Phone and Twitter equals Phweet - Cool new service

The Phweet alpha service launched making it possible to talk to your Twitter friends. Here's an excerpt from site "Sign-in with your Twitter name and password at http://www.phweet.com/. Select your preferred channel (Browser, SIP ID or number/Mobile Phone which will be enabled later) for hosting/accepting a Phweet. Add the Twitter username of the person you want to talk to, and send them a message (public or direct/private)." This is service by Mosoci LLC, the strategy and research group that also does the Skype Journal and is heavily involved in VoIP applications.

Give it a try, talk to me on Twitter id: tlidforss (see my profile: http://twitter.com/tlidforss)

Green Clip - Quick labeling of products with little material used

Here's another green tech company, GreenClip. GreenClip develops products for a patented labeling process and machines for attaching labeling to products using as little material as possible. GreenClip is a Gothenburg based Swedish startup company.

Contact me for a discussion about your business needs, see http://www.lidforss.com for details.

Xylophane - Green tech packaging material

The first startup post for today is looking at high-tech green tech products from a Gothenburg based Swedish startup, Xylophane. Xylophane has developed a new material acting as a barrier against oxygen, grease and aroma. The material is renewable and biodegradable and can be mixed with water, a big advantage. The material itself consists of the natural carbohydrate xylan and additives that are approved for food contact and patented. Xylan can be extracted from common agriculture by-products.

Contact me for a discussion about your business needs, see http://www.lidforss.com/ for details.

iLinc - Secure and feature rich web conferencing

Karrie Rockwell, head of Channel Sales at iLinc Communications made me recently aware of all the rich features that iLinc provides in the conferencing area. The iLinc software is a comprehensive package that covers the following areas; Webinar, eLearning, Web conferencing, Audio conferencing and customer support services. iLinc has a different angle to SaaS services too, instead of paying monthly fees, you can buy as a hosted service with maintenance fee instead of monthly subscription. You can also get installed services behind your own firewall. Either way of the two alternatives, you get the best security services around. AES encryption is used. The security aspect is a part often forgotten by iLinc's better known competitors. iLinc is a Phoenix based US company.

Register for a Free daily demo of iLinc features.

Ribbit - Mobile VoIP finally here?

There has been a lot of talk about Ribbit, "embed voice" in your web application company today with the announcement of an acquisition by BT. Ribbit is a startup company in Mountain View that has focused on building or enabling voice applications from any computing device using VoIP and Adobe Flash/Flex technologies. From a technology point of view, a key new trend with VoIP and Adobe is that allmost all devices have (or can have) the technology embedded thereby avoiding the giant hurdle of designing and getting new VoIP applications into a mobile phone. From a businss point of view, there are questions around the business model. Paying Ribbit to "go through" their softswitch gateways is together with the fact that paying in most countries for mobile data access using a mobile operators radio network is way too expensive.

It will be interesting to see though what BT will make out of this acquisition having bailed in and out of having their own mobile phone network. More to follow about this and future outlook for mobile phone operators.

Emotiv Systems - Get your mind to control your communications

Emotiv Systems is a cool San Francisco based startup with Australian roots. I think it is about time UI design gets to be innovative and creative. 30 years have passed since the early creative days at (Xerox) PARC center where graphical user interface and a computer mouse became famous developments. Emotiv is into using your own brain and mind to control how you interact with machines. This would be fun to try out writing a blog or a tweat on twitter or a new game on PS3, Wii and Xbox 360. See the "high-tech mouse" below.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/ for help in analyzing your business needs.

Food Radar Systems - Unique security method for food control

While reporting on security related Swedish startups, here's one addressing the safety of our food supply. Food Radar Systems has developed a patented non-intrusive microwave system to detect foreign elements in food. A first systems has recently gone commercial. This company is a Gothenburg based company providing a really useful product. On a quick personal note though, their logo design sucks, new marketing ideas needed.

Mindmancer - Advanced image processing for intelligent event recognition

Here's another interesting Swedish startup addressing the security space by focusing on advanced image processin systems for intelligent event recognition. Mindmancer software detects and alerts automatically security intervention when needed. The software used is also protecting the integrity better than other systems thus making it better to use.
See http://www.mindmancer.com for more information. Mindmancer is a Gothenburg based startup.

