Traveling Geeks

Opera has some news! Here’s a great comparison Opera threw our way. DYK that almost 1.2 million stormtroopers, droids and janitors can fit into a fully operational Death Star and nearly 11 million people follow Lady Gaga on Twitter?

Opera aims to put those numbers to shame with the number of downloads for its newest browser, Version 11.50 which the Opera team just announced. Follow their numbers on a live download counter.

Below are the details for Version 11.50, which introduces a new and novel type of browser extension: Speed Dial extensions.

Instead of handy thumbnails and links to your top sites, you can embed your Speed Dial with extensions that keep you updated–instantly–on what is happening around the Web. Take weather updates, for example. Why click through to a website when you can get the current conditions live at a glance? Or, why not be the first to know the hot news of the day just by opening a new tab? 

Here’s a few examples for you to try out:

Webdoc, a new way to mix media of any kind, developed a Speed Dial extension that allows you to create interactive web posts in just a few clicks. You can try it here. 

See how easy it is to create magic?

Another example is The Hype Machine, a popular music service that tracks emerging artists on blogs. They created a Speed Dial extension that features the most popular tracks of the moment, giving you an easy way to stay on top. 

And, with StockTwits, you can share real-time information and ideas about stocks. Using their Speed Dial extension you’ll get instant access to a passionate community to see which stocks are trending right now. You can try it here.

A few other new additions worth mentioning:

• Password synchronization: Now, Opera Link supports passwords, so you can synchronize your website passwords–securely–with other Opera browsers. 
• Sleeker Design: Opera 11.50 sports a new design that’s even more streamlined and lightweight than the previous version.
• Tighter Technology: They fixed thousands of bugs and tweaked their software graphics engine with faster CSS and SVG rendering. The result is faster speed and better reliability.

Craig Newmark tells the 140Conf crowd in New York to make your mark online by contributing and giving where and whenever you can. Below is a video of his talk.

Says Craig, “Press should be the immune system of democracy.” By contrast to a solo video, here is a Webdoc created during his talk which incorporates photos, tweets and a simple survey, all of which only took a few minutes to create and a couple of button clicks to embed this here, as easy as embedding a YouTube video via HTML code. The same video could have been included in the webdoc as well for added richness and diversity.

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to the Webdoc team.

FutureMed today launched a contest to attend its newly launched executive program dedicated to where exponential technologies, medicine, healthcare and biomedicine collide and are headed.

FutureMed is held at Singularity University on the NASA-Ames Research Park in Mountain View, CA May 10-15, 2011. 

Imagine experiencing an interactive and highly personalized Renaissance-like week, full of some of the best intellectual and innovative brains in medicine and technology under one roof, in an intimate setting.

Through a series of faculty speakers, panels, hands on experiences, site visits, in-depth workshops, and late night discussions, participants will complete this intensive 5-day program with new relationships and insights into unmet needs and opportunities that will transform the world of healthcare, from wellness and prevention to diagnosis and therapy.

Designed for entrepreneurs, innovators, executives, and physicians (CME credit offered), the FutureMed program is bringing together some of the smartest and most talented leaders and visionaries in technology, science and healthcare to examine the intersection of convergent exponential technologies and their game-changing potential to transform all aspects of health and medicine over the next 20 years.

FutureMed covers diverse areas such as genomics, the digitization of health data, regenerative medicine, neuromedicine, brain computer interfaces, gene therapy, robotic interventions, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, synthetic biology and more.

The faculty includes some of the world’s most distinguished leaders in their respective fields, including Stanford, Berkeley & Harvard trained oncologists, stem cell researchers, preventative medicine pioneers, surgeons, entrepreneurs and scientists. Speakers include Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil, Dean Ornish, Esther Dyson, Daniel Kraft, Thomas Goetz, David Ewing Duncan, Tim O’Reilly and a host of others. 

Singularity University (SU) was co-founded by Ray Kurzweil, futurist, inventor and author of “The Singularity Is Near,” and Dr. Peter Diamandis, chairman and founder of the X-PRIZE. SU’s mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders to facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies with the goal of addressing humanity’s grand challenges. A Graduate Studies Program is held each summer and week long Executive Programs are also held quarterly. You can also check out and follow FutureMed on Twitter and Facebook.

Pearltrees, a leading curation tool, launched a new team feature at LeWeb10 in Paris this week. More than a new feature, the “team” functionality makes Pearltrees the world’s first real-time collaborative curation community.

With Pearltrees “Team” release, curating content becomes social and immediate and curation becomes a playful, social activity.

