The South Moravian Innovation Centre, or simple JIC, aims to create a proper environment in order to support entrepreneurship in the South Moravian region and to become the main provider of support for start-up innovative companies in Europe.

Founded in 2003 as an association of legal entities with related interests, it includes several founders like the South Moravian regional authority, Masaryk university, Brno University of Technology (BUT). Moreover, JIC cooperates with partner companies, which are thus becoming a part of innovative environmental support in the region.

JIC supports innovative companies, science, research and students with original ideas by providing them with funding, consultancy, contacts and spaces.
Right now the incubator hosts more than 20 start ups mostly operating in the technology sector.

The JIC is an interesting example of the business activism and entrepreneurship that can be noticed in different countries of the Eastern Europe, willing to express their knowledges and competencies especially in the IT sector.

Startup Crash Test is about a series of events held in Kiev aimed to stress test selected software startups market strategy, business model, distribution, roadmap, etc. It is anticipated to gather a wide range of startup professionals to provide presenting startups with practical feedback and advise. At the same time such venue serves as a screening and investment vehicle for local angels thus creating opportunities for both investment and entrepreneurial community. SCT is held on last Friday each month and features some of the brightest emerging software companies in Ukraine. Each time 2-4 startups have their 15 min of fame on stage followed by 10 min Q&A. In addition to the startup presentations, a line up of panel speakers is assembled to spark lively discussion and debate on numerous issues of creating startup value. The admission is free of charge.

More information about the events and schedule are available on http://startup.klub.ua/profile.

Imagine you are planning your vacation or choosing a new PC. In that case, often you search for blogs, forums and e-shops in order to find the best offer. And more you surf the more questions will appear and there is no one who answers them except your friends or google search string.

Russian startup krible.ru has identified this problem and offers an interesting solution. Krible replaces standard banners and context advertisment with chat windows, like this one:

For example, if you are looking for web page about tours to Thailand, you can chat directly with the tour agent and ask questions you have about holidays in Thailand. Krible offers new possibilities for web-site owners to earn bucks, by selling leads instead of selling clicks and gives a new opportunities for salesmen to find clients. Forced sales with live chat windows are used widely, and for example with Rackspace you really cannot escape chat window, as it pops almost in the center of the page. Krible is quite different and offers not just a tool for your company websites but a new advertisement system. Will it success or fail depends on the conversation rate of such kind of ad. Anyway customers get answers they need, salesmen get costumers they look for. Everyone is happy.
 

Live chat window at Rackspace.com

Tired of writing sms, e-mail, blog post or any other notes with your mobile phone? Say Welcome! to Pliq.me. Pliq is new service that translates your voice into text. No need to use your fingers, just tell your phone what you need to write in Russian, English, American or German. Other languages are planned to coming soon. To start “speaking with your phone” you just need to download the application for it. The supported systems are Symbian, Windows Mobile and Iphone. Pliq has been launched, it is in “beta” and is working!

The entrepreneurs ambitious to create new Internet startups and the venture capitalists target to invest in online business in Russia has not been influenced by the crisis. It is easy to prove it – almost each month new Venture Fund opens and new events appear. Elba is a great example of it.

“Elba” is a conference of internet projects and investors that will be held in Moscow during 27-29 of November. It is organized by Aleksander Plushev, Anton Merkurov and Badri Cobechia. The main aim of conference is to connect people full of ideas with the venture capitalists pockets.

To attract the attention of startups, a new award, called Plyuschev Award is to be granted to the projects of the year. Prize nominations are Idea, A prospect, Usefulness , Implementation, Content, Users’ choice, Grand-Prix – the best project among all projects presented.

More info can be found at Elba’s official website.

Bloove.com is a russian startup based in Novosibirsk that allows to keep, export and edit all mobile contacts on the web. As for entrepreneurs it is very important to store tons of contacts: investors, clients, developers etc., and when your mobile phone is lost, down or even was left at your friend you will feel yourself helpless. So bloove is a real solution in such situations – all your contacts are stored online under your profile. This startup has a great potential if it will provide simple interface to fit it for daily use.

To start using bloove you just need to download an application for your mobile and make an online registration. The full package is offered for 36$ a year and includes a storage for 3000 numbers, 3000 sms and offers the possibility to create second profile.

Next week, from the 18th to the 21st of November, Moscow will be the capital for innovation and technologies. Will start the first Forum “Innovation and Technologies 2009″ which includes an high number of forum, discussions, competitions and conferences about the innovation situation in Russia.
A clear goal of the Exhibition Forum is to understand how Russia can reduce the technology gap compared to other European countries and what the transition from an economy based onextracting and processing of minerals to an innovative economy requires.
At the event will be take part many experts, politicians and businessmen, even president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev. The Forum and Exbition will be held at the Crocus Expo International Exhibition Centre.

The complete program of the 4 days Forum can be seen at the official website www.innotechexpo.ru.

Online Microsoft Project Viewer allows you to share MS project files online. This is a great tool for all the entrepreneurs and managers for checking plans, showing them anywhere to investors, chiefs, etc., without carrying flash drive or notebook. This simple service was created by Mike Butorin, russian startuper and already founder of Song.ly.

As for online business this project has two main problems:
1. the potential audience is very limited and not “cheap” to get. Mike needs a strong marketing campaign;
2. sharing MS project files has no viral effect comparing to services that provide online works with Microsoft products, like slideshows. People do like to share and spread slideshows, but they keep MS projects files in confidential.

If you want to share music with your blog readers you can use muzicons or any other flash music player, but what about music in twitter? The answer is song.ly, a russian startup founded my Mike Butorin.

At song.ly website you can search songs you need or put URL of MP3′s you like. After this you will get an URL, which is already shortened for Twitter. Tweet this URL and every one, who clicks on it, will be able to listen the music you have chosen in a compact flash player. Quick and easy! And that is not all – developers can use song.ly API to help people to share music via Twitter at other website too.

There are a number of other services that help to put music on Twitter, but for sure Song.ly is one of quickiest and comfortable with its “Tweet” button. Song.ly uses Tagoo.ru API to search music.

As described by the founders in section “about”, muzicons.com is about “Show your mood and emotions” and “Tell about your favorite music tracks”. That is true, because muzicon is a compact flash player with emoticons, that helps bloggers to describe their mood.

Example:

Muzicons.com is an interesting alternative to plain emoticon images, that are used by most of blog-platforms such as livejournal.com. In order to create muzicon you need to choose icons, search for songs you need or use URL to Mp3 files, choose colour and size of the player. The last step is to place embed-code to your blog.

Muzicons.com was founded in Russia on April 2008 by Philipp Gladkov and Vadim Belozerov. The project was translated into 8 languages and has got fans fromall over the world: Asia, Europe and North America. Currently it has more then 40,000 registered users and 700,000 views each day, widely spread at livejournal.com and blogger.com. The website has been covered by popular blogs such as Mashable.com, Wired.com, etc.