Developers anxiously awaiting the Google+ API (application programming interface) will have to wait a little while longer, we’re told. Although Google is hard at work on building the tools which would enable developers to build third-party applications for the new social networking service from the search giant, the API’s launch is still “months” away.

The timeframe, amorphous and vague as it is, was revealed by a Google+ project manager to a Google+ developer, who has asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

And it’s certainly disappointing news for anxious Google+ enthusiasts and developers itching to launch or use apps that leverage the network’s unique capabilities, like Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles.

Last month, for example, we had high hopes that an API was on the horizon, when Sully Taylor, Creative Director for Teens in Tech Labs and Founder & CEO at Sully Creative, released a basic Google+ application for Mac users. He had posted on Google+ that he had “access to private APIs,” which led to a firestorm of speculation about the status of the official Google+ API launch.

Sully later removed the comment from his Google+ profile at the request of Google, saying that it was “misleading.” In addition, Google also told us that no developer has private API access.

And it looks like no developer will for some time yet.

In the meantime, there are several unofficial workarounds available for accessing parts of the Google+ service, including this unofficial Google Plus API on Github and this Java object for accessing a few basics from the network, like profile details, friend lists, and posts, for example. The problem, of course, with using these unofficial methods is that they’re often difficult to build, prone to breaking as things on Google+ change, buggy and incomplete.

That said, given that Google+ launched in late June, an API launch by year-end would be a solid 6 months after the social network’s debut – certainly a reasonable timeframe (even speedy, perhaps) for an API of such scope.

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Still think mobile gaming isn’t a big deal? GameStop disagrees. Though they may not be as in-depth or graphically stimulating as console or PC-based games, but mobile games are accessible to everyone. My grandma can’t play L.A. Noire, but she’s beat every level of Angry Birds. So it only makes sense that GameStop has decided to put a couple new devices on its shelves: the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

GameStop has made a push into the tablet and mobile gaming space as of late. It started an iOS device trade-in program (for select stores) that is expected to roll-out nationally sometime during this year, reports 9to5mac. The company also said in April it had plans to get into the tablet space, whether that be with a device already on the market or by building a GameStop-branded gaming slate. Turns out, nabbing the iOS trifecta was the best plan.

With the carriers set on a duopoly, there’s no better time to start opening up other retail locations for Apple products. We vote with our wallets, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the iPhone or the iPad.

GameStop recently received some bad press over taking promotional materials out of games and then selling them as if nothing had happened. Understandably, people weren’t too happy about this. But the Internet has a short memory and it seems that GameStop needs to cover all the bases in its physical stores to remain competitive.

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Apple will be opening a new store in International Finance Center Mall in Hong Kong this quarter. Ming Pao Daily, a local paper, noted that the store should open on September 24.

The store is the first in Hong Kong and should ameliorate some of the crossbow-related smuggling associated with the region.

Businessweek writes that this is the fifth store in China and the other shops have so far generated $8.8 billion in revenue, no small feat. The company has long depended on resellers in the area to support and sell Apple hardware and this store will create a more central location for Macheads to get their fix.

The store should be about 20,000 square feet when finished.

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China, your savior is on his way. Per a WSJ report China’s certification agency recently gave a nod of approval to the iPad 2 3G. The iPad 2 has been a hit in the China market since its May debut, but outside of Hong Kong, only the WiFi model has been available. This approval paves the way for a China Unicom 3G model and enough coin for Apple to make Scrooge McDuck jealous.

Apple is slowly warming to the massive China market. The iPhone launched in the country a few years after its US release and a recent report indicated China Mobile and Apple are in talks to bring the iPhone 4 to its massive 600 million subscriber base. A China Mobile iPhone, or even iPad, would require a different mobile radio as the government-owned telecom operates on a homegrown wireless standard rather than the GSM/CDMA type used elsewhere.

