YEAH. Our developers in Cologne are awesome.
Be sure to nox yourself by creating your own E-Card here. Four different styles available: Pimp, Hippie, Girly and Metal.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of you. Hope to see you in best shape in 2008.
Peace out, yo.
We´ve seen a bunch of web services offering live streaming appearing in 2007. Amongst them Justin.tv, Ustream, Kyte and Stickam to name just a few.
Techcrunch just announced a $15 million financing round for Kyte that included Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and DFJ and brings them to a total of $17,25 million in cash. Sounds impressive.
Looks like 2008 will be the live year in webbernet.
This was announced throughout the day on "Spiegel Online" (that I believe is the most read online news site in Germany): Live streaming of the Cologne show starring Jan Delay, a famous german funk singer.
I actually got the chance to check it out and I must say that the quality was great. Some hick-ups here and there but all in all pretty good sound and image/streaming quality. No full-screen option though. User interaction through a live chat. Seemed pretty busy in there, I am wondering how many people watched the show. Will update in case I get the figures.
The company behind this live stream is called Livedome GmbH who provide on-site production, billing platform and streaming technology. The company responsible for marketing is Wunder Media GmbH. They´re both located in Munich.
Here´s a screenshot of the stream:
Compared to a lot (or more accurately - most) of german comedians and late night hosts, Stephen Colbert is a really funny guy. Over at Comedy Central they have a good bunch of video clips on demand. For free. No IP-mapping. One of the newest is embedded below. Favourite quote from that episode ("Hail to the cheese - Home State"):
"... on the "Plus" side, my body will stop to produce bright orange waste." - Stephen Colbert
Just had a really interesting chat with Max Niederhofer, Tech Analyst for Atlas Ventures in Munich. Max was the co-founder of myblog.de and seed investor for last.fm (acquired by CBS in 2007).
Max has pointed me to two interesting web services. Here is a quick round-up on two services that up until now I haven´t heard of.
First is Deezer (formely known as Blogmusik.com), a free music-on-demand service with a couple of hundreds of thousand songs available for free streaming. They´re business model is ad-based. The cool thing about Deezer is that you can create a embeddable widget for your site or blog with a playlist of songs you´ve chosen. Just typed in "Coldplay" and got over 50 Coldplay songs to stream for free. Cool thing that is. Deezer is based in France.
Second is Jaman. Jaman "is a destination for people to discover, enjoy and review movies from around the world. Jaman's Internet community is pioneering the social aspects of independent and international media."
Great to see a company that goes to independent film festivals like "Sundance" and offers an online distribution for 80% of the movies not picked up by the big distribution companies that solely aim to a mass audience in movie theatres.
What I don´t like: country restrictions. I mean c´mon people: The world has gone flat and internet is global. Do I have to wait for that specific movie to be released on DVD in Germany to see it?
About a year ago, I posted about not loving christmas songs. Still hate `em. What I do love: Stars from Montreal, Canada.
Missed the CitySlang/Cooperative Music showcase during Popkomm in Berlin, but luckily we got the chance to tape the show at Postbahnhof:
Here´s the show:
and the interview:
And here is the song I do prefer most right now
Spent the week-end in Prague with friends. Last time I visited was in 2004 and I already had a good impression of the city. This time was far better. Prague has become one of my favorite cities next to Barcelona and New York City. Such a lovely city with astonishing historical architecture and a good vibe. Managed to find two really really great restaurants thanks to local tips ("Cervena Tabulka" and "La Cartouche").
I´ve been a dedicated Firefox user for years now and haven´t had problems ever. Half a year ago, when I got my new MacBook Pro from work, I installed the Firefox 2.0 and had been using it until this week and I´m fed up. It kept crashing down several times a day. I am a heavy browser user and often have up to 6 to 10 tabs open. Seeing them crashing down makes my mood go down immediately. I googled the problem and read some blog posts about it. One post (I forgot where I found it) also mentioned that the Firefox 2.0 eats a huge amount of memory. I read a comment in the same post suggesting to use the Flock browser instead and I haven´t looked back since (well - that being just a couple of days) with no single crash.
Also - in it´s basic version, it has a great RSS reader installed that is much better than the one Firefox is offering it its plug-ins. And it has the "People side bar" where you can keep track of your Facebook profile and the one of your friends. Suggestion: add MySpace and I am a happy man.
Go Flock Go
Update: 14 minutes after posting it crashed using Google Maps. Dammit.
It´s been a while again - I know. Lots of work, lack of sleep but surrounded by a great bunch of people dedicated to make this company successful.
After successfully having launched our three channels Sly-Fi, 99stories and Str33t in the past months we went live with www.hobnox.com on Novemver 1st. You may ask what Hobnox is all about, let´s say this the "official" way:
Hobnox is an online entertainment and rich-media publishing platform, where artists, producers, professionals and users can meet and work together on creative projects. We aim to create a springboard for artists, to boost their creative potential, support their works and connect them with the right people.
We´re kicking off with the Hobnox Evolution, a special contest for talented newcomers in the areas of film, music and urban culture. We offer artists professional support during all stages of their creative process.
Participants can upload their projects in the categories “Music”, “Film” and “Urban Culture” to win an “Artist Development Package” worth €25.000 in each category. Selected entries will be featured on the “News from the Evolution” show, which will be aired on our channels. The show will offer you the latest updates on the artists and their projects. Finally, the Hobnox Evolution Festival will present the nominees on the big stage in Berlin in February 2008 and the winner of each category will get to spend the €25.000 on a project of their choice with our help.
Check out some screen shots of the site and make sure to head over to the site to rate the submissions. Oh and tell all of your friends who might be interested in participating to join:
