Stritar's chronolog

Cool Slovenian brands, part 3: The rise of the Slovenian hardware startup

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 08:55:53 GMT

I've been writing about Slovenian startups for years now. In a post I published in the beginning of 2012, I've highlighted a few Slovenian companies there were able to gain global traction, and as you can see, all of them are focused on software. About a year later, I wrote on the topic again, and this time, the spotlight was on a new generation of companies, which were fueled by Kickstarter and the crowdfunding movement. These businesses were able to find their market with niche products that were interesting to the public mostly because of their innovative design. This year, I'll focus on the third generation of Slovenian technology startups, represented by companies that were able establish something that actually seems so logical today: the rise of the Slovenian hardware startup.

This is basic evolution. Slovenians know how to make great software. We were always known to have had exceptional designers. Besides, there are plenty of outstanding engineers from previous and current generations that were able to produce global success stories with high-tech products such as exhaust systems, ultra-light planes, solar panels and even sailing yachts. Put the three together, and what you get, is a modern hardware startup. Because most hardware startups that want to compete globally, require these three components:

awesome software (1st generation)
awesome design (2nd generation)
awesome hardware (3rd generation)

Currently, there are at least 16 hot Slovenian hardware startups, who managed to reach global audience, receive funding via Kickstarter or investors, or have great potential to disrupt specific industries. Most are focused on uprising technologies, such as the Internet of Things and Quantified Self. Others are simple gadgets that help fuel the mobile revolution. All of them are focused on niche markets that did not exist five years ago.

I'm really glad Slovenian entrepreneurs were able to focus on these new fields, because the modern hardware market is not something anyone can compete in. You need specific skills from many fields, especially software, design and engineering. And Slovenians are exceptional in all of them. This is why this third generation of Slovenian startups perhaps has the biggest potential of them all. The community is strong as ever, heck, some are already joining forces in making cool mashups. And they need your help as well: know them, like them, support them, buy them!

Here they are, the hottest Slovenian hardware startups, together with a few highligths of their stories so far:

Beezinga

Beezinga is an early warning analytical system about events in remote apiaries. Beezinga - Google analytics for beekeepers.
Highlights: Wins ImagineCup 2013 (Apr '13), gets covered by TechCrunch (Jul '13) and others (Jul '13).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~500
Links: beezinga.com, @beezingahive, FB: BeezingaHive

Bellabeat

Hear, visualize and share your unborn baby's heartbeat with our pocket size heart rate monitor and a mobile app.
Highlights: Joins Y Combinator (Feb '14), gets covered by ABC News (Mar '14), raises additional $4.5M (May '14), introduces 3 new products (Sep '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~9.700
Links: bellabeat.com, @GetBellaBeat, FB: bellabeat

CarLock

CarLock is an affordable and easy to use solution for monitoring your car's location.
Highlights: Joins StartLabs (Jan '14), gets featured in Auto Express Magazine (Apr '14) and Top Gear Magazine (Jun '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~6.150
Links: carlock.co, @Carlock6, FB: carlock

Chipolo

Chipolo™ is a Bluetooth item finder for iPhone & Android. And it comes in 9 gorgeous colors.
Highlights: Raises almost $300k on Kickstarter (Nov '13), appears on TechCrunch (Nov '13) and TheNextWeb (Dec '13), is available on Amazon UK (Jun '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~4.300
Links: chipolo.net, @Chipolo, FB: ChipoloTM

CubeSensors

CubeSensors are small, cordless and connected devices that help you maintain a healthy and productive indoor environment.
Highlights: Wins TechCrunch hardware battlefield (Jan '14), raises $700k (Jun '14), appears on HardWired (Jul '14), is shipping from stock (Sep '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~2.000
Links: cubesensors.com, @CubeSensors, FB: cubesensors

Daisy.si

Daisy.si is an amazing new independent portable all-in-one design smart plant watering device.
Highlights: Raises $26k on Indiegogo (Jun '14), gets covered by multiple sources (Apr '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): N/A
Links: daisy.si

enolyse

Platform for family winemakers to improve fermentation and save time.
Highlights: Wins start:Cloud 2013 (Oct '13), becomes Slovenian start-up 2014 finalist (May '14), Joins LAUNCHhub (May '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~650
Links: enolyse.com, @enolyse, FB: enolyse

FlyKly

FlyKly Street Smart. Smart tools for smarter urban transportation.
Highlights: Gets covered by Engadget (Oct '13), CNET (Oct '13) and others, Raises $700k on Kickstarter (Oct '13), appears on PopSci (Feb '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~23.500
Links: flykly.com, @flykly, FB: flyklybike

H2O-Pal

The Hydration Tracker That Works Perfectly With Your Smartphone.
Highlights: Gets covered by TechCrunch (Oct '13), appears on CES (Jan '14), becomes Slovenian start-up of 2014 (May '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~5.300
Links: h2opal.com, @H2OPal, FB: h2opal

Lumu

Lumu is a light meter for your smartphone. It helps you create powerful memories anytime, anywhere.
Highlights: Gets covered by The Verge (May '13) and TheNextWeb (Jun '14), Raises $244k on Kickstarter (Jul '13).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~6.250
Links: lu.mu, @Lumu, FB: lumu.meter

MESI (Qualcomm Tricoder XPRIZE)

Our solution is to bring the doctor into your home. It consists of a wristband, wearable shield, mobile app and 4 modules.
Highlights: Becomes finalist of XPRIZE (Aug '14), appears on TheNextWeb (Aug '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~800
Homepage: mesimedical.com, @MESImedical, FB: MESIdoo

Monolyth

Monolyth is internet connected device for your AC unit, optimizing air temperature & quality for your comfort and energy savings.
Highlights: Gets covered by Digital trends (Jul '14) and others (Jul '14), tries with Indiegogo (Aug '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~650
Homepage: monolyth.co, @MonolythCo, FB: monolyth.co

OIVO

Oivo is the smallest charger on the go for iPhone. No cables, no AC power, no fuss. Just add AA batteries.
Highlights: Gets covered by TheNextWeb (Sep '14), starts great on Kickstarter (Sep '14) but cancels campaign to reiterate (Sep '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~1.300
Links: oivo.pw, @OivoPW, FB: oivo.pw

Red Pitaya

Red Pitaya turns your smartphone, tablet or PC into many amazing instruments.
Highlights: Gets covered by TechCrunch (Jul '14), raises $256k on Kickstarter (Sep '13), appears elsewhere (Dec '13).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~1.900
Links: redpitaya.com, @red_pitaya_, FB: redpitayaspark

Swich

A unique Smartphone Wireless Charger. Sophisticated energy transmission and elegant design in sustainable materials.
Highlights: Raises $45k on Kickstarter (Jul '14), appears on GigaOm (Jul '14), FastCo (Jul '14) and ZDNet (Jul '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~1.600
Links: swichwicharger.com, @swichwicharger, FB: Swich.wireless

Visionect

We're deploying the next generation of digital signage by applying electronic paper where glaring, energy consuming and heavily wired LCDs can't do the job.
Highlights: Raises $1,5m (Sep '12), gets covered by TechCrunch (Feb '14), launches development kit (Feb '14).
Total fans (TW + FB): ~2.000
Links: visionect.com, @visionect, FB: visionect

Interested in more stories about Slovenian startups? Check out this magazine.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Check out the complete Cool Slovenian brands series.

The end of recession or the coolest Slovenian billboard of 2014?

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 07:41:51 GMT

A few days ago, a billboard captured my attention. Actually, we're talking about many billboards, since this metallurgy company called Bučar put them all over Ljubljana. The weird thing is, they are using them to recruit new employees. Wait a minute, there's something wrong with this picture! While everybody is aggressively trying to sell us stuff we don't really need, these guys are actually looking for new workers with billboards? In a country with an unemployment rate of 13%? Is this thing for real?

Let's try to understand what just happened here... The company itself seems to be the development of a capable entrepreneur Drago Bučar, whose business is growing like mad. Judging the billboard's design, I would guess the campaign is not a professional act, but rather something done internally, without much involvement from a marketing agency. But that doesn't change the fact the effect of the billboard is brilliant. While trying to find 10 new workers (as posted on their website), I believe Bučar actually managed to produce one of the most effective branding campaigns of this year in Slovenia, which already granted them an apperance on the national radio. Everybody wants to know who these guys are, and they were targeting somebody completely different. Can you believe the irony?

Of course, there is always the possibility that this billboard is a work of a mastermind genius, whose plan was to capture attention with false pretense, but I don't think so. This thing looks legit, and it's always nice to hear about prosperous companies from Slovenia. Good luck, kick ass!

Me vs. IT 2.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:41:46 GMT

In 2009, I was very excited to present a few funky things we've been developing with Neolab, at the largest independent IT conference in Slovenia. The world was obsessed with "2.0" back then, and we were determined to join that hype. Facebook was already big at that point, and it was becoming clear they will make a huge impact on the future of technology. Tim O'Reilly wrote a seminal article on the topic, arguing how Web 2.0, the new generation of the internet (and software!), has changed everything.

I was amazed by the potential of Web 2.0 as well. Since my main focus is developing business oriented software solutions, I started fantasizing about the possibilities of integrating those concepts into our (serious) applications. If our clients are buying premium custom software from us, we should try to deliver more features with high added value for them. Stuff that enables co-creation and collaboration. Which we did. And called it IT 2.0.

We wanted IT 2.0 to be much more than Enterprise 2.0. At that time, Enterprise 2.0 meant using mostly third-party tools for social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, assimilating them into enterprise environments. On the other hand, we wanted to take the coolest concepts invented by social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, and integrate them into our solutions in new ways. You see, our software isn't social per se, our software's main goal is to solve complex and specific business problems. But we've managed to put a social layer on top of that software, making the term Enteprise 2.0 simply not awesome enough to describe it.

But Enteprise 2.0 is awesome. It's actually very awesome. If O'Reilly defined Web 2.0 in 2005, Andrew McAfee defined Enteprise 2.0 in 2006. He was one of the first who has studied the implementation of social software (such as social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging) into enterprise environments. In doing that, he developed the fundamentals of Enterprise 2.0, naming it SLATES (Search, Links, Authorship, Tags, Extensions, Signals). This concept was later on extended by Dion Hinchcliffe with FLATNESSES (adding Freeform, Network-oriented, Social, Emergence) and the 4Cs by Niall Cook (Communication, Collaboration, Connection, Cooperation).

But social software (like any other software) is usually just a means to achieve something greater. The truth is, implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools into the enterprise isn't enough to make collaboration and open innovation work, organizations need to fundamentally change as well. Enterprise 2.0 enables a completely new way of doing business, walking hand in hand with lean and agile approaches, seeking new opportunities in connecting employees, clients, partners, suppliers and even competition. It supports the new global and connected world. But it requires a new way of thinking and a deep corporate culture change.

Organizational culture (change) is very important for innovation and adaptability, but in the academic field, pieces of this equation are missing. Until now, there haven't been many studies about how organizational culture impacts the implementation of collaborative environment and vice versa. But I'm set to change that fact. And I will soon need your help!

I've finally started working on my master's thesis, which will try to find out if there is connection between organizational culture and Enterprise 2.0 adoption. I have already studied 6 books and 50+ articles on the subject, and will soon deploy the survey, which will combine the OCAI (Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument) and a general Enterprise 2.0 questionnaire. Those who will help me and participate in the study, will get the final report in return, besides a concise comment / advice about their specific organization's situation (the survey is not available yet, please ping me on if you're interested). I'm sure the results will be worth the effort.

If IT 2.0 is about new generations of software and user experience, Enterprise 2.0 is about new ways of managing companies. Those who are able to implement such approaches can win big, but then again, not all companies actually have the opportunity to absorb this transformation. There are many huge obstacles for businesses to go 2.0. Stay tuned because soon, we will better understand why.

Why Twitter is so important for the future of the Web

Mon, 05 May 2014 06:53:27 GMT

While working on a project, I visited a website to check out a product. Since then, I've been seeing their ads all over Facebook and various other sites via Google Ads. Can't run away anymore - it's becoming obvious the power of these two online giants is growing by the day, which leaves the decision about what you will see on the Internet in the hands of only a few. This is something that's very alarming; the Web is becoming too monopolized, and this trend needs to be turned around.

Today it seems Google and Facebook own the Internet. If you check out the list of the biggest (English) web companies in the world, we can see that they are way ahead of others in size and market capitalization (on May 2nd, 2014), and respectively, their power. (I haven't counted Amazon and eBay, since they are e-commerce, and not pure "Web" companies). Surely there have been similar cases of technology monopolies in the past as well, but with the Web, it's a bit more important. Whoever controls what information is being broadcast, controls everything.

	Value ($b)	Revenue ($b)	Users (m)	Network	Source
Google	356	50	1000+	YouTube, ...	revenue, users
Facebook	155	7.8	1230	Instagram, WhatsApp	revenue, users
Yahoo	38	4.7	800	Tumblr, Flickr	revenue, users
Twitter	22	0.6	250	Vine	revenue, users
Linkedin	17.8	2	300	SlideShare, Pulse	revenue, users

Chris Dixon wrote a great blogpost about how the mobile ecosystem is becoming too closed (apps over web), which will hurt innovation and progress in the long run. Something similar is happening with the Web as well, where only a few players get to decide what content we will consume. Google, with its presence across multiple channels (search, Android, maps, mail), and Facebook, with its ever-expanding suite of services and apps (Instagram, WhatsApp), trying to reach into every pore of our private lives.

That is why we desperately need alternatives. Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Yahoo come into mind, but they all share a common problem. They are not real platforms. Reddit is great for content discovery, but it hasn't really evolved beyond the original service. LinkedIn is very strong, but it represents a static (connections), rather than dynamic (interactions) ecosystem, which makes it hard to become a distributed platform. Pinterest's only logical evolution seems to be towards e-commerce, probably competing against Amazon and eBay in the long run. While Yahoo seems to be headed in the right direction, but can't seem to be able to find synergies between its services (Yahoo.com, Tumblr, Flickr).

Platforms are important, since platforms are those who rule specific sets of technologies. That is why these four probably won't have that much of a saying about the Web of tomorrow. But there is another one who can perhaps provide an alternative - my darling Twitter.

Not that Twitter is perfect - they've actually been quite bad. In my opinion, they've made a huge mistake by closing down their ecosystem, instead, they should become the ultimate platform for content exchange. Not showing Instagram photos inside their stream probably hurts them more than it hurts Instagram. But they have always been the cool kid, very important for humanity. They have also offered a complete view of the results, unlike those filtered by PageRank and EdgeRank algorithms.

Twitter's growth is stopping, which is bad. Some are already declaring it irrelevant, while others (as well as the stock exchange - its value is way too high for the revenues) believe in its bright future. I believe Twitter still has a chance to become a real player, big enough to matter in the long run. By expanding its portfolio of services (Vine, Gnip), by moving its experience more towards Facebook (I can't believe I'm saying this...), by finally admitting what it was meant to be all along: a public content-oriented social network (=perfect for anyone's public online identity).

Twitter also has the opportunity to directly compete with both Google's and Facebook's core services. The social networking component can offer an alternative to Facebook, while its search function can offer some sort of a substitute to Google search. That is why it has to work. No one else really has a chance.

The Internet desperately needs as many players as possible who will be able to stand against Google and Facebook in the years to come, for the sake of objective information. Twitter currently seems to be the best bet to provide this alternative, since they are the ones who have managed to evolve beyond its core service the most, and it seems they are distinct and innovative enough to matter. Otherwise, there's a chance that in the long run, 90% of the content we consume will be suggested by Google and Facebook.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their res…

Please help me curate a magazine about Slovenian startups

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 12:07:41 GMT

I don't know if you've heard, but the past year has been very generous to Slovenian startups. A new generation of companies like Layer, CubeSensors, Databox and Povio introduced innovative services in the technology sector, while products like FlyKly, Lumu, Musguard and Chipolo rocked Kickstarter with their fashionably designed solutions. If you take into account the veterans that have been around for years, you can see are slowly reaching a point where it's becoming hard to mention everybody worth mentioning. The scale of the Slovenian startup ecosystem can be understood by checking out this infographic provided by Yougo.

The supporting infrastructure and community that's emerged around these startups is thriving as well, and I'm proud to be a part of it. Even though I've started working on new things, I still don't have a huge success story of my own to tell, but I'm doing my best to support those who do. By spreading the word, blogging about it here and on other blogs (Whiteboard, Inventures), by collecting news about great solutions and people. And this is where I need your help.

Magazine

You've probably heard about Flipboard. Their new service offers anyone to create his/her own magazine, which combines articles from various sources into a single journal, and the results are pretty neat. By now, I've managed to collect more that 150 articles about Slovenian startups, which cover the following companies (some have already ceased existing, and some have pivoted into a different brand): Azumio, BabyWatch, Beezinga, CallWith.me, CarLock, Celtra, Chipolo, CubeSensors, Databox / Zeppelin, Dawn of Play (Dream of Pixels), DORA, DoubleRecall, eBeat, Equaleyes / 2ndsight, Fieldoo, Flaviar, Flowr, H20-Pal, Iddiction, Iptvbeat, Layer, LLStol, Lumu, Lyst, Koofr, JollyDeck, Mediately, Motiviti, Musguard, Ondu, Oust.me, Outfit7, Peekster, Povio, Red Pitaya, Toonia, Toshl, Vert, Visionect, Vox.io, Xvida, Zemanta. Check it out.

While I'm trying to make this magazine as relevant as possible, there are surely many others I have missed, and here's where you can come in. What I am looking for are other interesting articles about Slovenian startups in English (so non-Slovenians can understand them as well), preferably published by foreign media. I am also looking for other successful startups and go-getting people which I've missed, so I can put them on this list. All of this will help me keep the magazine fresh and up-to-date, creating an online news hub accessible to anyone.

So, if you know something, ping me on Twitter, contact me or make a comment below. Become a part of the ecosystem, our startups surely need all the exposure they can get. Thanks.

https://flipboard.com/section/startup-slovenia-bt6WAR

Cool Slovenian brands, part 2: The stars of Kickstarter

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 22:25:28 GMT

Kickstarter got my attention back in 2010, when Diaspora successfully raised $50k. This is the amount they required to develop an open source alternative to Facebook, where people would have full control over their posts and multimedia. It was a good idea, but too complex to easily implement, and the guys never managed to make it fully work. But there are other projects who did manage go big, making Kickstarter and crowd-founding an everyday thing. Today, numerous ideas, products, and even movies are financed this way, while statistics tell an amazing story: in 2012, Kickstarter pledges topped $300 million.

