Jan Ebersbach

Nightstyle Events and vacation plans

I’ve been quite busy in the last few weeks. In May we organized the ‘Fancy Friday’ party in Soltau, which marked the first of many events we organize this year. You can watch our highlight video here.

As it turned out we seemingly did a really good job and therefore attracted many interested potential clients who want to hire us to organize their event. We know what we’re capable of doing so the event’s success didn’t come as a total surprise. The number of resulting new jobs we obtained by that did come as a surprise though. This means we’re totally booked up until the end of September now. With increased work for our event business and the existing work for the web agency and my studies at University there needs to be time for some vacation.

I am already really excited to fly over to NYC in July and spend some quality time there to recharge my batteries. What better place for a vacation can there be, right?

Foursquare 6.0

Just two days ago Foursquare released the new and highly revamped version 6.0 of it’s app for iOS. When Foursquare launched in 2009 at SXSW, it was all about checking in, seeing where your friends were hanging out and collecting badges & mayorships. Up until now the company has gathered more than 3.5 billion check-ins and takes on 5 million more each day. Now, with this weeks update the company switched focus to being a recommendation platform. As a result, Foursquare 6.0 puts the company’s recommendations engine, Explore, at the center of the app, making it much more easy to search for the best place nearby. Where you formerly found the Foursquare logo, you’ll now find a search bar so you can quickly find the right place. Below that Foursquare shows you nearby friends and interesting places on a map. After that you’ll find personalized recommendations and you’re friend’s check-ins. In contrast to the last version you’ll miss the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. In 6.0 there’s a big check-in button to make it easy for you to check-in to share your whereabouts.

Whenever you open the app, it takes the date, time, and your location into account and gives you the best recommendation. Let’s say you’ve checked in at a cinema. Foursquare now suggests places where people go afterwards. If it’s dinner time, the app will exclusively recommend places it thinks are good dinner spots.

Besides of launching the new version of it’s app, Foursquare announced that it secured additional funding. In early April the company got $41 million from private equity fund Silver Lake Partners and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Spark Capital. Most of it is a multiyear loan from Silver Lake, the rest is convertible debt that can eventually be swapped for equity.

I am very excited about both news and can’t wait to see what’s next for Foursquare. I am still sure Foursquare is here to stay.

Overcoming technical issues

Finally, after quite a few weeks, my blog is back up and running again. I had a few domain problems which took much longer to resolve than I expected.

Last week I attended the very well organized Contao Nordtag in Hamburg which was a great opportunity to meet a part of the Contao community, learn a bit about the cms and have a great day. A few days ago I also paid a visit to this years CeBIT in Hannover. After missing the event last year due to my trip to the US, I made sure to be there this year. Definitely worth it as I got to see many really interesting products and companies.

Right now I’m enjoying some Uni-free time (just have to work on two bigger assignments) and try to get as much work stuff done as I can. Furthermore we’re in the middle of organizing the next big party event for Nightstyle Events which will take place in Soltau on May 17th. I’m really excited about it as we’ve lined up some very cool stuff and partnered with amazing sponsors.

Apart from that, I can’t wait for the F1 season to start in Melbourne next weekend. The tests in Jerez and Barcelona were very difficult to read, so no one really knows who’s gonna be right at the front. I’m sure it’s gonna be a very very tight grid this year, maybe even more intense than last year. It should be fair to say that McLaren, RedBull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Lotus will be up there to fight for podiums. Sauber and Williams seem to have a great car as well and could surprise a few people. Caterham and Marussia on the other hand are still quite a bit behind and will only be able to score points in freak races. HRT didn’t make it through the winter and had to close it’s doors at the end of last year. Bring it on :)

Introducing Rise - your new iPhone’s Alarm App

A few weeks ago I discovered Rise - a very beautifully designed Alarm app for the iPhone or iPad. 

The unique alarm clock takes advantage of gestures, making it very easy and intuitive to pick and choose a time to wake up. You also have the ability to set progressive and repeating alarms, and even wake up to your own music using iTunes. 

Check out the great video showing how to use the app here: http://www.simplebots.co

You can get it in Apple’s App store for $1.99.

