The company blog of Firmhouse. Here, we share our thoughts and experience on prototyping, concepting and random stuff.
So probably by now you know we’re building Frits.me a little website that allows you to extract some information from you Hyves profile in order to find cool people on Twitter. It’s quite easy, but it took a little MindMap to get the idea concrete. We’ve made this MindMap a so called WikiMap, which allows you to view and collaborate on the idea.
Here’s the MindMap click edit if you want to add or change some ideas!
So this rainy Sunday Frits.me will be born. Today we’ll finish stuff like design and data connections so everything works.
You can watch us live @ Ustream:
This weekend we’re having a Prototyping Weekends in collaboration with Dutch Coast Software and Red Factory.
A team of 10 skilled people is working on a little service around Open Filter from Peers. Open Filter concentrates on creating options for end-users to use their meta-data to do more on the net. In other words, your data is free to move with you. A bit of a dataportability kind of thing. Besides porting data, they focus on using the data to establish interesting relations. Check out their LinkedIN bookmark example (note: this is created before the API release of LinkedIN).
Today we’ve been working on Frits.me (name is because we still had that domainname, but also because we liked it).
Frits.me connects Hyves and Twitter via Oauth to help you find interesting people on Twitter based on your Hyves information. For now this will be done on a few datasets. We pull the data and connect it to our (still) little database of Twitter people. At the moment the match is made via context but in the feature this will be done with Open Filter. When more people start to use the service there will be more relations available so we can create co-relations and be more accurate.
Last week Techcrunch wrote an article about Friendster being awarded another patent on Social Networking. I wrote a post about this almost a year ago, when another patent was awarded to Friendster.
It’s amazing if you think about it. Friendster is becoming a patent troll and it’s only a matter of time when they will start charging other social networks for using ‘their’ intellectual property. Somehow I don’t think a judge will undoubtedly accept it in court. But let’s assume a judge does.
Friendster collects money and the best Intellectual Property (IP) lawyers to sue Facebook and MySpace for using their IP. They ask a big compensation and a huge monthly fee for using the patent. A judge decides in favor of Friendster, what will that mean for Facebook and MySpace? Or even more interesting, that thousands of other webservices mildly using other parts of the patents.
The patents won’t take networks like Facebook or MySpace down. But there is a reason for Friendster to go after all those patents. Maybe they’re looking for a buy-out and know that those patents will have the interest of those big networks. However going after big social networks in court is a realistic option, given that USA allows the patenting of software and processes. Also, judges highly value the fact software and processes are patentable.
Should big social networks fear Friendster? I think not. If big social networks want to do something against Friendster I believe there are some options. Get some more patents for yourself, just to be able to charge Friendster back. See if you can build a case against the US Patent office. Mostly because most of the patents awarded to Friendster are already in the Public Domain for some time now.
There have been a lot of comments on this subject, not only regarding Friendfeed but in general. This system of patenting software and processes don’t match with the current standards and trends. There is a need for a more flexible system and there need to be more regulations on international level.
More than a year ago Brightkite was one of the first location based networks that gained traction and had some active users. I’ve been using it myself for sometime, and liked it. But there wasn’t an incentive to keep checking everywhere. It updated my Twitter account and location, but nothing more than that. I missed the sparks to use the application on daily base. Foursquare and Gowalla might have found a solution.
Foursquare was one of the first popular networks that added a game effect to a location based service. Meaning, you could check in at locations and get a title. The person with the most check-ins on that physical location becomes mayor. Part of their business model is to give local businesses the opportunity to make offers or give free drinks for example. Unfortunately, Foursquare is only available in a limited amount of cities and heavily moderated.
Gowalla is a more low-key and user centric network. You’re able to add your own locations. And again here we find a game aspect, you can drop and pick-up items on that location. These items have a rank and a game of collecting and dropping items comes to existence. I think their first aim of making money will be in trading virtual goods or buy more items to drop on locations. Looking at the exploding trade in virtual goods online, this is not a bad idea.
At this moment it’s hard to point out a ‘winner’. Currently I think Gowalla has more potential in gaining traction on the short term. Simply because they allow users to create spots which are instantly ready for use. This way a more diverse user base evolves all over the world. Which enlarges the chances of people entering a city and already being a Gowalla user and instantly can start checking in.
Foursquare is now building an image of the location based network for the happy few. If they keep playing this exclusive card people won’t be able to connect to their friends in other cities. Resulting in exclusion of friends. If Foursquare opens allow all cities on their network, they will go head on with Gowalla. Which will be an interesting race.
Last Friday ‘The Creative Business‘ event took place. This even is held in ‘De Caballero Fabriek‘ in The Hague. We have our office in the building at unit 88.
The event is focussed on the creative industry and aims to create new connections and opportunities in the region. We had a great day because every company in the building gets a change to promote themselves during the event. Apparently most of the people where more interested in bigger companies, so we’ll make more noise next time (we’re planning as we speak).
We had whisky and therefore a lot of fun 
. Some pictures of the day:
Take a look at the complete set.
