Within just two years, we’ve grown to one of the largest, iOS and Android focused mobile apps developers in Germany, servicing major brands. With publ.me, we’ve created a revolutionary iPad publishing platform, that not only coined the term “iPad publishing made easy” – hence the “me” in publ.me – but is also used by market leading companies across the globe.

In fact, a comparison conducted by renowned management consultancy Arthur D. Little found publ.me to be the most comprehensive, affordable and easy to use offering in this market.

I’m in this game for quite a while and do understand, that success fosters envy.

Still, I was somewhat surprised this morning, to find voice application professional Excelsis Business Solutions AG – who has just recently jumped on the app development bandwagon – to go online with what’s almost a 1:1 copy of the GrandCentrix corporate homepage.

Here’s the original GrandCentrix homepage, as it has been online since almost two years (click to enlarge):

And here is Excelsis Business Solutions’ shameless copy under the brand name apperplace:

Some say, if an established player (at least in the voice industry) is unable to come up with her own original ideas and starts copying yours, one should feel humbled.

So we brainstormed ideas from taking legal action to trying to get in touch.

We finally came up with an even better one: What makes for a better argument in customer presentations, talks and sales meetings, if you can prove a company that’s in business since 1998 feels tempted to bluntly copy your ideas, design, messaging and content?

We’ve started modifying our Keynote presentations and all of our sales collateral. We’ve added a brief intro, showcasing how desperate some of our competitors really are. And if they’re desperate, that’s usually a good sign!

Besides this, we still believe, if you’re serious about iPad publishing, you’ll likely not hand your business to a $99 construction kit company, anyway.

A former boss, who has founded one of the largest Internet companies on the planet, taught me to “lead, don’t follow”.

Today, Excelsis Business Solutions has proven being good at copying. We stay tuned.

Last year, my MLOVE post was titled “It’s all about the people“.

This year, I struggled finding a headline, that would potentially express it even better. I couldn’t. MLOVE 2011 still was all about the people and hopefully that aspect will never change.

Covering the spirit and nature of MLOVE in a blog post is virtually impossible. You have to be there and experience it yourself to completely understand it.

So this year, here is my unordered list of feelings and observations that I’d like to share with you:

• MLOVE still is the one and only industry event – if one can even name it like this – that I’d pay for privately to attend. I’ve had the pleasure to visit SXSW, LeWeb, eComm, NEXT Conference, WWDC and many others in my professional life. Don’t get me wrong. Those are great conferences. But they are not family. And MLOVE sort of is.
• Thanks god, MLOVE does not suffer from “tech celebrification”. The speaker and attendee lineup was impressive. But it’s not the MG Sieglers or Michael Arringtons that you meet during MLOVE. In fact, at LeWeb 2010 those guys were escorted like superstars, as if they had to escape their audience. At MLOVE, Thomas Goetz the Executive Editor for WIRED Magazine and Chamillionaire, a Grammy-winning rapper, could very well end up next to you during dinner or in one of the Future Cubes, applying design thinking methodologies to complex problems. After all, we’re all just humans and in this together.
• Big company names just mean nothing. The MLOVE team made a good decision not even printing the name of the company you belong to on your badge. At MLOVE whether you’ve been sent by a giant telco or just launched your one-man-passion-startup, everybody gets treated equally. In other words: You get an audience because of what you have to say, not whom you work for.
• What happens at MLOVE, stays at MLOVE. During his opening remarks, Harald Neidhardt put it this way: “We try to make you leave your comfort zone. And hopefully find a new one here at MLOVE.” And while it takes MLOVE newbies some getting used to, I’ve never seen so many people whom I just met opening up like this. A truly rewarding experience.
• It’s like coming home. MLOVE is a truly international event. People from all over the world gather in the MLOVE castle. I’m connected through various Social Networks with many, but unfortunately, some I only see in person once a year. At MLOVE. And it always feels like family. Returning to the castle. Returning to this inspiring group. That is a fantastic feeling!
• Though I don’t have any official numbers, MLOVE felt bigger this year. In 2010 we were a group of approx. 150. The crowd since has grown to roughly 250. While adding more diverse viewpoints, perspectives and stories of life is a good thing, I hope MLOVE will stay with this size or even downsize a bit. Why? Because everybody is worth spending at least some time with. If MLOVE keeps growing, you don’t have a chance to spend much time with most of the attendees but instead risk feeling in a constant hurry.
• No corporate BS. Financing an event like this without falling into the trap of giving sponsors tons of time to present corporate slides is extremely difficult. MLOVE has always been different in this regard. Even Nokia’s German MD, the company was an MLOVE 2011 sponsor, talked about sustainability. And donated grassland and a wish tree to the MLOVE castle. I hope that MLOVE will find a way to keep the balance between size and not being 100% dependent on corporate sponsorship.

