GigaOM » Slush

Futureful plots smarter StumbleUpon for the iPad

David Meyer — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:37:17 +0000

This year’s Slush conference in Helsinki has been a terrific event, with a very high standard of startup and a disproportionate number of great ideas floating around. One of the most intriguing has been that of Futureful, a sort-of-browser app that’s going to be made available to iPad users in the U.S. in January.

Futureful has been under rather stealthy development for two years, and the team is backed and mentored by Skype co-founder Janus Friis. It’s a bit like StumbleUpon, in that it’s an app that contains a browser (as opposed to being a browser – you can’t enter a URL) and is designed to help the user find new content.

However, Futureful is all about semantic tagging and artificial intelligence. As you browse, the app presents subject tags in a row at the top – click on a tag, and you get taken to another related page with its own set of tags. So, clicking on a ‘Silicon Valley’ tag may take you to a tech story, with the fresh tags above it including something like ‘Moore’s Law’. It basically provides an intelligent chain of content discovery.

What’s more – and here it really differs from StumbleUpon, in my experience – you never see the same content twice.

“It’s a new way to consume content,” co-founder Marko Anderson said. “We want the interface to be as simple and fluid as possible. Based on my usage of the service, I get very different things coming to me. If I choose ‘Silicon Valley’ and somebody else does too, the content might be different.”

I’ve not yet had a chance to play with the beta extensively, and of course it would take significant usage before it’s possible to evaluate how successful the algorithms are, but – if it works – Futureful could be a great way to kill time and learn new things. If you’re an iPad user, of course.

As Anderson pointed out, “mobile devices aren’t great for typing”. Add to that the need for enough space to show the tag row, and it makes sense that Futureful is launching as a tablet app.

“We started with web development, but the tablet is the ultimate consumption device, where the information finds you,” Anderson told me. “We haven’t ruled out a web version, but the smoothness in terms of the cleanness of the UI has just been better on the tablet.”

And Android? “We have no plans yet, but we have had some of the biggest players in the mobile industry ask us to build for them.” Same goes for the iPhone – maybe in the future, but first things first.

Also, there’s no business model yet. That said, if Futureful takes off I’d imagine there would be many options for making money off it.

Here’s a video:

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Holvi prepares to roll out banking for teams across Europe in 2013

David Meyer — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 15:00:29 +0000

The financial services industry is seeing a lot of technological disruption these days, particularly in the arena of payments, but the humble bank account has remained relatively unaltered over recent years.

Finland’s Holvi is trying to change that. The company’s services are aimed at teams that want to quickly set up a new project (Holvi is powering ticket sales for the Slush conference in Helsinki, for example). Users can set up shared accounts and start receiving payments within minutes, and team members can collaboratively manage budgets. You can even set up an account for each of the team’s activities, and accounts can effectively act as storefronts for selling goods online.

And, in that Finnish spirit of openness, you can choose to show your account details to the world at large. In recent municipal elections, some politicians did just that with their campaign funding accounts, in a bid to demonstrate transparency.

It’s a pretty bold idea, and the company has just pulled in a new round of investment. The amount isn’t being disclosed, but one of the investors is Podio’s Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, who is now also on the Holvi board.

“I’ve been tracking the team for a long time, and in the end I couldn’t help myself,” Madsen-Mygdal told me. “I think the need for something to happen in this space is so big right now. An online bank is still the same as it was 20 years ago with telephone banking, and Holvi is fundamentally trying to change what it is.”

The investment is intended to drive Holvi’s internationalization. The firm is already up and running in Finland – getting there meant dealing with the country’s financial services regulator, of course, but it also gave Holvi the authorization it needs to go live across the European Union.

According to Madsen-Mygdal, that’s going to happen around the middle of next year. It’s a simpler task than it may at first appear, as Holvi is in reality a layer on top of more traditional accounts – all the company really needs to do is find banks to partner up with in each new territory.

And beyond Europe? Madsen-Mygdal says that’s “the vision”, but Holvi’s taking things one step at a time. After all, outside the EU, the company will need to engage with the financial services regulators of each new country it enters.

The regulators’ first question, obviously, is around the potential of using Holvi for money-laundering. However, the company says it avoids that – it may be pretty frictionless setting up a Holvi account and receiving funds, but users have to go through the same authorization procedures that would accompany the establishment of a normal online banking account if they want to pay out funds.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Transfluent translates for Unity, WordPress, Zendesk and Weibo

David Meyer — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 19:02:17 +0000

When we last covered Transfluent, the translation firm was applying its technology to social media and mobile apps. That’s obviously still the case, but now the company’s moving into gaming, blogging and even customer services.

At the Slush conference in Helsinki on Wednesday, Transfluent revealed deals with game engine provider Unity and WordPress.com VIP maker Automattic. Also, on the quiet, they’ve inked agreements with Zendesk and Chinese microblogging service Weibo.

