you might have been missing out!
Many will have this overnight feeling, but the truth is, Sweden has been catching up, in this almost sneaky way for some time, and a city called Malmö (third biggest city in Sweden) is no longer only known as the 30-minute-ride-train to Copenhagen city.
Malmö has a bubble that is about to pop, exploding with creativity, young and fresh talent shaped as entrepreneurs, who are eager to create, deliver and change, at least a little thing or two, in an attempt to make the world better.
I’ve been spending some time at MINC – which I dare to call the hottest spot in Malmö for entrepreneurship – and to meet the cool, creative, making-it-happen kind of folks – and it’s not surprising to find so many interesting projects taking off.
I had the pleasure to hang out with the Media Evolution team this week for a couple of days. Media Evolution is in its seventh year and focuses on the future of media and discovery of new business opportunities. The Conference (formerly known as Moving Images) attracts people from film, games, web, publishing, learning, tech and music. The organizers have been preparing Media Evolution The Conference coming up on August 24 and 25th and I’m nothing but impressed with the quality of the event in every single detail: from the speakers choice to the website design. I briefly interviewed Martin Thörnkvist, in between tasks, great music and crappy coffee, about the so waited event:
Maisa: You’ve been organizing Media Evolution The Conference from scratch. Carefully selecting the best speakers, location and the details together with the Media Evolution team. What can people attending expect?
Martin Thörnkvist
Martin Thörnkvist: It’s gonna be two days with 40 speakers divided in three tracks. The speakers come from all over the world to share ideas from their technological, behavioral and entrepreneurial experiences. It’s also important to not forget that we there will be 600 participants that will discuss the future of games, TV, music, communication and other forms of media.
Maisa: This year, the conference will offer three tracks: Who’s Next?, Man & Machine and Creation. How will these topics be approached and presented to the attendees?
Martin Thörnkvist: They will all be introduced by a keynote speaker (Moeed Ahmad (Al Jazeera), Amber Case (Geoloqi) and Bill Drummond (The KLF etc)), then there will be four 45 minute sessions led by a curator that has invited two more speakers to dig deeper into the specific subject. Also, for the for the participants that feel like they already know quite much about the topics in the sessions and we will arrange round table discussions that dig even deeper into the subjects.
Maisa: As I understand, for the first time, The Conference will be completely held in English. Why this change?
Martin Thörnkvist: Two reasons. (1) we feel that there’s a lot of Swedish companies and people with great ideas who we wanted to build a platform for; and (2) we felt that our conference, after seven years, was better than many we visited in Europe or in the US and wanted to enable internationals to come join us.
Maisa: Which professionals and from which industries would you consider to make the best out of attending this conference?
Martin Thörnkvist: Most of the participants at the conference are either executives or creatives at media companies. They’re representing all kinds of media industries, everything from games and TV to web agencies and mobile.
Maisa: And last but not least, why Malmö? What is it about Malmö that is getting people curious enough to travel from all over Sweden and Europe?
Martin Thörnkvist: The city is big enough to be home of a great music and art scene and small enough to have a start up scene where you bump into people by accident who are always willing to spare an idea or share experiences. It makes people want to found media companies here. There is a lot of them for a city this size: http://www.mediaevolution.se/en/members
Ready to enjoy all the fun? It’s not too late to register, here!
See you there!
About Media Evolution The Conference – Malmö, Sweden (24-25 August)
For the seventh year we invite you to come to Malmö, Sweden, to explore the future of media and discover new business opportunities. The Conference (formerly known as Moving Images) attracts people from film, games, web, publishing, learning, tech and music.
During two days we will discuss who our future audiences are, the technology we communicate with, and how we create and consume media. These matters will be treated under the headlines: Who’s Next?, Man & Machine and Creation.
The list of speakers include Moeed Ahmad (Al Jazeera) Bill Drummond (The KLF etc), Amber Case (Geoloqi), Naveen Selvadurai (Foursquare), Yancey Strickler (Kickstarter), Björn Jeffery (Bonnier), Luke Williams (NYU / frog design) and Måns Adler (Bambuser).
The Conference puts you right in the flow of the present media evolution and points an inspiring finger into the future.
