Thomas Lidforss - The DealMaker

GWC presentation about the GMIC 2010 conference about mobile internet in China

2010-09-19T08:58:00.000+02:00

The GWC (the Great Wall Club) of China has published a presentation from the GMIC 2010 event in Beijing earlier this year. This presentation high-lights a number of interesting points about the differences in local consumer and business behavior that you have in China vs. USA/Europe.

Some key points:

Everything is focused around micro-payments
Very little use of credit cards
A wide variety of competing services, not like here, focus on one Facebook, one Google, one Ebay...
Extensive use of buying virtual goods
Profitable companies through the massive user base, 800+ million mobile phones, 400+ million internet users

See presentation below;

Chinnovations on China's new media

View more presentations from Mobile Internet Great Wall Club.

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for development of companies and new markets. Contact us.

Excellent presentation on how to bridge business strategy and your brand

2010-06-06T10:58:00.000+02:00

The Brand Gap

View more presentations from coolstuff.

Check out this presentation from Marty Neumeier and Neutron LLC in San Francisco.

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for clients and service providers who are interested in mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services. Get yours today!

Sweden National Day - June 6, 2010 and Start of Love Stockholm festival (updated)

2010-06-06T10:26:00.006+02:00

Today on the Sweden National Day, the Love Stockholm 2010 Festival begins and will continue for two weeks. See http://beta.stockholmtown.com/en/ for tips on what to do if you get an opportunity to visit Stockholm or if you are already here on this beautiful sunny day.

Google is also celebrating by having a special image for the day.

Updated with pictures!

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for clients and service providers who are interested in mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services. Get yours today!

Dennis Gabor celebrated by Google today - The man behind the holographic images

2010-06-05T12:04:00.002+02:00

In case your have noticed the "strange" Google image today, you may want to read the Wikipedia article, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor

Dennis would have been 110 years old today...

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for clients and service providers who are interested in mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services. Get yours today, contact http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx

Me On TV and Bar-Deli at the TIE Nordic - SSE Open Mike event for startups Stockholm

2010-06-01T14:33:00.010+02:00

I attended the TIE Nordic event (http://nordic.tie.org/) organized by Hannes Dernehl jointly hosted by SSE organized by Bhavik (http://swedishstartups.ning.com/profile/NordicEntrepreneursNetwork) at the Hub (http://stockholm.the-hub.net/) in Stockholm on May 31.

Neev Technologies Nordic AB (http://www.neevtech.com) is a member of TIE Nordic. Contact tlidforss at neevtech.com for more info about IT outsourcing services provided.

Jeffrey Cole from Ericsson was there presenting the new service Me On TV where the general idea is to encourage businesses to start using user generated content (UGC) for product development and customer services by providing tools to make it as easy as possible for users to record, edit and mix info to be used using their mobile phones. See the Youtube video below for more details.

These events are covered by Open Entrepreneurship (http://www.openentrepreneurship.com/), Björn Paulsson the TIE Nordic Chapter Manager video records and posts on their site. I can recommend registering and signing up at this site if you are interesting in the start up business areas.

One interesting start-up presenting during the "Open Mike" session (where anybody can grab the microfone and present something) was Bar-Deli. See http://www.bar-deli.se/ for more info. The entire business case is very simple, go to any bar in hotels, pubs, restaurants in any city or country
and ask what snacks you can get. The answer in most cases is nothing put peanuts. So, as a result bar-deli packages, sells and delivers custom snacks that are different and healthier. I talked to Niclas Johansson the founder, you can contact him at niclas at bar-deli.se.

Thomas Lidforss International provides mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services for clients and service providers, get yours today!

The Fierce15 - Top Wireless winners for 2010 from FierceWireless.com

2010-05-31T12:15:00.006+02:00

Here's the fresh list of companies appointed winners this year by FierceWireless magazine. Read the full article at this address;

http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/fiercewireless-fierce-15-2010

or check out each one of the companies below;

- AirHop Communications - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Bump Technologies - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- ComiXology - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Dashwire - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Full Spectrum - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Ground Truth - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Harbinger Capital Partners - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Illume Software - iZup - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Open Kernel Labs - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Powermat - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- SpiderCloud Wireless - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Swype - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Ubidyne - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Validas - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Vitality - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

Thomas Lidforss International provides mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services for clients and service providers, get yours today!

Mobile High-tech along the ski tracks of Vasaloppet 2010

2010-03-07T12:09:00.006+01:00

Mobile high-tech along the ski tracks of Vasaloppet. I wonder if the old king of Sweden, Gustav Vasa could have imagined that 490 years later, you can as a skier following live streaming on your mobile what is happening up front in the 90 km ski race on your mobile while you are skiing. But thanks to http://svtplay.se/t/107631/vasaloppet services you can in the year 2010, RFID and GPS services combined with video streaming makes this the high-tech race for sure. It was funny to see and hear a guy with starting number 8600 something to talk about the front skiers with Tynell in the lead becasue he watched it on his mobile phone.

I think this is just the beginning of what is to come, just wait until 4G LTE services are widely available.

Google Sweden is also celebrating the 86th Vasaloppet race by a special logo today.

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Projectplace - Collaboration around your projects in the cloud

2010-02-28T12:50:00.005+01:00

Here's an overdue post about the growing popularity of cloud services. Projectplace sponsored in cooperation with SalesForce an event to highlight the status of project and collaboration services.

Niklas Zandelin, CEO, Exido talked about enablers such as service buses and a core focus on cloud services allowing processes between all actors. Cloud SLA documents are also now available within the EU and US markets. And recent trends with CFOs who all want to see no CAPex and only modest OPex.

Johan Zetterstrom VP Nordics, SalesForce.com presented the growth and history of SalesForce. He emphasized that at Salesforce you pay per user not apps used. Projectplace is a salesforce app on the app platform.

The scope of SalesForce with their AppForce;
- 125k apps on app platform.
- Service cloud with 6k customer.
The first 100 developers can develop for free first app.

Magnus Ingvarsson, Magnus.Ingvarsson at projectplace.se, Founder of Projectplace.

Projectplace after 2008
- 105 employees
- 129 MSEK revenue
- 18 MSEK ebit result

Magnus illiustrated how Projectplace sees cloud services vs. their project services;

PaaS (Platform as a service) is a vertical one addressing the app layer scope
IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) is the horizontal infrastructure layer
Integration as a service is the vertical management layer
Apps are of course the apps on the PaaS layer
UI
SaaS (Software as a Service) is what the users see and use

There are as he pointed out, of course a certain way of getting sold on a certain architecture. Each one of the major cloud services architectures has their own way of interworking between apps, similar but still slightly different meaning that once you have chosen an environment to use, you have work to do if you would like to change later.

Projectplace also sess a role for their project cloud services as a good fit for BPO services where you have a need for local and remote project management and that you should when you consider cloud services, see the whole picture from on premises, host outsource, cloud and SaaS.

Would you like to get the best IT project deals? Contact me asap! http://tinyurl.com/yjgqmxo

The MJ Launcher part2 - Transforming Your Mobile Experience see updated info in previous post

2009-11-04T12:14:00.003+01:00

I just updated the MJ Launcher posting, see previous post http://tlidforss.blogspot.com/2009/10/mjetzappgif.html or go and check out, http://mjetz.com from your mobile phone browser.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select representation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

The MJ Launcher - Transforming your mobile experience (updated)

2009-10-14T18:06:00.004+02:00

Here's a quick review of Mjetz or the MJ Launcher application.

The MJ Launcher is using patented active widget technology to smoothly blend browsing, RSS feeds and IM/email services in your mobile phone. MJ Launcher is presently only available as a J2ME app on your phone (works on 1B+ phones in the world though). But I think you have to imagine what can be done on new touch screen iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Symbian devices.

The major advantage of using the MJ Launcher is that you can get your own "UI" the way you want to have it based on your internet needs regardless of what the phone was delivered with.

The best way to test mjetz (today) is to use a J2ME enabled phone and download from the phone browser using http://mjetz.com

The site recognizes IP addresses and should propose a local version automatically. If not you can select by using e.g. http://mjetz.com/cn

Please also note that mjetz today is not what mjetz will and can become tomorrow. New local versions are being developed all the time regarding language and content.

If you register as a user and logon to mjetz from your computer, you can customize your phone from the computer in addition to the phone.

There is also an admin tool that can be provided for operators and content aggregators/distributors so you can customize content and configurations for your customers.

New versions in particular for touch screen phones are under development by mJetz such as an active widget Google Android version including plans for iPhone and Windows Phones. There are for this company and products investment opportunities for companies who are interested in this.

Please feel free to test and try services.

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How to make real money out of virtual money in your virtual world

2009-09-27T11:08:00.006+02:00

Virtual Worlds and Entrepreneurship _Teigland

View more presentations from Robin Teigland.

I attended a very interesting event with a presentation around the topic "Virtual Worlds and Entrepreneurship" at the IVA center in Stockholm, Sep. 22.

Guest speaker was Robin Teigland, Associate professor at Stockholm School of Economics (SSES), http://www.hhs.se

Here are som quick facts (but I encourage you to view the embedded presentation).

579 M users
68 MUSD invested in 1Q 2009
Tweens biggest user group
39% increase in userbase from Q1
Games and strategy players have started incorporating on their resumes/CVs facts about what they manage and are capable of doing in the virtual world
2 BUSD in micro transactions
One example, Mindark's Entropia Universe has got 780k users, 420 MUSD in revenue AND a real and virtual bank
Another examle of how you can make money, one guy sold the virtual Asteroid Space Resort for 100k USD in 2005

Some Chinese sites on the subject;

Robin and SSES are using Linden labs' Second Life services, http://www.secondlife.com for education, research and cooperation with other universities. See as one example the SSE Island area on SecondLife.

The use of 3d virtual worlds will expand to develop demos, showcases and training programs. IBM is e.g. using it to design "green" data centers.

Some company examples; IBM island and Accenture island, for more information about research contact robin.teigland at hhs.se

http://www.knowledgenetworking.org
http://www.slideshare.net/eteigland
http://www.secondlife.com

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Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009 Update - Get the presentations while available

2009-09-24T17:17:00.003+02:00

Here's a quick update, if you would like see the presentations from the Sweden-US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009 event, check out the following link while they are still available.

http://www.esbri.se/sweden-us/2009_presentations.asp

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Epicor 9 - Product launch event at Nalen, Stockholm

2009-09-20T11:41:00.009+02:00

I attended the product launch event of Epicor's latest, Epicor 9. For those of you who do not know Epicor; Epicor is a world-wide developer and distributor of ERP systems. Epicor has more than 2800 customers in 143 countries. Epicor is a Microsoft Gold Partner. See http://www.epicor.com for company details.

