Thomas Lidforss - The DealMaker

GWC presentation about the GMIC 2010 conference about mobile internet in China

2010-09-19T08:58:00.000+02:00

The GWC (the Great Wall Club) of China has published a presentation from the GMIC 2010 event in Beijing earlier this year. This presentation high-lights a number of interesting points about the differences in local consumer and business behavior that you have in China vs. USA/Europe.

Some key points:

Everything is focused around micro-payments
Very little use of credit cards
A wide variety of competing services, not like here, focus on one Facebook, one Google, one Ebay...
Extensive use of buying virtual goods
Profitable companies through the massive user base, 800+ million mobile phones, 400+ million internet users

See presentation below;

Chinnovations on China's new media

View more presentations from Mobile Internet Great Wall Club.

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for development of companies and new markets. Contact us.

Excellent presentation on how to bridge business strategy and your brand

2010-06-06T10:58:00.000+02:00

The Brand Gap

View more presentations from coolstuff.

Check out this presentation from Marty Neumeier and Neutron LLC in San Francisco.

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for clients and service providers who are interested in mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services. Get yours today!

Sweden National Day - June 6, 2010 and Start of Love Stockholm festival (updated)

2010-06-06T10:26:00.006+02:00

Today on the Sweden National Day, the Love Stockholm 2010 Festival begins and will continue for two weeks. See http://beta.stockholmtown.com/en/ for tips on what to do if you get an opportunity to visit Stockholm or if you are already here on this beautiful sunny day.

Google is also celebrating by having a special image for the day.

Updated with pictures!

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for clients and service providers who are interested in mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services. Get yours today!

Dennis Gabor celebrated by Google today - The man behind the holographic images

2010-06-05T12:04:00.002+02:00

In case your have noticed the "strange" Google image today, you may want to read the Wikipedia article, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor

Dennis would have been 110 years old today...

Thomas Lidforss International provides business management services for clients and service providers who are interested in mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services. Get yours today, contact http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx

Me On TV and Bar-Deli at the TIE Nordic - SSE Open Mike event for startups Stockholm

2010-06-01T14:33:00.010+02:00

I attended the TIE Nordic event (http://nordic.tie.org/) organized by Hannes Dernehl jointly hosted by SSE organized by Bhavik (http://swedishstartups.ning.com/profile/NordicEntrepreneursNetwork) at the Hub (http://stockholm.the-hub.net/) in Stockholm on May 31.

Neev Technologies Nordic AB (http://www.neevtech.com) is a member of TIE Nordic. Contact tlidforss at neevtech.com for more info about IT outsourcing services provided.

Jeffrey Cole from Ericsson was there presenting the new service Me On TV where the general idea is to encourage businesses to start using user generated content (UGC) for product development and customer services by providing tools to make it as easy as possible for users to record, edit and mix info to be used using their mobile phones. See the Youtube video below for more details.

These events are covered by Open Entrepreneurship (http://www.openentrepreneurship.com/), Björn Paulsson the TIE Nordic Chapter Manager video records and posts on their site. I can recommend registering and signing up at this site if you are interesting in the start up business areas.

One interesting start-up presenting during the "Open Mike" session (where anybody can grab the microfone and present something) was Bar-Deli. See http://www.bar-deli.se/ for more info. The entire business case is very simple, go to any bar in hotels, pubs, restaurants in any city or country
and ask what snacks you can get. The answer in most cases is nothing put peanuts. So, as a result bar-deli packages, sells and delivers custom snacks that are different and healthier. I talked to Niclas Johansson the founder, you can contact him at niclas at bar-deli.se.

Thomas Lidforss International provides mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services for clients and service providers, get yours today!

