τεχνολογία | opencoffee.gr

BizSpark comes to Greece and Open Coffee

February 10, 2009 No Comments

A guest post by Patrick Malone, Technology Director of Microsoft Hellas

bizspark_2_bl

A little over 2 months ago, I was attending Open Coffee Athens XVII with my 3-year-old daughter (she’s really interested in startups, so I brought her along) and George asked me to come on stage and talk about BizSpark. I probably wasn’t very good at explaining what it is, because my talk raised even more questions… So, I’ll try again – this time in writing – and see what happens!

BizSpark is a way for entrepreneurs to get fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and production licenses of server products with no upfront costs (you only need to pay $100 at the end of the program – in 3 years time) and minimal requirements (see below).

You get a number of benefits when you enroll in BizSpark:

Software

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium (this is our high-end offering for developers, in case you didn’t know) for the entire development team (you also get Expression Studio and a Team Foundation Server, but I don’t want to complicate things even more!)
Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and Office SharePoint Server and Systems Center production licenses, if your application is a web-based/service application (you obviously don’t need all this if you plan to build the next version of notepad)
Access to Windows the Microsoft Azure Services Platform (currently in CTP)

Hosting

We have the “Hosting Partners” that offer very competitive (and sometimes free) hosting for BizSpark members!

Support

You get professional support from Microsoft as well as community-driven support from Network Partners – active organizations in the entrepreneurial space, who can provide guidance, mentorship and resources to startups. It also goes without saying that you’ll also get all the support you need from the Microsoft Innovation Center (and just to be clear – you don’t have to enroll in BizSpark in order to get help from the MIC).

Visibility

Startups have the opportunity to achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients, and partners by profiling their company in the online Startup directory, BizSparkDB, on the Microsoft Startup Zone. Startups also have the opportunity to be highlighted on the BizSparkDB as a featured company and be promoted as BizSpark Company of the Week on the Microsoft Startup Zone.

The eligibility requirements are more than simple. A startup must be:

Developing software (client, web, online services – whatever you like). Note: you can’t enroll in the program if you provide services to others (such as hosting, creating sites for others, doing system integration or outsourced development).
Privately held (i.e. can’t be listed in the stock exchange). You may join BizSpark even if you don’t have a formally established business but you’re planning to create a startup.
In business for less than 3 years and have less than 400,000 EUR in annual revenue.
To be eligible to use the production licenses, startups must be developing some sort of solution or service that will be delivered over the Internet.

That’s all! Now all you need to do is find a Network Partner to sign you up and Open Coffee happens to be one! So click here, select Greece, pick Open Coffee and ask for access!

Oh, and for those of you that want to read all the nitty-gritty details, check out this document (.pdf).

conferences, τεχνολογία, internet, επιχειρείν, meetings, minutes, publicity

DLD conference 2009

January 29, 2009 1 Comment

Είχα την τύχη να παρεβρεθώ στο DLD (Digital Life Design) conference που έγινε 25-27 Ιανουαρίου στο Μόναχο. Το DLD είναι μία από τις μεγαλύτερες συναντήσεις ανθρώπων από το web και όχι μόνο και οργανώνεται από τον Γερμανό εκδότη Hubert Burda και τον Yossi Vardi. Συνάντησα αρκετές γνωστές προσωπικότητες του web 2.0 όπως τους Chad Hurley (YouTube), Samir Arora (Glam Media), Mitchell Baker (Mozilla Foundation), Peter Hirshberg (Technorati.com), Andrew Paulson (co-founder, SUP / Livejournal), Lukasz Gadowski (Spreadshirt.com), Max Levchin (Slide.com), Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek Software), Marissa Mayer (Google.com), Xavier Court (Vente-privee.com), Julia Allison (nonsociety.com), Loic Le Meur (seesmic.com), Joi Ito (Creative Commons) και το γνωστό σε όλους ιδρυτή του Facebook Mark Zuckerberg ο οποίος ήρθε εκτός προγράμματος ως έκπληξη του συνεδρίου.

Εκτός από τις web προσωπικότητες στο συνέδρειο μίλησαν και αρκετοί CEO μεγάλων εταιριών που με εξαίρεση τον Brad Anderson από το Best Buy δεν είχαν ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον. Η πιο διασκεδαστική στιγμή του συνεδρίου ήταν το party που έγινε τη δεύτερη μέρα καθώς ήρθαν διάφορα γερμανικά celebrities τα οποία δυστυχώς δεν γνώριζα:):) μιας και το party ήταν ένα mix του DLD μαζί με ανθρώπους από περιοδικά που εκδίδει ο Hubert Burda.

Για περισσότερα σχετικά με το συνέδριο μπορείτε να διαβάσετε το σχετικό post στο blog μου και προτείνω να επισκευτείτε και το http://www.dld-conference.com καθώς οι ομιλίες βρίσκονται εκεί σε βίντεο και είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρουσες!

τεχνολογία, επιχειρείν

Wadja lets you sign in using your OpenID

January 15, 2009 3 Comments

Before the news piece itself and congratulating Wadja I’d like to take a moment to rant.

It seems that OpenID is gaining traction, and many companies move to ‘support’ it by letting you log on to other services using their credentials.

This is of course hypocritical as until now very few let you use their service and someone else’s credentials. Support in this context means that you do the least amount of effort and take the least amount of risk that you need to get the ‘Supports OpenID’ tag in the eyes of the public.

This includes Microsoft, Google and Yahoo!. Others such as Digg have simply promised to do it and postponed it ever since.

Finally others such as Wadja surprise you pleasantly by delivering the service out of the blue. As of now Wadja.com will let you sign up using your OpenID, or link your existing account to one or more OpenID providers.

english, τεχνολογία, patra

Dimitris Glezos joins Fedora Project Board

January 8, 2009 No Comments

Dimitris Glezos presenting Fedora & transifex

It is with our great pleasure and excitement to announce that our member and principal organizer of Open Coffee Patras, Dimitris Glezos, has been selected to join the much respected Fedora Project Board. Dimitris has been tirelessly contributing to the local Open Source and Open Coffee efforts, while now working on the equally promising Transifex, and such an appointment clearly serves as a huge boost for himself and the community at large. Let the good times roll!

τεχνολογία, επιχειρείν, meetings, thessaloniki

Μιχάλης Μπλέτσας για το XO laptop

October 21, 2008 6 Comments

Σε περίπτωση που δεν σαν φάνηκε ύποπτο, ο Μιχάλης Μπλέτσας διευθυντής του MIT Media Lab και υπεύθυνος θεμάτων δικτύωσης του OLPC δεν ήταν εύκολο να πετάξει από τη Βοστώνη για να παρευρεθεί στη συνάντηση Θεσσαλονίκης.

Ο Μιχάλης θα είναι διαθέσιμος λίγο πριν και αμέσως μετά την ομιλία του για ερωτήσεις από το κοινό Θεσσαλονίκης καθώς και τους επισκέπτες του blog.

Συντονιστείτε ;)

Streaming .TV shows by Ustream

τεχνολογία, start-up

MyFacebook sidebar gadget

July 28, 2008 No Comments

A few days ago at the 1st Facebook Garage Athens, Konstantinos Pantos gave a sneak peek at his Facebook gadget for Windows Vista sidebar. MyFacebook brings into your desktop new messages, pokes, friend requests, albums, lists and events, plus it shows your status and a scrolling display of your friends’ statuses, while it also lets you update your status right from your desktop; we think it’s cool.

You may check out Kostas’ presentation embedded below (starting at 07:00), visit the gadget’s about page or go download it here, (yes, it works only in MSVista) and tell us what you think.