No word on when China Unicom subs will be able to pick up a 3G iPad 2. The word comes just this morning from the WSJ and alongside the news that search giant Baidu and Dell have teamed up for a series of phones and tablets. China, it seems, is the next great oil field, just sitting there, slightly undercover, for gadget makers to tap for untold riches.

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Photographers, take note. A startup called JPEGmini is introducing a new photo compression technology for JPEG photos which reduces the overall file size (by up to 5 times), while preserving the photo’s quality and resolution.

The technology is designed specifically with the Web in mind, as more photographers, both amateur and professional, use online storage for photo archival purposes. With JPEGmini, photos can be uploaded, emailed and shared faster, while saving on storage and bandwidth costs.

Sounds great, of course. But the question is: does it work?

According to the company, the JPEGmini technology works by analyzing the input image using a unique quality detector which imitates the human visual system. Based on this analysis, it applies the maximum amount of compression which will not cause visible artifacts. The second part of the system is a JPEG encoder, which adapts the JPEG encoding process to the original photos, creating the most compact representation of the photos that is possible under the JPEG standard.

So, to be clear: JPEGmini is not a new file format, it uses the JPEG file format.

And in some cases, it can achieve a recompression ratio of up to 5 times, or an 80% reduction.

The key phrase here is “some cases.” JPEGmini doesn’t always surpass the capabilities of current technology, it seems. Says San Francisco-based professional photographer Jim Goldstein of JMG Galleries, in tests, JPEGmini achieves greater file size savings on larger Web images than Photoshop did. But with smaller images, Photoshop’s “Save for Web” setting (at 60% quality) did better. (More details on the tests here).

This seems to confirm what JPEGmini itself says – the higher the original JPEG photo resolution, the greater the file size reduction it can offer. (Only photos 8 MP and higher can achieve the 80% reduction rate using this technology, for example).

As a professional photographer, Goldstein was also careful to read through the Terms of Service for JPEGmini, which says that if you choose to upload a photo to the site, they can use it to promote their service. This is overly broad, but could be ameliorated simply by adding the line “upon request.”

In addition, it’s worth noting that JPEGmini preserves all the photo’s metadata.

Still, for professionals, the best savings and balance of image quality would come from saving a JPEG for a RAW file, and ideally, doing compressions in batches, not one-by-one as with JPEGmini’s service, explains Goldstein.

So perhaps professional photographers don’t have need of JPEGmini, after all. But other consumers might…especially those who don’t own a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, for example. The technology could be integrated into consumer electronics, like phones and digital cameras, too, as a way to save storage space and bandwidth when saving or sharing photos.

JPEGmini was developed by ICVT, an Israeli startup company based in Tel-Aviv. Its founder, Sharon Carmel, previously co-founded Emblaze, which developed the Internet’s first vector-based graphics player, preceding Macromedia Flash, and BeInSync, a P2P sync and backup company acquired by Phoenix Technologies in 2008. JPEGmini is self-funded.

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ThinkGeek’s iCade certainly has a sense of visual flair going for it, but discerning iPad gamers who could do without the retro throwback may soon have another choice. The existence of the Atari Arcade Duo-Powered Joystick was recently confirmed in the Atari Greatest Hits app’s changelog, hopefully meaning it will make its official debut soon.

Details are still pretty scarce, but Technabob reports that the Atari Arcade joystick sports a largely plastic body with an open design that allows for easy removal of the iPad. At this point it seems likely that, like the iCade, the joystick will (for better or worse) connect to the iPad via Bluetooth to transmit control input.

The joystick, in essence, acts as a Bluetooth keyboard with certain keys bound to different on-screen actions — maybe not an ideal solution as far as control is concerned, but much easier than going through Apple’s MFi accessory certification program.

It’s far too early for judgment calls, but considering the design and button layout, the Atari Arcade joystick may soon see life as a budget peripheral. Discovery Bay Games has yet to reveal the joystick’s price point or ship date, but don’t expect it to break the bank whenever it does start making the retail rounds.

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Hot on the heels of Baidu’s new mobile OS launch, reports are circulating that the Chinese search giant is partnering with Dell to build tablets and mobile phones.

