Despite (or due to) the hard times in financials, web related innovative companies are alive and kicking here in Finland.

During this year and especially this autumn, we have helped a number of companies to jumpstart their business by helping them to conceptualise their offer, designing user experience, and implementing the needed systems to actually run the show.

Besides readymade and on-going projects, we are working with a number of other startups that have good and grand ideas for services that will shake certain segments or niches on the markets.

There is happening a lot also outside of Exove, too. Finnish startup scene has been pretty lively for the past year or so.

This all is due to the fact that implementing a web based business has become really cost-effective compared to the old ways of doing software business.

If you are pondering on an idea, consider also discussing with us. Let’s talk.

We had our first customer survey this autumn. After being business for more than two years, it was a good time to ask our customers how we have been doing.

The results were amazing for us. We were expecting to get positive feedback, as private discussions with our customers have been favorable. But the amount of praise and commitment was just so overwhelming.

Every single respondent would buy from us again. Everyone would also recommend us. These are reflections from our level of service that was graded either excellent (20%) or good (80%).

From the customers’ point of view, the main assets that Exove offers to its customers are flexibility, efficiency, and ability to take a vague spec and make a good service based on it. Our professionalism and knowledge were also rated excellent.

If you feel that you would benefit of our assets, get in touch with Janne Kalliola, +358 40 558 1796 or janne@exove.com.

Päivitys 3.9.2008: Haku on päättynyt. Kiitoksia kaikille hakeneille. Olemme teihin yhteydessä pikaisesti. / Update Sep 3, 2008: the applying period is now over. Thank you for everyone who sent their applications. We will be in touch with you shortly.
Kasvumme jatkuessa haemme lisää ns. hyviä tyyppejä täydentämään tiimiämme. Tällä kertaa avoinna on kolme työpaikkaa: tekninen konsultti, ohjelmistoarkkitehti ja PHP-kehittäjä. Lue lisää avoimet työpaikat -sivultamme ja laita hakemus vetämään.

As our growth continues, we are looking for more good guys to work within our team. This time, the following positions are open: technical consultant, software architect and PHP developer. Read more on open positions page and send your application this way.

On-going digitalization has achieved two major milestones: people are reachable in the Internet, and most of business processes are executed on top of software systems. Combining these two will open up both new opportunities and cost savings.

Internet as a medium is radically different from the other media; it is bidirectional, always available and easily connectable to other digital systems driving your business, such as customer relationship management or inventory systems.

When planning digital marketing actions, you need to consider the end-to-end process from page views and fancy flash animations to desired actions and their consequences in your back-end systems.

If a person wants to get a sample from a marketing website, you both capture the address and other information for future actions and also automatically signal your logistics partner to send the sample. Immediately, automatically. Not by collecting the addresses into Excel sheets and sending them three weeks after the campaign.

Or, if you are trying to book a meeting, the person is shown real-time booking information, in other words available slots, for immediate selection – instead of sending phone number by email to a sales rep that will call some day.

To prevail, marketing needs to be thought as the starting point of digital sales or customer relationship process – it feeds the latter parts with contacts, interests and profiles, for tailored services or automated actions. Adding value to the customer or reducing the cost of the process. Either way, the marketer wins.

When making decisions for your next digital campaign, make sure to check the integration capabilities of your advertising agency.

Blyk, the new mobile network for 16 – 24s that’s funded by advertising, has now more than 100,000 members in the UK. They started from zero in last autumn, and have grown faster than media and analysts foresaw.

Read Blyk’s own announcement in their blog.

Exove has provided Blyk a set of systems to help them to make this member growth to happen.

Coding is problem-solving business. Customer has a need that needs to be served with a software system. To be able to serve, the system needs to overcome a set of challenges set by the operating environment, business rules, abusive users and so forth. Every challenge needs a proper solution, or it becomes a problem.

We coders tend to speak about the problems, but not about the solutions. The problems are important, of course, otherwise there would be much less coders solving them. But at the end of the day, solutions matter.