Stefan Westelius, swestelius at epicor.com, partner evangelist at Epicor Sweden introduced the launch event.

The theme for the event was Protect, Extend and Converge. The goal; protect existing iScala customer base and installations while allowing a kind of "best of breed" set of service extensions to be made available and the option of converging into one system with the new Epicor 9 release.

Protect

iScala - The ERP

Some interesting notes around new release, support for the following areas:

SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is an EU payment standards initiative. The EPC (European Payments Council) develops the framework needed to implement the Single Euro Payments Area. See
www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu for details.

Svefaktura is a Swedish standard for electronic invoicing. See information from SFTI steering group for details, http://www.svefaktura.se

SAF-T (Standard Audit File for Tax Purposes) support. See http://www.oecd.org/.../0,2340,en_2649_33749_34910329_1_1_1_1,00.html for guidance information.

Epicor has an interesting way of supporting old products as long as customers buy maintenance services without forcing customers to upgrade to new releases.

Extend

The "extend concept" allows for ala carte type set of selecting your most wanted applications for your business. One good example demoed was Storefront, the e-commerce site service. I really like the way Epicor does a demo, you integrate your powerpoints with hotlinks to iScala and log in to the live service. This provides an excellent view of what you are presenting and what the application does for your business.

Storefront your one stop shop for e-commerce sites that can be used as a complement to your existing website or also as a tool for creating your business site.

Converge

With the new Epicor 9, in addition to the integration of different products into one system, comes new front ends. You do not have to be used any longer to find information the "traditional way" with a client application looking through tables and forms. Now, you can just search, like the "Google generation", just search and you will find the answer. The new release comes with search integration and information presented with hotlinks and relevance count, so you can find an answer to any question you may have. I like the format, very blog label inspired.

Since I had to leave for a conference call, I missed the afternoon part with the tech details but I have to say thank you to the Epicor people for an excellent setup and arrangements. I understand why SAP is watching what Epicor does...

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Notes from Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009, Sep 16 in Stockholm

2009-09-17T16:25:00.008+02:00

I attended the first day of this event in Stockholm. Here are some key notes and comments from some of the presenters;

Magnus Aronsson, Managing Director for ESBRI, the institute for entrepreneurs and small business research, http://www.esbri.se and Randy Mitchell, Private Equite Specialist, U.S. Department of Commerce were the co-chairs of this event. Randy talked among other things about the usefulness of the SBIC, Small Business Investment Company. For more info see http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/financing/sbic.html

Jöran Hägglund the State Secretary, Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and COmmunications was also part of the introduction. A panel about the role of government followed. Us view basically "Get the Government out of the way"... where as the Swedish version is more of Government guidance and control...

My two cents out of this is basically, I think Sweden needs to explore the "Chinese" way of developing businesses, "create economical free zones" where you as an entrepreneur can get a number of years of no tax and other benefits to get a chance succeeding building a new business that can become a big enterprise. All the political parties and people are just too focused on getting (re)-elected to their offices and cannot do what it takes. One simple example is, why should I have to pay 100k SEK (about 15k+ USD) to register a corporation in Sweden when it will cost you about 30 USD in Las Vegas and less than 250 pounds in UK... and why should you have to pay about 55% tax on personal company income (salary)??

The next session focused on how to get funded these days in the aftermath of a world-wide financial crisis.

Kimberlie Cerrone, entreprenuer and involved with The Angels Forum in Palo Alto, CA. See http://www.angelsforum.com and kimberlie at gmail.com or +14153782838.

Some points;

1M USD in revenue is what investors are looking for
"Put me as no 1 on your B round of funding"
Intrapreneurship
Great crop of companies will evolve in the years 2012-2014 in the valley once liquidity available

As a reference for Kimberlie, see also

http://www.esbri.se/pdf/Panel_4_Kimberlie_Cerrone.pdf

Clare Fairfield, Managing Director Concerto Ventures was next, for more info about Clare see http://www.esbri.se/artikel_visa.asp?id=506

Some points;

Government programs can be more useful for entrepreneurs these days
Use service providers
VC companies with over 50M USD will get new SEC regulatory rules
Consider cross border alliances
Break down funding needs into smaller pieces
Conserve, conserve, conserve your cash needs
Use milestones whenever possible
Funding rate 1-2%
Success rate 10-20%
Fail rate 20-40%

A conclusion I make of his presentation was basically as before, do not use VC money unless you have no other way of getting funded.

Katarina Bonde, Managing Director of Kubicorp was up next in the funding section. See for e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/katarina-bonde/0/23/78b for her public LinkedIn profile.

Here are her options for getting funded;

Through revenues
Regional funds
If you have got positive sales go to bank
If you are in the export business go to EKN (Exportkreditnämden), http://www.ekn.se
Use covertible debt
Finance through invoices
Joint projects with customers
Partner with distributors
Create a pre pay business model
Barter of trade your products or services
In Sweden check out the SVCA list of VCs, http://www.svca.se
Look in different regions of the country and start there
Partner with customers in a coop, example given, in state of Washington, a wine development company started by inviting interested customers to buy shares of the company to get started

Mikael Karlsson, Managing Director and Fund Manager presented the newly created ALMI Invest.

ALMI has been around for quite some time but this spring they have launched the new investment part of the company. See http://www.almi.se

Regional offices owned by Swedish counties to 49%
They do equity investments
1-10 MSEK put up by them
Mission is to bridge gap to get started
They have 7 regional funds, 1B SEK, launched in spring 09, 50% EU funding
Max 50% co-funding is the rule
They are looking for 5-15 MSEK investments, companies with good potential and within 7 yrs an exit

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

Update on Windows Mobile Marketplace launch event in Stockholm

2009-09-07T08:26:00.005+02:00

Windows Marketplace for Mobile Developer Registration Walk Through

View more presentations from Mike Francis.

Here's an update on an event I attended early summer. For those of you that missed the presentations, Per Ahlberg Developer Evangelist Microsoft has made the presentations available om his MDSN blog, http://tinyurl.com/kr9m8h

Johan Huss Mobile Solutions Specialist Microsoft presented Windows Mobile 6.5 that will be available on Oct. 7 in Sweden. Among the features, a "thumb" friendly touch friendly UI with good support for widgets. I tested the new UI features on an HTC Touch and Samsung Omnia and works very well for touch operation.

In addition to "touch" being a big thing with launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, MyPhone is a new convenient service where you as a user can sync and manage your phones data on the web. Works very well for managing contact data and syncing with your phone. This service works for older phones also, you do not have to wait for 6.5 to start using it. See for further details,
http://myphone.microsoft.com

Philippe Goldstein, Microsoft France presented the launch of Windows Mobile Marketplace.

Some comments;

No Java or scripts allowed in marketplace
Native code, managed code and widgets allowed
3-4 weeks for application certification
Cost 99 USD for 1st year for 5 apps thereafte per app
Revenue sharing, developer gets 70%, Microsoft (and partners) 30%

See for more information the Windows Mobile blog;
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/default.aspx

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Sino-Sweden Mobile Internet Business Seminar about upcoming GMIC conference in Hangzhou

2009-09-02T14:18:00.007+02:00

Some quick news about a Chinese delegation visiting Sweden and the Kista Science City in Stockholm. I attended eariler today the Sino-Sweden Mobile Internet Business Seminar at the Stockholm Kista Science Tower, sponsored by ISA, Invest in Sweden agency and GWC, Mobile Internet The Great Wall Club.

The Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010 is coming up in March 2010 in Hangzhou, China. The theme of the conference is Mobile Internet Opportunities in Asia. GMIC wants to promote international cooperation around mobile internet services and issues. GMIC sess Asia as the area of the world where mobile internet is going to be the key area whereas Europe with GSMA is more the mobile operator center and USA and North America is more internet and internet software.

The GMIC is an organization;

Guided by

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China
Minstry of Culture- Ministry of Commerce
State Council Information Office
China Association of Communication Enterprises
China Internet Association

Organizers

Mobile Internet the Great Wall Club,

http://www.thegreatwallclub.com

Co-organizers

MCF (Japan)
YRP (Japan)
IVP (japan)
Sino-Japan Communication Industry Promotion Association
KINTERNET (South Korea)
KWISA (South Korea)
CDMA
CDG

On a personal note, this event was well organized thanks to Tomas Bennich from Kista Showcase and people from Invest in Sweden Agency but I have to complain about whoever manages the facilities in the Kista Science Tower, no ventilation and warm humid air does not work very well for any event, blame global warming or whatever but facilities management has to work in a business building...

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

What to do about Plaxo - Nuke it or?

2009-09-01T11:17:00.006+02:00

Plaxo is I think a sad story, it started as an ambitious service for all office outlook users as a way to synch your business contacts back in 2002 if I remember correctly. Then once the social networking services hype got up to speed, Plaxo became a social networking site with a lot of promise. But with limitations, lack of access to info, screwed up (I think) user interface, and very little has happened even after Comcast acquired Plaxo, I see no future in using Plaxo, I think it is a service that is also rude to users;

Why should I as a user receive hundreds of invitations to get connected by people and I cannot view them (get the warning too many requests, you are too close to the limit 1000, please remove some so you can accept...) but on top of that Plaxo suggests I should connect since there are 5100+ people that I according to Plaxo know. There is no logic to it... to me it seems like if I have too many connections, It should not even be possible for other users to send me a request to connect, they should simply get a message that I have reached Plaxo's limit and that is it!

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Embedded browser in Net TV by Philips

2009-08-30T12:24:00.003+02:00

In case you have not noticed, TV sets are changing. I attended a while ago an event in Kista, Stockholm sponsored by Philips and their new Net TV division. The presenters were;

Åke Johansson, ake.johansson at philips.com head of Philips consumer area and Net TV champion.
Tomas Hedqvist, tomas.hedqvist at m-one.se, consult in digital media and service acqusition partner for Philips in the Nordic region, http://www.m-one.se/
Fredrik Andersson, co-founder Net Tv service from Accedo Broadband, http://www.accedobroadband.com/
Anna Caracolis, CEO of Adimo, mobile consulting services, http://www.adimo.com/, Anna presented practical opinions and results from porting designs from a 3" mobile phone screen to a 42" TV was not difficult.

Some facts about Net TV;

Standard used is CE html
Windows media and H264 supported but no Adobe flash yet
Optimized for 720 by 1080 format
Remote control controlled and operated
Fonts and readability important when designing web services for Net TV
Forecast says about 180M TV sets will be CE html enabled by 2012

The demo TVs used regular 16:9 HD TV sets but Philips also used the opportunity to showcase the new 21:9 see also http://www.consumer.philips.com/c/cinema-21-9/30849/cat/gb/

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Get your facts about who are your different social media users

2009-08-18T18:41:00.006+02:00

Social Media Strategy presentation from Globalization Strategies LLC visualized by the wizards at http://vizedu.com Interesting classification and stats on how you divide your users into different categories. Enjoy the presentation above.