Then there was Bernd Kolb.

From the MLOVE website: “Kolb left behind these accolades [he was a chief executive with German Telekom and is the founder of I-D Media, RR] to work as a ‘social entrepreneur’ and ‘change agent’ helping to navigate the complex challenges amongst us and to develop innovative new solutions to deal with those challenges. In founding the ‘Club of Marrakesh’, Kolb gathers international thinkers, scientists, politicians and entrepreneurs to develop integrated ground-breaking projects and to implement them. The approach is entrepreneurial in nature and follows the principle that sustainability can be only achieved through profitability.”

Bernd’s talk about the fundamental global challenges our planet and society are facing and his passion to transform the world towards sustainability was one of those rare defining moments in life for me.

It’s not, that Bernd presented any facts that haven’t been around or available before. It again, was all about the people. I happened to sit in the first row during Bernd’s talk and could literally feel his dedication, passion and strong believe in our ability, to help driving that transformation.

It was mind blowing, touching and a wake-up call much deserved.

When Harald thanked Bernd for contributing this to MLOVE, he could hardly hold back his tears. The crowd gave standing ovations.

Finally, the MLOVE Teen Camp.

Last year, Harald’s daughter Toni Neidhardt gave a talk about the impact of Mobile to her teen life. At the age of 15. It’s available at vimeo and I strongly encourage you to watch it.

That discussion sparked the idea of doing a Teen Camp at MLOVE 2011.

On day three the young MLOVErs from countries all over the world presented their work. And boy did they deliver.

To me, the strong contrast between Bernd pointing out the global challenges we all are facing and shortly thereafter seeing these wonderful, brilliant young people shaping their ideas for their future, that made it an even more intense experience.

And sort of reemphasized our mutual responsibility and the fact that each and everyone of us can and must help. As Aape Pohjavirta put it during his talk: “We have no excuses.”

Besides this, I think these kids should go out to German schools and teach the teachers to teach.

Thank you.

I’d like to thank Harald and his wonderful team for putting this together and letting us feel their passion. Back into my home office, I hope I will be able to carry some of it over to my professional and private life.

Namaste.

The open source initiative aims to become a distributed Facebook competitor, or, in their own words, “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network”.

Wow, what a bold mission statement!

I was lucky enough to get one of the early invites and naturally – I love the Open Web! – I signed up immediately and got… disappointed, like so many others. Point is: There was nobody else on DIASPORA.

So today, roughly three months after signing up, I took another look.

And boy I got surprised: A very special, very well-known friend had connected with me, Mr. Leo Laporte!

Likely, there’s hardly anybody in the tech universe, who doesn’t know about Leo and his TWiT Netcast universe.

I asked myself: Could this be the real Leo? – I mean, the real, real Leo Laporte? As a long standing listener of This WEEK in TECH, I knew Leo is keeping transcripts of his shows on the TWiT Wiki. I wanted to find out.

Turns out, not only is this the real Leo. Actually, the great act of the two of us becoming close friends is even documented! On video! Set in stone! Forever!

Check out This WEEK in TECH Episode #276 below. Just hit the play button and you will become an eyewitness. If you happen to watch on YouTube, you need to manually tune in to 1:44:38.

Here we go:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybAcCLByjbc

Unfortunately, Leo hasn’t said much on DIASPORA besides the “Derp” from this very episode. Me neither. It’s a sad story.

But I’m not exactly the depressed type of person and I want to bring back the spark to Leo’s and my relationship. My hope is, that once this post is out, he’ll remember. His DIASPORA user name and password (I had to look up mine today) and… of course me!

Leo, if you’re out there, please get in touch!

I’d love to join one of the next TWiT episodes, skyping in all the way from Germany, to celebrate our friendship in person! And if Jeff should be around, I’d be more than happy to provide a native German perspective on “privacy in Blurmany”. :-)

Just gimme a sign. On DIASPORA, if you prefer.