Register today -> http://mediaevolution.se/theconference/
–
Our guest blogger is a social media and blogger who hails from Brazil, but finds happiness in Sweden. Maisa Dabus and you can follow Maisa on Twitter @maydbs
Tags: Al Jazeera, Amber Case, Bill Drummond, Geoloqi, Maisa Dabus, Malmö, mans adler, Martin Thornkist, Media Evolution, Naveen Selvadurai, Sweden
Posted by Tattletech on Jun 13, 2011 in
Vision,
What makes good news Sometimes those with altruistic spirit need a bit of a nudge. ‘Twas ever thus, but recently the Internet has emerged as a powerful tool for nudging. With each success (the micro-lending site Kiva comes to mind), a blueprint is emerging on how best to provide assistance to those who wish to do well unto others.
The building and maintenance of community is strongly tied to our inclination towards kindness, and the Internet is certainly up to the task of community building. It’s probably fair to suggest that the Internet is currently obsessed with it.
Here is an idea heavy on idealism, that might have seemed a long shot five years ago, but whose time may have come: ComesAround.
ComesAround is a rescue tool that turns ordinary people into everyday heroes with the help of a smart phone app. It is a crowd sourced security solution banking on one’s willingness to reach out and help.
Basically, ComesAround takes the way people look out for each other in the ideal small community, refines it, adopts it to all communities and takes it online in smart phones. It then adds this community to traditional emergency response channels in an effort to get help to those who need it more quickly than any one channel on its own can manage.
ComesAround is a profile-based service used to alarm the official emergency center instead of calling them. It holds the user’s relevant health data and current position to be accessed instantly, and while contacting the emergency center (and through it, police, fire and health rescue workers), the app simultaneously send a help request to the 15 nearest civilian ComesAround users. These users can come and help if the official rescuers ambulance/police/firefighters are delayed. This way, civilians who are in a position to be of more immediate aid can come to rescue before professional rescuers.
ComesAround also pairs users healthcare data with instructions for civilian helpers. When helpers arrive emergency staff will guide them—the helper can film with his/her smartphone, which transmits to the emergency center, and receive instructions relevant to the user’s health situation generated from users profile. E.g. If a user suffers from a bad heart, civilian helpers will receive simple instructions in heart massage that might keep the user alive until professional rescuers appears on the scene.
ComesAround is not yet on the market, but it is an interesting idea and step forward in leveraging community for the greater good.
Posted by Tattletech on May 12, 2011 in
web design,
What makes good news 
We found one. TrueCPH out of Copenhagen. Try them out. They have an open house tomorrow, May 14 at 14:00 in their new digs. Follow them on Twitter @TrueCPH or their founders Jan @JanLigaard or Mark @enterthemark (he loves the Gap Band)
Tags: Design, Jan Ligaard, TrueCPH
Mike Martin from eCommerce Times wrote an article about President Obama’s new Start up America initiative that examined the program’s impact. And at the same time, Steve Case was out stumping in BusinessWeek about its not just “start ups” but “speed ups”.
ink Communications founder, Jennifer Hicks was referenced in the article by the reporter on her opinions on the initiative. [this is the complete Q & A which was excerpted in the article here]
eCommerce Times: Working with start up companies, what do you think of this initiative? Is it needed? Or is it a gimmick?
Jennifer Hicks: As a niche global PR agency that works with start ups around the world, we think it is a great idea. In many ways, Europe has been doing this on a country by country level with their incubator programs through the governments with small seed funds that provide both cash and resources. Silicon Valley is purely driven by the next big thing, but this program is a good way to continue to foster and grow the entrepreneurial spirit not just with start ups but with small companies with revenue that also need to push into regional or international markets.
The more global a company can be from birth the better. Finland is a great example of a country that despite its small GDP, puts a large amount funding, both private and public, into innovation programs for start ups or small companies across ICT, Clean tech, Life Sciences and eHealth.
ECT: Lots of tech giants have signed on. What might that say about it?
JH: I think that tech giants today are struggling to find their relevance with innovation. I mean to say that the standard methodology is to just acquire and absorb, but what if they have the opportunity to foster and incubate without a tie back to their own company? I think the world is global and tech giants still search for that next big thing. Microsoft invested a lot in outside vendors to bring Kinect to life and that investment for the first Kinect boxes came from a start up out of Israel that supplied the natural interface technology. So I think that in many ways, they need the agility and innovative thinking that comes out of start ups.
