30 million wine labels that include wine name, region and varietals, along with other data, on a QR code, from 150 different wine producers – that’s the milsetone recently hit by AVIN, an “ISBN for wines” cataloging system.

AVIN is a unique 13 digit number, acting like an open standard and used for tracking wine, for over 25,000 different wines from 7,500 wineries. It’s been sponsored and financially supported for over three years now by Adegga (a wine social network).

With the AVIN, wine producers get their product information on a small QR Code, where consumers, with any smartphone and one click, will get other Adegga social network  consumers review about the wine, turning the buying decision a social experience, with more detail, real information.

We had a recent talk with André Ribeirinho, AVIN founder, where he told us that AVIN is building up a board of wine producers people to assure that the project will be sustained in the future, along with the needed independence to run it. Also André thinks that the QR Code, one of the two ways to represent the AVIN,  will be a non issue on the near future due to the widespread use in Europe and USA.

AVIN was created due to the fact that the bar code, already present on every bottle, isn’t unique – since different years have the same bar code – and it couldn’t retain essential wine information neither it’s web friendly. So, with a smartphone you can scan and extract information from the wine label itself. Wineries will be able to create and change their own code database information, through the AVIN API which will be soon public.

In an attempt to attract more developers to create apps for its smartphones, Nokia have announced two iniatives that will make it less of a financial burden for developers to get their apps published on the Ovi Store.

Nokia will slash the cost of its developer licenses, reducing fees from an expensive $210 per license, down to $50. As well as this, publishers will now be able to create, sign and distribute their apps on the Ovi platform, for free.

The mobile giant must have been in a benevolent mood, releasing a new software developer kit, the QT Developers Kit, allowing developers to design and build applications for its Symbian and MeeGo platforms.

Nokia’s program is currently in public beta meaning developers will have to email publishtoovi.support@nokia.com with their Ovi Publisher ID to gain access.

Smart stuff from Nokia, entice the developers and maybe, just maybe, consumers will follow suit.

Microsoft TechDays 2010 just started here in Portugal and one of the main keynote speakers was Charlie Kindel, Microsoft Program Manager for Windows 7 Phone.

We’ve just talked a little bit about the new phone, what’s in for users and developers, some main features and what does this new platform mean for Microsoft. Also, he showed us the new prototype from LG with a full qwerty keyboard running Windows Phone 7 fluidly. At the end of the interview you’ll see the main features of this new phone (which is in fact built by HTC).

So, without further delay, here’s the interview and phone demos:

Spanish company Terminal A, a low cost flight booking site, with a local presence in more than 20 countries worldwide and bookings with 500 airlines, is Europe’s number one when it comes to getting a flight ticket.

However, according to Europa Press (Spanish news site), the company has just filed for bankruptcy with 50 million euros of debt to flight companies – some are stockholders.

The company, founded in 2004, predicted a 40% growth for 2009 and that in 2008 it earned 180 million euros, with a 30% growth from 2007. It now proposes a four year payment plan for the debt, just to continue their regular operations.

Their “group currently, directly or indirectly, handles one third of the worlds travel arrangements“, so the significance of its survival can not be understated.

Le Chef suggestion for today is: Cookwork - a social network for professional chefs and food students all around the world – “the first holistic web portal for chefs” , as they say – where they can share recipes, get job announcements and talk about common interests; like food preparation and safety, nutrition, wines, artisan foods or even restaurant management. It’s a closed social network and Cookwork will verify your credentials, assuring that only peers are there.

The sites main motto is “because they love food“, so the network is built around it, where the recipes area is one of the most participated, with lots of good ideas and filters (meal moments, difficulties and outlets), chefs can get the ingredients, equipment and, of course, instructions to prepare it. Also, other chefs can comment on recipes.  Chef’s also get news, like hot trends for cocktails and beer or just plain gossip chitchat.

As a community they have their own forums, the “round table”, where they talk about almost everything related to their lifestyle. Careers is the cherry on top of this exquisite social network, having job opportunities and some Cookwork advice. One of my favorites is the “escape into the wild”, but chefs can get detailed information on every step in going solo and having a restaurant.

