There we go. I met the founders at this years DLD and was at once thrilled by the idea. I somehow think it will work, without even fully knowing their business model. Firt business model will be getting loads of traffic via blogs like mine.
What is mymuesli? It’s a site where you can mix your own cereal. That’s it. Go with corn only, add a bit of banana and apple or something more exotic, your choice. And if you order now, every sixth package is free! So go and order and tell me what you did 
Rock on guys! Great startup and a nice site!
Update: First order is out. You can find my mix right here.
Monthly Archives: April 2007
mymuesli.com is online
VoIP with your Mobile Phone
Lots of tools are coming out that are great for use with your mobile phone and to save money on calls. The thing is that I have a Base contract which gives me free call germany wide to fixed lines and some mobile phones. With Cellity I can still save on the other mobile phones with a price of 15 cents versus 25 cents. That’s already nice. But the really good deal comes in when I think about international calls. Here I had another look at Jajah, which I really like from the general idea. I would be paying 15 cents for international calls to many countries via that one which is a lot cheaper than the 69 cents I pay with my mobile phone, and a client is available to use, sadly not on my E70 though.
Looking at Cellity though, which through their client, available for the E70, is a lot easier to use, I can get 9 cents a minute to the US and many EU countries. Cellity wins over Jajah here. The thing is that Jajah is available everywhere, world wide, so I will probably need both accounts if I really want to save. What I still want to have really, is something to save when roaming in other countries, that still seems to be some time away though.
I did just figure out that there is one cheaper version for me. I can dial into our Asterisk Box in the office from the mobile phone, get a free dial tone and dial out to the US and many European Countries for under 0,4 cents a minute. Sorry guys. QSC wins here.
It’s an interesting space though and I am looking forward to seeing stuff develop over time. If Cellity can internationalize their system somehow, this would start to really rock the mobile world. They are at a good start already though with a fairly nice client that runs on a lot of phones out there.
Top Ten Reasons Why Web 2.0 Sucks
This post from This is going to be BIG! right here and there are many very valid points. Let me put some down here.
The thinking, not just the building, has gotten small and lightweight… Too many people building features, not applications, or, gasp, companies. People are confusing design with innovation. Just because you add AJAX and rounded boxes to something does mean you have innovated.
We are seeing a lot of this out there at the moment, just thing of all the copy cats. The thing is that you can now build stuff very fast and it might even be taken up very fast. But is it a company? We are putting a lot of effort into building a company here at Ormigo. Among others, this means we hired the right group of people that have experience in leading teams and are happy enough to do the base work now. There are some very cool companies out there, but also a lot of featuritis.
Web 2.0 is a conversational vacuum. I’ll prove it. Unless you live in the Valley, walk outside your door and try to find a Twitter user… You’ve got six hours. Go. Trust me, we’re talking to ourselves. (Don’t get me wrong… I really like Twitter… We just need to remind ourselves about how close to the edge we all are out here.)
Yes! Thank you! We are our own echo chamber. It was the blogging world now it’s the startup world.
A lot of powerful people don’t participate. How many VC’s out there fund widget companies without having a blog or a MySpace profile? Any Sony bloggers out there? What about brand managers that want to do Second Life campaigns without ever having been inside. How about my elected representatives? They get out there and kiss babies during election time, but how many blogging elected officials are there? (And not watered down campaign blogs… actual blogs written by the actual people.) We could do great things if we weren’t so segregated into a small group of people punch drunk on Kool Aid and a great deal of people who’ve never even heard of Kool Aid.Â
It is getting there I have to say here. We have real people blogging, more and more, but it’s not an easy concept to grasp. It will make the world a better place in the long run, forcing companies to be open. But I have been saying this for a long time. The good thing about this Internet thing getting into the mainstream is that you can not as easily fake it anymore. And it will get harder.
Finally a good startup again
I just found it on Gründerraum. The entire thing was student project in 2004 and they have the patents it seems and are now looking for a producer. But what did they do?
