Sep
20
Blogworld Expo 2008 Best of the Tradeshow Floor
Filed Under Conferences, Entrepreneurship, blogworld | 3 Comments
I’m writing this from Blogworld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas, where I was on a Reblogworld panel yesterday talking about SmartHippo.
As i write this, the tradeshow floor here at Blogworld has been open for a little over an hour. I’ve made the rounds of the various booths and come up with my best picks:
Most innovative: Zumata
Zumata is a very cool tool for blog authors. As you’re writing a blog post, it analyzes the context to automatically suggest relevant images (creative commons-licensed), tags, external links and even related blog posts, all of which can be included in your post at the click of a mouse.
Zumata has the potential to help bloggers save time, write better and more interesting posts, and gain traffic. They are not monetizing it at the moment, but I can easily see them selling sponsored content recommendations tailored to the content of a blog post.
Most promising: Crowd Science
Crowd Science is a hosted audience measurement service. If you have a web site you want to sell ads on, you’ll want to provide your advertisers with demographic and psychographic information on your visitors. Most audience measurement services rely on observing the behaviors of a panel of web surfers, but many sites do not have enough traffic volume for such a panel to be effective.
Crowd Science’s approach is to host inline surveys embedded within the web site being measured. The surveys all contain a base set of common demographic questions, which site owners can enhance with questions specific to their vertical. The surveys are only delivered to a sample of overall traffic, and once enough data has come in, site owners can use it to create a media kit with data validated by a third party.
Most interactive: Toss up between b5media and Southwest Airlines
There’s a poker game going on at the b5media booth. You get get free chips by wearing b5media schwag, yelling out “I love b5media,” or the like. When in Rome do as the Romans do. And when in Vegas, well… here’s a crappy cell-phone photo of that poker game:
It’s great to see a big company that gets social media, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Southwest Airlines falls into this category. Southwest is holding a “blogospondent” where participants film and post videos about Southwest. They flew the top three contestants to Vegas for Blogworld, and they now have until tomorrow to produce a video. Oh, and they handed out roasted peanuts in the a
Are you at Blogworld and do you agree or disagree with this list? What are your favorite picks from Blogworld? Leave a comment below.
Jun
19
Video interview with Stuart MacDonald of Tripharbour.com - Founders and Funders part 2 of 3
Filed Under Entrepreneurship, Travel | 5 Comments
This is the second installment in a series of video recaps of the second Founders and Funders event in Toronto. In part one, we talked with one of the organizers. In this second installment, we talk to one of the entrepreneurs who was at the event.
Stuart MacDonald is the founder of Tripharbor.com (Tripharbour.ca for Canadians), a recently launched vertical search engine for cruise ship vacations. Besides just letting you compare details and prices, Tripharbour also features some cool community features that let you read trip and destination reviews and make friends with others who have similar interests.
Stuart knows the online travel industry well, having previously served as SVP Packages and Chief Marketing Officer for travel behemoth Expedia. Cruise vacations is a $24 billion industry in North America, and he’s aiming for a piece of the action.
Jun
11
The second Toronto edition of Founders and Funders event took place last week, on June 4th. The event is organized by David Crow and Jevon McDonald.
Rather than write up a big long report, I decided to continue my experiments with video by bringing a camera along to give people who did not have the chance to attend a bit of a feel what what the event if like.
In today’s interview, David Crow introduces the idea behind Founders and Funders.
Stay tuned: This Friday I’ll be posting part two of the series, where we get to hear from one of the entrepreneurs who was at the event.
Apr
8
In February, I blogged about how Canadian P2P lender IOU Central had suspended activity while they sorted out regulatory concerns. (They’re still not back up.)
Now, it looks like it may be Lending Club’s turn in the US. According to a notice posted on their site, they have stopped allowing their lenders to initiate loans via the site. (More coverage at Netbanker, Techcrunch, and Center Networks.)
Like IOU Central, they’ll continue to service existing loans. However, in an effort to maintain credibility with the borrower side of the equation, they will also continue to accept loan applications, which they will fund themselves from this point on. How long they’ll be able to do that for without having to start placing caps on new loans, I don’t know. They’ve announced $12.3 in total financing.
My guess is their legal team is burning the midnight oil. Anyone thinking of starting their own P2P lending marketplace may want to review this telling video from 2006 where Chris Larsen of Prosper talks about the effort they spent working with regulators before launching, which he says gives them a two year lead over potential entrants to the space. In Canada, CommunityLend seems to be taking a similarly cautious approach to regulatory issues.
Apr
7
Lost in the Mail: HSBC Loses Disk With Personal Data on 370,000 Insurance Customers
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
According to this Bloomberg report, HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, mailed a disk containing personal information from one city to another. But it didn’t make it there. And the data on it was not encrypted.
