Launching is maybe one of the most critical stages of your product. I don’t feel like there’s a difference between a startup or a “weekend-show-HN” project. Launching is launching, is critical and will remain this way for better or for worse.

Aside critical, it’s the one that offers you the most knowledge, as a developer, marketer, professional, hobbyist, […], and in the and even as a human, whether it’s a software project or not. Let me explain myself.

Keep It Simple, STUPID

Keeping your first version as simple as possible is top priority. You want to show people what’s the core of what your app-project-whatever does, yet not overbloated with features and chaotic design. It must be inspiring too, letting people know that this product has a feature, a vision behind it.

I could have included all possible features in the first version of 4sqwifi. Venue checkin, Twitter/Facebook sharing, in-app tip section for each venue so people can add wifi passwords within 4sqwifi, map view and hell knows what more. Inspite all this glitter I decided to keep only the most core feature of all and 4sqwifi’s promise: show nearby venues which have wifi and their password. But of course, along with a basic package of usability: Google Map for each venue, address, by whom-and-when each tip was written, number of all nearby 4sqwifi venues.

Beta test like a B*TCH, BITCH

You don’t want to launch with bugs. Seriously, I repeat: you don’t want to launch with bugs. Users in their vast majority won’t give you a second chance, unless a) they’ve seen a whole lot of potential behind your buggy product in its idea/vision b) were smart enough to figure out how to bypass the bug, c) where lucky to not spot the bug, d) you wrote a post, released a public announcement and whatnot about the bug and they were aware of it. But probably they won’t give a second chance.

And that’s what happened with 4sqwifi. A stupid bug that didn’t appear in the testing period (on-iPhone 4S/3GS, on Xcode iOS 4.3/5.0 simulators) or to a handful of other users. Suppose 1,000 people downloaded the app, 100+ had the bug, they wrote bad reviews in AppStore (which, by the way, its review system sucks big time) and that prevented other people to download the app. Plus, it annoyed me. The bug was very simple: it appeared after a user logged-in with his Foursquare account. A callback URL of the 4sqwifi website didn’t disappear and users thought that the app was crap and shit. The solution? One simply had to kill the app from multitasking and re-open it. Users don’t know about, don’t care, don’t want to do these kinds of stuff so they were totally right being wrong. Anyway, it’s already fixed and waits to be shipped. Mentioning shipping: real artists ship & launch fast, fail faster.

Ratings do NOT fucking matter

Clear example: Facebook Messenger for the iPhone has 2.5* stars in the Greek AppStore and Facebook itself has 3. The average user doesn’t know how to rate — that will remain so — and most of your users will be average users. Fact. The sooner you understand it, the better.

4sqwifi started with a solide 6/6 5* star rating, then dropped to 4.5* and finally to 3.5*. The main reason behind the low ratings is the bug itself, the other is that users didn’t get actually what 4sqwifi is about. Many thought it is a cracking tool, you see a wifi nearby, open 4sqwifi and it cracks it for you, showing the password. No, nein, όχι. Others didn’t get that it requires a Foursquare login so they were like “WTF IS THIS CRAP, DUDE,” I don’t want to sign up for anything. Others thought it’s a scam or a non-app app. Your idea might be perfect, your product might have the best intentions and potential behind it but without a excellent user experience, the rest is meaningless (quoting Pascal Finette, a Mozilla dude I met in my Silicon Valley trip.) Oh, remember Color? Yeah.

Listen to people that are of VALUE

Feedback from the average users doesn’t mean anything. Feedback from someone who is of value means a lot. Doesn’t matter who he is (can be, theoretically, your mom), it matters what is he doing and what’s he done. Experience that can be shared matters.

And how did this apply to 4sqwifi? I got feedback from Chris Wanstrath, co-founder of Github, Google engineers, Google semi-execs, founders of 8tracks, Crowdbooster, Higear, a Twitter Product Manager, i/o ventures. That’s valuable feedback. AppStore reviews in principle are not. Curate your feedback, understand better your users. That’s key for you. I’m not saying don’t listen to negative feedback. You should, but don’t get overwhelmed of it and start thinking that’s the end of the world. No, it’s not. But: don’t listen to the average user for future features. Don’t do that, it’s going to destroy you.

