Zum Inhalt springen

Das Netz | the net

Damn you, i-ku[be]!

This is an advertorial. Or, well, in fact… it’s not. A good friend of mine offered to lend me his drilling machine – and also help me drill -, if I write about one of his current projects: The i-ku[be].

Remember these dices, where you had to turn different sides in order to match the colors? I actually hated these things, when I was a kid – mainly, because other kids were better in solving the riddle, and I just didn’t have the patience for it. Also, I didn’t own one of these cubes myself, so the only time I had for practicing was at frinds‘ places in front of their eyes – so the situation was quite unfair, since the other kids had far more time to practice.

Now, Richard Nagy, has taken my misery to the next level, by making the whole thing digital and social: The „i-ku[be]“ ca be solved via a website or a facebook-app. That makes you use the office time properly for training your brain cells on the PC instead of wasting time with stupid bookkeeping. And, in addition, there is the social aspect: Every step you take on the cube is actually memorized by the fash-based site, so your friends have to continue where you stopped. In total, the aim of the site seems to be that several friends solve this greatest riddle of mankind together.

I actually totally fucked it up. I turned it a few times, quite likely into the wrong direction, and then left the site again. So, Richard and his friends might actually be angry at me now for disturbing their mindflow. But, you know what? I actually don’t care. Because, finally, I can practice solving the cube without two eyes watching me all the time. Then, one glorious day, I will solve the riddle and celebrate my success by hosting the greatest party of all time – without inviting those stupid kids from elementary school.

Some Austrian startup ideas

During the past weekend, an event called „STARTup Live“ in Vienna (Austria/Europe) showed the potential of European startups: Several entrepreneurs presented their ideas, formed teams, worked on the concept for a weekend and finally pitched the results to a jury of experts – the best results were awarded with prizes, such as space in an incubator or marketing budget.

There was a broad variety of projects and ideas coming up; and some of them are adaptable for other markets as well. Here is a list of the hottest startups in Austria:

Finderly: Finderly helps people to purchase the right electronic product by asking friends online. During the weekend, the team developed a Facebook game, in which users can challenge their friends considering knowledge on IT-topics.

City Pulse: City Pulse is a mobile app which helps you find the coolest places in your town. It is not another social network, and therefore does not require registration – it simply connects existing networks. Revenue is generated by selling advertising space to providers of popular locations.

dreamA.tv: DreamA.tv is part of a creative community located in the Austrian countryside, close to the Hungarian border. The aim is to become a „soundcloud for video“, and provide a plattform for alternative documentary movies.

Teenage Rockstar: „American Idol meets MySpace“ is probably the  most appropriate description of this project. Here, a platform is provided to young musicians who are not more than 19 years old. They receive mentoring by professional musicians and may even win record deals. The website is live for two years now; with 15.000 registered users in the German-speaking area, 3000 videos were uploaded. A turnover of 350.000 Euro was generated with premium accounts, ads, merchandising and licensing.

Roofnode: The aim of Roofnode is to bring highspeed internet to the countryside, with a prospected market size of 300 million people. This is solved by not having one single antenna in the middle of a village, but several antennas on rooftops across the village. The Austrian patent was obtained, the international patent is pending.
World taxi: „Don’t get lost in translation when ordering a taxi abroad“, is the key message of this project: The World taxi mobile app helps to order taxis worldwide. The app locates the user, asks him for his destination and forwards the information to a taxi nearby.
Newsletter platform: As the name of the project suggests, this is a platform on which users can subscribe to newsletters. Monetization will happen among other strategies by selling the top 3 places in the list. According to the founders, this will already cover the costs; revenue will be generated through premium accounts.
Circus offers: Marketing-officers are nowadays confronted with more than 200 promotion channels – e.g. new media in addition to TV, radio and print. Every single one has it’s own analysis and it’s own reports – so people in charge find themselves easily in „Excel Hell“. Therefore, the founders decided to build a tool for promotion management, called „circus offers“. It is supposed to save time and money by helping to choose the right promotion channel. Currently, Mc Donald’s is the only existing customer.
Cakadoo: Cakadoo aims for two target groups: Managers who work ten hours per day and don’t have time to do the dishes; and students who are willing to work a bit to gain some extra money. With Cakadoo, the manager posts the task, which is immediately forwarded to a student; the owners of the website receive 15 percent of the salary generated. Potential is also seen by cooperating with the HR-departments of big corporations.
Defect Detection: In order to detect defects on construction sites, the engineer has a camera, a voice recorder and a construction plan. Now, he can see all of this in just one app on his tablet PC; if a defect is detected, it is marked on the virtual construction plan, and the people responsible get informed. The founders are now working on a prototype product.

