14th of February 2007 by admin
Anothe great event….mashup* – 22nd February 2007 – London
“What’s next, Web3.0? – The coming semantic web”
Speakers include Hugh McLeod and Paul Walsh
Mashup is now organized by Sam and Mike from Vecosys
Plenty of Irish folks in London for FOWA …. add this to your itinerary….
13th of February 2007 by admin
Alex has the details….
Microsoft, BT and Top Coder have launched a competition encouraging developers to build ‘managed network mashups’ using BT’s Connected Services Sandbox (an implementation of Microsoft’s Connected Services Framework – CSF). From Top Coder’s announcement:
“Usage scenarios can include a combination of communications services, such as e-mail, instant messaging and document collaboration, with Web services, such as Windows Live, Microsoft MapPoint®, Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo!”
12th of February 2007 by admin
Top 7 indicators of consumer Internet success – Startup Review Blog
1. Define a previously unrecognized niche
2. Strong ability to leverage natural search as the primary means of user acquisition
3. Service that empowers people to make a living
4. Free (or near free) alternative for a previously high cost service
5. True viral distribution potential
6. Ability to jumpstart user acquisition through distribution partnerships
7. Story that lends itself to mainstream PR
original piece was on venturebeat – see here
8th of February 2007 by admin
BarCamp is arriving in little ole Dublin village on Saturday 21st April 2007.
If you're not familiar with BarCamp networking events, this is a great opportunity to hang out and chat with cool, smart and interesting people (and me) 
Take a look at the official BarCamp Dublin blog and wiki for more detail. Get your name down now.
1st of February 2007 by admin
Mike and Jason are running a new conference – with a bit of a twist.
Free for companies to present…. selection process by commitee.
It was announced from Demo – which is probably the premier event for startup/product launches. The Guidewire group – who run Demo – also run this European event – InnovateEurope
For more details see The TechCrunch20 Conference
Hopefully we will see some more European events – like techcrunch20….. we can’t have the folks in valley having all the fun.
30th of January 2007 by admin
Is anyone aware of a BarCamp Dublin being organised? If not, I intend to do one in the near future.
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Update: 31/1/07
Just found out that Elly and Joe are organising it. Elly has just asked me to help which is cool as I want to do more of this stuff in Dublin – where the networking scene should be 'happening'!
Thanks for the pointer Keithstrong>
30th of January 2007 by admin
I thoroughly enjoyed the Internet People networking event last night. I ended in a club yet again with Robert and a few others he's a seriously bad influence!
I usually get a little nervous before getting up on stage (which is a good thing) as I don't like 'broadcasting' my views on people, especially when the audience is equally qualified. However, the Semantic Web is something I'm very passionate about, so I found it very easy to talk and only wished I had more than the allocated 2 minutes. That's not to say however, that I was particularly good
The only other Irish person there was Nicola Byrne, an Associate from Benchmark Capital. Nicola's pitch was quite close to my heart. She spoke about bringing the Internet to more people. I personally believe this is a very important point that most people forget and I think it's where the Mobile Web will play a big part, mainly because mobile networks are cheaper to roll out than fix lines in developing countries.
As a member of the W3C Semantic Web Education and Outreach special interest group, I loved having the opportunity to talk about Content Labels as I believe they are one of the most compelling use cases of the Semantic Web.
Jemima Kiss from the Guardian covered what each of us had to say very well.
26th of January 2007 by admin
Update 29/1/07
The title of my post shouldn't say 'open source'. 'The Betavine Portal' is not an open source portal. All application owners will continue to own the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for their applications. The Portal however, will have a section dedicated to open source. Nothing has changed since I wrote my original post and its entire contents remain true.
I would like to apologise if I've caused some confusion.
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Vodafone is looking to stimulate the development of new applications in the mobile and internet industry through a new community portal. And I’m lucky enough to be the first to tell people
The Portal called Betavine, has been scheduled for a *soft* launch on January 31st 2006 and I've agreed to help seed interest within the community.
I've just posted this on my blog but thought it was worth posting here in case we have some new mobile applications amongst us.
I was lucky enough to take part in a workshop alongside Andy Tiller from Shozu, Hakon Martinsen of m-spatial and Tom Hume, from Future Platforms to help Vodafone put together their requirements. It was interesting to see how they had put most of it together already, demonstrating their understanding of the open source community.
If you want to take a sneak preview and take part in a field trial between now and the 31st (possibly longer), then get in touch and I'll give you login details.
If you own a mobile application this is a great way to get free feedback and exposure.
About the Betavine portal
It's a research and development space run by Vodafone Group R&D. It aims to encourage collaboration in the area of mobile and internet communications.
As a user you can:
* Download and test applications
* Comment and contribute on the forums and blogs
As a developer you can
* Create your own projects and host applications
* Blog about your projects
* Interact with your users and the Betavine community
On the Betavine Portal, interaction between developers and testers provides a testing ground for the latest concepts and technologies. New technologies are tested in real-world conditions, key technologies are identified and winning concepts come to the fore.
It's an open community that self-regulates. You are free to register and contribute to discussion threads and create or comment on blog entries. As a developer you can create a project space to upload your application, showcase your work and engage the Betavine testing community.
For students it's a chance to be involved in developing mobile applications through internships, 'externships' and competitions. Winning projects will be featured on the student page, and taken further through collaboration with the Betavine community.
Like featured projects and applications, the Betavine Web site itself is in continual beta testing by its users. Suggest new Web site features and discuss in the forum thread. Betavine's developers take their lead from the Web site community.
To participate in a beta trial before it's made public on January 31st 2007, get in touch with me.
This is a great opportunity to be one of the first to have an application on the portal.
25th of January 2007 by admin
Barry Maloney, Partner at top VC firm Benchmark [ex-digifone], Irish man, was quoted in a recent FT report on European investment in “web2.0″ space.[original research was from Paul Fisher at First Capital]
Quote: [fixed the bad spelling of Maloney]
Barry Maloney, partner at Benchmark Capital Europe, said recent transactions, such as the sale of Youtube to Google for $1.65bn and the sale of MySpace to News Corp for $580m, have fuelled interest in websites focused on user-generated content, also known as web 2.0 companies.
These companies are also much cheaper to set up than other technology businesses.
It is very difficult to build up a semiconductor company or an enterprise software business. You need to invest $40m to $50m before you know if you have a product that works, Mr Maloney said. With web 2.0 companies you can find out after three or four million dollars whether it will work.
As a result, Mr Maloney said, many European venture capital companies were using a spray and pray strategy, spreading small amounts of investment over dozens of companies in the hopes that two or three would make it. “
25th of January 2007 by admin
Sam at Vecosys picks up on NY Times coverage @ european startups [from an invite only event in Munich – DLD Conference ]
Vecosys coverage
Vecosys – a conversation about European startups
