Excellent news today, as Whisher has been selected as one of the finalists in CNET’s Webware 100 awards, under the Mobile Communications category. Voting is now open, so click on the banner, or visit this link, to cast your vote! I am one of the founders and CTO of Whisher, who recently received funding from Swisscom and Benchmark capital (one of the only two Spanish startups to have received funding from a major international VC, which I think tells something!). The Webware 100 Awards recognizes the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation. Voting is open to the public from May 23 through June 11, where the top 25 finalists in each category will be listed.

Reading through my feeds a few minutes ago, I noticed an interesting post in TechCrunch, titled “Plazes Simplifies: Lessons From Twitter”. The post talks about how Plazes is making their location system more simple, and also adding new ways for users to position themselves and update others as to what they are doing.

What was really spooky is that when I clicked on the feed link to read the post and possible comments on TechCrunch itself…the post wasn’t there! In my feed, the post was between the one about TalentSpring and the purchase of aQuantive by Microsoft, but in TechCrunch’s site – it was missing. Did Nick Gonzalez release a post too soon? We will soon see, I guess. For those impatient, here is the post in its entirety (original text in italics):

Plazes Simplifies: Lessons From Twitter

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

Plazes, headquartered in Zurich and Berlin, is a social community that connects you and your friends to the places you spend your time. They’ve been around for a while (we profiled Plazes on the day TechCrunch launched in June 2005), and they recently raised €2.7 million in a venture round.

Plazes lets users tell others where they are and what they are up to. Currently, users have to download software which auto-determines user location based on IP address, network IDs from routers and other information and then places you on the Plazes map. If it was a location no Plazes member had visited before, you could name and describe the place and add Flickr photos.

As good as Plazes was, the friction from requiring users to download software and use it whenever they changed location created friction and slowed user growth. Taking pointers from the simplicity of Twitter, Plazes is changing the way it handles location, and is also adding time and activity dimensions to the product.

The new features roll out next week. The client software will no longer be required to set location. Instead, users can simply add a place via a Google maps mashup (and are helped along the way with a suggestion mechanism), and can also say whether they were there in the past, will be there in the future, or are there currently. Users can also say what they are up to, a very Twitter-like activity. Users can give Plazes this data via the Plazes website, the client software or by texting it in via a mobile device. An instant messaging interface is coming soon.

The new version will also preserve a user’s update history and allow them to post locations for the future, allowing you to plan, or chance encounters. The timeline will also allow your friends to get a comprehensive look at where and when you hang out.

Friends can subscribe to people or places and see a data stream from that source. Groups can also be formed that include both people and places, and the feed information shows what those people are up to when they are at selected locations.

250 of Plazes 50,000 members will get access to the update before next week. Plazes draws a crowd that is 60% from the U.S., with the remaining mostly European.

Plazes is clearly trying to lower the participation hurdles to get more users and more participation from existing users. The product will be significantly easier to use, and adding the activity information means users are likely to update far more often than just when they change locations.

Whatever the case, this is not secret anymore, as I believe there are a few thousand other feed subscribers, and they all have had a chance to read it too.

A few days ago I saw a picture from back when I was in a UK’s Mountain Rescue team, and in good shape. In the mid 90s I broke my left ankle in the French Pyrenees, while walking down an slope after a good day in the ice, and things went downhill from there. The lack of exercise, combined with bad eating habits took its toll, and today I’m almost 118Kg, or 260lb. for those still using imperial metrics.

This morning I went to see a doctor who specializes in natural diets, and she has given me a strict one. To start with, no eggs or milk for a few weeks, so bye bye Starbucks (I can still drink black coffee though). It’s then a matter of combining the right kind of food, for example, breakfast consists of acid fruits (lemon juice plus oranges, pineapple or kiwis), the a salad plus chicken, fish or pasta for lunch. A friend of mine has recommended this doctor, having lost almost 10Kg the first month.

Part of the plan is of course exercise, which having three kids plus a startup will be difficult to get done – my idea is to get a mountain bike and try to go to places with it, rather than take the car, plus a short cycle in the morning before everyone wakes up. Any recommendations? I was looking at some today, and the two manufacturers which seemed best were Scott and Orbea, not sure which to get though.