Besides getting financial resources which help people to build their products, crowd-funding has many other interesting benefits. For young entrepreneurs, this platform provides an option to validate their ideas which can help them reach product / market fit. They can start selling their prototype or MVP before they have a fully developed product. The (viral) marketing component is important as well, great Kickstarter projects spread around the (social) Web in minutes. People who get involved in something, have a strong tendency to become advocates and share information about it. These are just a few reasons why there are so many individuals and startups who are choosing such approaches to enter new markets.

I'm very glad to see crowd-funding being used in Slovenia as well. Since 2012, when LLSTOL managed to raise $18k+ on Kickstarter, other projects used the same strategy. In the last month alone, we've seen two new superstars emerge, bringing the total number of successfully funded Slovenian Kickstarter projects to 4 (two of those are still ongoing, the third hasn't reached the goal yet). We must mention two other projects (My name is Janez Janša and Namazi na mizo) which managed to find funding elsewhere.

LLSTOL

Time: Aug-Sep 2012
Received: $21,956 ($18,000 goal)
The LLSTOL (LL Chair) is a modular piece of furniture you can use in many ways; as a chair, a table, shelving or a drawing board. These multi-functional properties make it a very interesting product, which enabled LLSTOL to get featured in many local and international blogs. Thumbs up for paving the way for other Slovenian projects on Kickstarter!

XVIDA Boomerang

Time: Nov-Dec 2012
Received: $50,667 ($40,000 goal)
The all-in-one iPad stand went a step further, with a funding goal of $40k. Again, we are seeing a product with a modular structure, with a variety of beautifully designed holders for different occasions. Boomerang managed to turn quite a few heads, and is already shipping.

ONDU

Time: May-Jun 12th 2013 - STILL ACTIVE
Received: $92,876 ($10,000 goal)
Currently the most successful Slovenian Kickstarter project, ONDU pinhole cameras already raised more than $90k, out of $10k required. I like this project a lot as well, since it offers a beautiful, simple and unique product, made from local materials, by an enthusiast who likes to work with wood.

Marko B.'s story

Time: May-Jun 20th 2013 - STILL ACTIVE
Received: $1,843 ($20,000 goal)
Marko Baloh is an ultra-marathon cyclist, who he has written an autobiography about training for one of the hardest races ever, RAAM. With the help of Kickstarter, he will try to translate and publish that book in English as well. Hopefully, he can get a bit more exposure that will help him reach that goal.

Musguard

Time: May-Jun 22th 2013 - STILL ACTIVE
Received: $25,323 ($10,000 goal)
The foldable rear bycicle fender is simply awesome, and it weighs only 35 grams. The hipsters will probably take this product for their own, and thanks to Kickstarter, we will be seeing it in many colors. Musguard is one of the few projects who made it to Gizmodo.

Other projects

There are other Slovenian projects who were financed or marketed with the help of crowd-funding as well:

My name is Janez Janša: A documentary movie about three artists who changed their names to Janez Janša managed to raise more than €7k on Verkami back in April 2012, which makes this film the first successfully crowd-founded project in Slovenia!
Pelicon Beer: While Pelicon beer didn't manage to raise $100,000 to expand their production line, their Kickstarter campaign was successful anyways; they gained so much exposure, they will be opening the brewery on their own anyways.
Namazi na mizo: The cook book about different spreads managed to raise enough money to be actually published in real life. This was achieved locally, by accepting donations.

Your turn

I admit I gave the projects that used Kickstarter a bit more weight than others. I strongly feel that such cool ideas should try to aim for global markets, and Kickstarter is the platform that can help them achieve just that. Besides, there are three Slovenian projects who are still active on Kickstarter at the time of writing, and I think they need any help they can get.

It's fascinating that pretty much all internationally successful Slovenian crowd-founded campaigns are about real-life products with unique and creative designs. Slovenia definitely has to start actively developing this industry, I know so many talented designers around here, and there is a lot of legacy from the previous ages. These projects deserve to join other Slovenian success stories, don't you agree? What are you waiting for, become a part of the story, apply with your project or back someone up!

(Special thanks to alivea for compiling the list which helped me write this.)

UPDATE (23.6.2013): In the mean time, Lumu Light Meter managed to set a new standard, reaching its $20k goal in hours, and is already at $140k+ after six days. This is already the fourth Kickstarter project in cooperation with Niko Klanšek (after LLSTOL, Ondu and Musguard), and Lumu is so cool it got TechCrunched!

Check out the complete Cool Slovenian brands series.

Be an apprentice. Evolve as a manager.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:22:18 GMT

Being a manager is not something that's in my DNA. I'm primarily an engineer, a scientist, a software developer. I find it hard to spend time on governing activities that have no direct output, and prefer doing things rather than guiding and supervising how things are done. Some people are natural organizers, others need to somehow learn and adopt that specific set of technical and social skills that help teams operate smoothly and efficiently. While I may have the technical skills of understanding how things should be done, my problems lie elsewhere.

The truth is, I don't feel that good when I'm telling people what to do, I don't see myself as a superior who sets the goals and awards or punishes people based on their results. At the same time I fully recognize this is something that needs to be done one way or another, otherwise, inefficiency. I must admit I did advance on the field in the past years, since I'm trying hard to learn how to do it. Slowly. And to my great surprise, it seems one of my latest ventures will unexpectedly help me evolve as a manager as well. As you will see, I happened to find myself on the other side of the story.

After many years, even decades, I'm finally an apprentice again! By dedicating multiple 10.000 hours to system architecture, database design, development, (digital) marketing, design and user experience, I've done or heard about pretty much everything that is associated with the fields of software development. That's what I do for living, and even if I embark on something new, I always have enough initial knowledge to prevent me from being an apprentice. Now I understand this fact made me miss out on a few very important realizations that come from being one.

My grandfather has left me this really cool car. A Yugoslavian Zastava 101, built in 1978. She hasn't been driven in about 20 years, but now, the time has come to bring it back to life. My girlfriend's uncle happened to be a car mechanic for 20 years, and he was specialized in repairing Zastavas. Lucky bastard me! He was very happy to help me out, and in the past weeks, we have spent a few session in his garage, coming close to making the beauty run.

I wanted to be there when repairs happen, to help and to learn. Which makes me an apprentice car mechanic. Swiping the floor, cleaning up spark plugs, screwing and unscrewing stuff, holding things aside, moving the flashlight, operating the car jack. I even managed to disassemble the wheels and brakes and felt amazing about it. My teacher is very patient and I don't feel bad at all for being ordered around and doing all the small things. I understand this is my role in this specific project, and I love playing it.

I did this. I will also have to put it back together.

I learned so much already, not only about cars and engines, but about management as well. The most important one being that people don't feel bad if they're ordered what to do, rather the opposite. They need to know why things are happening and how we will get there. It has nothing to do with someone being something more than the other, it's just a person's role in the specific situation. Perhaps those managed will be the ones who will give out orders in a few years, who knows. But today, I'm the one who is expected to do so, and it's becoming clearer, how. It's a bit ironic that I learned that by fixing up an old car that was waiting 20 years for me to take care of it.

Funny, how things are interconnected, how everything is everything. I probably wouldn't perceive the whole apprentice experience the way I do now if I wouldn't be where I am now, but what's even funnier, is that I can imagine having the same epiphany who knows where as well. I was ready for this, this needed to happen. We evolve every day, and sometimes, the next steps are achieved under very weird circumstances. That's why you and I need to do as many crazy things as possible. Being an apprentice somewhere to become a better manager somewhere else? Why not. Life is like a box of chocolates.

I believe Firefox OS may be on to something

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 22:27:50 GMT

A few days ago, during the Mobile World Congress, Firefox announced its mobile OS, which will be available soon. Teaming up with 18 carriers and 4 announced manufacturers (plus Sony), the release was probably bigger than expected. A few high-profile web services, including AirBnb, Disney, Facebook, SoundCloud and Twitter, also joined the hype by including their apps to the new marketplace. Analysts quickly put down their bets, some supporting the effort, while others denying the possibility of its success. One of the most fascinating things about the new OS is that it's going to be entirely web based, the operating system itself, the apps, everything. Unlocking the power of the web, as they put it. And to be honest, I can buy that.

The situation

Currently, the mobile OS market is dominated by two players, Apple and Google. They both have their own strategies, Apple being the control-freak offering exclusivity, and Google being the easy-going dude appealing to the masses. Windows is trying to find its place somewhere in-between, but it's still struggling to gain its market share (currently at around few percent) - we will see how their partnership with Nokia turns out in the long run. We mustn't also forget about Blackberry and their potential comeback with their new operating system and the newly introduced Z10 smartphone. But that's about it.

Until Firefox OS was introduced.

The history

To begin with, we must take a look at the original Firefox browser, the first-choice browser of the developer a few years ago. That is before Chrome managed to offer a stabler and faster version of it. What made Firefox so useful, were the Javascript console and Firebug, an add-on that all web developers need once they try out. But Firebug supposedly makes Firefox work much slower. Chrome built such a tool for client-side debugging inside its browsers and boom - millions of developers switched to Chrome. I don't know why Firefox hasn't offered a similar tool, they should, especially now, when they have a chance not only to gain mobile OS market share, but also to regain their position in the browser wars. They should fully unlock the power of the web, with their potential mobile OS and browser marketing synergies. Firefox = the internet.

The web is wonderful, and Firefox has always been one of its strongest advocates. And now they are doing it again, by offering an operating system that is fully based on the web. Besides, for many reasons, they are probably in a much better position to do it then WebOS was. Or as they put it:

With Firefox OS, you can simply enter any search term and instantly create a one-time use or downloadable app.

The community

Developers are an important part of every mobile ecosystem, and developing for different platforms is a big pain in the ass. Of course, everybody has the possibility to decide for HTML app instead of a native app, but if the platform prefers native apps, it's a no brainer that those will have more capabilities and better performance. But it's hard to make native apps. I am a web developer, been doing it for years, tried to develop something for iOS one day. I lost interest in a few days, because you need to get used to a totally new environment, and the thought of going through the same with Android and Windows just made me depressed. But here's what Firefox says:

Every Web developer can easily create and distribute HTML5 apps so you can find an app for whatever you want.

Holy crap, the web as the platform! Which means I will be able to make Firefox OS apps already from the start. And when I have that HTML5 app, will I perhaps be willing to easily turn it into a hybrid native / HTML5 app for all other platforms? The thought is appealing. And since HTML5 is powerful enough to access the phone's hardware (camera, GPS, etc.), this makes it much more interesting. Not to mention I would be improving my basic web developer skills if I would start developing for Firefox OS.

The recipe

Firefox OS has the carriers, manufacturers and supporters aboard, and if developing and deploying apps will be as easy peasy as they brag about it, it will all come down to a single thing: the interface and user experience that the rendering engine will be able to provide. Firefox has its own rendering engine Gecko, contrary to WebKit, which powers Chrome, Safari and Opera. Based on the first videos of the Firefox OS, it seems the interface isn't as smooth as the one you can get from the iPhone, Android or Windows Phone, and not as innovative as Ubuntu Touch. Which can be a big, big problem. Manufacturers may need and support alternatives, but it's the users who will decide, and their expectations are very high.

If Firefox can take care of this, and (stronger) devices are fully adjusted to run it, while developers are able to upgrade the user experience, I don't see a reason why Firefox OS shouldn't gain traction. All the components are there, the brand is strong and the race is long. Go Firefox!

Thinking about Silicon Valley? Did you hear about the Slovenian / Slavic startup house?

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:41:17 GMT

I can't believe it's been more than half a year since I went to the Valley. Good times, a lot has happened there, even more has happened since. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a place every developer and / or entrepreneur should visit at least once, to get the idea about how things work on a larger scale. To receive another orientation point, to think outside the box. All roads in technology lead there, and if you are planning on ever doing something major, this is definitely the place to be. Startups, developers, investors, enthusiasts, geeks, technology corporations, everybody's there. Good news: it's easier than ever for you to be a part of it too.

At the time of my trip, I stayed at vox.io's Bay Area HQ, which has evolved to a full-blown startup house since then. The loft was simply calling for this expansion, since there's room for at least 10 people to stay there at once. It was packed with entrepreneurs at that time as well, but financing such a place is simply too much for a single startup to bear. And since there are so many disruptive technology companies in Slovenia, some of them decided to help, recently transforming vox.io's into a real Slovenian / Slavic Startup house. Slavic, because the initiative is also supported by a startup from Croatia, which means that the Slovenian startup ecosystem is connecting even stronger with other startup communities from the Adriatic region. Respect to the guys from ShoutEm, Toshl, Zemanta, vox.io and Hekovnik, who are partners in the project!

Work hard, party harder, networking included. More pictures here and here.

I'm not fully acquainted with the criteria and terms for staying in the Startup house, but this is surely the easiest, most inexpensive and welcoming way for Slovenian technology freaks to discover San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Don't worry, these guys are really nice and helpful, so don't be afraid to contact them for more information.

The Slovenian / Slavic startup house. More pictures here and here.

Thinking about going? Here's the deal: going there is really easy, you just need to decide to go. Making something out of your visit is really hard, but you can get prepared, besides, you can learn a bit from my adventures. Bottom line, if you feel the need to go, you should go, also because you've never had a better opportunity, and it's not perfectly clear for how long this opportunity will stay available.

So here's what you can do: think about what you have and what you are trying to achieve. Prepare your pitch, pimp your sites and Linkedin profile, plan your visits and schedule your meetings. Open your mind. And just simply go. San Francisco is a crazy place, and even if things turn out totally different than expected (which they probably will), I promise you, visiting the Valley will be an unforgettable experience. Don't miss it.

http://ssh.si

Targeting non-vegetarians with veggie food? Well played, Spar, well played.

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 20:04:44 GMT

I'm not vegetarian, and apparently I share this habit with more than 95% of other people. I generally don't buy vegetarian food, a steak works fine with me. I didn't even know I could/should buy vegetarian food - after all, vegetarian food is designated for vegetarians, which I'm not. I don't have anything agains them, but we're a different breed you know, like wolves and butterflies. To be honest, I wouldn't mind eating a vegetarian meal, if only I would feel it's something intended also for me. That's why I don't. But Spar told me I could and I should. And I think they might be on to something.

Spar's new Veggie products have an interesting twist. It's a vegetarian line, targeting non-vegetarians. When the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow, who is not a vegetarian, but likes veggie, tells you that, you might as well think, hmm, she might be right. Why should I be a vegetarian to eat a meatless meal? I like my vegetables, so eating vegetarian on few occasions actually isn't such a bad idea. Which is fucking genius. Spar just made their potential client pool 20x bigger than it was, and their original target group probably doesn't mind it at all. There's a chance they will actually feel proud that meat-eaters will be copying their lifestyle.

"I'm not a vegetarian, but I like veggie." Why haven't I thought of that?

I love to comment on simple and effective campaigns like this, even though I'm not a marketing expert. That's why I'm not sure if this type of approach has been used before or if it even has its own name from the Mad Men times. Anyways, I think it's brilliant, and I will definitely be thinking about how to use it in other scenarios. Taking a minor group with specific requirements, creating a product for them, and then selling it to a larger group with the "why not" approach. Infinite possibilities, while the one presented probably has the most potential of them all. Well played, Spar, well played.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Did Apple and Samsung just pull the greatest trick in the mobile universe?

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:09:54 GMT

The verdict is finally in. Samsung has lost the lawsuit against Apple, which means the court decided they were copying iPhone's design and user experience. The decisions seems legit, specially if you saw the internal document from Samsung, a case study comparing and improving the Galaxy's user interface based on iOS's. On the other hand, it's hard to say if the decision is morally right and what it means for the mobile industry. Software patents are a problem and some companies like Google have already made a stance agains them (even though they've supposedly acquired Motorola because of them). But could all of this be just a marketing trick? Where Apple and Samsung set out to dominate the mobile industry?

Collectively, these two companies hold 50% of the smartphone market share, and take 90% of the global industry margins. Samsung is the only Android manufacturer that is really profitable. Around 25% of the iPhone is made by Samsung. The corporations publicly don't like each other, and don't have any problems suing each other while making business. A weird situation indeed.

Apple's biggest quarter brought in $13 billion dollars of profit on $46 billion dollars of revenue, most of it from iOS devices. Samsung's revenue is around the same, with lower margin ($5 billion). Yet the whole legal fiasco ended up in Samsung having to pay around $1 billion to Apple. Peanuts, if you ask me. We have been listening to this bullshit for years now, yet the decision doesn't make any significant different to any of the giants. Except the fact that people are taking side with one or the other. Not Nokia, HTC, Motorola, Sony or anyone else. Other manufacturers don't seem to exist anymore. Just Apple and Samsung, abusing the legal system to own the mobile world. Which could easily be one of the most brilliant marketing stunts ever. Two rings to rule them all.

Dear Twitter, please reconsider this madness

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:01:53 GMT

Dear Twitter. You were always one of my favorites. I love it how you managed to create a subculture, something that Facebook will never be able to do. You've allowed people to collectively create information that travels the world in seconds. Your role in many global activist projects is invaluable, and your stance on privacy issues something that inspires the world. You help us find out about things before they actually happen. When the Icelandic volcano was erupting in 2010, I was watching the #ashtag word clouds being broadcasted live on CNN. It was then that it struck me that the media will never be the same again, the power of thousands reporters wins every time. You made it to the mainstream, shaped transmedia into Twitter + television. You were becoming the ultimate foundation for real-time information. You made me realize so many things by being one of the most prominent platforms of the social era. You were the man.

And now you are starting to kill the platform.

Anyone who's read What Would Google Do? would know this is a huge mistake. This book (from 2009!) has a chapter about the value of platforms and distributed systems, and I've been obsessing myself with this revelation ever since. Wrote a blog post about it, which was retweeted by the book's author Jeff Jarvis himself, and it made me even more in love with the idea. Now I'm sure platforms are the future, because they have the ability to outlast services.

The most important things about platforms are the ecosystems around them. Yours was always more appealing to me than Facebook's. Because of the information Twitter has (almost all of it public), because of the culture that's emerged around this information. Twitterers, Developers, even Lurkers and Ninjas, the amount of innovative things that people have managed to build around your core is amazing. Not just silly games and marketing schemes, actually valuable and inspiring things (we've tried it too!). I always believed you were cooler than Facebook, that you have a brighter future, since you weren't trying to keep people inside your services. You seemed to know what made you in the first place.

I understand it's the high level mashups you are interested in, but still, the platform is the most important thing you have. Why not let other people reinvent your user experience, like others are trying to reinvent email? You want that, you want people to make Twitter whatever they want, while creating, consuming and curating the data that's inside you. You need thousand of different clients that feed your infinite hunger, enabling you to build your business model around the tweets that are generated. You want developers to use, abuse and reshape your essence. Because platforms are like networks, there value grows exponentially with the number of nodes they have, and these nodes help platforms evolve even further, in unimaginable ways.

