The Difference Engine Blog

Having just completed a nine city tour of the UK and overseas, it has become apparent the strength of demand that exists in Europe for accelerator programmes.  Over the last few weeks I have had numerous requests from new locations, in the UK and abroad, to present and discuss the opportunities available for start-ups through The Difference Engine.

Hence, we have decided to extend the application process through to the end of September, giving more teams the opportunity to apply for the second Difference Engine programme, which has been rescheduled to start in January 2011 running through to March 2011.

If you would like me to visit your meetup or event , drop me a line at jon at thedifferenceengine.eu and I will endeavour to attend.

I look forward to catching up with you over the next few months and, of course, to sharing the huge success of the first programme.

As we describe on our website, we believe that the early stage of any business is the most formative and can define how a team will evolve.  We also recognise that at such an early stage “money is not enough” – the right sort of intensive support is invaluable and the provision of the right mentoring is priceless.

The Difference Engine is part of a wider European ecosystem which is supportive of early stage digital businesses.  The strength of this wider community is dependent upon the ongoing cooperation between such initiatives.  There remains to be a fraction of the programmes in the Europe compared to that available in the US.

We believe that the Difference Engine is a great programme - but there are a number of other programmes whose applications are coming to a close very (very) soon - you should check them out.

Seedcamp Closing date 30 June.  Note, there has been a change in approach from previous years - to apply to the final Seedcamp week in September you must apply to their "mini" events, the last being London on 27 June.

StartupBootcamp Closing date 30 June.  This programme is highly comparable to the Difference Engine being a full time mentor led programme based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

If neither of the above appeal, you should also check out the following programme started by IBM:

SmartCamp Closing date 2 July. This helps to bring together entrepreneurs, investors and experienced mentors.

The provisional list of events which we are due to attend over the next few weeks will include

• Manchester, 29 June; Techcelerate
• Tallinn, Estonia, 1 July morning; OpenCoffee
• Tallinn, Estonia, 1 July afternoon; Embassy Reception
• Leeds, 6 July 10-12; OpenCoffee
• Leeds, 6 July 13-15; Lunch with Jon Bradford
• Warsaw, Poland, 8 July; TBA
• Newcastle, 13 July, Access All Areas
• Edinburgh, 14 July, TechMeetup
• Lithuania, 15 - 16 July, TBA

Keep checking back to the website for further announcements over the next 10 days.

We are proud to announce that applications for the next Difference Engine programme will open immediately.  Outlined below are the key dates for the Difference Engine programme later this year. 

• Applications open: Immediately
• Applications close: 23 July 2010
• Teams shortlisted: 6 August 2010
• Programme starts: 20 September 2010
• Programme ends: 17 December 2010

We look forward to your applications and if you have any questions in the interim drop us a line.  We are also attending a number of events over the next few weeks across Europe to watch out for announcements on this blog. 

Having completed the intensive thirteen week Difference Engine programme with a Demo Day at Microsoft London we are very proud to announce the first graduates of the programme. 

CANDDi helps companies to convert more website visitors into customers, increasing marketing ROI and ultimately profit.  This is done by tracking real individuals over multiple visits and across every one of a company’s online presences, from email to social media, to create a complete picture of their behaviour.  By analysing this behaviour we can tell brands more about how their sales funnel is failing and even give them rich lists of named individuals with whom to follow-up.  CANDDi turns anonymous aggregated analytics into a rich list of targeted individuals.

Curated.by is the first dedicated curation platform for the real-time web. We give curators (the crowd and maybe you) the tools to create handpicked streams of updated, tagged and categorized content. Just like at Wikipedia, our users are sorting the best content into bundles of information to be shared and consumed by other people. Curated.by currently supports Twitter, with additional social networks and microblogging services coming soon.

CuteFund has been founded by Andrei Korobeinik a successful entrepreneur from Estonia.  CuteFund is a crowd sourced mutual fund and platform for investors. As a mutual fund, CuteFund buys and sells stocks; the difference is that CuteFund doesn't have a fund manager! Investors vote for stocks, votes are weighted and averaged so we buy the best stocks and sell the worst. Investors are rated according to their performance; those with higher ratings have more influence while voting on stocks. This is how we pick up the best fund managers.

Geogoer is an open transport platform, where anyone can find passengers, cars and public transport, or publish their own journeys. It supports different modes of transport, such as cars, coaches, trains or even flying carpets, and allows users to find the best travel options or offer transport themselves. Geogoer.com is currently in live alpha. They aim to develop and launch two products using the existing technology: Internal Travel Networks for employers and Ticket Selling System.

Recite allow any website to become more accessible to people who are dyslexic, visually impaired or who have a young reading age.  It does it by intercepting the webpage online, instantly adding accessibility technique such as voice, high contrast text, alternate (simpler word options) and outputting it for any user to read.  By processing online, Recite increases the accessibility rating of the website instantly without the need or cost of changing the website itself.

Rock Control is the ultimate rock and roll experience putting you in control of a rock band hell bent on global domination.   Rock Control enables the global public to launch and manage a band from scratch, from deciding who they want to be in the final line-up, deciding the look and feel of the band and choosing which media opportunities they want to take. Ultimately, one song will be created and simultaneously released into every chart around the world with the intention of gaining that Global number one slot.

ScreenReach is the next generation in presentation and interaction technology allowing real-time delivery of media content to a mobile phone (or any smart device) via any digital display (TV, outdoor advertising, pc, kiosk etc) and then allowing the user to interact with that content in completely new and unique ways.  It allows service providers to engage and interact with their customers instantly and intelligently, to profile those customers, to evoke buying behaviour, raise brand awareness and to reward those customers for interacting with their content.

Tagorize is a system describes information so accurately that it can provide a level of search relevancy that is intrinsically more valuable and accurate than existing systems.  Using the Tagorize indexing system substantially increases search accuracy and relevancy, leading to higher search conversion rates.  Tagorize is the most natural and flexible way to store and retrieve data of large, unstructured datasets.  They are currently creating proof of concept services for niche job sites across the UK, Mergers and Acquisitions and Museum inventory search systems.

wishli.st is a Facebook application that helps people give awesome gifts. Buying gifts is difficult and time consuming. wishli.st makes it easy. Users create a list of the people they buy presents for and invite them to create wishlists. Then they receive email reminders before birthdays and buy them things they want!