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Jix up your short url links with Adjix

2009-06-26T13:05:00.007+02:00

I have just tested a new shorten or shrink url addresses to use when you twitter, blog or email. Adjix works with the option to have ads from different categories inserted on top of your page. You also get link tracking plus an option to earn money. Works very well and if you choose to have ads to are not very intrusive. The link statistics feature is a nice to have function.

See the pictures and one example of my blog url.

http://adjix.com/fjd8

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Need attention - Get your Google profile business card

2009-05-02T08:18:00.004+02:00

Google has recently launched a new service, get your own free Google business cards based on your Google profile. This offer is so far only available if you have a continental US postal address (and upto 25000 cards) but I think this is a great idea and incentive for anybody who does not have a profile to create one right away. Be aware of also that until you have created one with a vanity url, the address you would like to have will most likely be taken if you wait, remember the early days of dot com address registrations.

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The 100 Mb/s race is on - mobile broadband internet in any form or way

2009-04-10T09:42:00.004+02:00

Now you can get 2x or 3x mobile brodband internet speed to your laptop through the upgrade of HSPA to HSPA+ or as people call it here in Sweden, Turbo 3g+ service. Telia and Tele2 have announced and started selling 14.4 Mb/s or some locations 22 Mb/s, Tele2 14.4 Mb/s only, where as 3 is betting on 22 Mb/s service. 3 has announced the service to be launched during April but not yet updated their website. Telenor has not announced anything yet but will (I think follow soon).

Prices vary from 25-50 USD per month depending on carrier and subscription plan as low as 18 USD per month if you bundle your services. There are many pricing combinations though, I think most consumers are going to find it very difficult to compare the services. The mobile operators are doing a "swiss army-knife" style kind of marketing to cut out the biggest slice of the market for their company. All the operators (except 3) are also still penalizing pre-paid customers by having unrealistic data traffic limitations.

See urls for pricing data:

http://www.tele2.se/mobilt-bredband.html

http://www.telia.se/privat/produkter_tjanster/internet/mobiltbredband/?sl=privat_produkter_tjanster_internet_mobiltbredband

http://www.telenor.se/privat/mobilt-bredband/index.html

http://www.tre.se/templates/BroadbandShop/Storefront.aspx?id=33857&csref=fps_3bredband

This is now being marketed while the race is on to introduce LTE service within a year. The city of Stockholm is aiming at being first in the world with commercial LTE service, something the city of Oslo is also trying to achieve....

A final comment about these service from a hardware point of view, nobody says one word about software upgradability of modems, so if you are a pre-paid customer, you may end up in having to buy three modems within a year and you are out of luck if you have bought a laptop with built-in modem

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ArcticStartup event in Stockholm - Blast from startups in the arctic

2009-04-04T09:48:00.004+02:00

The Finnish ArcticIndex organized the first joint Swedish-Finnish startup event called ArcticStartup in Stockholm last week. The Social Media Business Network, http://www.sombiz.net/ and SwedishStartups were among the organizers in addition to Bonniers Media with as always the colorful Morris Packer as one of the key speakers.

In case you have missed the ArcticIndex site, I can really recommend it to stay in touch with interesting new Nordic and Baltic startups. See picture of people info section below:

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LG GD900 multi-touch smart phone with transparent keypad, mousepad or what?

2009-04-04T04:58:00.002+02:00

Just announced at the wireless CTIA show in Las Vegas, the LG GD900 multi touch phone. I think this is an interesting but a little bit "gimmicky" concept. Has a slider design transparent numerical keypad that doubles as a touchpad with iPhone style mouse functions in addition to the touch screen. This is though a full featured smart phone with touch screen, 8MP camera, video and the usual stuff. Watch the video and you will see the nice UI LG has developed for his phone. It is clear that multi touch and OLED screens will become the new design guide for all smart phones in addition to high resolution camera and video functions.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of outsourcing services!

Open is the New Cool - Open breakfast with Sun and SIME in Stockholm

2009-04-03T09:26:00.008+02:00

I attended the Sun Open Breakfast event that took place at the IVA conference center in Stockholm on April 2. Map of location. This was the first in a series of 'open' breakfast events hosted by Sun Microsystems and SIME. The event was introduced by Ola Ahlvarsson from SIME introducing Stefan Alariksson, the CEO of Sun in Sweden.

Open is the new cool

Stefan explained how and why Sun has moved from being mainly associated with server hardware to an open software and solutions company. Sun has with their packaged solutions of open source software been growing and gaining more customers. Sun in Sweden has about 2B SEK in revenue out of about 200 employees. Stefan also talked about the fact that despite what a lot people think, how can you make any money with open source?, you can, by getting faster and bigger penetration on the market, you classify customers into different segments. The individual user who downloads a copy of MySQL will not want to pay for the software or services but a successful corporate customer needs and wants to pay for qualified professional services. So even if only 10% of the customers pay, Sun is making money.

Open Minds panel discussion

Henrik Torstensson, head of strategy at Stardoll - http://www.stardoll.com a site targetting tween girls and general manaer Piczo, http://www.piczo.com a social networking site where you can easily design your own site, blog, avatars and use games, music, quizzes...

Ulf Ekberg, music entrepreneur from the group Ace of Base and into new business models for the musicians.

Fredrik Runnquist, former IT boss at Swedbank and board member in several corporations.

Stefan Alariksson, CEO Sun Microsystems

Good information was presented, nothing new if you are in this business, but talk about efficient business models, penetration of market share, having real customers, working relations, scalability, value of partnering...

An open table discussion followed. My personal take on this was that there is not enough time to actively start such a discussion, I think for the next event, it would be better if the organizers
focus on a theme and have branch specific people giving their feedback with a possibility to let people participating in the event have a chance to do select networking.

Anders Carlsarv, head of sales, Sun Microsystems, concluded by announcing next Open Breakfast event, May 7 which will focus on Cloud Computing. Monitor http://www.sun.se/breakfast for coming events. Sun has recently published a white paper on Cloud Computing, for more info about this area, see http://www.sun.com/solutions/cloudcomputing/index.jsp

Thanks to the sponsors also for an excellent breakfast.

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Make it Mobile with MMA guidelines - Mobile Marketing Association

2009-03-22T10:51:00.004+01:00

Here's a little tidbit of information about where to find useful guidelines if you are getting into mobile services and do not know enough. MMA, the Mobile Markering Association has a number of useful guideline documents available for download as pdfs even if you are not a member of the MMA. See a select list below;

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outsourcing services!

Excitera Enterprise Forum Event in Stockholm on Mar 12

2009-03-15T12:29:00.008+01:00

The organization Excitera Enterprise Forum held an event last week for entrepreneurs and students who would like to become new ones. This event took place at Naringslivets Hus in Stockholm.

Nicklas Mattsson, chief editor for the magazine, Entreprenör was the moderator for the event.

Elby Kwok Drewsen was the first speaker. She is the founder and owner of Lotus Travel. Lotus does specialize in organizing travel from Sweden to China. She described her long road to success, having to learn many different roles on her way to her focused niche business. Lotus Travel also has a sister company, Scandinavian Perspectives focusing on the opposite, travel from China to Sweden.

Ola Ahlvarsson, the founder of Result was up next, since this was the second time I listened to the same presentation, I put more attention to his laptop computer. Ola earlier in the day, this presenation at the Sun Nordic Software Roadshow event. This time though, he got computer problems, seeing that his machine was still running Windows 2000, I think he need to get a new laptop... anyway, always entertaining.

Pontus Lindwall finished the evening presenting his experiences from the gambling and entertainment services company, Betsson. Pontus realized early, already back in 1996 that internet gambling was going to be big. He founded Net Entertainment that later got acquired by his previous employer, Cherry where Pontus became CEO. Cherry later acquired Betsson.com, changed name to Betsson which is nowadays has a 350M EUR value. Gambling for sure is profitable even in these financial crisis days. I heard a similar story from Norbert Teufelberger and bwin.

Many thanks to the arranger, Excitera Enterprise Forum and their sponsors for a good event with food, beverage, networking and mingling.

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Excitera Mobile Cup 2009 with Interesting Speakers & Award Ceremony #1

2009-03-15T11:37:00.006+01:00

The first Excitera Mobile Cup 2009 event with award ceremony took place at Telenor HQ in Stockholm on Mar. 11. Hannes Dernehl and The Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship arranged the event. Five startups were also awarded for best new business concepts. Unfortunately, mutual NDA i signed by the companies and the organizer so I could not get that much out of the award ceremony.

Mikael Lindström from Mobilstart did a live demo and presentation of how to create a mobile application using Mobilstart's services. A simple shortcode SMS application and a shortcode application using POS command for positioning prompting. If you can live with the features supported, you can quickly develop a mobile application and get it working on all 4 Swedish mobile networks, Telenor, Telia, 3 and Tele2.

Joel Brosjö, Dubtools presented experiences from their MyQuran project. Dubtools is focusing on mobile publishing tools and he explained how they by pure coincidence came up with the idea of publishing citations from the holy book of quran and services for muslims and Jonas Vig, Bambuser presented his highly popular mobile video broadcasting service.

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Sun Nordic Software Roadshow Spring 2009 - Stockholm event

2009-03-15T10:07:00.015+01:00

I attended the Sun Nordic Sofware roadshow event on Mar. 12 in Stockholm. Ola Ahlvarsson of SIME and founder of Result warmed everybody up and presented entrepreneurial projects and business models. An interesting point made was, no lack of ideas or concepts in businesses today, the trick is how to execute properly and do something with the ideas. Ola also pointed out the importance of building a business with a business model focusing on relations with people NOT just trying to push a new product or service on to a customer.

Thorbjörn Fritzon, Sun Microsystems, presented Sun's roadmap in Open Source and how did we get there. He pointed out that maybe a lot of people still see Sun as a hardware server company. Things have changed a lot within Sun and the last 3-5 years, they have become a software company, with Open Solaris, MySQL, Glassfish (ASP server software), Open ESB (Enterprise services bus), Open SSO (Single Sign-on and ID management) and working on increasing the ecosystem of partners, integrator and professional services companies.

Kaj Arnö who is VP Community Relations at MySQL continued with MySQL and the importance of community relations.

Daniel Fröding from Coss Technologies presented GlassFish, Sun's application server platform that is gaining a lof of traction on the market. Coss Tech provides ASP solutions and professional services basd on GlassFish.

Tickstar is a company focusing on systems integrtion using Open ESB which provides a vendor independent solution of integration of different server solutions in your network. Martin Nyqvist presented how Tickstar is using Open ESB. See Tickstar presentation here.