Great marketing tip for your Youtube ads

Do you still think, YouTube and other sites are for nothing but playing around or sharing music videos? Then this is great news for you and your company. Video marketing can be as efficient as a good TV commercial but you have to make it interactive and easy for a user to do something while watching your video. Bubbleply by PLYmedia is an interesting startup company making it extremely easy for you to add "bubbles" to your video and include url links. Plymedia is a Silicon Valley startup focusing on video web media services. The best way to understand how this is working is actually to look at an example. See the embedded video below.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Brunch at sea in Stockholm

InterCare Connexion - P2P communications for hospitals

InterCare is a Gothenburg based Swedish startup company using P2P communication services specifically for hospitals speeding up the processing of patients. The P2P Communicator is based on a J2EE web services platform that can easily be adapted to be plugged into existing environments. Good to see a P2P solution being used for such a good purpose, usually we have read about P2P mainly when it comes to illegal filesharing services.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Lamera - Layered materials and Stainless ultralight composites

This blogpost is not about ceramics but a new Swedish startup, Lamera that does world class ultralight composites of metals. Perfect for design flexibility and saving weight without compromising strength useful in aircraft and automobile design.

Lamera is a Gothenburg based company.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Ballistic protection going high-tech and mobile

In the dangerous world of today, this must be a "safe" startup company. Protarius develops and provides a new patented bullet-proof protection material based on ceramics. The material stops multiple bullets in the same hole and is even efficent against armored piercing explosives. Among products that can be provided are mobile safes, in-door shooting rooms protection and safe rooms in general. The guys and gals from DHS, US Dept. of Homeland Security should knock on their doors. Protarius is a Swedish startup based in Gothenburg.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Egnyte - Continuous backup and on demand file management

Recent impact from lost data reminded me of startup where a friend of mine is involved. Egnyte is a Silicon Valley based startup providing on demand file management including sharing, storing and continuous backup while you work on your documents. Not a bad idea at all since most people around the world are not managing backup properly, I admit to that myself, backup tends to become the typical to-do thing, I'll take care of that tomorrow... So, I can recommend, give Egnyte's service a try.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Twiffid - A new service to read your friends blogs

Just released, Twiffid, check out http://www.twiffid.com if you want to read in your browser what your friends blog about. The interesting new twist to this service is that it is not a blog aggregator or reader based on your own blog links or RSS subscriptions but it is auto extracting from your Twitter followers profile what they blog post.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

TouchMe - Running with the trend for touch screens

TouchMe is a Swedish startup company jumping on the bandwagon of the more and more popular conception of touch screens. Touch screens are nothing new, I think though that all the attention Apple brought to consumers and businesses with th multi-touch screen on the iPhone has created a renewed interest for "thinking" multi-touch. TouchMe as a company is addressing this with a solution for making store windows and displays live and interactive. This together with an active connection to logistics and supply chain side side of the business creates an interesting package for stores and chain stores to become more dynamic in their presentations and ads.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

TableFinder - A different twist to mobile location use and restaurants

Tablefinder provides a community approach to user for finding relevant restaurant information and a software solution for restaurants to participate allowing you as a consumer to book a table in a restaurant from your mobile phone. This service is gradually being rolled out now and is available for a number of restaurants in different places in Europe as well as in New York. Try it out, the service is in beta right now.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Secureon - Better licensing for your open source on demand software

Secureon is a Swedish startup focuing on how to better provide needed flexibility for customer to control the licensing of on demand hosted software services (SaaS). I like the fact that one key reason for the growth and popularity of SaaS is the dynamic scalability that can easily follow the need from a business as it grows or scales back. The licensing support has not followed fully that approach today which is something Secureon is addressing.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Do you want to zoom and pan your position on your mobile phone?

Idevio is a Gothenburg based startup company providing a presentaton and mapping engine, RaveGeo with very efficient compression routines. This makes it possible to provide smooth pan and zoom in real time to your mobile phone. Idevio client software is available for J2ME, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. Server side products and SDKs are also available.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Save Google Adwords dollars by using CPM instead of PPC

Here's a summer tip based on notes I took during a presentation. I hope I have correctly interpreted the information. In any case, you are welcome to comment whether something is wrong or you have better information.

Most company marketing people think about Google Adwords and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) however, using cost per thousand impressions (CPM) can be a more effective way of using Adwords in particular if you have a small marketing budget. And yes, I don't think you can expect the value of a 24 ore Swedish stamp will get you anywhere with a marketing campaign but let's look at an example.

Adwords - Site bids (CPM) vs. pay-per-click (PPC)

Two important things to remember with;

• Site bids or cost per thousand impression (CPM), your landing page is not that important
• Pay-per-click (PPC), your landing page is important, you have to design with right keywords

Example to compare cost for advertising:

You pay for 1000 impressions $0.50 per impression, if you have 10 clicks you still pay $0.50.
Continue example using $0.50 CPM average cost, with a click through rate (CTR) of 0.5% to 2-3% CTR (very good)

you can calculate the number of clicks;

1000 impressions x 0.5% = 5 clicks and with $0.50 CPM cost you will get
5/$0.50 = $0.10 cost per click

With a small marketing budget, you get more for less using site bids instead of pay-per-click advertising even though the CTR rate is lower because the conversion rate is higher.

