Meet the webspider - Happy Halloween from Stockholm

A good friend of mine in Silicon Valley sent me a cool "Happy Halloween" card, with the "webspider" meets internet.


To all of you, Happy Halloween from Thomas (aka "Tom")!

Scour your searches and get Visa gift card vouchers

Scour is the new shape of the old aftervote search engine company launched in 2007. Scour lets you search by aggregating your serach engines (Google, Yahoo, Live) and adds community and social networking power to their service. I guess the driver to attract new users is the reward system collecting points per search plus 25% from your friends. The service works nicely, noticed though that you have to live within any of these countries; Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, U.S., and U.K. If you the reward system is pretty useless.

If you want to play with you are welcome to use the following invite link:

http://scour.com/invite/tlidforss

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

Meet me at Omniture Digital Marketing Event in Stockholm Oct 28

I am going to attend this Omniture event about digital marketing in Stockholm, Oct 28. Please feel free to contact me to meet for a chat during this event.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International to meet for this event.

Whitelines - Make my lines disappear, interesting new cleantech paper product for your writing needs

If you have ever got irritated about the black (usually) lines on a writing pad stand out too much and distract your design, here's the perfect solution from you. Buy Whitelines paper products available in all sizes and shapes. Whitelines is a Swedish, Stockholm based startup company where Roland Elander (the founder) and his team have come up with a great product. The company has recently got 6M SEK in VC funding and is looking for introduction opportunities in other countries such as USA.

Whitelines paper products are environmentally friendly produced and include carbon footprint information. The paper products have white lines on a light grey background which makes the lines "go away" when you scan, copy or fax the documents. See the flash intro on the homepage.

Congratulations to Roland and his team for the success so far.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

Meet me in Stockholm at the StartMeUp - A conference for how to start your own company (site info in Swedish)

The "Starta eget" conference is taking place at the Stockholm fair ("Stockholms Massan") Oct. 21-23. I am going to attend and would be happy to meet at this event.

Contact me at Thomas Lidforss International to make an appointment to meet at this event

Touch UIs for your next phone?

In addition to previous post about the new update to Nokia S60 released in the new Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, here comes select videos for Samsung Omnia, LG KC910 (Renoir), BlackBerry Storm, SonyEricsson Xperia X1 and Google G1 demoing the UIs of these devices. When it comes to evaluating the user interfaces you have to consider different aspects such as; formfactor, input and output methods, touch and feel, visual impression and convenience.

Formfactor: All the models have pretty much the same typical "candy bar" shape, some are wider and two (G1 and X1) are sliders with "real" keyboards. If a device is too wide, not good for one-handed operation and the BlackBerry Storm may be in that category as are the G1 and X1 when you use the keyboard. I prefer the soft keyboards (even if they take away screenspace), you get a lighter phone, more flexibility (vertical and horizontal keyboards).

I/O: Easy to use with one hand I think is again to prefer vs. two-handed friendly slider models. Some interesting differences, "roller" mouse on G1, "optical" mouse on Omnia vs. touch and touch and hold only. Easy to find connectors, micro SD style memory slots and rich Bluetooth profile support including audio/video controls also important.

Touch and Feel: Touch with a tactile feedback function is usually better than "sound" feedback, I prefer features you can operate without somebody noticing, silent operating mode. Interesting to see, screen "vibrate" key clicks on Nokia 5800 vs. screen "mechanical" key click feedback on BlackBerry Storm. On the overall feel feedback is also the need to easily find and operate the controls on the device.

Visual impression: Since you deal with small devices, screen resolution, color richness and possibility to see things in daylight are all important. Higher resolution and more colors preferred.

For global travelers, BlackBerry Storm stands out as the only phone that will work in USA on a CDMA (Verizon Wireless) whereas all the others will work on AT&T with the exception of Google G1 which will also work on T-Mobile in USA (T-Mobile is using 1700 Mhz which only G1 supports so far).