China is a goldmine in terms of potential consumers. With over 900 million mobile subscribers, China is becoming one of the fastest growing tablet markets, as well. As the Google of the Eastern world, Baidu should have no problem marketing hardware under its brand name. And Dell’s business in China seems to have picked up as well, though the name carries far less weight with consumers than Baidu’s.

According to an analyst who spoke with Reuters, Dell may be “grasping at straws” in an attempt to breathe life into its tablet business. The Dell Streak 5 tablet has been discontinued in the States, but a Dell spokesperson said that the company “has a partnership with Baidu [and] the Streak 5 tablet, so the partnership will be in that space.” It’s not clear whether that means we should expect a Chinese version of the Dell Streak 5 or just another similar minitab.

Either way, Dell and Baidu will face some strong competition in China. Lenovo has seen great success in the Chinese market over the past few years, and Apple has an almost terrifyingly strong presence there. We’ve heard of girls giving up their virginity for an iPhone 4 and a Chinese teenager selling his kidney for an iPad 2.

With brand dedication like that it may be more difficult than expected to rip people away from their beloved Apple. And the companies won’t have much time to do so, either. Though neither company gave a solid timeline, a spokesperson said we may see the partnership’s first offering in as early as November.

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After announcing the rollout of its movie and TV show streaming service to Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean, Netflix is announcing a significant content deal for this international expansion. Film and TV show studio Miramax is bringing its library of hundreds of film titles to Netflix’s Latin American customers via a multi-year agreement. Netflix has been streaming movies from Miramax in the U.S. since May 2011. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.This is actually Miramax’s first international licensing deal.

Films that will be available from the Miramax library to Netflix Latin America subscribers will include Chicago, Chocolat, The English Patient, From Dusk Till Dawn, Gone Baby Gone, Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Swingers, There Will Be Blood, Amityville Horror, Scream and Spy Kids. The movies can be watched on multiple platforms, including TV, tablet, PC and mobile phones.

The international deal with Miramax is a vote of a confidence after the company suffered a blow when Starz announced last week it would not be renewing a content contract with Netflix next year.

But Netflix has been able to secure some high-profile deals for its fledgling international service, including content agreements with CBS and Telemundo. As we’ve written in the past, striking international content deals is going to be key to the company’s growth beyond the U.S., where it already has major deals in place.

Miramax has actually been looking for ways to digital distribution even beyond Netflix. The studio recently launched a Facebook app that offers movie rentals in exchange for Facebook credits. The studio also landed a recent deal with Hulu.

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Japanese stationery maker Kokuyo has come up with an easy way to digitize and permanently store what you jot down on paper notepads: all you need is a an iPhone (or soon Android handset), a special app called CamiApp (available for free and in English on the App Store), and notepads made by Kokuyo.

The company says that taking pictures of the notes is enough: CamiApp adjusts the quality through using AR markers or a black frame before it lets you tag, edit, email or store your notes on Evernote or Dropbox (as JPEGs).

Kokuyo is currently preparing an Android version and thinks about exporting their CamiApp-optimized notepads.

This video (in English, shot by Diginfonews in Tokyo) provides more insight:

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Apple is seemingly sucking all the air out of the PC market. Major players are weary of launching an entirely new product type even one with such draw as ultrabooks. Digitimes is reporting that the first round of ultrabook orders are fairly light as companies smartly predict that consumers are still enamored with Apple products.

The first round of ultrabook (read: MacBook Air clones) were announced by Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba last week at Germany’s IFA trade conference. These svelte notebooks are built around an entirely new platform developed by Intel, which if pushed onto consumer’s properly, could usher in a new golden age for the Windows PC. But OEMs are reportedly timid and expected to artificially limit the amount of Ultrabooks for the rest of the year.

