Spotify launches in Italy and Poland, expanding its presence to 23 territories

Reports suggested it was coming, but today Spotify finally brought its popular music streaming service to Italy and Poland, taking its total number of territories up to 23.

The Italian launch is closely linked to the Sanremo music festival, which will act as a marketing push, as artists give the songs exclusively to Spotify. However, it appears the Swedish company has pushed its service live a little earlier than expected, with the event set to commence on February 12.

When Italian and Polish users visit the Spotify website, they are presented with information on the music streaming service, as well as pricing information. Like in all the other countries in which it operates, Spotify offers three account options — Free, Unlimited and Premium.

The free service offers access to millions of tracks, but comes complete with advertising after a specified number of listens. The Unlimited option does away with those restrictions 4.99/PLN9.99 per month, while Premium adds mobile access for 9.99/PLN19.99 a month.

Spotify launches in Italy with the help of former Googler Veronica Diquattro, who joined the company from Google in November 2012.

At Google, Diquattro was tasked planning and implementing the company’s Google Play launch in Italy, as well as managing the “start-up phase of two vendor offices for Google Play in Ireland and UK, supporting the entire EMEA market,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

We first got wind of probable launch last year, when job posting emerged for both countries online. They will be added to its existing launches in Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Elon Musk calls NY Times review of the Tesla Model S ‘fake,’ citing vehicle log data as proof

Following a less than enthusiastic review of the Tesla Model S vehicle in the New York Times, Tesla founder Elon Musk has publicly responded. According to several tweets, log data from the vehicle indicates that the reviewer in question, John Broder, did not test the car as he reported.

Here are the key tweets, in reverse chronological order:

NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour.

Tesla blog coming soon detailing what actually happened on Broder’s NYTimes “range test”. Also lining up other journalists to do same drive.

Tesla data logging is only turned on with explicit written permission from customers, but after Top Gear BS, we always keep it on for media.

If Musk is correct, and Broder did in fact fail to properly charge the car, and then managed to forget to mention an extensive route diversion, his white-knuckle notes concerning the battery capacity and range of the Model S will be in question.

Given that his battery issues were the crux of his review, this could be damning. Naturally, the length of the claimed ‘detour’ will matter – getting lost temporarily would likely be excusable, for example – but if it exceeds something reasonable, its exclusion will be quite unacceptable.

If you were wondering just what Musk meant by mentioning the ‘Top Gear BS,’ allow me to help. Tesla sued the Top Gear program for libel, following a program on its vehicles. Also using data logged from the vehicle, Tesla refuted parts of the program. For example, the BBC had to explain a shot involving it pushing a Tesla: “the tested Tesla was filmed being pushed into the shed in order to show what would happen if the Roadster had run out of charge.” Well then.

The larger controversy was well distilled by our own Matthew Panzarino: “Top Gear talked smack about the car, but Tesla proved that they broke one car and didn’t test the other like they said they had.” Thus, it frankly isn’t surprising that Musk would keep tabs on just what reviewers were up to.

Update: A New York Times statement as reported by CNBC doesn’t mince its words: “Jan. 10 article recounting a reporter’s test drive in a Tesla Model S was completely factual [...] Any suggestion that the account was ‘fake’ is, of course, flatly untrue.”

It is now time for Musk to post his data.

Top Image Credit: randychiu

Zerofund: An innovative platform to kickstart Greece’s startup scene

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Greece-based journalist Eleni Natsi. You can find her on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook.

In 2011 the leading French newspaper Liberation published an extensive report on the Greek economic crisis as well as what happened to the global financial markets following former Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to call for a referendum. The referendum asked Greek citizens to vote on whether or not they want to accept the EU bail out package and all its measures, or to exit the Eurozone and return to the drachma.

The title was "Le Chaos".

"Le Chaos" turned itself from a news title to a dominant word for foreigners each time they refer to Greece since the beginning of the severe economic crisis back to 2009.