Sharing is good, oversharing is fucking LAME

Unless you want to appear like a 14 year-old girl cheering the one whose name shall not be spoken in this blog, do not overshare about your app. Don’t spam Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, Foursquare, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, your blog and whatnot about the new product. This will kill the interest people might have in you and your product and start consider you like a douche. And probably they’ll be right.

I did overshare once about 4sqwifi. The moment when the 3 Push notifications from Apple came saying “Your app is under Review” blah, blah, blah. I did about 3-4 consecutive tweets and 1-2 Facebook posts. In retrospect, I don’t like it — I don’t regret it either. Being more discrete is valuable for everyone — your product, your users, our timelines. Luckily it didn’t kill the interest people had. Nor did it increase it, methinks. Things I shared afterwards and in the next days were: direct link to download the app, some “inside-statistics,” a couple of photos with AppStore rankings. Be descrete, not secretive; share, not overshare.

~fin.

There are three key-aspects I’d like to discuss about Strava and how they make it a unique biking experience. I’m not going to exaggerate, Strava (as any other athletic-sport-etc-driven app) does not transform the sport itself, it (or they) add a whole new layer of data, enhancements, feedback — a new reality atop our reality, which is extremely valuable, insightful and new.

Design

Strava is all about simplicity. The only thing you can change from the app’s Settings is the unit of measure (klm/miles). There is nothing else to bother you. You can start biking right away. The whole process starts from the icon. (That’s what made me in the first place to download the app — it is well-known that with a great icon you can attract more downloads for your app.)

Strava Icon

Have a look now in Strava’s landing (first) and main screen. (click for full resolution)

Main Screen of Strava

There are no unnecessary UI elements that distract the user. The time, a basic concept which apps like this one are built around, underneath it with slightly smaller size the distance and the average speed and just below, a big blue “play” button that says “Come on, press me, let’s start!”

Simplicity is also to be found in the navigation bar of the app. Only three tabs: New Ride (main screen), Rides (your history) and Settings (where you can only edit Imperial or Metric system). I like this; a like this a lot.

Strava Stats screen

Strava Settings screen

As someone said “Good design is a design when the user doesn’t have to think.” Strava totally gets it, imho. Plus, if you know who said it, add it in the comments below, I’d appreciate it.

Community

Strava is not only an app that lives in your walled-garden of your iPhone. Surprisingly it communicates with a reach social network of bicyclists on which you can make teams, share rides and stats, see stats of yours and other possible public routes.

You can even create the must-ride routes in your city for tourists or other fellow bikers. Or virtually explore other cities’ routes from the comfort of your chair. Naturally, you can use it only as a personal training app — but do know: it’s a lot more than that, yet more simple than all the other competitors. (click for full resolution)

Strava Routes website

Strava runs on a freemium model. That means all the basic features are free but with a subscription fee you have more data, analytics, records, analysis of you personal work-out profile and all that geeky mathematical stuff.

From athletes for athletes — and everyone else

As a skier, ex-member of the Greek Junior-Development National team and with a 1st place in National Championships I can deeply understand how much better is something sports-related when it’s being developed by athletes. That is because athletes not only understand but know exactly what are their needs and make stuff explicitly atop those problems eventually solving them. A jacket (or any other thing, even an app) that’s being designed with the co-operation, feedback and insights of an athlete instead of a pure R&D team it will be ten times better at least.

Quoting them, “Strava grew out of our own needs as athletes. With busy lives requiring much solo training, we missed the sense of camaraderie and friendly competition that drove us to achieve our best through training with others. We envisioned Strava as the means to put our workouts and races into context. We call that social fitness.”

Summing up

In < 140 chars: If you bike, Strava is the app to download, for to enjoy and cherish your rides.

Disclosure: I have none whatsoever relationship with Strava, its founders or its developers.

Before I continue on with writing, I’d like first to clarify some things. I’m not an entrepreneur, neither consider myself one. I’ve never founded a company, never worked or did a startup (yet?) (I don’t consider 4sqwifi as a start-up.) This means, these opinions stated here are fully personal, 100% of how I see things and all that disclaimers’ crap. All what I do is because I love it and have fun. You’re free to disagree — and please do so in the comments! Let’s continue, shouldn’t we?

