Welcome, Ning refugees!
June 30, 2010
Throughout history, communities have thrived by embracing those who were jilted by other communal entities. This still holds true today. Although of course, one cannot compare Amazee to, let’s say, the United States of America, but it is fair to say that we embrace all Web activists who dedicate their time and resources to a worthy cause for free.
Recently, the Social Networks platform Ning has announced the end of their cost-free communities for its users. They are currently implementing a system which will from August 20 on charge all networks, even the smallest ones to be able to continue their work on the Ning base. From running Amazee, we know that many activists devote a lot of time and money into the pursuit of their goals. With the Amazee platform we have been providing a stable and growing community which fosters social activism and awards dedication – without charging you.
That is why we are today reaching out to those parts of the Ning community who cannot or don’t want to put their money into merely being able to present their goals in an online environment. So, what do we have to offer you? Before you read on, here’s a little video recap.
First of all you’ll get a lot of the features on Amazee which you’ve been accustomed to on Ning*: You’ll be able to post blog entries, upload pictures and embed videos, you’ll have your own forums for discussion, and have a good overview over who’s doing what in your group and on the platform.
Next to that we are taking your Ning experience to the max: There is no limit to the number of members a group can have (Ning only allows for 150), there are no limits on storage and bandwidth (Ning only allows you for 1GB and 10 GB respectively), you’ll be able to set up events and have people rsvp directly in your group (this is not possible at all at Ning) and you can add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and content boxes to your group (Ning has 1 and 3 respectively).
Furthermore we allow for maximum online collaboration and promotion by supporting a solid Facebook integration: You can easily recommend your group on Facebook, if you like you can even sign in to Amazee with your Facebook account. And the icing on the cake: You’ll get a reliable and competent community management on top of all that. For free, of course.
At Amazee, you’ll be able to run your groups appropriately for free. Naturally, we also offer payable upgrades which, depending on your goal, can greatly enhance the performance of your group, but as we said: basic usage of Amazee will remain cost-free.
So, how do you migrate? We are taking care of that! All you need to do is give us some information on your Ning Network. You can even define what data you want transferred into your new Amazee group from Ning. For this we have developed the Amazee Migrator. Then you rest a little and let us do the work. We’ll let you know when your Amazee group is up and running and we’ll even invite your old Ning network members to join you in your new home! It will not take more than a day.
Are you ready to join the World’s number one platform for online Social Collaboration? We are looking forward to having you!
*All comparisons are based on Ning’s Mini Network, the cheapest available Ning package in the future.
Web Monday #15 recap
June 29, 2010
Last night the 15th Web Monday took place in the Startzentrum in Zurich Binz. “You’ve created a monster”, one of the visitors said to me, reflecting, as many others, on the long way the Web Monday has come. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: It is simply astonishing how this event has turned from a small meetup of the Geeks and Freaks into a venerable occasion which no Swiss Webster seems to want to miss. Of course we hope, the Web Monday is a cute and cuddly kind of monster!
Last night the attendees were in for three presentations about Switzerland’s prestigious digital identification project SuisseID, the University graduates’ job platform JobZippers and Nearshoring in Eastern Europe.
Christian Weber of the SuisseID project talked about the positive effects of digital identification for the individual as well as for the economy. However, Web activists (though not present yesterday) have been critical of such authentication methods, fearing that it might endanger the open Web.
It remains to be seen how widely accepted SuisseID (which also runs a group on Amazee) will be and what can be done with it and if it will develop into a political playing field, but being the positive people we are, we assume that it can greatly enhance societal participation in the online environment.
Peter Vogel then talked about “his” baby JobZippers, an international job platform for College and University graduates. From what we heard it seems pretty promising, as long as they manage to keep their users on the platform, once they have found a job. If you are still doing your studies, why not check them out?
Finally Franco Dal Molin ran the Web Monday crowd through a quick presentation regarding Nearshoring in the Ukraine. His company Ciklum works with IT personnel from the Eastern European country and says his customers have made many positive experiences. In contrast to working with hired workers from, let’s say India, there is less anonymity, because one can fly there in two hours and easily meet the rented co-workers, they are tailored to the customers needs and share a similar culture.
Afterwards everybody enjoyed a nice Swiss summer evening and a chat on the roof terrace. If you have missed out on this Web Monday, your next chance is coming right up: The next one is on August, 9th. You can sign up in Amazee’s Web Monday Zurich group, the attendance, of course, is free of charge. If you would like to present or host a Web Monday event, please get in touch with the group admin Dania.
You can find another blog post about the Web Monday by Jan Rothenberger in German over at Startwerk and some pictures from the event on our flickr page.
Our new Chief Technology Officer
June 28, 2010
We’re happy to announce that as of today Michael Schmid has taken over the Technology lead at Amazee. He has proven to be the perfect successor for Lucas Bally who is leaving Amazee after three years of hard work. Michael has been with us for almost a year and unites an unstoppable talent for everything Technology (in 2007 he became Swiss IT Champion in network technology), fast thinking and a creative leadership personality (the first Swiss army officer in our team!) – the ultimate combination for his new role.
