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News, insight and tips from the social web.
The Hoop blog covers the evolving digital landscape, social media, mobile communications, content marketing and also includes 5 top finds and Fish on Friday. Feel free to make comments.
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5 top finds #27 »
An intriguing marketing ploy involving cats (no, not the Ikea cat video), an impressive use of HTML5, 20 tips for mobile optimisation, Google's (ridiculous) spending habits and drawing some 3.2million dots (no, really). It's 5 top finds...
1. Catvertising
This morning, here at Hoop towers, we were talking about how best to control our recently discovered rodent situation. After an intense discussion, we had a collective epiphany; we could simply follow Toronto's John St.'s lead and open a catvertising arm. Visit YouTube to understand what we're on about (trust us, it's worth it).
2. Canvas & HTML5 with 9elements
What happens when you combine HTML5, tweets mentioning "love" and "HTML5", a bit of music and some serious development talent in the form of 9elements?
"HTML5 experiment" is the wonderful result. Beautiful work!
3. Mobile optimisation with Conversion Conference London
If we were to summarise this year in two words, they would be "Go Mobile". We've been going on about being ready for the mobile revolution for the majority of 2011 – and 2012 promises to be no different.
If you still need convincing (although if you follow the Hoop blog we hope you don't), SEOptimise has a great list of 20 tips you should be thinking about when joining champions of mobile first. Well worth a read.
4. "Hi, I'm Google and I'm a (shopping) addict"
It's technology conference Le Web this week. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt had the 2pm slot on the main stage yesterday and delivered some extremely interesting tidbits. It turns out that, on average, Google are buying one company every week – they bought 57 this year!
As usual, TechCrunch has the lowdown.
5. A hero with a pen, pencil and RSI
Multi-talented web developer Miguel Endara appears to have a serious bit of skill with a pen and pencil. He recently spent an astounding 210 hours creating 3.2million(!) dots on a piece of paper.
That may sound a little pointless – but when you see the finished product you'll be as blown away as we were. You can watch the video on Vimeo.
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Startups of the week #5 »
It's been another great week for discovering new and innovative startups. This week we're recording phone conversations, avoiding information overload (funded by hip-hop), converting business cards to electronic contacts, marketing our content, selling things socially and telling stories with social media.
1. Call Trunk
You're on the phone (often to a premium-rate number) to a service provider, signing up for a new contract or complaining about something etc. You'll have been warned, prior to the conversation starting, that your call will be monitored for "training purposes" or something similar. If you've ever been on the receiving end of poor customer service, been promised something you've not received and so on, there's now a startup for that.
Call Trunk's mission is "to make the spoken word accountable and verifiable". For a monthy fee (or on a PAYG plan), they'll record your outgoing (no incoming capability yet) calls via the free Call Trunk smartphone app (or their web app), decrypt and then store them securely online – for as long as your account has credit.
Call Trunk are solving a niche problem, but one that seems to exist (check their infographic about "people who lie" if you're unconvinced). It'll be interesting to see how they scale in the UK (the prices seem quite high), but if what they're offering sounds useful, Call Trunk's services are free to UK users until January 1st 2012.
2. Undrip
Any startup that produces a rap to market themselves (and ask for funding) is guaranteed to get noticed. And if said startup also writes custom raps for most of the big Angels in Silicon Valley, they're guaranteed to get people talking about them.
That's exactly what Undrip did two weeks ago when they uploaded their 2.28m hip-hop masterpiece to YouTube. And two weeks later, a venture fund uploaded their response saying they were interested in funding the 4 man startup. Doing things differently can work out!
Undrip are currently in closed testing, but are advertising a product which apparently reduces information overload/ fatigue from content shared on your social networks. It's a big task taking on the likes of Flipboard, but if their product is anywhere near as good as their rapping skills there's definitely promise. One to watch!
3. Slideshare & Cardmunch
Both of these companies have one thing in common (apart from being pretty useful); they exist in their current forms because of LinkedIn.
Cardmunch solve that ever frustrating problem of not having your library of business cards easily accessible on your smartphone or computer. The Cardmuch technology photographs a business card, the photo is then uploaded to their servers and transcribed by Amazon's Mechanical Turk before being pushed back to your phone as an electronic contact. LinkedIn bought the company at the start of 2011 and relaunched the app a fortnight ago with the added functionality of connecting a new business card to the person's profile on LI. Pretty neat!