I’ve witnessed in several organisations how the way of talking inside the team or the company affects the perception of the projects. Are we going to face issues or challenges? Are we hitting into problems or producing solutions? Wording makes a difference.

Besides terminology and wording, a good understanding of project goals makes people to look for the solutions instead of problems. If you understand why you are doing something instead of just doing it for sake of doing it (or getting paid for doing it), you can always ponder on various options — and suddenly you are thinking of the solutions, not the problems.

The best projects, both in team’s well-being and productivity, have always been the most positive and forward-looking, too. Motivated people tend to create stuff faster and with fewer errors. Staying focused is easier. You end up in the flow more often. Stuff just happens around you and everything progresses.

In other words, being more positive towards the project and its objectives, the project achieves more and also feels better. It does not matter whether you are a project manager or a coder; everyone’s attitude counts. Try this in your next project.

Olemme muuttaneet aiempaa suurempiin ja hienoimpiin tiloihin. Konttorimme on edelleen Ruoholahdessa ja ainoastaan talonnumero vaihtuu.

Uusi osoitteemme on: Tammasaarenkatu 3, 00180 Helsinki. Puhelinnumerot säilyvät ennallaan.

Uudesta konttoristamme on hienot merimaisemat, katso kuvat alla.

We have moved to bigger and better premises. Our offices are still located in Ruoholahti and only the building number changes.

Our new address is: Tammasaarenkatu 3, 00180 Helsinki, Finland. Phone numbers do not change.

The new office boasts with fancy seaviews; see the pictures below.

The Jaiku Dashboard widget for Mac OS X got a minor update today. Jaiku has added an extra set of icons to accompany posts and now the widget has all new cool icons as well.

The once selected icon can be removed from the new post by clicking it once. Also the icon selection menu can be closed by clicking the cross at the lower right corner of the menu.

Go to Widget download page to get yours.

This year and beyond, Exove has been supplying services and products to Blyk, the world’s first advertising funded telecom operator. Have you heard of it?

Blyk is a pan-European free mobile operator for young people, funded by advertising. For advertisers, Blyk is an innovative mobile media channel offering direct engagement with a young audience with real time feedback. Blyk was co-founded in 2006 by Pekka Ala-Pietilä and Antti Öhrling and has offices in Helsinki, Finland and London, UK. Blyk is launching first in the UK market in mid-2007, with other markets to follow.

Our role has been extensive in several technology areas to complement their teams — including, for example, technology vendor and software system selection, software architecture design, web 2.0 and advertisement service concept development, user interface design and implementation, mobile tools design and development, and IT administration. Blyk also uses Exove’s technology that in some cases has been customised to fit to Blyk’s needs.

When asked for a quotation, Blyk’s head of strategy and business development Timo Ahopelto said: “Exove fits the bill exactly when you are developing something novel like the Blyk service. Evove’s solid technical experience couples well with their curiousness for all new things.”

Kari Penttilä, chief technology officer at Blyk continues: “Exove has been a key partner for us in shaping our technology platform. They are fast to attain comprehensive focus from the big picture to the detail, and swiftly move to the execution. It has been good to work with them.”

During the Blyk project, as well as with Jaiku and some other projects still under the hood, Exove has gained strong practical experience in combining mobile networks and phones with web 2.0 services.

Further, through Blyk and other customers we do know all elements at a large-scale mobile advertising technology platform. As an additional benefit, one of our partners has an advertising agency, so we have experience in both sides of the media fence: technology and advertising industry.

Got interested? Let’s talk.

The second generation Jaiku Dashboard Widget is now available for downloading on our Jaiku Widget page.

The widget is now able to read the latest Jaikus from you and your contacts. Posts can have icons, too. And the widget can be collapsed into posting only mode to save precious screen space in smaller displays.

Please give it a spin. Remember to provide feedback here in the blog and write bug reports — should they be any — to widgetbugs@exove.com.