The disk, sent unregistered to Swiss Reinsurance Co., contained password-protected details including customers’ names, life-insurance cover levels, birthdates and smoking status, London-based spokesman James Thorpe said. It didn’t contain clients’ financial details or addresses, he said.
The article then goes on to state: “The company will encrypt any disk which includes sensitive information in the future, Thorpe said.”
Good idea, guys.
Mar
31
Why I Think Google Will Offer Free Hosting
Filed Under Google | 2 Comments
About a month ago I had coffee with a friend, a systems administrator who pitched me on his plan to provide managed web services for clients. Where was he going to host everything? He had a relationship with a local data center. Who in their right mind would invest in hosting infrastructure, I asked him, when Google has already figured it all out and will sooner or later offer this for free? He gave me a puzzled look.
You can argue that Google is already there with Google Page Creator and Google Sites, but there’s no doubt in my mind Google will start offering a free hosting platform that will rival — and likely surpass — Amazon Web Services.
Dave Winer has written two posts on the subject of a hypothetical Google Web Services. From reading the comments, it seems a lot of people are still skeptical about this happening. Let me explain why I think Dave is right.
The picture you see here is of Google’s entire server park from 1999 — ten CPU’s across four servers. Google has come a long way since then, building up a massive global server infrastructure. A 2006 estimate is that they had in the ballpark of half a million servers across the globe. Gartner last year estimated Google has a million servers. How is this all possible?
Google Adwords is a killer cash cow for Google. The profit from the Adwords franchise, which represents nearly all of Google’s revenue, more than covers the cost of their infrastructure several times over. For all intents and purposes, therefore, Google’s incremental cost to add new applications to its cloud is zero.
It’s not like going free would be without precedent. Google Analytics is a prime example of how they’ve done it before. Google purchased Urchin and promptly reduce its price from $499 per month to $199. They later made it free by invitation only and with a five domain limit. Today, the application is completely free, with no restrictions or limitations.
A more recent example is Google Ad Manager, a new ad serving platform which is by invitation only — for now. Then there’s Google Apps for Domains, Google Website Optimizer, Google Earth… all applications that people were used to paying for before Google made them free. Why would hosting be any different?
Google has already won the battle for search engine market share. So how do they keep up the revenue growth the market expects of them? Here are a few ways:
- Increase CPC’s
In 2006, Google launched a new quality score algorithm and revenue up 70% and profit doubled. Yup, leave it to Google to help you bid against yourself. Last month, Google started piloting something called automatic matching, which lets Google sell you clicks on keywords you didn’t even bid on. - Increase ad inventory
Wikipedia is great, but stubbornly refuses to run Adsense. Enter Google Knol. Google Ad Manager helps here, too. But Adwords is not limited to the web. You can now use the interface to buy ads on the radio, in print publications and even on TV. - Place bets on what the next big thing could be
The next big thing could very well come from within Google, and the company has not been shy to hire legions of programmers with the hope that one of these teams will strike gold. But what if it comes from the outside. Google’s covering that, too, with equity investments in startups. Offering a hosting platform would make sense also, which would let startups focus more on creating new applications as opposed to the nuts and bolts of managing hardware and networks.
So how will Google roll out their hosting offering? A logical start could be to offer free hosting to sites with Adsense on their pages. Or free hosting for, say, your first million or so hits monthly. And they’ll go from there.
One way or another, the move is inevitable. And until it happens, I for one won’t be investing in massive server infrastructure.
Mar
29
Montreal animation writer and blogger Emru Townsend has been diagnosed with leukemia and needs a bone marrow donor. Emru needs your help.
Finding out if you’re a match requires just a cheek swab or simple blood test, and you are not under any obligation to follow through later.
Emru’s chances of finding a suitable donor are complicated by a lack of registered donors from minority groups. While the chances are higher if the potential donor is of African or West Indian descent, Emru’s match can come from anyone, from any ethnic background, in any country. And if you’re not a match for Emru, you may end up helping somebody else.
You can read more at the Montreal Gazette or BoingBoing. Then head on over to healemru.com (version française ici) to find out how you can sign up with your country’s donor registry.
Mar
28
The first TwittYul was last night. Sylvain Carle, who organized it, says that TwittYul was just like Twitter, with people popping in and out of unstructured conversations.
Here’s the list of people who were there:
@mikelbyl
@georgefavvas
@adamsimms
@zelnox
@afrognthevalley
@dmireault
@coolaid
@mcdoyon
@millette
@fbrunel
@nikolai35
@30sleeps
@johnbaku
@emjcox
@aranr
@cb
@inevernu
@sammyqc
If you’re not on the list aboce, or if you’re in Montreal but were not able to make it, leave your Twitter username in the comments so that others can link up.