On a more serious note: Things on DIASPORA got pretty quiet shortly after launch in general. The DIASPORA blog has no posts between November 2010 and end of January 2011. There’s hardly been any exciting media coverage, either.

Would it be fair to state: DIASPORA is dead?

Starting your own venture, strongly believing in your ideas and working on it with a highly motivated team is what always drove me – and I admit, I’m somewhat addicted.

I often hear: It only happens in The Valley. Well that is not true.

Here’s the 2010 List of best known German Serial Entrepreneurs:

(Click to enlarge)

One-fifth of the planet’s population is active on social media platforms. The Bees Awards will showcase how companies make the best use of new communication tools. This prestigious event will be held in San Francisco on November 9th, 2010.

“Social media is a growing phenomenon that calls for new communication and marketing expertise,” said Bastien Beauchamp, Founder of The Bees Awards. “Contrary to advertising, social media is “real” – it involves real people, real conversations, real products, real companies and real brands. Marketing legends David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach advocated the necessity of being in constant contact with the consumer’s reality. The Bees Awards will recognize those who have most expertly married this original spirit with today’s technology to create social media that transcends all marketing that’s come before it.”

The Deadline for Entry Submissions is October 1st, 2010.

1st International Social Media Award Show for Communication and Marketing Professionals – The Bees Awards from BeesAwards on Vimeo.

Nominees will be announced October 21st, 2010 at 7pm PST on the Bees Awards website at http://www.beesawards.com and via Twitter (@beesawards #beesawards). The Awards Gala will take place in San Francisco on November 9th, 2010. It will be streamed live at http://www.beesawards.com and via Twitter (@beesawards #beesawards).

The Bees Awards seek to  fill the gap in current marketing awards competitions by focusing solely on recognizing excellence in social media across multiple platforms. The Bees Awards team has established three key criteria:

1. The Bees Awards are for communications and marketing professionals including: public relations and advertising agencies, advertisers, consultants, freelancers, students, business managers, and entrepreneurs.  People who pay or are paid to leverage social media tools to accomplish a corporate purpose may enter. No other social media awards exist for social media marketing practitioners.
2. The Bees Awards are  the first social media award show with representation from an international jury panel. Social media has no boundaries, but every country has its own expertise and practices.  The Bees Awards goal is to incorporate this ever-changing global knowledge base in its selection/judging process.
3. The Bees Awards will be awarded for delivering excellence in the various categories as judged by a jury of expert practitioners. It is not about being famous; it’s about executing impressive communications that are recognized by the jury to stimulate and challenge the industry. The jury has the responsibility to be the guardians of emerging media brilliance  and to help give  direction to the industry.

Looking very much forward to fantastic submissions and a great event in November!

Given my known addiction for All-Things-Apple and my fairly open bias when it comes to Android with all of its attributed iPhone killer potential, I decided to give Android a fair chance to win my heart.

I handed my iPhone to my wife for her to store it in a secret place and force myself to solely use the Motorola Milestone.

The setup

The Milestone is the European version of the US market’s Motorola Droid and is known as a flagship Android based smart phone. It ships with the latest version 2.1 of Google’s mobile phone operating system and I got it bundled with a Vodafone flat data tariff.

I believe from the hardware & services perspective it would be fair to say that I’ve chosen a leading Android setup for my experiment, thus making sure that in case of a failure nobody blames the device or mobile operator.

Preface

Many reviews have been published about Motorola’s device, the Android 2.1 software in general and how both play together. While most of them acknowledge the somewhat ugly clunky overall user experience delivered by the hard- and the software, they generally tend to be positive.

For whatever weird reason the tech news scene tends to grant everything coming out of Google with premature praise.

I’m not going to add another full-blown review of the Motorola Milestone, if you’re looking for one, a Google search will reveal many great articles.

Why I learned to hate Android

Instead, here is my official list, why Android does not work at all for me, why I believe it’ll not kill the iPhone anytime near soon and why in fact I totally disagree with most of the hype that comes along with Android as a perfect smart phone platform.