ECT: The Obama Administration has been criticized for being unfriendly to business, and for having too few business people in its ranks. Do you think this foundation will help raise awareness — a key public relations endeavor — in the Administration about the needs and importance of entrepreneurship?
JH: All change requires time, but I do think that any initiative a government or administration can take to back innovation will only help the country in the long term. When you think about change in terms of technology, we should be looking at investment into technology that feeds the sectors most likely to affect us in the long run – health, clean tech, services – and the application of innovation into those markets will, over time, affect citizens and how they interact with their environment, their health care providers and the businesses they interact with.
Tags: AOL, Barack Obama, ink Communications, Jennifer Hicks, Kinect, PrimeSense, Silicon Valley, Small business, Startup company, Steve Case, White House
So, the sun.
It keeps us warm, grows our crops, burns our skin, bleaches our hair and it also heats our homes, powers our computers and powers our cars. But the future is in solar and other renewable energies. We got super lucky and had access to one of THE leading solar experts around – Jan Schelling, who currently gives guidance to Hyrdo’s solar direction and despite his PhD, he actually boils the market down for us. You can follow his solar updates on Twitter @janschelling.
Tattletech: What’s the deal with solar (or PV) these days — can you describe the challenges in manufacturing solar panels and how the cost is currently being reduced due to new production methods?
JS: The challenge the PV industry is facing these days is to cut costs in line with reductions in financial support schemes around the world to maintain profitability for both the solar industry itself and investors in PV systems. Some years down the road, the solar industry will have to live without government subsidies in form of grants, investment tax credits, and feed-in tariffs and compete directly against more polluting sources of energy.
There are two main pathways to reduce cost: larger-scale manufacturing and technology innovation. The solar industry will have to do both. The three main technology routes are higher efficency of the solar cells (more power per area), faster processing (higher output per factory) and the use of less or less expensive materials. Tomorrow’s winners will have to succeed in all of these areas.
TT: Is it true that the earth’s supply of silicon suitable for solar is running out ? If so, how much is left?
JS: Silicon itself is not a scarce resource. If someone talks about a shortage of silicon, they mean the highly purified kind, which until five years ago only a handful of companies were able to produce. The same material that is used for computer chips. Silicon as a raw material is the second most abundant material in the Earth’s crust.
Think ‘sand’ which is essentially silicon oxide. There have been and will be periods during which highly purified silicon is in short supply but based on market demand, the silicon industry will increase its capacity and fill the gap in due time.
TT: Why are emerging markets ahead of the game when it comes to solar?
JS: Emerging markets are not necessarily ahead of the game, but solar provides a great opportunity. Well proven turn-key manufacturing plants for PV modules are now available. This allows emerging countries to generate their own solar panels and produce clean power. Similar to the adaption of mobile phones before major investment in land-based telephone systems where made, emerging economies can prepare their power grid for distributed rather than central generation, thus accommodating for a high penetration of intermittent renewable energy sources.
TT: What interested you first in the solar industry – I mean why did you throw your PhD brain around this ecosystem?
JS: Solar energy is the present and the future. Unlike many other sources of energy that are either here now, but gone tomorrow or have and always will be “only 20 more years of research away from commercialization” (fusion, hydrogen) — solar energy finds many great uses already today and it is the only source of energy that is abundant enough to meet the energy needs of an ever growing human population.
For someone who is impatient and gets bored easily, the solar industry is a great place to be in. Things happen and they happen fast. You don’t need to wait for a lifetime to see if your ideas and predictions were right. A year or two is normally enough. Solar energy is also a very interesting mix of technology development and global market dynamics with almost unlimited demand. And on top of all this, it feels good to help save the world.
TT: Why should corporations or municipalities turn to solar instead of wind or other renewable energy sources?
JS: I wouldn’t say corporations or municipalities should turn their back on other renewable energy sources. There are locations that are very favourable for wind, biomass, hydro, geothermal, wave or tidal energy and we should use what is available without putting too much stress on the local eco-systems. Solar energy can be used almost everywhere for power production, heating or even cooling and roofs of buildings are a great place to start. We don’t consume more land and the energy is produced where it is needed.