・・・

Yesterday I went to an interesting panel titled “Entrepreneurship Education Panel; Outlook for Entrepreneurship education in Europe” moderated by a guy whom I haven’t heard about. The same applies for the rest of the speakers (including a member of the Austrian Parliament, a serial entrepreneur who also teaches at a university, some other entrepreneur turned VC turned a university teacher too and some other guy who I can’t remember what he’s doing.) Except one: Sophie (she works at TNW) with whom the other day discussed the same thing actually.

If you’re eager to find out the names, more infos, etc, visit Startup Week’s website.

Anyway, I didn’t know she was participating until someone told me about yesterday, and so I went.

Government and entrepreneurship (yawn), skills and knowledge

Long story short short, I heard that the government can change the Educational System by creating entrepreneurship classes and a network of entrepreneur want-to be’s (not in a bad way of speaking) students across Europe (by the parliament member). I also heard that one can teach entrepreneurship to university students. The skills, that is, to become a (successful?) entrepreneur (from the guy entrepreneur turned VC, etc.) That academia needs entrepreneurship (or hates it, I didn’t quite understand to be honest.) — this was told by the serial entrepreneur and the guy entrepreneur turned VC, etc.

Well, I disagree.

It’s not that I’m against university. Kinda the opposite, I’d say. Neither I’m against personally on any of those guys — that’s one thing to have in mind. I just disagree.

And what the heck do I think

I don’t think that you can teach the skills or the characteristics of an entrepreneur to someone (in formal education at least.) As “entrepreneur” is a hyped word lately, I want to add that it’s not easy working 9-5 for a big corp., either. Definitely, entrepreneurs have many more things to do, problems to solve, less time and, while bootstrapping, less money.

Entrepreneurs are driven by the need to create (stick with that) and by gut and instinct which is driven by empirical knowledge. Try and fail. That’s it. They don’t go with business strategy manuals, academic approaches to marketing, etc. They deliver. The desire to create overwhelms many times anything else, that might pop in their way. The beauty and the joy of having created something — well, that’s something unbeatable.

One thing you can create is — foster, actually — the culture around entrepreneurs. I strongly feel that one cannot teach the skills but one can inspire someone, can transfer him ideas, mindset, desire, creativity, and lessons learned (to-do’s & not to-do’s.) The most important thing: creativity. And how do you do it? Look no further than Berlin, a thriving new community of startups. They managed to gather in the same place many artists, creatives, programmers, designers, photographers and all kinds of people who make this community go big time.

I also do think that you cannot create culture, either. Culture creates itself from the network of people who do systematically things together. It takes years and it’s not easy at all. But you, through actions, as said, can foster it.

It’s all about everything

And for a government, there are four things that need to be done. The first is: don’t create “entrepreneurship” classes. Yeah, simply don’t. Secondly, if your goal is to foster and enhance entrepreneurship add many creative classes throughout Primary up until High School, then teach kids the joy of creating. It hasn’t to be software only. The third is to introduce into university-level schools a class in which every student would get a $x-amount of money and will have to deliver product and profit within one or two months. A real life project, out there, outside of the bubble. In the real world, in the real market. And lastly, but not least, it’s vital for the government to create a new Law Framework around creating businesses, which will demand less paperwork but it’ll be a thousands times easier for someone to create a new company.

Entrepreneurship is such an overhyped word, to be honest. “Oh, you’re an entrepreneur, right? Duuuude.” Entrepreneurship is not the Holy Grail of economics or our own economies. It won’t save us, even if we all turned entrepreneurs today. Someone has to work for someone else. Plus, most importantly, not everyone can handle being or want to be an entrepreneur. Some people are happy working 9-5, feel secure, don’t want to take risks and all that yada yada. It’s ok. Yeah, shake your heads and understand that it’s ok. I cannot imagine myself doing some dull thing for 8 hours 5 (or even 6) days a week, but I do understand it’s ok for someone else.

And what we do?

There are very specific places in this world that things work really good out, where people understand the game and chase their dreams. What we could do? I said my opinion. It’s your turn now.

Additional discussion, upvotes, downvotes and other fun things for this post over at Hacker News.

Για να σας δώσω το full picture, ο λόγος που το app θα καθυστερήσει το public launch του για ακόμη λίγο καιρό δεν είναι ότι το έχουμε δήθεν παρατήσει ή κάτι παρόμοιο. Το αντίθετο, μάλιστα.