Disclaimer: I consider myself pretty tech-savvy. There might be solutions, workarounds, tweaks and updates available for some of the issues, that I have not been able to find. However, I don’t consider it to be a consumer’s primary task to fix a flawed smart phone OS, so I gave up after four weeks of trying to workaround the many annoyances I’ve found in Android 2.1.

Should you be aware of anything that relates to my points and could help others, feel free to submit via the comments!

And now to the list

1. Initial Setup

It sounds almost unbelievable but unfortunately it’s true: Possibly the most serious bug kicked in right after I unboxed the Milestone and switched it on for the first time.

As part of the setup wizard you’re forced to configure a Gmail account. Android expects your phone to have Internet connectivity at that stage.

Now, here’s the deal: Possibly you’ve password protected your WiFi network and your mobile operator requires you to adjust Access Point Names (APNs) to use mobile data connectivity.

Hence, in the majority of the use cases Android will not be able to connect to the Internet while guiding you through the initial setup routine, simply because you haven’t had any chance to hook up to your WiFi network, yet, nor to configure the device for mobile Internet access.

Consequently the wizard fails and returns an error message complaining about a (quote) “unreliable data connection to Google servers”.

One could argue this should be no big deal, just skip the Gmail configuration part for now, set up WiFi connectivity and add the required account later. Well, quite obvious that’s what I thought, too, but I did not count in the single most annoying issue I’ve ever had with a smart phone:

2. Setting up and adding Gmail accounts regularly requires a hard reset!

Yes, you’ve read that right.

As outlined above I couldn’t set up Gmail connectivity via the setup wizard, so I went ahead and configured Vodafone APNs and connected the Milestone to my home WiFi network. Worked like a charm. Next firing up the Gmail app, entering my credentials and hitting the add account button.

After watching the progress bar for some three minutes, Android complains:

“Can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server. This could be a temporary problem or your SIM card may not be provisioned for data services.”

WTF?!

I’m 100% sure I set up everything correctly but let’s double check: Firing up Android’s browser and trying to surf the web works perfectly fine. Even using the Gmail web interface works like a charm. So data connectivity wise everything was fine. Maybe I’ve misspelled my Gmail credentials?

Back to the Gmail app, adding my account credentials (again) watching each character very carefully while I type… same problem. Android cannot establish a reliable data connection to the freaking Google servers.

Rebooting, double checking Internet connectivity and firewall settings of my home network, trying Gmail desktop apps on my Mac – you name it.

One hour and a half after switching on my first Android phone and I didn’t even get email going, gimme a break!

A Google search for the error message returns some stunning 211.000 results as of this writing. Thanks god – and for some reason sadly enough – I’m definitely not alone with this annoying behavior.

Turns out that the problem not only occurs during initial setup but users frequently report it when trying to add additional Gmail accounts after using the Android for a while.

But there is an official solution: Hard reset your Android phone!

I’m serious: Two years after this extremely serious issue has first been reported, an issue which effectively prevents you from getting push email and buying apps from the Android market, the only solution available to date is to hard reset Android – thus wiping all your data, eliminating everything you’ve configured and deleting all installed apps.

Even if there would be no other issue with Android, this alone renders it entirely useless for anybody who requires reliable access to his or her email account.

I “solved” the initial setup problem by temporarily disabling security for my WiFi network completely, hard resetting the phone and thus allowing Android’s setup wizard to connect.

Two weeks later, I ran into the issue again, when I tried to add my Google Apps based yourdomain-email address to the Gmail application as a second account.

Certainly, I had to hard reset the Milestone, lost all of my data and had to go through the nightmare of manually restoring my important apps from a backup. All of this because I’d wanted to add a second email account.

3. No multi-language keyboard

Roughly 60% of my daily written conversations happen to be in English, the rest in German. For whatever reason Google does not deliver an on-screen keyboard, that’s capable of supporting multiple languages.

This means that whenever I respond to a German email, tweet or Facebook post, I’ve got to go through settings, locale and switch the entire Android UI to German.

Now, if the next email happens to be from a US based friend, I gotta go through it again.

To the contrary the iPhone allows me to configure as many simultaneous keyboard languages as I need, switch between them right from the keyboard while I type and they do not impact the UI language.

Because of the many other minor flaws with the Android’s on-screen keyboard, there are lots of keyboard alternatives available on the Android Market. None of those solve the problem that potentially any international customer will face.

