Barcelona-based dotopen has launched its B2B communication platform in public beta today in another attempt to create a successful matchmaking service for businesses where decision makers could come to collaborate and connect with each other. We’ve heard that a million times before, but I got an early peak of the platform when I was in Spain for the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference last month and there is one thing that I think differentiates dotopen from the likes of LinkedIn, XING, etc.: it’s not so much focused on connecting people in companies than it is to provide an up-to-date, stream of information on the company itself and start from there
Layar is one mobile application that has definitely managed to get quite some tongues rolling and keyboards rattling this past week, including at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference in Spain where I just got back from (video demo below). Layar is a so-called ‘augmented reality browser’, an application that turns you mobile phone’s camera viewer - only on Android-powered phones for the time being - into a full-fledged information portal and local business search engine. It essentially puts an information overlay on top of your camera view, bringing digital data of various sorts into play whenever you’re looking at or for something in the real world
Dead simple mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are slowly gaining traction and a new, well-funded player has entered the growing space. Recently launched mobile payments startup BOKU has acquired competitors Paymo and Mobillcash and raised $13 million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital, with Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures participating.
