Looking for alternative finance for your business and sick of the status quo? Then why not consider the in-crowd?
Latest
Small firms ‘less confident’ Trendspotting and crowdfunding All About Weight A question of overtrading If you want a comment, an idea, or feedback on a particular subject, then all you need to do these days is get a group of people together online. Known as crowdsourcing, this approach can deliver quick responses, but it can all be a bit inexact. You’re never sure that you have the right crowd, or that you’ve asked the right questions. However, when you apply crowdsourcing to funding, then the reward is always guaranteed to be right. After all, who can argue with hard cash?
Apart from those who have experienced difficult investor-investee relationships, of course.
One of the first crowdfunding markets was in the music industry, with website Slicethepie(www.slicethepie.com). It launched in 2007 with the intention of allowing musicians to get funding to make records. Slicethepie created an online community of music fans who then contributed if they liked the music and were prepared to take a gamble.
The success of the site is now being applied to encourage the setting up of new technology businesses. In early 2010, website Grow VC (www.growvc.com) launched as a new community-funding model to enable technology start-ups. The system works by pooling 75% of membership fees into a community fund, which gets invested
back into “promising start-ups” that are members of the platform.Grow VC manages the fund, but all the investment decisions are left to members, who determine how to invest their portion of the fund into other start-up companies that they feel have the most potential. So far, there are more than 5,000 members with a capital of $18m and 76 active start-ups.
Another crowdfunding project launched this year is Sponsume (www.sponsume.com). It’s a UK-based generalist crowdfunding site, which helps artists, entrepreneurs and inventors raise the capital they need.
Finally, there’s the latest brainchild of serial entrepreneur Pete Lawrence, who founded The Big Chill music festival. It’s aimed at raising funds for the development of a new social network, Pic-Nic Village(www.picnicvillage.com). Pic-Nic also targets creative thinkers, and aims to be a catalyst for new ideas, initiatives and collaborations.
The Next Big Thing
TelepresenceMeet the technology that takes video conferencing to new dimensions
The difference between watching a film on TV and at the cinema is the quality of experience. The cinema screen dominates your entire field of vision and sound appears to surround you, making your feel more involved in the movie. This ‘inclusion’ – to give it the right cinematic term – is precisely what telepresence does for video conferencing.
With telepresence you replace the small screen of video conferencing with large flat-screens or video projectors. Then you place multiple speakers and microphones around the room, so the sound appears to come from the person on the screen rather than from a box on the table. Telepresence also dispenses with low-resolution webcams and slow broadband video conferencing connections. Instead you get high-definition cameras and very fast broadband connections. Think video conferencing on steroids.
Telepresence is currently being used by many large corporations to great effect, reducing their carbon footprint and helping to solve the painful work-life balance equation. Ian Brooks, European head of innovation and sustainable computing at Hewlett Packard, can’t praise the technology enough. “Telepresence has saved my life,” he says.
“It enables me to present to 45 vice-presidents in Geneva and still get home on the same day. I would never have been able to achieve that by travelling or do it as effectively with ordinary video conferencing.”
The key enabler for telepresence has been the falling cost of broadband connections and large TV screens, which have put the set-up price within reach of most businesses. The next step is to make the technology even more inclusive by adopting some of the latest 3D cameras and screens into the systems, to make the experience even more immersive.
Additionally, businesses such as Silicon Valley technology company Anybots are giving telepresence a mobile twist by building robots that allow employees to stay connected while wandering round the office.
How to get more from your iPhone upgrade
What extra features does the iPhone’s latest operating system have to offer?
The latest upgrade to the iPhone and iPad operating system (iOS) was announced by Apple with predictable fanfare. However, most users are probably not using this new version to its full potential.
The first thing to do if you have an iPhone is to upgrade to the iOS 4.1. Version 4.0 has some issues with older iPhones – particularly the pre-3GS models – and applications (apps) will run slowly. However, 4.1 has ironed out these issues, enabling apps to run faster.
Folders
One of the most obvious changes to iOS 4.0 are folders. By default, the latest version of iOS creates its own folder on the home screen for all the utilities, including clock, calculator, compass and voice memos, saving space on the first home screen for downloaded apps.
You can add more apps to this folder – there’s a limit of 12 in each – or get rid of it by pressing and holding the items in it, then dragging each app back to the home screen. Alternatively, you can create your own folders by pressing and holding an app icon on the home screen, then moving the icon onto another icon and releasing your finger. The device will then create a folder, auto-naming it according to what genre the contents fit into. You can then change the name of the folder by tapping the name field and entering the new name.
Multi-task
Thanks,
No comments:
Post a Comment