Cookwork is a Portuguese foodservice internet startup company, with offices in the US,  launched this year but already have a few hundred users (remember that they all get their credentials checked), where for instance, in the US, they’re at least 1 million probable chefs with a 350 billion dollar market. Right now most of their users are from US, UK and Italy. They launched with their own funds in January 2009 and took them one year to develop Cookwork. Yet, for me isn’t clear on how they’ll monetize the network. Probably with the “shopping heaven”, some kind of shopping place for tools and other material for chefs.

Here are some screenshots:

Rock my RSS, Roadie!

Roadie is a simple and easy way to keep up to date with your favorite bands. It simply creates a unique RSS feed that you can add to your RSS reader of choice.

“Roadie is a free service where you pick the artists or band that interest you and we’ll generate a customized RSS Feed with their recently released or brand new albums.”

With Roadie you can get an RSS feed from Amazon (UK or US), an iCal to use or just bookmark it. Oh and you can also aggregate all your favorite bands or import them from your last.fm list into one feed, aggregating all the new albums in one place.  You can get more technical details from Pedro Sousa’s blog.

So, you’re running out of everything; time, patience, money and traffic isn’t helping. You’ve tried Amazon and now you’re on ebay following some last minute items for yourself or your fellow geek family member. Despair no more, the elves at TheNextWeb Xmas warehouse, have put together valuable information to help you out on this last-minute-you’re-doomed quest. It’s not only gadgets, it’s what we think it’s cool to have this Xmas and it could be even software.

List after the jump!

Here’s the list of (nearly all) The Next Web writers favorite stuff of 2009, enjohy.

• Alex Willhelm: Zune HD, an amazing device, and by far the best PMP that has ever existed. It’s firmware, heft, and weight are stunning. A must buy for the holidays.
• James Glick: Spotify for Mobile/Desktop. With the ability not only to sync playlists across a range of mobile devices and platforms, you can also make use of the useful offline mode which completes it as a music service for all environments and situations. It’s replaced iTunes for me and Spotify Premium is a must have this Christmas.
• Fawzi Rahal: Sonos audio system, the best multi-room audio solution by far. Great audio quality and great features. Controllable from anywhere.. iPhone, Mac, PC, Blackberry… No wires, no hassle. Streams digital audio and radio, live input and even Audible files. And it works great with huge libraries!
• Regina Walton: DOTS Gloves – not an app but a product. Basically, a pair of gloves for people with touch devices like smart phones. You can control the device and keep your DOT gloves on. This is HUGE if you live in a cold climate like NYC, where I am, or Seoul, where i used to live.
• Zee: Hypermac. External battery for the mac. While it’s bullshit that it lasts 16+ hours, it does last around 7 hours if used as described and that makes it possible for me to literally work from wherever I please rather than the corner of some coffee shop because that’s the only place that has an adaptor.
• Martin Bryant: It’s got to be the Kodak Zi8. So much better than the hyped Flip family. The Zi8 has a replaceable, rechargeable battery and takes SDHC cards meaning you’ll never run out of battery life and storage space as long as you take spares. Creating high-quality 720p HD video that can be uploaded straight to Youtube, this is the best pocket HD cam I’ve tried.
• Kristin: Pixelmator. Hands down the best image editor for Mac, aside from Photoshop. At just $60 per license you get the world’s first GPU-powered image editor – so it allows you better multi-tasking. It also has graphics drawing tablet support and harnesses the full power of OS X, including Core Image and Automator.
• Lucas Englehardt: Skitch for Mac – My favorite program for screen shots and sharing images. Amazing how often I use something so simple. Has a unique UI that’s easy to use and just the basic features you need. Best of all it’s free as it’s still in beta.
• Aleks Grynis: Uncommon Capsule Cases – Fully customizable iPhone cases; $40 – won’t harm ur wallet
• Tim Difford: I’d like to go for the Mikey from Blue. It’s an integrated stereo speaker/microphone for iPods, but it also works with the iPhone. The speaker isn’t up to much but the microphone comes into its own when partnered with AudioBoo. I was struggling to capture undistorted sound at gigs using AudioBoo. Following AudioBoo CEO @markrock ‘s recommendation I picked up a Mikey which has three settings so that you can be assured of clear, quality audio in ordinary situations, very noisy environments (e.g. gigs), or very quiet environments (e.g. lectures). I love it.
• Vitor Domingos: MiFi to end all 3G dongles. “The world’s first Intelligent Mobile Hotspot”
• Vidyesh Modey: Drobo S – The easiest way to add extra hard drives without disturbing your default arrnagement making it easy to add storage. In addition to fast eSATA, Drobo S features enhanced FireWire 800 performance and USB 2.0 connectivity. And ofcourse Sonos audio system posted by Fawzi. A must have.
• Mike Bracco: Omnifocus for Mac and iPhone. A great app built by The Omni Group, one of the Mac’s most popular developers. The app manages my projects and tasks with ease and syncs seamlessly between my Mac and iPhone. It’s a little pricey but it packs a ton of features based on the GTD method of time management. An app I could truly not live without.
• Ralf Rottmann: Livescribe Pulse SmartPen. If you (have to) attend lots of meetings the Pulse SmartPen is a fantastic tool to keep track of everything that’s been said and magically keep it in sync with your meeting minutes. The hand writing recognition works like a charm (even with German notes) and provides a full text index to your hand written notes!
• Jamie Riddell:  My one is the Amazon UK app for iPhone. As a regular shopper on Amazon, this app enables me to search and buy from wherever I am. Particularly handy is the one click purchase on the app which enables me to spend far too much on impulse purchases. The killer function though, is the reminders function. Harnessing the iPhone camera, the reminders function allows you to take a picture of anything and everything and it will try and match it with the same or similar product on the Amazon database.

