80beans

Ouch… it’s been quite a while since we posted some new items on our website. Not because we have no news (the contrary is true), but mainly because we’re very busy working on our own products, stuff for our clients and planning the move to our new office (we will be moving to the Vijzelstraat (still in the center of Amsterdam) somewhere in June). Besides that we’re also working on a new logo, which takes up some of our precious time too.

We promise to post some more once the move is over and the site has had a redesign!

ConfNetwork will be used at The Next Web 2008 (April 3 & 4, Amsterdam) to help people share their info and meet others. Everyone who will be at the event will receive an invitation to join the network somewhere in the next few days.

We will be giving a 5 minute presentation about ConfNetwork on Friday the 4th somewhere around 4 pm. Don’t miss it!

Just came home from the “NU.nl photo contest”, organized by the largest Dutch news site NU.nl. Fun event (with lots of great food) where I met some interesting people and had a look at the great user submitted pictures. Laurens Verhagen, editor-in-chief NU.nl, shared NU.nl’s thoughts on “citizen journalism” regarding photography, which is something they applaud. Joris van Lierop, publisher NU.nl, announced that NUkaart.nl will be released shortly. It’s a Google Maps application on which data from the NU.nl network (NUfoto.nl, etc) is displayed based on geo tagging.

Although it may seem a bit quiet around here, that’s actually because we’re working on all kinds of cool stuff. There’s a mashup for music lovers, iTender, a project management tool, Nationale Beeldbank (just transfered from another company to us), new features for NU.nl TV Guide, another NU.nl project, a website for a new product by IceMobile, ConfNetwork (will be used for The Next Web Conference), forum migration for Web-log.nl, a theme site for Elmex Junior (ilse media) and a new website for Stockx Metal Trading. Thijs will be in New York this week, so the rest of us are fairly busy ;-)

UPDATE: A new version of the NU.nl TV Guide went online just now, adding 15 more channels.

Last week we migrated our mail server to a new, dedicated machine. Because our customers received lots of spam (even though we ran anti-spam software) we decided to implement Postini. Google acquired this company in 2007 and for a good reason: their spam filtering rocks. Although their web interface is nearly impossible to use, virtually no spam makes it through. Since last Wednesday it blocked 81.4% of all incoming messages and put another 8.3% in quarantine. I haven’t seen a single spam message in my personal mail box since we started using Postini. At $3 per mail box per year it’s a bargain.

Today we launched ConfNetwork for the Bowlr event. All people attending the event received an e-mail asking them to confirm their account. ConfNetwork is a business network intended to improve networking possibilities at conferences and other events. The network will be used for more events this year, with the nicest feature being that a visitors profile is “transported” to other events. Within the network you can see who you should meet, schedule appointments and tag people. Rest assured, it doesn’t have any “add as friend” buttons.

ConfNetwork is a Meganova/80beans joint venture.

We’ll be at the IPAN/212 Amsterdam/IAB new year’s reception tonight. We would love to hear your views on how the internet is going to develop in 2008 (maybe because of your web app?). You can recognize us by… erm… we promise to put up some mug shots soon ;-)

Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, 7 to 11 pm.

Ultra-short post: We wish you a happy and successful 2008 here at 80beans. That’s it.

On January 31 we will be attending Bowlr 2008, the bowling event for the Dutch interactive industry. We will be in training for the first four weeks of January. Read more about it on the Bowlr website (sorry, Dutch only).

Update: We actually made it to the second round and ended up somewhere in the top 25%.