Michael, we wish you lots of fun in a great and challenging job – may Amazee.com and all customized solutions blossom!
P.S. And what is Lucas, Amazee’s highly decorated employee number 1, doing? His future projects are still stealth – all we know is that he’s on a motorbike tour up to the Scandinavian lakes which he just started with his girlfriend Ana yesterday evening – yes, we’re admittedly a bit envious.
4th Politforelle: smartvote and smartmonitor
June 25, 2010
Yesterday evening the Amazee team joined the well populated Politforelle to listen to Julien’s, Dave’s and Steffi’s presentation of the evolving politools projects. politools is an academically backed association aiming to increase political participation in Switzerland and beyond. Better known than their own name is their core product smartvote. Since 2003 the tool helps Swiss citizens lay back and easily find their candidates using an online questionnaire. In 2007 an amazing 1million users or about 15% of all Swiss citizens used smartvote to find the best matching national councils. Now that’s about when Twitter launched or in other words a looong time ago - the team is busy overhauling their baby to Web 2.0 standards. Additionally we’re likely to see the rollout of smartvote’s little brother smartmonitor. It’s supposed to be launched in the course of the 2011 national council elections and will provide transparency on the voting profile of political candidates, network analyses and more. Thanks to Feinheit for hosting, thanks to Politnetz for moderating!
Fried & Heinemeier Hansson – Rework
June 24, 2010
The new book by the two key entrepreneurs starters in 37signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework, has been much anticipated and is now treated as some kind of new business philosophy bible. A good portion of the team has read it, and our collective verdict is: Nice, but mostly harmless.
Fried and Heinemeier Hansson have written down their views on how to run a (small) business in the 21st century. What reads like a 270 page prep talk (nevermind the sheer size, it is interlaced with many neat drawings and can easily be read in two hours) in facts hold many truths which should be common sense. True, what they describe is a contemporary and progressive way to get things started – and done, eventually.
But rather than drawing a map to the Holy Grail, we are of the opinion that what they have put into words is in fact what many young starters (don’t call them entrepreneurs, the two authors say) are already practicing today. We see it everyday in our company. We hope that this book is an inspiration to those stuck in old business models and an affirmation to those who do things nu-skool.
Because after all, it boils down to a simple truth: Do what you love and be cool about it. Don’t let your work become a hassle, because if it does, you won’t love it anymore.
(And as usual, we say: Support your local bookstore!)
To Washington by bike
June 23, 2010
Do you remember the crisis of the automotive industry in 2008 and 2009? One image has stuck in our collective minds: The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler travelling to Washington, D.C., on a corporate jet to ask the U.S. government for bailout money. Now two young men have re-enacted this travel, only that they didn’t take a plane, they travelled from Detroit to Washington on electricity-powered motorcycles.
Of course, the travels which were accompanied by its own Website were meant to be a publicity stunt by the motorcycles’ producer, Brammo. But somehow, this turned into a very inspirational journey. “Shocking Barack” seems to be a great tale about innovation, hope, solidarity and friendship.
(Via Moritz Adler.)
In our constant effort to help you realize your goals, we have come up with another contest. This time, we team up with our startup friends from Atizo. The Switzerland-based open-innovation community will help one of Amazee’s groups to find the right solutions and ideas for free.
How can you win this consultancy worth 5’500 Swiss Francs (almost 4,900 USD) from Atizo’s experts? Just apply to take part in the contest by June, 30th, by sending the name of your group to contest@amazee.com. We will then hand-pick five groups which will enter the final round. Achtung! Only non-profit groups on Amazee can enter the contest!
In this stage, starting on July, 1st, all Amazee users and visitors will be able to vote for their favorite group. The same goes for Atizo, where their users will cast their vote. This means that you can call your supporters to action. The contest will run until the 10th of July, 6 p.m. CET. At this date we will determine the intermediate winner out of both polls, which will then be awarded the consultancy.
Good luck to all contestants!
Legal recourse is excluded. There is no correspondence regarding the contest.
Picture by woodleywonderworks, CC.
Release 2.1.2.1 Locatazee
June 18, 2010
With today’s release we added two nice new features and plenty of bugfixes.
You won‘t see anything from the first new feature, but that‘s exactly how it is meant to be. We added some new spam prevention mechanism which will help us to prevent spam messages by blocking evil spam users immediately – even before the first spam is being sent. With this feature you’ll get the best amazee experience without the really annoying spam.
The second feature is all about geo-location. With the help of Google’s Map API we reintroduced the member map for each group. Additionally, we also added some cluster features for markers: Now you can see from where the most of the group members are in the overview and get detailed informations about them if you zoom in. You can find a link to the member map in the member’s section of each group.
As we do in every release, we fixed some bugs and added some performance features. One of them to pick out: The hover windows for users and groups are now loaded with ajax. So it’s faster to show you the page itself and calculate additional informations about a user or a group only when you need it.
In the next two weeks or so, we’ll focus on the implementation of a brand new authentication method called “SuisseID”. We will inform you as soon as you will be able to log in with your own SuisseID. Stay tuned!
If you have any ideas or feedback, please send us a mail to support@amazee.com
The Amazee Tech Team