Αυτό το καλοκαίρι είναι το πρώτο καλοκαίρι μετά τις πανελλήνιες (more on that later) και όπως είναι φυσικό είναι παραπάνω ανέμελο if I may say so από τον “μέσο όρο”. Αρχικά, είχαν ήδη προγραμματιστεί αρκετό καιρό πριν διακοπές, οι οποίες δεν μπορούσαν να γίνουν rescheduled, ακριβώς μετά την λήξη του App Camp. Στην συνέχεια είχαν επίσης προγραμματιστεί παρόμοιες διακοπές και μετά από τις δεύτερες διακοπές υπήρξαν και τρίτες. Sounds cool, eh?

Παρά το overdose διακοπών με φίλους όμως, μεταξύ του δεύτερου και τρίτου vacations batch έπρεπε να ασχοληθώ με το που θα σπουδάσω. In other words έπρεπε να περιμένω όλες τις απαντήσεις κάποιων πανεπιστημίων του εξωτερικού και να διαλέξω που θα συνεχίσω τις σπουδές μου. Μια διαδικασία που δεν είναι εύκολη ούτε σύντομη. Τελικώς, για να μην πολυλογώ, όσοι με κάνετε follow στο Twitter ξέρετε ήδη εδώ και λίγο καιρό πως θα σπουδάσω στο Πολυτεχνείο της Βιέννης. Οι υπόλοιποι, το μάθατε μόλις τώρα. Επίσης, είναι ήδη uploaded στον πανεπιστημιακό server, η academic σελίδα μου. Clean, minimal and to the point, I guess.

Έτσι, καταλήγω στο ότι επειδή αρκετές διακοπές ήταν ήδη προγραμματισμένες στο συγκεκριμένο χρονικό διάστημα, το university picking και κάποια άλλα random πραγματάκια με κράτησαν εκτός προγραμμάτος όσων αναφορά το launch και το finalizing του 4sqwifi iPhone app. Και για να είμαι ακριβής, το app είναι σχεδόν έτοιμο. Έχουμε να λύσουμε μόνο ένα bug με το geolocation και να κάνουμε τα τελευταία μερεμέτια για το “κούμπωμα” του UI.

Άρα λοιπόν you can expect το launch του 4sqwifi iPhone app πολύ σύντομα — έχοντας υπ’ όψιν πως όλα βαίνουν καλώς.

Όσοι δεν έχετε δει την παρουσίαση του 4sqwifi iPhone app στο App Camp Demo Night μπορείτε να την δείτε τώρα, included app screenshots.

The organizational part

The first ever App Camp was focused exclusively on development of mobile apps or tablet PC apps. There were 3 App Campuses throughout Greece—Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras. The App Camp’s main goal was to turn good ideas for mobile apps into commercially viable products and services for the global market, all accelerated through this two-week program. Teams were consisted of at minimum 2 members, no single/solo founders were allowed, if I may say so.

App Campuses were mainly co-lab workspaces, such as Co-Lab in Athens and Thermi-Link in Thessaloniki. Patras’ App Campus was based in Indifex’s HQ, though—a very nice and cozy HQ of a great and promising global startup. Each App Campus provided the basics such as internet access (well, obviously, it’s 2011 and we were developing mobile apps for the TCP’s sake), comfortable couches (at least Thermi-Link here at Thessaloniki—I enjoyed it very much when I was napping and reading my Instapaper saved articles on the iPad 2), video-streaming & projectors for the mentors’ sessions which were available to all teams via UStream. App Campuses also served as the meeting point with the mentors.

Speaking of mentors, the participating teams were guided by mentors who they represented a variety of specialities and skill-sets ranging from development, design, marketing and to intellectual property. Almost each mentor had to prepare a session about his specialty. For example Petros talked about Github (for which he actually works for), Dimitris for mobile apps marketing and so on. Mentors were also available not only via person-in-person meetings at each Campus but also via IMs, Twitter, Skype and email, constantly.

Right in between of the weeks, in the first weekend of the program, the App Camp gig (teams and mentors) went for a 3-day trip to the App Resort, Friday to Sunday. The first ever App Resort was at Pelion, right in the middle between Athens and Thessaloniki. It was not a holiday-trip. Instead, the teams attended many meetings and sessions, coded almost everywhere—from their rooms to by the pool, enjoyed beers at night and various other geeky startup stuff.