The Fierce15 - Top Wireless winners for 2010 from FierceWireless.com

2010-05-31T12:15:00.006+02:00

Here's the fresh list of companies appointed winners this year by FierceWireless magazine. Read the full article at this address;

http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/fiercewireless-fierce-15-2010

or check out each one of the companies below;

- AirHop Communications - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Bump Technologies - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- ComiXology - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Dashwire - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Full Spectrum - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Ground Truth - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Harbinger Capital Partners - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Illume Software - iZup - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Open Kernel Labs - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Powermat - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- SpiderCloud Wireless - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Swype - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Ubidyne - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Validas - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

- Vitality - Top Wireless Company 2010: FierceWireless, Fierce 15

Thomas Lidforss International provides mobile, VAS, IT outsourcing services for clients and service providers, get yours today!

Mobile High-tech along the ski tracks of Vasaloppet 2010

2010-03-07T12:09:00.006+01:00

Mobile high-tech along the ski tracks of Vasaloppet. I wonder if the old king of Sweden, Gustav Vasa could have imagined that 490 years later, you can as a skier following live streaming on your mobile what is happening up front in the 90 km ski race on your mobile while you are skiing. But thanks to http://svtplay.se/t/107631/vasaloppet services you can in the year 2010, RFID and GPS services combined with video streaming makes this the high-tech race for sure. It was funny to see and hear a guy with starting number 8600 something to talk about the front skiers with Tynell in the lead becasue he watched it on his mobile phone.

I think this is just the beginning of what is to come, just wait until 4G LTE services are widely available.

Google Sweden is also celebrating the 86th Vasaloppet race by a special logo today.

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Projectplace - Collaboration around your projects in the cloud

2010-02-28T12:50:00.005+01:00

Here's an overdue post about the growing popularity of cloud services. Projectplace sponsored in cooperation with SalesForce an event to highlight the status of project and collaboration services.

Niklas Zandelin, CEO, Exido talked about enablers such as service buses and a core focus on cloud services allowing processes between all actors. Cloud SLA documents are also now available within the EU and US markets. And recent trends with CFOs who all want to see no CAPex and only modest OPex.

Johan Zetterstrom VP Nordics, SalesForce.com presented the growth and history of SalesForce. He emphasized that at Salesforce you pay per user not apps used. Projectplace is a salesforce app on the app platform.

The scope of SalesForce with their AppForce;
- 125k apps on app platform.
- Service cloud with 6k customer.
The first 100 developers can develop for free first app.

Magnus Ingvarsson, Magnus.Ingvarsson at projectplace.se, Founder of Projectplace.

Projectplace after 2008
- 105 employees
- 129 MSEK revenue
- 18 MSEK ebit result

Magnus illiustrated how Projectplace sees cloud services vs. their project services;

PaaS (Platform as a service) is a vertical one addressing the app layer scope
IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) is the horizontal infrastructure layer
Integration as a service is the vertical management layer
Apps are of course the apps on the PaaS layer
UI
SaaS (Software as a Service) is what the users see and use

There are as he pointed out, of course a certain way of getting sold on a certain architecture. Each one of the major cloud services architectures has their own way of interworking between apps, similar but still slightly different meaning that once you have chosen an environment to use, you have work to do if you would like to change later.

Projectplace also sess a role for their project cloud services as a good fit for BPO services where you have a need for local and remote project management and that you should when you consider cloud services, see the whole picture from on premises, host outsource, cloud and SaaS.

Would you like to get the best IT project deals? Contact me asap! http://tinyurl.com/yjgqmxo

The MJ Launcher part2 - Transforming Your Mobile Experience see updated info in previous post

2009-11-04T12:14:00.003+01:00

I just updated the MJ Launcher posting, see previous post http://tlidforss.blogspot.com/2009/10/mjetzappgif.html or go and check out, http://mjetz.com from your mobile phone browser.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select representation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

The MJ Launcher - Transforming your mobile experience (updated)

2009-10-14T18:06:00.004+02:00

Here's a quick review of Mjetz or the MJ Launcher application.

The MJ Launcher is using patented active widget technology to smoothly blend browsing, RSS feeds and IM/email services in your mobile phone. MJ Launcher is presently only available as a J2ME app on your phone (works on 1B+ phones in the world though). But I think you have to imagine what can be done on new touch screen iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Symbian devices.

The major advantage of using the MJ Launcher is that you can get your own "UI" the way you want to have it based on your internet needs regardless of what the phone was delivered with.

