One new blog every minute!

Amazing! According to Technorati every second somewhere a new blog goes online!
“The Pew Internet study estimates that about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. According to Technorati data, there are about 70,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about [...]

Digital Identity 2.0

I recently got pinged from a consultant in the US, who knew pretty well everything about me. When I asked him, how did he know all this, he told me: “Look at ZoomInfo! They know you in-side-out!”.
“ZoomInfo, the premier summarization search engine, delivers fresh, comprehensive information on over 27 million business professionals and two million [...]

Jajah moves HQ to Silicon Valley

An interesting Austrian start-up called Jajah has been making a lot of traction and “noise” in the VoIP market. Some people are calling it already Skype 2.0 as the company positions itself “JAJAH introduces global VoIP telephony between normal landline and mobile phones – without software download, installation process and headsets.” and a potential successor [...]

Good news for start-ups!

European start-ups and entrepreneurs can look positively into the future. European venture capital firms raised the highest amount in three years in 2005, with fund-raising totaling €3.7Bn according to VentureOne.
Takeaway: The years after the new economy hype were the most difficult years for start-ups and entrepreneurs to get funding. The recent pick-up in M&A or IPO exits [...]

Neomedia snaps up 12Snap – Munich based start-up

NeoMedia has purchased the mobile phone marketing agency 12Snap established in 1999 for about $22M. According to various sources, more money has flown into this venture than was delivered back to the investors.
Takeaway: Mobile marketing is a booming market. Still early stage, many companies have struggled over the last 5 years to develop a value [...]

Oracle becoming No1 acquirer in OpenSource Space

After having acquired InnoDB in 2005, Oracle is shopping for the next opensource companies in order to boost their software products. Last week, Business Week and others reported that Oracle is watching out for three open source plays, namely JBoss, Zend and Sleepycat. This week, Oracle announced already the acquisition of Sleepycat.
Oracle’s Ellison stated at [...]

Bridging virtuality and reality to create “Virtual Reality 2.0″

Recent start-ups are trying to bridge the gap between reality and virtuality. One of these promising examples is Plazes.com, a Berlin-based start-up established by Felix Peterson. Plazes.com allows you to share the place you are or have been with your friends and connect with them whereever you are. Felix believes that
„… verschiedene Software-Agenten für uns Dinge bloggen werden und [...]

Dialog Imaging Systems receives EUR22.25M First Round

Eur 22.5M have been invested into DIS. The company “makes camera modules for mobile phones which will aim to offer the same superior quality as stand-alone digital cameras. The company’s 41 employees located near Stuttgart, Germany, and at Clinton in the USA will be lead by Roland Pudelko, former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor” according to [...]

Online Searches Grow 55 Percent Year-Over-Year

As highlighted in one of my previous articles, online search is becoming a key element of people’s every day life and business. Nielsen Netratings just reveiled the lastest stelling numbers on consumer behaviour as far as search is concerned.
“The total number of searches in the U.S. conducted across approximately 60 search engines grew 55 percent [...]

First Munich Webmonday a great success

Yesterday, the first Webmonday took place here in Munich, which was a great success. About 30+ people attended an event well organized and moderated by Sigi Hirsch. Hendrik Mans outlined the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 and which tools he recommends people to use for Web 2.0 applications. Sasch Hameister gave a detailed [...]