Last month we reviewed a Swiss-based service named Moreganize. Our Swiss reporter, Corsin, noted that the biggest competition to Moreganize would come from another Swiss-based company, Doodle. Today Doodle has announced the launch of an event planning tool as a Facebook application.

It’s interesting to watch the event planning category move to a crowdsourced model where polls are used to find a time and date that meets the needs of the group. The Doodle Facebook application allows you to poll your friends around an event topic. Facebook friends will receive a message inside of Facebook and Doodle will send emails to your friends who don’t have Facebook accounts.

Here’s an example of the poll page:

Check out our coverage of other event-planning services including MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, Center’d, Coordinatr and GoLark. Also check out our coverage of technology in Switzerland.

More CN Coverage:
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– Amie Street
– Startup Tips

We initially covered online P2P IPTV service Zattoo last year when they launched in the UK. Our reporter in Switzerland, Corsin Camichel, has the scoop on today’s launch of high quality, full television resolution (HiQ) channels on Zattoo. The new HiQ service isn’t full HD (yet?) and is only available in Switzerland.

The monthly fee for the Zattoo HiQ service is 5CHF ($4.60) per month. Zattoo has a partnership with Swisscom and Swisscom VDSL subscribers get the HiQ channels for free. The channels included in the HiQ plan are: ARD, Canale 5, Eurosport, France 2, France 3, M6, Pro7, Rai Uno, RTL, Sat1, SF 1, SF 2, SF info, TF1, TSI1, TSI2, TSR1, TRS2, VOX and ZDF.

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AOL has announced the launch of a new flash-based instant messaging application today. AIM Express allows you to do everything you can in the normal AIM client inside of a Web browser. In my testing this morning, I found it to work very well. As you chat with more people, tabs show up on the top of the application so you can jump back and forth. Everything is contained inside of the one Flash application.

I wonder if they could port this to a desktop app using Adobe AIR as it would allow everything to be contained inside the app instead of opening windows for each current chat. The new AIM Express also allows for text messaging using SMS for friends that are offline.

AOL also announced the launch of an updated Windows Mobile client. The new client includes ads from AOL’s Platform-A division.

Other companies in the Web IM and chat space include current CN sponsor eBuddy and Meebo.

More CN Coverage:
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Source:CenterNetworks

Moreganize is a Swiss-based startup that looks to help you organize groups using surveys. Example uses would be to find the perfect time for a group meeting or which movie everyone in the group is interested in viewing. There are also some basic project management services including a to-do list.

The site is easy-to-use and if the survey is used for an event, schedule invites can be automatically sent to the attendees. The service is available in German and English although I would suggest they make sure all of the content is available in English. I see a good bit of words and phrases in German even on the English version.

They also need to look at making it easier to create a survey. There’s no link to create on the homepage and while the text says "no registration required" the only link to get started is for "free registration".

Update: Our Switzerland connection Corsin Camichel tells me that the biggest competition for Moreganize comes from switzerland itself: doodle.

Here’s a Moreganize sample where John Sample attempts to get feedback on which type of movie his guests would like to watch:

Check out Mark Gibbs’ review of Moreganize at NetworkWorld. And check out our coverage of other event-planning services including MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, Center’d, Coordinatr and GoLark.

Editor’s note: The story below was embargoed until this morning - but was broken last night. After speaking with Wuala founder Dominik Grolimund, he asked us to hold off posting until this morning.

When I interviewed Wuala founder and CEO Dominik Grolimund, I asked him how he defines the Wuala service. He replied, "Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This enables its users to trade parts of their local storage for online storage and it allows us to provide a better service for free."

The big news today out of the Wuala camp is that today marks their public opening. Previously the service was in a closed alpha for just under a year. The company is self-funded. The Wuala team is based in Switzerland and has worked on the product for three years.

I asked Dominik about the Wuala business plan as many online storage companies have tried a variety of models. Dominik noted, "At the moment, we’re experimenting with ads in the public (World) area. Since our costs are lower, this might work. However, there are also other possible business models such as photo finishing, buying additional storage (you can trade if you want, if you don’t, you could buy some additional online storage for a really low price), or also other forms of sponsoring that we’re working on."

Check out other Wuala reviews on Download Squad and Profy.

More CN Coverage:
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babyZbook is a Swiss-based startup currently in beta which hopes to help you move your baby books online. The name is pronounced as “babies book”. The service is available in multiple languages including German and English. The service feels like a test more than an actual beta but there is enough to get the product discussion moving in terms of overall roadmap.

I created a babyZbook and the process was easy overall. You can add information about the baby’s birth, events, photo albums, measurements and graphs. The photo feature only offers an upload option - it would be good if they could pull in photos from online sources like Flickr or SmugMug.

The design of the actual baby book is pretty nice and has tabs for the different content options (see example below). The only major change would be to look at the ability to customize the background and allow for comments on the appropriate content. I want my family to interact with my baby’s book not just look at the content. What about allowing my family to signup for email updates? And videos?

On the admin side where you enter the content, the interface feels very thrown together and really needs more work for people to take the tool seriously. All measurements within the service are in metric - they might want to offer the option to switch it if they are looking to enter the U.S. market.

There’s certainly a business model in this type of site - from the simple ad-based model to premium upgrades to printed services, there are many options available. Other services in this area include Kidmondo and Lil’Grams.