The teams and 4sqwifi

I think you already know about my 4sqwifi idea-project which started back in January ’11 as a simple Foursquare initiative only now (to be precise, very soon) to have its own iPhone app, so I won’t bother you with the details: what it’s all about, how it works and how you can take part. On the other hand, if you don’t know anything about 4sqwifi (that’s not bad) and you’re interested on learning more check out 4sqwifi’s website and its presentation at App Camp’s Demo night right below:

Since I didn’t attend the App Resort weekend because I had to do business in Athens (that did sound very badass-like) I won’t talk about the other teams a lot, only some generic words and rants. From what I heard and saw, the level of all teams (Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras) was decent. Some had experienced engineers, some not—but that’s why applied for in the first place (at least me)—to gain experience, not only to launch a product and call it quits. Some apps are cool indeed and look promising—can’t wait to see how the evolve and adapt into new environments and the upcoming challenges.

The 4sqwifi App Camp team consisted of Panos Oikonomakis, Lead Developer aka JavaScript poet, Gerasimos Tsiamalos who kindly provided his ninja design skills in order to design an incredible UI and Eleni Gizi who also provided her artisanal skills for to design 4sqwifi’s logo, and well, me who (tried) to do all these tasks before the guys would enter the team. It was a pain, to be honest. I deeply appreciate each one’s commitment to the team, trying to balance between personal work and life with this project. They could easily decide not to take part and work on some personal stuff, but they decided to take part with 4sqwifi and build something for the fun of it.

Closing rants

App Camp was a great experience. I would, without a second thought, do it again. It’s time for a post-4sqwifi idea now to be developed. Surely, App Camp could improve some things but those aren’t any significant draw-backs. A good idea would be also to have two App Camps per year. A summer and a winter session (just like YC’s batches). That’d be very interesting, challenging and will push each time the limits of creating, thinking, engineering and launching.

Update about 4sqwifi

Due to personal issues which I cannot write about (yet) 4sqwifi’s app launch will be delayed for a few weeks. Sorry, folks. I promise it won’t take long.

In order to understand BoothChat, we need to go back a bit in time. To be precise, we need to go back right when Thanasis Polychronakis from Athens, Greece took the brave decision to leave Greece and head to mighty San Francisco’s Silicon Valley to pursue his (then) startup, geoWarp. But one night, in SF’s StartupWeekend, Thanasis had the idea of BoothChat and immediately started working on it. The idea was is, in fact, very simple. You write something, BoothChat snaps you a photo via your computer’s web camera (USB or built-in, doesn’t matter) and the photo gets published in a room.

To learn more about Thanasis story on migration (and how-to’s), working in the Valley and many more interesting things, read his blog 20minus.

Anyway, you must have thought by now “Oh, another Chatroulette…”. BoothChat though, has some significant differences.

• Firstly, it isn’t Chatroulette
• Secondly, it is about pictures & chat, not about video
• Thirdly, it is much more fun
• Fourthly, there are no weirdos (and probably, won’t be any—more on that in a little)

So, how exactly does Boothchat work?

You sign in with your Twitter or Facebook profile(*) and you are dropped automatically in a system-made chatroom (you can identify them of their /booth_10540 URLs). There, you start typing your chat message and you’re asked to give permission to BoothChat to take over your webcam and by the time you hit “Enter”, to take you a picture. It is really fun.

You can create your own rooms (key feature for ultimate fun) just by entering whatever you want after boothchat.com/ and chat and play with your friends there. All rooms are public though—the user created ones are accessible only if you know the full URL. There are also boothpics perma-links and cool viewing features. And of course, you can share with Facebook and Twitter your photos.

(*) note: that’s the reason there won’t be any weirdos, or at least there will be few of them.

BoothChat hasn’t yet received any kind of funding, but I think after they ship some cool new core features (can’t reveal, sorry!) it will be the next logical step.

Back in the first paragraph (second time-travel in this post) I wrote that BoothChat needs an iOS app. Hell yeah it needs one. Imagine the fun and the possibilities. iPad 2 comes already with Apple’s Photo Booth. My guess is that after shipping the new features, BoothChat needs to start developing the iOS app and seek for funding. Times are exciting.

What are you waiting? Join the fun!

Disclosure: Thanasis is a good friend of mine. This post was not “pushed” by him. It is just another post of a web-service/app/startup review here in apas.gr.