Thorbjörn Fritzon, Sun Microsystems, presented OpenSSO which is Sun's solution for AAA services and federated identity management. Måns Håkansson then concluded with Sun's solution for Identity access management and the value of role managemnt for rule and policy compliance among users.

Lars Tunkrans, Fujitsu Services then finished the presentations of the day describing how Sun's VDI (Virtual Desktop) is working and projects undertaken by Fujitsu using VDI services. Lars showed differences between different "thin client" solutions going all the way from a thin client application just installed on a regular PC to a diskless client station, no software installed, no power adaptor used (powered through power over ethernet). He brought a proposal project they won (about 250 client stations and server infrastructure) and got to deliver to Värmdö county (just east of Stockholm) which included cost of energy saved as well as very low maintenance and support cost. Since there is no moving parts, no software installed, very small power consumption, about 4W per client station, there is very little that can go wrong once installed. Savings were about 5-6k SEK per client station and year throughout the lifecycle.

Among the exhibitors were; Cortego, who is a systems integrator providing solutions for security and event management. Inserve Technology, a systems integrator and Heimore Group, a solutions provider for security solutions using SSO and IAM

Many thanks to Sun Microsystems for a good event and sponsoring food and beverage.

UPDATE: Find the presentations here

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Widgetbox - Get your own widgets in no time

2009-03-11T13:40:00.005+01:00

I have started using Widgetbox widgets and their easy design of your own widgets features. This is a service I recommend for anybody with blogs and/or websites. As an example check out my twitter widget below or at http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/twitter-tlidforss. Don't forget to use your own tags or use your cloud tags for SEO purpose.

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Green hat people - A Killer event maker to get people participation

2009-03-11T11:35:00.004+01:00

I recently attended as a part of the ongoing Excitera Mobile Cup series in Sweden an event hosted by the Green hat People company. Green hat People does event sevices for mobile phones. Niklas Tyllström, the founder presented the company and organized us into competing groups of users for the event game. You can custom make your own trivia game related to whatever event you are doing or sponsoring as a part of, e.g. a tradeshow. Since we were all in the same office building, there were no location based trivia questions. The game console application monitors all the participants, time, answers and can award users.

I like this service, I think this can be perfectly used for all kinds of events, promotions, games, awards, award points, polls and so on. Head over to the website http://www.greenhatpeople.com/ to read more about them.

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Geek Meet - sIFR (scalable Inman Flash Replacement), Bringing rich typography to the web

2009-02-28T12:10:00.009+01:00

I attended the Geek Meet Feb. event at the bwin building in Stockholm. Thanks to Robert Nyman, Mark Wubben was the key speaker. Mark has done a lot of work with sIFR and typography for the web. His topics were;

sIFR (scalable Inman Flash Replacement) - Bringing rich typography to the web
Home Made Ubicomp - Ubiquitous computing

Mark presented a quick history of what has happened since the early (1994) days of the web to the problems of today using flash a lot which does not work very well with search engines. Since Mark has uploaded the sIFR presentation to Slideshare, I am embedding his presentation. See below;

Bringing Typography to the Web with sIFR 3 at <head>

View more presentations from Mark Wubben. (tags: headconference typopgraphy)

Mark also presented briefly the values of easy ubiquitos computing for everybody.

UPDATE: Here are the two urls for Mark's presentations:

http://www.slideshare.net/novemberborn/geek-meet-web-typography-and-sifr-3

http://www.slideshare.net/novemberborn/geek-meet-homemade-ubicomp

Many thanks to bwin (http://www.bwin.com) for sponsoring this event with good food and beverage. Got to check out Texas Hold'em poker.

Also if you are interested in Geek Meet, take a look at Robert's blog: http://www.robertnyman.com

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HTC Touch 2 with Windows Mobile 6.5 - A preview of better things to come

2009-02-28T09:16:00.005+01:00

Windows Mobile 6.5 Running on HTC from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

HTC understood early that you have to do something with the standard Windows Mobile user interface. HTC created their TouchFlo UI that makes a nice frontend to Windows Mobile. Microsoft has improved a lot the basic UI with the new release 6.5.

HTC has thus improved their TouchFlo with the new HTC Touch 2. I like this phone and I think HTC is finally getting there. So, right now I think the competition is on between HTC, LG and Samsung for who makes the best Windows Mobile based mobile smartphone.

See the video for a demo of the new Touch with Windows Mobile 6.5.

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Getting it right the right way with the Garmin-Asus G60 smartphone

2009-02-28T08:48:00.007+01:00

Garmin G60 Hands On from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

It is interesting to see that when a company is focusing on user-friendliness and use technology as an enabler, you usually end up with a pretty good product. I think the new Garmin-Asus G60 is one such example, following Palm Pre's philosophy.

Look at the demo video of the Garmin-Asus G60, the new Linux based smartphone focusing on using location as en enabler not as a feature you as an user have to think about. Location services as a feature is in this case just used to provide a richer experience with the applications most people use. I think the new cooperation between Asus and Garmin will become a successful company with mobile smart devices.

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Microblog vs. Blog, nanoblogg or macroblog, Where is blogging heading?

2009-02-02T21:00:00.005+01:00

I have noticed being in Sweden which is a blog-heavy country that people have got infected with the idea of blogging in every size or shape or whereever you are. A couple of weeks ago, when Google announced their saving plans for the company by e.g. shutting down the Finnish acquisition of Jaiku the Finnish mobile microblogging company and transforming it into an open source based solution service. Then Morris Packer at Bonnier media started pushing for Swedish Jaiku users to start using the new Swedish microblogging service Bloggy created by Jonas Lejon and then microblogging really took off in Sweden not just on Bloggy but also on Twitter since most people on Bloggy also have noticed Twitter without using it that much.

Now other services are also taking off, such as "What can you say with one word?" such as the new Nanoblogging site http://nanoblogg.se/tlidforss which works to emulate Bloggy's success but for even shorter blogs. This new service has recently picked up more than 400 users in a couple of days. Recently, people have stared mciroblogging about that they ned 2000 characters at least to say something meaningful raising the question about the need for a macroblog service? I like all the comments and think that this goes all way back to the starting of websites that ended up being too difficult to manage and maintain, then the first blogs came around and much later mobile phone updates and need for short updates. And now finally back to the beginning again.

Hmm, technology is amazing, we seem to go in circles sometimes...maybe it is time to learn from history and check out of internet for a while.

For all twitter and bloggers, also be aware of #blmon on Twitter and http://www.bloggersmonday.com/

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs'

Outsourcing and 2009 - Some interesting thoughts, Neev It with Neev Nordica

2009-02-02T15:16:00.010+01:00

Neev Nordica Explore Benefits Safe Outsourcing

View more presentations from Thomas Lidforss. (tags: denmark norge)

Neev Nordica, a Neev Technologies company is an outsourced product development company providing flexible methods for development and partnership. Rich internet applications, Java, Flex, AWS, Web 2.0, mobile applications, web portals and SNS software.

I read an interesting report from http://www.equaterra.com regarding the expected development for outsourcing and in particular ICT areas (software and communications).
India will still be the lead due to their competence, language, culture and experience regardless of pricing.

I think that management at companies getting into outsourcing really need to think wider than just money or cost. It is a choice where you can make strategic advantages to outbeat the competition in particular during a recession we have now in the world.

Here's a presentation about the creative new Neev Nordica available in the nordic region of the EU area.

Please contact us for further discussions and information about what we can do to your bottom line and competitiveness now in 2009.

PS. A quick update; was told the following about this presentation; "Your slideshow has been featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.
Cheers,
- the SlideShare team"

Twitter for the nobodies - Vizedu has done it again

2009-01-29T13:40:00.004+01:00

I really like the Vizedu presentations. They are always straight to the point. This time they have four new ones posted, here is a good one about how to use Twitter.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startups business services needs'.

Kilobyte confusion - Which one do you like?

2009-01-27T12:43:00.006+01:00

Since I cannot get the embedded object to work in my browser, here's the url; http://www.smartoons.net/comic.php?c=269 and a snapshot:

I like the cartoons from http://www.smartoons.net

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Google GrandCentral 2.0 - The new way of using your phones soon available

2009-01-27T11:54:00.005+01:00

I read with interest the blog update from http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/ about soon to be released the GrandCentral 2.0 service. I liked GrandCentral's services long before Google acquired them. I also hope that once out of beta this service will become available outside USA. I think Google search on voice mail, web widgets and 1 click calling straight from the browser on your mobile phone together with 4G mobile VoIP will finally dramtically change what you consider a "phone" to be.

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How to be trendy - Obamaize yourself

2009-01-25T12:27:00.006+01:00

This is a new service jumping in on the Obama marketing trend. Check out http://obamiconme.com, simple but powerful, just upload an image, play with the tool, contrast, color balance and bingo, you have created your "Obamaized" image ready to be used as an avatar or an a coffee mug.

See results before and after the tool.

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TwitterGroups - Join or create your own groups for twittering people

2009-01-22T14:13:00.006+01:00

I just joined a group #consultants on http://twittergroups.com a very handy new group site service for people who use twitter as a microblog service. TwitterGroups is using Opensocial features to connect so if you use Google's Friendconnect you can join and share your profile right away. Friendfeed room is also there for you. I recommend people who use Twitter, check out the groups available or create your own at TwitterGroups.

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MrTweet - Your personal Twitter assistant

2009-01-22T12:02:00.005+01:00

This is a service that I like a lot. Simple concept, just follow MrTweet on Twitter and you will get your personal report back (url). Whenever you want to check people of interest to follow or followers that you are not following, browse through the results. You will also get statistics about each user such as reciprocity, number of updates, links, conversation and of course usual twitter info.

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Twingly update - search for microblogs

2009-01-22T11:38:00.002+01:00

In case you have not noticed, Twingly has updated their blogsearch to also include microblog search. Works very well. Try it!

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Bloggparti.se - Check what political party you belong to according to your blog

2009-01-22T10:49:00.004+01:00

Bloggparti.se is a service from a Swedish startup idea created for the 24 hour business startup camp going on right now. Mattias Johansson who came up with the idea did not get to apply for the bootcamp in time but I tested his new service and I have to say I like it. By using uClassify to classify the words used, Mattias used 100 different bloggers from each of the political parties to analyze what words they use as a based for the service.

I tested the service and noticed I ended up (not quite sure how?) with a 50-50 mix almost for the conservative and christian party affiliations.

Anyway, I like the idea, you can apply that during election campaigns to check what your favorite bloggers write.

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Typealyzer - What type am I writing a blog?

2009-01-20T09:31:00.004+01:00

Try out Typealyzer, a funny way of getting your brain analyzed based on your style writing your blogposts. This is a new blog analysis service, just type in your url and get to read and see the result. I got for my blog the following results:

I am a Guardian and

"The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done. Once they have made up their mind on something, it can be quite difficult to convince otherwise. They listen to hard facts and can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.
The Guardians are often happy working in highly structured work environments where everyone knows the rules of the job. They respect authority and are loyal team players."