GetInspired: A social network for creative people, which works via microinspirations: Questions are asked in short sentences, other people can upload their ideas. For trading the ideas, the founders have created their own currency, „bulbs“, which can be converted into real money.
Lingibli: A tool to help people to learn languages. After selecting their own language and the language they want to learn, users print out qr-codes. With a mobile app, they can scan the codes and then learn the correct pronunciation of several words and sentences in the foreign language. The founders want to go live on July 13th.
TarifAgent.com: In Austria, there are 15 different network operators; 134.012 combinations of tariffs are possible. TarifAgent.com helps Austrians to save 22,4 Euros per month by choosing the correct tarrif. This is done with an app that tracks all data traffic, SMS sent and calls made. After 30 days, the app sends data to the company and automatically calculates the best tariff.
Prizes were finally given to City pulse,  RoofNode, teenage rockstar and finderly; the voting was carried out by jury decisions and SMS-votings. What do you think? Which idea inspires you most?

Sunday is Facebook-day

Yesterday, I spent my evening at home, heavily procrastinating. One of the coolest websites to support you in doing nothing is alexa.com – a website dedicated to ranking other sites in terms of traffic, pageviews etc. Since I realized that the average web user surfs to three standard websites after checking his email – to name them: Google, Facebook and stefanmey.com -, I decided to compare two of them: Google and Facebook.

In terms of reach, Google is still ahead of Facebook:

(Click image to enlarge)

That’s not really surprising, since Google is the preferred search engine for most people. But more interesting, here are the statistics for pageviews (statistics for pageviews per user are similar) and „time spent on the site“:

Three interesting facts here:

#1: Facebook obviously outruns Google when it comes to these two aspects.

# 2: There’s a weird negative correlation. The more clicks and time on Facebook, the less on Google. Is multitasking a myth?

# 3: Facebook has most of its pageviews on sundays. There’s a clear trend here.

Weird additional information: According to internal data of the website mjam.net – a page for ordering food online -, most revenue is also made on sundays. As if you didn’t know: Spending our lonely sundays munching a pizza, stalking people on Facebook and trying to get control of that saturday-evening-related headache is not just an activity limited to Viennese bobos – as statistics show, it’s actually a global phenomenon. Or am I wrong here?

Feel free to leave your comments on this topic: Are you a sunday-evening-Facebook-stalker? Or do you prefer to google yourself on lonely evenings?

The Center of the World

When traveling to Silicon Valley, I also wanted to visit the world-famous headquarteers of several US-based corporations. Unfortunately, most of them rejected me, so I had to do it the Guerilla-way: Together with Martin Sprengseis, an Austrian entrepreneur, I sneaked onto Google Campus. Fortunately, I still had my visitors badge from visiting the „Plug and Play Tech Center“ in Sunnyvale, where several international Start-ups are trying to get into contact with VCs – so I had at least some kind of alibi for being there.

Walking into the Google Campus is quite easy. It’s all open, there are no gates – unless you actually want to enter the office buildings, which means you have to make your way past the reception desk. However, there is a lot of weird stuff in their front garden. The first thing we saw there were these coloured bikes, which didn’t have any locks – they are available for the employees, so that they can make their way across the Campus.