The best way to test mjetz (today) is to use a J2ME enabled phone and download from the phone browser using http://mjetz.com

The site recognizes IP addresses and should propose a local version automatically. If not you can select by using e.g. http://mjetz.com/cn

Please also note that mjetz today is not what mjetz will and can become tomorrow. New local versions are being developed all the time regarding language and content.

If you register as a user and logon to mjetz from your computer, you can customize your phone from the computer in addition to the phone.

There is also an admin tool that can be provided for operators and content aggregators/distributors so you can customize content and configurations for your customers.

New versions in particular for touch screen phones are under development by mJetz such as an active widget Google Android version including plans for iPhone and Windows Phones. There are for this company and products investment opportunities for companies who are interested in this.

Please feel free to test and try services.

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How to make real money out of virtual money in your virtual world

2009-09-27T11:08:00.006+02:00

Virtual Worlds and Entrepreneurship _Teigland

View more presentations from Robin Teigland.

I attended a very interesting event with a presentation around the topic "Virtual Worlds and Entrepreneurship" at the IVA center in Stockholm, Sep. 22.

Guest speaker was Robin Teigland, Associate professor at Stockholm School of Economics (SSES), http://www.hhs.se

Here are som quick facts (but I encourage you to view the embedded presentation).

579 M users
68 MUSD invested in 1Q 2009
Tweens biggest user group
39% increase in userbase from Q1
Games and strategy players have started incorporating on their resumes/CVs facts about what they manage and are capable of doing in the virtual world
2 BUSD in micro transactions
One example, Mindark's Entropia Universe has got 780k users, 420 MUSD in revenue AND a real and virtual bank
Another examle of how you can make money, one guy sold the virtual Asteroid Space Resort for 100k USD in 2005

Some Chinese sites on the subject;

Robin and SSES are using Linden labs' Second Life services, http://www.secondlife.com for education, research and cooperation with other universities. See as one example the SSE Island area on SecondLife.

The use of 3d virtual worlds will expand to develop demos, showcases and training programs. IBM is e.g. using it to design "green" data centers.

Some company examples; IBM island and Accenture island, for more information about research contact robin.teigland at hhs.se

http://www.knowledgenetworking.org
http://www.slideshare.net/eteigland
http://www.secondlife.com

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Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009 Update - Get the presentations while available

2009-09-24T17:17:00.003+02:00

Here's a quick update, if you would like see the presentations from the Sweden-US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009 event, check out the following link while they are still available.

http://www.esbri.se/sweden-us/2009_presentations.asp

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Epicor 9 - Product launch event at Nalen, Stockholm

2009-09-20T11:41:00.009+02:00

I attended the product launch event of Epicor's latest, Epicor 9. For those of you who do not know Epicor; Epicor is a world-wide developer and distributor of ERP systems. Epicor has more than 2800 customers in 143 countries. Epicor is a Microsoft Gold Partner. See http://www.epicor.com for company details.

Stefan Westelius, swestelius at epicor.com, partner evangelist at Epicor Sweden introduced the launch event.

The theme for the event was Protect, Extend and Converge. The goal; protect existing iScala customer base and installations while allowing a kind of "best of breed" set of service extensions to be made available and the option of converging into one system with the new Epicor 9 release.

Protect

iScala - The ERP

Some interesting notes around new release, support for the following areas:

SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is an EU payment standards initiative. The EPC (European Payments Council) develops the framework needed to implement the Single Euro Payments Area. See
www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu for details.

Svefaktura is a Swedish standard for electronic invoicing. See information from SFTI steering group for details, http://www.svefaktura.se

SAF-T (Standard Audit File for Tax Purposes) support. See http://www.oecd.org/.../0,2340,en_2649_33749_34910329_1_1_1_1,00.html for guidance information.

Epicor has an interesting way of supporting old products as long as customers buy maintenance services without forcing customers to upgrade to new releases.

Extend

The "extend concept" allows for ala carte type set of selecting your most wanted applications for your business. One good example demoed was Storefront, the e-commerce site service. I really like the way Epicor does a demo, you integrate your powerpoints with hotlinks to iScala and log in to the live service. This provides an excellent view of what you are presenting and what the application does for your business.

