Today we’ve introduced wallpaper ads on E. Your Public Card can now display wallpaper ads curated by Nalden. Now I can hear you say “Yikes. Ads. No, thanks.” But trust me, you won’t notice them if you don’t activate them.

So with that out of the way, let me explain what our partnership is all about! We’ve partnered with one of the coolest lifestyle blogs on the interwebs, Nalden.net. Nalden came up with an innovative way of connecting brands to users, by serving high-quality downloadable wallpapers. Advertising partners include Vodafone, Jameson, NBC Universal and Nike. These wallpapers are designed for advertising brands by some of the best designers out there. And they’re really awesome. Plus, they work in your desktop browser and on your iPhone or Android.

How do you activate them? Simple. Log into E, got to your Settings/Public Card and select Nalden wallpapers. It’s that simple. Now you’ll have a different wallpaper every once in a while, handpicked by Nalden.

We partnered with Nalden to come up with an advertising partnership that our users get to decide about. We believe in creative ways of serving commercial content. That’s why we’ve given you the option to activate or deactivate the wallpapers whenever you like. We’ll be monitoring the activity for the next couple of weeks and touching ground on how we can make this even more beneficial to our users and advertisers.

Download our press release or read on to view it. Read the rest of this entry »

In the third quarter of 2007, we embarked on a mission to connect people. We came up with an idea that allowed people to exchange digital contact information through a USB keychain device called Connector. Because of this innovative way of exchanging information through an NFC and RFID connection, we gained a lot of traction and founded our company in 2008.

Over the past year, our company has learned where we truly excel and have our strength. Development of our cloud service and mobile applications have given us more traction and adoption because software moves freely, is distributed easily and supersedes financial and adoptive barriers.

Our company however, is mainly known for Connector. The ease of a one touch connection seems to be appealing to a lot of people. We get emails on a daily basis of people asking to buy, lease, rent, sponsor, sell or gift these nifty little devices. We have seen other companies producing connective hardware and successfully selling it. It seemed to be a great market opportunity.

And as nice as specialized hardware can look and behave, its got an expiry date. Something which is not the case with software. If you think about it, most people in the world already have a Connector in their pockets. It’s called a mobile phone. And the market we aim to target consists of these people.

A few weeks ago, we announced our roadmap to platform independence on mobile phones. And a clear mission: E is not just aiming to replace the traditional paper business card. Replacing the paper business card will only make sense if we can leverage the it to the next level. And that’s exactly what we are planning to do over the next couple of months. Our software allows us to provide you with real-time functionality that will enhance the experience of connecting with new, real-life contacts.

Therefore, today we announce that E will not be manufacturing, selling or delivering Connectors itself, under the E brand. We will allow developers and third party manufacturing partners to build on top of our API. Our sophisticated API allows others to push contact information into the E cloud from all kinds of hardware and software out there. Because that is where our strength lies. In creating the best possible software experience.

Feel free to contact us for more information.

We just launched a new version of the webservice, which I’m sure you’ll like, though the visual changes are minimal. Here’s the breakdown of everything we changed (and fixed!) and added to our service.

Mobile Public Cards

Your Public Card, http://eee.am/username, is now fully optimized for your mobile browser. Place direct calls, emails or open address information directly in Google Maps. Connect with someone remotely, and get a clear overview and direct access to the social media profiles. They especially look great on iPhone and Android devices (hint: turn your phone to landscape mode!).

Added support for Custom Domains

This feature is still in beta, so we encourage you to test it. Custom Domains allow you to automatically redirect your URL to your Public Card, a feature that was requested by many. Please try it out and support us with your feedback. You can access Custom Domain settings in Settings/Public Card.

Added support for Gravatar

Don’t feel like uploading a profile/card picture? Just use your Gravatar. It’s located under Settings/Pictures.

Redirect to Trail when previously logged in

Small, but significant in your user experience. If you’re logged in to E and visit the website, it’ll take you to the Trail directly instead of the homepage.

Smaller updates

• Updated image selector on Cards

• Deleting your public card bug fixed

• Delete your background pictures

• Address info on your Public Card now has a better structure

• Image uploader now fully supported by Internet Explorer

• Disable/delete account bug fixed

A lot of people ask me why we don’t support Twitter’s OAuth yet. Let me explain why it’s taking so long.

When we launched E about a year ago, Twitter had no OAuth support. That’s why we intregrated it by using regular HTTP authorisation, which requires the user’s username and password (which we store encrypted). A few months later, when the Twitter API team released their OAuth Beta version we immediately started implementing it. While doing that we noticed a substantial problem popping up. E was not built to support two types of service integration, which meant that if we’d implemented OAuth, we’d have to ask all users to integrate Twitter credentials again. Which we, and our users, would obviously find ridiculous.

