Hip Hotels

Choose your next destination and look if there is a Hotel for you at the list of Design Hotels. One of my favourites is the Gastwerk Hamburg Hotel located in a old gas plant. Industrial look combined with modern design. Beautiful!

October 31, 2003 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Guide: Migrate from Windows to Linux

I read on slashdot that Germany has Published a Windows to Linux Migration Guide. The guide [pdf] sections include:

Linux distributions: Debian GNU Linux 27, SuSE Linux and Red Hat
License models: GPL and BSD
Technical guides: File Systems, Print Service, Networking, Web Services, Web Servers, Databases and Office / Desktop.

A very nice guide for everyone. If you don’t use Linux this is a good way to start. If you do just think you can always learn more!

October 25, 2003 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Mobile Games Growth

Mobile games market is growing faster and will be worth US$7 Billion by 2006. In 2002 this value was just US$800.79 million. Accodring to the article the most potent driving force behind growth in the European mobile gaming industry is the increasing number of people with games capable devices. Nokia N-Gage has just been introduced and will probably be the first real test into game-oriented mobile devices.

October 24, 2003 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

Do You Accept Cellphone Payments?

There’s a ongoing discussion about mobile payments on slashdot. According to this article you may soon have a credit/debit card inside your mobile. That way you will be able to pay directly for stuff just by pressing a “hot button”.

I have complied a list of filtered comments from the slashdot discussion:
Read more

October 23, 2003 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Young Entrepreneurs in the UK

I read about Carl Churchill and the other 19 youngsters who’ve toped the Rich List 2020. It’s nice to see some young technical-oriented entrepreneurs among singers, actors and football players. Carl Churchill is a 19-year-old’ who runs DMC Internet, an information technology company specialising in allowing big businesses to connect to the net and he’s predicted valued by 2020 is £100m. Adam Hildreth is an Internet entrepreneur who set up Dubit, a youth marketing company which is launching a discount card. Predicted value: £40 million.

October 16, 2003 | | Leave a Comment 

Mozilla Firebird: A Great Tool

I’ve used Mozilla Firebird in the past but in the process of re-installing my machine I sticked with IE for some reason. Now I’m back at using it. During a lunch-break talk with my friend and regular lunch-break partner I was convinced into using it again. For those of you curious about this great browser take a look at this tour.

October 15, 2003 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Entrepreneurship Course - Day 1

Yesterday I attended the first class of the VectorE program. VectorE is an entrepreneurship course and a business plan competition for engineering students.

If you read my weblog you know that one of my favourite activities is brainstorming. It was really something I desired to do in this kind of environment for quite some time. So we had an informal meeting of circa 30 people presenting their ideas and organizing themselves into about 15 teams. We were almost all motivated to discuss our own ideas so there’s was a lot of discussion on who wanted to proceed their own idea and who wouldn’t mind leaving their idea and help other pursuit his. In the end we had 17 groups/ideas that we’ll be presented more in detail next week.

The presenters
Burkhard Schrage is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Instituto Superior Técnico. His presentation was very nice. He introduced the course and gave some views of what entrepreneurship is. What I liked most was the fact that he not only shared his knowledge but was also keen on aquiring new. He was, for example, interested in discovering what the students thought about entrepreneurship in Portugal.

Nuno Arantes e Oliveira is Co-founder and CEO of Alfama, a drug discovery start-up focusing on inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and he is also CEO of ATGC Portugal, a Technology-transfer company dedicated to the Life Sciences. This course has a special focus on experienced presenters and Nuno Arantes e Oliveira was the first to present his own entrepreneurial experience. He presented his company Alfama and pointed out which factors he thought were vital to the success of a company: Technology, People, Market and Funding. He covered and answered questions in matters such as funding and intelectual property protection.

October 15, 2003 | | Leave a Comment 

Costumer Service Live Chat

I went to web hosting company rackspace and suddenly I was presented with a small live chat window asking me if I needed any help. At first I thought it was intrusive but then I realised that you have the freedom to let the window open or you can just say no to the customer service person. But while you are there why not take that chance and ask some question? You don’t have to spend mmore money on phone calls, write a long e-mail or fill any form. This is great pre-customer service!

October 13, 2003 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

VW and Apple Unite

You buy the new beetle and you get the new iPod. Take a look at the Pods Unite campaign at the vw’s site and at apple’s. This is the perfect match! They both target the same audience and apeal to people who like to stand up for an intelligent fashion statement. Simplicity, performance, and fun.

October 10, 2003 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Logo Analisis

Fast Company did a small logo analisis. Small but informative. I think everyone needs to understand the power of a well designed logo and how it can contribute from everything from brand awareness to a last-minute decision.

October 10, 2003 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

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