Written on July 14, 2008 – 3:46 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Sometimes I dream of going to my favorite club, grab my mobile, and check who of my friends are there as well - so I won’t miss them in the dancing crowd. If I lived in Germany, this dream would be somewhere close to reality. German folks can look up their friends on aki-aki, a social network that uses bluetooth to see whose around within a distance of 20 meters. Of course I could join the English version, but there aren’t many Dutch people on the site yet. I think I’ll have to wait for such a feature on Hyves.
Anyway, enough about me. Let’s go back to aki-aki. After installing a mobile app and switching your bluetooth on, aki-aki tracks wherever you’ve been and who you’ve met. You can look up this info at the web site to see what you’ve been up to recently. Imagine you’ve ran into someone sixty times, it might be an interesting idea to meet up.
A month ago we reported they were about to receive more capital. Well, that worked out fine, as Aki-Aki has announced (translated) that they’ve received a small investment from venture capitalist Creathor Venture. The size is undisclosed. Partly due to this investment and a talented team, a diploma project at the Berlin University of Arts has grown to a real business with 16 employees.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on June 12, 2008 – 3:58 pm
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is a guest post by Charlie van de Kerkhof from the Ministry of Web Development
When you’re talking about German start-ups, you’re talking about Berlin. The city is booming. There are cheap offices and a bunch of angel investors of which one might help you to get that so-wanted lead investment. I learned this optimistic lesson at the TechCrunch UK/Twidox meetup yesterday. Mike Butcher had left London to find out how it feels to say ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ and to meet 15 startups - all eager to promote their business. These are my personal highlights:
Undersigned and Chris from Hiogi
Hiogi - the community answers your questions
Hiogi is a mobile search service that is based on a knowledge community. You can ask anything via Twitter, SMS or email and receive an answer on your mobile. I’ve tried it and ask for the best pizza place near Senerfelderplatz. Within 10 minutes I had my answer and I must admit, it was a very good pizza. Hiogi has just released an open API which gives you acces to the latest questions and answers that were posted. Not surprisingly, these guys have received funding this year and won a couple of prices.
Hobnox - platform for professionals from the creative industry
Hobnox is an online music and video platform where users can watch, connect, collaborate and create. The Next Web has already written about this in May 2008. They are now busy with the community feature of their product where you can download and upload the music to the site and share it with friends.
Jimdo - a personal website for everyone
Jimdo is an online website builder. You can create your own JimdoFree-Page and add several modules to it - like a blog, guest book, photo gallery, etc. The team is now working on adding social modules like Open Social widgets. Jimdo is based in Hamburg and received the first round funding earlier this year. By the way, one of their most important competitors is Webnode, who presented on The Next Web conference. (more…)
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