MaxMon is a free Android app that lets you use an Android phone as a monitoring system. Rather than just using your personal phone to connect to the internet and find out what your sensor is reporting, the MaxMon app turns your phone into a data collecting device. The MaxMon app monitors mains power and vibration using sensors built into the phone (with a shake-to-alert feature useful for people in distress) and if you have Wi-Fi at your remote location you don't even need a SIM in the phone, or a mobile phone contract. Great uses for MaxMon include monitoring elderly relatives living alone, boats in marinas, unoccupied properties and so on. MaxMon are very keen to stress the social benefits of their app and the lost cost nature of their business. Not only is the app free to download and able to run on cheap hardware, but the entire business was started with just £10k. Founder Martin Lambert is over the moon with this, saying he "burned through $50M+ of investment" in his previous venture. If you need extra sensing capability such as temperature, humidity or motion monitoring you can purchase an external gadget (the cutely named Quatropus - picture above) from MaxMon that connects to your phone and enhances its inbuilt sensors.
More details at http://www.maxmon.co.uk/.
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Last week I attended the second Digital Wallet Foundry event, on the topic of Identity and Loyalty in digital payments, at Microsoft's Modern Jago workspace in Shoreditch. It was the first time that I had visited Modern Jago and the space itself is absolutely gorgeous. Set in an old school, many of the original features have been kept and new art installations on the theme added. The week kicked off with talks from industry insiders including Microsoft evangelist Richard Peers, Rafaele Petruzzo, Director of Business Development & Innovation at Tesco Bank and payment entrepreneur Julian Wilson. Eager teams listened to ideas on micro-payments, gamification and loyalty schemes before getting down to writing their app.
Development commenced on Monday afternoon, with just 4 days to code until the winner was chosen on Friday 19th. A team from Barclays had won the first Foundry event so everyone was rooting for a small player for the second, but it wasn't to be with a two-man team from Lloyds TSB taking the title. Their presentation was well thought-through and entertaining. They started with a role play of someone buying a mobile phone and outlined the frustrations and barriers to sale of ID and credit rating checks. Their solution was an app called Verify Me, which hooked into the customer's own Lloyds account to allow them to verify themselves and to take a credit rating. The results could then be passed to a merchant app using a QR code or NFC. Neat and to the point, Verify Me will be going back to Lloyds for further development. Maybe customers will see it in their banking app shortly? Wayra is the technology accelerator of O2’s parent company, Telefonica and the last week of March was Wayra week - where 30 startups battled it out to win just 20 places at the Wayra incubator. The results have now been announced and are online at http://uk.wayra.org/en/wayraweek/6329/ganadores. I spoke to Liz Rice of winning startup Tank Top TV about what they do, how they started and what it was like taking part in Wayra week. Q: So what is Tank Top TV? Our mission is to make it really easy to find something you want to watch from all the various on-demand services out there, like BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Lovefilm, BlinkBox, 4oD, Crackle and a load more (I could go on!). There are literally thousands of TV shows and films available on-demand - so we think it's crazy that we ever find ourselves thinking there's nothing on to watch. Q: And why did you start it? Like a lot of great products, it came from solving our own frustrations. The very first step was way back when iPlayer first came out, and it took forever to navigate past all the episodes of EastEnders that we didn't want to watch, so Phil (my husband and Tank Top TV co-founder) built a little script to make it easier to find what else was showing. Then other services started appearing and we realised that pulling all the listings together in one place would be really handy. From there it was a logical step to add recommendations and personal watchlists. And then we learned from users that a lot of them were using us to find films, specifically, so we started Tank Top Movies to focus on that. Q: What support/funding have you had to date to help you get to where you are? Our local council has a great initiative called Enfield Innovation, through which they award £10,000 funding for the best idea in each of three categories - business, student and resident. We had already set up a company so we entered - and won - the business category last year. Getting that support was a massive boost of confidence, and really it marked the point where we started thinking of ourselves as a genuine business! Team Tank Top Q: What is Wayra