Slideshare launched their content marketing service for professionals on LI back in 2008. Today, they're on the receiving end of 60million unique pageviews and 3billion slide views a month. You can follow their impressive road to success via their new infographic here. As the popularity of content marketing continues to grow, you can guarantee Slideshare will be at the forefront.
4. Sellaround
Social has changed the web. The internet is slowly moving towards everyone being interconnected, able to share experiences with whoever they want to. We've got social networks tying everyone together, social search joining up the dots and now we've got social commerce in the form of Germany's Sellaround.
Imagine you've got an shareable, embeddable, social e-commerce widget that contains a product you're trying to sell. It operates in Facebook's newsfeed, in the Twitter stream, on blogs and so on. And it's mobile by default. That's exactly what Sellaround allows you to do!
There are loads of potential applications for Sellaround's widget. We're pretty sure you'll be seeing it in your social circles soon.
5. Storify
With the explosion of social media over the past few years, it's become progressively harder to organise and present content in a logical, clean and user-friendly way. Luckily, Storify are doing their best to make recording events recorded with social media accessible.
Storify curates social media content into streams or 'stories' – and there are many examples of why Storify's concept is so useful. The journalist Mona Eltahawy was recently arrested and tortured in Egypt, a lot of which was played out over Twitter as the world discovered what was going on. Her story has been Storified; as has the part Twitter had to play in her subsequent release. Yesterday's social media coverage of the public sector strikes has also been Storified.
The rise of social media has led to the need for a concise way of documenting the often important content that's posted online. Storify covers that need wonderfully!
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5 top finds #26 »
A new logo for London 2012, Facebook's mobile phone is apparently a failure (and it's not even finished yet), Google's take on iTunes, i(can't)Message, chasing deer and chasing investment. It's 5 top finds...
1. 2012 gets a facelift
There was quite a bit of consternation when Wolff Olin's logo for London 2012(™) was unveiled in 2007. We were a little surprised to see the consternation continuing – with an alternative logo being submitted to Logo Design Love just last week (with an accompanying dig at Wolff Olin's attempt). venturethree's version is actually rather good!
2. Poor Buffy's not doing so well
There have been rumours drifting around the internet for years about the possibility of Facebook producing a phone. Or rather Facebook writing the software and partnering with a hardware producer like HTC or Samsung to produce a mobile.
Tech blog AllThingsD recently published a story revealing that FB are actually in the process of producing such a phone running on a HTC handset with souped-up Android. Apparently, according to Inside Mobile Apps, things haven't been going smoothly...
But, on a more positive note, all is apparently not lost. The Wall Street Journal is reporting Facebook are looking into filing their elusive IPO "targeting a time frame of April to June 2012 for an initial public offering, said people familiar with the matter" – in which the company is looking to raise $10bn.
Which would value the company at around $100bn...
3. Spinning in control (as long as you live in America)
Google launched their attempt to steal the digital music crown from iTunes (Match) last week. The imaginatively titled (but rather awesome) 'Google Music' lets you upload up to 20,000 of your own tracks to the cloud (for easy listening on any device), share your music tastes via Google+, access your music anywhere and discover new music via the Google Music recommendation system.
Which all sounds great, but it's as of yet unavailable in the UK...
4. To iMessage or not to iMessage
When Apple announced iMessage, their version of Blackberry's BBM service, back at WWDC in June, we all jumped for joy at what we thought would be a (free and) fantastic, SMS-killing service.
But, as is often the way, all is not as magical as first advertised. Entrepreneur Matt Galligan eloquently described what we couldn't. Well worth a read.
5. Chasing deer and rapping for investment
We've two videos in this week's 5 top finds:
1) Benton (no relation to the author, for those of you who were about to ask; who the Sun is reporting is actually called 'Fenton') being admonished – but taking no notice – for taking an afternoon jog with a herd of deer.
2) An intriguing way of marketing your startup and asking for angel investment (but it seems to work).
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Startups of the week #4 »
It's been an good week for discovering new and innovative startups in a variety of areas. This week we're crowdsourcing data modelling solutions, taking the (right) pills, getting fit with your iPhone, ending event queues and recommending things to our friends.
Get in touch if you know of any startups we should feature!
