Spot me if you can!

SpotMe is a personal handheld device for efficient face-to-face networking at conferences. It can store photos and relevant data of all the conference participants, a participant can then mark the people he/she wants to meet. As soon as a marked person is within a 10m radius, the Spotme alerts the user by vibrating and a photo pops up on their display. With the Spotme device all participants are kept up-to-date with all attendees at the conference. When a new person arrives, a photo is taken and transmitted to all devices within seconds.
Shockfish SA was founded in 1998 by three research assistants from the EPFL Lausanne. With the assistance of funding from CTI, a Swiss Government Fund and a loan from FIT, a non-profit group that helps high tech startups, they built a demonstrator prototype of Spotme. Based on successful trials with professional congress organisers, Shockfish secured a substantial round of investment to finance the development of the Spotme concept. As of August2002, Spotme has been successfully used at more than 20 high profile European events and a Spotme system has been sold to a leading congress rental company.

Are you chasing aSmallWorld.net?

A former investment banker and the son of a Swedish ambassador got the aSmallWorld idea during a boar hunt at a friend's estate in Germany. "I was crouched in the leaves, meditating alone, and thought: Relationships are like assets. Why not create a secure network where people can share and develop them? People in the upper echelon have a tremendous need for trusted info. Not from a guidebook, but from their peer group."Dubbed Snobster by the masses, aSmallWorld is geared toward those who regularly jet among places like St. Barths, London and New York, where princesses and barons mingle with socialites like Frederic Fekkai and Conrad de Kwiatkowski. In November 2004, it stopped letting the majority of the members invite others to join. Now, only 1 percent of the 60,000 members can do so, including people in countries like Brazil where the site wants more members. aSmallWorld is actually serious about keeping their network exclusive. That is, in effect, what happens via aSmallWorld’s policy that you must be invited by five members before you too can become a member. In fact they're about to start pruning and kicking out people. Those kicked out get sent to aBigWorld - a paralell universe. Their rules are strict and they post they prominently. Anyone breaking the rules - gets sent to aBigWorld. And they're getting plenty of press and exposure for just that.
Banishment to ABW occurs when members don't follow ASW etiquette, the same unwritten rules that govern the highest spheres of polite society. No public communication about its goings-on. No using offensive language or pestering those above one's station. "ABigWorld wasn't conceived of as a penitentiary, but it does serve as one," says Erik Wachtmeister, the founder and self-described "benevolent dictator" of the ASW and ABW social networks.ASmallWorld plans a premium membership service where members would pay for additional features. It hopes to have at least 50,000 paying members within a year and to be profitable by the fourth quarter.

GPS and Wifi for intelligent advertising

Vert is a dynamic technology company revolutionizing outdoor wireless advertisting applications. The explosive combination of Vert's digital outdoor infrastructure with three proven technologies: video, global positioning and wireless Internet has created Video Interactive Displays (VIDs): a smart effective and precision-targeted advertising medium. In sharp contrast to conventional one-color LED technology, VID's high performance LCD screens provide significantly wider viewing angles and ultra-bright, full-color animations and video images. The Vert Network lets advertisers reach key consumer groups based on demographics. Run ads for financial services in affluent zip codes, Spanish-language ads in Hispanic communities, or messages directed at college students in and around campuses.
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French Goddess celebrates 50 Years

The Citroën DS, known affectionately as the Goddess, celebrates her fiftieth birthday on 1 October 2005, marking the day when Citroën unveiled a car at the Grand Palais Exhibition Centre in Paris that, quite simply, revolutionised the automobile industry and was hailed as a sensation by the world's media. Pronounced the French way, DS is a homophone for "déesse" (goddess), a semantic interpretation that is marvelously apt for this extraordinary car. The influence of the DS continues through every product Citroën produces today, be it the Hydractive 3+ suspension in the new Citroën C5, the direct descendent of the original hydropneumatic suspension in the DS, to the spirit of design and technical innovation that is in every Citroën model.
The marvel of automotive design that is the Citroën DS was created by two men and their staff teams. Both were originally recruited by André Citroën and they designed the Traction Avant, a car equally as revolutionary when it was launched in 1934. André Lefèvre was an engineer, while Flaminio Bertoni was a draftsman and sculptor. The two men pooled their talent to create this automotive wonder. With the DS, they were set to revolutionize automotive history. Technology and styling functioned together in perfect harmony.