If you make your way through the area, you pass by a volleyball-field as well as cute tables with colored umbrellas, where the employees drink their coffes during their short brakes. Sounds nice? Well, yes… but be aware of that giant T-Rex hiding under a tree:

Oh, false alarm… it’s obviously dead. Interesting for nerds: There are not only „Points of Interest“ all over the place, but also a weird sculpture of the Android-mascot:

Fun-fact: This sculpture is equipped with an QR-Code and a NFC-Chip. So, I guess that you can do something really cool with it – but I unfortunately didn’t take the time to find out.

Another quite unknown fact: If you are working for one of the world’s biggest tech companies, you obviously need to be a high-performer. Since going to a hairdresser normally takes too much time, the Google-management has found a solution: An „On-Site-hairdresser“!

I guess you just walk into the van in your lunch break, while eating a sandwich, they cut your hair, and you get back to work again… sounds simple and effective.

But ironically, the coolest thing I saw in Mountain View was the screen of my iPhone:

That’s right. Since several Google-employees work in Mountain View, they covered the whole area with WiFi. After joining the Wifi-network, the user is redirected to a page on which he can log-in by using his Gmail-address – now that’s what I call Customer Relationship Management! Since I was waiting at the train station for ages to catch the train back to San Francisco, I was glad that I actually had a Gmail-account and could therefore kill some time on the web. In case visitors to Mountain View don’t have a Gmail-account yet, this is the right time for them to get one.

Lessons learned during the visit: First of all, other companies should also try to do some innovative CRM with their WiFi; Google sets a cool example here. Additionally, Google shows that QR is still not dead and that NFC will be the next big thing. And finally: Everybody should have a dead T-Rex in his front garden. Just because it’s cool.

An article on Austrian enrepreneurs in Silicon Valley will be in WirtschaftsBlatt, Austria’s leading business paper, on Friday.

Jetzt ganz neu: Antiaktive Medien

Haben Sie schon von de so genannten Antiaktiven Medien gehört? Das sind quasi Medien 3.0;  Kommunikationskanäle, die aktuelle Probleme rund um das Web im Allgemeinen und Social Media im Besonderen aufgreifen, um sie zu eliminieren.

Beispielsweise wäre da das Problem der Reizüberflutung. Wer kennt das nicht? Es twittert Hunde und Katzen, und die Würmer haben längst die Macht über Facebook übernommen – Antiaktive Medien machen Schluss damit, indem Nachrichten vorselektiert werden. Auch die Gefahr potenzieller Internetsucht auf Grund der ständigen Jagd nach neuen Informationen wird eingedämmt; denn irgendwann machen die Antiaktiven Medien einfach von selbst Schluss und entlassen den Konsumenten in die Freiheit.

Des Weiteren kommen Anitiaktive Medien dem aktuellen Wunsch nach Media as a Service (MaaS) entgegen. Entgegen herkömmlichen Smartphones und Tablet PCs muss zwecks mobiler Mediennutzung vom Konsumenten kein teures Endgerät mehr angeschafft werden. Stattdessen wird diese Infrastruktur an den Medienproduzenten outgesourced; der User zahlt lediglich für jene Inhalte, die er auch tatsächlich konsumiert – neben der teuren Anschaffung entfallen zudem Wartungsaufwand und -kosten, ebenso wie das Verlustrisiko.

Dem nicht genug, gehen Antiaktive Medien auf aktuelle Forderungen der Zivilgesellschaft ein. Nachdem im aktuellen Cloud Computing-Report der NGO Greenpeace etliche Anbieter wegen der Verwendung giftiger Chemikalien, Intransparenz und unfairer Produktionsbedingungen in Fernost angegriffen wurden, stellen sich Antiaktive Medien diesem Trend entgegen: Die Medien werden im Inland produziert; so entstehen hierzulande Arbeitsplätze in transparenten Institutionen, und der CO2-Ausstoß wird durch kurze Transportwege minimiert. Die Hardware ist zu hundert Prozent recyclebar.

Klingt zu schön, um wahr zu sein? Ist es aber schon. Erste Versuche in diesem Bereich sind bereits gestartet, die entsprechenden Start-Ups hoffen auf ein baldiges Erreichen des Break-Even-Punkts. Als Schlagwort für diese Technologie kann wohl nur ein einziges Adjektiv gelten: Zeitgemäß. Woraus sich auch ein passender Produktname ableitet: Wir nennen es Zeitung.