End of the year post

Wow. What a year this has been. It’s -again- way to long ago, that I posted something on here. I guess I will never get this problem sorted out.. But here it is, my end of the year post. Business-wise 2012 has been awesome and quite frankly way better than expected. We did some really interesting projects, welcomed some big clients and had a lot of fun as well. Another stand out moment were the four weeks in March, which I spend entirely in the US, doing an internship in New York. It is safe to say that these were by far the best weeks of the entire year for me! As it wasn’t the first time for me to be there I pretty much knew what to expect and see there, but being able to be there for more than just 2 weeks was amazing. NYC is the most amazing city I’ve ever seen and getting the chance to intern at Spring11 was the cherry on the cake. They gave me the opportunity to do almost anything I wanted to do and challenged me to try things I hadn’t done before. I learned a ton in these four weeks and apart from working with brilliant people in NY I flew out to Georgia, North- & South Carolina for them as well, which was challenging at first but fantastic looking back. The other milestone in 2012 was my move to Lüneburg, were I started studying at Leuphana University in October. This also meant moving into my new apartment which I share with a great friend. Coming from a small town like Soltau, Lüneburg is absolutely great for a change. Not a big city like Hamburg but big enough to have great shopping and eating/drinking opportunities. Combining business and studying was quite hard at first but in the past weeks I got the hang of it and am really happy to be able to do both.

Looking at Formula 1, this year had some incredible highs but many lows as well. There were so many incredibly tense and exciting races which were absolutely fantastic for Formula 1 and everyone watching. Malaysia, Montreal, Austin & Brazil to name just a few. Another highlight was McLaren’s world record-breaking pitstop on Jenson’s car in Germany which took only 2.31 seconds! For the first time in many years McLaren had a very quick car right from the beginning of the season and were able to fight for victory in most of the races. But sadly reliability and poor pitstops in the first half of the season cost us way to many points and wins which left us not being able to fight for neither of the two championships. Keeping in mind that we had the quickest car in most of the races, we should have been in contention for both titles. But we weren’t.. On top of that, Lewis decided to leave McLaren to race for Mercedes AMG next year. McLaren signed Sergio Perez, who had a very good first half of the season for Sauber, as a replacement. I can’t wait to see how he will do next year - he surely has a big potential but is some kind of a risk as well and nobody knows whether he really is ready for a McLaren cockpit. I certainly hope he is and will be able to fight for the championship. Having won the constructor’s championship for the last time in 1998, we desperately need another one in 2013. 

Yesterday was my last day in the office - at least for 2012 and I am really looking forward to some quiet and laid-back days with my family. Saying that I am already looking forward to starting in 2013 as I have some very promising ideas which I can’t wait to transpose and see how everything turns out.

I wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year!

I am now on app.net!

Have you heard of the social network app.net yet? It’s a great alternative to Twitter, as long as you are open to paying $5/month or $36/year for using the service as a member. A developer subscription costs $100/year. So whats the difference to Twitter?

App.net is and will be ad-free. And you can control your data.

In case you have an ADN account, feel free to follow me =)

https://alpha.app.net/janebersbach

You can find more info on ADN here:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/13/app-net-dalton-caldwell-twitter-feed/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/appnet-and-the-myth-of-the-social-network-do-over/2012/08/14/f807c240-e606-11e1-9739-eef99c5fb285_blog.html

Formula 1 - Final four races

Next weekend Formula 1 will return to India and hold the 17th out of 20 races this season. Sadly though McLaren and Lewis Hamilton won’t be fighting for the Drivers World Championship anymore. At least not realisticly. After struggling heavily in Korea Lewis is too far down in P4 with just 153 points compared to Vettel’s 215.

Leaving McLaren at the end of the season I really hope we can end on a high and see another 2 or 3 race wins for Lewis. Considering RedBull’s current dominance this will be very tough though. I guess this year’s constructors championship is also out of reach for us.. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope for some very interesting last races. 

Moving into my new apartment

It’s been a bit quite here lately - for a good reason though. I moved into my new apartment in Lüneburg and started studying business administration and e-business at Leuphana University which meant a load of hard work. So now I’m fully settled in and am really looking forward to everything here.

New myspace is coming soon!

I’ve been pretty clear on what I think or thought of myspace. Even when Justin Timberlake took over and announced a redesign I was very sceptical and didn’t think they could turn it around. Now they released a preview video of the new myspace.

Most distinctive is the very different interface which incorporates some elements from Pinterest and Google+. Music still seems to play a big part in myspace’s attempt to become something big again.

Although it is just a video, I have to say that I am very impressed by it. Of course we have to wait and see how it turns out once it is online and available to everyone, but I think it could be something great. But that obviously depends on it’s users and the necessary mobile apps which will be key to myspace’s success.

You can sign up for an invite to the new myspace here: https://new.myspace.com/

(Source: theverge.com)

See for yourself, this is incredible!