But is that the whole truth about Greece? Certainly not. Some people, especially the young generation, do their part to beat the crisis. And sometimes against all odds. Due to the crisis, government services were asked to undergo harsh budget cuts and companies started laying people off by the thousands. As a consequence, people started thinking of creating - and some of them actually funding - their own companies.

BugSense, Taxibeat, Hellas Direct, the newly funded by Openfund startups Incrediblue and Workable HR (a 100,000 investment in Incrediblue and 600,000 in Workable HR) are some of the successful Greek startups that were founded during the crisis, paving the way for a hopefully better future for Greece. Are we talking about the rebirth of the Greek startup ecosystem? This remains to be seen in the next few years but certainly something feels right about this.

Zerofund and how to fight startups' "bugs"

If somebody wanted to identify the problems that Greek startups face, three words would surface: funding-networking-logistics. Also, if somebody asked who knows in detail the problems of a startup, the obvious answer would be "a startuper". And here comes Zerofund.

Zerofund is a collective effort of Greek entrepreneurs, famous Greekamericans and others, to deal with the problems faced by startups in the country. It was founded by active startupers, John Vlachogiannis, Maria Nasioti and Panagiotis Papadopoulos, the core team of BugSense, a tool that collects and analyzes crash reports from mobile apps.

So, what is Zerofund?

Zerofund is essentially a social network of mentors from Greece and abroad and a funding and participation bridge to an acceleration program in the United States called Mindthebridge.

Almost all "heavy weights" of the Greek startup scene participate in the Mindthebridge platform as mentors: Pinnatta, Taxibeat, Hellas Direct, E-shop, e-food, Doctoranytime and Weendy supported Zerofund from the very beginning along with many others such as Visionmobile, a market analysis and strategy firm in the mobile sector.

Behind the Zerofund curtain one can also find personalities with an international presence such as Alex Gounares (formerly AOL CTO and before that one of Bill Gates’ closest aides at Microsoft) Location Labs CEO Tasso Roumeliotis, as well as Google Product Managers from San Francisco and London who agreed to offer their knowledge to the Greek startups.

Is it like Kickstarter? Nope. This is how it actually works

The first step for a Greek startup that wants to participate to Zerofund was to simply register to zerofund.org. Zerofund accepted registrations until February 1st .

In the days after the registration, the Zerofund team sends to all registered startups a template in which - through the use of text-video-photos - the startups have to describe in detail what they do and their team’s composition.

In this point comes the public audience: anyone can view details of the startups, and if they’re interested, they can publicly offer a "virtual" investment sum.

This the first difference between Kickstarter, the famous crowdfunding platform, and Zerofund, the "innovative crowdresourcing platform" as John Vlachogiannis, CTO of BugSense puts it: "In the case of Kickstarter your aim is to raise a particular amount of money for your project to get off the ground. In Zerofund, the virtual amount of funds that needs to be raised from each startup is just the means of going to the next phase. In fact, not putting real money through the Zerofund platform saved us from legal issues."

So, what's happens next? In the next phase, approximately on February 20th, during a specially organized event, the startups that managed to raise the specific virtual amount of funds, will be called to present their idea to the public. At that point, anyone who is interested can offer an actual amount of funds (not virtual) to the startup of his choice.

The funds a startup will collect will be funneled directly to the coworking spaces Colab and 123p, where the startup would be offered space to work, and meals.

"The whole scheme was built like that for a number of reasons: firstly, by giving the money to coworking spaces and not directly to startups means that startups don’t need to have a legal identity. Secondly, by giving the money to coworking spaces and putting startups to work there, we reinforce and build a strong startup ecosystem. In a coworking space, startups learn to interact with each other, exchange ideas and cooperate. Coworking spaces are also the fertile soil for new ideas to flourish and become business ventures" says John. And here starts the actual work: according to the schedule, the selected startups will have one month to build their product/service.

Since ZeroFund is a Microsoft BizSpark Network Partner, free resources will be provided to startups as well as from Google and the Microsoft Hellas Innovation Center. Naturally, during that period, the startups will have access to the mentor network that was mentioned before.