Here’s babyZbook’s 20-second pitch from the Techcrunch meetup in Zurich last week:

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Yesterday I spent some time with the Evite and JS-Kit teams to discuss the updated Evite beta platform launch. From a Web perspective the most impactful update is the addition of JS-Kit’s comment system and polling platform. Now when you create an event, a message board is automatically added to the event where guests can speak before, during and after the event. JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux notes that this deal pushes JS-Kit past the blogosphere in terms of integration. This is a major distribution deal for JS-Kit who are just coming off their acquisition of Haloscan.

Other Evite platform updates include integration of Flickr for images, YouTube/Vimeo for videos and Plaxo for contact management. Event pages are more "hip" by adding images and videos. Evite also signed popular artist Robert Holmes to create a variety of new event designs. There’s also a private comment feature which allows guests to send notes to the host without the entire guest list viewing them - quicker than an email. More mobile options have been added including event reminders and the ability for hosts to send event invites to guests via sms.

Users can now contribute their own designs as well. This was an interesting area of discussion. All designs are automatically approved and available in the event gallery. The Evite editors will hand pick some of the popular designs to place on their home page. They expect the community to police the user-submitted designs for illegal and objectionable content. Wonder how long before we see something way out there - my odds are one week.

The Evite platform is built in Java. eVite is part of IAC and has 35 team members in Los Angeles. eVite’s self-reported stats include: 18 million registered members, 15 million monthly invitations sent, 6 million parties planned and 24,000 Evite invitations sent every hour. The average event guest goes to Evite four times per event.

The Evite team explained that the biggest challenge the face is working on a new platform while still maintaining the current platform.

To be honest, the updates are a bit of a letdown. When JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux and I spoke about this announcement a week ago, I was really looking forward to yesterday’s meeting. I was excited to see a whole new Evite that was more 2008 and less 1998. The team certainly was excited to demo their changes and that’s what makes this so difficult. But what I’ve seen is somewhere in the middle, call it 2005. When you are the market leader, it’s ok to be years behind.

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Source:CenterNetworks

Are there actually startups outside of Sillicon Valley and the USA? For us Europeans this is quite an akward question. Of course there are startups here. And thanks to Mike Butcher and TechCrunch and his European tour we can show the world how great our startup scene actually is. As one of twelve cities on the tour, Mike came to Zurich on July 17th. As a techblogger and engineer myself and as a CenterNetworks writer, I had the great pleasure to attend, take photos and videotape the event.

One of the highlights of the evening was the 20-second pitches each startup had the opportunity to give. We have compiled together a video with all the pitches. If you have 14 minutes and want to see a variety of Swiss startups, check it out below. I’ve also included some photos as well - over 150 people attended. Please share your thoughts on any of the startups represented in the video.

Editor’s note: Corsin Camichel covers technology and European startups on his blog, Geekness. Also, we’ve provided reviews of two of the startups from the event, Poken and Mixin.

Poken is a new Swiss startup that aims to simplify the way we go from real world interaction to online social networking friends. This week we reviewed DropCard which offers a way to stop collecting business cards and instead send the information through SMS. Poken also is interested with ending business card collection but in a different way.

When you signup for Poken, they send you a keychain fob which contains your social networking information. When you meet someone at a conference, event, mixer, etc and they also have a Poken fob, you tap the fobs together and instantly you are connected on the social networks where there is a match.

Since most people have only one social network they are attached to, is Poken really necessary? Apparently the Poken fob costs about $3 and the team is working on securing advertisers to "own" the Poken fob. For techies the idea seems more interesting and feasible. Also, enough people you meet and in your circle would need a Poken to make the system work. The first person you try to poke (?) and they have no fob, it’s done.

It seems like for this type of application to work, it has to connect to the devices we carry already. Poken has an API and perhaps they should be working to integrate their technology (including the fob) into mobile devices? Maybe it could replace the infared port on many mobiles and actually make it more useful. Overall I like the concept and see it as moving the business card conversation forward.

Paul Stamatiou has a good look at physical social networking. Poken is currently angel-funded and is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Here’s their quick pitch filmed by Corsin Camichel at the TechCrunch Zurich event last night:

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Mixin is a new Swiss-based startup that aims to aggregate your activities into a timeline/agenda. Basically the way Mixin works is that it can aggregate your event timeline from sites like Twitter and you can also place events directly into your timeline through Mixin.

Here’s an example Mixin activity page. It’s basically like a messageboard thread where you start the thread with your event. Your friends can then note if they plan to attend, leave comments and embed photos and videos. Events can be sent to Mixin by mobile sms, IM and email as well. Then you can post the event to Facebook and/or Twitter. There’s also an API so developers can build on top of what Mixin offers.

There’s color-coding for event types so you know whether to pull out your finest shoes or flip-flops. When you setup your friends list in Mixin, you can decide if they person is just an online friend, or if they are a "real" friend by placing a star next to their name. Friend updates can be sent to your email or mobile.

Notifications can be setup daily to remind you of upcoming events. It would be great if you could include an address for the event or a conference URL. There’s a link to Google Maps but without a specific address it won’t work correctly. A connection into Google Calendar and the other online calendar applications would also round out the service.

You can also embed your timeline into a blog, Website or email. Here’s what my embedded Mixin timeline looks like:

Mixin supports OpenID and the overall interface is pretty slick. The "how to use" guide is very interesting as it actually layers on top of the service so you can interact with the service while looking at the help.

This is one of the most interesting services I’ve seen as of late. It aggregates and leverages content from other sources but can also survive alone. I could see Mixin doing very well if it can gain some level of traction.

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