Storefront your one stop shop for e-commerce sites that can be used as a complement to your existing website or also as a tool for creating your business site.

Converge

With the new Epicor 9, in addition to the integration of different products into one system, comes new front ends. You do not have to be used any longer to find information the "traditional way" with a client application looking through tables and forms. Now, you can just search, like the "Google generation", just search and you will find the answer. The new release comes with search integration and information presented with hotlinks and relevance count, so you can find an answer to any question you may have. I like the format, very blog label inspired.

Since I had to leave for a conference call, I missed the afternoon part with the tech details but I have to say thank you to the Epicor people for an excellent setup and arrangements. I understand why SAP is watching what Epicor does...

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Notes from Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009, Sep 16 in Stockholm

2009-09-17T16:25:00.008+02:00

I attended the first day of this event in Stockholm. Here are some key notes and comments from some of the presenters;

Magnus Aronsson, Managing Director for ESBRI, the institute for entrepreneurs and small business research, http://www.esbri.se and Randy Mitchell, Private Equite Specialist, U.S. Department of Commerce were the co-chairs of this event. Randy talked among other things about the usefulness of the SBIC, Small Business Investment Company. For more info see http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/financing/sbic.html

Jöran Hägglund the State Secretary, Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and COmmunications was also part of the introduction. A panel about the role of government followed. Us view basically "Get the Government out of the way"... where as the Swedish version is more of Government guidance and control...

My two cents out of this is basically, I think Sweden needs to explore the "Chinese" way of developing businesses, "create economical free zones" where you as an entrepreneur can get a number of years of no tax and other benefits to get a chance succeeding building a new business that can become a big enterprise. All the political parties and people are just too focused on getting (re)-elected to their offices and cannot do what it takes. One simple example is, why should I have to pay 100k SEK (about 15k+ USD) to register a corporation in Sweden when it will cost you about 30 USD in Las Vegas and less than 250 pounds in UK... and why should you have to pay about 55% tax on personal company income (salary)??

The next session focused on how to get funded these days in the aftermath of a world-wide financial crisis.

Kimberlie Cerrone, entreprenuer and involved with The Angels Forum in Palo Alto, CA. See http://www.angelsforum.com and kimberlie at gmail.com or +14153782838.

Some points;

1M USD in revenue is what investors are looking for
"Put me as no 1 on your B round of funding"
Intrapreneurship
Great crop of companies will evolve in the years 2012-2014 in the valley once liquidity available

As a reference for Kimberlie, see also

http://www.esbri.se/pdf/Panel_4_Kimberlie_Cerrone.pdf

Clare Fairfield, Managing Director Concerto Ventures was next, for more info about Clare see http://www.esbri.se/artikel_visa.asp?id=506

Some points;

Government programs can be more useful for entrepreneurs these days
Use service providers
VC companies with over 50M USD will get new SEC regulatory rules
Consider cross border alliances
Break down funding needs into smaller pieces
Conserve, conserve, conserve your cash needs
Use milestones whenever possible
Funding rate 1-2%
Success rate 10-20%
Fail rate 20-40%

A conclusion I make of his presentation was basically as before, do not use VC money unless you have no other way of getting funded.

Katarina Bonde, Managing Director of Kubicorp was up next in the funding section. See for e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/katarina-bonde/0/23/78b for her public LinkedIn profile.

Here are her options for getting funded;

Through revenues
Regional funds
If you have got positive sales go to bank
If you are in the export business go to EKN (Exportkreditnämden), http://www.ekn.se
Use covertible debt
Finance through invoices
Joint projects with customers
Partner with distributors
Create a pre pay business model
Barter of trade your products or services
In Sweden check out the SVCA list of VCs, http://www.svca.se
Look in different regions of the country and start there
Partner with customers in a coop, example given, in state of Washington, a wine development company started by inviting interested customers to buy shares of the company to get started

Mikael Karlsson, Managing Director and Fund Manager presented the newly created ALMI Invest.