In the next phase, the Zerofund team will evaluate the startups and their products, and will choose the one that will travel to the USA in order to participate for a period of three months in the Mindthebridge acceleration program. There, besides the direct funding it will receive ($65,000), the startup will also be given the opportunity to be exposed to an extremely dynamic environment, such as Silicon Valley.

From its side, the Mindthebridge acceleration program has the capability to take three more startups that "reached the finishing line" and have built a well structured product or service in the one month initial period.

During the entire process, Openfund, a Greek fund focused on technology startups in Greece and South East Europe, will watch the startups that enter the Zerofund platform closely. According to future plans, startups from other parts of Europe will be able to enter the Zerofund platform too.

The Greek startup scene: A no man's land?

No man's land: One phrase, so many interpretations. In the case of the Greek startup scene, ‘no man's land’ may refer to an area of uncertainty or ambiguity. In fact, the newly built Zerofund platform faces one crucial challenge: Are there going to actually be well-built teams able to go through the process, build a good product/service within a month and cut the finish line, successfully entering the MindThebridge acceleration program?

Another tricky part might be that of the virtual amount of funds that someone publicly offers in the platform. At the next pitching occasion before the audience, will they actually give that amount of real money to the startup of their preference? This remains to be seen, but what should be noted here is that Zerofund was built on a community, meaning that every person involved in it is exposed and judged by this community.

Concerning the first challenge - the number of well-built teams going through the Zerofund process - it should be noted that the Greek startup ecosystem is brand new, and is still in its infancy.

Despite the fact that there are some really good examples of Greek startups, what the Greek scene lacks is a successful role model. So far there isn't a Greek startup that has accomplished either a good exit, or a really notable profitable organic growth and can be an example for others. Keep in mind that from 1957 and for the next 20 years just eight Fairchild Semiconductor employees founded 67 startup companies in the newly-born Silicon Valley. The bottom line is that successful ecosystems are built, among other things, on successful examples or role models that give their feedback on the new-born ones and create a startup "think big" mentality.

Since the startup ecosystem is newly built, the same challenge applies to the four new venture capital funds (Odyssey Venture Partners, PJ Tech Catalyst, Openfund II and First Athens) that have to invest their money ( 65 million - $86.8 million - without the First Athens fund, which hasn't made an official announcement yet) in a considerable number of Greek startups in the ICT sector in the next few years. In Greece these funds were built under the JEREMIE initiative, which is organised through the European Investment Fund (EIF). Through the Jeremie initiative, the EIF manages funds made available from the European Regional Development Fund and related public expenditure granted for utilisation under the JEREMIE initiative.

In conclusion, currently in Greece having a pool of talented people who are urged to do their part to beat the crisis could be simply put, in an interpretation of Eric Hobsbawm's famous book, as... "Interesting Times."

Image credit: Thinkstock

There’s no startup scene in Oman, but that’s not holding some entrepreneurs back

Editor's note: While working at Buzzcar (Zipcar founder Robin Chase's project in France) as community manager, Aline Mayard decided to go explore the Middle East. She quit her job, and starting investigating society, innovation and change there on her travel blog: yallabye.eu. She's sharing what she's learned about local Web ecosystems on The Next Web. You can follow her on Twitter as @aline_myd or @yallah_bye.

Oman is probably the least known and most discreet oil country of the Gulf countries.

The sultanate has been through an intense period of development ever since the 70s, and is now a relatively rich country (with $ 27.600 GDP/capita, Oman is ranking 49th in the world). Its economy is benefiting from a rapid diversification (Since 2004, non-oil related GDP has tripled from US$2.1 billion to US$6.4 billion), and is driven by a large number of expatriates (20% of the population), albeit in way smaller proportion than in the other Gulf countries. Despite all those changes, Oman remains a really traditional country, and the way its people use the Internet is no exception.

Oman is just starting to get to know the Web. ADSL services were launched in 2005, and are still quite expensive ($258 for unlimited 8 Mbit/s access). Internet users living in Oman would find it hard to quote more than 1 or 2 websites they use in Oman. And those websites are nothing revolutionary. They may sound a tad simple for westerners, but they are changing everything: they're creating an Internet culture in the Sultanate, they're educating an entire country.

