I’ve recently come across a new startup company, named Qwiki. Having used it a few times, i am very excited and pretty sure, this will be the next big thing.

Among web officials, information search is considered the ultimate discipline, since it is a tough challenge to meet user expectations, usability, and decent search results at the same time. A lot of coverage has recently been focused on semantic search and the likes. Qwiki, on the other hand, has developed sort of a universal knowledge engine, combining images, text, or videos in an orchestrated manner that provides users with a unique perspective on a specific keyword: If you search for a term, i.e. a specific city, it automatically reads the information while showing you adequate image material. For the first time, i believe, this reflects a search approach that has hit a sweet spot, it’s like a combination of Wikipedia, Flickr and Youtube.

Qwiki even features content, text and some stunning pictures, of my birthplace Freudenstadt, most notably demonstrating its historical relevance (didn’t know that F-D-R visited it once), as well as my hometown Baiersbronn, Germany’s culinary capital.

Admittedly, Qwiki shows some “Kinderkrankheiten” when transforming text to voice (i.e. Napelon “I” instead of “1st”). I believe, though, this will remain just a matter of time.

To see what it can do, just check out their startup video presentation at TechCrunch. In my mind, Qwiki addresses the needs of digital natives like me, taking search to the next level. I am curious to see how the team around Qwiki will continue to develop their product and what kind of business model they will build on top of it, apart from being a potential technology takeover target for Google & Co.

Imagine you’d have to pitch your startup. Most Germans would rather opt for a pitch style that is driven by analytical elements. In the US, on the other hand, startup pitches tend to be much more passionate. I prefer the US-Style – startup founders behave like sales men instead of acting like an engineer (even if they are engineers).

Recently, i discovered a startup pitch that i really like, underlining the use case of the startup’s product:
(here’s the direct link to the video)

I was just checking my emails, and was amazed by a display ad that was apparently launched by Adobe. Assumably, i received this add, since i was using Safari on my MacBook. It appears, Adobe is desperately trying to use the “last resort” in order to get Flash on Apple’s aspiring devices, the iPhone and the iPad: By putting pressure on Apple through Apple’s customer community. This attempt demonstrates how helpless Adobe acts in the current situation:

It seems highly unlikely that Adobe will achieve any public benefits from this kind of campaign. The vast majority of consumers, especially in Germany, won’t even realize what this is all about. Even if they do, i’m sure they won’t care. The reason for that is simple: Apple is currently doing the best job delivering user experience and functionality – why would should users complain?

The only ones that do understand and might be touched by those ads can be found in the developer community. At kaufDA, we are heavily using flash for displaying retail promotions on our web solutions. When we were about to define the specs for our kaufDA iPhone App, we had to find an alternative for Flash, as well. That might increase complexity. In the end, though, none of our users complained…This is all that matters.