MarkThisDate

MarkThisDate Wins Publisher’s Pitch

Today at the Dutch National Publisher’s Conference, MarkThisDate presented itself as one of five innovative publishing concepts. This short ‘pitch’ turned out to be a competition which, in all modesty, we just had to win.

Not only did the panel of professionals immediately recognize the power of Calvertising and the commercial promise of MarkThisDate.com, but in the end the entire public chose us as the most (potentially) successful concept.

Of course the “grand prize” was nothing more than recognition of our work, which is always appreciated. Cheers!

Relaunch

As you might have noticed we changed our look and feel completely. Red and beige are now blue. In the last year we have been working on our back-end (’the engine’) and now it was time to overhaul our front-end. With thanks to the guys over at Metalab we are very happy with the result. Besides the changed color:

• we took out our homepage which was a useful but unsuccessful experiment and went back to the list view
• we added icons to calendars
• we made it easier to share calendars either via our widget or your favorite social network
• we added business functionality to facilitate professional calendar distribution
• we expanded our network through which we distribute calendars
• we added suggestions to the sidebar for easy navigation

Please let us know which features you like or dislike.

Immovator Cross Media Cafe: the new TV Guide

Yesterday I attended the Immovator Cross Media Cafe. The topic was: The New TV Guide or EPG (electronic program guide). Key word of the day: collaborative filtering.

Interesting to see what:

• Vincent Everts, PCZapper
• Marcel Houtman, Dag, Zie.nl
• Albert Treur, TSS
• Annelies Kaptein, Stoneroos
• Berend Jan Verheijen, Hoofd Nieuwe Media, BNN
• Carl Lunenborg, Programmabladen AKN, TVgids

had to say. From a technical standpoint everything is possible: combinations with Youtube, video/tv on demand, mobile devices, etc. Please visit all those sites above and see how different the solutions to the same problem are. What I found also interesting is that TV programs in my view are not only competing amongst themselves for viewers, they are competing for precious time of the viewer. The viewer could also do some sports, read a book or visit grandma. My point is: in the examples I saw yesterday there was not one EPG that interacted with the calendar of the viewer. When am I going the watch all those collaboratively filtered programs? The solutions could be so simple as an ics feed for you favorite program, channel, actor or any collaboratively filtered (3 times is too much, I agree) content to your calendar app. Not only a good service to the visitor/viewer but also a perfect way to tell the viewer more about the show he is about to see with links back to the EPG.
Good idea ?

3000 calendars and counting

Since last Thursday we have indexed over 3000 calendars for you to add to your electronic calendar. The submission of Yahoo!’s NCAA Women’s basketball calendars did the trick. Sports is the biggest category but holidays and business calendars are also very popular. We are working on some much needed interaction improvements.

Redesign launched

We put a lot of effort in a new design and some new functionalities. The most visible is the updated homepage based on the country you are from. So from now you’ll be presented with the latest and most popular calendars from your country. Also today’s events are displayed.

Other changes include:

• We changed color settings based on this color scheme from Colourlovers.com.
• We added stats to the calendar detail pages. You can see to which application the calendar was downloaded and when.
• We added a creator tab to the calendar detail page showing which calendar the creator add and how popular they are.
• We added xml upload options for mass calendar additions.

And the winners are ….

….. not us. Although we didn’t win one of the Dutch Web 2.0 Award we had a great time Friday night. Of course congrats to all the winners (Zoom, Buurtlink, Google, Netvibes, Hyves, eBuddy) and many thanks to the people that voted for us.

We have got the whole world in our hands

As mentioned in this post our partnership with bank-holidays.com has been expanded…..with the world. You can now download all holidays from any country (and a lot of regions within that country) in the world to your calendar. Soon our functionality will be available through the bank-holidays website. Did you eg know that today (17/1/2007) is Cook’s Possession Day in South Georgia?? Well now you do

Dutch Web2.0 Awards nominated (2x)

We have been nominated in two categories of the Dutch Web2.0 Awards. (most innovative concept, best Dutch app). All contestants are now encouraging their visitors to vote for them through their weblogs, newsletters, websites etc (all very web1.0). Not us (so unfair to influence the voter) …… we do it through our own app, so download or subscribe to your favorite calendar and experience the power of calvertising.

Happy New Year!

We wish everyone a very happy and healthy 2007.

European Bank Holiday Calendars

As a result of our partnership with Bank-Holidays.com we now provide all correct and complete bank holidays for 25 European country’s. Bank-Holiday uses our widget on their website to provide their visitors with our functionality. Soon you can find all the bank- holidays in the world on MarkThisDate.com
Bank-Holidays is the source for bank holidays in the world.