Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category

Convez

To perform currency conversion, there is a new one that called Convez which you can perform currency conversion mainly currencies from Europe using the latest exchange rates.

Currently, Convez only supports the currency conversion for twelve (12) currency forms, they are British Pound (GBP), US Dollar (USD), Indian Rupee (INR), Swiss Franc (CHF), Czech Koruna (CZK), Danish Krone (DKK), Estonian Kroon (EEK), Hungarian Forint (HUF), Lithuanian Litas (LTL), Polish Zloty (PLN), Romanian Leu (RON), and Russian Ruble (RUB).

To use Convez is very simple, simply input the amount figure to be converted, and select a currency to be used, Convez will act as a currency calculator utility and helps you to convert the amount to some popular currency forms. If you like the conversion result so much, how about embed the currency image for the conversion you did? Yes, you can by just embed the code onto your Web site or blog.

Keyboardr

Computer keyboards are indispensable, no doubt about it. However, if you say you want to search on the Web solely rely on keyboard, and use it like the steering steels and without any touch on your mouse, you’ll need this newly launched home page called Keyboardr.

Keyboardr was built by Julius Eckert from Cologne, Germany. It is a part-time project that initially served as a future version of a project he worked with his friends called Chosr. While the site look like a 90’s home page, it’s intend to help you gain a different Internet experience, and keeping your fingers on the keyboard, and eventually throw away your mouse.

To try it, you can type a simple keyword on the search bar. And whenever the keyword is, the Google Web and blog results shall always appeared in the left-hand side, and the right-hand side, you’ll find Keyboardr is aggregating the results from Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google Images. To navigate the search results, you don’t need to learn a new set of Keyboardr’s own keyboard shortcuts, just move the arrow key with the direction of up-down-left-right, and it’s go. To open any search result or view the full lists of a particular Web service, simply press Enter.

I can’t say it’s a sort of meta search engine, as its presented, will integrate more popular Web services such as FriendFeed, Twitter, Flickr, and many more to the Keyboardr. Think of it as a home page with search capability among all the favorite Web services, though it only displays a handful of search results on the front page.

Virel: Microformats Search Engine

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Microformats has only become a popular data format that helps to structure Web content recently. For this newly open data format that was supported by some established companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, Mozilla, etc. the future is bright for them. It is designed for humans first and machines second, and mostly to be used in structuring Web content such as contact information or events.

There is a little unknown search engine called Virel.de that aimed to enable your contact information, they called it hCard visible on the Web. Virel is a search engine that is available in German and English. Users can search all the available contacts or events it crawled on the Web and stored in its database. All the contacts or events can be searched with a simple keyword you type in its search bar. For example, I typed in “pub,” it will return all the results relevant to my keyword from some well-known Web services such as Mixx, Technorati, and etc. (See below picture) The results return can either be saved to my email client using the vCard format, or I also can view it in a picture format, i.e. its DataMatrix.

Meanwhile, you also can create your own microformats by submitting your personal particular using the hCard creator form prepared by Virel or this Microformats Organization. Upon you completely submitted your details, you can use the code it generate and embed it to your Web site and make your microformats accessible to the public.

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123people: A People Search Engine

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123people is a search engine that was seeking to exploit the emerging market for people searching. I first came across it and tracking its progress since it has been shortlisted in the Plugg top 20 European startups. It is an European, specifically an Austrian-based startup and slowly gaining momentum with the developed of the people search add-on for Ubiquity as well as offering an add-on for the Firefox browser.

People search represented another major growth opportunity for a new startup like 123people. Although there is no actual statistical data on how big the market share for people search, but there is always a need in searching for a particular human being on the search engines. 123people is primarily a data or human profile aggregator, type in any name the friend you’re searching for, it will pull a detailed information on that name, in the forms of weblinks, images, videos, social networking profiles, emails, phone numbers, blogs, documents, IM, as well as the news related to that name. You can find a particular name appeared on the social networks mainly from Facebook, but notable mentions also go to some sites with extension lists of name sources such as Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube and Wikipedia.

Currently, 123people offered users with the options to search people with the name appeared on its Austria, Germany, Switzerland, or its Worldwide site.

Wigadoo

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Wigadoo is a travel site that launched in the UK. It is a site suitably for those who are organizing a trip or a travel leisure plan. What Wigadoo provided is a platform which allowed users to propose a trip, send the emails out to their friends, and then confirm the number till get everyone involved on board by giving out their credit or debit card details and pledge a certain amount of money.

The money collected for a particular event will be saved into a so-called online event account. This handy account comes with a Wigadoo Virtual Prepaid MasterCard that help users to pay for the event in advance.

Wigadoo was initially formed in January 2007, but only being introduced on the Web on 23 June 2008, approx. 18 months of preparation for the site. Currently, they have a team consists of five people based in the UK, and additionally four developers are from Bulgaria. As Founder Uma Rajah mentioned, “We looked in lots of different places – China, India, various places in Eastern Europe, the UK. The guys in Bulgaria referenced very well and we’ve had a really good experience working with them.” According to this RealBusiness article.

Update: September 8, 2008