It kind of speaks for itself anyway, that developers seem to see a vital business opportunity in improving exactly the piece of software that’s responsible for something as basic as text input. I never felt I had to look for a “better keyboard” on the iTunes App Store.

4. No central place for application updates

Having worked around the crappy implementation of setting up Gmail on an Android powered phone I moved forward to Android Market, looking for some great apps (and a better keyboard).

While the Android Market looks & feels a bit like websites of the late 80s, purchasing and installing apps worked fine for me. The shopping experience is not as pleasant as known from the iPhone App Store, but from a technical point of view it’s been pretty seamless. You do need to be a Google Checkout member to buy paid apps.

When I read somewhere on a blog about major feature updates for some apps I had installed, I was starting to wonder how I could quickly download those.

The iPhone App Store provides a convenient view which lists all apps with available updates and allows you to do one-click updates or updating all at once.

I launched Android Market and searched for some similar functionality. By now you might already guess what: There is none.

In case you accidentally stumble upon an app you’ve got installed on Market again, it does let you know that there’s an update. But there’s no such thing as a central place for managing all application updates.

In light of the absence of yet another essential feature, another third party tries to fix Android and produced the strangely called aTrackDog app.

It’s one of the most popular apps on Android Market, so I guess many users would actually love to have a better handling of application updates build right into the OS.

(If you take a brief look at the aTrackDog website, you get an idea of how the Android Market feels…)

5. No good Twitter app

I’m pretty sure I’ll receive some flame responses for claiming that there’s nothing compared to what’s available for the iPhone when it comes to Twitter clients.

But those cannot hide away the fact, that iPhone Twitter clients are light years ahead of every single Twitter app for Android.

While most of the Android Twitter clients are entirely crap, there are two which frequently receive fantastic reviews: twidroid PRO and Seesmic.

I’ve tried both. If you’ve ever used Tweetie on an iPhone, you will hate the basic, unresponsive and complicated UI of twidroid PRO. Seesmic does a little bit better usability-wise but does not support multiple accounts.

These are essential for me, as I’m running my private @24z twitter account and the one for The Next Web Germany.

Twidroid recently added the ability to handle multiple accounts but lacks overall usability for quickly tweeting stuff.

None of them support the official Retweet function.

All of the prominent iPhone Twitter apps do all of the above perfectly fine and come with a beautiful user interface.

Seriously, anybody who states that there are better Twitter clients for Android as compared to those available for the iPhone is simply lying.

6. No easy way to take screenshots

This post lacks first hand images.

I would have loved to show you more, but unfortunately something as basic as taking screenshots requires you to install the Android SDK, configure a debug connection and run a command line tool on your computer! For those who don’t mind the hazzle, a good tutorial is available by another third party.

Remember: On the iPhone it’s pressing the Home and the Power button and you get a beautiful photo sitting right in your camera roll waiting to be shared.

I would have loved to show you some screens, but frankly didn’t want to spend another two hours of my time to set up screenshot capabilities just because Google decided to not give us a convenient way.

7. Just three home screens

When I first encountered this, I thought it’s me doing something wrong.

Why on earth should Android only provide three home screens given the Android Market and the potentially hundreds of fantastic apps I’d like to have neatly arranged on my mobile desktop.

Well, I don’t know why, but Android seriously limits the number of home screens to three, providing space for a maximum of 48 apps. One page to the left, one to the right, that’s it.

If you’re adding widgets to the home screen, this number gets even smaller.

It comes as no surprise that Android Market offers complete Home Screen replacements. The ones I tried all sucked heavily, caused frequent crashed and significant performance decreases.

8. Inability to install apps to the SD card

Many Android powered phones ship with SD card support which potentially allows you to upgrade to anything from 2GB to 64GB.

But: Google does not support installing apps to the SD card (and likely never will), so developers are limited in what they can create. For most applications, we want a small file size to limit the download times. When it comes to 3D games though, we need a ton of space for all the high-res textures, audio, and video.

Have you seen all the awesome iPhone and iPod Touch games? Hardly any of them would ever make it onto an Android phone. It is not uncommon for popular titles to easily exceed 100 MB. For example, the game Myst takes up a whopping 727MB.

Having installed only Seesmic and Twidroid on my Milestone the amount of space left to install apps is already down at as little as 139MB.