I like the result since I have so far barely written anything about emotional and very personal things, so the logic behind this service seems to work very well.

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Palm Pre - Palm is still alive and kicking out smart mobile phones

2009-01-09T05:38:00.004+01:00

Just announced and presented at the CES show in Las Vegas, Palm is presenting their new smart mobile phone, Palm Pre. The phone has a 3.1 inch multi touch display, 8GB, 3 MP camera, WiFi, GPS and will be made available for Sprint's EVDO 3G network. The phone does not use a screen keyboard, there is a slide out qwerty style keyboard.

Nice hardware, it will be interesting to see though, the perception and pickup on the application side. With Apple's appstore and Google's marketplace for apps and of course the windows mobile application developers I have some doubts about the market penetration for Palm devices. I should not count them out though, Palm has always been a groundbreaker, I still remember using the first wireless Palm Pilot in 1999 over the 8 kb/s Bell South Mobitex packet data network....

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OQO model2plus - Nice convergence of mobile phone and mobile internet device

2009-01-08T09:32:00.005+01:00

I just read reviews about OQO's latest model 2 plus from CES and I have to say, this kind of mobile internet device has I think finally become useful and convenient. The new model features touchscreen OLED diplay, something you have only so far been able to get on mobile phones. The OLED type diplays are superior when you are outdoors. Try looking on the display of an old Motorola Razr phone vs. one with OLED screen, big difference, you can hardly see the screen on the old one when outdoors.

About the OQO, I met with Bob Rosin at CES2005 and I liked the device already back then but thought for $2000 with slow performance and 20GB harddrive, nah not ready for consumer market. Now though with built in WiFi (r) , Qualcomm's GoMobi (r) 3G wireless chipset that works for both EVDO and HSPA networks, 60GB SSD memory, Intel (r) Atom (tm) 1.86 GHz, 2GB RAM you get a true mobile internet device that you can bring along anywhere.

I think with new innovative UIs, cheaper and more powerful computing hardware, we will see a trend where computing devices are going to take over more and more over traditional mobile phones.

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PS. Just noticed this blogpost as a draft I never published for some reason??

Getting lost in the cloud - Explore this appealing vizedu cloud computing presentation

2009-01-01T20:48:00.004+01:00

I came across http://www.vizedu.com a Telezent, http://www.telezent.com internet property for educational presentations. I really like their style, you get a lot of information out of a dozen slides without having to read a lot of text... In this specific presentation about cloud computing, I think in particular the case with NYT and Amazon webservices as a project shows a new way to go for big projects in need of a computing power solution at an affordable pricetag.

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Kicking off 2009, the new Year with FriendConnect for tlidforss

2009-01-01T11:46:00.008+01:00

Happy New Year to all of you in the blogosphere, we survived 2008. I think 2009 will be a good year since it cannot get worse than last year. I am starting this one by playing with Google Friendconnect on the blog. Friendconnect is (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/intro) is the Opensocial based services Google has started using together with Google profile that allows you to see what blogs, sites and social networking services you are using. See the widget in the right sidebar further down the page. Please feel free to join so I don't have to look at only myself everytime I work on the blog.

Happy blogging to all of you!

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Headweb.com - Head for the web and grab your movies

2008-12-30T10:17:00.005+01:00

Headweb is a Swedish startup using bittorrent filesharing technology to distribute movies without piracy but still with no DRM or copy protection. You can (if you want to) burn a DVD and watch your movie without having to depend on DLNA compliant computer and TV on your regular TV with an old DVD player.

Headweb is using embedded watermark technology to control illegal copying. To encoruage the use of the their client software to actively partcipate in the filesharing connections, you get points for your movies which you can use against purchase of new movies. I met with Peter Alvarsson, COO at Headweb (http://www.headweb.com/) at a startup event earlier this month and Headweb seems to be getting traction and a lot of attention. I think most people though, don't understand the differences between Headweb and Pirate Bay, that may be need further clarifications. But Headweb is a great service, in particular for those of you having 10Mb/s (or better) internet connections. I like the no DRM approach, nobody wants to have nowadays some DRM scheme that will screw up your files later. A cheap RAID server and a fast internet connection and you have your own entertainment store.

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How to get going without funding - bootstrapping and diversification

2008-12-30T06:28:00.004+01:00

The Diversified Bootstrap

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business entrepreneur

Here's a good presentation outlining the value of not getting funding but getting through tough times without funding. Diversify in a smart way, have cash flow and work on your "side projects", your startup.

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Today I am - This sounds like a statement beginner but is a new micro-blogging service

2008-12-25T17:01:00.004+01:00

Today I am got started as an eleven day challenge, some key guys took up the challenge and managed to launch "Twitter-like" site in just 11 days. This I think is a good example of what investors keep an eye on, what's the barrier of entry for somebody to do something others have already done. Now of course in the internet world of today, you do have to create enough momentum to build a user base quickly and be able to manage and keep your user base. I personally don't know how many "Twitter-like" sites are needed? I do see a point if you think local country users vs. global use. Also when you know that in many countries people prefer a local base using the local language in question. But feel free to take a look, I have user tlidforss here on http://today.im as on other micro-blogging sites.

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Recordunion.com - A music sharing and distribution company

2008-12-25T16:30:00.005+01:00

Here's another Swedish startup company, RecordUnion, http://www.recordunion.com who will help people who own tracks of music to share, distribute and sell through various companies. David Nilsson is CEO and co-founder of the company. The service is not commercially launched but check out the talking dog, nice homepage. It reminds me of the old cartoons with "Deputy Dog".

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Spontu - Get your ideas on Facebook

2008-12-25T16:14:00.006+01:00

Here's a tip during the holidays, if you have a lot of ideas about what you would like to create on Facebook but don't know how to get started or where to begin. I can highly recommend the Swedish startup company, Spontu, http://www.spontu.com I have met twice recently with the founder, David Haddad and belive in what Spontu is doing. Check it out and contact David.

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Hitta.se does streetview maps for Stockholm

2008-12-16T09:02:00.000+01:00

The Swedish company http://www.hitta.se just introduced their version of "Google Streetview" for Hitta's Stockholm maps. Nice quality, now anyone can be a tourist and walk around the city of Stockholm but for fun and for business. You can easily search for a business and walk to the door of the building.

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Turbo charge your Twitter - Use Bloggy, a Multimedia Twitter

2008-12-14T11:06:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Jonas Lejon, founder of http://www.bloggy.se, you can now enjoy a multi-media version of Twitter called Bloggy. Works very well, it works like combining Twitter with Twitpic and an whole array of other Twitter piggyback services including cross feeding of information from blogs, bookmarking sites and so on. Check it out I can highly recommend it. See http://jonasl.bloggy.se/ for Jonas and http://tlidforss.bloggy.se/ for my Bloggy micro-blog.

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Starting up your startup company - Cool and realistic tips from John Buckman

2008-12-13T09:22:00.001+01:00

Employees Suck

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: bookmooch magnatune)

This is a very interesting and thought provoking presentation by John Buckman at http://www.magnature.com about what you can do to eventually succeed in making your own business.

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Nobel prize week, Christmas food and holidays are coming up

2008-12-09T22:57:00.001+01:00

I had the great oppotunity to enjoy good food and a good time a couple of days ago. I went to Grand Hotel in Stockholm where most of the Nobel prize winners and guests will stay this week. About time I post some pictures. The first one above is the starter plate with some traditional Swedish appetizers, smoked salmon, different kinds of herring, eggs, kaviar, shrimp, cheese and baby potatoes, onions and spices. This goes very well together with "Julol" -- Christmas beer, water and the 1874 spiced schnaps aquavit.

I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the main plate, spiraled ham, meatballs, sausages, venison, "jansons potatoes", so the next picture will just be the light version of the dessert, fruit and whipped cream, I skipped all the chocolate, pie and cookies (need to lose weight anyway).

A view from the windows shows you old town and the Royal Castle.

Happy holidays to all of you,

/Thomas

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

Mippin - Mobile blog result, 5 minutes and this is the result ad enabled

2008-11-18T19:59:00.000+01:00

I have to give the Mippin.com guys a big thumb up. This service works very well. Please help yourself and check this service out if you have a blog and want to reach into the hundreds of millions of mobile phone internet users with your blog. I can highly recommend it.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

Mippin feed validation KEY=8e8d322f

2008-11-18T19:54:00.000+01:00

Oops, this is what happens when you are in a hurry and don't read instructions. Let's see what happens now with Mippin's AdMob validation...

Rippin' with Mippin - Nice and handy way to get your monetized mobile blog

2008-11-18T19:26:00.000+01:00

If you have not heard of our used Mippin, http://www.mippin.com and its Mobilizer service you are missing something really good. Mippin does social networking and auto generation of your blog source (in my case this blog) into a mobi-style blog (http://mippin.com/tlidforss) and allows you to use AdMob's ad services for your mobile blog. I have to say, nice layout, you got two styles to choose from;

List style with images and text with links
Images ala iPhone layout only with links

I am posting this first post to get AdMob enabled and verified on the Mippin mobile blog site. Mipping is using a verification code system for this.

Mippin feed validation KEY=8e8d322f

Stay tuned for updates about usability and any other comments.

Hold on to your neck - Escape the noise with Neckmike

2008-11-16T19:50:00.002+01:00

We all use our mobile phones in more and more places and know how annoying it is when you cannot have a normal conversation because of noise from the background or environment whether at work or out driving or boating. Here's the perfect solution. Neckmike (r) from http://www.neckmike.com and http://www.bikeman.se

Neckmike started in 2004 by the inventor Bo Franzen has successfully been selling the latest product version the GSM Neckmike since 2007. The concept behind the product is simple but very efficient, use a neck band with dual "neck" microphones and two noise and shockwave blocking earplugs and you have handy small product to use with your mobile phone wherever you go. I met Bo and checked the product out at the Mobile Focus 2008 event in Stockholm last week. I have used similar design earplugs on shooting ranges and going hunting in USA so I know they work.

See the demo video by Bo and you will understand directly what it is and does for you.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

Maximize your ROI on search advertising and SEO services, Great tips from Omniture event

2008-11-15T12:59:00.000+01:00

Maximize your ROI on search advertising and SEO services, Great tips from Omniture event with presentations from Omniture UK, KeyBroker and iConvert.

Here's a list of services and my tidbits about how to do things smarter for your marketing.

Important to think about account structure before you get started and get too deep into what you are doing; Use an "agency" view and apply multiple accounts for search engine, campaigns and ad-groups.

