Welcome to Zeblog

We’ve recently released two more channels onto the Zebtab platform with both Motorsports and Euro 2008 going live.

The Motorsports channel is a real must for petrolheads, whatever their preferred mode of racing is, covering everything from F1 & Rallying for cars to MotoGP & Superbikes for two-wheeled action. As with Euro 2008, there’s plenty of video footage for users to tuck in to.

Euro 2008 is our ‘Ronseal’ channel (i.e. does exactly what it says on the tin!) and delivers users all the very latest news, gossip and video from the Swiss/Austrian based tourament. Users can personalise the channel to their own country, ensuring they are alerted only for content they really want.

New users can download directly from www.zebtab.com while existing users can ‘Add’ either (or both!) to their existing channel set.

Rich

If it’s Wednesday, it must be Brussels!

We’ve just got back from two days in Brussels exhibiting at both the Microsoft European Investor Summit and the 4th Annual SME Day.

This was our second appearance at this joint event and, once again, provided a great opportunity to plug in to the latest from Microsoft as they continue to role out their SME programmes across Europe while also giving us the chance to meet with a multitude of European VC’s.

Not forgetting the chance to meet with other European start-ups also and catch up with those from closer to home, included the guys from Trusted Places, SiloBreaker and Mydeo.

An excellent event for us, now for the hard work of following up on all those cards…

Rich

As sure a sign of summer as covers on the wicket at Lords and England losing in the quarter finals of a tournament (remember when we were that good!), Big Brother is back. BB9 kicked off last night and we’re delighted to, today, announce the debut of the dedicated Big Brother channel on Zebtab.

Delivering content from Channel 4, The Sun and You Tube (amongst others), the Big Brother Zebtab channel keeps users posted on all the very latest video, pics and gossip from the house.

Existing Zebtab users can simply ‘Add’ the Big Brother channel while new users can download from here

Yup, we’re feeding the monster, we can only apologise…

Rich

Followers of Zebtab will know that we have been building real momentum recently with the launch of several new channels (Man Utd, IWOOT, Hello!) generating a surge in user numbers. Alongside our recently won industry awards (Red Herring, Killer Start-up…) it’s been quite a couple of months.

That said, if we’re not generating significant incremental content and ad impressions, then we’re only a ‘nice to have’ for clients. So you can imagine our delight (relief!?) in viewing ad impression figures for May, showing a four fold increase on April (and now comfortably in seven figure territory).

This, coupled with the doubling of traffic to Man Utd fanzone post launch of their Zebtab channel, shows we are very much coming age in the delivery of hard measurable benefits for content owners.

Rich

We’re pleased to announce the arrival of another new channel on Zebtab, iwantoneofthose (IWOOT), the internet gadget retailer.

The IWOOT channel ensures our users will always be the first to know about the latest gadgets & gifts (and other stuff), while also keeping them up to date on all their fabulous competitions, enlightening them with little known, and mostly useless, facts (their words!). It will even give them the unique IWOOT perspective on their star signs!

It’s a great complement to the existing firebox channel, ensuring we really are the one stop shop for gadgets & gear on the desktop.

Rich

We’ve released a version update today to allow users to mute and/or snooze Zebtab direct from the alert ‘toaster’ (i.e. without having to open the app first). See image of new ‘toaster’ below:

Users told us they wanted a quicker and easier way to control Zebtab, ‘I love your service, but there are times when I need it to be quiet, such as when I’m in a meeting or on the phone’ being a classic comment.

We think (and hope) this new functionality gives users an even better Zebtab experience and helps further personalise to their specific, and changing, needs.

Keep the feedback coming!

Rich

We’re delighted to announce the arrival of hellomagazine.com to Zebtab. It’s another great content channel to add to the list and provides users with all the very latest celeb news, gossip and pics (and provides a welcome balance to the largely male-focussed content currently available!).

If you’re new to Zebtab you can download from here with Hello! pre-loaded. If you’re an existing user, simply click ‘Add’ on an empty tab and browse to find Hello! or go to MyZebtab>Channels to add.

Rich

We have released the latest version patch for Zebtab (v1.8.1), delivering a number of feature/functionality improvements. Most of the work is under the bonnet and users will benefit from the following:

1). Speedier Adding/Removing of channels
2). Better communication in the event of lost network connection
3). ‘Refresh’ added to the action buttons

Rich

FootballFanCast is now live on the Zebtab platform, giving football fans all the latest fan podcasts, blogs and news from their favourite team.

This channel is a great complement to the existing football channels on Zebtab, such as Man Utd, 4TheGame and Setanta Sports.

Watch this space for more club channels comng soon (particularly if you are from North London or the North West of England…all will be revealed!).

