New Features, News and Updates
Without noticing we passed the 10.000 calendar mark on October 19th. We could and should have made a big deal out of it but unfortunately I just noticed. The honour goes to a 4th division Belgian Soccer team. Currently we have over 1500 calendars live; 8500 did their job and went to calendar heaven.
If you have a Twitter account, be sure to follow us @markthisdate
Our goal has always been to serve people with the right information at the right
MarketDrums.com
time. MarkThisDate.com was and is a service that does just that. About a year ago we took it one step further with SchedJoules.com, our event distribution platform that distributes time related information to people when they want it and how they want it via calendars but also email, sms, rss and instant messenger. Now we applied this concept to financial and company news. MarketDrums.com brings real-time and complete news about companies from the world’s most reliable sources like Dow Jones. When we say we bring the news we mean that. So no more looking around on websites or newspapers, all the news of the companies of you interest is brought to you (again) via email, rss , text message, in calendar, instant messenger and on desktop. Great for investors but also for professionals who want the know what is being said about their company, the competition or their clients. We do do not only bring current news but also future news: the company events. Currently we cover all major European stock markets and indices and we are looking into the US. So if you want to be the first to know about
on your investments, your company, your competitors or you clients check out MarketDrums.com and let us know what you think.
Everybody a very happy and healthy 2009! We are very proud to have facilitated over 130.000 calendar downloads in 2008. Outlook XP/2003 is still the most popular calendar but gCal, iCal and Outlook 2007 are catching up. The most popular category is still sports followed by holidays.
In 2009 we will launch 2 new initiatives; related to but very different from MarkThisDate.com:
Cheers,
The MarkThisDate team
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!
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:
Please let us know which features you like or dislike.
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:
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 ?
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.
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:
….. 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.