And now you are trying to kill bits of this platform, those bits that help create the most valuable thing you have - hundreds of millions of Tweets every day. They may be just Twitter clients, but they might as well be the most important thing you've ever had. Your fans, your supporters, your ambassadors, your army, your ecosystem. Your future is more important than your monetization, not just to me and to them, to everybody who loves what you are, and to those who don't get you. Your future is important to mankind. That's why you should stay what you were meant to be. You should stay the open platform.

On iPhone, toys, the enterprise and of course, Windows 8

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:34:06 GMT

Flashback 5 years ago. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, the original model, which had no 3G support and cost more than any other mobile phone. At that time, Nokia dominated the market, with almost 40% market share, and Samsung was gaining ground on Motorola, both owning around 15% of the industry sales. Funny, how things change in so little time, but what's even funnier, is how the competition reacted to the iPhone. Some of you may remember how Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, laughed at the iPhone, saying that it's pretty much an expensive toy that would never penetrate the enterprise. History proved him wrong, and we can only guess if this was one of the most bitter predictions he ever made.

Apple proved that with proper marketing, a toy can find its place in the enterprise, a place traditionally owned by Microsoft. We must understand that even if a lot of Microsoft's revenue does come from the Windows division, most of it still comes from their enterprise business (Business Division + Server and Tools). But is the enterprise ready for a radical user interface such as Windows 8's Metro? I hope Microsoft isn't overcompensating for the totally wrong estimate about the success of the iPhone, because it's hard to believe they will be able to pull something similar off. Sell another toy to the enterprise.

I love Windows Phone 7. The user interface is great, the user experience is intuitive and fun. I like what I've seen about Windows 8. I think it's fresh and modern, something that even Apple could be proud of. But what worries me is its adoption in business environments, which is Microsoft's core business. The phone and a tablet are primarily casual gadgets, the personal computer is not. And there is already quite a bit of bad press around about the upcoming new version of Windows. Some have already said the next Vista situation might happen, and that most people will stay on Windows 7, like they did on XP before.

I think the average user in the enterprise in not that tech-savvy. Imagine a 50 year old secretary, struggling with the new fundamentally different environment of Windows 8. Businesses have already had problems with implementing the new Office 2007, at it was only slightly different than the previous version (compared to the differences between Windows 8 and Windows 7). Who will pay for the massive training required by users to adapt to the new Windows? Which company will risk it?

Of course, I might be wrong and Microsoft isn't primarily interested in the enterprise with this release. Maybe they are just trying to own a bigger share of the consumer markets, and targeting mostly smartphones and tablets, hardware included. This might be an interesting strategy, since adoption of Macs has also grown with the success of the iPhone and iPad. I hope they have a solid plan behind it, because I would like to see Windows 8 succeed. Because Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 actually did higher my perception of Microsoft, they made me believe Windows can be awesome. But to succeed, Windows 8 will have to be more than awesome, the way it's done, it will have to be so amazing my mother will be able to use it on her first try. Otherwise she won't.

The final destination, part 1: technologies and concepts enterprise IT will have to adopt

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:38:09 GMT

In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel for PI-PL on Ljubljana's Faculty of Economics, where I was asked this exact question: where do I see corporate IT in 10 years. A very hard question indeed, but the more I thought about the it, the clearer it became. Enterprise data, software and technology will sooner or later integrate everything. Simple as that. But to fully understand how this will happen, we must first try to identify the most important trends that have shaped information technologies as we know them today. Yes, most of them don't have that much to do with the enterprise. But things are changing.

Cloud technologies

While cloud computing may have been present in the enterprise for quite some time, it's still pretty much dominated by web players like Google (mail, docs, etc.) and Amazon (hardware), who are also flirting with the enterprise. Who wouldn't? There are massive benefits for businesses to move their stuff to the cloud, from scalable physical Infrastructure to higher level Platform or Software as a service information systems.

Perhaps the most important thing the Cloud achieved was to render technology infrastructure irrelevant. It doesn't matter any more, what kind of environment you use. What type of security, infrastructure, servers and network you have installed. You can outsource these things to others, and it will be much easier and cheaper, while all your migrating-to-a-bigger-thing problems will be solved with a swipe of a credit card. I was fascinated that Microsoft now offers Linux based servers on their Azure cloud services, which can be changed to Windows with a click of a button. Architecture doesn't matter anymore, and this fact helps IT departments to focus on more important things than system administration.

APIs, mashups, platforms and ecosystems

Heavily connected with the whole Cloud concept, data and information never had it easier to travel from one place to another. System migrations (moving data from one information system to another) and system integrations (connecting multiple information systems into one) have always been one of the biggest challenges of IT. But the web didn't have as much resources as the enterprise, so it had to simplify things. By offering APIs (Application Programming Interface), web applications allowed others applications to work with their data in an easy way. Mashups, hybrid information systems built on top of others, were born.

Pretty much every noteworthy web service has its own API. This helped a lot of them to become a platform. You know, like Facebook and Twitter, who have created an ecosystem, where thousands of other applications live around them? Soon, similar concepts will dominate the enterprise too. There are already players like Salesforce, who not only offer business-oriented Software as a service solutions, but the also a Platform for other developers to build services on top of their services. And since everything is so open, all this data can easily be integrated with other information systems or transferred to a different environment. Modern information systems don't have problems with understanding each other, but IT departments have problems with understanding information systems, since different, more business oriented skills are needed to support these integrations.

Mobile devices and new distribution channels

More than ten years ago, when I was an Information Sciences student, there was still a debate going on about the benefits of web based enterprise information systems over traditional Client - Server architecture. In the end, the Web won, mostly because distribution was so easy, you make the update on the server, and every user gets it instantly. Employees need nothing but a browser. They are acquainted with the environment ever since they started using Hotmail, and took it for their own ever since they started using Facebook.

But today, it seems the Web is losing its ground as the leading infrastructure, since a new technology came into town. Capable mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, now enable access to information systems from anywhere, anytime in real-time. Besides, they arrived with their own app markets, which enabled a whole potential for software distribution, and perhaps more importantly, for software billing. You give a fair share to the store owner, who also promotes your solution, and you can freely focus on developing and marketing the product. It's true that mobile apps may not be as flexible as web applications, since the users need to install the updates (even though this can also be achieved by combining native mobile and hosted HTML 5), but the trend is clear. Apple already has its Mac store, Microsoft Windows will follow soon. Distribution of mobile and Software as a service information systems is becoming trivial.

Big data and The internet of things

Traditionally, banks, retailers and financial institutions have been the organizations that operated with the most data in the world. Well, things are changing, and we can only wonder who owns the most bytes today: is it Google, Facebook or someone else? Since there are less transactions than there are interactions, we can estimate consumer oriented information systems with billions of users are the biggest in existence. While this data is accessible to the enterprise to some extent, there are also hundreds of other systems the enterprise or its employees use, and they all create massive amounts of data and information, which needs to be integrated into a wider picture.

Not only that. Today, there are already are more connected devices that we have initially anticipated. These devices (cameras, sensors, tools, etc.) create even more data, which the enterprise needs to process. This trend of wired gadgets is called The internet of things, and together with the large amount of interconnectable information systems businesses use, points to one important trend: the typical enterprise was never faced with so much data and information, which somehow needs to be integrated and understood in an interdisciplinary way.

New ways of doing things, on a higher level

In the mean time, these consumer oriented (B2C) web corporation not only became a few of the biggest technology companies in existence, they've also invented new ways of how to get things done. From Google's 20%, to flat organizations without management, more and more companies (not only startups) set out to revolutionize how business is done. In the service oriented society, creativity is important, but so is productivity and the ability to ship fast. Done is better than perfect.

With new types of management concepts, such as lean and agile, modern organizations are becoming more and more flexible. Not only in doing things, but also in switching from one technology to another. These companies have developed their own way of thinking about which software to use. And it probably has a lot to do its price, how fast can you start using it, how scalable and connectable it is, and how fast can you dump if for another. IT requirements are moving to a higher level, and information systems have become just pieces of a puzzle that needs to be completed.

Design and user experience

Design and user experience probably still don't have that much to do with enterprise IT, but they are very much worth mentioning nevertheless. Face it, users are becoming more and more demanding, and software developers need to make better and better software. Even though the above mentioned facts are probably the dominating factor for the choice of which information systems the enterprise will use, design and user experience matter more and more.

Businesses have always had problems with implementing new software, educating the users, going through the whole status quo change. But beautiful and useful software penetrates faster. People perceive beautiful things to be more useful, and it's the whole intuitiveness and usability of software that helps them adopt something without too much resistance and problems. Some software vendors already found out user experience is the new competitive advantage, and in the end it may be the thing that tips the scale. But the whole point behind it is that I can see better, more clever and detailed, information systems force out older ones on an even faster pace. The whole world of information systems need reinvention, and user experience design will be the science behind these upgrades. Benefits are becoming more important than features.

Social, crowdsourcing and gamification

More than 3 years ago, I was very excited to present a concept we have been developing in Neolab on Days of Slovenian IT. I called it IT 2.0, since it meant integrating social services into enterprise software (at that time, Enterprise 2.0 was more widely used for stand-alone social software such as wikis or corporate blogs). The truth is, I didn't get the chance to sell it well, and in the mean time, disruptive social services managed to fully find their way into the enterprise. But business won't stop here; there are many other fascinating things the internet has invented that can fully be applied to corporate environments.

Gamification, the art of using gaming mechanics in non gaming environments, is getting more and more claim beyond the web. Both for motivating employees, as for motivating clients. We all like to play, so why should work be any different? And we all like to participate in something bigger, that is why crowdsourcing, where people coproduce something, can bring such exciting results. Can you see where I'm headed?

We are all human, and in the end, behaving on a very basic level. Sometimes we perform better, sometimes worse, and we all hold hidden potential even ourselves aren't aware of. That is what software in the workplace can sometimes help us discover, and it's something more and more businesses are aware of. Social, gamification and crowdsourcing are only a few approaches that can make us feel better and more motivated, and they are all concepts that enterprise IT will adopt sooner or later. Behind every company, there are only people.

The final destination of enterprise IT

These are the concepts and technologies that will shape enterprise IT of tomorrow. And with it, new challenges will emerge, together with new profiles of people, who will understand and use all of the above. These profiles, such as data scientists and business analysts, will help enterprise IT do what it was destined to do: Integrate life, the universe and everything.

But that's another story. Coming up soon.

Check out the complete The final destination series.

Putting 'people who look at you' to your Facebook profile would be the smartest thing to do

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:50:34 GMT

Are you one of those people who are wondering how Facebook decides which friends they put on your profile? I admit I am, both out of programmer's curiosity and of course, there have been rumors that those individuals are the ones who look at your profile. While LinkedIn offers this "who looks at your profile" insight to its (premium) users, Facebook is still very mysterious about it, denying this is how this particular algorithm works. But there is a simple reason I don't believe them: if I would be Facebook, I would design it exactly like this.

EdgeRank

Facebook uses EdgeRank to calculate the connection between two people, determined by the amount of mutual friends, interactions, tagged photos, attended events and other parameters in a time period. Besides other things, the EdgeRank influences which posts get displayed in your news feed. It seems Facebook is saying that a similar algorithm is used for the friends on your profile, but is it really?

The exploit

Some time ago, someone managed to find a way inside the EdgeRank results. This guy noticed that Facebook caches the list of your friends, together with the level of proximity you have with each one. This stored part of the social graph helps search and other lists on Facebook to work faster and be sorted better. He was nice enough to write a script and made it public, so everybody can see who their Facebook BFFs are. The results looks like the real deal, and it's actually quite fascinating that Facebook hasn't patched this potential abuse yet, it's been available for almost a year.

Bottom line: the list of friends in your EdgeRank and the list of friends on your profile are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike each other.

Comparing my closest friends to those that are showing up on my Facebook profile

Why bother?

Facebook needs to constantly drive your engagement, and they have infinite data about you. They are trying to seamlessly integrate their experience into every pore of your life and make you even more connected. They are saying they can predict when hookups and breakups will happen. Who do you think they would put on your profile?

It would work

Adding "people who look at you" to your Facebook profile would act as the poke that never got clicked. The most basic (inter)action, something that wants to lead to something bigger. The invisible act of someone longing for engagement. Potential connection, potential partnership, potential relationship. The beyond EdgeRank scary social experiment, which holds infinite possibilities, positive and negative. An almost godly algorithm. Why would anyone even think of doing it differently? It simply doesn't get much better than this.

I would do it, I believe Facebook would do it as well, but even if they did, it's pretty clear why they can't tell us. This feature would work only as long as we wouldn't really believe it's being used. That's why you need to forget about all of this and simply enjoy your virtual life.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Why I don't believe in these crazy technology company valuations

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:14:15 GMT

The debate about the potential second technology bubble is all over the media. One of the first milestones that will determine the outcome of this story happened on friday, when Facebook went public. As opposed to other (smaller) web IPOs of the past years (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Yandex), the price on the first day stayed on the same level. This was to be expected, since Facebook received the valuation of 100 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's around half of Google's value, and about the same value as Amazon has. But Facebook makes 10 times less revenue than Google does, and its revenue growth is slowing down. Was Facebook valued too high? It seems so, and some analysts are already saying that most of the stocks were bought by institutional investors to keep the share price above 38$.

Facebook is not the real problem

But Facebook is not the biggest problem. It is the leading global social service, and an established company with almost 1 billion registered users, besides making quite a hefty amount of revenue ($3.7 billion in 2011). I'm more worried because of others, who make little or no revenue at all. Today, Rovio is valued around the same as Nokia, with yearly revenues of around $100 million. Instagram, with practically no revenue model, was bought for $1 billion, which is 12.000 times what Kodak is worth. A bit silly.

In technology, specially the web, companies come and go. The lifespan of services is short, and people don't hesitate to switch to a new, better alternative, and they switch fast. Remember Excite? Yahoo? MySpace? They were on top of the world not more than a decade ago. Draw Something, which was bought by Zynga for $200 million, already lost millions of users. How long does will it take for people to get bored with Angry Birds? Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, even Facebook?

Still looking for a revenue model? Consider this.

Most of these companies have millions of users, and that is probably what fuels their valuations the most. Even though, quite a few of them are still looking for their revenue model. But what if the market simply isn't big enough for everybody? What if that is the real problem behind not being able to find a revenue model? I did some research, and here's what I found out:

the projected global spending on online advertising will be around 97$ billion in 2013 and $113 billion dollars in 2014 (source, source)
around half of that will be spent on search, around half on display (source)
projected revenues of social media ad spending in the US are around $10 billion in 2016 (source)
global mobile ad spending in 2016 will be around 15% of total online spending, or $22 billion (source)
apps and in-app purchases will generate around $46 billion in 2016 (source)
estimated size of the virtual goods market in 2015 is around $5 billion (source)
Google makes around $40 billion a year (source)

Perhaps I'm missing something, but these facts tell me that all of these companies have a market of around $150-$200 billion in 2015. ALL of them, including all the local players. Not really that much when you think about it. Sure, it's a different industry without production, but for comparison, Apple's yearly revenues are about $100 billion.

Trying to understand the math behind valuations

I went even further, and analyzed the performance of these companies; how much they earn, how much they are worth, and how many users they have. Then I tried to compare the price / sales, sales / users and price / users ratios. Since a few of high-valued companies basically have no revenue (Instagram, Foursquare), it seems that they are worth mostly between $20 and $100 dollars per user.

	Sales ($b)	Price ($b)	Users (m)	Price / Sales	Sales / Users	Price / User	Source
Amazon	50	100	/	2.00	/	/
Apple	110	520	/	4.73	/	/
Draw something	0.05	0.2	10	4.00	5.00	20.00	revenue, value, users
Facebook	4	100	900	25.00	4.44	111.11	revenue, value, users
Foursquare	/	0.7	20	/	/	35.00	revenue, value, users
Google	40	200	1000	5.00	40.00	200.00	users
Groupon	2	8	115	4.00	17.39	69.57	users
Instagram	/	1	50	/	/	20.00	revenue, value, users
Kodak	6	0.07	/	0.01	/	/
Linkedin	0.5	14	130	28.00	3.85	107.69	users
Microsoft	70	260	/	3.71	/	/
Nokia	38	11	/	0.29	/	/
Pinterest	0.05*	1	12	20.00	4.17	83.33	revenue, value, users
Rovio	0.1	9	1000**	90.00	0.10	9.00	revenue, value, users
Tumblr	/	1	30	/	/	33.33	revenue, value, users
Twitter	0.14	10	100	71.43	1.40	100.00	revenue, value, users
Yahoo	5	19	170	3.80	29.41	111.76	users
Zynga	1	7	150	7.00	6.67	46.67	users

Data for publicly traded companies are available on MarketWatch.
* - estimate
** - downloads

Google manages to make the most from its users, around $40 per user per year. How much can the others make in the long-run, put together with the estimated $150b market size? How many can even earn anything before their users leave? The equation somehow doesn't add up.

These companies are great, but still…

I'm a big fan of the internet, I truly admire these companies, and use most if their services. But I still think this is madness. Didn't we learn enough from the first dot-com bubble? Today, we're a part of the social / mobile excitement, what can we expect tomorrow, the semantic excitement? The internet is maturer than this, and nobody will take it seriously, if it will behave so manically depressive. Ups and downs every few years surely don't work that well, and another bubble is definitely something the we don't need in these unstable economic times. So, please guys, take it a bit easier. don't be too greedy and enjoy what we have.

Perhaps the best thing that could happen at this point is for Facebook to lose about 30%-50% of its value. That could put some sense into the frenzy, before it goes to far. The situation surely needs more consideration.

You know what's cooler than $100 billion dollars? $50 billion dollars.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 8: Lessons learned, time to reevaluate

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:01:36 GMT

It's been about month since I've returned from Silicon Valley, so I've had plenty of time to think about what happened there. This time I went out of curiosity, hoping to get the idea of how things work in the global center of technology. The next time I will be there for real business, approaching the situation more systematically. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a great place to visit for profiles such as myself, so there surely will be a next time, when a wiser version of me will be able to do some serious shit. And I'll be wiser also because I've learned my lessons this time.

Ideas are worthless, but execution also isn't all it takes

When I started being an entrepreneur, I thought The idea was everything. While innovation may be important, it's mostly worthless by itself. No matter how good or revolutionary your idea is, hundreds of people probably have a similar idea at the same time. As Oren Michels puts it: "Stealth mode is stupid, execution is what matters.". Ideas are worth nothing if they're not executed properly. But wait, we've done a pretty good job with Twenity, but that still wasn't enough to make it abroad. It seems execution isn't enough as well.