A tip is, remove web sites with a CTR rate of less than 0.1% (not worth using Adwords sitebids on).

Contact me for sales and marketing services, http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx

Intertex - make my small business multimedia enabled

Intertex is a Swedish startup addressing the need for simplicity and internet multimedia communications. The company has despite its small size managed to design a set of products with interesting feature comabinations. DSL modem (ADSL 2+ with 23 Mbit/s downlink, 3 Mbit/s uplink) with firewall (SIP ready), router, 802.11 b/g and analog phone ports for old phones. This together with QoS, SIP switch software and VPN pass through will make your office communications be smoothly integrated using internet communications for presence, IM, video and VoIP phone services. The product is also supporting the TR-069 network management specification which lately has been accepted by the femtocell industry group as the standard to use. I think Intertex fully understands that the way to go for the future is simplicity combined with a set of key features most people are using. The biggest reason for why a lof business communications projects fail is that everything should be integrated and you get a solution too complex and too costly to manage.

See easy to compare product overview; http://www.intertex.se/upfiles/ModelOverview.pdf

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs

Voolife - Multimedia Twitter in Swedish

This is my Voolife page. Voolife is like a Swedish Twitter. Voolife has a pretty clean interface and does access to Twitter and Jaiku. Voolife does have interesting features for mobile users such as support for pictures and videoclips as well as geo-tagging of your info. This is another service that specifically is thinking about and using location based info to provide something different than Twitter.

Mikons - Make and market your own ikons with social networking

This is another example of a webservices Texas-based, startup company that is using the power of social networking for marketing purposes. Mikons is a handy little service where you can create logos, your own ikons for whatever purpose, use, market and order your own T-shirt, buttons... I created quickly a sample of a T-shirt with my own logo. Not bad for a couple of minutes work. Once you are happy with the result, you order your T-shirts. See, example below at http://www.mikons.com/people/tlidforss/ The editor is easy to use for cartoons and your own little set of icons you can use for animation.

Earth calling moon tonight

Later tonight, Texas time is the 39th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. Just remembered that coming home from my sister's place booting up the laptop. I still remember that moment in time as a kid inspiring me to get a masters degree in engineering to go after the all-inspiring unknown areas to be explored.

I guess the only comment right now is, cheers to you Neil and Buzz for making an impact on the future of mankind.

Bipbip - mobile shopping roadrunner style?

The Riga, Latvia based startup company bipbip must be preparing for the launch. I got an invitation from Lars Larsen at Bipbip to test their service awhile ago. I noticed though that I am probably not the best person testing such a service not being a very active consumer (too difficult for me to define my shopping habits). The service is based on a patented idea for location based marketing using a "wishlist" style approach matched with your shopping interests and habits. You get proposed matches on your mobile phone to decide where to get your stuff from. It will be interesting to see how this new service will work out from a consumer point of view. The service will be rolled out from Scandinavia.

Contact me for startup company qeustions, see http://www.lidforss.com

Picasa slideshow - Sweden National Day

A sunny little reminder for a rainy day in Stockholm.

Toluu - I have got my blog aggregator to do social networking

I just started using toluu's new blog aggregator that also does sharing with friends and matchmaking to help you find people to network with. See, http://www.toluu.com/tlidforss for my toluu.

I like the fast and slick UI with listing of blog post contents, useful if you have a lot of blogs you scan and read. I will have to update and check-in later with comments about the match making parts. I think there is an interesting trend going on right now in the blogosphere in parallel with the twitter like gangs. Several new companies are addressing the need for searching, sorting, scanning through blogs together with directory listing type services and social networking. In addition to Google's blogsearch, you have Swedish startups such as Twingly and Bloggkoll that togheter are addressing this area with toluu.

The nimble "Buzz" is getting louder

The Netherlands based Nimbuzz is the latest among internet communications startup companies that have started gaining a lot attraction. Nimbuzz is in addition to supporting already popular IM/chat services such as Skype, Windows Live, Yahoo, Google GTalk... also like Rebtel focusing on cheap and easy to user international mobile phone calls. Nimbuzz has their gateway locations around the world in places such as New York, Amsterdam and Hongkong supporting around 35 countries. What I find in particular interesting is that Nimbuzz is the first company actually addressing the vast majority of already available mobile phones that can download and run a Java application. This is a first step in a phased opportunity to finally move towards mobile VoIP thereby once and for all killing the old telecom operator approach to voice calling and in particular billing. More about to follow in a separate article.