Week and why did you enter? Wayra is Telefonica's startup accelerator programme. They have academies all around the world, with the largest in London that opened last year. I had met a couple of folks from companies that were part of the first cohort at Wayra London, and they couldn't have been more enthusiastic about the benefits they were getting from the programme, so we put together an application from Tank Top TV for the second round. By this stage we had been joined by our third co-founder, Ian, and we were starting to try to raise some funding, so the financial aspect of the Wayra programme was obviously attractive. But the mentoring programme, and being co-located with companies who are going through similar issues and can help each other out really appealed to us too. Wayra Week is the final stage of the selection process for the Academy. 29 companies descended on O2's headquarters in Slough for three days of speaker presentations and workshops - and at some point during that three days each company pitches to the judging panel. Q: What was the experience like? Full-on, friendly, tense, slightly confusing and extremely supportive! Oh, and you're being filmed and photographed all the time, so that Wayra can put together films like this to convey the atmosphere of Wayra Week! Right from the train journey down to Slough, we started meeting other Wayra hopefuls, and even though we were competing against each other for places, all the teams were helping each other out. So for example we gave each other advice on our pitches, or shared the kinds of questions we'd had from the judges after our pitch session. I think that's a really good sign for when the Academy gets going. The three of us decided to stay in Slough rather than face a two-hour commute so that we'd be as fresh as possible for our pitch. We ended up with a pitching slot fairly early on the second day, so we were in the hotel bar until pretty late that first evening working on our slide deck! We obsessed about whether we had addressed every single point in the evaluation criteria that Wayra had given us, and we practised over and over to make sure we nailed it. We had workshops ranging from a presentation on how VAT figures in the Wayra agreement through to a session led by an acting coach who helped us with our posture, breathing and voice projection for actually delivering the pitch. There was a discussion about government funding grants, and a workshop on how to network at events, and there were talks from previous Wayra companies about their experiences. And several more sessions - all designed so that even if you didn't get a place at the Academy, you'd feel you had learnt something from the week. Q: What did you win? How does that feel? When the announcement was made, it was a huge relief after a fairly nerve-wracking (but fun) couple of days, but it also felt slightly unreal! They announce the winners in random order, and fortunately we were second out of the metaphorical hat so we didn't have to bear the tension for too long. We'll get desks in Wayra's very funky office space near UCL, funding to the tune of Eu 40,000, and a mentoring programme involving some really great folks from the startup world and the wider business community. Wayra's funding comes in the form of a convertible loan, which is extremely founder-friendly. And of course it's a great signal that we're a business worth watching! We've already had some advances from potential partners and contacts, as a result of the Wayra win. Becoming part of Wayra is a step-change for Tank Top TV, and genuninely life-changing for us as founders. The programme doesn't start until the end of this month, and I can't wait for it to get going and for us to move into our new home. At the moment we get together regularly in the Central Working space at Google Campus, which is a fantastic resource for the London startup community, but it does get pretty crowded and noisy, so it will be fantastic to have a space of our own. In addition to the practical aspects, we're already feeling like part of the Wayra family. We met some great people (from Telefonica and from the other companies) at Wayra Week and I'm sure we'll make friends for life through the shared experiences we'll have over the next few months. Q: Where can we expect to see Tank Top TV in 5 years time? We'll be behind the best content discovery services for finding long-form TV & video content - we're going to change the way you find something you want to watch. Today's typical experience, where you spend ages flicking through hundreds of channels or scratching around in different services in the hope you can find something you're prepared to settle for, is rubbish. We want to make that a thing of the past in 5 years! Tank Top TV's new site Tank Top Movies
Last week I was lucky enough to be able to attend the FDM Women in Technology Awards as a finalist. Although I didn’t win myself, I was bowled over by all the female talent there and the range of achievements - from founding award winning start-ups to creating artificial organs.