At this point I think the hardest thing to do is the next step, putting the product on the market, making it recognized. At least that's where we are now, that's the obstacle we are currently facing. But I can already predict that the next hardest thing would be to find the investors, and the next to scale the business. Idea > Execution > Marketing > Financing > Scaling is a complex lifecycle, and you have to control every element before you can say you've made it. That's why you should try (and fail) as many times as possible. With every new project you do, it will be easier to dominate the prior steps, allowing you to focus more energy on the next ones.

Competition is fierce, but the market is big

The (Seedcamp) startups I've met on my trip really do some seriously crazy shit. Some of the things were so awesome I've almost lost faith in being able to do something similar. But I managed to somehow get back in the game. Neolab may not be cutting edge (yet) on the emerging fields such as mobile, HTML 5 or responsive design, but that's really not that big of an issue, since we make things that do what they're supposed to. That's the Execution phase, but luckily, the Market has the capacity to absorb many things, if approached properly. Face it - there will always be companies who do a better job than you, but it's the Market who'll decide who makes it or not.

I attended a Salesforce conference for a few hours (thanks Davorin!), which attracted thousands of visitors. In case you don't know them, they are the leading provider of Software as a Service CRM solutions, offering a service and a platform for other developers. Their product is really awesome, but that doesn't mean similar products can't find their own market. Researching on this issue, I found a review of the 10 best known SaaS CRM solutions, all of them obviously able to survive, even though Salesforce dominates this segment. And I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands more that are able to coexist at the same time on the huge global markets. Which brings me to my next point:

Highlights from a massive Salesforce conference

User experience is the new competitive advantage

You need to find your Unique selling proposition and competitive advantage. Most of the above mentioned Seedcamp startups found it in superior user experience. Take something that works, and make it work even better. Today's users are quite willing to migrate to a new product / service if it turns out to be better than the current one. A great example of this philosophy is vox.io, which offers a similar service than Skype (online calls and chat), but simply does it better. And by better I mean using new innovative approaches to make something more simple and intuitive to use. The user experience segment will only become more important and challenging in the future, since new ways of interactions with software are emerging (touch, voice, thought?).

vox.io's chat with embeddable content proves chat can be reinvented

Selling and pitching is ok

When you mention Sales, many people get the impression of a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell you books. Or company phones ringing with people who make it hard to say no to. These things give sales a negative connotation. But it seems that's a cultural thing. In San Francisco, everybody is trying to sell you stuff, everybody's pitching all the time. When you ask somebody "What do you do?", the person is already showing you their product on his/her iPhone. Maybe not for the actual sell, but just to get some decent feedback. You shouldn't feel bad about trying to sell something, that how the system works. Just make sure that something is worth selling.

One of the parties at vox.io's. Everybody was pitching.

You're nothing without the contacts

I admit I was a bit naive this time. I hoped the fact me being a blogger and a representative of two startups would open a few doors, but this turned out to be wishful thinking. It's true I did manage to find a few contacts on the spot, which enabled me to do great things (such as visiting the technology bluechips and the Internet archive), but my way to the influential blogs was closed. I heard that they receive a few hundred submissions a day, so you need to make sure your pitch is awesome and you have backdoors to deploy it. Do your homework, the next time I take on a similar adventure, I'll try to schedule as many meeting as possible in advance. I've finally found a reason to pimp up my LinkedIn profile, and I was lucky enough that:

The Slovenian (startup) scene is alive and kicking

One of the most fascinating things that happened to me was the chance to meet the Slovenian diaspora in Bay Area, and the startup scene around it. Thanks to a few individuals, such as Jure, Tomaž and Andraž, a lot of things are happening around Stanford University and vox.io's San Francisco headquarters, and everybody is very welcoming to the new generation of Slovenian immigrants and other startups, trying to make it abroad. Thank you for your kindness, I feel Slovenia!

The Slovenian diaspora meeting at the Stanford University

Foursquare is the ultimate travel guide, so get a local data plan

Forget maps, Foursquare has become the ultimate travel guide if you're looking for companies, tourist attractions or happening. That's why you'll need a local data plan, which costs a few bucks a day. Pretty much everything is on Foursquare (besides, physical addresses are often very hard to find online), and trending venues can point you to the events worth visiting. I've never used Foursquare in such a way, and the critical mass of users reached around here surely provides massive value beyond the game.

What now?

That pretty much sums it up. This trip was a great experience, but it's time to get back to the drawing board. Rethink my strategies. Redesign Twenity's user experience. Reinvent Neolab's business model. Stay in touch with the people I've met. Find new contacts for the next visit. Adopt new technologies. Research new markets. Think global.

Well, at least I won't get bored.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The future (of software) is in platforms

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:26:11 GMT

I don't know if you've had the chance to read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. You should, it's a very powerful book, even though it's been written a few years ago. Things have changed a bit since then, when Google was on top of it's game, but that doesn't mean the ideas presented in the book aren't more actual than ever. One of the chapters that made the biggest impact on me was the one about platforms and distributed systems. Google managed to conquer the world of Web 1.0 by being decentralized, allowing others to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps and Ads anywhere on the Web. This orientation provided the fuel for Google's further development and growth. Today, this way of thinking is not a competitive advantage anymore, it's becoming a necessity. As you will see, current online market leaders of various industries are not those who provide the service, they're the ones who provide the platform.

Platforms rule because mashups rule

Platforms, as opposed to products and services, allow others to build on top of them. Not thinking about control and centralization, they provide the basic building blocks other can use to develop even more products and services. In the world of Web 1.0, this meant using an embedded YouTube video instead of having your own video player, but Web 2.0 has been heavily defined by ecosystems of services built around other services. With APIs these platforms provide, developing high-level mashups has never been easier from the technical point of view, and this type of architecture benefits everybody. The platform vendor gets additional developers that extend and market it's service, while the satellite mashup gets the distribution channels, users and data they need to get somewhere faster. A modern synergy packed symbiosis.

Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery, which provides API as a service, talking for Silicon Gardens in Kiberpipa

The technology platforms

Today, pretty much all of the technology market leaders are platforms. Google allows various levels of use of it's services, from embedding things to using different APIs. Facebook's games and other apps ecosystem is huge, with providers such as Zynga already gone public. Twitter and it's massive amounts of tweets generated in real-time produced the Twitterverse - an array of fascinating high-level services. Foursquare, a geo-location network allowed other interesting concepts, such as augmented reality and games, on top of its service. Amazon offers you to build your own store, and Apple's and Android's mobile app stores are hosting hundreds of thousands of apps developers can build, deploy and distribute in short amounts of time. Salesforce offers a platform for enterprise IT, WordPress for writing and blogging tools. I could go on, but you get the picture. Platforms are the future, because they evolve collaboratively, with thousands, if not millions of people co-creating them.

A massive Salesforce conference in San Francisco, which I've visited on my Silicon Valley trip (thanks Davorin!)

The real-life platforms

Not only in software and technology, platforms in real-life are also becoming more widespread. The whole Apple iPad/iPhone gadgets ecosystem is one of the most obvious cases, where various providers offer sound systems, dongles, add-ons and other accessories that upgrade and make the original item even more appealing. Nespresso and Dolce Gusto are another interesting products. Nestlé provides the platform - the small coffee pads, which they are pushing to the market, while different manufacturers make coffee machines and other complementary products. The platform becomes more useful because of its satellites, which make the platform even more successful, turning this relationship into a virtuous circle.

Coffee machines by various vendors for Nestlé Dolce Gusto

So what should I do?

Firstly, you should embrace this way of thinking and understand what's happening. Platforms have been around since the beginning of software, even though you maybe haven't thought about them in such a way. Computer architectures, Operating systems, Programming languages and Development environments are all platforms, on a more basic level - but they provide the foundation which others can build on top of. Other platforms are build atop of these and others atop of those. Platforms are everywhere, and with every new level, they are less technically, and more conceptually oriented. Think about where you fit in.

Next, find a platform that suits what you are trying to do. Personally, against many odds, I believe more in Twitter than I do in Facebook, since Facebook is trying to keep as much as possible inside its service, while Twitter acts distributed. One of our projects is Twenity, a game we've developed around Twitter influence measuring.

If you're feeling lucky, you might want to become a platform on your own. While this may be almost impossible to do, it's something I wish I will have the chance to do someday. Neolab already has its own development framework, and if we do manage to make enough surplus or find an investor that will take us down this road, I'll be the first one in line. That is, if we don't decide to join an established platform and rather build on top of that.

Things have changed. The future (of software) is in platforms. Are you already a part of the show?

The Silicon Valley tour, part 7: A few exciting new business models that actually work

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:28:22 GMT

Visiting Silicon Valley enabled me too peek into the future a bit. Finding out about new technology trends, meeting disruptive new software startups and seeing fascinating new business models that are proven to work. There are even more futuristic products / services than the ones mentioned in this post, but these are the ones that made the biggest impression on me. And they all share similar competitive advantages: using smartphones and other mobile devices, canceling middlemen and supporting cashless commerce.

Mobile payments and Square

While Square may already be mainstream in the States, something like it is far away from being used in Europe, not to mention Slovenia. Square is focused on mobile payments, and is currently offering three different services:

a credit card reader that you can plug into your mobile device
an iPad register app for merchants, supporting invoices, payments and inventory
an app for paying with your smartphone

Square is on fire, and there are tons of places in San Francisco where you can use it. Electronic payment industry leaders such as PayPal are already looking for ways to conquer the same market.

A place that accepts all major credit cards and Square

Personal chauffeur and Uber

Uber can only be described as taxi on steroids, bypassing the dispatcher. Ok, it's actually a chauffeur. Using a mobile app, you make a request, and one of the drivers answers it. After that, you can see where the driver is, when he will pick you up, how your driver looks like, and get a direct link to call them. A guy in a suit driving a Lincoln picks you up, takes you wherever you want, and after it, you just exit, without paying. You get an invoice on your email, together with the map of the route, and the fare gets deducted from your credit card. It's a bit more expensive than a cab, but still, a pretty awesome service, that will be expanding to other countries soon.

With Uber, you get picked up by a Lincoln like this

Carsharing and Zipcar

The next generation of rent-a-car is called carsharing, and it's offered by Zipcar. No agents, just your card that you use to unlock the car you've rented. Everything happens online, where you make a request for a car, get directed to a designated pick-up area, and the car is already waiting for you there. Petrol is included in the price, and if the fuel tank drops below 1/4, you just use their credit card to top it up. Results: rent-a-car has never been easier, cheaper and less stressful.

One of the Zipcar pick-up places. They are everywhere.

bonus: Co-working and NextSpace

Co-working represents shared offices that people from different startups and companies can use. Besides being cheaper than renting your own office, you also get a chance to spend time with other people, share knowledge and ideas, which is something I found out to be invaluable. NextSpace is an established co-working space in San Francisco, with more than 175 members and packages ranging from a few hundred dollars monthly for a desk to around a thousand for a complete office. Something similar is already happening in Slovenia, so if you are interested, please visit coworking.si.

Tables, offices, conference rooms. All available with NextSpace.

Conclusion

Some of these business models might not work as well outside the curious and tech-savvy culture of Silicon Valley, but they can still help as a demonstrator of things that can be done and an announcer of things to come. Let's face it, in technology, Silicon Valley is still miles ahead, so if you're looking for trends, the smartest thing to do is just to go along with it.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 5: Visiting the technology giants

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:15:13 GMT

Visiting the global technology bluechips was one of the things I was looking forward to the most on my trip to the Valley. Seeing how things work, the giant campuses they have, the amazing work conditions they offer. But like some other things, this plan didn't turn out as expected. I have to admit I was a bit naive, but a man can have his dreams, right? These corporations have their business to run, so why should they accept visitors like me? The fact is, they do accept them, but you have to have a contact on the inside. No contact, no glory. I was actually lucky enough to have some, and the next time I'll decide on journey like this, I'll make sure I address the situation more strategically.

Apple

I know a person working for Apple, so I was able to visit the famous 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino and eat lunch there. Taking pictures inside was strictly prohibited, but the visit was very worth the while. And since I'm a big fan, this was something that had to be done.

1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino: Apple headquarters

Facebook

Facebook recently moved their headquarters from Palo Alto to Menlo Park. I took a cab there, hoping I could get at least a bit of insight and some pictures, but since the place is still "under construction", I was escorted off the property by security. Trespassing much?

Facebook's new headquarters in Menlo Park

Google

Google turned out to be one of the most welcoming companies on my trip, but this fact had a lot to do with the Seedcamp sessions happening in the Googleplex on which I've participated. Located in Mountain View, this giant campus is very impressive.

Google's Googleplex, Mountain View. For more photos, please visit my post about Google and Seedcamp.

Square

Square managed to become one of the hottest new startups around, set out to revolutionize mobile payments and already employing 200 people. Located in San Francisco, their offices are something you have to see for yourself. I wish I could, but like with others, I couldn't get it. But at least they were very nice about it.

Square headquarters reception, San Franscisco

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favorite online services, so I was really looking forward to talk to a few people there, also because of Twenity. While Nick and I did manage to talk our way past the security desk, our trip ended at the reception. We filed a request, but nothing came out of it. But like on Square, they were very nice. It seems they share a similar corporate culture, since both companies were founded by the same person, Jack Dorsey.

Twitter headquarters reception, San Franscisco

Bottom line

The bottom line is: you are not that welcome as you would like to imagine. Something similar happened to me while I tried to visit the technology blogs located in San Francisco. They also required a contact to get in, so no luck there. So, if you're planning on doing something similar, make sure you do your homework first, try to ping a few people or find a contact form on their website, perhaps you get accepted. Otherwise, you'll end up being just a curious tourist like me.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 2: vox.io's San Francisco HQ aka the Slovenian hall of tech

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 03:19:06 GMT

There's this very cool place in San Francisco, a place where I'm staying while I'm on my Silicon Valley tour. vox.io's Bay Area headquarters, where not only people from Slovenia, but also from a few other countries currently live, work and play. This giant loft now gathers individuals from technology startups into a giant hub of solutions, people and ideas. Filled with hopes and expectations, this is definitely something I'm proud to be a part of.

There are currently 8 people living here, from vox.io, Zemanta, Oust.me, the Austrian startup blossom and me, representing Twenity and Neolab. A pretty wicked bunch of people having both productive and fun sessions.

The place is huge, with a giant living room, kitchen, dining area, working tables everywhere, and a very cool chill-out zone on what used to be a stage. There's a separate bar and a DJ area, besides a few rooms for sleeping. An awesome hackspace, probably few times better than my flat.

I can't describe how important this place is. Besides giving me and others shelter, the opportunity to hang out here and share knowledge and ideas with other people from the industry is crucial, I've learned so much in a few days, it's unbelievable.

These kinds of things should be subsidized by the government. In our case, vox.io is doing more for the Slovenian technology startup scene than most other public projects are, for a much smaller investment. By allowing people to be here in Silicon Valley, trying to find investors, exploring new ways of doing business, or just learning about the culture around here, the reach of Slovenian startups has widened by miles. All thanks to a few individuals with great ideas.

A huge living room, the center of our everyday lives

The kitchen and the dining area

The chill-out zone, where you can work or relax

The bar and DJ area

Highlight from the Slovenian party, to which we've invited everybody from Slovenia that lives around here

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 1: Seedcamp America Trip visiting the Googleplex

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 02:05:21 GMT

When I decided to travel to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I didn't expect things will be happening so fast. But thanks to Andraž from Zemanta, I managed to do two awesome things already on the first day after I've arrived - visit Google's headquarters in Mountain View and talk with the Seedcamp teams, currently on their tour of the United States. They came here to present their projects to potential investors, and Google was nice enough to accommodate one of the mentoring sessions in the Googleplex.

The Googleplex experience

Googleplex is huge, it seems that there's a whole town that exists only because of Google. When you get here, you really get the idea about the size of the corporation - it's a corporation by all of its meaning. Infinite buildings and office for various Google products, hundreds of people going back and forth.

What was said about Google is still true. You do want to work there. The place looks great and there's a feeling of extreme brain power everywhere you look. We got fed for free and even met Žiga, who is one of the few Slovenians working for Google. He's been doing it for a few years now, working on Google search, and he says he loves it. Who wouldn't?

Google's park and restaurant, located in the 1950 Mountain View building

Cafeteria and chill-out zone inside

The slide in the main lobby - sadly out of order. The screen displays Google search queries.

The Seedcamp experience

The mentoring sessions for Seedcamp teams took place in the afternoon in one of the buildings (Mountain View 1950 to be exact), where the companies currently in the Seedcamp program presented their solutions. I was honored to be one of the mentors, trying to help the projects with my experience in enterprise IT, business intelligence and Twitter integrations. Hopefully I was able to give the teams I was associated with some decent feedback. Here is the list of all 19 Seedcamp teams on the tour (including Oust.me from Slovenia), and these are the six I managed to get to know a bit more:

Zingl, a dating service that uses the social, interest and location graphs to match people
24symbols, a solution for e-books based on a subscription model
AppExtras, a plugin for mobile apps that allows publishers to promote other apps
archivme, a service for managing invoices and other business documents in the cloud
Bilbus, which works as a broker between businesses and lenders
blossom, a project management tool for lean companies

Pretty much all of these 19 companies managed to create some very impressive business models and innovative new services.

Alex presenting Oust.me, a location-based conquering game

Mentoring sessions happened in various rooms

A bit of food and drinks after an exhausting day

What now?

So far, so good. The Seedcamp experience in the Googleplex was amazing, and I learned more in one day than I did before in months. I truly hope these teams will be able to get what they came looking for, and I hope I will too. I just need to find out what that is, because I'm not even sure anymore.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

Zakaj blogam v angleščini [In Slovene]

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:14:26 GMT

Dragi prijatelj, znanec, bralec, naj se ti najprej opravičim. Pred leti, ko sem se loteval tega projekta, sem se soočil z eno izmed težjih odločitev v svoji spletni karieri: ali naj svoj spletni dnevnik pišem v slovenščini ali v angleščni.

Takrat sem se odločil za slednje, kljub temu da sem vedel, da bo na ta na��in težje začeti. Podobno, kot na Twitterju, se mi zdi, da je na kratek rok v materinem jeziku lažje dobiti tisto osnovno občinstvo, vprašanje pa je, kaj je bolj učinkovito na dolgi rok. Z angleščino je enostavneje doseči več ljudi, kar sem tudi pričakoval, da se bo enkrat zgodilo. Danes, skoraj tri leta kasneje, lahko rečem, da mi je kar uspelo.

Čeprav imam zelo rad Slovenijo, se ne čutim dolžan delovati v smeri ohranjanja materinega jezika - za to obstajajo drugi profili ljudi. Morda se sliši ignorantsko, vendar ni. Svojo misijo vidim drugje.

