New Ring Resolutions

Everybody loves numbers. And lists. Everybody loves numbers and lists. That’s why everybody loves resolutions.

Ok, we’ve passed the second half of January so you’ve seen (and possibly written down yourself) resolution lists. Chances are you’ll dig these even more since they have an almost unseasonal appeal.

Resolutions are meant to be broken, but this time we’ll try not to. Especially since we’ve added a twist. We chose a song title to work as a mantra for each resolution.

The followings are a compendium of everything we wish for the next 12 months.

1. “Circle of Life“: stuff happens – never mull over the detours along the way. Think of this childhood memory, reconnect with your inner child and…get over it.

2. “Oops, I did it again“: whenever hitting a bump, get back on track, or be able to rearrange the route if necessary. Take a leaf out of Britney’s book and keep reinventing yourself.

3. “Perfect day“: make work fun. Enjoying the fact that you get to work in a young, lively environment should be enough to get up cheerful in the morning.

4. “More than words“: turn team-building into more than just an inspirational thought. The more you share, the more others will feel inclined to do the same. It’s that easy.

5. “You get what you give“: not just for clients. That’s especially true when dealing with coworkers and acting bitchy. There’s someone who might be bitchier than you, it’s called Karma.

6. “Live like you were dying“: if you want to sign a deal, that’s the fine line you’re looking for. A positive, take-it-all attitude will work wonders when we feel we don’t have that much to lose.

7. “True colors“: and we’re not talking about the great impulse our presentation skills received. There’s a second meaning to this song about not feeling fearful or small that’s particularly appealing to us.

8. “Enjoy the silence“: this might seem to contradict previous resolutions. In fact, it doesn’t. Working in team is stimulating, but it can be a burden to your creativity. Sometimes a little solo time is what will do us good.

9. “Contagious“: the adjective we wish to apply to our communication. Word of mouth and viral is what we need now.

10. “Don’t stop me now“: things are falling into place. We.will.not. let anyone dampen this feeling.

Better get going and press “Play”!

Call the A-team!

Last Sunday a brand new service made its on-the-field debut in the sport industry.

The volley team Lube, together with 1ring, introduced an engaging contest that put all Lube players on trial…only to be judged by their own fans!

During the afternoon match between Lube and Monza held in Macerata, Lube team fans were able to test, for the first time ever in Italy, a new voting system that allows anyone at the stadium to choose their own favourite player simply through a free ring from their mobile phones.

Anyone was able to vote for free one time during each set till the MVP was elected. But how does this new voting system work?

If you want to choose your MVP, save this number +39 029 296 63 XX on your phone and add the two digits that make up your favorite player’s T-shirt. For example, if you think Savani - number 3 - was the best, add the final 03. Make a phone call and follow the easy  instructions in the message you’ll receive!

The initiative takes off from our technology, which can be applied to tag anything (ora anyone in this case), including volleyball players. Fans can choose their favorite player and vote for him in real time through a free call to his 1ring number, eliminating the need for smartphones and costly mobile devices connectivity!

For voting and/or having access to extra contents on LUBE players, fans only need to call a traditional number. 1ring provides a new way to take LUBE always with you and relive the most exciting actions and the highlights of every match.

All contents are available 24/7 and in real time. Thanks to this new system the applications for the sport industry are tons: fans can easily stay up-to-date with how their team’ s doing by simply consulting the updates on latest games and save the information about their MVP on their personal profile.

Save your favorite player’s 1ring number and get voting!

Taking action in the field is just a – free – phone call away!

Hostin’ powers

Tuscany is the ideal setting of basically anything you can romantically or artistically think of. Yet you wouldn’t expect it to be the location where the innovators gather to make the difference.

Tomorrow and Friday the Stazione Leopolda in Florence will host the annual event dedicated to the digital tourism, Buy Tourism Online.

The event’s fourth edition offers new web-based business projects addressed to the tourism industry the opportunity to take off and grow.

At a time when self-service tourism is the rule, thanks to low cost airlines and the likes of Groupon Escape, agencies in the tourism industry have a very hard time. If tour operators want to keep being competitive, this can only be achieved through innovation. Hence this year’s BTO features Storming Pizza. This format, created by H-Farm in order to choose next breaktrough ideas, gives start-ups no more than 15 minutes to both explain the idea and answer questions from investors.