Maybe that explains the three page home screen limit: You cannot install that many apps on an Android anyway.

(I am aware of hacks and workarounds that include rooting your device and will then allow you to transfer apps to the SD card, but as stated before, I don’t want to waste my time to make up for fundamental Android architecture flaws.)

9. Android’s fragmentation

Many have praised Android’s openness.

I’m generally a strong believer in openness but only if project owners have a clever strategy to prevent fragmentation. This is clearly even more important when we specifically talk mobile operating systems. We already have a situation where Android is not like Android and I’ve seen many apps on the Android Market that do require not only a specific device but also a specific minor version of Android.

That raised the question of how to update the Milestone operating system itself. I am running on 2.1 which is considered the latest and greatest as of today, but what will happen if Google rolls out a major update?

Let’s see. We’ve got Settings > About phone > System updates. After confirming that normal data rates may apply I get:

“Unable to connect. The device is unable to connect to the server. Try again later.”

Thank you. By now, I don’t have to mention that checking for an update never worked so far. Not later. Not later than later. Simply never.

While this specific issue might be more Motorola’s fault than Google’s, frankly, I don’t care.

It’s Google’s freaking operating system and they should have imposed at least basic means of quality assurance to make sure that Android partners provide a consistent experience to consumers.

I’m not asking for simplicity, easy of use, a beautiful user interface, consistency in applications and all of the other stuff, the iPhone does right, but a working mobile operating system in key areas would be a good start.

10. Java exceptions

I have to admit that I did not experience many crashes. The once that did occur, though, were ugly.

Having installed some 25+ apps from Market, I regularly ran into Java exceptions not only in the downloaded apps but also in native Android apps. The only option given was to force quit those processes.

One particular case finally made me drop the Milestone entirely and beg my wife to hand back to me my iPhone 3GS: An unresolvable crash of Android’s email app.

I ultimately set up email to handle four IMAP accounts and Microsoft Exchange integration. It worked for almost two weeks. Then it crashed for no obvious reason. Checking memory consumption and clearing the cache for all Google applications (both of which I never ever had to perform on my iPhone), did not help.

I had to revert to the final solution and the only one, which seems to help with many Android issues:

Hard resetting the phone. Losing all my data. Losing all my applications. Losing all my settings.

Well, this time it came in handy. The Milestone is now perfectly prepared to be sold on eBay.

I’ve long been an author for The Next Web International and occasionally contributed to the German blog, too. We all know that many of the really, really cool technology news originate from the US. Even in our almost 100% virtualized world, that’s a clear location advantage for blogs targeting an English speaking audience.

The Next Web Germany is available since roughly two months now and I’m planning to make some slight adjustments to the content strategy over the course of the next weeks. We might add more commentary posts and will also increase the number of articles from our mother, that we offer as a German translation.

I’m also looking forward to add some really cool new resources to our German team.

They’ll add upon the many different angles and perspectives we try to provide on the stuff that forms the next web. (If you’d like to get in touch, email me at ralf@thenextweb.com, please!)

That said, I’ll continue to write for The Next Web International but am feeling honored to take full responsibility for our German baby!

Finally, I’d like to ask you for your support by

• following TheNextWebDE on Twitter,
• becoming a Fan on Facebook and
• subscribing to our RSS feed.

Thanks and looking forward to get your comments over there!

1. Twitter kills the blogger star

There’s no doubt that we are headed to the real-time web. More capable  mobile devices, a general trend towards mobility and the rise of social networks are rapidly adding new ways to communicate and stay connected to our lives. As in my professional life I’m dealing with communication technologies since more than a decade, it’s quite natural for me to try out all the latest and greatest.

I’m broadcasting brief updates via Twitter and no longer expand them into full blog posts. Twitter is a great tool to find topics of interest and to keep a loyal audience updated. My Twitter stream tends to focus on smartphone related stuff (think “Apple”), Google Wave hints, social media and mobile strategy related content and occasional personal updates.

I highly encourage you to sign up for a Twitter account should you not have one, yet. In case for some weird reason you don’t want to “join the hype” (it’s not a hype anyway, it’s technology evolution), my Twitter updates get replicated to 24100.net and following my timeline can be done without being signed up, as all updates are public.

Without your own Twitter account there is, however, no backchannel, and I like to hear from my readers.