1. Runkeeper
There's been many a startup attempting to target health and wellbeing over the past year or so. Some have been (relatively or extremely) successful and some have not. RunKeeper, in our opinion, has been one of the former.
Using the freemium model (the mobile app that you download is free but you can pay for the more advanced functionality), the RunKeeper app uses a smartphone's GPS to track exercise. That might not sound like much, but having a free app track distance, elevation, number of calories burned, length of exercise period etc can prove pretty useful!
It's not often you find a useful, functional and well-designed application that's free in a form that actually works. RunKeeper ticks all of those boxes. It also seems they're only getting started – we can't wait to see what RunKeeper does next!
2. Stamped
When you buy a product, how frequently do you read the reviews and ratings? It's an increasingly popular way of championing a new film, book, event – basically anything. But how relevant is a three star review from someone you've never met?
That's the problem new startup Stamped are attempting to solve with their mobile app. Recommendations are much more likely to be useful if they're a simple yes or no – from someone you know.
The user starts with 100 'Stamps' and earns more if their friends like what the user is 'Stamping'. It's a novel solution to a problem we weren't aware we had, but the more we think about it and use the platform the more we like it. You can download the iOS app for free [iTunes link] so start stamping today!
3. Intellitix
Festivals are an experience. Live music, dodgy food, watered down beer, mud and rain (if you're in the UK) and a whole host of other reasons why they're loved (and hated) by many. If you ask anyone at a festival what their most hated part of the whole experience is, we have an inkling it might be the queueing process.
Queueing for hours and hours, with a paper ticket that you'll exchange for a wristband which will get destroyed over the weekend... It's a definite low point to an otherwise great time. But this scenario isn't limited to just festivals. Exhibitions, sporting events, theme parks – the list is endless.
Enter Intellitix, with their proprietary "Access Control" system, who are on the way to solving the entire conundrum. Based around NFC and RFID technology, Intellitix have been trialling their technology throughout "most of the key North American music festivals with 100% uptime and without a single issue". Sounds promising – and we'll be seeing them in Europe in 2012!
4. Kaggle
What do you do if you're an organisation with lots of important data or the need to solve complex problems (e.g. how to predict the severity of an HIV infection or how to improve healthcare as a whole) but you don't have the capability to solve your problems or do anything with your data? Likewise, what happens if you're a data scientist who has no data?
Kaggle is the missing piece to this puzzle. Kaggle crowdsources the best data scientists from all over the world and matches them with people with no solutions to their problems. The outcome is hugely successful predictive modelling which has solved many complex issues.
Participants compete, in realtime, against each other to solve the problem first. The 'winners' who solve the problem then sell the IP to the competition host. All in all, an extremely innovative solution to many a complex problem. Pretty damn cool!
5. Diagnosia
After purchase, how many times do you read the pamphlets you get in a drug packet? Not many? You won't be the only one. What if you lose the leaflet, but want to check the information in it? Are you a doctor who wants to check the dosing of a drug prior to prescribing it to one of your patients?
Diagnosia is a new European-wide database for drugs licensed in the EU. It features "verified and up-to-date medicinal drug information intended for both patients and physicians in 4 languages and counting", all displayed in a user-friendly way on their frequently updated website. They've even got iOS and Android apps in the pipeline.
The Diagnosia library currently only holds 1454 substances so will take a long while to reach the 15,400 or so drugs that are currently licensed in the EU. But it's an extremely useful (and maybe even life-saving) concept that we can't wait to see actioned. Diagnosia are definitely worth watching!
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5 top finds #25 »
Internet successes, some lovely WebGL, a discussion around human-machine-hum interaction, QR code cows and stop-motion animation. It's 5 top finds...
1. Success stories
If you're still in doubt of just what the internet is capable of doing, the Google blog has a wonderful story of how anything is possible. Even selling tongue brushes via YouTube. Awesome stuff.
2. Harvard does WebGL
Ever wondered what the surface of the brain (as well as the neural tracts) looks like? If so, Harvard have answered your prayers with a bit of nifty WebGL. Definitely worth a look.
If brains aren't quite your cup of tea, why not take HelloRacer's F1 car for a spin?
3. Will Siri change the human language?
The iPhone 4S has only been in the public domain for a few short months, but it will always be remembered for Siri; Apple's virtual assistant. But Siri is a choosy beggar and only accepts directions spoken in a certain way.