Samsung demo:

LG 910 demo:

BlackBerry Storm demo:

SonyEricsson Xperia X1 demo:

Google G1 demo:

Bloglovin for all you blog loving readers

The Swedish startup Bloggkoll.com who provides the easy to use with a nice clean interface blog reader with subscription and search based on among others things most subscribed blogs has launched the English version of their service called Bloglovin'. Check out this service and register at http://www.bloglovin.com/

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

Gadget review of Touchware mobile phones

Now when the new generation touch mobile phones are all out (not everywhere yet) but it is time to take a quick look. One Apple OS, one Symbian (Nokia), one Android (Google/HTC G1) and three Windows Mobile (LG, Samsung and SonyEricsson). Two with "slider style" qwerty keyboards (G1 and SonyEricsson X1) the rest with touch qwerty keyboard. The pros-cons of this is real qwerty ones are easier for traditional computer style functions such as browse and type but I personally favor the touch on a device that you use most of the time as multi-media mobile device different than a laptop plus you avoid the additional weight from the mechanical slider keyboard. The G1 and X1 are about 40 grams heavier than the rest, with an exception for Samsung who has a beefed up battery as standard. Some noteworthy differences between all of these devices;

LG 910 Renoir: 8MP camera, video, dolby, slim but with a relatively small battery, a little bit odd though that for a phone that emphasizes photo and video, screen resolution is not the best 240 x 400 pixels, 3.0 inches

Samsung Omnia: 5MP camera, video, beefier battery than others, really good UI layer on Windows Mobile. Same screen resolution comments as for LG, 240 x 400 pixels, 3.2 inches

SonyEricsson X1: 3.15 MP camera, video, different UI layer than the LG and Samsung with "panels" as different default layers on top on Windows Mobile. Don't know about that one until I have used one myself. Good screen resolution, 480 x 800 pixels, 3.0 inches.

HTC G1: 3.15 MP camera. Android OS. Very cool "Apple like" UI with the exception of the keyboard. One of the most interesting aspects of this device is how much the developer community will pick up the mobile app store and the openess of this device vs. all the other ones. Screen resolution as Apple but with less colors, 320 x 480 pixels, 3.2 inches.

Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic: 3.15 MP camera, video, the lighest device of all of these models but still with a high capacity battery. Good screen resolution, 360 x 640 pixels, 3.2 inches.

Apple iPhone: 2 MP camera, still the reference standard for the new generation UI. Featurewise, it shows that the other phones are newer, they have richer camera and video services. Good screen, 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches

An overall conclusion, I like the formfactor of the Apple, LG, Nokia and Samsung. Pricewise, Nokia is the clear winner (for an unlocked not tied to a contract), the others are about $200 more. I like the Samsung UI layer for Windows Mobile, they have done a good job hiding the traditional layers. My take is though, regarding feature content, size, shape, weight and price that Nokia is the winner. The catch maybe the dependence on Symbian and its ongoing support and Nokia will have to make sure of that they do not repeat initial troubles they had with N95 when that came out. But as I said in previous post, the driver will be war between the ongoing developments for each OS software package whether you believe more in anyone of the following; Apple, Microsoft, Google and OHA and Symbian. Also to fully be able to compare these devices with the different screens and UIs, you need to use them next to each other to see with your own eyes what will a certain function look like on a particular device, it is not enough to watch a company demo video.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

Touch is now everywhere - The battlefield is getting set Nokia vs.Apple and Google

I guess now when Nokia has finally taken the wraps of the rollout of their "iPhone killer", the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. My take on this new phone is that showdown is going to depend a lot on the openess and ease for application developers to get to the different devices and the business models offered. The second issue is the availability of cheap mobile broadband, and since there has not so far been enough competition among mobile operators, I think we can all cherish the fact that Nokia finally has a device that compete with Apple iPhone, Google G1, Samsung Omnia, LG, HTC Touch and SonyEricsson X1 touch phones. The competition now becomes more of Apple OS X like OS vs. Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian. From that point of view, I think Google has an advantage from their close connections and understanding of "cloud computing services" and cooperation with companies such as Amazon.

Nokia though has put together a pretty interesting device, I like personally the formfactor of the iPhone and the new Nokia. From a technology point of view, I cannot wait until all these new mobile phones will finally push mobile VoIP services to the front in an open style making true mobile multimedia IP services available in as many places and countries as possible from any device and any wireless carrier.

Check out the demo video from Youtube.



Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

Vironova - Nothing to sneeze at, virus image analysis and diagnostic services

Time to get blogging again, I have had an ugly cold lately slowing down work needed to be done. But today's first blogpost is about anti-virus in a different way. When you hear virus image analysis in the IT business, you almost all the time think, anti-virus software for your computer, but in this case we talk about the real viruses that affect our bodies. Vironova is a hot Swedish startup combining digital image analysis software and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to quickly analyze and identify key parts of a virus. Vironova also provides diagnostics services. The company has been funded so far by EU research grant and private investors. They are presently open for additional funding, see home page for details (available both in Swedish and English). If the cross-over between IT and medical research is of interest for your investments, I suggest check out this company right now!

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for you statup business services needs.