Glede na trenutno gospodarsko situacijo je zame bistveno, da skušam v tujini predstavljati lastne projekte, kot sta Neolab in Twenity, ter zagotoviti zaposlitev čim večjemu številu ljudi. To ni edini razlog za angleščino, veliko delujem tudi v smeri splošne promocije Slovenije, njenih dosežkov, uspešnih podjetij in ljudi ter kulturnih posebnosti. Nekdo mora povedati svetu, da obstajamo. Tako imajo tudi drugi nekaj od mojih naprezanj. In morda je takšen pristop celo bolj učinkovit za ohranjanje naše kulture kot uporaba slovenskega jezika.

Eden izmed večjih problemov Slovenije je, da so država in njeni sateliti pogosto edine stranke, ki si sploh lahko privoščijo projekte večjega obsega. Delati za državo pa ni ravno najbolj spodbudno. Zasebna podjetja imajo jasen cilj, ko kupujejo programsko opremo: racionalizirati poslovanje, zniževati stroške in/ali povečati prihodke. V državnih ustanovah pa se rado zgodi, da so vpleteni še drugi interesi, kar ne vodi v najbolj optimalno izvedbo posla. Zaradi tega je še toliko bolj bistveno, da se mala podjetja usmerjajo navzven. Ob tem lahko ponosno povem, da je Neolab v svoji zgodovini uspel izvoziti storitve v več "zahodnih" držav: Nizozemsko, Veliko Britanijo in Južnoafriško republiko.

Ne skušam trditi, da je mednarodno profiliranje našega podjetja posledica mojega pisanja. Morda ne povsem, je pa pisanje verjetno pripomoglo v določeni meri. Ko smo že pri pisanju - to je moj stoti zapis, zato sem si tudi privoščil tale jezikovni preobrat.

Dalje pa spet naprej po starem. Razglabljanja o tehnologiji na vse možne načine. Nekoč bo že nekdo prisluhnil mojim razmišljanjem in me potegnil s seboj, jaz pa bom s seboj potegnil ostale. In takrat bo v Silicijevi dolini še več ljudi govorilo slovensko, pisatelji in novinarji pa bodo skrbeli, da ne bomo pozabili na slovenščino. Mar ni to super plan?

Upam, da sedaj razumeš, zakaj blogam v angleščini.

Cool Slovenian brands, part 1: Technology startups making it big

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:23:10 GMT

Slovenia has a surprisingly high level of technology companies that made a global impact. These startups are an inspiration to everybody, and we hope more of us will be joining them soon. Some made it with the support of different incubators, such as Seedcamp or Y Combinator, others made it on their own. They all share an innovative and outstanding product or service, proving that Slovenia is a place of very talented and ambitious people. While there are probably even more successful startups I haven't heard of or mentioned, I think these eight Slovenian technology organizations created the most hype in the recent few years.

Celtra

With the recent domination of smartphones and tablets, mobile advertising is sky-rocketing. And we are not talking only about ads inside apps, we are talking about multi-platform mobile rich-media ads. These ads go beyond the direct effect of clicking, they enable mobile branding, attracting top-level multinational companies. Celtra has developed a platform for publishing and tracking such ads, and it is so hot they've received 5 millions in investor funding.
http://celtra.com

DoubleRecall

DoubleRecall is a company that might as well save the printing industry. The internet made information more accessible, and people are willing to pay less and less for it. Banner ads don't generate enough revenue for online editions, so newspapers are trying other options, specially content paywalls and tablet editions. In the mean time, DoubleRecall "invented" a new type of ad, where you have to type-in in a few words to access the article. High recollection of something you read and type make this type of ad very effective, and advertisers are willing to pay a lot for it. DoubleRecall got picked by YCombinator.
http://doublerecall.com

Flowr

Even though Enterprise 2.0 has been around for a while, we haven't seen it penetrating business on a large scale. Flowr addresses this issue, offering a simple and effective service for online collaboration between coworkers and teams. Call it Facebook for the enterprise if you like, these types of applications surely are the future of work. The Flowr managed to become a finalist in the Enterprise 2.0 conference.
http://theflowr.com

Oust.me

The latest Slovenian Seedcamp winner, Oust.me, combines two fascinating and trendy technologies: location based networking and gamification. The game supports Foursquare and other geo platforms, and its main objective is to conquer as much territory as possible by checking-in to places, becoming an ouster. Recently, they've also introduced a risk-type game that you play in teams. Your life should be a game? Can't agree more.
http://oust.me

Outfit7

Thanks to a series of talking friends available on most smartphone platforms, Outfit7 has become one of the most successful mobile development companies, and its founder one of the wealthiest Slovenians. At this point, more than 200 million downloads of Talking Tom, Talking Santa and other characters have been made. One of the most fascinating facts about Outfit 7 is that they have identified a totally new target group - children on (parents') smartphones and tablets, which is shown by their vision: we compete against Mattel and Disney. Ingenious.
http://outfit7.com

Toshl

Toshl is a fun app that helps you track expenses on your smartphone. With more than $250.000.000 expenses tracked on different mobile platforms, Toshl managed to became a finalist on SeedCamp New York in 2011. The competition there was fierce, so they didn't receive any funding, but that didn't stop them from moving to Silicon Valley, where the real magic happens. We are standing by to hear about the results.
http://toshl.com

Vox.io

Vox.io is one of the hottest Slovenian startups at this point. After winning Seedcamp London in 2011, this company is on it's way up, being covered by influential magazines / blogs Wired and TechCrunch in the past weeks. What is it about? It's VoIP (Skype) in your browser, without installation. Besides being cool, Vox.io also introduced a few interesting new concepts, such as using an URL instead of a phone number.
http://vox.io

Zemanta

Zemanta is the original Slovenian startup success story, the winner of Seedcamp in 2007. It offers a service that allows bloggers to enrich their writing by adding pictures, links and related content to their posts. Zemanta is very important because it showed other companies they can think big, and since then, they have been paving the way for other Slovenian and East European startups. A few days ago they've announced a strategic partnership with Federated Media Publishing.
http://www.zemanta.com

The impact

These companies are not only successful, they are also very important for other Slovenian startups trying to make a difference. They've become the foundation and mentors of a new mentality that's coming to this part of Europe, and they deserve all the respect. We are trying too, with Neolab and Twenity, and hopefully someday we will become members of similar lists. Until then, it's only fair we support them, by using their services, helping them, or just spreading the word about their awesomeness. We should be proud some of us have actually made it this far.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. Martin Strel image courtesy of Martin Strel Swimming Adventure.

Check out the complete Cool Slovenian brands series.

I feel sLOVEnia. I really do.

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:25:27 GMT

Not that it's the best slogan ever. I always preferred "Slovenia, on the sunny side of the Alps", which was somehow forgotten / lost / stolen in the mean time, but "I feel" it's still much better than the previous "Slovenia invigorates" we've been seeing. Each slogan tells a story, but together they tell another, wider story, a story of a nation looking for its identity in these confusing times of globalization and recession. But we may not be as confused as it seems, these past weeks have shown there is much determination around. Much love, displayed in the huge amount of support and sincere wishes I received after we've launched Twenity. I felt sLOVEnia, finally!

Even in the making of Twenity, people were helping us, commenting, blogging about it and lending us their Twitter accounts for testing. The launch went great, the whole wwwh community and others took Twenity for its own. We've made contact with successful Slovenian startups (more on them some other time) and exceptional individuals, all prepared to help and support us in any way they can. Everybody's curious about what's happening and where we are going. And quite a few think Twenity could be it.

But why the surprise? Well, even though Slovenians are very capable, they are traditionally also a bit protective and envious, not really wishing their neighbor would succeed with something or have a bigger car. We often lack the ability to find unity (as displayed by the current political crisis in the worst time possible), but at the same time wish we could stand united the way some other cultures can. But it seems new values have finally come around, backed up by ideas that Slovenia could truly be the next Silicon Valley. Ideas brought by a new generation of technology entrepreneurs, experiencing them on their own skin in San Francisco.

Tomaž Štolfa from vox.io said that the entire IT sector in Slovenia couldn't form a corporation as big as Apple or Google, and he is more than right. We shouldn't compete between ourselves, 5 mobile operators are more than enough for 2 million people. We should think big, and technology is where I FEEL we can make it, it's where i recognized LOVE and wider thoughts. I see capable people everywhere, and it's overwhelming. Together, we could do something special, bypassing the current political and economical fuckup. And I know you feel it to. Thank you for that.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Occupy Wall Street – why it won’t go away and why it matters [guest blogger Nick Taylor]

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:27:26 GMT

This is part of a special two part series transatlantic blog post about Occupy Wall Street. Come check out my cross-branded blog post on Nick Taylor’s thetwohalves.com*.

The Occupy movement has gone global ever since it’s fiery start on September 17, 2011, in New York City's Zuccotti Park. Strangely enough, the phenomenon was initiated by Canadians, the founders of Adbusters magazine, not Americans, lending further credibility to South Park’s famous "Blame Canada" motto. But I digress.

Why should you care? It’s just a bunch of stupid hippies and jobless freaks expressing their angst because they can’t get a job with their smelly dreadlocks, right? Well, maybe not. This movement is tapping into the very core of the reasons underpinning the Great Recession, tapping into ancient history and even potentially changing the course of the political debate in the United States and around the world through its grass roots and social media approach. Click here for a global map of protest locations around the world. More interesting than the countries on the map IMHO are the glaring exceptions: quasi-communist China, formerly communist Russia and most of Africa. Freedom of expression is a wonderful thing.

The drivers of the movement are many, however one of the more powerful statistics (click here for a primer) is that the top 1 percent of Americans possess a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent. What’s making people angrier still is the drop in lower and middle class income against this top 1 percent. While no one is really talking about the reasons, it’s pretty simple. While the middle class in America grew wealthy primarily due to rising home values tied to mortgages, the wealthiest decile was predominantly invested in their own businesses and didn’t rely on loans for their wealth, so when the bottom fell out of the housing market worldwide, they were immune.

But enough about money. What this post is about is recognizing the political impetus for change evident in OWS. Some have called it the left leaning version of the Tea Party movement. And it is. In fact, I have great respect for both movements, as impossible as that may sound to Europeans. And I am not one to shy away from controversial positions, as evidenced by my post on WikiLeaks. Both organic movements were born out of a frustration with the current self-serving political structure that is willing to change absolutely nothing. So much for Obama! But what the OWS is sorely lacking is a well-defined set of goals and more importantly, a charismatic spokesperson. From my strategic marketing perspective, what they need to ultimately succeed is a leftist version of Sarah Palin. And much like the billionaire Koch brothers (whom the only viable Republican candidate for President of the US, Mitt Romney has been courting) were soon outed as the financial engine of the Tea Party, it’s only a matter of time before the people financing the Occupy movement are exposed.

The grassroots model which OWS champions, based loosely on the Egyptian protests which made effective use of social media to spread discontent with an unpopular and autocratic government worldwide is the closest the modern world has seen to a direct democracy since ancient Greece. Could this be the way forward? Say what you will, but the Occupy movement is absolutely right about one thing. Money should not equal political influence. The will of the people should. If it weren’t for the crack rock habit corporate money represents to US politicians, Congress would have changed legislation to outlaw the dubious financial instruments which nearly sunk the global economy years ago. Shame on you, elected representatives.

Sadly, while most Americans still want to believe in the Dream and many will tell you that hard work is the key to success, the stats offer a much starker reality. Income inequality in the US now ranks in the bottom third of the world, is greater than in most of the developed world (including Europe) and is in fact very close to Russia’s. Not exactly the comparison Americans aspire to. Slovenians reading this post can take comfort in knowing their country is best in the world when it comes to income equality, even if it could be doing a much better job in attracting FDI, reforming its 3rd world judicial system and job creation.

Way forward? You tell me, but change is in the making, and if history has taught us anything, it’s that revolutions can be sudden, unpredictable and harsh. France’s Marie Antoinette learned that the hard way. America was forged through a revolution. Will it be re-born through one? Or will the OWS movement simply fade into oblivion? Only time will tell, but the clock of political change is ticking, many people are fed up and the younger generations are the ones with a future to lose… Not to mention the whole world is watching.

Nick Taylor is a social media, PR and marketing consultant, blogger, politico and wannabe geek based in Scottsdale, Arizona (US). He shares his thoughts on thetwohalves.com.

Check out the complete Occupy Wall Street series.

The great technology wars and the transition of software from B2B to B2C

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:25:14 GMT

The epic article by Fast Company about the technology wars of 2012 provides great insight into what's happening in Silicon Valley and software in general these days. Four players, or the Fabulous Four, are mentioned to be the real market and innovation leaders: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. Each of these companies found its place where it dominates and invents new business models, and each one is a role model for new generations of technology startups and leaders. And if you didn't notice, all of them sell software to consumers, not other companies (in case of Google and Facebook, you are the real customer, but advertisers pay for it). Software is becoming more and more consumer-oriented, and the clash of these titans will determine the outcome, the software of the future.

The Fab Four

Who are these fantastic companies? Amazon is the leader in e-commerce. Apple reinvented mobile devices and content distribution. Facebook is the largest social network in the world, a big brother in the making. Google is the biggest web and search company.

I almost won't argue with the choice of the Fab Four. To me, these are truly the technology companies that are moving things forward. To be honest, the list is bit of an understatement for Microsoft, even though that doesn't change the fact I'm trying to put out here. These four corporations (their software at least) are more B2C (Business To Consumer) than B2B (Business To Business) oriented. Even Microsoft, with its XBox, Bing, Windows (Phone and Tablet) programs is shifting focus to consumer markets.

The stock market comparison

The B2B software market is still huge, but electronic commerce, online advertising and the economy of scale of billions of users spending a few dollars is slowly outperforming more expensive business solutions sold fewer times, even if they are deployed millions of times as operating systems, products or services. If you check out the following charts, you can see information about market capitalization, revenue and historical price change of these companies (Facebook is not public yet, but it's IPO could be around $100 billion) compared to traditional technology companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. The numbers are pretty interesting (source: ycharts).

Market capitalization of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 10 years (as available)

Change in market capitalization of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 7 years (as available)

Revenue of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 10 years (as available)

Change in revenue of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 8 years (as available)

Change in stock price of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 7 years (as available)

Why does it matter

As a software architect, I see major shifts in user-centered software compared to business-oriented software. Even if you check Gartner's strategic technologies of 2012, it becomes more and more obvious what's happening:

software is made for and "sold" to users, not management anymore
product cycles and new releases are reaching Warp Speed
the focus is shifting from features to benefits
user experience is becoming more and more important
technology used is getting less and less important
system and data integration is becoming trivial with web services and APIs
there's a new generation of devices that run software (smartphones and tablets, the internet of things)
scaling and performance is not measured in Whateverbytes, but in number of users
new distribution channels (marketplaces) are going beyond the Web
platforms and mashups have emerged, where ecosystems of software are being build around the core service
online software is more disruptive and innovative, business software follows (from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0, adoption of gamification in the enterprise, etc.)

Adaptation

Some business software companies, such as Salesforce.com have managed to adapt to this situation, offering a platform others can upgrade and develop on. We're adapting too, on a smaller scale. Neolab is still mostly focused on B2B software, since that's where we've built our market. Sure, we did a few web portals and are working on deploying our own user-targeted service Twitfluence, but it's business-oriented software that we generally work on. But that doesn't change the fact we are fully aware that the concept of software is changing, and we are on top of it, trying to embrace these trends and include new paradigms in corporate infromation systems. Social, user-oriented, user-friendly. Knowing that people are behind every company.

Software is maturing; consumers are getting more and more demanding, brands behind the software are getting more and more important. And as the Web expands even further, this fact will become yet more obvious. It's you and me who are the ones who are "buying" software. Which is great, since in the end the ordinary people, not corporations, will be those who will decide how software and technology of the future will look like. Interactive, useful and fun. Here we are now, entertain us.

Facebook vs. Twitter, Part 3: The phase of unification

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:22:32 GMT

I started writing about Facebook and Twitter because I saw these two services as the most impressive players of the social age. I received a lot of comments about the two of them not being comparable, which I disagree. They are the biggest global Web 2.0 platforms (LinkedIn successfully went public and has a lot of users, but it's hardly a platform) and two of the ten most visited websites in the world. They are social trend-setters, both super advanced on technical and conceptual levels. They are a lot, but with the latest sets of patches, they are also becoming a lot alike.

Originally, Facebook wanted to be a social network. On the other hand, Twitter wanted to be a news network. But seeing what's happening these days, we can ask ourselves: is it rather the other way around? Indeed, Facebook and Twitter are finally entering the phase of unification. Let's begin.

Two way integration

Twitter now officially supports posting to Facebook, while Facebook now officially supports posting to Twitter (for now, Pages only). Until recently, you had to use other services or install apps to fully connect both accounts, but these days, direct integration it's pretty much trivial. The wall between the two giants is obviously coming down. And they both noticed the need to recognize each other to proceed.

Facebook adds following

The symmetric relationships (friends) on Facebook made it what it is - a social network for keeping in touch with the people you know. The same goes for Twitter, the asymmetric relationships (followers) made it what it is - a news network where you can follow people you are interested in. This fact was one of the biggest differentiator between the two social services.

Facebook soon noticed they will have to somehow go beyond that, for the sake of enabling more accessible information to the masses and enabling unprotected, crawlable real-time data without privacy. They've started with Pages, intended for brands, which users can like and follow. But recently, like I predicted more than a year ago, Facebook introduced subscriptions for personal profiles, where you can follow people without the need for them to confirm you back, and they can post public updates. What an interesting turn of events.

Facebook adds a real-time stream

Facebook put a lot of effort into developing the EdgeRank, which recognizes the level of connection between two people. The previous version of Facebook had Hot and Fresh streams, the first one being based on the amount of activity and EdgeRank vicinity, and the other one on recent activity. Today, the main stream is a mixture of both, while a new feature was introduced. The so-called Ticker in the right sidebar, showing real-time activity from all your friends. Your own little Twitter inside Facebook, which they plan to evolve even further, adding automatic updates.

Twitter starts to close, adds multimedia

Traditionally, the Twitter app ecosystem was built around (outside) Twitter, while Facebook's app ecosystem was built inside Facebook. But Twitter's policy is changing. They've already acquired one of the biggest Twitter clients TweetDeck, and said they will prevent new Twitter clients from being developed. They've also added a multimedia library to each profile (feeding also from external services) and enabled an internal service for sharing photos. Bad news and a stab in the back for Twitpics, Yfrogs and such. Smells like Facebook.

Twitter adds activity streams

Social networks are all about profiles, streams and interaction. Twitter used to be plain, providing only simple profiles, basic tweets stream, replies and retweets. But the newest addition also includes real-time activity streams, where all retweets, replies and favorites are gathered in one place. I haven't gotten it yet, but people are saying Favorites are the new (Facebook) likes. Twitter is becoming very much a social network, trying to boost up it's social graph.