ALMI has been around for quite some time but this spring they have launched the new investment part of the company. See http://www.almi.se

Regional offices owned by Swedish counties to 49%
They do equity investments
1-10 MSEK put up by them
Mission is to bridge gap to get started
They have 7 regional funds, 1B SEK, launched in spring 09, 50% EU funding
Max 50% co-funding is the rule
They are looking for 5-15 MSEK investments, companies with good potential and within 7 yrs an exit

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

Update on Windows Mobile Marketplace launch event in Stockholm

2009-09-07T08:26:00.005+02:00

Windows Marketplace for Mobile Developer Registration Walk Through

View more presentations from Mike Francis.

Here's an update on an event I attended early summer. For those of you that missed the presentations, Per Ahlberg Developer Evangelist Microsoft has made the presentations available om his MDSN blog, http://tinyurl.com/kr9m8h

Johan Huss Mobile Solutions Specialist Microsoft presented Windows Mobile 6.5 that will be available on Oct. 7 in Sweden. Among the features, a "thumb" friendly touch friendly UI with good support for widgets. I tested the new UI features on an HTC Touch and Samsung Omnia and works very well for touch operation.

In addition to "touch" being a big thing with launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, MyPhone is a new convenient service where you as a user can sync and manage your phones data on the web. Works very well for managing contact data and syncing with your phone. This service works for older phones also, you do not have to wait for 6.5 to start using it. See for further details,
http://myphone.microsoft.com

Philippe Goldstein, Microsoft France presented the launch of Windows Mobile Marketplace.

Some comments;

No Java or scripts allowed in marketplace
Native code, managed code and widgets allowed
3-4 weeks for application certification
Cost 99 USD for 1st year for 5 apps thereafte per app
Revenue sharing, developer gets 70%, Microsoft (and partners) 30%

See for more information the Windows Mobile blog;
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/default.aspx

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Sino-Sweden Mobile Internet Business Seminar about upcoming GMIC conference in Hangzhou

2009-09-02T14:18:00.007+02:00

Some quick news about a Chinese delegation visiting Sweden and the Kista Science City in Stockholm. I attended eariler today the Sino-Sweden Mobile Internet Business Seminar at the Stockholm Kista Science Tower, sponsored by ISA, Invest in Sweden agency and GWC, Mobile Internet The Great Wall Club.

The Global Mobile Internet Conference 2010 is coming up in March 2010 in Hangzhou, China. The theme of the conference is Mobile Internet Opportunities in Asia. GMIC wants to promote international cooperation around mobile internet services and issues. GMIC sess Asia as the area of the world where mobile internet is going to be the key area whereas Europe with GSMA is more the mobile operator center and USA and North America is more internet and internet software.

The GMIC is an organization;

Guided by

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China
Minstry of Culture- Ministry of Commerce
State Council Information Office
China Association of Communication Enterprises
China Internet Association

Organizers

Mobile Internet the Great Wall Club,

http://www.thegreatwallclub.com

Co-organizers

MCF (Japan)
YRP (Japan)
IVP (japan)
Sino-Japan Communication Industry Promotion Association
KINTERNET (South Korea)
KWISA (South Korea)
CDMA
CDG

On a personal note, this event was well organized thanks to Tomas Bennich from Kista Showcase and people from Invest in Sweden Agency but I have to complain about whoever manages the facilities in the Kista Science Tower, no ventilation and warm humid air does not work very well for any event, blame global warming or whatever but facilities management has to work in a business building...

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

What to do about Plaxo - Nuke it or?

2009-09-01T11:17:00.006+02:00

Plaxo is I think a sad story, it started as an ambitious service for all office outlook users as a way to synch your business contacts back in 2002 if I remember correctly. Then once the social networking services hype got up to speed, Plaxo became a social networking site with a lot of promise. But with limitations, lack of access to info, screwed up (I think) user interface, and very little has happened even after Comcast acquired Plaxo, I see no future in using Plaxo, I think it is a service that is also rude to users;

Why should I as a user receive hundreds of invitations to get connected by people and I cannot view them (get the warning too many requests, you are too close to the limit 1000, please remove some so you can accept...) but on top of that Plaxo suggests I should connect since there are 5100+ people that I according to Plaxo know. There is no logic to it... to me it seems like if I have too many connections, It should not even be possible for other users to send me a request to connect, they should simply get a message that I have reached Plaxo's limit and that is it!

