We have been constantly working on new service type and some major improvements in some services, but this week we have something even better for you and it is related to money. Now you can get the money earned in Bulgaria and Czech Republic 1 month faster. Isn’t it cool.

Coming soon:
- new service type
- admin for sms-chat
- 2 new countries in CEE and 2 in Western Europe

It’s always great experience to communicate with start-up people. They have the most creative and ambitious mind among us. By luck, I have the opportunity to talk with many undergoing start-up project owners. Frankly, I think they all have brilliant ideas. However, many times it is just frustrating as I get to know they suffered from the same start-up myth.

“I run a web 2.0 start-up. I think to get users has priority over profit. After I have users, I can have all sorts of monetization models.” Actually, most of the start-up owners embrace this belief, despite the fact that facebook’s or twitter’s case is just one out of a hundred. In reality, the other 99

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For the first time ever, the UK branch of TechCrunch presents its own Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation. It’s called “Europas”.

The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 - will honour the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe.

There are 15 categories and Fortumo is presented in the prestigious “Best Mobile Startup“. We hope that all of you will vote on the voting page and hopefully many of you will select Fortumo as their favorite. Every vote counts!

And for the ones of you that want to familiarize themselves with the rules or buy tickets for the event, so that they can visit London - check the official page.

Findit.fi is a free local classified website and is used by the local citizens and companies in Finland who want to sell or buy goods, products and services.

“Our goal is to create a clean and easy-to-use marketplace that allows visitors to browse and post listings in areas such as Motors, Electronics, Housing, Pets, Hobby, Business and Services. Findit.fi emphasizes the local aspect and thus have a search widget that allows users to customize their search results to a specific address or ZIP code, and then select within a certain distance from that location. The items are also visible on a map for easy navigation.”

Where did the idea of offering and starting a website like that come from?

The idea behind the Findit.fi site is that we wanted to build a similar site like Craiglist here in Finland, because Internet is very suitable for online advertisements. Findit.fi is currently one of the most rapid growing sites in Finland and many people has recognized that classifieds advertisements on Internet work very well for selling and buying of used products and vintage clothes.

How have you applied SMS-services on your website?

Private persons can publish their advertisements for free, but for companies we charge a minimal fee per advertisement and Fortumo’s SMS-service is used for that purpose, in another words for micro payments.

Where did the idea of using SMS-services come from?

The idea of using SMS-service came in a very early stage and it was obvious that micro-payment is very easy to-do by sending an SMS.

Why did you decide to use SMS-services in your web business?
The users have liked the idea of paying through SMS instead of using online bank services. Today we use Fortumo’s SMS- service for both Finland and Sweden, because we have users from both countries.

What has SMS-service additionally given you?
The SMS-service has opened the doors in order to be able to charge a minimal fee for additional services, and we will probably extend the services where SMS is being used for micro-payments.

By the way, findit.fi is currently seeking for partners in other countries (especially where Fortumo is operating in). They have plans for expanding the findit.fi concept into other EU countries. So if you’re interested in becoming a partner, email to info@findit.fi.

You know that Premium SMS services are the best tool for making the payment process as easy as possible. No credit cards or account number is needed, not even any personal information is revealed in this way. That is why it’s only natural that a great service as Textango has been created.

Textango have been founded in 2007 and since then follow one of the most attractive models among all sites selling songs. Their main principle is 1song - 1 SMS. Just by sending 1234 to 5678 you receive a code to redeem the favorite song. It’s so easy.

A good marketing trick of theirs

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This service can be a nice trick to send easily big and small files to your mobile when you do not have chances to use bluetooth or memory cards.

This Beam It Up Scotty is a free Web-based service that leverages SMS to send just about any kind of file to your phone. It works in quiJust browse your hard drive for the desired file–document, photo, MP3, movie, or whatever–and then choose a compression setting. Beam It Up Scotty can automatically optimize video and audio files for mobile-phone playback and can compress other kinds of files for speedier transfer.

Finally, enter your cell-phone number. Within a few minutes you’ll receive a text message containing a link to download the file straight to your phone.

Enter Beam It Up Scotty, a free Web-based service that leverages SMS to send just about any kind of file to your phone. Just browse your hard drive for the desired file–document, photo, MP3, movie, or whatever–and then choose a compression setting. Beam It Up Scotty can automatically optimize video and audio files for mobile-phone playback and can compress other kinds of files for speedier transfer.

Finally, enter your cell-phone number. Within a few minutes you’ll receive a text message containing a link to download the file straight to your phone.

Fortumo has great news to share. We have just inaugurated a new market in Asia. This time we would like to present Taiwan to you. Taiwan, Illa Formosa in the era of maritime exploration, is today an innovative and creative economy in East Asia.

Empowered by the strong IT hardware industry, Taiwan is one of the hands pushing communication world to move forward. In the G-Phone fever last year, the first G-Phone in the world was exactly created by the Taiwanese company HTC.

Taiwan is the Pop culture and Entertainment sanctuary of Mandarin-Chinese speaking world. It is the greatest market to test the potential of your service if you are targeting on the Chinese-speaking people. Its powerful media and online industry will be a great plus for your

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Our clients have been saying that they would like to have better oveview who are using their service. Besides the messages number graph they have been asking something more spesific. So we have decided to provide an operators information as well, check the technical spec for Premium SMS-connectivity service. Now you will know which operator your clients are using. This helps you to detect operator based problems, acting patterns and even build new product or marketing campaigns etc. We hope you’ll enjoy it.

Do not hesitate to let us know what features or improvements could be next on the list by sending an e-mail to Support

Coming soon:

* SMS- chat admin interface which allows you to moderate all the posts

* new country in Asia, what coud it be?

* new cool service type

In many countries the pre-grad school students are required to sit an exam after their last year at school. In Bulgaria, these exams took place a few weeks ago. Now, some of the young people are having a rest on the sunny beaches and others have to study a bit more. Still, for a first year, the future students are allowed to check their results with greater ease through the use of SMS. Infosystems.bg made this possible through the use of Fortumo’s services. The students only have to send TXT ID and their personal ID* to a specified short code, in order to check what they have achieved. In order to inspire you, we post here a short interview with the creators of the service - Infosystems BG:

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June in Taipei is always the best time to spot the latest IT trend and to bump into some big heads of IT industry while Computex is taking place. This year’s ritual has been even more flavored with the publicity from the WiMax Expo held at the same time. The public attention is focusing on “WiMax on the move”.  The new gen mobile internet, provided by the local WiMax connectivity provider “VMAX”, is now accessible for free on one of the metro lines.

Since the issuing of 6 licenses, WiMax

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