Think "merge" of CRM data, blog data, website data and design of landing pages so your landing pages apply both CPM, PPC and SEO keyword requirements. This results in a "sales-funnel" approach to how you layout and structure the use of different data on different levels.

An example of landing page levels;

Level 1, home page - think brand, industry branch,
category when you choose keywords
Level 2, product area page - think products area specific
keywords
Level 3, individual product page - think product specific
keywords and chosen features, benefits and advantages (F/B/A) keywords
Level 4, Buy or call to action page - reinforce F/B/A
keywords and provide easy action

Design of Landing pages

Design a landing page having clearly in mind, where do you want your
customer to end up? Applies for all levels of pages.
Use images, color, action text
Use 3 different designs of you landing page layout ads for the same
campaigns, kill the two worst performing, write two new ones based on the
number one performing, keep going, allow 6 months for analytics and follow up,
then keep marketing

Conversion

Some facts from iConvert about conversion

Fortune 500 companies spend about 15% of marketing budget on optimization
A lot money on optimization but not on analyzing and measuring conversion
rate
Optimization still a must but testing needed

Testing, Segmenting and Targeting (TST)

The commonly used split testing (A/B) usually does not work because it only tells which one of the two alternative ads work better but the result does not tell you why? -> use multivariate testing (MVT)

MVT testing will analyze use of a specific element vs. price, product message, no phone number in ad, what logo used, etc.

Segmentation

You want to check parameters such as

Source, from where does the customer come when arriving on your
landing page?
Behavior, what does the customer do once there?
Geo tagging data, what day and part of day?

With a rolling scheme of 3 different ads, using segmentation as test criteria in the MVT testing will tell you whether the simple ad is the best (good for people who know or understand right away what they want) or the most detailed ad works better (good for people who need to be more informed before they act).

Conclusion: A project result was presented, with a 12% uptake in conversion, resulting 874% ROI on marketing cost and more than 1M £ in extra revenie.

Omniture's SiteSearch and SiteCatalyst will let you play with all these variables to SEO, PPC, CPM, TST optimize you marketing campaigns. Technically it is done by Javascripts used on website pages that will depending
on criteria used redirect traffic via Omniture and back to company website, presenting the different landing page choices.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

SIME2008 - Trends you can take to the bank, views from GP Bullhound

2008-11-14T18:00:00.001+01:00

Per Roman presented "Trends you can take to the bank". Per is CEO for the investment bank, GP Bullhound.

Per outlined his opinions and views about the present market conditions. We have got a 38% on average down on any market index you can follow. It is tough for any company that needs funding right now.

If you meet investors, be direct, in many cases, investment companies do not want to say no, they say let's schedule another meeting. Be direct, ask for term sheets, either you get them or if not move on.

The IPO market is practically dead. But, the M&A market is still alive even if the market for acquisitions on VC backed companies is down to 2001-2002 levels. About 140 deals this year.

The overall advice;

Be in a niche market that is an expanding market
Have strong distribution and sales capacity
Be in a business that scales internationally
Have domain expertise

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

Mirror's Edge promo by Telia - SIME2008

2008-11-14T17:46:00.000+01:00

A big splash was made by Telia and the Mirror's Edge, the first person action-adventure game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE during the SIME2008 event. On the big display on one of the high-rise buildings at Stureplan in Stockholm, you could play the game.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs

Gapminder - What is left of the Western World?

2008-11-14T16:26:00.000+01:00

If you think you understand what is going on in the world, think again and visit Gapminder and take a look the very entertaining and educational animated presentations by Hans Rosling, Professor of Public Health and an excellent presenter using international and UN organizations' statistics to analyze and above all visualize what the world looks like today and into the future.

Hans stated that what kids in school learn is actually based on knowledge and information that is as old as from the year the teacher was born. And since a lot of teachers were born in the 50s, 60s and 70s, what kids learn is what the world looked like back then. As a result most people think of the world as the Western world, orient and developing world.

Play with the animated statistics on the Gapminder site and you will be able to see things Hans highlighted that the Asian boom the last 20 years has meant that countries such as Vietnam has surpassed USA growth and standards in many areas.

The new Global World means

Convergence between different continents
But not for the last billion people below poverty level
And the growth is not based on sustainable technologies

We still have got time to do something for a positive future if we act now. Hans is a very entertaining presenter, he also got stuck with two random events, the first one Microsoft Windows automatic update kicking in during his presentation and the second one, the controller for the big screen at the movie theater quit working leaving the giant screen dark for awhile...

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs

MoYuMe - More of you and Me, mobile picture lifestream service

2008-11-14T15:52:00.000+01:00

MoYuMe (More of You and Me) is a mobile picture lifestream style sharing service. A good friend of mine, Peter Sandberg launched this business. I ran into Peter at the SIME event in Stockholm earlier this week. I like the MoYuMe services, to see a live example, check out Peter's own photo lifestream on the Disruptive blog.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

Bloggers meetup at SIME2008 - Blogging the bloggers

2008-11-14T12:21:00.001+01:00

I attended the bloggers meetup at SIME2008. Dave Sifry (Technorati), Kris Hoet (Microsoft) and Joi Ito (Creative Commons) presenting.

Kris Hoet, Microsoft EMEA market. Kris talked about his blog about working and Microsoft vs. his private Mustang blog ( http://crossthebreeze.com/ and http://iblogmustang.com/). Microsoft has no corporate blog yet, they do have about 5000 employees that blog and so far the company has decided this is good enough. He also stays away from topics such as being dragged into endless discussions about Microsoft vs. Apple, as he put it you don't want to start something that will result in endless comments.

Joi Ito, CEO Creative Commons. Joi (http://joi.ito.com/) talked about his ups and downs blogging. He is a very frequent blogger but has recently toned down his approach, taking up too much time and getting him involved too much. A long time ago, he wondered, how come, I don't get that much traffic and people he asked said, you are writing too good or complete articles, there is no reason to comment on anything and come back to the blog.

Dave Sifry, Founder & Chairman of the Board, Technorati, Inc. Dave (http://www.sifry.com/alerts/) talked about his experience coming out of his Technorati company. He outlined tips for how to get read by many;blog often, be personal, update regularly (more important than number of posts), think SEO, be like a creative copywriter when you come up with the title for a post. He also pitched Technorati new ad service, Engage which has passed 1Billion ads per month. http://technoratimedia.com/publishers/

Tom Crampton, moderated the discussion. http://www.thomascrampton.com/

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs

Hasta la vista baby! - Meet three entrepreneurs from SIME2008

2008-11-14T10:35:00.000+01:00

The Scandinavian Interactive Media Event (SIME) for 2008 took place in Stockholm, Nov. 12-13 at the movie theater, Rigoletto. Cool place, when you have a giant sized movie screen and movie theater surround sound system, your presentations get a bigger bang for your bucks. Here are three of the presenters posted on movie theater posters.

Meet Andie Nordgren, pro blogger from http://www.sime.nu , Pelle Tornberg ex-CEO Metro International magazine and Norbert Teufelberger, co-CEO from the successful bWin betting company.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs

Internetworld Magazine - Top 100 awards event at Sturecompaniet in Stockholm

2008-11-14T09:20:00.000+01:00

The awards countdown started with a presentation of websites that inspired people during 2008, amog them, PolyCola (aka. GahooYoogle) the mashup of Google and Yahoo, Twitter, Ebay (still after all these years) and others before going to the list. Here's the result of the 2008 list;

1. VisitSweden.com (new) – Sweden's best site 2008
2. SVT – best media site
3. Ving – best travel site
4. Travelstart
5. DN.se – best daily newspaper site
6. Prisjakt
7. Coolstuff (new) – best e-commerce site
8. Eniro – best search site
9. Stardoll – best idea site
10. Svd
11. Tasteline
12. Sweden.se (new)
13. Webaidshop.se (new) – best creative thoughts site
14. Lindex – the blog friendly site
15. Tretti.se
16. Fokus (new)
17. Ikea – best inspirational site (new)
18. Hitta.se
19. VA.se (new)
20. Onoff (new)
21. Pricerunner
22. Utsidan.se
23. Veckorevyn
24. Länsförsäkringar - best bank and insurance site
25. Nordnet
26. Aftonbladet
27. Kanal 5
28. Mr Green (new)
29. Dagen
30. Sesam.se
31. Stadium
32. Stallet.se (new)
33. Redeye.se (new)
34. Barnsemester.se
35. Familjeliv
36. Zoovillage.com
37. Knuff.se
38. CDON.com
39. Garaget.org
40. SR
41. Fritidsresor
42. Skatteverket – best government site (hmm.. Swedish IRS)
43. ShakeMyWorld (new)
44. Mötesplatsen
45. Newsmill – best site for opnions and views
46. Ikanobanken
47. Viktklubb.se
48. Allabolag.se
49. Booli (new)
50. Mintur.se (new)
51. SBAB
52. Wikipedia
53. TV4
54. Tradera.com
55. Grandshoes (new)
56. Swedbank
57. Modette.se (new) - best community site for fashion
58. Dustin Home (new) – best site for easy checkout
59. Taffel.se (new)
60. Haléns (new)
61. Funbeat
62. Svenskaspel.se
63. Rädda Barnen (new)
64. Manolo.se
65. Bloggkoll.com (new)
66. Unibet
67. Icabanken
68. Tappa.se (new)
69. Skistar.com
70. Tailorstore
71. Fondmarknaden (new)
72. MTV
73. Folksam
74. Sveriges riksdag
75. Playahead.com
76. Café (new)
77. Freeride
78. Aktiespararna (new)
79. Canalplus (new)
80. Bilddagboken
81. Bris
82. ATG
83. Jaycut
84. Fass.se
85. Reseguiden.se
86. DO (new)
87. Avanza Bank
88. Regeringen
89. Skandiabanken
90. Vägverket
91. Trygg-Hansa
92. Bokhora (new)
93. Bwin
94. Svenskafans.com
95. Discshop.se
96. Laget.se
97. SEB
98. Expressen
99. MUF (new)
100. Resfeber.se

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

Mobil Magazine awards for 2008 - "guldmobiler"

2008-11-10T01:31:00.001+01:00

The results of the mobil magazine awards for best product and services for 2008;

Products of the year 2008

Best music mobile phone - SonyEricsson W902
Best camera mobile phone - SonyEricsson C905
Best smartphone - Nokia E71
Best media mobile phone - Apple iPhone 3G
Best design mobile phone - Apple iPhone 3G
Best GPS device - TomTom Go 930

Services of the year 2008

Best mobile news service - Aftonbladet Tagga
Best mobile sports service - SR Radiosporten
Best mobile useful service - Quedro: Noplace SvD magazine mobil
Best mobile entertainment service - Polarbit new games for iPhone and Symbian

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your business services needs.