Today, the drawback is related to cheaper or too old mobile phones supporting Java J2ME apps using MIDP v1 and operator preloaded phones you cannot easily change.

Since Nimbuzz is working on Java application that is using VoIP, it will be interesting to see what is in store for us users coming from competitors.

The Zen of Creativity in the high-tech world

When you get stuck not knowing what to do, it's funny that all the high-tech tools in the world do not beat up the old fashioned way of a notepad, a pen and a cup of coffee outdoors in the sunshine...

Telecom Benelux 2008 Business Event Sep 16-18

The Swedish Trade Council is arranging an interest business opportunity for companies interested in getting to know hot products and services from telecom and communications software companies. The event will be held in association with Ericsson and key Telecom Operators in Belgium and the Netherlands. If you are going to be available in the Hague, Rijen and Brussels area at this time, I would recommend you check this event out. See agenda details at:
http://www.swedishtrade.se/tbo2008/?objectID=9169

The companies presenting will be;



Appello is a small company that has been around for 5 years, based in Gothenburg with very interested knowledge going across GPS information, navigation, mapping and end user devices in particular mobile ones used in autos. The company has also launched white label solutions for service providers. Appello is in Gothenburg, Sweden.


Arkivator is not a new startup company, started already in 1940 but is a high-tech focused complete solutions supplier of development through manufacturing including test and assembly. Arkivator has a focus on wireless peer to peer radiolinksystems. Arkivator is in Falkoping, Sweden.

Aurora Innovation is with its TeleQ contact call center system, offering a smarter solution with callback times given instead of just having people waiting. Aurora is also offering the CallControl mobile solution, se older post on this blogsite. Aurora is a startup company in Uppsala, Sweden.

Dub Tools is a small startup focusing on mobile media content delivery services. Dub Tools is in Stockholm, Sweden.








Emerson Network Power is an established company. The power energy systems area in Sweden provides smart energy solutions for communications service providers. They are in Stockholm, Sweden.





Intertex is an established company in Sundbyberg (just outside Stockholm), Sweden focusing on next generation broadband access products such as SIP and IMS compliant feature rich ADSL modems and personal gateway products.

IS Tools is an established company in Stockholm providing complete ECM solutions.

Mobile Arts is a Stockholm based company providing SMSC as well as very interesting voice SMS service solutions.




PacketFront is a Stockholm based company providing complete solutions for FTTH services.




Procera Networks is a Silicon Valley headquartered company with R&D head office in Varberg, Sweden providing state of the art high-end DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) products for the demands on multi-media IP networks.

SmartTrust is a Stockholm, Sweden based company known for many years for their intelligent SIM card and mobile device management products and solutions.








TeamQuest is a Gothenburg, Sweden based company specializing in capacity management software in the IT services optimization area very useful for any telecom operator facing mixed and dynamic traffic demands from their users.

TelecomCity is a business services organization in Karlskrona, Sweden. TelecomCity is going to showcase mobile business services solutions.



Transmode is optical network solutions company in Stockholm, Sweden with products based on WDM technologies.

Webconnect Europe is a Stockholm, Sweden based company known for radio analyzing tools used in particular in 3G networks.



Webforum Europe is a Solna, Sweden based company focusing on easy to use ECM tools and services as hosted services including collaboration.

Twingly - Blog search and linkback service

Twingly is a cool startup company providing a great combination of searching for blogs and linkback service for blog post comments of other sites' posts. Twingly is also working on a "visual blog search" tool called Blogoscope.

To use the linkback service, you just do the following;

1. Write a post in your blog and link to the article on another site.

2. Ping your blog at Twingly http://www.twingly.com/ping

3. Done.

The link to your post will be shown under the article you wrote about. Note: This requires the website or blog you are commenting on to have the needed Widget and Javascript in the html page template. Vice-versa is of course needed if you want to provide the same service to your own linkbacks. See http://blog.twingly.com for further details.

A 75 year old tip - Make a deal before you do the deal

Here's an interesting story from an old Swedish magazine from 1933 about Kronblom and his adventures. For those of you that do not read Swedish, Kronblom gets out of bed, goes to the grocery dealer in town, negotiates best price for the skin of a fox, closes the deal and then leaves with the comment, "Now I just have to go out and shoot a fox". A true entrepreneur!

Have a great Sunday, /Thomas

PS. Click on image to read the story