GeoMe announces integration with 11870.com API

BARCELONA-GeoMe announces yesterday that it had completed the integration of content from the 11870.com platform within its own Location Based Social Networking beta mobile application.

11870.com is one of Spain's leading online business directories with over 10,000 daily page views and includes reviewer's comments and photos for each listing.

The full text of the press release can be seen by clicking here:

And the winner is...Mendeley @ Plugg Start-up Rally 2009

BRUSSELS- Mendeley took Plugg by a storm and won the Start-Up Rally ahead of 20 other competing outfits from all over Europe with a unanimous vote of confidence from both the jury and the audience.

Rightly so, given that they presented a unique idea, pitched it very clearly and effectively and actually made the revenue model very tangible. The idea behind Mendeley? It is a last.fm for research papers incorporating a recommendation system and acting as a dis-intermediary within the (high priced) academic journal market. You can see the full pitch here.

The audience award went to Myngle, a web-based interactive vehicle for language training with an attractive market and a crisp pitch.

My personal favourite after Mendeley was SofaTutor, a start-up that recruits video-tutors for maths subjects from YouTube and addresses the "digital age" gap present in most schools. It has a clear business model, focused execution (it only does maths tuition) and taps into what is a lucrative public sector (education) that is well ripe for a shake up.

You can read up more details on the start-ups by clicking here

European Entrepreneurship & Social Media @Plugg

BRUSSELS-The first couple of themes from Plugg this morning focused around European Entrepreneurship (and differences with US entrepreneurship) and Social Media.

Inma Martinez , founder of Stradbroke Advisors (and speaker at Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona last summer) marked out three categories of European Entrepreneurship: Clueless, Pirates and Super Bad.

The Clueless category includes entrepreneurs with great ideas but no idea as to how to market them (see Collaborative film making experiment Wreck A Movie and their great trailer www.ironsky.net), the Pirates include entrepreneurs not afraid to break the rules (PirateBay from Sweden was quoted) and the SuperBad includes those with cheeky ideas but not much more.

The key message? It is good to be cheeky and also European Entrepreneurs should focus on product and not on technical excellence.

Jo Caudron from ONE agency stated how the Web 2.0 era has now moved us from a model of media consumption of 'feeding fish to penguins' to a 'birds and the bees' model, where the bee is spreading the word and has the real power in the social environment.

He also emphasized how Web 2.0 companies can make money by understanding that they are dealing not merely with social media but all-encompassing social business, where the social element effectively permeates all parts of traditional business spheres.

Plugg Startup Rally 20 Finalists Announced-include Bubok and Burt

Brussels-The nominees for the Plugg Startup Rally being judged next week in Brussels have been recently announced. The initial 126 companies to apply have been whittled down to just 20 and come from all corners of Europe, from language learning websites, to book writers' online publishing sites (Bubok from Spain), to location based services and semantic advertising.

It is a truly diverse group of start-ups companies, mostly web based, showcasing the fact that innovation hasn't stalled in the current economic climate.

I encourage readers to take a look at the full list here .

The Start-up Rally will add to what is already a compelling agenda for the day, with a focus on entrpreneurship, raising capital (in tough times) and generating revenue