[Portugal] There are four types of crops (bear with me on this) for companies; seeding (seed capital); harvesting (venture capital), selling (acquisition) and consuming (IPO).

In Portugal, each one has their own expression. We have VC’s, we have acquisitions and some IPO’s, but not that many seeders. So, it seems natural that the actual business angels in Portugal should be doing seed capital, but they’re more interested on being just the middle man between the ideia/startup and the venture capital noney. For that they’ll crop up to 10%. So, what history tells us ? Everyone’s killing the middle man and it will be shot at plain sight!

Wait no more, hope is here and we’re starting to see the rise of the newborns, the seeders! The guys that support your startup/idea/project, without the business spreadsheet or the fancy 20 page business plan full of charts. They’re the ones who leverage most of the startup risk, but also the ones who can profit from your business. The  best seats of the train are always those upfront, that’s what seed capital hopes and prays for!

It comes as no surprise that seed capital is the guinea-pig money of startups, but some seeders are just that, pure money that could be used to build, burn or scale your business. The difference between them is that some are smarter than others. Some are the “smart money”.

Seed Capital, is one of those portuguese seeders, the smart type, they say: “Young enough to know the value of technology, old enough to know the value of money. Experienced enough to make a difference”. Experience is the key here, for them at least and the proof can be found on their team.
Their vision is also clear and ambitious: “To be recognized at European level as one of the top 5 seed/start-up investors before 2015.” and “To have at least one >10 million Euro sale/acquisition before 2015.” For both plans, there’s a 5 year marathon that starts right now and they’re open to anyone out there, portuguese, european or from the farther place on earth. 

Call for Startups/Founders

You have less than one month to submit your startup idea/project for their smart money funding. No details about the money yet, but as far as I know it’s on the same basis that YCombinator or SeedCamp, so expect something like 5% to 10% for 20k to 25k euros in a 6 month period. In January, it’s the Kickstart 1H10, which is the like a micro MBA for entrepreneurs and where you’ll be asked to present your idea or project for seed funding. So, if you don’t have the business basis, they’ll teach and help you, that’s the point with kickstart, and after be invited for a demo.

Lisbon as Europe best place to have a startup

Regarding startups and places to have one, Mário Valente, Seed Capital head of investment operations, wrote a great article about Lisbon as a nice place to have a startup, by the sea. It’s like the European California. We too have the golden bridge, wine, sun and beach. We’re missing money (that’s where they come in) and ideas/projects for kickass startups.  What are you waiting for? You don’t have no excuse now. Apply!

Disclaimer: I’ve worked with Mario Valente, SeedCapital entrepreneur in residence, at the Portuguese IT Institute for the Ministry of Justice.