Conclusion

There are even more cases like this, but these are the most significant. I hope this trend won't continue much further. It was the differences between Facebook and Twitter made each one interesting and useful in it's own way, but I guess things like this are inevitable. Like operating systems or browsers, competitors are constantly copying each other's features and solutions, which actually proves mutual recognition. Why would social services be any different? It seems Twitter and Facebook are finally mature enough to enter the phase of unification.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

Apple has enough money to buy Slovenia's entire yearly production

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:00:34 GMT

Apple is currently hot like a chili pepper. Its products are well accepted, their sales and revenues are growing, and their stocks are going sky-high. A few months ago Apple even managed to dethrone Microsoft as the largest technology company in the world and ~~second~~ third largest according to market capitalization (behind Exxon and PetroChina). Their yearly revenues are currently around $65 billion, which is a lot, and that figure is even more interesting if put into perspective.

Slovenia is a small country in Europe. It has around 2 million inhabitants who almost manage to live in peace. Its GDP in 2009 was around $24k per capita or $49b in total. We are so small that our neighbors are making jokes about it, but we are still a proud nation of capable people, who try hard to make it. Speaking of small - nowadays it's not that unusual for large corporations to have bigger revenues than a small country's GDP, but if a company has more money than a country's GDP, well, that's simply ridiculous. But Apple now sits on more than $50 billion (11 billion in cash + 14 billion in short-term marketable securities + 25 billion in long-term marketable securities), which means that it's actually capable of buying the whole yearly gross domestic product of Slovenia.

Apple obviously won't do that, but eventually it will have to do something. There are speculations about them wanting to buy Facebook (estimated value 33 billion), focusing on mobile payments, and many others. It will be interesting to see what happens, but I'm almost sure Steve will do the right thing. The company is very healthy, the demand is high, so it should be a piece of cake. Just take a look at these interesting facts or the figures below, which display the case of Apple vs. Slovenia. I guess we truly are small.

	Apple	Slovenia
Full name	Apple Inc.	Republic of Slovenia
Established	1976	1991
Capital	Cuppertino	Ljubljana
Government	~~Monarchy~~ Empire	Parliamentary republic
Leader	Steve Jobs	Danilo Türk
Population	49,400 (2010)	2,054,199 (2009)
GDP	$65.225 billion (2010)	$49.217 billion (2009)
GDP per capita	$1.320 million (2010)	$24,417 (2009)

Source: Wikipedia, Apple

Working in Cape Town - Part 1: First impressions

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:33:35 GMT

I managed to be lucky enough to get invited to Cape Town to work on a project for a month. Neolab has been developing an information system for a client stationed here and the results are quite satisfying, both for us and for the client. Therefore they decided it would be best if I came around, so we could work on the system together, while at the same time plan new, advanced features to come. I must say this is one of the greatest projects we've ever did, and I really look forward to implementing the social IT 2.0 features into the system in the future. Clients back home don't seem to recognize the real potential in those services, so it's really satisfying to get real feedback from a client on the concept.

Cape Town and South Africa are beautiful, the landscape is simply amazing, even though the flora resembles the European Mediterranean a bit. It's currently spring time, so this is actually my second trip in spring this year, and first ever to the southern hemisphere. Speaking of the southern hemisphere - I was actually disoriented for the first few days here, subconsciously thinking north was south, which is a fact I find really interesting.

The city of Cape Town is located around Table mountain, a great landmark of the city, where the Devil and the Dutchman often have a pipe smoking competition. The main city center (called the City Bowl) is surrounded with other mountains, while the suburbs and slums behind them stretch for miles. I am located inside the City Bowl, and the office I work at is within walking distance, so I can enjoy the real wibe of the city every day, as good or bad it may be.

View over Table mountain from our office

I live in a building called Lulu's house, an interesting place filled with interesting people. I share the house with a few interns and other travelers from all over the world, some of them have been living here for months. It's really been wonderful to meet all these people and share different views on life, even though I spend most of my free time with my hosts. Meeting these people made my wonder about my connection with Slovenia and the lack of traveling as a student.

Lulu's House, where I live

I was actually a bit shocked about the general cultural situation at first, the racial mixing seems to be working, but you can still feel the post apartheid influences and segregation. There are many beggars, most of them African, and the other day one of them threatened to steal my wallet if I don't give him change. An awkward moment, but I managed to talk my way out of it, hoping to have as little similar situations in the days to come. South Africa still has a long way to reach equality, but it looks like it's well on the right track.

Cape Town street, where I live

The food is nice, even though most of it would tend towards sweet. But I already got accustomed to that in Thailand, so no problems there. Meat is obviously the main component of the diet, both in meals (preferably roasted or as they call it, braaied), as in dry meat snack called Biltong (which is great). The beer is OK, but it's the wine that deserves a special mention. It's really really amazing, so I'm still thinking of a way to bring as much of it as possible back home, even though we have some very nice wines of our own.

A nice meaty meal

These are my first impressions of Cape Town and South Africa after about 10 days since I've been here. The city is actually quite growing on me, and I didn't even have the time to do a safari, shark-diving or many other things you can't do in Europe. So what seemed like a great deal of time when I got here could actually be over really fast, thanks to a lot of work during weekdays and a lot of crazy stuff to do during the weekends. A most delightful and useful journey indeed.

Check out the complete Working in Cape Town series.

Apple's strategy of becoming a content provider might simply be ingenious

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:38:22 GMT

Apple is an interesting corporation. Some love it, some hate it, but the fact is, Apple has become the biggest technology company in the world. An interesting turn of events, from a company that nearly went bankrupt a few decades ago, to a player that we know today. Looks like Steve Jobs really is one of the greatest visionaries of our time, as his comeback in 1996 together with the introduction of the iMac and the iPod managed to turn things around for Apple. Looking at these facts in 2010, the iPod may turn out to be even more important than it seems, creating a digital music revolution and providing the foundation for Apple's strategy of becoming the world's dominant commercial content provider.

Apple was always known as the great innovator, and all of its products and services(!) strive towards perfection. This vision of making things people want and need (or don't need but still want anyways) has moved beyond hardware and software, towards a new direction – providing both free and payable content in any form. And because of the loyalty and fanaticism of their customers, they are one of the few that are actually able to make this work on a global scale. And be aware content is more than just actual news, it's multimedia (music, videos), it's software, it's books, it's just about everything, and Apple was the first to notice this potential and put it into action.

It all started with the iPod (2001) and its biggest sister, the iTunes. Today, iTunes is the largest music retailer in the US, with over 10 billion songs purchased. With the introduction of the iPhone (2007), its biggest sister, the App Store became one of the largest software marketplaces in the world, selling more that 6 billion applications in two years. The next gadget, the iPad (2010), was launched with a bigger sister too, the iBooks, which is currently messing up Amazon's Kindle operation, even though the success of this story is still hard to estimate. A few weeks ago, Apple also introduced the new cloud powered Apple TV (2010), which will enable selling (actually renting) fresh HD movies and TV shows using the iTunes platform. And to complete the circle, there are rumors Apple will also provide a subscription service for newspapers, supposedly the iNewsstand, which could actually become the biggest of them all.

So, how did a "personal computer" company come to this position? If you ask me, the answer is simple – Steve Jobs. This visionary was able to predict where the future will go and if you look at the situation today, when this business model is proven to work, it's really trivial. When personal computers were on the rise, it was obvious business and sales will be in hardware and software. But in the present information era, where billions have access to the web, overloaded with information, it's almost obvious that business and sales will be in providing content: data and information in all forms.

Besides Apple TV, Ping, a social network on top of iTunes, was also introduced on Apple's last "mass". I won't speculate on how cool it is, because I haven't tried it and am not sure if I will. But the fact is that iTunes has 160 million users and generates a lot of revenue. Ping actually represents a first integrated wide scale social market place, which probably is the future of social electronic commerce, so it will be interesting to see what will happen. No matter how cool, adding a Facebook Like button on Amazon simply isn't real social commerce.

That's Apple, once a computer manufacturer, today a diversified technology and media corporation with great know-how in electronic commerce and providing content, while pioneering (again) in social commerce. Besides owning a complete set of platforms for providing and selling different types of content, many of them market leaders, they also offer beautiful hardware and software infrastructure for their implementation. Something we will be seeing in most living rooms of the future?

Google 2.0, take infinity: Google Me

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:17:35 GMT

The past few months have been loaded with expectations and speculations about the new social service from Google that will be introduced soon: Google Me. Facebook is currently dominating the social market, with 500 million registered users and an expected 2 billion dollars of revenue in 2010. It's satellites, mostly in the form of social gaming providers, are also gaining momentum, e.g. Zynga, the most successful of the pack, could generate $500 million in revenue this year. Even though Google's revenue is still much much greater, more than $20 billion a year to be exact, this does not change the fact the future of the World Wide Web lies in social – and Google obviously wants to be a part of that.

SEO is out

We can see for ourselves that the Web has been shifting to a new shape, where you don't look for information anymore, information finds you (push vs. pull). Another interesting fact - The Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference was not about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) this year, it was about possibilities of new social strategies. Modern viral campaigns that use social media, such as the one for Old Spice, make traditional web strategies seem plain, ineffective and a thing of the past. And Google, once the ultimate company and employer, the coolest place to work in, is facing a leakage of its employees towards Facebook, currently valued at 33+ billion. Middle aged Google, slowly loosing its coolness against the new kid on the block.

Facebook is in

A few days ago, Facebook was granted with a patent concerning social search, an algorithm build on the number of clicks made by your social vicinity. A really interesting idea, and potentially a great threat to probably the world's greatest (most valuable) mathematical algorithm – Google PageRank. This is not some service of a new type anymore, this one competes directly with Google's core business and the thing that made the corporation what it is today. And Google desperately needs to strike back.

Google's past attempts with Web 2.0 weren't that successful. From the decline of Orkut, to canceled Wave and useless Buzz, these services didn't quite make it to wider use, leaving aside YouTube. The following infographic beautifully shows all Google's (mostly failed) attempts at social, but they will still give it another go - this time in the form of Google Me.

Google wants in

Aimed to be a Facebook clone, some people say it has great potential, some are reserved, while others think it will be a failure. Besides, an open alternative called Diaspora is set to launch September 15th with huge social buzz, so this game might turn out really interesting. But Google, once the web's innovation leader, is slowly turning into an old school player, finding it hard to cope with new concepts. Something similar is happening to Nokia, who has problems with fully penetrating the smart phone market, and is loosing ground towards new players, such as Apple and the whole Android movement.

But a few strategic takeovers (check out the complete history) and strong partnerships and acquisitions of social gaming providers may just enable Google the brain power it needs to provide a successful Facebook alternative. Facebook is currently loosing some hype and if Google is able to provide a fresh service for what the core functionality of Facebook is – connecting with people you know – this just might work. But this time, it will have to be something smart and creative (but not too creative like Wave), similar, but different (not a total clone like Twitter's clone Buzz), and Google could get a chance to get on top of things again. The only question is if Google still has enough out of the box thinking left to pull it off and finally become a real Web 2.0 player.

I'm really eager to see what they'll do and like many curious people, I will surely give it a try. The only question is if it will be just a try, or will it be interesting enough (for others) to persuade me to stay. For Google's sake, I hope it will, otherwise they may face an even bigger problem on a strategic scale: the lost domination of the World Wide Web.

Many colors and identities of different brands with the same name: Neolab

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:43:10 GMT

The company I work for is called Neolab. It's a name we obviously share with many other companies from all over the world, producing a little global identity crisis. We were aware of that fact when we picked the name, but nowadays it's becoming almost impossible to find a unique name for a brand. A few years later, I went on a quest to find as many Neolabs as possible online and stumbled upon 21 of them. While I was at it, I also took my time to try to find out which industries these companies are from and to understand why other people chose this brand. This post will bring you a diversified collection of different "Neolab" logos, so similar in name, but yet so different in corporate identity and design.

In the case of Neolab Slovenia, my partners and I decided to go for the name "Neolab" because we wanted something that would represent and communicate our focus on Research and Development (the Lab part) which has to be in tune with all the newest technologies available (the Neo part). Neo-Lab. Others were probably thinking in a similar way, and the interesting fact is that these "New Laboratories" don't come from many different industries. As the name already suggests, all Neolabs that exist (online) today focus on knowledge intensive fields.

Medical

"Neolab" is obviously a name which people instinctively connect with medical industries, and most of the Neolabs I was able to find are working on that field:

Neolab Chile
Industry: Clinic
URL: http://www.neolab.cl/
Design: 3 points

Neolab Germany
Industry: Medical Equipment
URL: http://www.neolab.de/
Design: 4 points

Neolab India
Industry: Medical Equipment
Design: 3 points

Neolab Russia
Industry: Medical Equipement
URL: http://neolab.ru/
Design: 2 points

Neolab Serbia
Industry: Clinic
URL: http://neolab.co.rs/
Design: 4 points

Neolab Switzerland
Industry: Medical Equipment
URL: http://neolab.ch/
Design: 5 points

Neolab Ukraine
Industry: Clinic
URL: http://neolab.kiev.ua/
Design: 6 points

Neolab United States
Industry: Medical Supplies
URL: http://www.neolab.com/
Design: 4 points

Average score for Medical: 3.9

Pharmaceutics & Biotechnology

The other similar industry the name "Neolab" is well suited for is definitely Pharmaceutical. Here are some of them:

Neolab Argentina
Industry: Biotechnology
URL: http://www.neolab.com.ar/
Design: 5 points

Neolab Canada
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
URL: http://www.neolab.ca/
Design: 3 points

Neolab Peru
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
URL: http://www.neolabperu.com/
Design: 6 points

Neolab United Kingdom
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Design: 1 point

Average score for Pharmaceutics & Microbiology: 3.8

Marketing, Web and Design

The connection between Marketing, Web and Design is usually hard to distinguish, and the following Neolabs are focused on some or all of those fields:

Neolab Brazil
Industry: Web & Design
URL: http://www.neolab.com.br/
Design: 5 points

Neolab Denmark
Industry: Design
URL: http://neolab.dk/
Design: 4 points

Neolab Italy
Industry: Design
URL: http://www.neolab.it/
Design: 9 points

Neolab Japan
Industry: Web & Design
URL: http://www.neolab.co.jp/
Design: 8 points

Neolab Korea
Industry: Web & Design
URL: http://www.neolab.kr/
Design: 7 points

Neolab Norway
Industry: Advertising
URL: http://www.neolab.no/
Design: 8 points

Average score for Marketing & Design: 6.8

Technology & IT

IT companies also often see themselves as laboratories and here are a few of them, including our Neolab:

Neolab France
Industry: IT
URL: http://neolab-systems.com/
Design: 6 points

Neolab Poland
Industry: IT
URL: http://www.neolab.pl/
Design: 4 points

Neolab Slovenia
Industry: Web & IT
URL: http://www.neolab.si/
Design: 10 points

Average score for IT: 6.7

Other

The special case from Thailand is working on construction projects.

Neolab Thailand
Industry: Construction
URL: http://www.neolab.co.th/
Design: 4 points

Average score for Other: 4

While I was putting the list together, I decided to quickly rate each one of them to see if there are any significant differences in the quality of logos and websites between different industries. This score was made on my personal opinion and not on any scientific methodology. You can see for yourselves that those Neolabs, working in Marketing, Web and Design have the best corporate identities. IT is close, but mostly because our design is so unique and won many awards last year. The Medical and Pharmaceutics follow miles behind, and their websites and logos already look a lot out of date. These industries are maturer and the companies older, and they probably take their competition to other fields (research, quality, professionals), without giving so much on their image and marketing, at least online.

Applying the same calculation to Neolabs from different continents, we can see that Europe scored the highest score (average 5.5), followed by Asia (average 4.8) and Americas (average 4.3).

Neolab - the name behind so many different companies, brands and identities. It's interesting to see how specific industries, people and cultures are able to portray the same simple name in so many unique ways. Some our good, some our bad, and really trying to be unbiased, I still think ours is the best, followed by Italy, Norway and Japan. Or am I just too blinded and you have a different favorite?

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Why Web 2.0 is so important

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:10:53 GMT

The influence the Internet is having on our every day lives is reaching almost unimaginable levels. The extent of the information revolution can only be compared to inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past, which are all major achievements that allowed new ways of sharing thoughts and ideas between people. Web 2.0 is the next step of this information (r)evolution, and to understand why it's so important, we have to observe all the significant applications it represents (according to Wikipedia). This will hopefully give us a better insight into the potential they bring to our personal and professional lives, besides their impact on the whole humanity which we still perhaps don't fully comprehend.

Social networking

Social networking sites enabled probably the greatest migration of people to the virtual world. People have a new opportunity to interact not only in real life, but also in cyberspace, where geographical and other physical barriers don't exists. I'm not saying this is a promising thing overall, some people are obviously overdoing it, but it's still useful for keeping in touch with people. Together with the implementation of feeds and streams which enable dynamic information, social networking could represent the biggest and most important component of Web 2.0, reshaping business, marketing, politics and just being plain amazing.

Video sharing

Yesterday we read the newspaper, listened to the radio and watched television. Today, we have a super-medium that supports all of it at once. Video, as the most complex form of multimedia, is something that you can record with your telephone and publish online in minutes, from where it can go anywhere. If distributing a video is easy, anything else surely has to be a piece of cake. This fact obviously holds massive potential for science and arts in general.

Wikis and folksonomies

Wikis and folksonomies are tools which harness the amazing effect of participation and collaboration of millions of people to create information and knowledge. Wikipedia is the biggest encyclopedia in the world, holding knowledge whole mankind can benefit from. Folksonomies, such as tools for collaborative tagging and social indexing enable structured knowledge, while recommendation engines help us get information from massive quantity of data available online. Today, if something important is discovered, everybody knows it in minutes.

Blogs

Most people have the need to express themselves, and blogs (and microblogs) are the perfect tool for that. Plain and simple: anybody can be a journalist and if you have something smart to say, people will listen. Those who are influential enough can even break out of anonymity and become opinion leaders.

Web services and mashups

Web services and mashups enable and use open flows of data from one online service to another, from one online platform to another. System integration used to be one of the most complex things in IT, but thanks to new standards, protocols and technology, data can freely travel from and to different sources. This provides a perfect ground for exchanging information and enables evolution from software services to software platforms.

Perhaps we should also mention cloud computing, which makes hardware requirements irrelevant – the processing power and memory is around in plenty – but computer grids with shared resources have already been around for decades. All the better to understand that Web 2.0 is more about concept than it is about technology.