The Digitimes report indicates that these companies expect to ship less than 50,000 units citing Apple’s current dominance over the space. This will of course limit the companys’ losses if the consumer market doesn’t latch onto the slightly more expensive but incredibly thin notebooks. You see, this isn’t the first time Intel has sold computer makers on the idea of thin notebooks. Intel’s previous ultraportable platform, the CULV, also produced ultra-thin notebooks, but also ultra-high prices. This time around though, prices are more in line with consumer expectations with many even first-gen models available for less than $1000 USD.

In a way the Ultrabook platform is the Windows PC last hope. They offer a brand new form factor with similar performance over the current bulky models. They offer all the portability of a MacBook Air but with Windows. If the Ultrabook movement fails, only Steve Jobs himself will be able to build the PC Windows notebook space back to what it was before Apple hit the big time.

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Do you remember the 3D HD display specifically designed for gaming that Sony Computer Entertainment unveiled back in June at E3? It took them a while, but now big S in Japan announced [JP] the final release date for the device in its home market: November 2. For the equivalent of US$582, buyers will get the 24-inch monitor itself, an HDMI cable, and a set of 3D glasses.

A game isn’t included in the Japanese package – a separate set of (active shutter) 3D glasses will cost $78,. PSP games are displayed in full screen, while a system called SimulView allows 2 users to play 3D games on one display but to see full-screen images each.

The display produces images in 1,920×1,080 resolution, comes with LED backlight, offers 5,000:1 contrast ratio, 3W×2ch+5W speakers and two HDMI interfaces.

We’ll let you know when Sony announces the 3D display for markets outside Japan.

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With the Xoom now officially six months old, a major price drop is likely in the works. Various European tech blogs are reporting sales and/or price drops regarding the first Honeycomb tab. Register Hardware points to Dixons, a popular UK retailer, who is now selling the 32GB Xoom for £329 rather than £500. Blogeee goes as far to say that Motorola will officially cut the price down to £399. As they note, this would place the 32GB model at the same price point as competitor’s 16GB model. Smart, but a tad late.

Retailers in the US, namely Amazon and Best Buy, recently cut the Xoom’s price as well but not as drastic. Amazon lists the 32GB version for $449 while Best Buy has it at $499, which while decent prices, are nothing to skip the first day of school over. Motorola surely knows how to make the Xoom a blockbuster: do an HP and cut it to $99.

The European price cut is right on cue. The Xoom is now six months old and with the holiday season approaching, retailers, distributors and even manufacturers are likely looking to clear some room in their respective warehouses. The Xoom, while receiving a fair amount of pre-launch hype, hit the ground running but then fizzled out as consumers and reviewers found that Honeycomb was half-baked. Here we are a dozen Honeycomb tabs later and the product type is all but generic now, with all Honeycomb tabs looking the same save several trivial differences.

Motorola has yet to make the price drops official but they will. They have to. The Xoom’s arbitrary amount of fame was over months ago. Now it’s time to hit the bargain bin and make way for the next generation — which will follow the same timeline to price cuts.

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Cloud Platform startup Morphlabs has raised $5 million in Series C funding. The round was led by strategic partners BBT of Japan and a private, Indonesia-based investor group. This brings the startup’s total funding to $12 million.

Morph Labs offers a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that virtualizes the application environment through the use of open source technologies. The startup offers a server appliance, the mCloud Controller, which helps clients with provisioning, billing and virtual machine management.

The company plans to use the funding to expand to the south east asia region, and will be opening data centers in Indonesia and the Philippines. Morph Labs currently has 10 data center clients.

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Seedcamp Week, the annual week-long session run by Europe’s oldest tech startup accelerator, has kicked off in London, and it looks like the biggest yet. In particular, this week sees changes to the way Seedcamp has operated in the past which indicates a clear uptick in how the European tech scene is fairing.

When Seedcamp first started in September 2007 – the same Week TechCrunch Europe launched – it funded six out of 20 companies that pitched.

This week 16 of the 20 Seedcamp companies presenting this week have already received the initial Seedcamp investment. Seedcamp normally invest €50,000 (for 5-10%) as standard but sometimes they invest less for less of a stake, (though these exact terms are not usually disclosed).