Rich

Ok, so not quite the front page, but we’re more than happy with Page 6 in the Business section. Richard Tyler, the Telegraph’s Enterprise Editor, focusses on how the likes of Google and Microsoft are working with smaller companies in his article ‘Tips for start-ups to score with Giants’. Writing specifically about Microsoft’s approach, Zebtab is highlighted as a featured case study with quotes a-plenty from our CEO, Damon.

You can view the article online here or see a scanned version of the original, complete with Mr Ronalodo in full flow here!

Rich

‘Zebtab the Unreader…’ A nice line! Interesting take on what we do from a feed is born blog. Click the link to read the article.

Rich

Listen to Damon’s interview with Blogtalkradio while over in San Francisco for Web Mission ‘08. Also check out WAYN in the same piece…

Rich

Our CEO, Damon Oldcorn, is currently ensconsed in the Web Mission ‘08 to San Francisco, alongside the rest of the great & good (rabble?) of the UK digerati. Clearly it’s not been all VC presentations and coffee with Michael Birch as, today, Damon has been extensively quoted in the BBC’s coverage of the mission. To quote:

‘Damon Oldcorn, chief executive of Zebtab, a desktop tv application promoting sport and news, says he hopes to forge relationships and lay down plans to expand in the US.

“The game is back on again. We were here during the dotcom era with another company I built but that tapered off in 2001. It’s pretty obvious the buzz is back. The money is here, the alliances are being struck and there are deals to be done and it’s the place to be again.” ‘

Read the full article here.

Rich

Update - more articles coming out covering Web Mission, check out Tech Digest here

Also, check out Mike Butcher’s coverage on Techcrunch ‘The Brits are coming…back soon’ and ‘It’s a wrap’

And Richard Tyler’s piece on The Daily Telegraph

We have a shiny new movie on Zebtab.com and we’re so pleased with it we just had to share it here!

We hope it gives users a simple and clear view of what Zebtab is all about, and…we just think it looks cool!

Rich

As we announced last Thursday, the Man Utd channel is now live on Zebtab, with the soft launch (a single discreet link on their site) already delivering hundreds of downloads.

As of 3pm GMT today, however, the channel is prominently featured on their Splash Page (see above image) as Man Utd Desktop. Suffice to say the impact has been significant!. Where once it was hundreds, now it’s thousands. An even closer eye to be kept on our servers!!!

Rich

p.s. More channels on their way shortly, watch this space…

We’ve just been told by the guys at killerstartups.com that we are…err…a killer start-up!

You can read their full article here.

…and don’t forget to vote for us when you get there!

Rich

We pleased to announce that the Man Utd channel on Zebtab is now officially live. You can see for yourself by visiting the download page here:

www.manutd.zebtab.com

Come on you reds!!!

Rich

We’re absolutely delighted to have bagged another award, this time it’s the coveted Red Herring 100 Europe, the award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year. Past Red Herring 100 award winners include Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Netscape, Salesforce.com and YouTube, so we like the company we’re keeping!

This award builds on our recent nomination to the upcoming Web Mission to San Francisco and our 2007 Digital Elite Award. With major launches ahead over the next few weeks it’s officially an exciting time here at Zebtab towers!

Rich

We’re delighted to release Zebtab v1.8 into the wild today. There’s a ton of stuff that has improved, both under the bonnet and in front of users. Highlights include:

1). New ‘Toaster’ Alert - When we launched the rhs of the screen was pretty much virgin territory. Alas no longer! With the likes of Google Desktop, Vista Sidebar now on the scene, it’s getting a bit crowded. So we’ve amended Zebtab to alert via ‘toaster’ from the bottom right hand corner. We’ve also made the alert bigger for stronger branding and to enable added functionality (coming for v1.9).
2). Drag & Drop - Users told us they wanted the ability to put Zebtab where they wanted on their screen, and not be chained to the right hand side. We listened and we changed.
3). Server upgrades - to deliver an even faster user experience. Faster content loading and faster adding of new channels.

And…

4). Removal of Registration - Users can now download and experience Zebtab without needing to input their personal details. There were many guesses as to how this would impact user numbers and while, a matter of hours after launch, it’s a little early to draw too many concrete conclusions, we currently have double the number of active users we have ever seen before. Go figure…

Rich

p.s. Watch this space for a major channel launch this week…

Josh Kopelman tells us, in his AlwaysOn article, why he loves the idea of news feeds but is less than enamoured with the sheer volume of content he now has to sift through. His response to this ‘pain’ is Feeds 2.0, the feeds dashboard (as a notional concept). An intelligent filtering agent/platform, giving you what you want, when you want it.

This is pretty close to what we are delivering with Zebtab. Helping users to cut through the ‘noise’ to stay connected to their interests and passions, effortless, without having to wade through 2000 stries to get their. RSS is a victim of it’s own success, the time is now right to introduce intelligent layers on top of the RSS engine to give user a great experience, based on ease & convenience.

It’s good to hear some other voices in the wilderness!

Read Josh’s article here.

Rich