2. The Next Web

The second reason for less update on 24100.net is my increasing editorial work for The Next Web.

The Next Web (TNW) is a leading technology blog driven predominantly out of Europe. We recently grew TNW into a global network, covering local content in many countries, but its roots are in Europe.

Initially I cross-posted many articles but quickly noticed, that 99% of my readers here at 24100.net are also subscribed to The Next Web anyway. In an attempt to not spam their RSS readers, I decided to stop cross-posting. Not only is The Next Web a fantastic opportunity to share my opinion and get in touch with many think-alikes, it’s also a great team and a major source for inspiration.

Here’s what some of the industries most acclaimed internet influentials say about our blog:

Werner Vogels (CTO Amazon): 
“What sets the TheNextWeb apart is a focus on the internet as a key driver for a global market. Their international view is unique, making their blogs a must read and their conferences a must attend for professionals like me who do business around the globe.”

Robert Scoble (tech evangelist):
“I read thousands of news sources for tech industry information and the Next Web is on my short list of ‘must read’.”

What’s next?

I’m not planning to take the 24100.net blog down but instead contemplate various ideas towards giving 24100.net a new content focus. I’ve not yet come to a final conclusion and am currently discussing my early ideas with some close friends. If everything works out fine, I’m going to announce the changes in January 2010.

Stay tuned and let me hear back what you think. Use the real-time web as blog comments are so not Web 2.0 anymore. :-)

Brainstorming ideas on how to leverage and take them to market with my peers is so much fun and I’m very much aware that doing this as a job which allows me to feed my family is something I should never take for granted.

GrandCentrix

Many of you have been contacting me over the past couple of months asking me to reveal details about my new company. Well, I had to be quite for various reasons. Number one: We’ve been in negotiations with Venture Capital firms. VCs typically do not allow you to talk about the stuff you’re planning while you’re talking to them. It does not feel right – as quite obviously founding a new endeavor is something you’re very likely proud of and want to talk about everywhere – but hey, money rules and so we’ve been quite.

This will change shortly.

We’ve managed to find what we’ve been looking for. We are currently in the final steps of sorting out some subtle details. Expect the GrandCentrix website to launch someday next week.

Many fellows, most of them enjoying a secure but pretty boring life working for IT tycoons, warned us that starting a new company in the current economic downturn might be risky. Sure, it is. But one thing I learned during my years of entrepreneurship is, that if you really believe in something, you are going to overachieve more than you thought of would be possible.

I’m glad to report that GrandCentrix managed to win its first customer even before we officially launched! I’m again not allowed to disclose any names but it’s a wonderful first customer to have. A customer who has defined quality standards in her industry more than once and pioneered an entire field in the entertainment industry.

As the Chief Technology Officer of GrandCentrix, I’m obviously quite involved into this project and that partially explains, why 24100.net experiences a bit of a lack of attention. I promise I’m trying to get better, soon.

The Next Web

The Next Web is one of Europe’s most successful technology centric blogs. I’m extremely proud of being one of its regular authors and have to admit that some of my attention and some of the posts which would have made it to 24100.net now get published over at The Next Web.

The team at The Next Web, its founders Boris and Zee, and all the other authors are outstanding. They are smart, visionary, focussed, open minded, thought-leading and bring to the table many different view points, which I particularly enjoy. The conversations we’re having, the start-ups that approach us with first-to-see stuff and all of the eco-system grouped around my work there, is so much inspiring, I love it!

Close friends keep asking me how I cope with the distraction working on so many different projects might cause. However, I believe this is a totally wrong perspective.

The opposite is true: I believe in order to add value to a team running a technology centric company that strives at constantly delivering the biggest value to its customers, you have to make sure that you’re getting a fair amount of insight into leading-edge stuff.

A good example are my journeys into Twitter land.

I’ve received emails from former colleagues asking me why I’ve been jumping right onto this geeky, first-mover service that nobody takes serious. The answer is simple: In my former professional life I’ve been working in the customer care/contact center industry. Unfortunately, innovation in this area comes down to pretty basic stuff, as most customer service organizations are mainly driven by cutting cost and not by enhancing the customer experience (even if they tell you so).

Many good and many bad things have been said about Twitter. One thing is sure: It’s a new communication paradigm. It might be geeky. It might not be mainstream. It might be Web 2.0, Web 2010 (as Robert Scoble uses to say) or all about the real-time web. But it for sure is a new communication paradigm.