The contrast with last year is that 13 companies got the investment and there was no follow-on funding.

Another change is that last year there was a competition by all the teams for investment. This year the four remaining that haven’t had the initial investment (out of the 20) will be interviewed at the end of the week.

And, at the end of the week, the companies considered by Seedcamp and mentors to be the top three of all 20 will receive a cash prize, which they can use as a part of a ‘follow-on’ round. The winner gets €25,000, second place gets €15,000, third place wins €10,000.

Lastly, there are no “new” teams at Seedcamp this week. All of them have appeared at Mini Seedcamp days already at events around Europe. In years gone by there were always a few wild-cards – this year, this is the “creme de la creme”, if you will.

Now, after four years you would think we would be starting to see some exits among former Seedcamp companies and a new eco-system develop around it. But only Mobclix was acquired last year for a reputed $50m – a pretty good “European” exit.

Meanwhile many former Seedcamp companies are still going, though exits are, as I point out above, thin on the ground.

However, we shouldn’t worry. As a Seedcamp investor told me yesterday “We might see an exit soon form a former Seedcamp companies, but we’re relaxed about that. We’d rather see these companies build up to the point where they can knock it out of the park.” I think that’s the right take on this. It’s unusual for companies to see liquidity events in this short time period, and it’s better not to focus on an exit anyway.

In addition, the trend amongst the companies chose this year are a mix of evolution on existing business models and disruption of traditional industries.

So thus, GrabCad is targeting the traditional sector of engineering. Farmeron is about targeting the agriculture sector. Vox.io is about the evolution of the third generation of telephony – you get the picture.

But I’ll be exploring the startups selected in a separate post shortly.

(Above, Seedcamp’s Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Saul Klein, Reshma Sohoni)

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This is a post I never thought I’d have to write. Unfortunately, I do. And the worst part about it is that it should be Michael Arrington writing this post, not me.

But he can’t.

TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows. And if he is, he will be replaced by — well, again, no one knows. No one knows much of anything. Certainly no one at TechCrunch. This site is about to change forever and we’re in the total fucking dark. I’ve been able to piece together little bits of information here and there, and it’s not looking good. Hence, this post.

By now, if you read TechCrunch, you likely know about the nuclear situation that has exploded over the past several days. Mike unveiled an investing entity known as the “CrunchFund” with full AOL support — so much support, mind you, that they’re the largest backers of the fund — only to have his legs kicked out from under him due to what can only be described as nonsensical political infighting and really poor communication. To make matters worse, some Journalists (with a big “J” and even bigger senses of entitlement) have proceeded to pile on, despite having no real knowledge — at all — of the way TechCrunch actually works. And now here we are.

Earlier this evening, I wrote a post on my personal blog attempting to explain to those outside our company how TechCrunch actually works from an editorial perspective. The notion that Mike, or anyone else, investing in a company would dictate some sort of giant conflicted agenda is laughable. Literally. If Mike tried to get me to write some unreasonable post about a company he had invested in, I would laugh at him. But he would never do that. Ask Loic Le Meur. Ask Kevin Rose. Ask Shervin Pishevar. Ask Airbnb. Ask countless others. He didn’t get to where he is by being an idiot. He has gotten to where he is by being honest with his readers. Even if everyone doesn’t always agree with him, he has been honest. And he’s brought forth information that no one else has, even when it’s probably not in his best interest to do so.

AOL may be on the verge of changing all of that.

Again, none of us know for sure — including Mike — but I have a really bad feeling. In my post earlier, I wrote, “These things tend to flare up every few months, and they ultimately end up meaning nothing.” That was premature. These situations have arisen in the past — multiple times — and they always have led nowhere. But now I think this time actually may be different. Arianna Huffington is already on record as saying she’s looking for a new Editor-in-Chief to replace Mike (who technically was co-Editor along with Erick — even though the title has never meant much). And there are conflicting reports as to whether or not Mike actually works for AOL — let alone TechCrunch — anymore.