I decided to go talk with the two websites people have been talking about: Clickformeal and Alatool.

Clickformeal is an online food ordering portal that lets Internet users easily find restaurants, view their updated menus, read restaurants ratings, and place orders for takeaway and delivery restaurants with no extra fee charged. Alatool Muscat offers daily deals in Muscat, available only for a limited period of time. You can buy anything on Alatool, from hotel stays to products, but you have to be quick enough, thus the name, Alatool, which means ‘quickly’ in Arabic slang.

Other websites should be launched soon such as platforms to find a job, to rent a house (muscathomes.com) or to shop groceries.

Keeping it simple and local

Both of these websites have one thing in common: their concepts are nothing new - various similar websites exist worldwide - but those two were created in Oman and designed for the Omani market.

Clickformeal was created to resolve three typically Omani problems: the heat and the traffic (you can't walk in Oman) that can turn any trip into a painful experience, and the difficulty of putting an order in English when most of the people don't speak a good English.

Alatool had to take into consideration the geography of the country: Oman is a very large landscape, with lots of small cities, so it's hard to create ultra-local communities. Therefore, Alatool didn't want to set a minimum number of clients to reach. With Alatool, the deal will happen even if only one person buys it.

Creating the trust

Clickformeal and Alatool also took into consideration how people use the Internet in Oman. People are still learning how to trust websites, they still assume that a website that doesn't ask for money has to be a scam. That's why Clickformeal and Alatool's main objective is to create the trust.

Clickformeal decided to set a cash-on-delivery payment system, as both the clients and the restaurants feel more conformable dealing with the money themselves. The other advantage of this solution is that Clickformeal avoids one major administrative obstacle: online payment can only be made with Omani credit cards in Oman. If this banking rule proves one thing it's that clients are not the only ones to be afraid of fraud, so is the government.

Alatool took a different approach. Jessica Asher, founder of the website, believes that people who have a credit card don't mind using it on the Web - after all, they're already buying airplane tickets or paying their bills on the Internet - but they need to trust the websites. That's why Jessica Asher is focusing all of her energy on customer service, and creating the trust. Alatool implemented live online chat, a telephone hotline, and inquiries are solved within two hours. Alatool also offers three payment systems: cash on delivery, credit cards, and payment at the office. The latter is particularly important to create trust as it sets the websites offline.

Asher proudly explains that, at the beginning, people were only purchasing small items "to try" and are now starting to buy bigger deals.

But the success she can be the most proud of is to have changed the administration's view on online payment. After six months and having proved that there was no fraud going on, Alatool has been allowed to accept payment from non-Omani credit cards, and/or outside Oman.

Educating the market

Jessica Asher, remembers when she was creating the service and she was confronted to Oman officials who didn't understand the Web industry. "We needed to explain the concept over and over. They wanted to see a boutique, they didn't understand the online thing. For them, a store needs to be a boutique."

Sencer Ozokur, Clickformeal founder, is laughing when he recalls the first time he talked to restaurant owners. "They were saying, 'we don't need a website. Our clients don't need it, they haven't been asking for it.'"

According to Jessica Asher, most businessmen in Oman don't understand the advantage of the Internet, and what they can do with the data, what they can create for the customers.

Oman is still learning. Ozokur and Asher believe that with time, people will be ready for more complex services. Omani are far from being ready for eBay. For now, they have to keep it simple. ClickforMeal had to come with an easy process for the restaurant owner. He doesn't require restaurants to have a computer or to be connected to the website. He provides them with an automated device connected to its server. 30 seconds after an order has been placed, the restaurant receives all the details, and is free to accept it or not.

Who are the entrepreneurs of Oman?

Who are Clickformeal and Alatool founders? They're both foreigners. Sencer Ozokur is Turkish. He has been living in Oman for 7 years ago in the construction sector. He decided to create Clickformeal because he found Internet companies inspiring, and was interested in the restaurant business. Why would a new entrepreneur start in Oman, rather than in Turkey? For the challenge! "Because in Oman everything is still to be done."