If you’ve got children (I’ve got a 10 years old) you will be very well aware that things are changing. That the telephone is by far no longer the most important communication tool of tomorrow’s consumers.

My conclusion: If you want to lead innovation in the customer care industry, you simply have to look into how communication evolves. And that means you’ve got to try out Twitter. You’ve got to play with emerging video communication platforms. You’ve got to look into Google Wave.

Besides this: It’s fun. It’s inspiring. It keeps you young. And it’s ultimately giving you a competitive advantage that will likely leave the big ones behind (keeping in mind their implicit inertia).

As the saying goes: Failing to prepare means preparing to fail!

Google Wave

The media has been a buzz about Google Wave. Analysts predicted the end of email. Google Wave, as does Twitter, establishes new ways to collaborate, communicate and share. That’s why I’m there, too. Trying to get a feeling for the good stuff and the things that need improvement. Always trying to sort out which parts could be applied to real-world problems my customers are facing. How to integrate and leverage the technology stack that’s evolving over there.

Google Wave has not yet been opened to the public. I’m one of approximately 5000 other lucky folks, that have been granted early access. Should you be one of those lucky Wavers, please do add me: I’m 24z@wavesandbox.com. (No emails please, I’m not monitoring the mail part of that account.)

While I primarily use Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Wave and other tools to apply learnings to the services we create for our GrandCentrix customers, sort of a really fantastic byproduct is getting in touch with all of those outstanding smart folks from all over the world.

Quite obviously these services are predominantly used by people who think alike and simply love technology as much as I do. As many services evolve around some sort of communication, getting in touch with others is a key aspect. Actually the Wave shown above is a fairly typical example. I did not know Scot Gardner before. We just happened to be online at the same time, adding comments to the same Wave and we got in touch.

Scot runs a cool blog (Geek Outpost) and I really enjoyed sharing parts of my Google Wave adventure with him.

These sorts of things happen all the time. I’m an absolute believer that if you contribute to communities and openly share your passion, they pay back will all be yours.

The iPhone

You did not expect an article from me, without mentioning the iPhone, did you?

For once the iPhone plays a pretty important role for what we do at GrandCentrix. Our business is not 100% Apple focused, but as the iPhone is the most significantly growing smart phone of our times, it definitely is important for us.

Together with my team at GrandCentrix we are currently working on a revolutionary new user interaction paradigm that will provide users with an unprecedented way of navigating an (entertainment) application.

We hope it’ll impress our customer (yes, the one I’ve been referring to before) as much as it does all our beta testers, boys- and girlfriends, young ones, mamas and papas. The GrandCentrix website will have all the glory details around the October timeframe. That’s also, when the first application based on the technology will be available on the App Store. Stay tuned, it’ll be well worth your time.

Looking for a new job?

I almost forgot to mention: We will have great job openings available at GrandCentrix. If you’re passionate about technology, consider yourself being one of the best in your field and are tired of working in a process overloaded  environment with a boss that might be good in Excel but not in many other things, feel free to get in touch. (For now use the Contact option available here.) More info on specific positions will be available via the GrandCentrix website shortly, but I’m also happy if you just briefly let me know you’re looking for a new opportunity today.

Just explain briefly what you’re up to these days, what you do best and don’t forget to link in some references.

We are happy to welcome home office arrangements and working with an international team is something we consider beneficial.

But be warned: GrandCentrix is truly agile. If you’re a big fan of waterfall project plans and buzzword dominated meetings, GrandCentrix might not be your ideal place to work at.

Anything else?

As for my professional life, 2009 has by far been the best year for me, since leaving the corporate world in 2004. Privately, I’m enjoying my time with the love of my life – who in many ways forced me to do exactly what I’m doing these days – and our 10 years old boy is doing extraordinarily fine.

We’ve recently completely reworked the home office, which is now serving as an office for both of us, taking away some of the loneliness that sometimes goes along with writing detailed updates like the one you’re currently reading late in the evening.

I’d like to thank all of my readers, subscribers, followers and Wave peers for keeping me motivated and the many good conversations we had.

Hope to read, meet and talk to you soon!

Thanks for being patient with me during my “twitter-account-merger-mania”!