In the case of Unity, this means Transfluent’s services will be available through the Unity Asset Store. And, according to Transfluent, translations will be updated every time the developer updates the game itself. The company’s 15,000-strong freelance translation squad will also handle app store descriptions.

Weibo? Well, that’s a social media service, so no new territory there. Zendesk is a pretty big deal though.

“It’s going to be very interesting, because a lot of customers have been asking if we support Zendesk,” Tranfluent CEO Jani Penttinen told me. “Half a year ago, it wasn’t possible, but then they opened up their API.”

And for pro WordPress.com users, well, it’s pretty simple – they can serve up human-translated versions of their posts to customers in the relevant territories.

So, what kinds of deals is Tranfluent striking here?

Pettinen opened up about the two really interesting ones here, namely Unity and Zendesk. Unity’s a profit-sharing deal, apparently, while Zendesk is a far simpler matter.

“It’s an added value,” Penttinen said. “We don’t pay anything. They’re just happy we provide the service for their customers.”

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, GigaOm. Om Malik, founder of GigaOm, is also a venture partner at True.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Blaast hits Android, squeezing data for emerging markets

David Meyer — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:55:20 +0000

As recent figures have shown, 72 percent of all mobile devices being sold – not just smartphones – are now Android-based. That points to an invasion by the Google OS of emerging markets, but there’s a problem: data is still way too expensive for people in such areas.

That’s why Blaast, who we covered earlier this year, has just launched on Android. The Finnish firm’s platform provides versions of popular apps that run partly in the cloud; mixed with clever compression techniques, this means lower data use. Think Snappli or Onavo‘s data shrinkage, but baked into the apps themselves for deployment in partnership with carriers.

Before now, Blaast has only been rolled out by operators in Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh on their low-end Java featurephones – a similar approach to that taken by the Eric Schmidt-funded biNu, but offering an app store rather than a fixed suite of apps. And even before this shift to Android, it’s already been a big success.

“We are bundled on over 50 million SIM cards,” CEO Joonas Hjelt told me at the Slush conference in Helsinki on Tuesday. “We have over 4,000 developers, and over one million chat messages per week in just one app. That’s how we’re doing with featurephones.”

Now, those are very basic, lightweight apps. Stepping up to Android means more complexity, and Hjelt claims Blaast pretty much halves the amount of data those apps use, on average.

So how big is that data problem, really?

“In emerging markets, it’s as expensive as having an AT&T subscription and roaming in Indonesia,” Hjelt said. “That’s what it’s like for the local people. [In terms of spending power] it’s six to ten times more expensive than in the U.S.”

Here’s the deal at launch. Indonesian operator XL is bundling the Blaast store alongside the Play Store on its Sony Xperia J. The carrier is rolling out a $5-per-month tariff for the use of Blaast apps – that’s around half of the previous cheapest option in Indonesia. Alternatively, customers can opt for even cheaper deals that give them a la carte access to specific apps, such as Facebook or WhatsApp.

“By promoting this as a channel, the operator benefits – they can lower their entry price and get more data subscribers,” Hjelt said.

Bye-bye browser?

There may be an interesting side-effect of this whole approach.

Consider this. For people in emerging markets, the handset is the personal computer. Many have never had a desktop and, chances are, they never will.

But, with data being expensive and platforms such as Blaast representing the cheapest way to get online, these people may find themselves limited to a subset of apps. (It should be noted that XL’s launch deal for Blaast also includes data for general use, but that may just be a promotional offer.)

Where data is more reasonably-priced, the browser is one of the most important elements of any smartphone or tablet. Take it out of the picture, and you excise the open web; we’re talking about a curated, closed experience. Better than nothing, for sure, but not open.

At some point, the cost of data will level out in such regions (although Hjelt maintains that “making things faster and more affordable will never go out of fashion”). Until that happens, we may be looking at a serious geo-economic split in the way people use and experience the internet.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Is this the next big phone OS? Meet Jolla’s MeeGo-based Sailfish OS

David Meyer — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:20:48 +0000

This morning, at the Slush startup conference in Helsinki, Nokia spinoff Jolla revealed the user interface for its Sailfish OS.

For fans of open-source mobile software, this is a big deal. It’s the evolution of the MeeGo operating system that Nokia ditched in favour of Windows Phone, and… well, here’s how it looks:

The UI was shown off by new Jolla CEO Marc Dillon (Jussi Hurmola left abruptly about a month ago, and is now a consultant to the firm), along with his team. There weren’t a whole lot of new details today, nor was there hardware on show. Indeed, the team came on stage brandishing a range of development hardware, rather than the Jolla smartphone that will soon go on sale through giant Chinese distributor D.Phone.

So here are a couple more pictures. In some ways – and I say this without denigrating the Sailfish UI – it brings together elements of both Windows Phone and Android. From the Windows Phone side, it seems to have borrowed the live tile concept for the homescreen, only it presents it in quite a different fashion. The app menu looks Android-ish, in my opinion, as does the dock at the bottom of the screen:

One for the road, this time the lockscreen:

Oh, and there’s a video too:

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.