We’re currently rebuilding the complete system that supports multiple types of integration. The cool thing about this is that we’ll be able to offer additional advanced features after this release. Those features will see the light in our next major version, codenamed ‘Gundam’.

This problem is not only related to Twitter, but to all services we’ve integrated on the second level (http encrypted auth) that now support OAuth.

Since we’re advocates and members of multiple open standards workgroups and associations, we do our very best to implement solutions for privacy issues and the password anti-pattern. Sometimes, we have to stick to the lesser of two evils for the better of the user experience.

We hope this explains the situation, if you have any questions about this topic, please don’t hesitate to comment, email or post in our Get Satisfaction.

E for iPhone

The first version of our iPhone app has been available for free for a couple of weeks now on the iTunes Store. E for iPhone allows you to exchange your cards from iPhone to iPhone (or iPod touch) with a flick of the wrist.

It’s integrated with your iPhone contacts, so all the new people you meet stay local and in the cloud. Is the person in front of you not on E? No worries. E for iPhone allows you to send your card via email for posterior connections (just tap ‘Other phone’).

It’s gained a lot of popularity here in the Netherlands, where we’re based, but the fastest growing audience comes from Japan. To our surprise, since localizations are planned for later this year.

Spread the word and download E for iPhone!

Over 50 services supported

We’ve added several waves of support for new services to add to your cards. We’ve added over 50 new services, distributed over 4 categories: Social Networking, Media, Instant Messaging and Gaming. Go update your cards now.

We’ll be adding many new services in the near future, and if you want to have a say about which ones we should integrate next, please leave some suggestions on our Get Satisfaction.

E for Android

We’re happy to announce that the E for Android app is well on its way. While we can’t disclose a release date yet, we can announce that E for Android sports many features not yet available on iPhone, including a revamp of the user interface.

You be able to ‘flick’ your cards from Android to Android, or Android to iPhone, as well as the basic functionality that E for iPhone supports. These include sending cards via email, address book integration as well as the built-in browser to view services within the application.

We’ll be presenting E for Android next week at the PICNIC ‘09 conference.

E for Everybody

We need you to help us expand as fast and steady as possible. Since we’ve introduced the Public Card, people have been linking it on their blogs through our widgets, in their email footers and bios on Twitter.

That’s why we introduced our short URL service, eee.am. Short, easy to remember and very microblog friendly.

Use your Public Card to list all the contact information and online identities you want to share online, publicly, and help us by linking to your Public Card! Set your Twitter website to http://eee.am/username to make sure people get the right information.

Help us win!

We’re a starting company and need all the help from you to make a difference. We’re very proud to have entered the final round of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2009 competition. But we need your vote. Please vote for us here!

Gundam

We’re also happy to mention that we’ve started working on the next big version of E, codenamed “Gundam”. We’ll be releasing a minor update (new features, don’t worry!) next week at PICNIC, but Gundam will require some additional time to finish as we’re implementing some compelling new features. Stay tuned!

“US companies often know little about the European startup environment and the opportunities to be found there. Panelists will share both the highs and lows of their startup lives and will answer questions regarding funding opportunities, cultural idiosyncrasies, legislation and differences between Europe and America.”

Spare this panel some votes and you’ll be seeing yours truly, plus – Robert Gaal from Wakoopa (Netherlands), Alexander Ljung from Soundcloud (Germany), Bruno Pedro from Tarpipe (Portugal), Stefan Fountain from Soocial (Netherlands), Ville Vesterinen from ArcticStartup (Finland) and Matt Biddulph of Dopplr (UK). Moderated by Peter Robinett (USA).

Vote here!

We’re very happy to announce that from today, E offers support for over 50 online services. We added a few last week, and with the ones included today, we support a total of 52 services. The ones integrated today:

Hulu
Watch your favorite videos right from your browser, anytime, for free. With full episodes of TV shows both current and classic, full-length movies, web originals, and clips of just about everything, Hulu is the place to watch and enjoy premium videos from the biggest names in entertainment.

Google Profiles
What do people see when they find you online? You can control how you appear in Google by creating a personal profile… …and people will see it on their results page when they do web searches for your name.

Google Reader
Google Reader lets you subscribe to your favorite websites so new content comes to you when it’s posted. Reader keeps track of which things you’ve read so that when you only see unread items when you come back. If there’s a dark blue border around an item, Reader is marking that item as read.

Google Talk
See real-time availability and status of friends online, send instant text messages, easily go from text to voice chat, chat right from your desktop or from Gmail.