The initiative, developed by H-Farm, invites anyone with a business idea based on the Web and related to travelling, to take part in the selection and seize the chance to see their idea go beyond the Beta version. The eight best entrepreneurial projects that make it past the initial selection, will speak in front of the H-Farm investment committee in a special Storming Pizza session.

The goal is to see the winning start-up’s idea come to life, through managerial and financial contribution by H-Farm. So where does 1ring fit into all this? Each start-up team will step up in the Main Hall carrying a sign with a 1ring phone number to get voted.

By calling our free numbers, the audience and people who’ll be following the event via streaming, may vote for one or more ideas that will make their debut in each of the four sessions.

Good luck guys!

Ivy is longing for her Apple

Paradoxical as it may sound, real innovation is not always found in the institutions that are born to foster new ideas and eagerly wait for sparks of genius to come along. Simply put, universities are rarely the birthplace of breakthrough projects. Not only in mainland Europe, but also in the U.S., where some of the most successful start-ups are born without higher education’s blessings.

Two VIPs who followed this pattern are among the most famous people of our times. Archetype of modern fairytale hero, late Steve Jobs, is to some extent similar to the ubermodern hero of the social generation, Mark Zuckerberg. Yet the apple never falls far from the tree and not just in the well-known, iconic Stanford speech. Harvard dropout Zuckerberg (as anyone who saw The Social Network knows pretty well) returned to his alma mater while on a recruiting mission just in time to witness some pretty big change. Last Friday marked America’s oldest college debut in the start-up scene with the i-lab, a start-up incubator. Harvard University‘s very first time in this enthralling world of innovators comes wrapped in crimson and institutional presence. Talk about the old and the new come together.

Buzzing with entrepreneurial activity since September, as the Gazzette reported, the i-lab is Harvard’s reply to West Coast universities competition, not to mention the one coming from a most annoying neighbor, the MIT.

The space, which is meant to give physical shelter (and shape) to a process that was already up and running in the university, is ideally set in Allston, probably the one area in Beantown with the highest rate of young people (and garages).

The incubator model is somewhat the polar opposite to the almost dramatized garage-thinking philosophy. The Cambridge-based college probably meant to put its authoritive signature on the innovation process by providing funds, one-on-one coaching, workshops and training in order to create new – hopefully succesful – start-ups.

Back in our early days, here at 1ring we immediately turned to universities because we have always thought them to be incubators of new ideas and key links between research and business world. Since last March, the Internet Marketing class of the University of Padua has set up a hands-on laboratory, in which students offered their takes on the service, testing it throughout the entire semester. They worked really hard to come up with different ideas and ended up exceeding our expectations.

Heart-filled with this succes, we then turned heads to Milan, where the city’s most international campus (Bocconi University) will host our service for a class to do the same. And possibly, even more. There are no two ways about it, if you want to keep being competitive as a start-up and make it in the almost saturated market, universities should be top of the list of your go-to places.

So much for “stay hungry, stay foolish”.

1ring to become King of your Land

RE/MAX Real Estate Group, the world’s leading real estate franchise with 100,000 agents in 7,000 agencies over more than 85 countries, chose 1ring to deliver extra content to its clients.

The service debuted during the latest edition of the Swiss International Holiday Exhibition, held in Lugano. The 2011 edition once again marked the go-to meeting point for travellers, both from the Ticino area and from Italy. The affluence for this year’s edition, with about 40 thousand visitors, once again turned into an event tour of huge importance in the European landscape.

In this international context 1ring met both RE/MAX and its clients’ needs perfectly. ​​Since 1ring is an already existing technology, its communication tool very much like that of traditional phones, turned out to be very intuitive and certainly made the exhibition experience a much more fun experience for those who used than for those who didn’t.

Through 1ring numbers, the agency provides extra content on the properties on sale and their surroundings. No more need for heavy handouts: all visitors need to do is simply make a phone call.

Among the extra features delivered via 1ring numbers were virtual house tours made up of pictures of the property and the area in which it is located. This way, visitors who crave more information on their dream home don’t have to settle for the few things they find on reports, but can get an accurate idea of ​​the property without having to necessarily set a face to face appointment.

As usual, after the first ring, the software automatically ends the call and the user receives all the extra content in real time on their 1ring and email account if they have a smartphone. If not, or if they want to peruse the contents later they might do so once they’re home on their desktop computers.

After 15 solid years of activity on the Italian front, 1ring adoption helps bring some fresh air to the real estate agency business.

