With ilscipio we have been quite busy the past couple of months and we have alot in the pipeline which we are now beginning to release to the general public. To start off Jonathan, our SEO expert extraordinaire, released Browseo.net  this week - a neat little tool which lets you see a website through the perspective of a search engine crawler.

The tool is really meant for search engine optimizers, who currently rely on a set of firefox plugins and costly third party providers to do their daily business. We tried to take the best from those tools and combine them in one. It is easy to use and runs very smoothly on mobile devices (in fact, if you add it as a bookmark on your iPad or iPhone, it will run just like an actual browser).

Browseo comes with a rich set of functionalities. It removes all unnecessary styling, disables javascript, prints out additional information, such as meta tags, headers and such in a nifty little sidebar, and allows you to highlight internal and external links easily.  In short: it is a great tool for Search Engine Optimizers. In the future we will enhance this further and will even add nifty little guidelines.

So what can you do with it? Well, if you are into “search engine optimization”, ie the ways of optimizing your page so that it ranks higher within search engine results, this tool gives you what you need to optimize your page itself. Couple this with offsite optimizations (linkbuilding etc.) and you are off to a good start. But have a look on your own: Browseo.net

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People who know me know my boundless love to Jurassic Park: Trespasser - a piece of computer gaming history. Today I consider my involvement in the Trespasser Community (a fan community), one of the core reasons to get into computer development, management and alike. This love dates back 11 years and I still continue to be amazed by that little marvel.

Reason enough for me to try to take a look back at its beginning and how I got involved with the game (being a jurassic park nut, isn’t part of that story though ;)). So here it is: TresCom (follow the link for a “UBER-DINOSAUR-COMPUTER-GAME-STORY”).

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As always it has been quite a while. Ilscipio is growing like crazy so I am quite under alot of pressure these days. But with our growth come more playgrounds for me to play around with. One of which is our corporate website www.ilscipio.com, which we relaunched yesterday.

There’s of course still stuff we haven’t added yet (as always this is a work in progress), but already I must thank Jenni & Dejan for the terrific effort they put into this!

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Spring is just around the corner! True, none of us can feel it yet - the weather, the foliage on the ground & my mood, all tell you otherwise. But personally, I don’t think we have to be extraordinarly positive to get ourselves looking forward to it…

And there is a reason to it: Velo Comfort! Not to spoil anything, but we just recently launched the new website for its distributor “Thun”. So I do have good reason to be excited.

But there is more to it! In this case, we all had loads of fun developing the new website. Jenni, Pascal, Alex, and Janine all joined together for this project and enjoyed it quite a bit. The product: a great new eBike system, which works like an engine that you can attach to your existing bycicle. Needles to say, even though I am not the biker myself (I currently lack any physical training), I was smitten - we all were. 

So, what can I say - have a look and you’ll see exactly why I was excited: velocomfort.com

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It’s time for another look into the past. This time around, I’d like you to have a look at Towners! Yes, that’s right - it’s time for another mobile application. I hope you enjoy the read and video.

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Just a quick update to all of you: With Ilscipio we recently launched outletcentersoltau.de. It is the oficial website to the yet-to-be-built factory outlet center near Hannover, Germany. Though a simple website, by design, I especially like how balanced design & content came to be. Certainly worth a look and once the outlet center is built: Pay it a visit if you can.

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Today, Netzwertig.de, released a second article on why german startups may not receive the attention they’d need. The article losely references my own thoughts on t3n.de a few weeks back, but goes further. Interestingly, Martin Weigert points out, that most german startups lack decent PR. He is overwhelmed that, though cheap in production (he says 15min is all that’s needed for a great personalised mail), most german startups miss out on this opportunity - often he receives lengthy, unpersonal and uninspiring emails… needless to say that that is something he wouldn’t publish.

Needless to say: I agree! However, I must also add that this may be too much to ask for. When I began with Cumonian (bazaaria.com - that basar I continuosly talk about), anything PR was tough work. A PR agency takes from 1000-4000€ a month for their continuous work - as always, sometimes even more than that. If you pick up work on your own, and barely scrapped together the money on your initial investments, it is something most people probably would not want to spend. Though PR can add a LOT to your marketing strategy, it probably isn’t wise to spend all your money on PR alone, anyhow (the results are hard to track and may come irregularly). This does not mean, that Martin is incorrect by pointing this out, actually, he has made a strong point, BUT it probably comes down to this: entrepreneurs must learn how to do PR by themselves. Frankly, though, not all of us are born writers and it takes alot of courage to get in touch with blogs and other websites…  

Still, I say, it is a great read, and definately adds to the current discussion, so have a look:

* Ein Grund für Aufmerksamkeitsprobleme

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What can I say. Despite the fact, that I was really trying to keep this website light-weight (take a look at that theme again: simplicity is the key here), I am slowly beginning to add some functions for convenience reasons. First of all, all updates have a permanent link attached, so that you can send specific updates to your friends.

For the future, I am considering installing a small rss feed, who knows, it is simple…

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Well, we just recently launched a marketing campaign for my pet-project bazaaria. Part of which was was a tiny Radio spot we produced on our own. The original plan was for me to record myself a gazillion times and hope anything of use would come out of it…

Needless to say, the plan didn’t fully work out. BUT, and heres the good part, we still managed to produce a making-of video (with all of us speaking GERMAN). Hell yeah. So, enjoy this short clip:

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Well, I just restructured the backend a little, since it had taken me too much time to update this page in the past. Now that I got my tools ready, I am sure that I can update alot more frequently  (Also, all my updates are going to be archived as you may see on the left) :)

As a start, alot has happened since the last time I wrote. First I wrote a few german guest-articles (I think there was more, but I am reaaally bad at keeping track - sorry!!!):

• T3n - 7 Dinge, die ein Gründer wissen sollte
• Deutsche Startups - Weshalb IT bei Startups keine wichtige Rolle spielt

I was also asked to give a few interviews for Bazaaria.com:

• Im Interview mit Sian Rulai
• Business Allee - privater Handel fair und ohne Risiko
• Förderland - Ich sehe mich selbst als Gründer aus Leidenschaft
• Selbständig im Netz - Tausch und Handelsplattform im Schatten von eBay

But there is more! I also spent lots of time developing projects for ilscipio, here two examples:

• Henriette Piper
• Mutschler Immobilien
• Super secret pet project

And then of course Bazaaria - possibly the greatest auction killer EVA!!!:

• Bazaaria Search Plugin (runs on IE7+ & Mozilla Firefox)
• Lots of Updates on the backend (seriously, Adrian and I redid many major parts)
• Lots of Updates on the frontend - many pages are getting overhauls these days

Oh and then, I also began to work on my thesis (for the diploma in St Gallen), marched for 60km (intended to do 100, but failed lousily - more on this on a later update), began to learn C++ (felt like it), learned to learn Swedish (well, barely began) and finished up some other projects. Clearly - there is LOTS to see and write about in the near future, so… uhm… YAY :)

Cheers,

Paul

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