Same thing for Jessica Asher from Alatool. She's a third-generation Indian living in Oman, who worked in the digital marketing field in Dubai but was longing to become an entrepreneur, like her father and grand father before her. It didn't matter if it was online or offline, but she wanted to go back to Oman. She was tired of seeing all the Omani companies going to Dubai for their marketing, design, and communication needs. She wanted to help Oman be independent. So she created Socioholics, an online brand management agency. Following Socioholics, she launched Alatool, mostly in order to gather data about Omanis' use of the Internet for Socioholics.

What about Omanis? Let's say that they are not really what you imagine when you think entrepreneur. They're known for being quite relax (a work day will end at 2pm, and they will benefit from lots of different holidays), and for being reluctant to take risks. But things are changing. Asher says she's been to various entrepreneurs meetings where she met many very educated Omanis wanting to launch their business, but always offline.

One of the main problems is there is no IT-educated Omani. So, entrepreneurs have to go abroad to find designers and developers.

No startup scene, and so?

It comes to no surprise after reading this article, that there is no proper startup scene: no digital entrepreneurs meetings, no coworking spaces, no incubators, not many events, no investors networks. Our two interviewees didn't know any other Web entrepreneurs when they launched their website and only had their spouse for advice and moral support. And so?

Those entrepreneurs believe that making business in Oman is not harder than anywhere else in the world, and is actually more interesting.

They agree that Oman is not the most entrepreneur friendly place in the world, but nothing that a good witty entrepreneur can't overcome. The two main obstacles are probably that an entrepreneur needs to make a 150 000 OMR ($389,661) deposit while Omani officials are processing the creation of the company, and that they need to find a sponsor. You can always find a way to find the money. As for the sponsor, it's apparently not that hard to find a well-educated silent partner you can trust (but it may take one or two shots). Sometime, a sponsor can even be useful as he knows the market better than the foreigner entrepreneur. But in any case, a sponsor doesn't know the business, so in case of a problem, the
entrepreneur will probably be the one to win.

But at least, the taxes are low, and everything is yet to be done. Jessica agrees "In Dubai, it's easier to set a business with the free zones and everything, but it's not easy to swim because there are so many people in the sea already". She says she received much more support in Oman than she would have had in Dubai because here everybody knows everybody and what launching a website is more unusual.

After meeting Ozokur and Asher, I had that feeling that being a web entrepreneur in Oman was quite a fun adventure. They were both so optimistic and positive. Well, of course, how would you feel knowing that you're creating something new, the future for the Internet culture in Oman?

Don’t miss Aline’s previous posts on Lebanon and Jordan.

Image credit: Thinkstock

Pinterest reportedly in talks to raise new round of funding with a $2.5b valuation

The popular online bookmarking and scrapbooking service Pinterest is reportedly in talks with investors to raise a new round of funding. According to The Wall Street Journal, sources have told it that the potential round has the company valued at between $2 billion and $2.5 billion.

Pinterest has raised $138 million from several notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Rakuten, Ron Conway, and Max Levchin. In its last round of funding, it was valued at $1.5 billion. Most recently, SV Angel took part in a $30 million secondary sale investment in Pinterest.

With this valuation, Pinterest is a part of a growing group of technology companies that have extraordinarily high valuations, including Evernote, Airbnb, SurveyMonkey, and Spotify.

comScore has reported that Pinterest has more than 28 million users in December 2012, up from 7.5 million a year ago. What has been causing this huge spike in users? TNW’s Brad McCarty reported that Pinterest’s rapid rise to popularity was due to its appealing nature towards the female audience.

We’ve reached out to Pinterest for comment and will update this if we hear back.

Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Apple’s iOS 6.1 Maps Search API is its official alternative to Google Places for local results

With the release of iOS 6.1, Apple has also announced a new Search API that will allow developers to query its Maps servers to get back point-of-interest and location data. This will allow them to integrate these kinds of local results into their apps when users search for things around them.

