Tag Archives: tech

entrepreneurship, Events, News

Annoucing the 11th Hacker News Cologne Meetup

UPDATE: We’re back in control of the meetup.com group. Please note that no decision has been made to continue using meetup.com as the Hacker News Cologne community platform going forward. That’s up to you to decide at the next meetup. As Apple says, “We like to have options”.

Guys,

The rumors about our death are yet again greatly exaggerated.

In light of our meetup.com group being p0wned today, I thought I’d announce the next meetup here. It’s business as usual for Hacker News Cologne and we’re looking forward to see you all again at SolutionSpace on November 28th at 1900 CET. This time we’re relying on you and not meetup.com to get the word out. You know what to do.

We’re super excited to bounce back with a couple of awesome talks!

Kyle Ellicot (Head of Products, BigChampagne at Live Nation, Co-Founder and President of Heavy Cloud Media Group and Co-Founder of TechHustler) will be skyping in from the US to talk and take your questions, confession-chair-style.

And that’s not all! Greg Cooper, Y Combinator alum and Co-Founder of the awesome Interstate will also be joining us in the flesh to share some stories from his experience and take your questions.

At the next Meetup we’ll also discuss and decide an alternative community platform to meetup.com – which I think we can all agree left us somewhat wanting in security and reliability department, albeit rich on drama and adventure. Now you’ll get to decide where we go next.

As always, bring your own lightning talks and projects to show and tell and keep recommending new topics and speakers!

For now, we recommend avoiding meetup.com completely and staying tuned to the HNCGN Meetup organizers’ twitter accounts (@maikloewen @blacktar @francis_dierick) and blogs (http://www.maikloewen.com https://blog.vidarandersen.com and http://fr.anc.is/) for the latest news until we meet up again.

We also insist that no personal attacks be launched agains the hijacker of the HNCGN meetup.com group – Let’s show them what we’re made of by keeping it calm and clean.

Looking forward to see you all again at the next meetup!

Vidar & Crew

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Events, News, startup

We made it to LeWeb 2011!

We at @getGauss made it to LeWeb 2011 all because of people like YOU helped vote us there! We are very grateful for your support!

Have you been wondering what our bootstrapped startup is all about? Watch our live world premiere from on stage at LeWeb in Paris:

This is what Gauss – The People Magnet is all about:

The amazing pitch coaches to whom we owe our pitching steez – Chris Shipley (@cshipley) and Michelle Messina:

Videobombing Sean Parker’s keynote live on-screen, meeting Geraldine and Loïc backstage:

Interviewed by TechCrunch Europe on the LeWeb Radio:

Interviewed by the wonderful Mylène Schwinte (@swantoka) for the Leonardo Davinci Institute:

Hustling in the LeWeb Startup Exhibition hall:

Time to thank our fans personally after voting for us:

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News

Boom or Bust!

Dear friends and random strangers! You might have noticed that I’ve been extraordinarily boring quiet in the last couple of months. The reason is that I’m working on the next big thing ™ bootstrapping a new startup with partners. It’s not like it’s the new F-117 but we’re kinda stealthy about it still.

We think we are addressing a real-life problem by tapping into existing potential to mitigate it. I know that isn’t saying much but I’m super excited about this! We’re either changing the world or going home on this one.

We’re all about doing the heavy lifting aggregating power and wrangling leveraging technology to work for people – real people like you and your family and friends and colleagues – and not the other way around. (Ok, maybe not for you, you and you – but for YOU!)

It may just be a small step in a nacent field, but we think its potential to make a difference in your life is just awesome. We are extremely passionate about it. We want to be able to share our vision with you any-day-real-soon-now!

What makes us perhaps a little different than most of your average garden-variety tech startups – besides our vision – is our eclectic team. Our team consist of seasoned pros with a couple of merit badges of their own. I am super excited to have them onboard!

I think there’s such a great background story behind it all too. I wish I could tell you more right now.

Should you be looking to invest, our Keynote deck is quite fancy and our enthusiasm for our vision highly contagious, but we’d love to get back to you in a month’s time or so when our own money, blood, sweat and tears has transmogrified into proof.

If you’re interested to know more I would love to have a coffee with you right about now. If you’re interested in contributing, help out or join, come aboard – we’re expecting you!

Let’s talk! My iPhone is as always +49 (0) 151 40 133 149. My mail is as always [email protected]. My lines are as always open. :)

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Rants, Software

Is Google Buzz the new Blog?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. You’ve heard it all week; Buzz, Buzz, Buzz. I’m very guilty of adding to the… well… Buzz. (Sorry. Bad pun.) and I’ve almost had enough myself.

I think nobody knows exactly what Google Buzz is right now and where it’s going to go, evolve into. I think most agree it has tremendous potential. However, a most provocative thought occured to me today; Could this be a Blog killer replacement?

The gist of my hypothetical argument is that Google Buzz could probably replace most blogs given the ability to take it out of Gmail, customize, widgetize and skin it a la iGoogle. The Google vehicle is already there in the form of the current Google profile page or embedded externally over the Buzz API. The vehicle for an standalone service is already there as Google owns Blogger. The quest for unified commenting could also have been solved by the advent of Buzz. Further more, Google’s proven efficiency at filtering SPAM in Gmail, it stands to reason that they’d do an excellent job at eliminating comment SPAM.

Please share your take with me – I’d really like to hear what you think.

For those of you who live under a stone actually live wholesome, meaningful lives Buzz is a new service launched by Google.

Think of Google Buzz as something like twitter with no character restrictions and with comments or Facebook without Farrmville and the other horrible wonderful stuff, like FriendFeed if you’re of a more adventerous inclination – or perhaps a Blog?

Currently I hate the (as of writing) lock-in of the service with Gmail, but I’ll keep that for future posts.

The service has improvement potential and, shall we say some rough edges?

Here’s a primer on what you should know about Google Buzz to get started.

To keep in the spirit of ‘the now’, I’ve embedded the original Google Buzz thread (as a grotesque kludge – do tell if you know of a better way) below.

UPDATE 2012: Below we have the answer to the question in the headline. It’s a resounding “no”. Buzz is scheduled to be killed and old content is not embedable anymore.

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