Happiness at LeWeb ‘09

LeWeb wrapped up in Paris a few days ago and turned out to be a star-studded event with some great discussions and panels covering a variety of issues. The theme was supposively  “real time” but in reality the topics were all over the place, ranging from: mobile apps to music to funding to the european tech scene… oh, and Violet Blue presented something about crazy future-porn-robot-sex.

Although, several of the panels were a bit of a bore and have received quite a bit of slack for lacking substance, there were a couple stand-out presentations. One of which included Tony Hsieh’s (CEO, Zappos.com) presentation about Delivering Happiness and the importance happiness has on the culture and overall success of his company.

You can see the full presentation below:

Grooveshark Gets New Redesign, Improved Features

Grooveshark just made a major update to their site and I’m loving everything about it. The user interface was always a strong point but they actually managed to improve it while maintaining their slick look and feel, and include some new functionalities.

The site now claims over 1 million registered users and continues to grow as they give Spotify a run for their money. Of course like many other music sites, they have a big challenges to deal with including licensing issues and the ability to effectively monetize their userbase (which pales in comparison).

If you still haven’t used it, Grooveshark is a simple music search engine that scans a repository of over seven million songs online and lets you listen for free. You can search by song name, artist, album or playlists that have been created by users.

Some of the new features that stand out:

• Revamped UI with a simple list view and very accessible call-to-actions
• Slide bar in music player
• Sidebar navigation (was much needed)
• Custom themes and layouts

Web Technology Trends for 2009

Still trying to get a grip on web 2.0?… sorry, too late – it’s time to move on to bigger and better things. Richard MacManus recently wrote a post about some of the emerging web trends we are seeing in 2009.

Some of the noticeable trends he cites are greater focus on web services (90% of twitter activity happens through its API!), real-time, open data, structured data (semantic web) and personalization.

Below is a quick introductory presentation he put together on this topic.

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Play.fm: for those who love DJ sets

There´s nothing new about online DJ sets but the guys at play.fm have pulled off a killer online music site.  Robin Wauters recently wrote a post about the reemergence of the site and, yes, it does impress. Based out of Vienna, Austria (my birthplace!), play.fm aims to be a hub for DJ studio mixes, radio sessions and event recordings and currently includes a database of more than 12,000 recordings.

I like this site for a few reasons, most notably:

1) It´s free – you can stream hours of music without interruption at no cost (woot!)

2) Beautiful interface – spanking clean interface  and super easy to navigate around the site. the player is just as lovely.

3) Track IDs – ever hear a great track during a set and have no idea what the hell it is? now you can try and find out with the help of community members.

4) Buy stuff you like – I love it when there is a clear business model that provides real value for me: I find a track I like. I purchase it. I own it. [...]

Getting Nice with Beatboxing at Google London

This video has been getting heavy circulation… but for good reason. Nathan “Flutebox” Lee and Beardyman please the Google employees with their incredible beatboxing skills.

Might take some time to load, but well worth watching.

YouTube

Innovate! Europe 2009 – Round Up

I had a chance to stop by Innovate! Europe in Zaragoza yesterday for the presentations of the top 10 Master Class Finalists.  Lots of solid projects presented with varying focus… everything from web-based “passion” games to enterprise email and collaboration solutions.

Congratulations to all of the participants, in particular, NomaDesk who was recognized as the 2009 winner.

The 10 finalists included:

eBox – platform for managing corporate networks

Proactum – open source enterprise applications

Owlient – online passion games

JobiJoba - job search engine

Nomadesk - virtual file server

Climpact – climate business intelligence solution

Local Data Company – detailed retail data

Calinda – email collaboration and project management software

Arimaz – interactive toy applications

MyPrinting – personalized photo products

Europe's Top Startups: Startup 2.0 Finalists Announced

Europe’s top 11 10 internet startups have been announced for the 2009 Startup 2.0 event.  The finalists will present their projects on Friday April 24 in Bilbao, as part of the Nonick conference.  The line-up looks something like this:

CampusMovil, a home desktop

Colnect, a collectors community

Genoom, a family tree network

Gli Affidabili , a yelp-like services 2.0 guide

HelloTxt, a social networks and microblogging aggregator

Koinup, a virtual world

Mobnotes, a geo-aware social utility

SocialWhale, a twitter utility

Trourist, a social network for travellers

Twidox, a document finding and sharing website

Yoolinkpro, a SaaS collaborative intelligence solution for companies

Sikbox – Slick Search App for Your Blog

Looking for a live search tool for your blog ? Then check out Sikbox, a light-weight and impressive search application that can be easily embedded to a site with a simple piece of code.  We added it to our celebrity site and the results are displayed fairly fast in a very nice, slick user interface. The relevancy of the results is still not perfect, but overall it´s pretty decent.

There is also support for image search and, best of all, it´s free and customizable.

Media Usage According to eMarketer

eMarketer posted and interesting report today about media usage by US internet users.  Undoubtedly, traditional media is languishing (tv networks, local news and newspapers) and 2009 is poised to hurt even more.

According to the report, the two shiny stars among internet media are social networks (up 9% from 2006) and blogs (up 11% from 2006).  Surprisingly, search engine usage has slightly dropped. Another interesting piece that caught my eye is that mobile media consumption in the U.S.  has hardly changed and still remains very low  at 6%, bottom of the list.

With all the great things happening in the mobile world (browsing + apps + iphone + etc, etc.) it’s hard to believe mobile is so slow to catch on in the U.S., but proves it’s still hard nut to crack.

U.S. Media Trends 2006-2008

Celebrity News Aggregator – The Launch of SoSoJuicy.com

Yahoo! just announced the Top Ten Searches of 2008 and it looks like the celebrities still have a mighty presence in the world of search. The results for this year look something like this:

1. Britney Spears (number one again, seven of the last eight years)

2. WWE

3. Barack Obama

4. Miley Cyrus

5. RuneScape

6. Jessica Alba

7. Naruto

8. Lindsay Lohan

9. Angelina Jolie

10. American Idol

Coincidentally, this week was the launch of our new celebrity news aggregator site called SoSoJuicy.com. This was a fun little project that we created to simply find out what are the top news headlines in the celebrity and entertainment world.

I won´t get into all the details, have a look for yourself. =)