Web 2.0 is important and revolutionary, both in a good and a bad way. It brings a new perspective and new opportunities to different arts and sciences, such as business, education, sociology, psychology, literature, politics and many other. My professional and academic work focuses mainly on it's influence on information science and technologies, but it's clear that this new paradigm has a huge global effect, whose scale we still can't fully estimate. Now we just have to hope younger generations don't get too overwhelmed because of it and will be able to adjust to this new reality without abusing it too much.

The influence of new generation information systems on modern organizations

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:08:48 GMT

The traditional role of Information Science and corresponding Information Technologies is providing organizations with information. This makes it a tool supporting decision process, which can be counted as an organizational process. But today, this role is becoming more widely spread, making Information Sciences and Information Technologies also an important part of the operational process itself. Concepts such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) make information solutions a vital part of any modern organization process, present in all components in the business cycle of planning, realization and controlling.

The World Wide Web as a platform

If Information Science and Information Technologies revolutionized modern organizations, there is a heavily related technology that revolutionized our every day lives. The Internet and its main service, the World Wide Web hold unimagined potential both for personal and professional goals. This technology enables unlimited knowledge sharing between people and organizations, while at the same providing the platform on which different information systems can be created. Intranets (designed to support internal people and processes) and Extranets (designed for connecting with external entities, such as clients, suppliers, partners and competition) enable effective, flexible, scalable and accessible web-based information systems that can support most of organizational needs of a modern organizations.

To understand the implications of World Wide Web we can also take a look at the companies behind it, as they have become some of the largest IT companies in the world, and their services the most widely used information systems, leaving aside operation systems. There is an important point hidden in that statement – most information systems of today are not used to support organizations any more, they are designed for personal activities. Software solutions are shifting from B2B to B2C, and where management was the key buyer of software yesterday, ordinary everyday user is the main "buyer" of software today.

The Internet with its possibilities to share knowledge is a revolution probably comparable to the inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past. Those organizations and individuals who are able to recognize this fact have a great opportunity for progress. That potential goes both for getting useful information and knowledge from other sources as for getting useful information about organization to those or any other sources. There is no doubt that today we live in the information era, and those who will not adapt that fact, probably have no future.

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and IT 2.0

In the past years, a new generation of World Wide Web solutions has emerged, which we understand as Web 2.0. These services are focused on collaboration, cooperation, communication and connectivity, enabling sharing between millions of users and utilizing the effect of mass participation. The potential marketing revenue, which is the driving force behind the World Wide Web, and the large competition between millions of software companies around the world allow these services to evolve with light speed, making them both technologically and functionally more advanced than classical information systems. It didn’t take long for managers and entrepreneurs to realize the effect of these now approaches and services can also be beneficial on organization, marketing, decision support and other fields of organization and management.

The concept of Enterprise 2.0 adapts Web 2.0 for business-oriented use and represents using these new technologies, approaches, concepts and services in business-oriented environments. With a focus both on internal optimization (wikis, idea banks, social networking tools) and external optimization (blogs and microblogs, RSS, social bookmarking and tagging), it enables companies and their employees new ways to connect and interact between themselves and with other organizations. The focus of information systems is shifting from technical elements to social elements of organizations, and traditional information systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are getting upgraded with modern systems, such as custom developed intranets and extranets.

But Enterprise 2.0 solutions are still mostly partial (separate) software solutions modern organizations can use to optimize their performance and strategies. In my opinion, future information systems will have those concepts and approaches incorporated into the core of the system, enriching traditional business-oriented solutions with social components that will support connections both with other individuals within organizations and with individuals from other organizations. Real-time interactions and communication will be one of the foundations of new business models that are emerging on the market, and IT 2.0 will be the platform that supports those concepts and activities.

It's time for IT to go social

Modern organizations are mostly service-oriented, so traditional ERP systems are becoming used mostly for low value-added activities. These new organizations are founded on innovative business models, knowledge and human capital. High value-add information systems for those organizations are systems for Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management etc., which are not oriented on technical components of organizations, but on social ones, such as people, relationships, connections, interactions, knowledge, cooperation and other.

New services that Web 2.0 "invented" fit into this picture of new generation IT 2.0 software solutions perfectly. Social networking tools can enable higher connectivity, new forms of interactions, team building and cooperation between all the people in the process. Social bookmarking and tagging produce structured knowledge and can harness the effect of crowdsourcing. Visualizations of data and information can bring more information used for decision making and clearer view on organization process. Feeds and streams enable faster data flow and clearer connections between most individuals inside the organization.

Organization is a system of dynamic relationships, and people are no longer considered only as a part of the machinery, but as complex entities, building even more complex social units. The greatest corporations that exist today were produced by capable individuals, forming even more capable teams. Therefore we must not ignore the science behind it – human capital is the probably the most valuable thing any modern organization can have and most software solutions of the future will be focused on these social components. The interesting symbiosis between new generation information systems and modern organization approaches is more obvious than ever, providing all the elements needed for business-oriented IT to go 2.0.

Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 2: Privacy and real-time web

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:11:14 GMT

After my previous post comparing Facebook and Twitter I received a few comments about how Facebook and Twitter are two totally different services which can't really be compared. I admit they are not perfectly analog, but my thoughts originate mainly from the fact that these two players will probably be those who'll define how the social web of tomorrow will look, from the point of user experience as well as an organizational and marketing tool. Where Google dominates Web 1.0, Facebook and Twitter are obviously becoming the leaders of Web 2.0, and the fact is any of them (including Google) has a good chance to define Web 3.0.

What's new

The past few weeks have been pretty intense for Facebook and Twitter. The two Web 2.0 rivals both held conferences about how their companies are doing and revealing plans for the future. Facebook's (f8) main presented functionality was the universal Like button, which was already adopted by more than 50.000 websites in its first week, even though with a bit of problems. Twitter (Chirp) announced its service has more users than expected (105m registered, 180m unique users a month) and their main focus in the future will be Twitter Annotations, used for making Tweets embedded with meta-data used for better indexing and search. These two features imply that one of the main battlefields of the future of web will surely be the semantic web, for which experts say at this point Facebook has the advantage.

Real-time web

Leaving aside speculations about where this whole story is headed and how the semantic web will turn out, and concentrate on another thing hot right now: real-time web. Real-time web has so much potential even Google wanted a part of it. Sadly, Buzz came out a bit of a failure, and most of it's traffic is non-generated. The giant probably doesn't really care because it can display Tweets and other streams in it's search results, finding a symbiosis with real-time web services, similar as it has with Wikipedia. But still, it's "new" Buzz service proves that real-time web is interesting for everybody, even the biggest web company in the world.

The main point of real-time web is already hidden in its name. It's about information when it happens. News portals and blogs are minutes if not hours behind, after all, they usually present professional and lectured articles with sources and photographies. But in this hectic and hyper-speed world we live in, information has the highest value when it happens. In the case of extraordinary and unpredictable events, such as natural and man-made disasters, or just casual popular things, such as the premiere of a new movie, timing means everything. That is why journalists turn to these sources more and more, and CNN occasionally analyzes the twittersphere live on television, taking advantage of these new modern media platforms. They actually deserve to be congratulated for seizing this great opportunity.

Privacy issues

Where does Facebook fit into this picture? Well, to be honest, I think it's still trying to fit in it, and that's what the whole "Privacy and real-time web" in this post title is all about. To understand what I'm getting at, we must go a few years back, back to Facebook's beginnings. Facebook started as a closed network for elite schools, then slowly opening up to general public to become one of the biggest websites ever. The service and concept was originally based around privacy – where everything you did you had a full control over who will see it, what probably made it big in the first place. Today, this privacy is almost gone, and even Mark Zuckerberg admitted it doesn't interest them any more.

This decline of Facebook's privacy is concerning many people right now, and you can check out this interesting evolution for yourself (also visualized). Activism and search for alternatives have already made it to the mainstream and it looks like I'm becoming a part of this movement too. Don't get me wrong, I still think Facebook is a great service both for personal and professional life, but sometimes you just have to not want it all (sounds familiar?). It's a bit ironic actually, the thing which made Facebook could also become its end.

In the case of content providing, real-time web and search, for which Facebook perhaps also has ambitions, privacy is a giant barrier. Facebook has content, not only that, it has the most content of them all (including multimedia), but this valuable content is entangled inside Facebook's huge web of (dissolving) privacy, making most of the streams unreachable for general public. Even Facebook Pages, designed to have their information fully open to public, were not helping a lot, because it's the the millions of microbloggers, from the most influential, to the most insignificant, who are empowering the real-time web, and not brands and corporations. Real-time web is a giant crowdsourced news network with reporters scattered all around the world, and that is something Facebook so desperatly wants to be a part of, using all means necessary.

Twitter is the king

We will see if Facebook went too far or will it be able to become a real player in real-time web too. For now, Twitter seems to be the dominant platform and the fact that it's entire timeline will be archived in the Library of Congress is an amazing achievement proving this theory. Facebook's only option to make it on this market is to continue getting rid of privacy, making it's content available for everybody, both human and machine. Of course, there will be other players too and uncle Google will sit right on top of it, trying to use all the platforms and services to its own benefit.

Number of users is the crucial component of real-time web, so Facebook could probably have a greater potential in this field in the long run too. But the truth is Facebook users are becoming annoyed, and it's still a question how they'll accept its new strategic policy and how intimidated they will become by its frequent debacles. But the attachment to Facebook can sometimes be too heavy, so it will be interesting to see if users will actually leave Facebook or simply adapt to its new privacy, continuing to feed it with accessible real-time content.

If the future is semantic web, reality is real-time web, and at this point Twitter is very much in the lead. In the end, it probably doesn't make a lot of difference for a casual user if he gets the information late, but still, the whole concept of real-time web is quite amazing and holds great potential for many people and businesses. An interesting thing, the World Wide Web is, and everything that came with it. Welcome to 2010.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 1: The battleground

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:50:45 GMT

Facebook and Twitter are probably the two hottest Web 2.0 services available. A lot of us are familiar with both of them, but it's hard to predict which has greatest potential in the long run to take on the title of the main social networking service. The competition is on, but it's also obvious the race is long, even infinite. The World Wide Web runs on a time of its own, and we have seen major players vanish and marginal players with great ideas take the lead in years, if not months. Because I like to speculate on things like that, I bring you the first part of my thoughts on Facebook vs. Twitter.

For now, I won't go into details, but we'll rather check out different categories and variables that represent the already made success and future potentials for both giants. The list of the comparisons is based on my opinion as a web developer, web 2.0 user and social media strategist, in no specific order. Later posts will go into specific fields and analyze how things are turning out.

The size

Today, Facebook is a few times bigger than Twitter, with 350 million registered users vs. Twitter's 50 million. The following diagram is already a bit old, but still gives an interesting overview on the comparison between the two giants. We must admit Facebook has been around longer, but that doesn't change the fact it's way up ahead in this category. More users mean more possibilities and greater potential. Facebook 1.

The revenue

Facebook already went cash flow positive, while Twitter is still thinking about its revenue model. This could turn out to be one of the crucial stages in Twitter's development, where bad decisions could change everything. Besides, it's a no brainer that making money is good, in our case probably even the main goal for everybody. Facebook 2.

The karma

Facebook’s karma is getting worse and worse. Ever since the infamous Facebook beginnings and stories of the stolen idea, issues concerning privacy and other weird decisions have been a pain in Facebook's behind. On the other hand, Twitter with its involvement on the Iranian elections and now with live reporting on Haiti earthquake, seems like the good boy of Web 2.0. Twitter 1.

The service

Facebook was built around a ton of services, such as events, photos, fan pages, etc. On the other hand, Twitter was build around one service, analog to Facebook’s status, but so much different in content. The so called microblog. External services, such as Twitpic also exist, where one photo becomes richer than the whole album with 100 photos on Facebook. Besides, we have to admit Facebook is becoming a little spam machine and we all know less is more, so this one goes to Twitter. Twitter 2.

The openness

Facebook’s API is focused on building applications inside the portal, where Twitter’s API is focused on having different clients to access Twitter. But concerning the time an average user stays on Facebook to play all the quizes and games, looks like this is an effective approach. Farmville alone, one of the most popular games on Facebook, is bigger than Twitter. Besides, looks like different Facebook clients are also more actual and available than before. Facebook 3.

The relationships

Facebook and Twitter have two different approaches on relationships. On Facebook, both people have to "confirm" each other to become friends. This is called symmetric friendship, which ends with 5.000th friend on Facebook. On the other hand, Twitter has asymmetric friendships, which allows people (and celebrities) to have millions of followers. This makes it more flexible and open and we can only wait for Facebook to do the same. Twitter 3.

The publicity

The celebrity base made Twitter big, and many popular microbloggers intentionally and unintentionally help to promote Twitter. Oprah did her first tweet live on her show and got immediately corrected by Shaq. This type of publicity is something Facebook just can't manage with current architecture. Here is the list of the most followed people on Twitter which gives it a lead over Facebook, because they are far more active and appealing than Facebook fan pages, managed by PR companies. Twitter 4.

The technical platform

If you had to take an estimate, it would be clear that Facebook’s platform and service is much more complicated from the technical point of view. Besides, Facebook has much more users who are more active, but still remains more stable and is online more often. Twitter has a problem with being over capacity often. Is this a problem with the core software architecture or just with the physical architecture and number of servers? Facebook 4.

The influence

2009 was the year of the Twitter, and Twitter was the top word of 2009. Ashton Kutcher kicked CNN's ass to become the first account to have a million followers on Twitter. This clearly show the shift of broadcasting information from mainstream media to opinion leaders. Facebook is for following people you actually know, Twitter is for following people you would like to know. On Facebook you are trapped inside your social circle, while on Twitter you are free to go and look anywhere. Real time search is more actual than ever and Twitter is faster with delivering news than the mainstream media. Even though Facebook groups have some activism influence, Twitter is becoming a platform rather than a service and in this surely means future. Twitter 5.

Conclusion

I think these 9 facts should cover the initial battleground between Facebook and Twitter. For now, I would go more towards Twitter, who also won this faceoff 5 points to 4. Leaving aside this rough analysis, history usually likes to prove that ideas that are the most simple and the most elementary, usually are the best and most history changing, and Google is direct proof of that. You can't go more minimalistic than Twitter, and collaboration of millions of users could mean a whole lot of information and potential. This gives Twitter an opportunity to go beyond Web 2.0, something even Google could be afraid of. On the other hand, Twitter is probably not that useful and fun for non-heavy Web 2.0 users, because it doesn't offer so many things to do. We probably shouldn't underestimate people who are bored online.

This competition will be fun and interesting and I really am curious what will happen. We will see soon, probably even too soon, but it's safe to say the ordinary web user will benefit from this battle anyways.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

Environmental, political and technological influences of Avatar

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:46:28 GMT

This post is probably already out of date, but I still feel I should say a few words about the movie that could become one of the biggest blockbusters of all time and surely a cult movie of the future. I personally loved it. Not just because of the story and the package, but because of the positive influence it will bring to this confused era. I think the director James Cameron is quite bold to openly address most of the biggest global issues of our time in it, a thing that actually wasn't mentioned as much as it probably should be.

Comparing Avatar with Pocahontas is very popular these days, but I simply don't care about the similar plots. I see Avatar not only as a movie that changed cinema forever, I think it will also change the world for the better. We, the people of this planet needed a statement like this badly, now we can only hope that many of us got the obvious and the subtle messages it holds. The messages which doubt the actions of governments and corporations worldwide and support a more responsible attitude towards life, the universe and everything.

Environmental issues

The debate on global warming is more actual than ever, and the media are doing great to confuse people about the fact if it really exists and if it is really caused by humans. I personally don't care about what's true anymore, because one thing I did get out of this is that there is nothing I can really do about it. But that doesn't change the fact that I care about this planet and I feel we should be more responsible and respectful towards 'our mother'. Humans are the only species on the Earth that will take anything we are be able to get our hands on as long as it's available and possible, without thinking about the consequences. We were supposed to be the most intelligent species, but in this case insects or rodents act more intelligent and strategic than we do. If our planet dies, we will just go somewhere else.

Imperial and political issues

The age of imperialism is far from over and capitalism without any morale is a global trend. Child and slave labor, other types of exploitation, mining of scarce natural resources using all means necessary, destroying nature for business opportunities and even wars are things we got used to seeing as normal. Because of these actions, some people and other living beings are dying, suffering or barely able to survive while some other people are getting richer and more influential. Bad things used to happen because of religion. Today, in the advanced world of democracy and liberty, the worst things on the planet are happening because of political, economical and corporate interests. In contrast with your television, Avatar makes you sad because of this.

Revolutionary technology

Leaving aside the global problems, we can’t go past drooling over supposedly revolutionary technology of film making on which James Cameron waited for years before he filmed Avatar. The imaginary landscapes, together with amazing flora and fauna is really beautiful, even though we have to admit the whole concept resembles The Lord of the Rings a bit. But one thing is certain, the 3D screening is pretty awesome and almost makes you think the movie is a real theater stage. It’s really real 3D. You have to see it to believe it, which you probably already did. Electronics manufacturers are already making 3D television prototypes so it looks like we are ready for the next generation of broadcasting. Another thing to spend money on, but still pretty cool.

I enjoyed Avatar because of the listed reasons and statements, which are portrayed in the film in different forms and to different extent. Hopefully you were able to notice them too. Besides, the movie is fun and surely a positive influence on the world and our perception of it. Hell, you can’t believe a movie like that has a chance to break the all time box office record, looks like it's not so hopeless after all and people actually do care about our lives and our future, even if they saw Avatar mostly to admire the technology. If they sympathized, they understood, and that's what's important for the already messed up future up ahead. Avatar, we thank you.

Neolab in 2009

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:38:32 GMT

2009 was a hard year for everybody, specially for start-ups such as Neolab. Greed and wrong decisions of global financial institutions and their leaders turned the world upside down. Luckily we were able to survive, to stand tall against all the challenges that await for us next year. Projects have been confirmed, so the biggest issue that we face now is consolidating our inner organization and finishing our software framework that we put so much time and energy into.

A few weeks ago, Neolab celebrated it’s second birthday. The first two years are supposedly decisive for the survival of start-ups, so if this unfriendly situation won’t last too long, looks like we’ll make it. To sum it up: for us, 2008 was the year of checking out the scene, where we were observing if it’s possible to make it on our own. The second year, 2009, was the year of marketing, where we presented ourselves to broader audience.

Our presentation was quite successful. After a few years of building and optimizing our design and marketing concept with IlovarStritar, we finally launched our web page, a thing we are very proud of. Until this post we (they) have already received two awards for Neolab’s broader corporate identity, Brumen award and Taiwan international award. This confirmed we made the right decision by doing something special with our image.