A weekly progress report will be posted here, I’m actually thinking of making some sort of weight widget, it’s just an idea for now.

This comes a little late as the event is over, but I thought it was worth making some final remarks. On the last day we presented the new look & feel of Whisher, together with some new features such as integrated SIP VoIP, and powerful geolocation functionality.

It was interesting that a couple of companies presented their products using PowerPoint documents labeled ‘Confidential’ (this happened to us at Lift’07, so a little mea culpa, and a heads-up to others). Not that the information is really confidential, just remember to take out the labels:

At the end of the day, Chris Shipley interviewed Martin Varsavsky, who was also being presented with an Entrepreneur of the Year award by the conference organizers. By this time, many attendees had already left, eager to catch trains to take them to Madrid or Barcelona for a flight back home, so the interview was rather bleak. People were asked by the organizers to sit towards the front of the theater to make it look a bit more full (if that was at all possible), and we even saw students from Zaragoza’s University turn up, who had not been present during the rest of the event. We also left after this, as we had a longish drive home, and felt sorry for SpeedBit, who were the last to present, after the interview with Martin.

Some comments about the event:

• The venue was nice, but the low glass desks were totally inadequate. At DEMO, we had nice custom-build stands, with the company name on top, so even if you were standing, the laptops were at the right level to show people stuff. At this event, everyone resorted to stealing chairs from around the theater, as none were provided by the organizers.
• The WiFi worked OK, but sometimes got too congested. There were two 3Mbit ADSL lines, and six access points tied to each, placed about 20cm from each other. You can guess that interference, and heavy usage by some of the attendees didn’t do the network much good.
• For some strange reason, a van with a huge screen was placed in the middle of the main square of Zaragoza, near the event, and live video feeds from the event were shown there. A simultaneous translation ran at the same time, but the volume was set at the same level as the original audio, and the end result was a cacophony that basically amused the locals.
• The catering did their best, but left every day just before 17:00. This meant 3 to 4 hours with no food or drink (not even water, never mind coffee).
• Little publicity of the event was made, which resulted in basically a couple of local newspapers showing up to report, and the sponsoring newspaper Cinco Dias. Other media was there but were basically not very interested in investigating all the companies presenting. The feeling was a bit depressing, almost like you were presenting to the other companies also attending. There is no point running such an event if absolutely no national press coverage (at least) has been attempted to be captured.

I won’t say the event was bad, we actually met some great people, talked to a few VCs, and had a good time. I will leave you with a few more pictures from the event (and a few more are on my Flickr page).

We’re presenting Whisher at Innovate!Europe 2007, being held in Zaragoza, Spain. The event itself is not huge, and has not been written about much, but since it is a stone’s throw away from Barcelona base, we felt it was worth coming. I’ll be posting some pics and info a bit later on.

Day 2: Presentations, demos, networking and no coffee after 17:00

The day started off with an intro from Chris Shipley, and a few onstage demos.

One of the demos that caught my eye was a service called Smeet, which creates a virtual 3D space (in an isometric birds-eye view for your techies), for example, a bar, and places animated avatars which correspond to real users who login to the system. Each user also dials in to a conference number, and his audio can then be heard by others in proportion to their distance, i.e. there is a hearing range, and a speaking range. Thus, by moving your avatar close enough to a group, you will begin hearing their conversation, and even talk to the group if you get closer. Pretty cool stuff!

In the afternoon there was a discussion panel on angel and VC funding of startups, with some heavyweights present – Klaus Hommels from Benchmark, Simon Levene from Accel, Mark Tluszcz from Mangrove, Saul Klein from Index, and Oliver Jung from Adinvest. The moderator was supposed to be Loic Le Meur, but he didn’t show up, apparently due to political engagements back in France (my guess is he will be the next interior minister!), so Chris Shipley took the lead. Some interesting discussion was generated around when and how to take money, and from whom. One conclusion is that if you go for top VCs, you have to set your aims very high, not on a $10 or $20M exit, which can be fine if you take angel funding instead.

The event is OK for networking with others, but the catering disapeared around 17:00, and we were left with no coffee!