Monthly Archives: November 2006

WAYN – world at their feet

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The two British backpackers – Pete Ward, 28, and Jerome Touze, 27, who developed WAYN in their spare time after returning home from a round-the-world trip with combined debts of over £40,000, have just secured $11 millions in backing from VC fund Esprit Capital Partners.
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Peter Ward said, “Back in 2002 we recognized the huge potential for a travel community network. Travel captures the imagination and meeting people from different places is something that most of us really enjoy doing”

WAYN allows users to create profiles, search for other travellers near them and make friends using the traveller’s social network. Membership has grown from 45,000 users in March 2005 to seven million today, and is increasing by up to 35,000 new members per day with over 650,000 members joining last month alone.

Brent Hoberman, Co-Founder and (former) Chief Executive of lastminute.com said, “WAYN is a flagship example of the next generation of internet companies born out of the UK with global potential. The innovative customer proposition, which enables members to interact with others, based on the places they have been or plan to visit in the future, has proved to be extremely popular. By sharing tips and introductions with likeminded travelers, WAYN members can get more out of their leisure time. The WAYN brand has massive growth potential and I am delighted to be involved.”

Brent Hoberman, who is part of the syndicate of investors, is to join the WAYN team in january 2007 as chairman.

Co-founder of WAYN Jerome Touze added: “This is an exciting time for WAYN and we’re over the moon that other successful parties have the same confidence and vision in our business as we do”

The new funding will help WAYN offer a host of new and improved benefits to its members, including a tailored trip planner and the ability to share experiences and tips with others, in real time through rich media. They are also expanding their technical team which is based in Poland, and setting up shop in the US.
via PRWeb

Netvibes destined for more…

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netvibes2.gifThe people at Netvibes have been extending their personalized startpage services. Included in the new features is the ability to search throughout all the feeds and various modules Netvibes users have been busy collecting on their pages.

Webwags, another French startpage, added this option in October, though it seems the Netvibes search is more wide cast, including video search and search in webmail accounts of which two more have been added – Microsoft Hotmail & AOL Mail.

There is also a podcast search which covers iTune, Odeo, Pluggd and Podemus (fr)

The video module now supports MySpace videos and a full screen mode has been made available.

With the ability to integrate Google Widgets and Dapper giving the more tech minded among us the possibility to create personal modules, Netvibes appear destined to keep on growing with the help of inside and outside innovation.

via blog.netvibes

Quick round-up of the latest online video-sharing sites from France

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The most popular francophone video-sharing destination, Daily Motion, recently struck a deal with the leading French TV station TF1. DM has developed a Web site for TF1 called
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Wat.tv where users can post and view videos. TF1 are following in the footsteps of another French TV station M6 who have launched Wideo with the help of Kewego. Although TF1 are going one step further in smudging the dividing line between TV & the Net.

Since November the 17th, the best clips from Wat TV are being broadcast on a national TV show called Watcast, every Friday night

Company co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Bejbaum says it’s only the first of several planned partnerships with traditional French media.

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November saw the birth of yet another. Nine months in preparation and a private beta testing period later, Vpod.tv was was up and running on the 14th.

“Vpod.tv allows companies or individuals to quickly set up their own Net broadcasting channels”.vpod_logo.gif

They are offering up a free service with unlimited space for videos and a 50% share of add-generated revenues (early 2007). Along with a premium, bigger file sizes (+ 600MB) & no adds, service.

source JDN & JDN

Video tutorials at Visuarios

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logo_visuarios.gifSpanish start-up launched on the 21st of October, Visuarios is a new video sharing site with an educational slant. Visuarios videos are a mixture of tutorials, advice, tips & tricks, and simple how-to’s.

“Visuarios is a website to share videos about everyday knowledge among everyday people.”

If you sign in for a free account with Visuarios you can comment, share and evaluate videos. You can upload your own videos and there is talk of getting paid for your videosvisuarios-drawingoldman.png due to an ‘integrated tipping feature’.
Visuarios are trying to make it that little bit easier, as they say, amongst the current tidal wave of online video content, to find the video tutorials people are looking for.

via Transnets

Free encryption tools from Germany

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One for email

The Firefox plug-in Freenigma is an e-mail encryption tool that can be used in a whole range of Web email systems – including Gmail, Yahoo!Mail and Hotmail/MSN.
Developed by freiheit.com, Freenigma came out of public beta at the end of September.277747578_c167fe564a_m.jpg

“Today, all your e-mails are stored and sent around the planet in plain text. And today you have no control over what happens to your private or business e-mail conversations and you can’t prevent others from reading them. Get your privacy back! Encrypt your private and business e-mails to protect your freedom, privacy and your business secrets.”

- from the Freenigma homepage.

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The advantage of being browser-based, is that it runs on all the main OS platforms – Linux, Mac or Windows XP. It uses one of the most famous and most widely used cryptographic software packages in the world: the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). Werner Koch, developer of GnuPG, is a founding member of freenigma along with Stefan Richter.
The FAQ

One for the developers

While developing an online voting system in Germany, Micromata invented a component for secure PIN/password input via untrusted, insecure browsers, called Transec.
Micromata has just released this secure authentication input module under GPL.logo_print.gif

Spyware in the form of Browser Helper Objects and keyloggers can capture user keyboard input even if it is encrypted. As spyware attacks the Browser implicitly all the data entered by a regular user on a web page could be accessible for a third person.
This is why Transec enables user authentication using 100% server-side control. The entire input field is generated on the server. The only interaction between the user and the server is the transmission of pictures and the coordinates of mouse-clicks.
The Java code and a demo application are available at the Transec homepage. Freely embeddable, Transec can be redistributed for non-commercial projects; a commercial license is also available.

FON WiFi router in new Skype bundle

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fon-logo.pngThe largest virtual phone network in the world, Skype and the largest WiFi network in the world, FON, have teamed up to jointly launch a WiFi phone that connects for free wherever you find other foneros (fon community members).
Started by maverick entrepreneur Martin Varsafsky, in November 2005, FON, the wireless services company, has come a long way since it began life in Madrid, when many critics discarded the idea of sharing broadband connections as impractical.

“It all started as a simple idea. Why should you pay for Internet access on the go when you have already paid for it at home? Exactly, you shouldn’t. So we decided to help create a community of people who get more out of their connection through sharing” Varsafsky.

After collecting 18 million euros at the beginning of the year, from Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, FON are now having their first custom built router, available since October, bundled into a Skype WiFi phone package, which was released today.

Part of the investment deal in February meant additional board members at FON, such as Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype.
“There is perhaps no more important goal for the industry than helping to make broadband Internet access available around the world, FON has a great idea to help people share WiFi with one another to build a global unified broadband network, and we’re happy to lend support” Zennström.

Via MobileHub

Update:The bundle is exclusively available in the U.S. and Europe, from the Skype Web store at skype.com/shop.

European Web 2.0 company going public

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The German company, OpenBC is to be floated on the German and Swiss stock exchangeobc_logo.png within the next six months. The announcement came at the same time as Konstantin Guericke flew into Germany to open a new website for LinkedIn, the company he co-founded and a major competitor to OpenBC.
They both cover the same area — letting business people connect with each other through their network. The OpenBC business network has about 1.5 million members.
The three-year-old European company is planning to use the proceeds for international expansion. Maybe the planned renaming of the company from OpenBC to Xing, could give a clue, as to the direction this expansion might take?

source – goingpublic.de