Archive for 'Enterprise'

How to sift through Twitter’s noise? MyTweetSense, FriendBinder give it a go

by on December 10, 2009 at 7:15 pm
December 10, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler

Now that there are plenty of apps for reading your entire Twitter stream, here comes the hard part. How do you build filters that automatically find the most interesting bits from a stream that can contain more than 100 tweets an hour?

Two apps I’ve taken a look at the Le Web conference in Paris are giving that a shot, taking very different approaches. (more…)

Le Web: Social networking tool Stribe takes top honors in startup competition

by on December 10, 2009 at 7:11 pm

December 10, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler

stribeStribe, a tool that helps build a social network around sites, won the top prize at the Le Web start-up competition in Paris today.

The French startup is trying to tackle the difficult problem of building social communities around content on a page, and outside of a social network. It’s a line of code that you add to your site, which creates an overlay that users can log into. They can see the most active users visiting the page and the most popular links people are sharing. (more…)

The cool and not-so-cool of LeWeb

by on December 10, 2009 at 8:53 am

This week I traveled to Paris with a consortium of fellow bloggers, the Traveling Geeks. We’ve been meeting with tech companies and French entrepreneurs all week. The tour ended with attendance at LeWeb, a two day tech conference produced by tech entrepreneur and Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur. Here’s my summary of the best and the worst of the event, plus I included some other stuff experienced from the Traveling Geeks tour and Paris in general. For a summary, make sure you watch my end of day show reports from LeWeb (day 1, day 2) and my other end of day report from the Traveling Geeks tour.

CoolAccordions, Accordions, Accordions – There are plenty of street performers in Paris. Most of them are carrying accordions. On my first day I saw four sets of performers hop onto a train car, play a few tunes, and jump off. On one train a duo jumped on with an accordion and a stand up bass. My favorite was the karaoke accordionist that would also take a mic for a solo himself to sing “Just a Gigolo”. (more…)

Le Web 2009, Day 2: The good, the bad and the vacuous

by on December 10, 2009 at 8:44 am

matthew-buckland-300For day two of Le Web, this Travelling Geek slinked off to one of the side rooms for the “deep discussion” sessions. There was the word “future” in quite a few of the session titles, which caught my attention. (more…)

Mendeley , “the Last.fm of Research”

by on December 10, 2009 at 8:10 am

Mendeley , “the Last.fm of Research”

[LeWeb] Mendeley is an online research papers database that connects scientists together by analyzing the connection between them and their research papers. Mendelay enables collaboration and conversations in the scientific community and aims to change the way research is done, paving the way to “Science 2.0”. Based in the UK, the startup has rapidly grown and currently offers 25,000 downloadable free research papers covering a broad range of academic disciplines, so far, 8 million research papers have been uploaded and the site counts 100,000 users.

Startups of Le Web 2009, Paris

by on December 10, 2009 at 7:11 am

The winner of the Le Web Startup competition was announced as Stribe — it’s a plug & play application that turns your site into a social network (not too dissimilar from the Hub actually). The runners up were CloudSplit and Mendeley.

The other startups that entered the competition included:

CloudSplit
FitnessKeeper
FriendBinder
Kukunu
Mendeley
Shutl
Siteheart Inc
Sokoz
Sports Predictions
Storific
Stribe
Superfeedr
task.ly
the hyper words company
Wordy
Yeasty Mobs

tags: le web, startups

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Paris Diary: Putting “French” Back Into Entrepreneur

by on December 10, 2009 at 2:01 am

The quality of the French startups we have been meeting with all week, has been very good.

It seems as if the French can once again claim back ‘entrepreneur’ instead of it being sometimes derisively labelled as an oxymoron in the French context.

But it seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon and one that relies on a compelling mix of government programs and tax breaks. While many countries have tried to encourage the formation of startups through various incentives, the French appear to have gotten the mix just right.

It wouldn’t surprise me if in the near future, some US startups might choose Paris as a headquarters because of some of the advantages they can gain here, compared with an indifferent US government. (more…)

Le Web: Jack Dorsey says he’ll give away Square devices for free

by on December 9, 2009 at 7:36 pm
December 9, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler

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Picture 7

Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and co-founder of a new payments startup called Square, said the company will give away its credit card-swiping devices for free at the Le Web conference in Paris today. (See a Q&A with Dorsey here.) It’s a move that should help overcome the biggest hurdle for the startup, and probably help make its money back if it can take a small share of all payments it manages. (more…)

Le Web: Twitter releases data firehose to everyone, now has 50,000 apps

by on December 9, 2009 at 7:24 pm
December 9, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler

rsarverTwitter said it’s opening up its data stream of tweets to all developers, not just Bing and Google. Ryan Sarver, who is on the platform team at Twitter, said details will be hashed out later next year.

Sarver said Twitter’s business model will be to drive and split revenue with the ecosystem of developers that have built applications around it. (more…)

Parrot’s new Wi-Fi Picture Frame and Wireless Speakers

by on December 9, 2009 at 9:14 am

(This post is part of the Traveling Geeks tech tour of Paris. David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions and a tech journalist that blogs at Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio and on John C. Dvorak’s “Cranky Geeks.”)

At a visit at phone-accessory and gadget maker Parrot in Paris, I interviewed Parrot’s CEO, Henri Seydoux, about a couple of new products: Grande Specchio, a wi-fi picture frame that just came out a few weeks ago, and some giant wireless speakers. (more…)