The whole story of our design identity is built around a fictional ecosystem of pixelized mutant animals, representing connectivity of people, organizations and processes using information technology. Different animals are used for different documents and people so the whole concept is scalable, artistic, interesting and fun. If you like, you can check out the whole showcase on the IlovarStritar website.

We are becoming one of the biggest slovenian experts in IT. In april we received an award on the Slovenian IT conference for best paper on the subject of IT 2.0. If that wasn’t enough, we were also named the Emerging web agency of 2009 on Slovenia's biggest web authority, Netko. The barriers between organization, marketing, IT and web are obviously getting thinner and thinner, and Neolab stands strong right in the middle of it.

We may look good on the outside, but we are also healthy on the inside. At this point we employ six people, which actually brought a bit of organizational confusion. By adopting stronger approaches in project management, things are turning for the better. Besides, our big investment into our framework, which now stands stable, scalable and promising, will soon be complete, so we are more than ready for all the projects that are coming upon us.

Hopefully this year will be more welcoming. As we and our services mature, new challenges for our clients, suppliers, partners, supporters and ourselves are on the horizon, so you better be ready for all the things we have in store. To a successful 2010!

An approach to statistics and data analysis

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:32:06 GMT

When information systems evolve, they become greedier for both operational and advanced strategic statistics and data analysis. This need is a part of a natural evolution. The more data you have, the higher potential for extracting information you have. Looking at business environments using IT platforms, that's what analytics are actually all about - getting useful information from usually bad data. It turns out the task of analytical reporting is not so complex as it seems, but you definitely need a set of different skills / people to make it work.

There are tons of different statistical approaches, methods and theories, but it turns out that for average business needs you only need basic mathematics, where the most complex operations are sometimes logarithms. So, if it's so simple, where does the problem lay? Why do information systems often lack analytical support, which can be used for decision making?

In my opinion there are three main steps to consider when trying to make useful statistics and data analysis, and ignoring or underestimating any one of them will make your reports suck.

Data

Data is the king. If you don't have the data, you might as well give it up. If your data is bad or weak, you might consider rebuilding it. But you should know one thing - the better the structure of your data is, the better your analysis will be. Using a flat database such as a text file or an Excel spreadsheet gives you few analytical opportunities. Relational databases, such as Access, MySQL or SQL offer cross-data querying and advanced reporting, but huge and complex calculations can take a lot of time. For those, a multidimensional OLAP database designed strictly for analysis becomes the only option.

Challenges in this step: Technical

Information

The data discussed above defines the scope of potential information you can deliver. In this step, the main goal is simple - you need to know what you want to know. Business needs, process flow, strategic goals or just plain simple amusement are the main factors that need to be addressed. Having someone who is able to recognize these opportunities is crucial, because data is just numbers, but aggregated data - information - is knowledge. It's quite clear you won't be able to get something if you don't know what you want to get.

Challenges in this step: Analytical

Visualization

A picture can tell a thousand words and this goes a long way for data visualization. Even if you can't use charts, you can color information and use measures such as font size to represent another dimension of information or trends. Besides, always keep in mind that less is more, so you should put irrelevant information in the background and punchlines in the spotlight. Check out different chart types, they're useful for different representations and experimenting with them can display things that don't seem there at first sight. Observe patterns. Try to imagine a playground, where information can satisfy your curiosity and while doing it, it also brings useful and valuable results.

Challenges in this step: Creative

If you have the will, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff with statistics and data analysis, but you should know they sometimes take a lot of time. I'm proud my chronolog already has two nice looking children of these activities. The first one is a simple recommendation engine used for content ranking and the other one a set of reports which offer insight into activity and interactions of the chronolog. What can I say, I like to play around, and it may as well be any information system I can get my hands on. Give me the data and I'll give you information.

Made in Slovenia

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:57:42 GMT

Friends tell me I am usually too naive and romantic, but sometimes I just can't help myself being an optimist. Even though Slovenia is one of the most taxed nations in the world, I still envision Slovenia as an emerging country with one of the highest potentials around. Breakthroughs are possible, f.i. Ireland became one of the most successful countries in the EU (second highest GDP in EU!) even though their economic model was hit really hard by the recession. I'm sure Slovenia will do even better when her time comes, so be ready.

Perhaps the greatest competitive advantage of Slovenia is insight, intuition and understanding others. It started with Yugoslavia, probably the only country in the world fully embracing three major religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim). Sadly, that story ended in bloodshed, but some positive heritage remains. With great geographic location, bordering Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy, all the major cultures of Europe are influencing Slovenians. By being a post socialistic country with not too exploited capitalism adoption, Slovenia was the perfect playground for new era negotiations between Bush and Putin. Neutral ground between north and south, east and west, understanding motives and interests of many players, small enough not to be a threat.

Cultural diversity and high information flow made some Slovenians outstanding, and the Adriatic see being the window to Europe probably helped too. Quite a few companies were able to produce global success stories, specializing in high-tech products and services, such as IT, technology, aeronautics and alternative energies (more on cool Slovenian brands some other post). Not bad for a country the size of a large city, taxed to the maximum.

Taxes. They work really contra productive, but they're caused by our greatest flaw - our size. 2 million citizens. Everybody knows everybody and projects become political way too soon. Another thing that happens is that the government becomes the only buyer big enough to afford things. Our startup Neolab is developing innovative IT solutions and trying to make it abroad, with some success. Because I understand that building the Slovenia brand plays a really important part in achieving this, I'm blogging about it and doing everything in my power to promote Slovenia (and Neolab, I admit...). Hopefully others will follow and "Made in Slovenia" will have higher value soon. I think it deserves it and most of us probably need it.

Exporting high value-added specialized products and services is what we do best and what we will hopefully be able to continue on a larger scale. This is the strategy Slovenia has to keep and support. Our scientists are amongst the best in the world and can make innovative, creative, useful and modern goods of the highest quality for a fair price. Besides, people here are cool, most of them are faithful, fair, loyal and unconflicting. Come see for yourself, nice people, tasty wine, good beer and beautiful nature will do you well.

The world of the globalized tomorrow will be moderated by the neutral and objective. This is Slovenia's hidden expertise that still has to be recognized, even though we've already been doing it for ages. And because we are too naive, we won't even take advantage of it. We will rather work hard and wait for the indirect, long term benefits. It may sound irrational, but I fully support that approach.

My inspiration for this post is an online civil initiative about development and future of our country that's actual right now by taking full advantage of Web 2.0 (Facebook, Twitter, Noovo, LinkedIn). Thumbs up for that, but we will probably need more than just good ideas. This time my contribution goes for motivation and realization that we have the potential to make it big if we work together and cooperate. Made in Slovenia.

How Facebook & Co. changed the world

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:53:30 GMT

I'm a bit shocked actually, because my first (brand oriented) Web 2.0 post was about Twitter and not about Facebook. It looks like times are changing and Facebook is not so dominant as it was a year ago. Nevertheless, for now it's still the greatest and in many ways it showed us the way that MySpace wasn't able to show. Even though there is a bit of controversy behind Facebook's beginnings, we have to admit it set new standards in many areas, both conceptually (real names instead of aliases, mini-feed, status updates, people tagging) and technically (open API for applications, great Ajax, useful upload). And while doing it, it changed the world we live in.

Today, there are supposedly more than 300 million people registered on Facebook. That's about the size of a large nation, such as USA. Marketers and politicians didn't take long to notice social networking sites can be great (and cheap) resources for building campaigns, sales and brand awareness. It's not so much about business, the politics part is scary. I'm really interested what will happen when a majority of a nation will make their own elections, decisions or political programs on Facebook. Will the world stand still? Is Twitter's role in the Iranian elections just the beginning of a new era of virtual governments? Who will control all of that?

Well, we better not get carried away, what I wanted to discuss was the impact of Web 2.0 on us, the ordinary people and our ordinary lives. In three years after Facebook came around (it went open for public in september 2006), the world is upside down. B.F. (before Facebook) we were thinking about how did we ever live without mobile phones. Now we think about how did we ever live without Facebook (or any other clones). Today, I probably know more people that are not on Facebook anymore than people that are still not on Facebook. A weird situation, but sadly, that's how it is. If it didn't happen on Facebook, it probably didn't happen in the real world.

This chain of events is actually quite understandable. You don't need to talk to somebody specific anymore. Instead, you tell it to the whole world and everybody takes just the information they are interested in. It's like having your own small web page, extended with galleries (Facebook already has one of the largest photo databases in the world), microblog (status update), dating portal and a fast flow of data from numerous sources. Great for stalkers, and done 100 times better than MySpace. New people and constant diversity of information keeps you jacked in. Time ticks differently in cyberworld, 10 minutes ago is so yesterday.

I'm happy one habit finally got old. I noticed that when people actually met in the real world, they often discussed Facebook. Luckily, it looks like we slowly went through everything and we will have to find something else to discuss about (perhaps Twitter or Google Wave?). I don't know if this is a trend and we will socialize on virtual socializing in the real world too. But it looks like these are the first steps of migrating to the virtual world. Hell, this post is too, so I should better shut up and go to sleep.

Price elasticity of demand - operating systems and Snow Leopard

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:25:49 GMT

A lot of my colleagues from the Faculty of Economics think their study was mostly a waste of time. Too much focus on old, out of date concepts and approaches, too little focus on real life. I can't argue with that, it is a bit old school and theoretical, so it's up to the student to make the most out of the abstract things he learned. But you can't do that before you see the real world. And you also have to put a bit of thinking into the whole picture. Then you are able to see that basic concepts, such as supply and demand are everywhere (not only in economics and business) and can fully explain why the sweets of the most scarce flavor in the box taste the best.

Another interesting concept in economics is price elasticity. To put it in simple words, it explains how people react to different prices of the same commodity. Elementary goods, such as food, are not elastic; if a loaf of bread costs 50 cents or 2 €, the bakers will sell about the same amount, because people need it for living and they will buy it anyway. On the other hand, luxury goods are very elastic. If a basic car would costs 5.000 € or 20.000 €, the people would react strongly to it, and only a few people would buy cars because they would be too expensive.

There's a whole theory behind it on how to find the optimal price for goods. Record labels don't want to see it and the whole record industry is in a crisis, while music piracy is in bloom. In my opinion, I would buy a lot of records, if they would cost 5 € each. In real world, I won't buy many because they cost 20 € each. So, the big question at hand is: would the global record industry sell more than 4 times the number of records they do if the price was 4 times cheaper? I think they would - and if I am right, this would mean that music records are price elastic.

These days we are witnessing a very good example on price elasticity of software and it looks like Apple has done it again. They're offering their newest operating system Snow Leopard for 29 € to users of the previous version (Leopard). Rumors have it you can put it also on the prior version (Tiger), which I hope is true, because I already bought it (it is possible according to AppleInsider). So, at the same time Windows users are struggling not to let go of Windows XP and are sticking to the past, Apple is giving away their new operating system for a price of a good meal and everybody wants it. Pretty smart for market penetration and building customer loyalty.

I wouldn't pay 150 € to go for a new version of an operating system, which is about the regular price of Windows Vista or Mac OS, specially if the current one works. But 30 € completely changes the story. The result is interesting; it caused a demand overflow and here in Slovenia you had to make a reservation and wait for a week to get it. When I went to the store, everybody was buying Snow Leopards. I understand the cult of Mac, but this was amazing and a good example of market supremacy.

Looks like the strategists at Apple know their economics as well as they now their marketing.

At least we have the Discovery channel

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:14:05 GMT

I think television is bad. Besides making you a brainless zombie, watching without thinking, it channels all the bad things on this world into the little box in the living room. Of course, there are also positive broadcasts, but they are still heavily overwhelmed by the negative. The news brings mostly bad news, making mass paranoia and hysteria. Reality shows are making the youth confused and are building a wannabe society. Sure, there are a few interesting series going on, a few good movies, but otherwise, it sucks. Thank god for the Discovery channel.

The Discovery channel is one of the most interesting channels we get. The way I see it, the whole watchability stands on two different concepts of shows, clothed into numerous different versions. The real-work reality shows (not to be confused with "reality" reality shows, such as Big brother) and the pop-science shows. We have the Discovery channel (probably) East Europe, so this post may not be up-to-date with the US or European versions, but here are the shows that are cool.

The real-work reality shows are actually reality show in the most literal meaning of the word. They cover real people, doing real jobs, without (m)any scripts or scenarios. Those that are worth mentioning are American Chopper (a dad an two sons building motorbikes and having a spicy relationship and vocabulary), The Deadliest Catch (Alaska fisherman hunting crabs in hellish environment), Ultimate Survival (someone named Bear going through different uninhabited regions and eating bugs) and Dirty Jobs (a guy trying out how hard and dirty some jobs are).

The pop-science shows bring an interesting overview on how things are made, how they work and what they are. The Mythbusters are the best in this category (two geeky guys making weird experiments), their English almost copy Brainiac, Time Warp (recordings of things using a high-speed camera), a few different shows on how things are constructed (How It's Made, How Things Work, etc.), and a ton of documentary shows on construction, cars and technology (Mega Builders, Built From Disaster, etc.).

In some cases there's a thin line between the categories, and I think the best ones are actually those that are able to combine the concepts of both. These shows are at the same time working well on our curiosity, but still keep a contact with our social senses and humanity.

There's an honorable mention, a show that we don't get anymore, which is a bit sad, because it was really cool. Scrapheap challenge, or in it's worse US edition, The junkyard wars. It's about two teams, who have one day to build something using just materials from a junkyard.

There you have it. A solid proof that Discovery channel is one of the best TV channels around. It's fun and it educates at the same time. So kids, don't watch MTV, it just makes you feel bad.

IT + Web 2.0 = IT 2.0

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:43:32 GMT

Web 2.0 is one of the hottest things around. Everybody is talking about it, and it is revolutionizing the way we work, communicate and enjoy our free time. It is obvious even now that such services will be the main tools of marketing and political movements of the future. Now we have to wait and see how far it goes and where it ends.

It did not take long for executives and technology officers to see that Web 2.0 could also have interesting applications on business oriented environment. Therefore, Enterprise 2.0 was "invented". It represents using new discovered approaches such as tagging, wikis and blogs for corporate goals. It works and I think companies shoud embrace it, because it's modern and effective.

We have taken it to another level, partially because we have become quite obsessed with developing not partial, but wholistict software systems. Web 2.0 is not just a collection of tools for better communication, it is a new concept of interaction, data visualization and user participation which was originaly discovered for one purpose - to amuse users and to earn more money from advertising. Usefulness came with it, and in this case the market economy worked.

Neolab is one of the first companies in the world that is offering business oriented software, fully integrated with Web 2.0 services, such as internal social networking, mini-feed reports, content tagging, cloud visualizations and more. As it is an integrated concept, we have dubbed it IT 2.0. We think that this approach helps both the users and the management with easier use, stronger belonging to the company and richer information than classic information systems.

Hopefully there will be more professional articles available on that topic in the future. It's hard to find the correct equilibrium between academic research and real life development. At this stage It has more and more scientific background each day, and the implementations prove it works. IT 2.0 is born.

Michael Jackson's death - this year's biggest business

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:43:18 GMT

We have finally seen it. Michael Jackson's death ceremony. I have seen parts of it, a bit out of curiosity, but I also enjoy his early music (Bad was actually one of the first songs that gave me the shivers) and I wanted to see other artists perform his covers (meh). I am not here to judge the ceremony, but I should mention that I was sickened by all the hypocritical people that were talking on his final event. Yesterday he was a freak, today he is a saint. That was to be expected, as we have seen it in similar situations before.

I have always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist and the idea of him staging his own death doesn't seem that far fetched for me. Today, in a world that we get live coverage of famous people going to the toilet, we didn't get even one clear picture, movie or anything that could prove the body was really his.

Michael Jackson was heavily in debt, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. It turns out that his death could be worth in that range. Let's check a few lucrative after his death businesses:

The O2 concerts: Michael was supposed to have some 50 concerts in the O2 arena to cover some of the debt he has produced over the years. They sold a lot of tickets, and now, when it's clear that the concerts are not going to happen, not everybody is returning the tickets. They are the ultimate fan relic, to keep or to sell on eBay.
Music and merchandise: After his death Michael became the first artist to sell more than 1 million downloads in one week. Combine that with all other stuff people are buying and you can calculate quite an interesting figure.
The ceremony: Hundreds of millions of people watching, infinite television stations broadcasting. That should top even the previous two.

I would like to point out again that Michael Jackson was one of the greatest pop artists of our time and I hope I didn't insult any of his fans or family with my critical thinking. If he is still alive, all I can say is good work - you got us all. But in both cases I am interested to know who benefited from this outcome and what figure are we talking about, as I am not able to make an estimate. Hopefully it will be enough to pay for all of his debts and let (him and) his family live a normal life.

UPDATE (26.10.2010): At the time of this post the movie This Is It was nowhere to be seen, supposedly grossing 260 million.

I want it all - the curious case of Microsoft

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:18:12 GMT

There's Microsoft, probably the biggest software company in the world. And there are others. In the past years Microsoft has been trying to expand it's business to pretty much all the markets, faintly connected with it's core business - developing software. Marketing experts could say this is not a good strategy, because it is better for companies to retain their focus and stay specialized in things they do best. But if Samsung can build bridges in South Korea and at the same time make smart phones, why shouldn't Microsoft make iPods?

There are a few interesting new markets Microsoft entered into. But are they profitable enough to let the Windows family suffer because of this expansion? Here are the most significant:

Gaming consoles market: the Xbox 360 is supposed to be one of the best gaming consoles according to independent tests, because of it's high performance and good online support. They even offer some exclusive Grand theft auto content, which was probably the most anticipated game of this year.
Portable media devices: we are supposed to see the new Zune HD in autumn, designed to kill the iPod dominance of portable mp3 and video devices. But is it cool enough to be able to take this burden upon itself?
Search: a few years ago Microsoft introduced Live search, which was the successor of MSN search. A few months ago Bing was launched, and it is actually successfully taking search engine usage and share from Google and Yahoo, at least for now. But is it just curiosity, or is it actually good enough to replace The mighty one?

In the mean time, Windows Vista was quite a debacle and left most of the users longing and keeping Windows XP. We will see how Windows 7 does, but they surely lost a good position against Mac and Linux in the past years. I still think that Microsoft's business suite is the best there is (Office, asp.net, SQL server), but negative attitude can easily travel from operating systems towards enterprise environment and fun gadgets. People want the iPod and the iPhone because it is easy and fun to use, will they think the same about Zune after using Windows Vista?

It is always fun and interesting to check what the stock market says. The following diagram compares Microsoft (MSFT) to it's competitors from different markets mentioned above, Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Nintendo (NTDOY), from the beginning of 2005 until now.

It doesn't look that good, does it (even though the dates and players in the diagram were carefully chosen to support the hypothesis)?