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Friday 26 October 2007

News; Cloudsmith, Science Gallery, UNICEF and Ammado.

Some news snippets from some of the things I'm involved with:

Cloudsmith

An upgrade to the web site at www.cloudsmith.com – more features, particularly so that you can easily map your own repository, better documentation. The site is generating considerable interest in both the open source community, and some commercial firms seeking interesting new ways to distribute and support their software.

Note that the next major release of the Eclipse development environment – the Ganymede release - will be built using Buckminster: the team behind Buckminster also have built Cloudsmith, as I discussed in some earlier posts..



Science Gallery

Opening in Feburary next, with the LIGHTWAVE festival and showcase, and getting some good coverage eg in Nature and the Irish Times recently. Watch the blog at www.sciencegallery.org for further news and announcements.



UNICEF

A great new video at http://www.youtube.com/user/UNICEFIreland - featuring Irish children with Irish celebrities Andrea Corr, Colin Farrell, Marian Finucane, Stephen Rea and Ryan Tubridy. Our UNICEF colleagues in the US Fund produced a similar (US centric) video last year, and the Irish National Committee have borrowed their idea, with permission.

“Every single child deserves to live”.



Ammado
Their web site is now live at www.ammado.com I first mentioned Ammado and their CEO Anna Kupka earlier this year. Actually, I'm not directly involved in Ammado, but know the senior team and are very excited by what they're doing.

An entirely new way of thinking about social networking is imminent...


"Creating heros.."


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi Chris

do you think their tagline "creating heroes" is like the sellaband concept, basically levering into participating in the emotional aura surrounding something you're too busy to participate in directly yourself?

sellaband allow you to finance bands using lots of micropayments, though that's about it really. you pay to be "part of the process", there's no guarantee whatsoever that the band will do well, and worryingly enough, no guarantee that the band will reach the 50k minimum required to be produced by sellaband's own A&R people. And obviously, once you make a 10 euro payment, you are unliekly to chase it down (you're entitled to refunds I think) if your band never makes it, while it continues to earn interest in the bank for the site owners.

anyhow, ammado, cute pun on amado, but your comment on being excited about what they do sort of sums up their value proposition, people pay to be excited about something. And to relieve their guilt. Is this a painkiller or a panacea?

I'm concerned that ammado is jsut another CMS dolled up with a healthy dose of VC and Web 2.0 hype to present itself as a "platform" and at the end of the day the founders can't wait to be bought over by someone with more cash than sense.

I'm being harsh, but I'm also speaking as an industry person who builds websites, works with associations and not for profits, and knows what drives business decisions.

chris horn @chrisjhorn said...

Hi Jeremiah,

Knowing the founders Anna and Peter of Ammado, I personally very much doubt whether your assessment is correct.

I believe both of them view Ammado as an opportunity to financially assist the philanthropic sector, globally. Their business model, which they have yet to fully roll out, is also intriguing (and currently still "under wraps" I believe).

best
Chris

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeremiah, Chris' observations are correct, we set up ammado to connect nonprofits, socially responsible corporates, CSR professionals, social entreprenuers and engaged citizens on a global basis. The platform has been developed in close communication with some of the leading nonprofit organisations from around the world. Most of the features have been developed in direct response to requests by these organisations. In particular the next software release will include a very novel global donation feature. Given your interest in the non-for-profit sector we would be happy to show you these new features in advance and would appreciate your input. You can contact me on akupka@ammado.com