As someone who has helped build TechCrunch into what it has become, this entire situation is insulting. I can only imagine how Mike feels.

The point of my earlier post was twofold: 1) to dispel the assertions being made by The New York Times and others about our brand of reporting. 2) To provide everyone with some insight as to how TechCrunch actually works. If we have anything close to a trade secret, that’s it. The magic at TechCrunch happens because the writers have very little oversight. Instead, the emphasis is placed on hiring the right writers in the first place and putting them through a trial-by-fire to see who emerges. Those that have, my peers, are the best at what they do. And that’s why TechCrunch has soared.

Mike Arrington has enabled all of this. He brought in Heather, he brought in Erick, he brought in the rest of us. He built TechCrunch out of thin air. He’s made enemies along the way. He rubs some people the wrong way. But there is no question that the entire space is better because of what he’s built. And there’s also no question that what he’s built needs him.

Could TechCrunch survive without Mike Arrington? Probably. We’re doing so many pageviews now, and the machine is so profitable, that you can plug in other parts and it will run. But without him, it will not be the same. You might not think you’ll miss what he brings, but you will. Quite often, you never even see what he brings. But it permeates the entire site.

If AOL tries to bring in their own Editor-in-Chief to run TechCrunch, it will be a colossal fucking mistake. The old adage: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — if AOL throws out Mike and tries to install their own despot, it will be breaking it just so they can fix it. And they might not like the end result. It may run, but it will never purr with the precision at which we purr right now.

I can’t believe this is even a possibility. But it is. And so I’m writing this at the eleventh hour to let you, our readers, know before you find out via a press release. I don’t know, maybe I’m hopeful that the collective voice of millions of loyal readers can change a company’s mind. Maybe that’s naive. But it’s worth a shot. We owe that to Mike.

AOL seems to think that by cutting off the biggest conflicts — ones so big that they’d obviously have to be disclosed — that they’ll be a bastion of integrity in the editorial landscape. What a bunch of horse shit. The conflicts we need to worry about are the ones not disclosed. They’re far more prevalent and they do actually deceive readers because they’re far more subtle. But that’s an impossible task. AOL can’t fix that — no one can. So instead they’ll slaughter the lamb everyone can see to gain puffery amongst the old media peers who also live to die another day.

It has almost been exactly one year since AOL acquired us. At the time, they promised not to interfere with the way we do things. For 11+ months, they’ve kept their word, and things have run beautifully from our end. Our business is one of the few sterling ornaments on their mantel. Now they may break their promise to us. And if that promise is broken, it will break TechCrunch.

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I spent the better part of last week hanging out with some fellow tech bloggers in Denmark – in Aarhus and Billund, to be more specific – and mingling with the people who organized and traveled to attend, speak or exhibit at the Next Aarhus ‘Beautiful Mistakes’ conference and exhibition.

The conference in itself was really fascinating, though not exactly TechCrunch post material even if people working at AT&T, Google and Katalabs were on the speaker list. Topics ranged from biotechnology, “green” productification, sustainability and the reinvention of architecture to social media marketing, context-aware computing and the future of advertising.

Terribly interesting stuff, but not quite the type of event I’ve grown used to attending. No startups pitching, no interviewing of or keynotes given by top-level executives from tech companies, no product launches. Awesome, in other words. They even featured a working wind turbine next to the stage, and brew their own arctic herbs-flavored beer for the event (meet Ale 404).

When I was picked up from the airport by someone who works at Innovation Lab, the organization that put on the show, I asked him what the most exciting tech company or startup in Denmark was in his opinion. He had to think hard and ultimately couldn’t give me an answer aside from Navision (which is really a U.S. company since it was taken over by Microsoft) and Bang & Olufsen.

Amazing, really. Also: get to work, Startupbootcamp Copenhagen!

As a self-confessed geek, the accompanying exhibition was a real treat, though: hackers on the loose, a multitude of nifty robots, Lego bricks, an augmented reality-enhanced Sega OutRun arcade car capable of driving (must-see video right here), ancient technology artifacts – the works.

