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The Swedish mobile operator 3 (www.tre.se) becomes one of the first operators world wide to offer commercial Internet connection using High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA).
Starting at 1,2 MBit/s but in January 2007 upgrading to 3,6 Mbit/s.
Easier then ever to "Go Beduin".
The "Going Bedouin" story from Greg Olsen, the CTO of Coghead, has been around for a while but I really found it interesting. Especially since I tried it myself from the Caribbean and many other places.
However, you don't need to go that far away to see the benefits. It amazes me to see that, in year 2006, people still set an auto-message in their Outlook when they are going on business trips!
How much do they miss not having a laptop using connections over 3G or a WiFi network at a hotel or coffee shop?
(3G runs very well in Sweden providing a mobile 0,4 MB connection, soon 1,5 MB)
Hemnet, the leading residential listing service in Sweden, has upgraded their mapping service.
The new (highly) improved service is provided by Hitta.se, a national "yellow paper" service which has focused highly on the mapping functionality to attract visitors.
The pressrelease is found here (in Swedish).
I had the opportunity to sit down with the founders, Per Wigart and Rolf Andersson, of FastighetsSverige (a Swedish real estate magazine) the other day. Their lifestyle magazine, with a strong real estate focus, which was started 1½ year ago, has became a great success in Sweden.
Going online with style
It's common for newspapers to put some of their articles online. Some even provides a PDF version, but it could be done better, like they have down. Below is a screenshot from the latest issue of FastighetsSverige provided online through a service called E-magin.
(The service E-magin is provided by Leanback Sweden AB.)
The visual effect would be that off a flipping through a magazine, you're able to zoom and quickly jump between pages. Furthermore, it is possible to click on the ads (try Datscha's ad on page 53). If you are a subscriber you will receive the online version at the same time as the paper goes to the printshop.
Great product, brilliant online execution!
The technology to create 360 pictures has been around for years but that doesn't mean that someone is using it great. However, today I got a tip that Eklandia (a large Swedish property firm) is using it in a clever way.
It's not the 360 picture that is impressive but how they have implemented it to the floor plan and that you easily could see on the floor plan where the camera is pointing. Take the tour using this link. The entire market material is found here.
CoMotion is the company behind it and from visiting their site I could also see that they are doing the same for Vasakronan and Fabege.
Are you wondering how your future customers (or colleges) are using new technology? Take a look at this video from a the Churchill Club event 'Next Generation Innovation' , run by Guy Kawasaki, interviewing youngsters about their use of mobiles, Internet and PC.
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First of all, everyone in marketing should take notice (even though marketing won't go away, your next campaign may need to be different), but not to far away these young people will start looking for employers and a place to live. How do you attract them?
Source: Drew Meyers blog
Check out this video from the Salesforce "Future of Software" event in London on the 13th September. (There could be a need for a leaving contact information to see it.)
The event is two hours, but you're able to jump between the different parts.
Marc on the SaaS model: fast forward to 64 minutes in to the presentation
Click on the Carbon Trust in the menu and wait to Marc is back. It's also possible to click in the timeline box to jump in the presentation.
A business case: take a look at the Total Jobs presentation (by the way, this guy has brilliant presentation skills!)
Source: found the video at the "Where is the upside?" blog
Found an interesting entry on the 37signals blog about simplicity.
"Imagine a world in which software companies simplified their programs every year by shipping with 10% fewer features at 10% higher cost due to the expense of simplification. For the consumer to get less and pay more seems to contradict sound economic principles…Yet in spite of the logic of demand, “simplicity sells.”
It's an interesting point, but I would go for a strategy to make the product 10% easier to use for every year. Not necessarily taking away functionality.
Found a post on Techcrunch about Zillow starting to add user generated data to its Zestimate on Wednesday morning (I assume that is Seattle time, so another 6-8 hours). Actually they are providing two zestimates; one based on public records and one on user generated data.
As put by Michael at Techcrunch "I would expect people to be aggressive about updating Zillow information when they put their home up for sale".
So situations like the one "about a seller who immediately pulled his home off the market after a prospective buyer confronted him with a Zestimate $500,000 below his assessed value. His conclusion is that Zillow.com has made his home unmarketable." Read more here at BloodHoundBlog.
Update at 9 a.m. CET
Just after completing the post above Drew (active blogger at DrewMeyersInsights and Zillow employee) found me being online over Skype and we started chatting. Drew told me that the new release (called z2) has been launched (a few hours before deadline). Zillow's Chairman and CEO Rich Barton has posted an entry on their blog about their thoughts.
Here you found how the update process is executed. You first has to prove that you are the legal owner. There are three ways of doing it, including faxing(!) legal documents to Zillow. Could be quite an effort for Zillow to handle internally if millions of homeowners prefer this method. Finally, I guess all brokers will put some "pressure" on the seller to update their home at Zillow before putting the house on the market.
Update at 8.30 p.m. CET
US has waken and so has the Real Estate blogosphere. One know what was going to happen... Zillow does something and quite a few people have very strong feelings about it.
The non-believers;
Bloodhoundrealty (you have to give him credit for his consistency)
Sellsius
Charlottesville
The believers;
Robbie at Seattle's Rain City Guide
AnyGeo
RealEstateCoach
My call? Believer to 100%.
If I were moving to US, I would indeed be using Zillow. Should I take the Zestimates for granted? No, but it is for sure a better starting point then nothing moving to a new place. Especially by comparing different suburbs to each other (the heat-maps are brilliant).
It seams that some people take credit of the new functionality added on Zillow (see the comments on the techcrunch post). Please, don't underestimate the people at Zillow. I don't know about their product roadmap but I'm absolute convinced that this has been on their horizon from the start. I also believe Ardell at Seattle Rain City Guide is on to the next step in her comment to this post...
Michael Price at MLPodcast runs the excellent blog Mikes Corner. Especially worth reading is his interviews with a number of Internet services. This week he added an European site, Nestoria. You find it here.