An investment in solar energy is a great long-term investment: While requiring a significant up-front investment, solar installations provide virtually operating and maintenance-free energy for decades and safeguard against rising energy costs.
TT: Have you seen the movie, Sunshine, where the sun burns out in the near future? What’s the ETA on that?
[note that some PhD's miss TT's misguided attempts at humour]
JS: I must admit I have not seen the movie Sunshine, but I think there are more
pressing issues than worrying about the sun burning out any time soon. The sun is a pretty big ball of gas in which hydrogen is turned into helium by nuclear fusion, thus releasing large amounts of heat. This process is gradually accelerating and will eventually increase the temperature of the Earth so much that all water will evaporate and life will cease to exist. However, it is estimated that this will not happen until 1 billion years from now and that’s pretty long-term on almost any scale.
– JH
Tags: Earth, Energy, Energy development, Hydro, Jan Schelling, Jennifer Hicks, PV, Renewable, Renewable energy, Solar, Solar power, Sunshine, Tattletech
Tough week, even thoug
h it ended in Barcelona, it was the final event of the 2010 and we give thanks. But the week did bring some insight we can’t even print here, but what we did learn we will share with you.
1. Barcelona is really pretty at Christmas time and all those annoying sweaty tourists are joyously missing.
2. When you approach a table with three VC’s and not one of them gets up to 1) offer you a chair or 2) offer you a glass of wine from the bottle they have on the table; They are just impolite and have no manners. Run away.
3. Surprisingly, it is still very much a man’s world when it comes down to old school networking and investment discussion.
4. If a man turns to you and says, don’t worry we are just talking about VC stuff, walk away, that guy is a jerk.
5. People take advantage.
6. Reality is a prison.
7. Fishnets with a knee-length black dress are a perfectly acceptable attire for a cocktail party with uptight European VCs and money men in Barcelona at La Pedrera.
8. Clean tech is sexy, ICT is a boring piece of re-hashed, re-heated slop.
9. If the bartender can’t make a Gin martini, leave.
10. If a man walks into a dinner meeting already making excuses for how tired he is, or how busy he is or how annoyed he is by his own circumstances, get sick and leave.
–JLH
Tags: Barcelona, Cocktail party, Gin Martini, ink Communications, Jennifer Hicks, La Pedrera, theinkstudio, VC
We were on the ground in Barcelona at the Eurocan European Venture Contest – essentially the final of all finals for the best start ups in Europe (including a handout of 30,000 euros in cold hard cash) in ICT, Life Sciences and Clean Tech. This isn’t a popularity contest or for the faint of heart like some of the other more pop culture VC/Tech contests out there. This was about a year-long slog through regional contests with tough judges and a bunch of hoops to jump through. Our guess is that you won’t see most of these final 25 start ups (many with revenue already) in the other pop tech scene cause they are busy making money, bootstrapping and well just can’t be bothered with yet another 20-something booze fest with the trendies. We digress.. again.. so more on that later…(Our favorites: TaxiPal, Defendec, (both from Estonia BTW) and Denmark’s Lithium Balance)
But what we actually learned will indeed change the face of venture in the Nordics forever. A new 150m Euro fund is being raised out of Finland and is backed by three heavyweights, and I mean heavy, tipping the scales. We do know that it is expected to launch in Q2 2011 and it is comprised of three men – Telco pioneers and a Finnish investment, fixer, numbers man direct from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Yuuup. You heard that right. So what does that mean for the regions government backed incubator programs and seed round VC firms? Nothing. But what does that mean for the Nordics sad shape of affairs with A round and up VC firms? A lot – the region has seen a handful of firms whither away, no new funds are being raised, several are shut down and the current “names” haven’t had an exit or IPO in ages. So this group of Finnish cowboys are taking matters into their own hands and putting Finland squarely on the map where it belongs. I’m told by one of the three founders that the fund is going to be for extreme innovation with long term strategic commercial appeal in Clean Tech, ICT and Life Sciences. – JLH
Tags: Business, Clean Tech, Clean technology, Defendec, e-Unlimited, EuroCan European Venture Contest, European Investment Bank, Finland, Fund, ICT, Lithium Balance, Nordic countries, TaxiPal, venture capital