Triggered by the title? Well, basically that’s what is happening here in the Netherlands on the web. All bloggers (amateur and professional) that embed video or music need to pay a fee based upon the amount of viewers. The fee is depending upon the amount of visitors. But first let’s start with a small explanation for what Buma/Stemra is. From their website:
There are people who make music although you’ll never hear them make a sound: they are called music authors. Their efforts precede the successes of the artists who perform their works. The music that we enjoy is their intellectual property. Just like other authors, they have the right to remuneration when their works are played, sung or recorded. Buma/Stemra takes care of these matters.
So. Buma/Stemra takes care of all interests of music authors in the work they create. Not necessary a bad thing, wouldn’t it be the case that they’ve launched this ridiculous idea(dutch) for charging bloggers for embedding the music of authors.
What’s crazy about this is that YouTube or any other site providing access to copyrighted content should (and in a lot of cases already is) pay for it. In other words, they’re the broadcasters. They deliver the content to my browser. For me to see. A blogger or any other website is just a channel which I’m in which leads me to the content on the network of (for example) YouTube.
In the old world this would mean a manufacturer of TV’s is paying a fee for the amount of viewers that watches content via the screen. Where in fact (and completely logical to me) the broadcasting networks are paying fees for the series, movies and other contents that are being broadcasted.
Can we solve this? Yes we can. It’s not that hard, only it involves more effort from Buma/Stemra. I believe they should be more cooperative and look at how the world is changing. They’re focusing on the downside of the Internet (pirated content) and fighting against it. However they should see this as a big opportunity. You can now promote your artists and drive sales through all kinds of content networks. Artists are more and more using the web to connect and promote their own music. We now see more artist producing music on their own without a label. They own their channel and show what we’ve always known. They love to create music and connect to people that appreciate them for it. How? By listening, buying and maybe even more important: promoting it.
If Buma/Stemra won’t start making more deals with content networks, they face to be replaced. I love to see more self managing artists. Buma/Stemra is in it for the money, that’s why one day they’ll be gone.
Talking to your customers about your product is very important. We’ve experienced that while starting Tweetburner and see it actively happen around us. It’s a big drive for your success. For example, let’s take a look at two big video websites: YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube is the real big guy, while Vimeo is just, well, big. However I’ve never heard people say: ‘YouTube is a great product and becomes more and more relevant for me’. Other people have kept repeating to me how great Vimeo is.
I believe this has to do with the staff of Vimeo being active in their community. Involving your users during development makes them loyal and likely to stick when a YouTube in your market arises.
In the valley, building the next YouTube’s is what they try everyday. I would lie if that doesn’t appeal to my imagination, but think about it. Because VC’s have funds they need to keep alive, cashing out is their goal. If building a bad product allows them to cash out, they will. And if that affects you and your users, too bad. Needs to happen. Your customers know that. It’s like the banking world, it’s all about he money!
When a new YouTube enters your market, you want to be able and say: ‘Our users love us, let’s improve our product even more and show that new competitor who we are‘. You want to be credited for creating a product loved by users, not raising another $20 million dollar of funding.
This Friday the Creative Business event in ‘De Caballero Fabriek‘ will take place. Besides all the cool speakers during the free event, companies get the chance to show themselves to the visitors (a lot of people from outside are coming). Like other companies we organize something to show our huge-creative-thinking-power
In the afternoon we open our doors and organize ‘FEBO – trek eens een ideetje van onze muur’ (FEBO – grab an idea from our wall). Inspired by FEBO, a place where you can eat ‘kroketten‘ from a wall. Just put in a euro and a small door will open for you to grab your ‘kroket’. Instead of ‘kroketten’ on our wall we put on idea’s and have you select one.
We do this to show how fast a simple concept can be created by just putting in an idea, some keywords and loads of creativity. During the day we will organize sessions at 13.00, 14.00, 15.00 and 16.00. After selecting your idea from our ‘FEBO Idea Wall’ we’ll take 30 minutes to create a concept from that idea. Sounds good? Drop by!
We hope to see you this friday!
We know, we’re an internet company and probably we should stick to that. But we liked to explore the production of physical products. Or to say, customization of physical products. We’ve been inspired by Engraved Moleskine Covers, whom produce cool covers for Moleskine notebooks. We aim to bring this to the iPhone in a slightly different way.
When creating webservices we use prototyping to see what works. So we did with engraving these skins. We started with some plain leather, Omar Munie gave us some remaining materials to test the engraving on leather. Watch the video below to see how this turned out.
(Watch in HD)
I sacrificed my old Knomo iPod case to apply our company logo. We used the front to experiment with some grayscales, but it didn’t turn out that well. So we’re looking into that right now.
We also tested with a case imported from China. Anniething was kind enough to give one for testing purposes (thanks!). For engraving the materials we use the laser engraving machine from CabFabLab. Probably we will partner with them to actually start producing these cases & sleeves.
More information will be coming soon!
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