The future is already here

Schmooze your parents with Geomeer’s saftey app

Gustaf Brandberg — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:42:19 +0000

When I was a teenager, the word “curfew” didn’t exist in my family, just one simple rule: as long as my parents always knew where I was, whom I was with and when I was expected back home, I could stay out at night for as long as I wanted. Today, most families have a curfew and many teenage parents are worried about their kids whereabouts. Enter Geomeer footprint: an iPhone or Smartphone app that can be downloaded from Geomeer.com and that lets the parents know where the teenager checks in. As a bonus, the teenager can always send an instant alarm to the parents (and to friends and social media accounts as well) whenever the situation feels unsafe.

So, here is a deal for teenagers to make with their parents: “If I let you know where I am (on specified times of the day – you can only see where I am when I let you), you will let me stay out with my friends longer”. In other words:

Geomeer – Schmooze your parents from Rodolfo on Vimeo.

Join the Schmooze your parents-campaign on Facebook and win an iPad.

Stockholm is a magic place to invest in

Gustaf Brandberg — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:03:29 +0000

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Samsung Smart Window

Gustaf Brandberg — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:36:23 +0000

You have all seen it in the movies: windows that double as computer touch screens.

Now it is reality in the labs, and apparently soon in mass production. Samsung has done it again. Enjoy.

A swarm of Nano Quadrotors

Gustaf Brandberg — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:44:08 +0000

Hey, watch this clip. Cool, but at the same time scary since you cannot help thinking of military applications.

The questions is: what other kind of applications can you imaging for this technology?

Go change the world

Gustaf Brandberg — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:57:36 +0000

The weekend is approaching. Here are some Friday reflections from Steve Jobs to think about during the weekend:

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.”

Now, go change the world!

Gamify your toilets

Gustaf Brandberg — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:51:36 +0000

If it ain’t fun, it ain’t worth it. Not entirely true in this case, because if you gotta go, you gotta go, but admit that a toilet game makes it so much more fun.

Over the years I have heard many ideas of how to use games in different settings, for example putting a bicycle game in front of the gym bikes having the customers at the gym competing with each other, burning more calories. Or, as we proposed to energy companies in Sweden when I worked for Tieto, having customers compete with each others in energy savings.

This is the first time that I have heard about using games in the toilets. Not a bad way to get your clients’ attention when they have nothing much else to do, don’t you think?

Thanks Christian Lövstedt at loadimpact.com for sending me the link.

Touch screens that touch back

Gustaf Brandberg — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:39:27 +0000

A strong trend in technology is natural user interfaces that let people interact with computers in an intuitive way. Think Segway and multitouch. I just found this demo of a touch interface that actually “touches you back”, that is can be programmed to feel like different structures. Cool. It will be interesting to see how fast this technology can be incorporated in mainstream technology.

Is Facebook overvalued? Naah, I don’t know anymore…

Gustaf Brandberg — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:52:58 +0000

I used to say that Facebook is overvalued. I’m not so sure anymore – Facebook is now the de-facto platform for the social layer on the web, just as Google is the de-facto platform for indexed search.

Watch this video and try to grasp the figures.

Mobile eye tracking and other innovations

Gustaf Brandberg — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:01:54 +0000

Today I have been judge in the international innovation competition Idea to Product. It’s been interesting to listen to early stage ideas ranging from from paint that can function as light sources (or, to put it differently, light sources that can be painted on a wall) to mobile eye tracking from Danish Senseye.

Eye tracking is another interesting natural way of interaction with computers apart from voice, gestures and movements and will be huge in the near future. There are already several companies working in this area, Tobii being one of the most well known.

Senseye has developed a eye tracking technology cheap enough to be widely distributed, for example in mobile phones, but there are many other interesting areas of application, such as:

Safety devices in cars with alarms that goes off if the driver falls asleep
Game controls
Interactive ad billboards that changes information depending on where on the ad someone is looking at

Just to name a few.

Stress test your website online in 5 minutes with new Load Impact 2.0

Gustaf Brandberg — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:21:49 +0000

As an investor and chairman of the board, I am proud to present Load Impact 2.0!

Load Impact runs the world’s most popular online load testing service, with over 420,000 executed load tests. Load- or stress testing is when you simulate visitors to your website in order to see how much traffic the site can handle. With the new version of Load Impact, load tests can now be configured to run multiple user scenarios from multiple geographical locations. Measurement data can be associated with geographical regions or different user scenarios as well as aggregated over multiple regions.

The great Load Impact team led by Algonet-founder Ragnar Lönn has created a service that can test any website’s ability to handle being “slashdotted,” that is subject to a large, sudden increase in traffic. With Load Impact 2.0 we can separate traffic generation and test results from different geographical regions, which will improve analysis for websites expanding into new geographical areas.

Load Impact 2.0 uses public cloud infrastructure to generate massive amounts of load when required. Initially, loads up to 50,000 concurrent users is supported in a single test, which means that sites with many millions of monthly visitors are able to run load tests at their peak traffic levels. Load testing is perhaps the ideal cloud application, as it uses enormous amounts of infrastructure resources, like server capacity and network bandwidth, but only for a short time while a load test is running. Being able to utilize public cloud infrastructure allows us to provide our users with a platform that can run load tests of almost any size, while keeping the costs at a reasonable level, as we don’t have to own the infrastructure but can rent it for a very short time whenever necessary.

Load Impact 2.0 also adds a range of new and unique functionality that gives users unprecedented control over their load tests. A geographical map shows traffic flows across the globe during your load
test and all information is updated dynamically, in real time, providing the user with very fine control over the running test. There are many new metrics and a vastly improved reporting system that also
displays everything in real time. Tests can be configured to run multiple user scenarios (scripts) from multiple geographical locations, and measurement data can be associated with geographical regions or
different user scenarios as well as aggregated over multiple regions.

Stress test your website now at http://loadimpact.com