Amidst blogger, podcaster, media and entrepreneur activity and panel discussions today in LeWeb’s towering halls (3 in total — separated by a snow and sleet storm) at a place called Les Docks in the northern part of Paris, Pearltrees’ CEO Patrice Lamothe and his team demoed Pearltrees Team to attendees, which they also showed on a touch screen.

The number of possible uses for Pearltrees Team is virtually infinite:

•  Journalists can now team up to curate public interest topics such as the Wikileaks pages to share them with the world.
•  Physicians might team up to curate information on a medical condition like autism for the benefit of their patients.
• Friends can now collaborate to plan a holiday by curating cool locations, hotels, restaurants, etc.
• Experts and interested parties can work together to organize an aggregation of existing content such as a library of videos.

Other platforms focus on friends or followers; Pearltrees is a social curation community where people connect with one another via shared interests. It is the first place where people from anywhere on the planet can spontaneously “team up” to explore and organize the largest library in the world.

Below, Patrice Lamothe demos to Gabe Rivera at a blogger luncheon at Alcazar.

 Pearltrees Team has a number of key features that makes it unique:

• it is the first and only fully collaborative platform: people can team up and curate in real time;
• it is not limited to just a few services: it is possible to curate anything on the web;
• the unique visual interface escapes the limitations of lists and pages giving users the ability to see everything at once or drill down to a specific interest almost instantly;
• Pearltrees also gives users unlimited curation capacity;
• Pearltrees is completely free.

Pearltrees is currently in open beta, interested parties can sign up today by visiting www.pearltrees.com.

DataHug’s Connor Murphy (right) tells me about their service over drinks one night in Dublin last week.

DataHug, which just won an IntertradeIreland award earlier this month in Dublin, has developed technology that indexes corporate email systems and generates insight about the everyday connections between people. 

While there are several email filters and indexers, none of them really take the pain out of dealing with information overflow and making sense of it in a meaningful way. Enter the growing need for Social CRM that works.

Currently in beta, DataHug analyzes emails coming in and out of a company to build a rich and dynamic picture of ‘who knows who’ and ‘how well they know them’. DataHug sells their service online to businesses that rely on relationships to succeed and are currently trialling the technology with a number of customers. 

There seemed to be no shortage of new Irish start-ups emerging in Dublin or ideas in the works that were planning to emerge in the next six months to a year. Below are a few I connected with during my recent trip to Ireland for Dublin Web Summit and F.ounders:

Mark Roden with Ezetop explains how the service works over lunch in Dublin recently. It’s a fairly straight forward and easy pitch and the aha moment is pretty immediate.

In a world where everything except for cash is growing in popularity as ‘currency’, why not have air time as something you can give away, offer friends, customers and/or your family if they live far away from you.

Using Ezetop, you can send a top-up instantly to a mobile phone.Think of it as the Western Union of mobile air time. Remember that air time is a currency and it has a value.

Imagine the emerging world for a moment: there are more places than not who do not have unlimited calling plans nor do they have salaries that support higher-end mobile options.

For people who are working abroad but still have family in South America, Africa, Asia or other pockets of the world, you could easily and quickly top off air time for family and friends.

An easy way to send support instantly and cost effectively, friends and family can call you back whenever they want at their normal low calling rates.

Their coverage is extensive; currently they support 130 countries and have another 40 on the way. Take a look at the countries supported by their service today. Forbes’ Quentin Hardy calls their service Smart Tech for the Working Poor.

While social utility Weedle may be based in Dublin, it has a growing user-base in the U.S., says CEO Iain Mac Donald, who I had a chance to chat with at the F.ounders conference last week.

Free to use, Weedle enables a better way for you to get found by people who need your skill and also, to find people who have the skills you need. Think lawyers, shoe repair, accountants, hairdressers, piano teachers, tutors, photographers, web designers and more. Leveraging social media with semantic technologies, they’re combining both with their own search and social graph algorithm, to increase the effectiveness of a match that is right for you — whether you need the skill or you are promoting yours to the world.

Because it’s based on your personal community, you learn about people who have a particular skill inside your network and can see who in that trusted network has used a person and what they think. It’s the kind of service that essentially anyone can benefit from; give it a try as it only takes a couple of minutes to get started. CEO with a personality — Iain Mac Donald — tells us more.

Dublin has a lot to offer, much more than what meets the eye from nearly 6,000 miles away. No, I’m not talking tourism although the city certainly has plenty to offer on that front.