But sun shines for all and you don’t have to be in Thessaloniki. Nick Drandakis and Nick Damilakis, both from Athens, Greece, started up Taxibeat. Taxibeat is a new unique way to find a taxi in Athens (and soon in other major Greek cities). With just two taps from your iPhone or Android you can book the taxi driver you want and who is the closest to you. While you’re waiting you can watch his GPS signal on your iPhone app, then rate him. Taxibeat’s business plan is kind of similar to Flattr (at least for the driver). Suppose x the number of clients a driver got in a month, then at the end of each month the driver will get paid x*0.49€. For the end-user it’s totally free.

But it’s not the technical part that makes me like Taxibeat (which is great by the way). There are some key-facts, which I think make Taxibeat awesome. Let me list them.

• Easyness. Taxibeat is very easy to use. Just two taps and you booked your taxi.
• Rate the driver. Rating will give a great feedback for each driver’s quality for the customers-users. Plus that you can leave comments too—not only rate with starts.
• Easy interface. The UI & UX must be easy to use. Not everyone is a geek or spend much time to play-understand the app. You need fast and responsive clients. Taxibeat has that.
• Awesome for the tourists. It’s a well-known fact that many taxi drivers in Greece aren’t the best guys around. See also “rate the driver”.

And there’s something more, for which I like Taxibeat the most.

It can disrupt the taxi business as it is now in Greece and make a fresh start for them. It can be the force to make radical new things in this field. And the best thing? I believe it can.

Fast forward to 2011 Linden Tibbets developed this awesome app called If this Then that. Ifttt (it’s the acronym) is based basically on the concept of event-driven programming. The whole concept of event-driven programming is that during the execution of a program, the programmer has some ideas about what types of events may happen.

For example “a user clicks a specific button” or “a new message arrives in your inbox”. Knowing what these events are, you can then attach a bit of code that runs the same way every time an event is encountered. It is very much like cause and effect, except as a programmer you’re free to be creative with what effects match up to each cause.

In plain English ifttt provides a simple logical structure, if this then that, along with two properties that fit into that structure, called triggers and actions. That being said ifttt enables anyone to be creative in their digital environments. Ifttt though, isn’t a programming language or app building tool, but rather a much simpler solution. Internet’s digital duct tape in a way, allowing you to connect any two services together.

Ifttt is in beta mode and just today I got my invitation. My first impressions are extremely positive. You can imagine, the first task I did create is a Delicious to Twitter process. As of now, whenever I submit a link into Delicious it will be automatically tweeted. Other tasks I created include “if current weather condition changes to rain, send me an email” or “when I share an item in Google Reader, then submit it to Delicious” which leads back to the first task, from Delicious to Twitter.

If you’re creative enough you can make clever “if this then that” tasks. Not only that, but there are literally dozens of web services and tools ifttt supports (which they are called channels in ifttt). I liked ifttt because of its easy-to-use interface and approach. You just log in and click create a task. Then, there’s something I’d call an automated wizard, which in about 5 steps helps you create your brand new tasks with beautifully simple menus, prompts and design.

The least I can say is that I am very impressed. Well, I am and I cannot help it. Ifttt is awesome and I suggest you registering for their beta invites. And just now, while writing the previous sentence, the very first ifttt email arrived notifying me that it rains in Thessaloniki. It’s quite fast, should I add. Take a look for yourself:

Again, I repeat. Ifttt is awesome and I suggest you registering for their invites. Now.

Random rant: the biggest part of this post was written in WordPress’ iPhone app while raining in Thessaloniki and watching Champions League’s semi-final between Manchester United and Schalke. It’s a long time since 2008, isn’t it? I was 16 and now I’m graduating from High School in a month!

Update: I liked a Vimeo video and boom—here’s the relevant tweet from ifttt:

Nikos Anagnostou ''Social Shopping'' http://bit.ly/m5xgqx

May 5, 2011 12:02 am via iftttReplyRetweetFavorite

@apas

Apostolos

It’s called Recommendatr and as a concept is kind of similar to 4sqwifi yet radically different. Recommendatr does not focus on where you can find a (Foursquare) venue with wifi but instead, it focuses on where you can find a venue with excellent service for you, the customer. It can be anything: from a cafe to a restaurant and an electronics retailer. Most importantly, it can be anywhere—it is not do not solely focused for and in Thessaloniki.