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Embedded browser in Net TV by Philips

2009-08-30T12:24:00.003+02:00

In case you have not noticed, TV sets are changing. I attended a while ago an event in Kista, Stockholm sponsored by Philips and their new Net TV division. The presenters were;

Åke Johansson, ake.johansson at philips.com head of Philips consumer area and Net TV champion.
Tomas Hedqvist, tomas.hedqvist at m-one.se, consult in digital media and service acqusition partner for Philips in the Nordic region, http://www.m-one.se/
Fredrik Andersson, co-founder Net Tv service from Accedo Broadband, http://www.accedobroadband.com/
Anna Caracolis, CEO of Adimo, mobile consulting services, http://www.adimo.com/, Anna presented practical opinions and results from porting designs from a 3" mobile phone screen to a 42" TV was not difficult.

Some facts about Net TV;

Standard used is CE html
Windows media and H264 supported but no Adobe flash yet
Optimized for 720 by 1080 format
Remote control controlled and operated
Fonts and readability important when designing web services for Net TV
Forecast says about 180M TV sets will be CE html enabled by 2012

The demo TVs used regular 16:9 HD TV sets but Philips also used the opportunity to showcase the new 21:9 see also http://www.consumer.philips.com/c/cinema-21-9/30849/cat/gb/

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Get your facts about who are your different social media users

2009-08-18T18:41:00.006+02:00

Social Media Strategy presentation from Globalization Strategies LLC visualized by the wizards at http://vizedu.com Interesting classification and stats on how you divide your users into different categories. Enjoy the presentation above.

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Jix up your short url links with Adjix

2009-06-26T13:05:00.007+02:00

I have just tested a new shorten or shrink url addresses to use when you twitter, blog or email. Adjix works with the option to have ads from different categories inserted on top of your page. You also get link tracking plus an option to earn money. Works very well and if you choose to have ads to are not very intrusive. The link statistics feature is a nice to have function.

See the pictures and one example of my blog url.

http://adjix.com/fjd8

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Need attention - Get your Google profile business card

2009-05-02T08:18:00.004+02:00

Google has recently launched a new service, get your own free Google business cards based on your Google profile. This offer is so far only available if you have a continental US postal address (and upto 25000 cards) but I think this is a great idea and incentive for anybody who does not have a profile to create one right away. Be aware of also that until you have created one with a vanity url, the address you would like to have will most likely be taken if you wait, remember the early days of dot com address registrations.

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The 100 Mb/s race is on - mobile broadband internet in any form or way

2009-04-10T09:42:00.004+02:00

Now you can get 2x or 3x mobile brodband internet speed to your laptop through the upgrade of HSPA to HSPA+ or as people call it here in Sweden, Turbo 3g+ service. Telia and Tele2 have announced and started selling 14.4 Mb/s or some locations 22 Mb/s, Tele2 14.4 Mb/s only, where as 3 is betting on 22 Mb/s service. 3 has announced the service to be launched during April but not yet updated their website. Telenor has not announced anything yet but will (I think follow soon).

Prices vary from 25-50 USD per month depending on carrier and subscription plan as low as 18 USD per month if you bundle your services. There are many pricing combinations though, I think most consumers are going to find it very difficult to compare the services. The mobile operators are doing a "swiss army-knife" style kind of marketing to cut out the biggest slice of the market for their company. All the operators (except 3) are also still penalizing pre-paid customers by having unrealistic data traffic limitations.