Meet a new emerging market for technology, entrepreneurship and innovation, which was realized from experiencing Web 2.0 the Irish way at the most recent Dublin Web Summit and F.ounders event that spread over three days.

Says Butcher in his Techcrunch post, “F.ounders event did exactly what it said on the tin: almost 95% founders, few investors and an extremely well oiled organisation of events to network everyone together.

Almost no investors meant the entrepreneurs could compare notes, swap war stories and generally relax…..heaven for entrepreneurs who can get pretty sick of having to feel like they are under pressure to perform all the time.”

But it doesn’t end there and it’s only part of the story. What the two simultaneous but related events did was combine the best-of-the-best in one city from Europe and the states, during non-stop rain, to connect in a meaningful way…..and this my friends, involves the exchange of human stories not technology ones.

What made it so special? Unlike so many events in Silicon Valley, we didn’t talk business models 24/7 or money 24/7 or tools, deals, plug-ins and traffic strategies 24/7.

I had an opportunity to meet with a number of entrepreneurs in the context of dinners, coffees, pints of guinness, walks in the rain, lunches and before and after Irish fiddling late in the evening. (which btw is 4 or 5 am, not 10 pm which is the time most of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs either go home or are online connecting rather than over pints and bottles of brew, whiskey and port).

I’m not trying to beat up on the Valley, because frankly despite having had a reputation of being an “energizer bunny” (you know, the battery commercial), I’m not sure I could keep up with a wee morning pub culture year round. What I am trying to do is point out cultural differences which is what was instrumental in making this event ‘magical.’ Multiple cultures brought their own curiosity and their unique ways of pitching, engaging and exchanging with them to Dublin.

There’s other magic I discovered too and it has to do with BEING IRISH: the Irish know how to tell a bloody good story…..all the time. As one Irish entrepreneur said to me, “we live for telling a story – we’ll talk at ya all day long if you’ll let us.” The downside he said, was that “we might be more focused on the story than the business model and making money.”

Fair enough, yet my initial thought was this: HIRE someone who knows how to get your business to cash-flow positive, whether that’s bringing in the right biz dev guy or finding some seed money. Any idea how hard it is to instill storytelling in someone who doesn’t ‘get’ storytelling?

A lot of CEOs over-complicate their pitch, get bogged down with the details, the technical features and what they think is important. If you have a good storyteller on board, no one will leave your campfire gathering, when if presented correctly, can be the most powerful ‘magic sauce’ in your corporate recipe book. The Irish are naturals at this. And, they also know how to add humor to their story in a way that keeps you engaged for longer.

And we all know what longer engagement can lead to….it’s all anyone talks about in social media circles. (modern translation of campfire gathering: your website, blog, presentation, facebook fan page, twitter page and so on).

While this discovery meant that it took a little longer to get entrepreneurs to talk about their company and products, I got to know their personalities, backgrounds and the things they cared about OFFLINE. It’s amazing what you can learn about a company and their direction when an entrepreneur is more focused on their story and your story combined than their iPad, iPhone or Blackberry in front of them. No one checked in to anything, tweeted or sent an email in the middle of any of our conversations.

What a joy to have a “human” focus dominate over a “digital” one during a meeting……Imagine truly being present for the journey, participating in that journey and focusing on the laughing, breathing, singing, talking and eating around you rather than the Hootsuite stream in the palm of your digital hand.

“Storytellers, the very act of telling, communicate a radical learning that changes lives and the world: telling stories is a universally accessible means through which people make meaning.”-Chris Cavanaugh

If you haven’t heard all the buzz in the last week or so about Dublin’s F.ounders event, then you’re not reading the right blogs or sites. It’s a must-attend says Butcher of Techcrunch and hear what other major bloggers and writers in Europe have to say. (scroll to the bottom for the links). My kick-off blog post can be found here. 

Thanks to Enterprise Ireland who made sure I was on a plane for this not-to-be missed event and hats off to Paddy Cosgrave and his team for pulling together an experience that didn’t disappoint. The conference combined engagement, intellectual debate, networking, food, culture, pub crawls, founder stories and illuminaries under one roof for 2.5 days. (the one roof btw was the Dublin sky…….might I add that a vivid memory was of multi-colored and checkered umbrellas, block after block, as we made our way from one event to the next). Below is the event unveiled in images. Enjoy!

What’s so uncanny about this photo of Paddy Cosgrave and Michael Birch chatting at one of the hosted dinners? Except for the slight variation on angles of their glasses, do they not look a helluva lot alike? Can’t recall Birch’s shoes that evening tho now the yank who came all the way to Dublin and pays attention to fashion (including geek fashion) is dying to know.