Looking for your dream home? Just dial the free number +39 029 296 6054.

A new kind of (T)Vision

At 1ring’s headquarters, we feel like we’re being flashforwarded to the future. Things are falling into place almost as smoothly as anyone could have hoped for.

In a time of turmoil such as the one we’re living in, the peaceful coming together of indipendent voices is always a good thing. Whether you agree with those left-out-of-the-choir voices or not.

We’re referring to what happened last night on many Italian broadcasting platforms: Antennatre, along with 25 other local TV stations, Sky Channel 504 and 4 TV streaming sites, “Servizio Pubblico“, a.k.a. public service, a show hosted by Michele Santoro, former state television presenter.

The show, which will likely turn into the media event of the year, is scheduled to air every Thursday at 9 pm on local TV stations leaders. The main idea was to showcase all that’s normally left out of mainstream TV channels, information-wise. Hence the name, public service.

This revolutionary concept of TV show was righteously matched by a revolutionary communication tool, 1ring. The revolution itself lays in the fact that, thanks to our technology, viewers who tuned in on AntennaTre were able to speak their minds about the show.

The collaboration between 1ring and TVision, has now landed on a much wider scene. Three Northeastern regions (Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia) are covered by the telecommunications group via several channels: Antennatre, Antennatre Northeast, Antennatre News, 7News, and Ask.me Northeast Magazine and Free.

Thanks to an innovative programming, mainly focused on current issues, culture, information and films, with an impressive four hours of daily news, the group has gradually become a key player on the local market.

Building on the ProntoAntennaTre mechanism, yet taking it further, every week, people who are watching the news will be able to choose among three different options. Right at the start of the show, a poll will be introduced.

In addition, through this new service viewers will make their voices heard through a two-way communication by expressing their Facebook-like (dis)approval. That’s to say, viewers will ring “I like” or “I do not like” about products, programs and social issues. All for free thanks to 1ring numbers.

How does this groundbreaking system work? To speak their minds, viewers simply have to make a free phone call to the number associated to their choices. After one ring, the software immediately shuts down the call, recording the vote. It goes without saying, users don’t need to have a smartphone or an Internet connection and they will always be able to follow the progress of the polling by visiting Pronto.tv.

Let the revolution begin!

The take over, the ring over

All hail the mobile king!

With one of the first believers in the potential of mobile’s passing away last week, there is a slight dramatic, nostalgy-filled note in the worldwide takeover of the mobile troops. Not just social networks, which are more and more to-go by the day; everything you can possibly think of is being rebuilt for the mobile experience.

As a matter of fact, 2011 saw smartphone and tablet orders take over desktop PCs and notebooks ones for the very first time. In addition, this year U.S. citizens are spending more time fidgeting with mobile apps than they are browsing the web on their mobile phones and desktop PCs.

The gold rush of the decade, a kind of app craze we already looked into, changed the way the man on the street is looking at his mobile phone. As a result, it also changed what to expect from the latter.

With almost 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store, you might want to jump on the app bandwagon, say, now. If you are a professional, you’d better do that before your clients start asking if you can design the übercool app and the best you can do is stare at them with a blank face.

Nevertheless, in most cases a well designed mobile site would be enough, especially for businesses which do not really require an app.

On a recent edition of The Guardian the debate focused on “the proliferation of black and white puzzles you see on film posters, adverts, retail items and in art works”, followed by the author describing in detail of one of the many QR scanning apps.

The article, QR reader – consumer app of the week, somehow misses the crucial point. The app, like its replicas, is just a technology that allows you to access another technology.

We’ve said that, QR codes are cool. But they fail to go beyond the here-and-now philosophy.

This is a single flaw that could turn out to be fatal when people will entirely abandon their desktop PCs for a mobile phone which is going to become an actual personal physical device. Very much like the extension of the indivual. Very much, actually, like the idea of 1ring itself, which is a collection of your real world thumb-ups.

One could easily point out that, given the fact that 1ring is a way to access the Web from the offline world, there might be no point in having a 1ring.com mobile versione on a device that already has Internet access.

So, here’s the twist for the devil advocates out there.

Rather than having way too many apps, 1ring is the virtual archive where everything that caught your attention is automatically stored and organized for you. To cope with the ever-changing mobile scenario, we are implementing our mobile structure by introducing new tools. Like our user-friendly widget that pops up on your screen and lets you see the last 1ring number you called.

It’s you…on the go.