Tech journalist and venture capitalist (and Apple fanboy extraordinaire) MG Siegler recently posted a discussion piece suggesting, in some circles, Siri may alter human-human interaction because of the way it demands a rigid human-machine relationship. We'll wait and see what happens – but it's an interesting concept nonetheless.
4. QR cows
Nope, we weren't joking. An innovative farmer (and his technologically-minded friend) has painted QR codes on his cows to market his farm's produce. A truly ingenious solution to a difficult problem! 2d code has the details and you can watch the video on YouTube.
5. "Marshell"
We love video, especially if it's a good stop motion animation. Marcel the Shell (with Shoes On) ticks all the right boxes. A heartwarming story for a Monday morning.
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Startups of the week #3 »
We've collated another collection of interesting startups who've caught our eye over the past week. If you've seen any we've not yet featured get in touch!
(Honorable mention) Tesla
Given Tesla went public last June, we're a bit naughty for including them in this list. They're not really a startup anymore – but they are definitely worth an honorable mention.
Founded by Paypal and SpaceX's Elon Musk, Tesla have been attempting to combat one of the world's biggest conundrums; what to do once fossil fuel runs out. Their answer was (in part) a battery that powered the world's first "viable production electric car". The Tesla Roadster is capable of travelling 211 miles on one charge, takes 3.7s to reach 60mph and produces no emissions. Pretty awesome!
Musk first wrote of Tesla's "Secret Master Plan" in 2006, discussing the company's plans to produce a fleet of Tesla cars. This week, we got a look around their new 7-seater sedan. We'll be seeing more of Tesla. And we can't wait!
1. SCVNGR/ Dwolla
Given we discussed Square and iZettle (who have now publicly launched in Sweden!) last week, we thought it worth mentioning SCVNGR and Dwolla this week.
Dwolla enables you to send payments to connections in your social networks (through Facebook and Twitter integration) and simply charges 25¢ per transaction – whatever the size of the transaction (they've yet to launch outside of the US so we're not sure what the transaction charge would be in the UK; presumably something equally nominal).
SCVNGR is a little different. Their product offering, which strikes us as the monetisation of location-based networks, has gained a fairly large amount of interest/ investment, with their latest round valuing the company at around $100m – and founder Seth Priebatsch reckons his concept can revolutionise the credit card industry and generate a market worth $50bn+. We're not so sure...
2. Sparrow
If you've used Twitter's desktop app, you'll get a vague sense of déjà vu when you first use Sparrow's mail app for Mac. It's a similar minimalistic design, but one that works – and works extremely well.
Neat touches like plugging into your Facebook contact list provides conversation personalisation (always a nice touch to see faces in a sea of emails) and CloudApp – Sparrow's take on email attachments.
You can download Sparrow Lite (but it's only compatible with GMail accounts) or purchase the full app from the Sparrow website or the Mac App Store. We thoroughly recommend it!
3. TapBuy
Searching for "daily deals" on Google produces 113,000,000 results. A little too much for you to comb through? TapBuy thinks so too.
TapBuy's proprietary iOS app searches your local shops for deals, groups multiple items together in one order, applies the relevant deal and submits the order (after you've entered your payment details) to the merchant.
TapBuy seems to be a great way to capitalise on the e-commerce market's movement towards a mobile future – and we love the concept!
4. Coffee & Power
With the current (rather wobbly) economic climate, and employment figures not faring much better, it seems we need to start thinking about creating jobs and spending money in a slightly different way. That's where concepts like Coffee & Power's come in.
C&P is a digital marketplace for people selling their talent ("wills") and people looking for services ("wants"). The marketplace is combined with a rating and review system, its own currency and payment system and even its own workspace (but it's in San Francisco).
C&P are backed by Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder/ CEO) and a veritable list of who's who in the investment world. We love the idea, and given the times we reckon the team are onto something. We're predicting big things from Coffee & Power!
5. Sprout Social
We're always on the look out for a good set of social media management tools. We've tried more than a few over the past year or so and have been blown away by some and less than enthused by others.
Sprout Social, however, has so far been one of the best we've found. Sprout recently went back to basics and completely redesigned their product offering, their prices and even created a mobile app for those marketeers on the go.
First impressions of S2 have so far been great and given we can now manage our Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn accounts – as well as track our Google Analytics, we may have found our favourite social media management tool. Highly recommended!
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