Recommendatr operates under the spirit of “keep calm, hack the world and do epic stuff” while being also licensed by Creative Commons & Kopimi. So I’d say do not wait no more, visit the website and give it a spin.

By the way, I created a new page in which I list all my projects I’ve created. You should visit it.

Of course it is!

And by the way, this whole new API and concept proves Twitter’s interest in a new self-owned datacenter. Heck, User Streams API needs a lot of bandwith and infrastructure. The world will be instant. Like, real instant or like, IM instant.

TNW did mention a kind of bug/problem related thing. New User Streams API will be useless for power users (read: Scoble and his friends). Either they (Twitter) should make the new API opt-in/opt-out with a Settings option — which is, I think, very likely to happen or Scoble and his friends should a) unfollow a ton of people b) setup new accounts (pointless, in my opinion).

There’s also a new concept. Again, TNW points it out. An idea of implementing Favorites into a built-in Retweet system (I imagine it as something like Flickr’s favorites which are now together with comments in comments format.).

I love favorites. Yes, I am the very single person after Scoble who favorites tweets. It’s very handy when I’m with my iPhone outside and see interesting tweets for great articles and stuff like this. It serves as an Instapaper for my Twitter. Yes, I know there’s Instapaper on Twitter for iPhone. Whatever..

As with Flickr, I’m against this new favorites implementation. I don’t see it as a Twitter’s “Like” button. I’m positive though, that the Twitter guys will surprise us. Or at least, I hope so.

Back on the real-time thingie. We’ll all like it. A lot. I was looking for a such upgrade since May or June, mainly on my Tweetie desktop client. During the summer I found out that I was desperately looking for it on Twitter for iPhone. So, guessing from my experiences and keeping in mind that you follow under 1,000 thousand people (I follow 540), I bet it will be great.

I’m just wondering how Twitter will solve — not only their’s — bandwith problem. I mean, being mobile with a data plan it’s ok nowadays but won’t Twitter for iPhone will fetch a lot of calls (read: MBs of your data plan in the long shot), especially if you follow a lot of people and they tweet like a thousand monkeys on keyboards. A good solution could be if Twitter would sum-up 5-10 tweets at a time and send them to you (if you’re mobile) in intervals. That’s a lot of nerd-talk in their geeky meetings I guess.

Conclusion

Straightforward: I like it. It will bring Twitter into the next level and I am sure about this. There’s a small technical problem that can be easily hacked-around. Do you think that will, the new User Stream API indeed bring Twitter in the next level? Oh and by the way, you should follow me, I’m @apas.

Το μόνο ερώτημα που έχουν να απαντήσουν οι τύποι του Foursquare είναι «Πολλά λεφτά και μέρος μιας εταιρείας ή περισσότερα λεφτά και startup για πολλά περισσότερα λεφτά αργότερα;» όπως το έθεσε ο Στέφανος. Κανείς δεν ξέρει, ίσως μόνο αυτοί.

Το θέμα είναι εάν εξαγοραστούν, θα πρέπει (και θα θέλουμε) να συνεχίσουν το creative development και να μην γίνουν just-another-bought-startup. Να συνεχίσουν να πέφτουν new ideas. Δηλαδή, να αγοραστούν μόνο και μόνο για το background help μιας μεγάλης εταιρείας, να την έχουν σαν big advantage. Βέβαια, αυτό ίσως περιορίσει την «ελευθερία» τους ως προς το τι μπορούν να φτιάξουν και τι όχι. Αλλά αυτό φυσικά θα το δουν στο συμβόλαιο.

Από την άλλη, αν μείνουν on their own, θα τρέχουν πάλι από πίσω τα χρήματα μέσω VC funds που έτσι και αλλιώς οι investors είναι πολλοί, άρα θεωρητικά money flows and is no problem. Και φυσικά θα έχουν όλη την ελευθερία του κόσμου να προγραμματίσουν ό,τι θελήσουν και όπως το θελήσουν.

Εν τω μεταξύ ο ανταγωνισμός αυξάνεται. Gowalla και Loopt έχουν μπει και αυτοί στο παιχνίδι. Την μάχη φαίνεται να την κερδίζει όμως το Foursquare και δεύτερο να φτάνει το Gowalla. Εάν το Foursquare γίνει κομμάτι μιας μεγάλης εταιρείας ίσως επικρατήσει ακόμη πιο εύκολα — βέβαια, ο ανταγωνισμός θα πέσει, εκτός αν εξαγοραστεί και το Gowalla. Τότε θα μπορούμε να μιλάμε και για μονοπώλιο του Foursquare στα location services.