Mar
6
Microsoft Acquires Technology and Team from Montreal-based Credentica
Filed Under Blogroll, Entrepreneurship, Microsoft | 1 Comment
Microsoft this morning announced that it has acquired the technology and patents of Credentica, a Montreal-based provider of identity management solutions. The team, led by Stefan Brands, will join Microsoft’s Identity and Access Group.
(More blog coverage from Microsofties Kim Cameron and Adam Shostack, and on Stefan Brands‘ own blog)
Brands is the inventor of private credentials technology which allows a user to prove something about their identity without disclosing more information than is absolutely necessary. For example, a voter can prove unequivocally that they have the right to vote in the state of California, without having to disclose their name or other personal information. As more and more of our lives moves online, privacy is increasingly becoming an issue that cannot be ignored. Most solutions require that you trust a third party (such as your bank, government, or Google), while Brands’ approach uses advanced cryptographic techniques that do not re.
The technology has previously found temporary homes at now defunct DigiCash and then Zero-Knowledge Systems, neither of which were able to succeed in commercializing the patents. But our plan is to integrateMicrosoft says it plans to integrate Credentica’s U-Prove technology into both the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and CardSpace.
I’ve known Stefan personally for nearly a decade now, and wish him the best of luck in this new chapter of his professional life.
Update: I’ll be writing a follow up post with an interview from Stefan focusing more on the personal side of his journey as an entrepreneur. Watch my blog for more.
Feb
29
Regulators force Canadian P2P lender IOU Central to suspend activity
Filed Under Banking, Blogroll, Entrepreneurship | 3 Comments
Over the past five or so years, the Internet has radically changed the way most industries (from content, to music, to travel) function. Central to this wave of change is a shift of power from large institutions to consumers. The financial industry is one of the last bastions where old-school business models still reign supreme.
But that’s changing.
Sites like SmartHippo empower consumers with tools and the information on the best available rates that they previously did not have access to. Peer to peer (P2P) lending sites such as Prosper and Lending Club empower consumers to bypass banks and lend directly to each other, with the promise of better rates on both sides of the equation. Where technology now provides a scalable way for consumers to exchange information and capital between themselves, the middlemen of the past are no longer as relevant.
Needless to say I’m a but fan of P2P lenders so I was quick to sign up with IOU Central was the first Canadian company to launch in the space. (I tried signing up with Prosper, but the site is restricted to US residents with a Social Security Number.) Lo and behold I logged into IOU Central today to start using the site only to be greeted by the message that “IOU Central is now operating with limited functionality.” Translation: No new loans on IOU Central, at least for now. Startup North was the first to report on this here.
I just spoke with Phil Marleau, their President and CEO, and he told me the action was taken at the request of the Autorité des marchés financiers, Quebec’s securities regulator. The agency is infamous for its impotence in front of real issues that should be under its control, such as its abysmal failure to help the 1,600 investors who lost $130 million in the Mount Real scam back in 2005.
He told me the AMF paid a visit to IOU Central yesterday and asked them to halt operations. It turns out that individuals using the site to lend money are making an investment, so IOU could be construed as selling securities.
“The important thing is that we’re working with the regulators and want to comply,” Marleau said.
According to Marleau, IOU Central had received legal advice stating they did not have to be regulated. This was based on the fact that their model was closely based on the way Prosper and Lending Club operate in the U.S., as well as Zopa in the UK. Based on this legal advice, IOU Central did not bother to even brief regulators on what they were doing.
Canada’s other P2P lender, CommunityLend, hit the scene with a lot of noise when they announced in December they had raised $2.5 million in financing. However, they have yet to have launched, citing the needs to properly address regulatory compliance issues first.
When IOU Central launched earlier this month, it looked like they had come out of nowhere and one-upped CommunityLend. CommunityLend must be gloating now.
“Our approach has been to build a viable and sustainable company, that will appeal to Canadians, and their desire for security with anything financial,” Colin Henderson, CommunityLend’s CTO told me via email. “There are no shortcuts with peoples money, and we have been working hard with the regulators for over 8 months, on over 40 Licences to ensure we can satisfy the needs of Canadians, by the time we launch.”
Marleau, to his credit, at least put on positive spin on the events: “When we’re back up, it’s going to be a better model. Because we’ll be regulated and that adds credibility and confidence.”
Here’s hoping it happens quickly. Canada’s financial system, an oligopoly if I’ve ever seen one, badly needs some shaking up.
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About George Favvas
George Favvas is a serial web entrepreneur based on Montreal, Canada. He's been involved in the web since 1994 and is currently the President of SmartHippo, a community-driven comparison shopping site for financial products and is the co-founder of Reflexity, Inc., a provider of customer acquisition solutions for financial companies.
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