Here is a roundup of the winners. Woman of the Year – sponsored by FDM Group Eleni Antoniadou, Co-founder and Chief of Science, Transplants without Donors from London Eleni is the founder of Transplants Without Donors, which produces "off-the-shelf" tissue engineered organs that are customizable for each patient. She has also recently joined the NASA Academy as a researcher. Entrepreneur of the Year – sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent Jennifer Sheridan, Founder & CEO, Togeva Ltd from London Founded in 2010, Togeva is a unique Live Sharing™ Platform and API for mobile devices that allows people to create and share digital content. Jennifer is responsible for many roles, including leading technology development and design, general accounting and managing the team. She is actively involved in the startup scene in Tech City/Silicon Roundabout. Innovator of the Year – sponsored by The Institution of Engineering and Technology Joanna Montgomery, Founder & CEO, Little Riot from Newcastle Joanna launched Little Riot, an interaction design company in 2010 – with flagship product ‘Pillow Talk’ originally created as her university degree project. This innovative technology allows couples who are apart to listen to the heartbeat of the other person. As well driving PR, Joanna leads on product development and oversees the entire company operations. Inspiration of the Year – sponsored by VMware Deborah Gundle, Founder/Director, Netbuddy from London Without any prior IT experience, Deborah established Netbuddy in 2010, an online social networking community and crowd sourcing resource for parents and carers of children with learning disabilities. Since its inception, the site has received an average of 6,000 visitors per month. Leader of the Year - in a corporate organisation (with over 500 employees) – sponsored by BP Lucy Dimes, Chief Executive Officer, UK & Ireland, Alcatel-Lucent from London Lucy joined Alcatel-Lucent in 2011 and has been at the forefront of driving innovation and growth in 4G, internet and web hosting services, ICT, managed network services and outsourcing, on an international scale. She has established the UK&I Diversity Forum, the UK&I ‘StrongHer’ network and introduced mentoring for women in a global talent pool. Rising Star of the Year – sponsored by Cisco Taylor McGhee, Integrated Supply Chain Specialist Apprentice, IBM UK Ltd from Port Glasgow Taylor joined the IBM Apprenticeship Scheme in 2011 at just 17 years old, rotating within the main pillars of supply chain from customer fulfilment to supply operations. She is charged with helping each area improve their business processes and is an active Social Business Advocate within the team. Taylor also acts as a mentor for newly recruited apprentices and regularly attends internal networking events. Team Leader of the Year - in a SME (with under 500 employees) – sponsored by salesforce.com Tamara Lohan, Co-founder & CTO, Mr & Mrs Smith from London Mr & Mrs Smith, an innovative travel website was co-founded in 2003 by Tamara and her now husband James after a disappointing experience with a hotel guidebook recommendation. As CTO, Tamara has consistently championed technology as a key differentiator for the brand, masterminding an array of technical integrations whilst leading and nurturing her team of loyal staff. Lifetime Achievement In addition, for the first time, a special Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by Alexander Mann Solutions, was presented - to pioneering IT entrepreneur and philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley. This Award recognised her significant contribution to the industry, her game-changing influence and lifelong passion for inspiring and enabling women to achieve success in technology. Do you use Twitter? If you're reading tech blogs, I'm guessing you probably do. If you're just a personal tweeter then you won't need a service like Hootsuite, but if you run a small business or an personal projects it can become invaluable.
If you run a small business then it's advisable to have a Twitter account. For a very low amount of marketing effort, you can catch the eye of consumers that you wouldn't otherwise reach, and if your twitter feed is clearly targeted to a certain market, you will pick up followers who are interested in exactly what you offer, creating a tailored sales channel. On the other hand, if you are an ambitious professional. It also makes sense to have a personal Twitter account, allowing you to build your brand as a thought leader in your field. How to manage both of them? The first service that Hootsuite or similar sites, such as Tweetdeck, offer is a simple one, but probably the one that adds the largest value. Without a place to access more than one feed you would need to log out and in again every time you wanted to look at a different account. With Hootsuite you can stay logged into your main Hootsuite account and then access all feeds, in a simlar way to the Google mutiple sign-in feature for emails. Then there are services that are invaluable if you are a busy business tweeter rather than a casual personal one. You can send the same tweet from mutiple accounts. You can schedule tweets so that they appear in your timeline at a later date (perhaps while you are busy in a meeting!). You can even auto schedule tweets to appear when they will have the maximum impact on your followers. Hootsuite is free to use if you want to access fewer than 5 twitter accounts, which should be enough to be getting on with for most people. I'm pretty sure that, like me, you don't remember the first time that you used Eventbrite. When I first came across it, it felt like one of among a million new startups to do something that it seemed sensible to have a web app for. It felt like a nice site that did what you wanted, but would they ever make money just from selling tickets?
The competitors that Eventbrite started out against were the big boys - Ticketmaster, Ticketweb and individual venue and event organiser sites. As a consumer buying tickets, I couldn't see how tiny Eventbrite could end up a winner. But Eventbrite had a better plan. They weren't trying to compete with Ticketmaster to sell Madonna tickets. They were going for a previously unserviced market - small independent events organisers. In fact I would suggest that Eventbrite in fact helped to create this market by allowing event organisers who couldn't afford large system licence fees access to a simple pay-per-ticket cloud platform, and hence the ability to run events that wouldn't have happened otherwise or to grow attendance of smaller meetups. Eventbrite is completely free to use if you are not charging for your tickets, and they charge a percentage (which can be either deducted from your revenue or charged through to the ticket buyer, as you prefer) on paid-for tickets. And if you fancy trying out Eventbrite - why not have a look at these lovely Tech Talkfest events :) techtalkfest.eventbrite.com Simple but effective is the key with our third online web app Doodle. Most people I know through work have used this app, so chances are that if you're in the tech space you will have too. If not, you may surprised at just how simple it is. Do you remember the last time you tried to get your mates together in the pub? All of them, on the same day? It can be difficult to juggle emails, suggesting a date only to find that John can't make it, while trying to remember that Susan can't do Wednesdays. Well this is exactly the problem that Doodle solves! Using Doodle feels like simplicity itself. Enter your dates, receive a link, share with your friends and wait for them to enter their availability. Then you can easily see the count of who is free on which night (and a grid of exactly who, if some friends carry more weight than others). It somehow seems counter-intuitive that a business can make made from such a simple idea, but personally I think it's an important lesson for any startup. Simplicity is key.