See urls for pricing data:

http://www.tele2.se/mobilt-bredband.html

http://www.telia.se/privat/produkter_tjanster/internet/mobiltbredband/?sl=privat_produkter_tjanster_internet_mobiltbredband

http://www.telenor.se/privat/mobilt-bredband/index.html

http://www.tre.se/templates/BroadbandShop/Storefront.aspx?id=33857&csref=fps_3bredband

This is now being marketed while the race is on to introduce LTE service within a year. The city of Stockholm is aiming at being first in the world with commercial LTE service, something the city of Oslo is also trying to achieve....

A final comment about these service from a hardware point of view, nobody says one word about software upgradability of modems, so if you are a pre-paid customer, you may end up in having to buy three modems within a year and you are out of luck if you have bought a laptop with built-in modem

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ArcticStartup event in Stockholm - Blast from startups in the arctic

2009-04-04T09:48:00.004+02:00

The Finnish ArcticIndex organized the first joint Swedish-Finnish startup event called ArcticStartup in Stockholm last week. The Social Media Business Network, http://www.sombiz.net/ and SwedishStartups were among the organizers in addition to Bonniers Media with as always the colorful Morris Packer as one of the key speakers.

In case you have missed the ArcticIndex site, I can really recommend it to stay in touch with interesting new Nordic and Baltic startups. See picture of people info section below:

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LG GD900 multi-touch smart phone with transparent keypad, mousepad or what?

2009-04-04T04:58:00.002+02:00

Just announced at the wireless CTIA show in Las Vegas, the LG GD900 multi touch phone. I think this is an interesting but a little bit "gimmicky" concept. Has a slider design transparent numerical keypad that doubles as a touchpad with iPhone style mouse functions in addition to the touch screen. This is though a full featured smart phone with touch screen, 8MP camera, video and the usual stuff. Watch the video and you will see the nice UI LG has developed for his phone. It is clear that multi touch and OLED screens will become the new design guide for all smart phones in addition to high resolution camera and video functions.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of outsourcing services!

Open is the New Cool - Open breakfast with Sun and SIME in Stockholm

2009-04-03T09:26:00.008+02:00

I attended the Sun Open Breakfast event that took place at the IVA conference center in Stockholm on April 2. Map of location. This was the first in a series of 'open' breakfast events hosted by Sun Microsystems and SIME. The event was introduced by Ola Ahlvarsson from SIME introducing Stefan Alariksson, the CEO of Sun in Sweden.

Open is the new cool

Stefan explained how and why Sun has moved from being mainly associated with server hardware to an open software and solutions company. Sun has with their packaged solutions of open source software been growing and gaining more customers. Sun in Sweden has about 2B SEK in revenue out of about 200 employees. Stefan also talked about the fact that despite what a lot people think, how can you make any money with open source?, you can, by getting faster and bigger penetration on the market, you classify customers into different segments. The individual user who downloads a copy of MySQL will not want to pay for the software or services but a successful corporate customer needs and wants to pay for qualified professional services. So even if only 10% of the customers pay, Sun is making money.

Open Minds panel discussion

Henrik Torstensson, head of strategy at Stardoll - http://www.stardoll.com a site targetting tween girls and general manaer Piczo, http://www.piczo.com a social networking site where you can easily design your own site, blog, avatars and use games, music, quizzes...

Ulf Ekberg, music entrepreneur from the group Ace of Base and into new business models for the musicians.

Fredrik Runnquist, former IT boss at Swedbank and board member in several corporations.

Stefan Alariksson, CEO Sun Microsystems

Good information was presented, nothing new if you are in this business, but talk about efficient business models, penetration of market share, having real customers, working relations, scalability, value of partnering...

An open table discussion followed. My personal take on this was that there is not enough time to actively start such a discussion, I think for the next event, it would be better if the organizers
focus on a theme and have branch specific people giving their feedback with a possibility to let people participating in the event have a chance to do select networking.

Anders Carlsarv, head of sales, Sun Microsystems, concluded by announcing next Open Breakfast event, May 7 which will focus on Cloud Computing. Monitor http://www.sun.se/breakfast for coming events. Sun has recently published a white paper on Cloud Computing, for more info about this area, see http://www.sun.com/solutions/cloudcomputing/index.jsp

Thanks to the sponsors also for an excellent breakfast.

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