Auktionsfynda - Find Your Last Minute Online Auction Bargains
Auktionsfynda, Swedish online auction search engine service launched today. It's focusing on listing the auctions about to close, thus triggering the great feeling of satisfaction when finding the best bargain. The service initially indexes five auction sites (Tradera, Auktionskompaniet, Brabud, Metropol, Lauritz) and is planning to add two more in the next coming weeks. For time being only Swedish auction sites are included.
Auktionsfynda is a service with a simple search and clean GUI, the main page displaying random selection of items that have 10, 30 or 60 min. left to bid. The search results include a short description of an item, time left to bid and link directly to the respective auction. No transactions, nor bidwatching is handled by the service, at least not yet. I think on demand notifications on auctions closing shortly would add value, since many of the bidwatching applications and services on the market are made service specific, especially for eBay.
24 Hour Business Camp In The Swedish Archipelago
Ted Valentin, a succesfull Swedish Internet serial entrepreneur and the founder of 24 Hour Business Camp (Google Translated site in English here), believes that you we should forget expensive offices, photo copiers and even business cards when thinking about setting up a business. All one needs is a laptop, an Internet connection and an idea. "The important thing is to experiment", Ted explains.
Now Valentin is rouding up a group of the most promising Swedish Internet entrepreneurs and soon-to-be-entrepreneurs to spend two days together in Swedish arhipelago in a Japanese spa working on new business ideas in groups (52 small teams!). The concept in called 24 Hour Business Camp (24hbc), which means each team has 24 hours to work on their idea (hence the name) and when they are done, the teams present their ideas, pick up and head back to Stockholm loaded with inspiration. (Here's more about the 24hbc concept)
ArcticStartup is there as well documenting the project from start to finish. We will not only post updates to our blog, but will be also post short video snippets in a Live Blog with Beata Wickbom . The Live Blog has been set up specificly for the 24hbc and will be in English throughout.
Why is Valentin doing this? Because just as we in ArcticStartup, he wants to push the Nordic entrepreneurial culture forward and inspire creative people around him ...and it's simply just too fun of an idea to not go through with. As Valentin puts it:
The goal of the 24 hour business camp is to have fun, meet other entrepreneurs, test our creative limits, and inspiring other people to build their own start-ups. The inspiration comes from the 24 hour dot com , a similiar but smaller event that took place in Berlin in 2004.
Valentin is also behind the annoskartan.se, which is a search engine for local classified ads (previous post here), which is only one of his many map websites he has released (See all his projects here). Others include Sushikartan.se (the sushi map), Wifikartan.se (the wifi map), Cafekartan.se (the cafe map) just to name a few. Valentin is also runs AcademicNetwork.se - Swedens largest site network for students and academics.
Photo by puyol5 (CC:BY).
Annonskartan.se, Swedish Classified Ads Google Maps Mashup
Annonskartan.se is a new Swedish search engine for local classified ads. The service is targeted only for Swedish market and not available in English at least for the moment, but it's rather interesting and the potential seems big.
With Annonskartan.se one can for example find an iPhone on sale in a certain city, or a sofa within a 1000m radius from a landmark, or find all possible classifieds close to a certain street in a given city. The service searches through different sites and aggregates this information and positions each piece geographically on top of Google Maps. The positioning is based on the postal number, so it's not totally accurate but gives a relatively good idea of the location. At the moment the site indexes around 1,2 million local ads.
The developer is Ted Valentin, a Swedish entrepreneur and web developer, who has been very productive with building different web sites and services, and he's also sold quite a bunch of the sites he's put together. Ted Valentin is also working on other maps, now with a working name Allakartor.se ("all maps"). At the moment this main address doesn't work, in the previous five months Ted has released seven other websites: for example Sushikartan.se (listing sushi places), Wifikartan.se (free wifis), Cafekartan.se (cafe map), and Ted mentions he has "more fun ideas in pipeline..."
Annonskartan.se hasn't received completely unanimous reception, though. The service aggregates the local classifieds currently from Blocket.se, Tradera.se och Eniro.se, while Ted states more sources will be added in the coming weeks. At least Blocket hasn't reportedly been very happy with the mashup. Ted Valentin comments that his aim is that more people would find the ads, which would lead to more traffic and higher turnover also for the sites that are used in searches. A short summary of each item is shown on Annonskartan.se, and then linked to the source of the information where interested users can find the whole description.
Ted Valentin commented to ArcticStartup that at the moment he doesn't have any business model for his maps network. His primary goal right now is to grow the network, and attract more visitors. To question whether he has any plans to expand the service into other countries, Ted comments it is a possibility and he will soon have to start looking into finding some business model and partners to cooperate with.