Engadget’s managing editor, Darren Murph, posted two videos of some really cool robots if you’re into that. London-based design artist Vahakn Matossian also has a great photo set of the exhibition up on Facebook. These are some of the photos I shot:

And here’s a video featuring Flemming, a hacker from Open Space Aarhus, showing neat stuff:

Hackers, unite!

As I mentioned, Next Aarhus is organized by Innovation Lab, an international knowledge center for new technology. They have an übercool office space north of Aarhus – I just had to take some pics:

So what about the sharks you teased in the headline, you ask? Here you go:

Yes, there were batoids and other fishes too, but sharks sound cooler, right?

The video above was shot in Legoland Billund. Visiting that theme park was such an amazing experience, however, that I just had to do a separate post about it. Coming up.

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I spent the better part of last week hanging out with some fellow tech bloggers in Denmark – in Aarhus and Billund, to be more specific – and mingling with the people who organized and traveled to attend, speak or exhibit at the Next Aarhus ‘Beautiful Mistakes’ conference and exhibition.

The conference in itself was really fascinating, though not exactly TechCrunch post material even if people working at AT&T, Google and Katalabs were on the speaker list. Topics ranged from biotechnology, “green” productification, sustainability and the reinvention of architecture to social media marketing, context-aware computing and the future of advertising.

Terribly interesting stuff, but not quite the type of event I’ve grown used to attending. No startups pitching, no interviewing of or keynotes given by top-level executives from tech companies, no product launches. Awesome, in other words. They even featured a working wind turbine next to the stage, and brew their own arctic herbs-flavored beer for the event (meet Ale 404).

When I was picked up from the airport by someone who works at Innovation Lab, the organization that put on the show, I asked him what the most exciting tech company or startup in Denmark was in his opinion. He had to think hard and ultimately couldn’t give me an answer aside from Navision (which is really a U.S. company since it was taken over by Microsoft) and Bang & Olufsen.

Amazing, really. Also: get to work, Startupbootcamp Copenhagen!

As a self-confessed geek, the accompanying exhibition was a real treat, though: hackers on the loose, a multitude of nifty robots, Lego bricks, an augmented reality-enhanced Sega OutRun arcade car capable of driving (must-see video right here), ancient technology artifacts – the works.

Engadget’s managing editor, Darren Murph, posted two videos of some really cool robots if you’re into that. London-based design artist Vahakn Matossian also has a great photo set of the exhibition up on Facebook. These are some of the photos I shot:

And here’s a video featuring Flemming, a hacker from Open Space Aarhus, showing neat stuff:

Hackers, unite!

As I mentioned, Next Aarhus is organized by Innovation Lab, an international knowledge center for new technology. They have an übercool office space north of Aarhus – I just had to take some pics:

So what about the sharks you teased in the headline, you ask? Here you go:

Yes, there were batoids and other fishes too, but sharks sound cooler, right?

The video above was shot in Legoland Billund. Visiting that theme park was such an amazing experience, however, that I just had to do a separate post about it. Coming up.

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LONDON, Summer, 2011: When you can gather 1,500 startup people into a car park on a warm summer evening in London, you know something is going on. When you can tell 800 people at a joint startup party in Berlin that they will have to PAY if they LEAVE the party before 8am, you know something is going on.

And so it is in London and Berlin. Other European centres – Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona – are clearly generating their own startup clusters. But right now, it’s London and Berlin which are becoming the natural centres of gravity for the European Tech scene. When a London-based VC says you – as they said to me the other day “I am spending my days on planes between London and Berlin” – then you realise things really are happening. This is the Europan “NYC-SF red-eye” right now (without the red eye).

It’s obvious to see why. London is hugely international, Europe’s largest financial centre and a natural landing point for visitors from the Valley. It also has it’s own natural startup cluster in East London, or Silicon Roundabout (which we’ve been documenting in a series of films here).