Starting with paid-for Premium Doodle to capitalise on people who want a bit more from the service, Doodle have now launched BookMe as a complete service for time-based service industries such as hairdressers. Given their reputation, it deserves to be a success. I'm writing a series of 5 posts on what I consider to be the best free web applications available at the moment. You can read the last post about free emailing application Mailchimp here.
It is with great delight that I choose Weebly for my second best free app. This is in a large part because if you are reading this on my personal blog (http://www.zoefcunningham.com/blog.html) it is being brought to you by Weebly! (Similarly if you are subscribed to my blog, the you were delivered the last post about Mailchimp via Mailchimp!). As a coder, I wrote and designed my first website myself, from scratch. Big mistake. I am a coder, not a designer. My website looked truly appalling and had that hint of "is this a hoax site? It's so badly designed" about it. It was so bad, I wish I had taken a screenshot of it to show you. My second attempt involved using someone else's design but editing the HTML directly myself. This seemed like the perfect way to get maximum flexibility (WYSIWYG was a dirty word 10 years ago) with a sensible amount of effort. But was it a sensible amount of effort? Editing my website became a massive chore. I was using a simple file sharing site, and so to make an edit I had to download the HTML, make an edit, test locally, upload it and then fix the typos that inevitably occur. That's leaving aside the fact that "make an edit" involved typing out more characters in HTML tags than in text. I have used a lot of Wordpress sites, and I find them too to be difficult and non-intuitive to use. So I was absolutley delighted to discover Weebly.com, (found by typing into Google something similar to "website designer") which I now use for all of my websites (8, in total). Weebly solved all of my website problems.
In fact, despite starting with Weebly because it was free, I quickly upgraded to the professional version in order to use my own domain names (the biggest limiation of the free version is that you must use <your-site>.weebly.com). For me, that is the perfect example of how good these new free web applications are - you'd be prepared to pay for them if you had to. I recently gave a talk at the City Business Library on how to get your software to work for you (rather than the other way around!) and one of the key parts of my talk covered how much amazing quality free software there now is available. More and more professional web apps are attracting users by offering a free entry level package allowing the small business user access to a subset of features, or limited usage. Because these sites hope to turn you not a paying customer one day, you also get a professional level of service, unlike the "made in a bedroom" class of apps that have sketchy support at best. It was quite difficult to pick my top 5 and I'm sure I'll keep adding to the list as new apps come on the market. The notable similarity between all of these apps is that they all do only one thing, and do it well. This week I'd like to start by extolling the virtues of MailChimp - the essential app for maintaining a mailing list. MailChimp includes easy to use interfaces to do all the things you'd expect:
MailChimp is free to use for up to 12,000 emails a month if your mailing list is under 2,000 users. Above that a monthly charge applies, but, like with all the free software options that I'll be writing about, hopefully by the time your list gets that big you'll be making enough money to afford it! Last Tuesday I went to my first ever TEDx event. I'd seen (and loved) the TED videos online, but I only found out about the local TEDx franchise about 9 months ago. (If you haven't heard about it, you can find out more info at http://www.ted.com/tedx.) TEDxRussellSquare was run by the lovely Lisa Jacob and a team of enthusiastic volunteers (pictured above, Lisa centre), who ensured that the day went swimmingly. The attendees were all very special too and there was a great atmosphere at the event. Speakers and topics were very varied, but all thought-provoking. I was lucky enough to be able to speak (video pending...) but my favourite thing was writing on the posters on the walls, made by the volunteers. You can read more about the event on the official blog. We're all hoping Lisa will organise another one soon!
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Zoe Cunningham
Managing Director of Softwire, technology and backgammon presenter. Plus a little bit of new music radio. Archives
June 2014
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