Blicko can proudly announce that we just got accepted to BizSpark Plus! BizSpark Plus is a program from Microsoft for startups who has been nominated Microsoft BizSpark Plus Partners such as Student Inc. BizSpark Plus offers a range of services and the most valuable for Blicko will be the hosting benefits for up to two years.

More information about Microsoft BizSpark and BizSpark Plus can be found at their webpage: http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/Plus/Default.aspx

Yesterday Blicko was a part of STING Day, and their 10 year anniversary celebration. We were one of the 15 external (not in the STING incubator) startups, selected out of 79 applicants, that had the honor to represent Sweden’s most exciting startups.

I; Jesper, were representing Blicko and spent the day at Kista Science Tower where many interesting people related to STING had gathered together. There were presentations and workshops with both investors and entrepreneurs, that brought up relevant subjects and questions regarding innovation and entrepreneurship.

We were then shuttled by buses into the city of Stockholm, and more specifically: Berns, where the actual festivities began. We enjoyed a really nice three course dinner together with the entertainment and award ceremony on the main stage. All in all a great day with a good introduction of STING and their incubator business.

Yesterday Michael Bublé had a show at Ericsson Globe and thanks to Niklas from Globen Arenas we were allowed to have a test session with Blicko at Legends Bar. Legends Bar is a bar at Ericsson Globe where people go to get a drink or eat something before a big event such as Michael Bublé. It was a nice event and the test session with Blicko worked flawlessly. It wasn’t as much action on Blicko as we had hoped but we got a few connects and some publicity. But it was a very pleasent event and hopefully we will get more opportunities to test our concept.

Setup at Legends Bar

Made some information notes to get more users into Blicko during the event.

The bar filling up.

Last Friday we were invited to the inspirational day Future Friday which is arranged for high-school students who might want to start studying IT or similar subjects. It was a great opportunity for those who is interested in getting a glimpse into the IT-industry in Kista. This was also a great chance to show Blicko for future students and show how things can turn out after you have finished an education in IT. Jesper also had a lecture about how his experience at KTH Kista has been as well as a small demonstration about Blicko. In total we gave out about 50 invitation-codes to students and some of them really liked Blicko. 

Jespers lecture was scheduled at 12:00 and the headline says “The idea which became a master thesis which turned into a business - Blicko!”

Our table with Blicko on a screen to demonstrate to the visitors. Also brought Theodors nice speakers.

Overall it was a nice day and we handed out a lot of invitation-codes so hopefully some of them will create happy long living stations.

Once again Blicko was used at the event 3Pub which is the after work pub session hosted by 3. We were vert excited to use blicko again since we have made a lot of updates to make it more stable. 

In the beginning it went a bit slow and not many people connected. But after a few beers people started to get interested in the music and suddenly people were Blicking and Blocking like crazy. In total there were 374 votes (combined blicks and blocks) and 234 submitted songs. Of those songs 149 was played. There was also 50 connects to Blicko during the event. For all stats see: http://www.blicko.com/3Pub/profile

New tv-view.

Nokia showed new phones in front of the blicko stage.

Lots of action on blicko.

Another week and another event! This time Blicko handled the music during the MobileCup Kick-Off. It was a very nice place for Blicko to be shown since there was a lot of people in mobile business. The locale was also very nice with a huge projector screen so it was easy to see Blicko. Blicko was used during the dinner as well as during the mingle. In total there was 13 new users to Blicko and those who tried it really seemed to enjoy it.

Jesper setting things up before the event starts.

Big nice screen for Blicko!

During the event!

Yesterday Blicko handled the music before the program “Meet the co-creators of Skype, Spotify and Wrapp” started. It was held in aula Magna at Stockholm University. About 1200 persons were signed to the event which means that the entire aula would be filled. Unfortunately only about 500 showed up. Blicko was on for about 45 minutes before the first talk. It was a very good setup for Blicko because many people were going to attend and on the stage Blicko was shown on a really big screen so that visitors easily could see that something was going on. In total 52 users were connected who together submitted 52 songs and made 70 Blicks. We were very pleased that people seemed to Blick a lot when they realized that the playlist was quite full. 

For all stats and the playlist for the event go to this link: Excitera Station.

Aula Magna and the TV-view of Blicko

Snapshot of the playlist

The stage.

Sebastian Fuchs, Niklas Zennström and Andreas Ehn on stage.

We were able to learn a lot from this event and hope that there will be more similar events coming up. Stay tuned!

Been a long time since the last update mainly because of the christmas holiday but also because of some major changes in the development of Blicko. We applied for a spot in the student incubator Student Inc at KTH which is an incubator for student startups. Now we can happly annonce that we have been accepted to Student Inc. To see other projects who also has been accepted to Student Inc check out Here!

So now we have settled in at Student Inc and its a very nice environment to be in for startups since other projects also hang around in the same area. 

At the moment we are looking at other companies for cooperations as well as working on the new tuner which will be cross-platform in order to include OSX and Linux as supported operating systems. Other than that we are always making small changes in order to improve the overall feel and efficiency of the UI.

Working at the Student Inc office.

Last Friday we were once again allowed to try out blicko at a 3 after work party. This time there was about 30 people connected to blicko at the same time. The evening went very well and even though it wasn’t as much action as the last event blicko still delivered!

The feed from the projector.

People at the 3Pub having a good time.

Last week the student union for media technology and computer science tried out Blicko at their student locale called META in one of their pub nights. The evening went very well and people seemed to really enjoy Blicko.

In total there were 190 song submissions and 418 votes. 

Setting things up.

People starting to arrive.

The night continued nicely.