Is that THE Michael Birch behind the counter serving pints of Guinness? How much did they pay you for the hour Mike? Inquiring minds want to know.

Did I mention that we took over the Guinness Storehouse?

You’re probably wondering whose feet these are? They belong to THE Paddy Cosgrave of course, for those who attended but never looked down. These feet are attached to a man who gets things done…..from walking, dialing, connecting, tweeting, emailing and everything under the sun to ensure F.ounders Dublin was a huge success.

Fred Karlsson with Donedeal.ie and Ronan Farren with Nappertandy

Dr. James Wilk and Davnet O’Driscoll

Dr. Dorian Selz with Memonic and Maurice Collins with Ticket Truck

Chad Hurley during his fireside chat with Robin Wauters (sans the fire)

One of the pre-dinner cocktail receptions was held in a building that resembled a space musuem, well sorta. Result? Darkness with stars baby.

Mathys van Abbe of Moby Picture, Vannesa Fox, Paul Rush, Renee Blodgett

Matt Mullenweg (aka @photomatt – his blog header rocks btw)

Laurent Feras Pierssens

Some nights were blurrier than others, like the jet-legged first night at Saba Restaurant. 

Philip Meagher, CEO of Gruupy

Andy Young of GroupSpaces (and oh btw, this man can DANCE – anyone have photos of him from the happening Krystal night club on the last night?)

Paddy Cosgrave

It’s a shame you can’t see the kick-ass view of Dublin just behind them.

Musician/storyteller Niall Toner at the Iveagh House dinner.

Yeah, our very own Dave McClure (Silicon Valley Dave McClure that is), showed up and added a little humor with his advice. (for those who missed the memo: he called the Irish community pussies if they did NOT invest in their own, since if they don’t, someone else will….like the damn yankees perhaps).

At the final night dinner (held at very cool Guinness Showroom), Paddy Cosgrave gets kudos from the community and other founders, while he thanks those who helped make the event a success! And yup, that is Tariq Krim, SimpleGeo’s Matt Galligan and Jeff Clavier stage right.

Kick-off Dinner (before we got any sleep)

Paul Rush

Vanessa Fox proudly displays her PERFECT PINT certificate (of Guinness that is, what else?)

Is that TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters and Mike Butcher? (Butcher, you’re a genius. Thx to you, my Kodak is working again! Note to self and anyone else who wants to know: the man has hidden talents)

Simone Boswell from Enterprise Ireland

Renee Blodgett, Tariq Krim and Reshma Sohoni from Seedcamp

Who are these Irishmen who look so suspect? Hmmm, isn’t the one on my left an imposter? As English as they come Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead?

Crikey and golly-gee, it IS Nick Halstead? Does that mean the English actually showed up? Yes, and then some peeps; it was well worth the trek from all pockets of the continent.

Paul Hayes and his adorable and energetic son (after too many brown sugar cubes) at Dublin’s Westbury Hotel.

Matt Galligan and Tariq Krim

Product briefings Dublin style? (under an umbrella). Owen Cooney with Tunepresto.

BTW, pub crawls are VERY different on the other side of the pond. Think ambience, storytelling, dogs and drapes on decadent windows to die for. The fabrics and carpet are also incredibly rich even if they don’t always match….(details, details, details…)

More of those dark black glasses that I used to peg for New York ten years ago.

Had I brought a different lens with me, this shot could have been incredible!

Famine Memorial in Dublin

Halloween Dublin style

Did I mention pub crawls were part of the agenda? Just remember that while some damn good conversations happen on golf courses, they also happen in pubs, under wet umbrellas and in cafes where they serve dark chocolate, dark coffee and dark beer.

Sloane Berrent

John Firzsimons with Camara and Ray Smith from DataHug (who won an award at Dublin’s Web Summit – check out the details on www.datahug.com). 

Frankie Gavin and De Dannan play at the Iveagh House (okay, so they jammed….man I was dying to dance)

And not only did I love her voice but she knows how to entertain; let’s remember that not all ‘entertainers’ do.

Eddy Carroll of Amulet Devices

Ever taste Guinness beans?

A sit-down four course dinner which drew Dublin’s mayor for the opening speech followed by Niklas Zennstrom who sponsored the evening.

While we’re on the topic of hosted dinners, the food was fabulous –– everywhere.

There’s more Guinness in these photos than technology. Details, details, details.