Yahoo!, Microsoft και Facebook φαίνεται να είναι οι επικρατέστεροι. Προσωπικά πιστεύω η Yahoo! και Microsoft είναι πιθανότεροι εξαγοραστές ή αλλιώς VC funds. Εάν όμως φτάσουμε στο σημείο να αγοραστεί το Foursquare από το Facebook τότε θα μιλάμε για το απόλυτο internet domination από τον Zuck και την παρέα του. Όμως όχι και τόσο απίθανο.

We’ll see.

Για να είστε εδώ κατά πάσα πιθανότητα ξέρετε ή και χρησιμοποιείτε το Foursquare. Όμως πιθανότατα δεν ξέρετε για το Plancast. Ένα startup που θεωρείτε από πολλούς εκεί έξω στην Αμερική το μέλλον των Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt και λοιπών. Επίσης δεν ξέρετε ότι ήδη μετράει κάποιους μήνες ζωής και ανεβάζει ρυθμούς, αναπτύσσεται και ετοιμάζεται να προστεθεί στα location services που χρησιμοποιούμε χωρίς να θέλει να αντικαταστήσει κάποιο υπάρχον — εδώ είναι που καινοτομεί.

Και αυτό γιατί το Plancast δεν το νοιάζει που είσαι τώρα, αλλά που θα είσαι μετά. Τι σκοπεύεις να κάνεις, που και με ποιόν χωρίς να είναι ο Μεγάλος Αδερφός. Με άλλα λόγια, το Plancast είναι a way to easily broadcast your plans to your online social circle ή ακόμη καλύτερα is a service for sharing your upcoming plans with friends. It’s a social calendar of sorts.

Επιβεβαιώνοντας το KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) background, ήρθε για να πετύχει. Μέσω μιας εξαιρετικά απλής διαδικασίας εγγραφής, Facebook & Twitter connect μέχρι το πρώτο plan που ετοιμάζεις — όπως και όταν θες να κάνεις το δικό σου slick online presence webpage — το Plancast σε κερδίζει από την πρώτη στιγμή.

Δεν στηρίζεται στην επισημότητα, για αυτόν ακριβώς τον λόγο ήρθε για να μείνει. Σε αντίθεση με το Facebook και το RSVP του, το Plancast με ένα απλό “Count me in” σε φέρνει ένα βήμα πιο κοντά στα upcoming social σχέδια σου. Αφήνει στην άκρη τα Upcoming, Going, Google Calendars και άλλα γιατί πολύ απλά αυτά είναι event-centric — δεν μπορείς να γράψεις & δεν έχει νόημα να γράψεις εάν θα βγεις με φίλους έξω, εάν θα πας να δεις μια ταινία στο σινεμά, ενώ το Plancast είναι ακριβώς προσανατολισμένο σε αυτόν τον σκοπό. Δεν λείπουν όμως και τα big events όπως το SXSW στο San Fransisco, όπου έχουν δημιουργηθεί από έναν χρήστη και όλοι απλά κλικάρουν στο “Count me in”.

Αν και δεν τους αρέσει ο όρος event,

“We shy away from using the term “events” because we don’t feel it’s very appropriate for the scope of activity we’re trying to capture. While our users may be interested in posting more formal, organized parties and whatnot to Plancast (and we certainly encourage them to), we want them to also feel completely comfortable sharing more informal plans (getting drinks, seeing a movie, going to the zoo, traveling to new york for a week, attending a conference, etc).”

όπως μας λέει ο Mark Hendrickson, ένας από τους 3 πίσω από το Plancast και blogger του ΤechCrunch μέχρι και το Φθινόπωρο όπου παραιτήθηκε για να δουλέψει αποκλειστικά στο startup του.

Το μόνο που του λείπει yet, είναι η mobile εκδοχή ή καλύτερα ένα iPhone και Αndroid app. Σύμφωνα όμως και πάλι με τον Μark Hendrickson, το iPhone app ετοιμάζεται και θα είναι σύντομα κοντά μας.

Ρίξτε του μια ματιά — τουλάχιστον, αξίζει.

Μπορείτε να βρείτε τα upcoming plancasts μου εδώ.