The beta testing of the CrowdSpirit platform will start in the coming days. So all the people, who will join the CrowdSpirit community here before wednesday 1st of august (included), will receive an invitation for participating to this beta testing. After it will be too late. Do not hesitate to spread this news

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit FounderÂ

the sheep market site is really incredible, here is the concept : “a collection of 10,000 sheep created by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical turk. Each Worker was paid $0.02 US do draw a sheep facing left”

So we have in front of us, a crowdsourcing initiative for drawing sheep !. Here is some figures:

• Average time spent drawing each sheep: 105 seconds
• Average wage: $0.69 / hour
• Rejected sheep : 662
• Collection Rate: About 11 sheep/hour
• Unique IP adresses: 7599

That’s really incredible

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

Springwise is reporting a new english initiative of the crowdsourcing world : “VIPbandmanager is recruiting 50,000 band managers to propel a band to stardom. For a GBP 20 lifetime fee, which is collected after 50,000 people have signed up, managers get to vote on everything from picking the band’s name to choosing a drummer. After the band has been formed, members will continue to make all the behind-the-scenes decisions and plans that artist managers and record labels make: choosing producers, helping pick tracks, deciding on the band’s image and promotion, organizing a UK tour and, of course, reaching the top of the charts. The latter will be aided by the viral marketing clout of 50,000 fervent fans.“

This initiative is a mix of 2 existing start-up : Sellaband — groups of fans funding bands — and MyFootballClub, the online community that’s gathering 50,000 football fans to buy an English football team.

Best Regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

yes, you have well understood. Look @ the video below between the 24 and 36 seconds and you will see a base jump session in the sky over the CrowdSpirit headquarter. It’s not a joke.

[dailymotion 6pSiAOrsxZxn34Eiw]

The below video is also a nice example of what kind of base jump can be performed on the Grenoble Area

[dailymotion 4pk0bZ8e03oKM53Wf]

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

“OpenMoko is a GNU / Linux based open software development platform. Developers have full access to OpenMoko source and they can tailor their implementations to underlying hardware platforms.” What a brilliant idea !! FIC, which is the manufacturer of that mobile, is a very well known ODM on the consumer electronic world, so few doubt about the quality.
Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit founder

Here is some news from the CrowdSpirit project, as we’re more alive than ever. CrowdSpirit is now part of the French incubator GRAIN .

Located in the Grenoble area, Grain particularly encourages the creation of new companies with high growth potential, helping them integrate into the regional economic system. Grain has a notable role in the transfer of technology from public research to new companies: these companies integrate the technology in such a way as to convert it into a significant competitive advantage for themselves.

Each project selected by Grain must:

• integrate a proven technology coming from a public research laboratory
• propose innovative products or services
• prove its economic viability
• be ambitious with respect to its growth potential

You can find the CrowdSpirit’s Description here and all the others companies here.
Here are some figures :

• 106 projects have been conceived : 9 in 1999, 11 in 2000, 10 in 2001, 15 in 2002, 14 in 2003, 14 in 2004 and 20 in 2005, 9 in 2006 and 18 have been stopped.
• 54 start up creations : 4 in 2000, 6 in 2001, 9 in 2002, 14 in 2003, 6 in 2004, 11 in 2005 and 13 in 2006

I will be back in the coming weeks with some news about CrowdSpirit.

Best regards,

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

Like Zero Assignment, CNN is also proposing its crowdsourcing initiative…so become a “I-Reporter” and send your story, share your thoughts for one of the proposed stories. With the same concept, Zero Assignment already managed to conduct 80 interviews focused on the crowdsourcing world.

Best Regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

Reuters has just published a very interesting article which describes the production costs of the iPhone. ISuppli, a market research company, “calculates that each 8-gigabyte iPhone, which retails for $599, costs 265.83 to build, including hardware and manufacturing“..You have well understood, Apple will earn more than $300 per product !!!. In fact, that’s not 100% true because this cost doesn’t include Marketing, research and logistics costs…but it will remain anyway a lot of $ at the end ;-).

Knowing that “ISuppli analyst Tina Teng estimates 4.5 million iPhones will be shipped this year, rising to more than 30 million by 2011“, it means that the apple Gross Margin will be around $1.3 billion only for this year and $9 billion for 2011…even if it’s theory, that’s not too bad

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

Here is an interesting list in progress of non-software Free / Libre / Open Source goods from guy Snir Blog. Let’s have a open source beer

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit founder