Only 10 days after we released Quickker Alpha, we were able to improve it substantially, thanks to enormous effort by SAM-ITECH and more than valuable input from our first alpha users. Even with Alpha version, Quickker is already used by 15 teams to manage their sport activities. In the next phase of Quickker development, where SAM-ITECH plans to invest 20.000 euros in resources, Quickker will fragment into various sectors in order to better target its audience.

Quickker is lead by two individuals, myself and Marco Meier. Marco is currently a Media Executive at Starcom MediaVest Group in Dubai, with previous experience from Deloitte, holding Masters in Marketing from acknowledged Barcelona's University of EADA and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from one of the top private Universities in the US NSU. He just recently ended his professional basketball career in Spain. As I had never introduced myself at EuropeanStartups, I am currently a Software Engineer at one of the most successful on line sport betting companies in the World - BWIN.COM, where I came from the most visited Job Search company in the World Monster Worldwide. I also have an NSU background, holding a Bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems. Next to BWIN and Quickker, I run EuropeanStartups and SAM-ITECH. Marco and I were both members of NSU Knights (now NSU Sharks) basketball team which competed in the NCAA division and have vast experience in semi professional and professional basketball.

It's been four months since I started development on the project code named "Q". Finally, today at 3AM, thanks to the join effort with SAM-ITECH, I have deployed the first Private Alpha version to the live server under the project's full name Quickker.

Due to arrangements with "parties of interest", I am still not at freedom to disclose what Quickker actually is, but I am at freedom to invite anyone intrigued to register. All I can say is that Quickker is related to sports, that there will be a lot of hand on athletic experience applied to the functionality and usability, and that it will target anyone engaging in any kind of sport activity and in any kind of sports. I can assure you that Quickker will not be just another social network with a target audience!

Quickker is and will be developed in RubyOnRails with MySQL database, and, of course, with unavoidable JavaScript, Ajax, XHTML, XML, CSS, and other Web technologies.

Please welcome a new company to our Company Index - Monema. Monema is a Spanish start up that offers hosted PBX service for small and medium enterprises. One great advantage that Monema has to offer is an extremely friendly UI which allows non-technical end-user to design complex behaviors and location menus thanks to its drag and drop control panel.

Well, if you think that would be all and that Monema is just another PBX provider, you are wrong. Monema service is entirely Internet dependent! There's no need for new hardware, while the installation is more than simple. The phone system is customizable to easily fit into your company structure, while it stays completely flexible.

Well, some may wonder, why give this Spanish start up a free advertisement at EuropeanStartups? If they feel that EuropeanStartups can help them get their business more noticed by utilizing our site, we are all for it. As I previously mentioned a few times, for a startup to get noticed, it must be talked about all over the internet - from big guys like TechCrunch, to small ones like EuropeanStartups. The presence is what matters! Monema might not be Web2.0 start up on one hand, however it has very much to do with the European start ups. It's a young start up from Spain, and they offer services through the Internet at very convenient cost. That can be more than useful for distributed software development - read: cuts costs!

I've seen many travel sites poping up in the European Web market latelly, but haven't spent any time writing about them since they haven't introduced anything new (Austrian TripWolf for example, even dough I have a positive opinion about it). However, there is one site that went live recently, developed in UK, and ran from Bologna, Italy by Michael Phillips - JungleJam.TV.

JungleJam.TV specialises in making video guides of buildings and landmarks enriched with all the Web2.0 standards, such as geo-tagged Google maps, images, videos, audios, text, etc. The site does require a face lift, but being the first release, it is just fine - the desired functionality is there, the visual identity can come later since it requires extended investment. What I like the most about JungleJam.TV is that it focuses on cultural monuments such as art, curches, museums, and more, while not on clubs, restaurants and beaches (what most of the travel sites actually focus on). That makes it a unique web experience for cultural city hopping around Europe.

From the technical perspective, the site runs on Adobe's (originally Macromedia's) ColdFusion with support of unavoidable JavaScript and Ajax. Performance is more than satisfying.

What I'd like to see in the future from JungleJam.TV is the iPhone version of the site. It could become the most used city guide! Just imagine if you could avoid paying for audio guides in all the museums and galeries, or going through five different city guide books to find the information you need. Problem of "lost connection" inside buildings could be handled by "content pre ordering" that would upload desired guide to your iPhone...