MobileFocus2008 - Pictures from Exhibitor area of Mobile Media Companies

2008-11-09T23:32:00.000+01:00

Stay tuned for more updates about select exhibitor companies from Thomas Lidforss International about this Mobile Focus 2008 Mobile Media event.

MobileFocus2008 - LociLoci does mobile social networking without the need for GPS

2008-11-09T18:43:00.003+01:00

The Swedish startup Lociloci has started with an interesting twist, do mobile social networking with location services without the need for using GPS. Their philosophy is that a lot people have or may have concerns about having GPS set to enabled in their phones all the time. So, they have started offering location based networking where you can leave GPS set to off. Since keeping track of where your friends are when you need to know precisely where works well in particular in cities where the cell sites are small, I think the quality of this social networking site is OK.

Lociloci will also soon integrate with Blogger, tumblr, facebook and twitter.

The company behind Lociloci, is XYZ Technology AB has offices in Stockholm and Boston and works as a technology and services provider to any company that wants to use and get a neworking and location services platform.

I also met with a good friend of mine, Mary Larson who works for this company now.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Learn about new rules for your media rights by Twobirds

2008-11-09T15:06:00.000+01:00

”New rules for media rights” by Helene Miksche, Senior Legal Counsel, Bird&Bird http://www.twobirds.com/

Helene gave an overview of different activities going with the EU countries to harmonize the media rights' rules across the borders. As an example STIM the old community which collectively distributes based on rights can no longer work exclusively in Sweden, againt EU rules.

International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies, CISAC, http://www.cisac.org/ has recently come up with a new agreement from July 2008 which you have to follow. Not very entusiastic readings unless you are a lawyer. Bird & Bird has good information on the company website, so help yourself to a better understanding of media rights.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - 4G will make media providers the new mobile operators

2008-11-09T14:52:00.001+01:00

“4G enables media providers to become mobile operators” by Reidar Mouhleb, ZTE

Reidar emphasized ZTE's deep involvement in all infrastructure technology areas and their end-to-end solutions for an all-IP network with Software Defined Radios (SDR) for LTE.

He also believes the rollout and deployment for LTE will be easier than people think, reflecting back to mid 90s with GSM/GPRS data access where the big differences in network existed between circuit switched telephony equipment and packet data IP products made everything a lot more difficult. GPRS once
deployed became obsolete and upgraded to EDGE and then in parallel 3G was deployed. HSDPA as add-on, then quickly HSUPA, the now being deployed HSPA infrastructure. So conclusion was LTE will come faster than people think. LTE chipsets in 2009 and later next year the first mobile devices with new LTE chipsets.

It is interesting to see both ZTE and Huawei have such a big presence in the "Silicon Valley of Sweden", Kista more or less across the street from Ericsson.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - The LTE revolution, mobile multi-media nirvana

2008-11-09T14:25:00.003+01:00

“The LTE-revolution” by Mr. X (oops, forgot to write down his name)

Ericsson presented their views on LTE (Long Term Evolution standard):

Wider pipe
Flat architecture
Focus on self optimization and self configuration services in network

Overall goal: Lower the TCO and better radio spectrum flexibility

Converge the LTE/HSPA and LTE/CDMA paths to provide infrastructure that works anywhere in the world. This is a requirement in the present standardization work for release of 3GPP R8

Major operators around the world on board for this strategy; Verizon Wireless, China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone

For those readers that need a technology update, see the Agilent presentation.

LTE Protocol Primer

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: protocol agilent)

Ericsson did not say one word about WiMax, they are clearly pushing for LTE as soon as possible. They are also targeting mobile 150 Mbit/s as a technical goal. I cannot wait until I can get my hands on such a mobile phone.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Mobile phone, your personal media center

2008-11-09T14:05:00.001+01:00

“Mobilen, det personliga navet i mediavärlden” by SonyEricsson.

I missed this presentation also, heard they presented your mobile phone (or as some people say here in Sweden "nallen" Swedish for your presented the mobile as the driver andlittle "teddy bear") as the king for your personal media. I know after some discussions that SonyEricsson likes a lot the Adobe Open Screen Project and they are also working a lot on Android, so I would not be surprised to see next year some drastically new mobile phones coming out, if SonyEricsson just can improve their financial results. I have also got the impression that SonyEricsson is kind of losing its interest in Symbian as a platform. My bet is we will see more Windows Mobile and new Android phones and support for Adobe services.

The flagship model X1 has already been sold out in Sweden.

SonyEricsson has also an interesting concept with the Xperia panels open developers, you can customize Xperia phone models by designing your own panels. Will be interesting to see how well this concept will be picked up.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Simplifying the mobile internet media

2008-11-09T13:39:00.001+01:00

“Simplifying the mobile internet media” by James Pearce, Vice President, CTO DotMobi, http://mtld.mobi/

I missed this presentation, got stuck discussing with several vendors in the exhibition area. I know all the important companies are sponsoring dotMobi, primarily to simplify the creation of mobile friendly sites and the awareness for everybody with a website what it meas to deliver the best possible user experience on a mobile phone. The best information about dotMobi is the following TypePad blog;

http://dotmobi.typepad.com/

I myself use MoFuse, they make it extremely easy to create a dotmobi website. See, http://tlidforss.mofuse.mobi

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Get Flashy with Flash and new channels for rich mobile multi-media

2008-11-09T13:07:00.001+01:00

”Flash in your mobile - channel for a rich multi-media massmarket” by Michael Berman Telenor/Mobilstart and Patrik Nilsson, Adobe

They presented launch of new Rich Internet Applications (RIA) applications and quick snapshot of the history, how we got here;

PS -> PDF -> Flash -> Air (flash/XML/HTML)

Adobe has created an Open Screen Project to promote Adobe Air among other tools (the Creative Suite, CS4 Master Collection is the "Gold" standard to go for). The open Screen Project includes most chip vendors, Verizon Wireless and SonyEricsson among other companies.

Mobilstart is heavily using Adobe applications and together Michael and Patrik showed a really good live demo of verious news (http://www.svd.se http://www.dn.se), weather and sports sites displayed on a mobile phone. Adobe is pushing hard to get away from todays environment where you have to develop mobile phone applications (very time consuming and expensive in the mobile phone developer environment today, with too many phones and too many OS environments). You should also not having to think like a computer user navigating between applications all the time.

Mobilstart by Telenor is offering gateway services for content providers that work with all mobile operators in Sweden, free to sign up and test drive.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - iPhone changed the rules for mobile internet

2008-11-09T12:45:00.002+01:00

”iPhone and the changed rules of the game for mobile internet” by Ulrika Steg, Product Manager Consumer markets, TeliaSonera

Ulrika presented the impact from the Launch of the iPhone.

28% more data traffic in their 3G network after 1 week, since 160% more data traffic
Most iPhone users browse outside their portal (the way it should have been everywhere from day 1 when internet access was possible on a mobile phone!) vs. non-iPhone users
User cost control important
iPhone users feel they have internet in a pocket
80% of buyers men under age 35 and half live in big cities (I think this also depends on the fact that in big cities you do have 3G coverage, I know a friend of mine living out in the country in northern Sweden and as he put it, "you have to climb up in a f%%%ing tree to get phone access")

The good thing about the iPhone launch, it forced the mobile operators to start thinking about how to offer value priced "flat-fee like" data plans. Telia has come up with pretty good plans so far, at the expense of higher price for the phone. The Metro daily paper actually made up a plan, buy cheap Ryan Air tickets, fly to Rome Italy in the morning, buy the iPhone, fly back home and you save a lot of money. But this is just the beginning of smart touch phones with turbo 3G access, more phones have just been introduced and more competition from Tele2, Telenor and 3 will mean better and better data plans. It will be interesting to see what happens here in Sweden when the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone starts selling at the 279 Euro price for an unlocked phone.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Future of Mobile Applications according to Nokia

2008-11-09T12:10:00.001+01:00

“The future of mobile applications” by Eric Hugo Ovi by Nokia

Eric gave a brief introduction of Ovi by Nokia, the software approach to the Nokia. He showed a professional video presentation that did not actually say very much about Ovi, more giving a quick history lesson (I do remember when Nokia used to sell winter tires for cars that all taxi liked during the winter season) and emotional connection to the future. It was very much like Obama - "Nokia, Yes We Can"

Eric used himself, a south african living in Sweden with family relatives in Italy and South Africa as an example of how international a mobile world has become. A funny little thing, while Eric let the video present itself, I clicked on the Nokia Ovi website and got error on home page, don't know if you so far only can access service in UK where it is being introduced.

Ovi by Nokia is the brand

Context is the differentiator for Ovi

Maps on Ovi
With social networking
Open for all developers
Files on Ovi for your web information
Comes with music
Share on Ovi

Ovi by Nokia is being introduced by Orange in UK.

130 pounds with pay as you go
40 pounds per month

I think this the correct approach but as they say "the devil is in the details". I think Nokia's positioning of Ovi and attempts to "open source" the Symbian environment will determine if this is going to be a success. Now when more and more mobile phone companies seem to give up on using Symbian, I have some doubts about Nokia's attempt to become the number one against Microsoft, Apple and Google. I think Nokia feels the "heat" though from the Apple iPhone success and recent Google G1 phones with Open Handset Alliance and Android not to ever forget Microsoft with big muscles. Nokia does really understand the consumer mobile phone and lifestyle market, so from that point of view, the odds look good.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Social networking goes mobile, here's comes the ink, INQ Mobile

2008-11-09T11:38:00.001+01:00

“Social networking goes mobile” by Ashley Benigno, INQ Mobile and Hutchison, Mobile Futures Strategist

Ashley presented the new company INQ Mobile http://www.inqmobile.com/ sponsored by 3, http://www.three.co.uk/

They have a "INQ OS" kind of platform which is Qualcomm Brew based with a simple but efficient UI for the new INQ phones. Speed and simplicity of pre-integrated apps into the new device makes the use almost instant. They have followed the concept, press a button or one click and the service in question should work right away without delay.

The INQ phone is based on the previously developed SkypePhone S2. The phone has one click access to Facebook, MySpace, Skype and 3's portal.

"Internet communicators that anyone can use" is their slogan. I like this concept with a model for a "cheap" phone, easy one touch access to the most commonly used services. INQ mobile's approach is not to compete with smartphones which they consider too expensive for a big mass market but still provide "cheap" easy access to internet services.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Media goes mobile, views from Yankee Group

2008-11-09T11:26:00.001+01:00

"Media goes mobile” presented by Declan Lonergan, Yankee Group, Vice President, Head of research
YankeeGroup (YG)

Declan used statistics and experiences from Vodafone in UK.