Identi.ca
A micro-blogging service based on the Free Software Laconica tool.

Qik
Qik enables you to share your moments live with your friends, family and the world—right from your mobile phone!

Readernaut
Share your reading experience by writing notes, tracking progress, and meeting fellow readers.

TipSpot
TipSpot is an event calendar for your computer and mobile – it gives you a personal overview of all the action around town. tipSpot is smart and takes into account what you and your friends are into. You see where your friends will be going and which events they recommend.

TripIt
Organize trip details into one master online itinerary — even if arrangements are booked at multiple travel sites. Automatically include maps, directions and weather in their master itinerary. Have the option to book restaurants, theatre tickets, activities and more right from within the online itinerary. Safely access travel plans online, share them, check-in for flights, or print an itinerary

Twones
Twones is a music service and a new way to store, organize, find & share music played all over the web (i.e. YouTube, Myspace, Last.fm, Hypemachine, Favtape, Blogs and many more) or on your computer (i.e. iTunes) to one single point of access. Twones ties all music and music services together and lets you share your taste with others in the most direct way.

Ustream
Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand.

Virb
Virb is a community and a place for you to contribute the stuff that interests you. Virb is your social network, your photography portfolio and your band’s website. Virb is the collection of all that you share online, from what you find to what you create.

Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger is a free product that makes it easy and fun to communicate with friends and family around the world. Enjoy real-time text chats with friends, make free PC-to-PC voice calls, send SMS messages from your PC, plus share photos and files instantly.

Update your cards now!

We’ve been releasing new waves of services integration since our public softlaunch in April, and we thought it’d be time to elaborate on how we approach the integration of services to add to your cards. To start, let me explain the three levels of integration E supports:

Level 1 – OAuth Integration

We are solid advocates of the OAuth platform, and apply this protocol throughout the whole web service. This standard allows users to integrate their service accounts with E without storing usernames or passwords. By granting E access within a service (if the user is logged in), no longer will they need to provide us with sensitive information. Integration through OAuth is our preferred method of adding services, since it allows ‘automatic friending’ in most cases.

Level 2 – Encrypted Integration

Many services don’t support OAuth yet, or restrict OAuth access. The second tier of integration stores the user’s username and password of the service in the E database. We encrypt this data and don’t perform any actions without the user’s direct consent. Although this method allows for ‘automatic friending’ to take place, we highly suggest integration through OAuth instead.

Level 3 – Linked Integration

Some services don’t support ‘automatic friending’. Not through OAuth, not through encrypted integration. The third tier of integration allows users to supply E with their public profile on a selected service. This way, the service does get listed, but no direct connection is established. Integration usually takes place by letting the user specify their username or public profile URL of a designated service.

If you have a service you want to have integrated with E, or have suggestions about what services to add in the next wave of service updates: please leave us suggestions at our Get Satisfaction or email directly to services [at] mynameise [dot] com

Today’s update is all about fellow startups, more microblogging and gorgeous designer portfolios. We’re announcing support for the Behance network, Plurk, Tupalo and Foursquare!

The Behance Network is a gorgeous collection of portfolios by designers, illustrators, typographers, artists and more. Check out the gorgeous work by Momkai for example. Starting today professional creatives can add their Behance portfolio to their cards.

Plurk is a social journal for your life. We already have Twitter integration, and as we’re open to all, Plurk fits in just as well. Add your horizontal lifestream to your cards now!

Tupalo is a social yellow pages community from Vienna. The guys from Tupalo contacted us directly about integrating Tupalo with E, and we couldn’t respond without giving them some fellow startup-loving. Plus, we’re Eurotrash ourselves, so we just couldn’t refuse especially since they’re also launching support for the Netherlands. Go add Tupalo to your cards now!

Last but not least, Foursquare. This booming company founded by Naveen and Dennis from Dodgeball is getting awesome traction, and I just can’t deny that we’re big fans of Foursquare at E HQ. If you’re not familiar with Foursquare: it’s a location-based game/social network around venues and going out. A service built around pure fun. So after you finish your business meetings with E card transactions, go out and do some Foursquaring.

Yes! It’s out, finally! And trust us, we’ve been as impatient as everybody else. Took quite a while before we actually finished everything, and then the submission process… But hey, it’s out there, time to celebrate (or in our case, collect feedback). Because this is just the first version. We’re getting lots of feedback already (it’s only been out for a couple of hours) and will also keep improving E for iPhone. To submit your feedback on the app, please visit our E for iPhone Get Satisfaction. And we’d love you to post videos on ‘flicking’ cards to your contacts. Follow us on Twitter and @ us!