andUNITE is currently spending it’s valuable weekend at the barcamp in Munich - on a sunny day at SUN in Heimstetten near Munich. Somehow all “sessions” we went to today were in fact “presentations”. Not really open discussions, talks, maybe workshops, but classroom presentations. Very interesting presentations but still - it’s more like being at some kind of weekend university and not, well, a barcamp… Still: It’s fun and interesting.

Just as last year we visited the online-marketing-düsseldorf today. The first news: It was bigger than last year! Is this supposed to be an indicator for anything? Not sure… As Oliver Samwer mentioned in his talk at the omd today, 2008 and 2009 are/will be difficult years. But hey, the Internet business is still the business which makes most fun, right? And he also said: The Internet business is one of the few businesses where you can be really successful without any experience because what you are learning today is pretty old news tomorrow. And here we thought that he is completely right because this is one of the reasons why we started our andUNITE project.

P.S.: The servers are up and running again - sorry for the downtime. If you have any questions please - as always - don’t hesitate to contact us!

We are taking a short break and will be back, soon. Of course with the all the features you are used to - then even faster and easier to use. Thank you for your patience. Still, this is a start-up, based on a crazy idea…

The big German newspaper F.A.Z. reported last weekend about andUNITE. The article is based on an interview with two of the founders of andUNITE, Bernd and Christian. From today, the article is also available online. They really printed our answer to the question why we won the German Gründerwettbewerb by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology: “We had a crazy idea - and therefor we needed a crazy jury who appreciates this kind of ideas.” See? This is how it works!

Widgetbox offers really cool tools for everybody who wants to create something flashy for his website but doesn’t know the difference between HTML and BMW (or who starts an Internet startup and doesn’t know anything about programming…). If you want you can now add an andUNITE blog widget on your Website / blog / facebook profile or on iGoogle, netvibes, whatever. It’ then look something like this (it is highly customizable):

Please note: This widget has nothing to do with andUNITE.com itself (you won’t be able to see any search terms here) - it is strictly and only related to the andUNITE blog. This is why the headline looks a little bit weird: It IS a blog blog widget…

If you want to stay up-to-date with the Web searches of your friends or group at andUNITE and you don’t always want to go to andUNITE.com why not export the feed e.g. to your iGoogle page? Nothing easier than that!

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First click on “Subscribe to News as RSS Feed” on the top right hand corner of your news page at andUNITE.com:.

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Then pick “Google” at the following page:.

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After clicking on “Subscibe now” you’ll have the choice between adding the andUNITE searches of your freinds either to your Google homepage (left) (=iGoogle) or to your Google reader. Make your choice:.

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And voilà - from now on you’ll be able to see your friends’ Web searches on you personal iGoogle page:.

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That’s it! If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask us.

It can happen to everyone, it probably already happened to most people who surf the Web: They “wilfed“. To “wilf” stands for “what was I looking for” and it usually starts with an interesting Website and the you are carried away by a link, another link and again a link. And after a few minutes you “wake up” and think: Ahmmm, where was I? What did I want to do? Well, I found some interesting stuff while I was wilfing, but now let’s get back to business…

andUNITE provides a perfect entry for “wilfing”. This is how it usually happens:

- You connect with your friends through andUNITE and follow their Web searches.
- You find a search term at Lisa’s searches which you never heard of
- You click on the magnifying glass next to the search term and search for the term by yourself and:
- Wow: you discover a really interesting new artist!
- Let’s get back to Lisa’s searches: Here, another search term which sounds kind of cool
- Again: You search for it yourself and discover more and more interesting sites - since Lisa is really cool!
- Ahmmm: Where were you?

Congratulations: You just wilfed (again)! Enjoy wilfing with andUNITE!

“Stop web links! Start talking!” enabled by andUNITE.com

Web links are nice and, well, we “love” them. But still, it’s terrible to click through all the links “presented” in a “nice” list (or is it a “format”?) by a smart search engine such as Google, Yahoo! or Live when you are in the urgent need of some information. Wouldn’t it be much nicer to be able to just talk to someone who knows the solution?

This is why you should use andUNITE.com. And why not start using it in your own project group so that your colleagues / friends / co-students can see what you are currently working on and searching for so that they might be able to quickly help you when search engines let you down (and vice versa of course)?

andUNITE.com is free and easy to use for work groups. Just follow some easy steps which are presented in the presentation below:

(Basically: Just replace the word “friends” at andUNITE.com with “colleague” or “co-worker”).

Try it, give it some time and don’t forget to send us feedback on your experience with andUNITE.com and what you would like andUNITE.com to be able to do for you.