Voda UK most searched;

Facebook
Bebo
eBay
Windows Live

Voda UK most visited;

Facebook
Google
BBC
MSN
Bebo
SonyEricsson
Yahoo
MySpace
Windows Live

Mobile universe vs. Advertising universe? - complementary values and crossover activities, mobile greatest attribute is combo of personalization and ubiquity.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Experiences, conclusions from Mobile-TV

2008-11-09T11:12:00.001+01:00

”Experiences and conclusions from mobile TV trials” presented by Stefan Vlachos - Viasat head of mobile TV
http://www.viasat.se/Mobil-tv (side note: the company home page does not work properly in my IE7 browser)

MTG - ViaSatToGo service is available to Tele2 customers, http://www.tele2.se/

About 30 channels right now.

What people say they are going to use and what they do use is the complete opposite;

Here's what they do use:

Entertainment 80%
Sports
Music
Kids stuff
News

Of the 30 channels, most people use the scheduled areas/channels not on demand views

What is the value of mobile-TV?
-mobisodes - no
-made for mobile - no
-where and when
-why

Conclusion: value of mobile TV - it's your personal TV

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - New TV-habits demand a new TV service

2008-11-09T11:01:00.001+01:00

”New TV-habits demand a new TV service” presented by Johan Wahlberg, web strategist at SVT, http://www.svt.se/

Johan presented the views on TV from a mobile point of view.

What is the mobile from a TV point of view?

an internet channel
short and fresh info
on demand

Limitations due to price, phones,

Mass market eventually with a potential for

interactivity
always on consumers

Requirements:

flat fee reasonably priced needed
again Johan pointed out the UI ease of use a must

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Your daily newspaper goes mobile

2008-11-09T10:24:00.003+01:00

”The Daily Newspaper goes mobile" - presented by Jan Helin, Aftonbladet, chief editor and publisher, http://www.aftonbladet.se

Jan started by presenting his views on use of mobile phones in Japan. Another interesting comment about the philosophy at Aftonbladet internet, use your gut feeling and decide to do something even if you are not quite sure it will be a big hit. This was the case for introducing scannable tags in the printed newspaper, the "beetagg" project.

Reflections from Japan;

Simple media business model in Japan
Too complex and expensive business model for content providers here in Sweden
UI simplicity, press a button and the service works
Low flat fee broadband

The "Beetagg project";

Introduce the use of tags for printed media used to get a direct connection with your readers. Importance of taking a strategic decision to go even if you don't know where you will end up

Results;

Worlds first paper with a moving image - use tag click on phone ad in paper and get a video on phone
Makes an paper article longer - see pictures from an event
Have a dialog with the readers - vote on a question
Service personalized to your needs - get the updated news for an item
Customer clubs and ad solutions - just started this part of the project

What is a "Beetagg"?

Beetagg from Connvision is used for coding, QR and Datamatrix not good enough quality (to use on daily newspaper paper quality), the reader can also as an open solution reader, read these other two open standards. Support is there for secure solutions also where you can verify that use user e.g. only can click once and participate in a survey or buy something.

Some user statistics after the introduction day:

45k clients downloaded of which 8k iPhone
100 - 1k clicks per tag

Sony, ICA, PhoneHouse leading commercial partners. All Swedes and Swedish companies on the directory website http://www.hitta.se have a tag

Connvision Sweden has a site for design of your own tags for web/blog, see http://www.beetagg.se/

UPDATE: Aftonbladet awarded "the Gold Mobile 2008 (Guldmobilen)" for this project.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/tagga/article3715093.ab

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Is mobile content revolution here? Views from Norway

2008-11-08T12:28:00.001+01:00

Mikal Rohde, Schibsted, Head of mobile busines, Schibsted Corp. presented, ”Is the content revolution for mobile phones a reality now?”

Mikal represented views from Norway. He started his career with marketing at Netcom, GSM mobile operator in Norway.

Opinions from Mikal:

The value UIs and ease of use for a user
Walled garden is a dead concept
flat-fee reasonably priced data is needed
more ad paid services
internet with mobility
20k iPhones represents about 50% of all internet traffic vs 5M other phones

UI friendly is the key to success, even the new Nokia's are too hard to use still

Google's strategy with Android+Chrome+AdWords = key indication of a driving direction for the future

Use all advantages of knowing about the user to build useful services, quality on ads needed. The next big wave is ads on the mobile internet and by 2011 $12.8B market according to Gartner group.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Learning from Asia's mobile market for your future

2008-11-08T11:31:00.001+01:00

Benjamin Joffe, CEO +8* and founder Mobile Monday Beijing presented “The invisible media revolution: learning from Asia's mobile futures”

Benjamin Joffe founded http://www.plus8star.com +8* is a cross marketing company focusing on China-Korea-Japan markets.

Benjamin presented mainly views on China, Korea and Japan mobile markets and users.

The World-wide mobile market is 3.3B users, of that

Asia 40%
ROW 12%
North America 8%
Latin and South America 11%
Europe 29%

The 3G market is >70% in Korea and Japan. In Japan more than $1B market for mobile music.

The mobile TV market is >30% in Korea and Japan. 70% of all phones are TV enabled.

D2 Communications, a mobile marketing firm says the mobile ads market is $700M, ads are using QR coded ads.

Blyk an ad sponsored UK MVNO operator is e.g. targetting 15-25 year old people, free phone service plus about 200 SMS per month. http://www.blyk.co.uk/

Good examples of money making mobile services in Asia:

Mobile auctions MobaOku (DeNA) in Japan has $7.4B m-commerce in Japan.
http://www.dena.jp/en/services/ecommerce.html#mbok

Mobile books example 2M books sold (of one book) for about 8 Euro apiece. Benjamin also stated, one major reason for good penetration of mobile commerce in Japan is that they introduced a flat fee data plans already back in 2004.

The last example concerns Mobile SNS (social networking). In a sharp contrast to almost everywhere else in the world, in Japan, Korea and China, social networking services are profitable including the mobile version.

Good examples;

The mobile social networking site mbga in Japan has 10M users with communities of games. http://www.mbga.jp/.pc/

The mobile social networking site mixi in Japan http://mixi.jp/ has 10M users

The mobile social networking QQ in China http://qq.com/ has 50M mobile users and 520M USD in revenue with 87% coming from users.

The mobile social networking site cyworld in Korea http://www.cyworld.com/cymain/index.asp has 6M users where 80% of revenue coming from users.

Finally, Asia is getting a mobile lifestyle infrastructure, use of 3G plus flat-fee data means media drives mobile services, devices and indirectly need for infrastructure.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Who will drive mobile media?

2008-11-08T11:14:00.001+01:00

"Media companies and mobile operators - Who will drive mobile media?"
Morris Packer from Bonnier AB, responsible for mobile media presented

Who is driving the media? - Mobile media is "the media"
http://www.bonnier.com/Default.aspx?epslanguage=EN-GB

Morris presented a story about the first 5k days of the web and it is all about the economy stupid quoting Bill Clinton". Morris also used an example; They ran an ad for Spotify the music streaming service offering 4k free invites in the daily paper Expressen, http://www.expressen.se , the give away invites offer disappeared right away.

User generated content is also a key driver, an example, the Bambuser company allows everybody with a 3G camera/video phone to become a reporter and get the news streamed via http://bambuser.com
Bambuser is used for - online streaming TV from this event

Mobile broadband, blogs, twitter and streaming are changing how elections are done. Just see what happened in USA for the 2008 election.

Mobile media is driven by the users
Bluetooth used for peer communications between users (kids who don’t have internet service on their phones) for videoclips
Email has become a service for old people
Multimedia and live streaming for new generation of users
Consumers are the new media creators

Another little story, you have to remind people nowadays to call 112 (in US 911) to report an accident before, you send in a video clip to the newspaper.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Introduction and Mobil magasinet

2008-11-08T11:02:00.002+01:00

Introduction to the MobileFocus2008 event by Linus Brohult, chief editor Mobil magazine. http://www.mobilbusiness.se

Linus talked briefly about the big rise, finally in mobile data by quoting info from TeliaSonera who has reported a 430% growth. This gives though a skewed impression, most of that growth has come from the USB dongles for "Turbo 3G" laptop modems but later we could see that statistics from TeliaSonera's introduction of iPhone.

Mobil Business is also publishing a very good mobile phone and services magazine. Interesting to see that they just like most PC Magazines started performance benchmark testing to get score values for both performance as well as real live test on battery lifetime. Battery lifetime varies wildly on 3G phone from just under 3h to over 8hrs. Good to know if you are hunting for a useful phone for continuous internet use. Recent issue includes good tests of all new (except BlackBerry Storm) 3G touch phones.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Mobile Media is King - Summary

2008-11-08T09:54:00.001+01:00

The Mobile Focus 2008 event took place on Nov. 6, at Kista Science Tower, Stockholm, http://www.sciencetower.com/

A quick summary of this event can be summed up as 3 "musts" and some marketing and technology tidbits.

Ease of use a must
Flat data plan at a "reasonable price" a must
Easy content monetization models a must
Adobe Air mobiles and INQ OS vs. Apple OSX, Google Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian
Big belief in LTE with a faster time to market than earlier technologies
Nokia "Yes We Can" be better than Apple, Google and Microsoft
Self publishing, Social networking Services (SNS) and media publishers will drive markets
Mobile media will the driver
Mobile TV is personal TVBridging paper and mobile media

Details from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International.

Stockholm Newspapers - Obama Yes We Can

2008-11-05T09:37:00.001+01:00

Following the US election from abroad was very interesting. With all the broadband streaming news, blogs and twitterposts, you can check CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC and Swedish news at the same time. For those of you who would like to see the majot Stockholm newspapers frontcover of the result, see the presentation below:

Listen to your heart - Go out and vote

2008-11-04T03:28:00.000+01:00

Hey, this is a special blogpost for all of my friends in USA. Go Out and Vote!, tomorrow is the final chance you have to make a difference. To get you inspired, here's a song for you all, enjoy!

Shared services outsourcing? - What is that and why bother

2008-11-04T02:26:00.002+01:00

I think now when we are getting closer to 2009, it is time to look ahead and get creative instead of just getting down and out and thinking about global financial crisis. Companies who are smart will outdo the competition in times like now. To kick off your budget thoughts for next year, I am here presenting what you can do if you think about outsourcing.

Outsourcing is not about saving costs only. That is what most people think when they hear the word "outsourcing". Instead you should think strategically, what can you do to outsmart the competition, do more with less and gain a competitive advantage the way you are working. As a little teaser for your thoughts, help yourself to the presentation below;

And contact Thomas Lidforss International for a discussion about outsourcing your non core business functions.

Meet the webspider - Happy Halloween from Stockholm

2008-10-30T10:58:00.001+01:00

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

2008-10-26T11:29:00.000+01:00

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

2008-10-26T11:01:00.000+01:00

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.