Hilfe, Mark Zuckerberg frisst meine Daten auf!

Mütter, sperrt Euren Nachwuchs ein, denn Kinderschreck Mark Zuckerberg geht um. In hinterlistiger Manier will der Daten-Vampir das haben, was Euch heilig ist: Statusmeldungen Eurer Kinder, geteilte Links Eurer Ehepartner, Nacktfotos Eurer Katze.

Sicher können Sie wie ein kleines Kind die Augen verschließen und sich selbst mantraartig vorbeten: „Wenn ich Mark nicht sehen kann, sieht er mich auch nicht.“ Aber dann geht es Ihnen so wie jener Mitarbeiterin, deren Arbeitgeber ohne ihr Wissen ein Promovideo mit ihr in der Hauptrolle verwendet. Oder dem CEO, über dessen Unternehmen im Web hergezogen wird – und er selbst kriegt das gar nicht mit. „In Social Media nicht vertreten zu sein ist so, als würde man nicht Zeitung lesen: Gesprochen wird über einen so oder so; die Frage ist, ob man es aktiv steuert“, hat mal jemand auf einer der zahlreichen Social Media-Konferenzen gesagt, die man in unserem Beruf dann und wann besucht. Die Welt ist also schlimmer geworden: Unsere Daten kriegt Mark so oder so, ob wir es wollen oder nicht.

Doch dem nicht genug, denn die Datenkraken, -vampire und-spinnen (in kaum einem Kontext bieten sich so schöne Metaphern an wie hier) lauern an jeder Ecke: Kameras in Gebäuden, an Bahnhöfen und U-Bahn-Stationen dokumentieren fast jeden unserer Alltags-Schritte. Und auch in unserer Hosentasche lauert das Böse: Über die SIM-Karte in unserem Handy kann der Netzbetreiber unseren Standort jederzeit ermitteln. Im Rahmen so genannter „Kundenbindungsprogramme“ tragen jene, die sich vor Mark fürchten, etliche Vorteilskarten diverser Supermärkte, Transportunternehen, Asia-Restaurants und Friseursalons mit sich herum. Und mein Kreditunternehmen weiß immer, was ich gerade im Web eingekauft habe. Oh Schreck!

Wir sind uns also einig, dass das Böse immer und überall ist, und dass es unsere Daten haben möchte. Dass diese längst schon an diversen Ecken und Enden der Welt liegen und wir dagegen nichts mehr tun können. Wirklich nicht? Keine Sorge, es gibt noch Hoffnung: Wir können in ein fernes Land auswandern, uns dort in einer Höhle verkriechen und autark leben. So lässt sich verhindern, dass wir Produkte kaufen müssen. Oder eine Kreditkarte verwenden. Oder ein Handy. Oder gar das F-Wort. In Kauf müssten wir halt dafür nehmen, dass es demnächst zum Abendessen Termiteneintopf statt Tiefkühlpizza gibt. Und dass wir es nicht mehr „liken“ können, wenn der beste Freund auf Facebook oder Twitter gerade das Verspeisen eines riesigen Schnitzels verkündet.

Sollten wir dieses Opfer nicht bringen wollen, steht uns durch die Preisgabe unserer Daten das schlimmste Szenario von allen bevor: Zielgruppenorientierte Werbung. Wer dann ein Fan von David Hasselhoff ist, kriegt eine Einladung zu seiner Autogrammstunde. Und meine schwangere Bekannte wird dann wohl nicht mehr die zeitlich sehr unglücklich gewählte Werbung für Brustvergrößerung erhalten. Die Frage ist: Wollen wir das? Werbung kriegen, die uns de facto nützt?

(Aus Gründen der Effizienzmaximierung erschien dieser Beitrag auch in Stefan Meys wöchentlich erscheinender Kolumne im „WirtschaftsBlatt Investor“)