It is very simple, and has nothing to do with the Web… well not at first sight. They developed a Coaster that has a pressure sensor in it and through this sensor and wireless technology it can alert the bar that your beer is empty. Right on! Above that you can put some features into them of course. Let’s hope it takes off.
unddu.de goes online
unddu.de is only. It’s a german social network that seems to have a bit of everything, like myspace, blogs, videos, … . And it’s done by United Internet, who own among others web.de and gmx. You can sign up now… not everyone though.
For those of you not fluent in German, the above reads: To become a member of unddu.de you need a GMX or web.de eMail address.
Ok, that’s that for me. What I do find interesting is that unddu.de was supposed to be everything for everybody. They said that all these niche things lead to too many accounts on different platforms and you need one central things. Everything seems to be true. Everyone seems to be limited to United Internet customers. Come one people, open it up, or make it invitation only. But don’t limit it to those people that have these emails. Looking forward to seeing it open up tomorrow after a blogger backlash 
web 2.0: chmod 777
That is really the best and shortest explanation about one part of what makes Web 2.0 special. chmod 777. Very short, very simple. Found here.
For the non-technical here. Chmod is a command in Unix to handle permissions on a file for unix. The first number is for the owner of the file, the second for the group that user belongs to and the third for everybody. 777 means everyone can read, create, write, anything. Free for all.
My Firefox Extensions
Firefox is great, and even greater is how good it gets when you add a few extensions. Here are mine.
- Greasemonkey: While I don’t have lots of scripts, things like Download Video are great. I am looking forward to your suggestions.
- Better GMail: Ok, this one rocks. You can get saved searches to the left, get attachment icons, conversation view and best of al, macros. I can now navigate my gmail a lot more via the keyboard. Feels like Quicksilver for the Mac.
- Bluedot: I am using Bluedot, and the add-on is obviously a must.
- CustomizeGoogle: This will let you make Google better. Very cool.
- Firefox Showcase: Get an overview of all open windows.
- Firebug: You are doing web development? You need Firebug. Period.
- GMail Manager: Do you have several accounts? One on Google Hosted? Great tool to stay informed without keeping GMail Windows open.
- Live PageRank: No need for a Google Toolbar.
- S3 Firefox Organizer and EC2 UI: Working with Amazon S3 or EC2. There you go. Great Tools to have.
There you go, those are my additions. Have fun with them.
Some Thoughts about the Googleclick Deal
One weekend you relax, and come late to the news, and Google has bought Doubleclick for $3.1 billion in cash. Cash. Not stock, cash. Boy oh boy. But it is worth it and I can explain to you why. Some time ago I was sitting in a meeting where we were looking at different banner server companies for use at a big german special interest portal. I was there just to listen in as this might be interesting for another part of the company I was responsible for. We looked at several different ones and at the end Doubleclick won, not because it was better, but because it was the standard, especially in agencies. So there you go. That’s why it is worth $3.1 billion.
This also becomes clear in the FAQ that Google put up. They have lots of questions they answer in great detail (especially privacy stuff ) and then there is one question they can answer very clearly:
Q. Will advertisers and agencies be able to serve ads to Google network sites through DoubleClick?
A. Yes
Ahhhh… there you go. That’s the reason they bought Doubleclick. Agencies get X Million USD to manage and distribute and they want to track everything via one tool. Above that, Paul Kedrosky thinks that $1 Billion is really just to be a pain for Microsoft. Above that, this really puts Yahoo! back on the map for lots of people he thinks.
The competition has already cried out and wants regulators to take a close look at the deal as seen here and here. I have to admit that the power that is building up there is immense. DoubleClick is amazingly powerful in the agency market and Google has an amazing Network of Sites. The problem is that they will not get the Top of the Fold spots and especially they will not get them as a first solution. They will get the placements that are left over, and their ads will only be shown if there is nothing else the publisher wants to show.
Of course stuff will change a lot on those fronts, but it will take time. With this deal Google has the power to push along integrated changes if the publisher and/or agencies don’t stop using Doubleclick or AdSense. We’ll see how it plays out.
Next up, Google acquires the Internet.