It’s not exactly an earth shattering development, as there are tons of ‘places’ API choices out there for developers including OpenStreetMaps, Foursquare and Google Places. But it does bring a significant point of parity back for Apple when it comes to its mapping offerings for third-party developers.

With iOS 5 and previous versions of iOS, developers could call Google Maps and use those in conjunction with any third-party places API. This included Google’s own Places API, which could only be used with Google Maps tiles, and not other services. So a developer could use Apple’s MapKit to call up mapping tiles and Google Places to fill out location data. This is fairly standard operating procedure for mapping services.

Unfortunately, with the release of iOS 6, developers no longer had the ability to use Google Places with Apple’s mapping tiles, and had to make the choice to use other services if they wanted to use the standard MapKit frameworks for their mapping apps. Now, with the addition of the new Search API, developers have a one-stop shop to get their mapping display tiles and their POI search data, all in one place.

Notably, Google’s Maps SDK for iOS does not have local search provisions, developers must continue to use the Places API to get local search results. While the effort involved in using an external API to call local search is fairly trivial, it is interesting to see Apple making an effort to make its mapping solutions more feature complete for developers.

Services like turn-by-turn and detailed traffic information were ones that Apple felt it had to make its own product to offer in the way that it wanted to (and without whatever concessions Google wanted). Unfortunately, launching when it felt it had to had serious consequences for the quality of mapping data backing the comparatively polished interface.

Adding local search to its API definitely doesn’t improve the quality of the results that will be returned, which is still very much a problem, but it does display a willingness to expand on the developer-facing features of Maps, as well as the consumer-facing ones.

Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Apple’s Tim Cook: Rumors of single iPhone component order cuts are ‘impossible to interpret’

During Apple’s Q1 2013 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook took a moment to address the rumors of iPhone component cuts which caused some consternation recently. Though he said he didn’t want to address specific rumors, he did say that basing judgements on a single data point of cut component orders would be impossible to interpret correctly anyway.

Cook said that he would ‘recommend questioning the accuracy’ of those rumors, especially given that there were so many possible interpretations.

“I'd also stress that, even if a particular data point were to be factual, it would be impossible to interpret what that data point menas to our business”, said Cook. “Our supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for our components. Yields can vary…supplier performance can vary. There's an inordinate list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what's going on."

Reports that Apple had cut orders from one supplier for screens caused many to interpret that as a significant reduction in iPhone orders for Q2 of 2013.

Image credit: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP / Getty Images

RIM hasn’t forgotten its roots, launches BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 for businesses

RIM is all set to unveil its new BlackBerry 10 devices at the end of January, hopeful that they will make a splash among consumers. Despite that focus, the company hasn’t forgotten its core enterprise roots, and it launched its new BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES 10) today.

The company first released details of the new system for businesses at the end of August, promising that it will launch in the first quarter of 2013, and it has delivered on its word. RIM is coming under increasing pressure for corporate customers from Apple and Samsung — which invested in enterprise-focused Fixmo this week — and its new enterprise service consolidates all of its services for business into one place, while also allowing easier management of non-BlackBerry devices.

RIM was the main target of a Samsung ad which aired this week and poked fun at the fact that many companies are limited to using BlackBerry devices for ‘work phones’. It has set out to address that and, while it has long had technologies allowing other devices to use BES, it has made management of multi-platform devices a central part of BES 10.

With BES 10, everything from the company's mobile device management (MDM) to its security, infrastructure, and app management products come together into a "single unified web-based console."

Other key features that the company is stressing include application management for apps — both internal and public — via BlackBerry World for Work, improvements to over-the-air activation for devices and ‘enhanced’ IT policies.

BES is available on a 60-day trial without cost, while existing customer can upgrade their software through a range of packages.

RIM’s focus on content for BlackBerry 10 appears to be going well and its final Port-A-Thon to encourage developers to port iOS and Android apps to the platform saw more than 19,000 submissions last weekend. That volume has forced the Canadian firm to push back the deadlines for its developer incentive programs.

This walk-through shows the BES 10 product working, and includes it being set up with a BlackBerry 10 alpha device.

Headline image via Honou