A view from the front of Bono’s house late at night. (yes in the rain. Did I mention that it didn’t stop raining? I know I certainly tweeted about it).

While we’re on the topic of Bono, there’s an alley that runs alongside his house and on the stone walls and entry way gates and doors are messages that combine asks, pleas, thanks, and love to this renown superstar.

lt’s not quite Amsterdam but there are plenty of bikes outside plenty of cafes.

St. Stephen’s Green which dates back to 1663

Meet Tommy the Lipp and no, he’s not part of the conference but he’s very much part of Dublin. I thought I’d end with a photo that could only be taken in Ireland. Many lads tdought I had an ‘Irishness’ abooute me and now tdat I’m back, I’m finding that my th’s are disappearin’ on mei and otder letters are getting a taad confuused too.

Not just the F.ounders and Dublin Web Summit rocked, but Ireland did too even in the pouring and drizzly rain. Thanks for the memories Dublin!

Founders, funders, entrepreneurs, investors, and men who can all tell a damn good story are gathering in Dublin Ireland this weekend for two technology conferences, demonstrating that it’s not just the yanks and most certainly not just Silicon Valley geeks who can come up with successsful start-up ideas.

Skype founder and now Atomico Niklas Zennstrom sponsored the kick off F.ounders dinner last night, the invite-only event co-organized by Paddy Cosgrave. The event, dubbed ‘Davos for Geeks’ in Dublin, is spread over a 2.5 day period.

It runs along side with the Dublin Web Summit, which has managed to pull 600 attendees, all registered for a series of ‘sessions’ that ranged from developer tools and social media best practices to digital marketing and advertising today and successful company case studies. 

Both events are extremely well organized and have a number of high-touch elements to them, including a private whiskey tasting, sit down dinners, book signings (@vanessafox has a new one out called Marketing in the Age of Google), pub crawls and walking tours.

American and European technology visionaries flew in for the event as well, giving talks at both events while holding media interviews with the local press. Jack Dorsey of Twitter (and Square) was on local TV and Jack, together with Directi founder Divyank Turakhia, Niklas Zennstrom, YouTube’s Chad Hurley and Bebo founder Michael Birch were photographed for the Irish Independent and the Irish Times.

What’s with the visionary GLASSES guys? No doubt, it must have been a fun one to shoot I’d imagine. Love the lighting in the hard copy newspaper that people still read in Ireland.

READING was a notable difference here – very few entrepreneurs had their Twitter handle on their business cards and I discovered countless people reading books, magazines and newspapers in Dublin’s St. Stephens Green (which dates back to 1663 btw) NOT on an iPad, iPhone or a Blackberry, even in the drizzly rain.

Dublin’s mayor who apparently is one of the few in office who use Twitter regularly, gave a talk at the opening dinner as well. Niklas followed before we all did a ‘ching ching’ (with an Argentinian Malbec) before, during and after salad, soup, a main course of chicken, potatoes, string beans and squash. Dessert? Berry tart with powdered sugar and ice cream of course, what else?

Immediately before dinner TechCrunch Europe’s Robin Wauters interviewed Chad Hurley in a small but crowded standing-room only room. Funnily enough, they had English quartered sandwiches and American beer by the bottle (I guess that’s what the after event pub crawls are for since there have been plenty of yummy Guiness, stouts and ciders for the taking on every corner).

Three out of four panelists in the “Life as an angel: Seeding Innovation, Culture, Clashes & Funding” panel were yanks: TechStarts Tom Keller, Dave McClure and Jeff Clavier (okay, so he’s French, but he lives in the Valley which impacts perspective), and Reshma Sohoni from Seedcamp (based in London).

Everyone else outside the states has an inferior complex someone threw out there and “doesn’t need to.” Says Jeff regarding lack of capital, “you don’t need that much. You just have to be really smart about getting $50K, then you can bring on sales, then you build a real business, then build cash flow, but just start somewhere…..raise $50K and take off from there. The whole premise of having to raise a ton of capital to build a real business is not necessary. Build a business that produces cash flow.”

Others agreed and McClure told Irish investors and entrepreneurs that they better invest here at home because if they don’t, developers and creators will go to the states or get funding from somewhere else. He says, “if any of you own a car that is worth more than $25K, you have money to invest.”

There is increasingly more activity in the angel investment sector than there is with traditional VCs and it’s continuing to grow, particularly in the states. Companies simply don’t need the kind of capital they did, even five years ago, to build a company that is sustainable and profitable.

Take a look at Mike Butcher’s TechCrunch post on the event.