No more walls...

The concept of Kiboze is simple. Maintain all your relationships in the tools you use today and Kiboze just gives you yet another way to communicate with them through text messaging.

Just think of all the places we maintain lists of our contacts. Everywhere from mobile phone(s), to multiple email accounts, to multiple IM networks, to multiple social networks like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. Meanwhile these tools require us to re-connect to the same people over and over. These so-called "walled gardens" make building and managing your relationships hard and often unnecessary, work. I'm exhausted just writing about it.

Unlike other social networking services, Kiboze hopes to spare you that frustration by allowing you to connect with your existing contacts via text messaging on your terms using the many relationships you've already defined in your IM platform or platforms. The next thing is to find a way to pull those names and number from that old black book you used to have...er, on second thought, maybe we should just leave that old thing alone. (Giving Kim 4 stars? What were you thinking?) Meanwhile, keep on Kibozing!

And the winner is...

Saying we had a great time at the Kiboze BBQ Battle of the Bands on Wednesday is an understatement. There was great food and even better music from some of Boston's top rock bands like Three Day Threshold, Girls, Guns & Glory, Alpha Juliet, El Gringo, The Colt Thompson Project, Shades & Whispers, and the Hansen Sisters. Several prominent Boston publications were there to cover it live (The Improper Bostonian, The Noise, Northeast Performer) and it ended up being a sell-out crowd. You can see some great shots of the event thanks to Johnny Arguedas of Motion-Blur.

Of course only one band could walk away with the honor of being the winner of the 2006 Kiboze BBQ Battle of the Bands. In the end, after a tie-breaker from the judges, the winner was El Gringo!

The Kiboze team would like to thank again Kier Byrnes and Three Day Threshold for organizing such a fantastic event. Oh, by the way, Kiboze has now dropped the "wall" and is currently inviting anyone to get a sneak peek at our revolutionary mobile messaging platform.

Sign up now at www.kiboze.com.

Kiboze makes the FRONT PAGE!

Wow!! We mentioned earlier that Wednesday was a big day for Kiboze because we were going to give some people a "sneak peek" into what we've been up to. So we decided to sponsor a Battle of the Bands and BBQ that was happening here in Boston. It was just supposed to be a small event that might get a couple hundred people aware of the Kiboze name.

Boy were we wrong! The Kiboze Battle of the Bands event was picked up by Boston's #1 free newspaper, The Metro, with 250,000 daily readers. There it was, the Kiboze name slapped across the FRONT PAGE. Fantastic right!!! Absolutely. But one minor detail...the Metro spelled Kiboze wrong, doh! You can see a copy in .pdf here.

Oh well, it was quite a thrill anyway that our first little foray into PR would be such a big success.

Kiboze Battle of the Bands and BBQ

Hi all, Wednesday is definitely a big day for Kiboze. We decided to give some people a sneak peek at what we've been building for all these months and we wanted it to be memorable. So we decided to sponsor an event this Wednesday in Boston. On July 26th in Boston, a bunch of rock bands will be competing in a Battle of the Bands type format with a twist! Bands have to prove their just as good behind a grill as they are on stage because this is the Kiboze Battle of the Bands and BBQ. As part of sponsoring the event, I will also be one of the "celebrity judges" joining many other much more prestigious local music experts like:

• Leslie Kilgore, Improper Bostonian
• Carmelita WAAF, 107.3fm
• Joel Simches, Sonic Enhancement Specialists
• Alissa Greenberg: Northeast Performer
• Johnny Arguedas, Motion-blur.net

It's going to be a great time with good food and lots to drink so if you’re near Boston you should definitely drop by on Wednesday around 7:30 for the Kiboze Battle of the Bands at O'Briens Pub (Allston, MA). Oh yeah...and get a sneak peek at the new Kiboze mobile messaging platform where you can always stay connected!

…and a big thanks to Kier Byrnes and Three Day Threshold for making this event happen.

Textaholics Wanted...

It's true, I'm an addict. Last month I sent & received over 500 text messages. But of course unlike email, which is free, text messaging can get expensive. Not only that, how hard is it to send one text message to multiple people? If your phone even supports the feature, the user interface is clunky and oh-so painful. The end result is we send a different msg to each of our friends...or, more likely, some of our friends just get kept in the dark - the pain is just too much. (sorry Diskin)

Kiboze is a new way to send text messages. Save yourself money, save yourself time. Send one text message to Kiboze and we'll locate your friends no matter where they are - on the computer or on the road and Kiboze delivers the message for you. Imagine that - one text, to rule them all.

My personal logistics planner...

I'll admit it, my friends and I aren't very good at planning things. Better said, we really suck. We used to half-joke about hiring our own college intern to be our personal logistics planner (Kramerica anyone?). I mean when we finally got together, a good time was to had by all but the coordination was enough to drive a sane person mad. Who called who? Why are they going there? When are they arriving? All those questions just to have everything change 30 minutes later. Unlike the A-Team, our plans rarely came together.

If only I had a tool that helped me find my friends and kept us all informed as to who was doing what, where and when...hhmmm, that sounds like something we could use. Kiboze anybody?