Berlin, meanwhile, is cheap to live and work in, has a natural affinity for attracting talent from all over Europe (especially Central and East where there are rich engineering talent pools), and has an increasing international scene of technology founders. It’s also throwing off its shackles as a clone factory, something evidenced by the recent declaration of an “anti-copycat revolution“.

Thus, last Thursday night this week the annual Moo party – a fixture on the London scene – attracted 1,500 people into London, and it was only three weeks ago that SoundCloud and EyeEm attracted 800 people to theirs.

This September will see new events like the Advance Conference and Pirate Summit in Cologne, How To Web in Central Europe… Next week is Seedcamp Week in London, StartupWeek in Vienna, Dublin’s DWS / F.ounders in the Autumn, Le Web in Paris… the list goes on. Innovative, European startups who want to take on the world are flowering like they have never flowered before, and they have the platforms to showcase themselves.

If there was a Summer of Love in European startups, a 1968 Woodstock era if you will, then Summer 2011 was it.

Welcome to the revolution.

BERLIN, Summer, 2011

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LONDON, Summer, 2011: When you can gather 1,500 startup people into a car park on a warm summer evening in London, you know something is going on. When you can tell 800 people at a joint startup party in Berlin that they will have to PAY if they LEAVE the party before 8am, you know something is going on.

And so it is in London and Berlin. Other European centres – Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona – are clearly generating their own startup clusters. But right now, it’s London and Berlin which are becoming the natural centres of gravity for the European Tech scene. When a London-based VC says you – as they said to me the other day “I am spending my days on planes between London and Berlin” – then you realise things really are happening. This is the Europan “NYC-SF red-eye” right now (without the red eye).

It’s obvious to see why. London is hugely international, Europe’s largest financial centre and a natural landing point for visitors from the Valley. It also has it’s own natural startup cluster in East London, or Silicon Roundabout (which we’ve been documenting in a series of films here).

Berlin, meanwhile, is cheap to live and work in, has a natural affinity for attracting talent from all over Europe (especially Central and East where there are rich engineering talent pools), and has an increasing international scene of technology founders. It’s also throwing off its shackles as a clone factory, something evidenced by the recent declaration of an “anti-copycat revolution“.

Thus, last Thursday night this week the annual Moo party – a fixture on the London scene – attracted 1,500 people into London, and it was only three weeks ago that SoundCloud and EyeEm attracted 800 people to theirs.

This September will see new events like the Advance Conference and Pirate Summit in Cologne, How To Web in Central Europe… Next week is Seedcamp Week in London, StartupWeek in Vienna, Dublin’s DWS / F.ounders in the Autumn, Le Web in Paris… the list goes on. Innovative, European startups who want to take on the world are flowering like they have never flowered before, and they have the platforms to showcase themselves.

If there was a Summer of Love in European startups, a 1968 Woodstock era if you will, then Summer 2011 was it.

Welcome to the revolution.

BERLIN, Summer, 2011

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Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book he’s giving away free. He built and sold Reset, Inc in 1998 and Stockpickr.com in 2007, among others. You can follow him@jaltucher.

I’m a pretty good salesman, but I’m the worst negotiator. If I say, “buy my car for $10,000” and someone says “$8,000,” I’d just shrug my shoulders and say “ok”. In fact, that happened.

Some people could be good at both. But I think it’s very hard. By definition. When you’re a salesman you want the other guy to say “yes.” When you’re a negotiator you have to be willing to say “no”, regardless of what the other side says.

So although they aren’t total opposites, the goals are completely different. But big picture:

Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything.

Why? Because when someone says “yes” to you, you are in the door. Eventually then, you’ll get the girl in bed (or guy, whatever). If you negotiate right at the door, then you might have to walk away and try the next house. That takes time, energy, and still might not work out.

Some examples of my bad “negotiation” that have worked out for me.

A) I sold my first business for much less than other Internet businesses were going for at the same time. But it was 1998, the Internet was about to go bust, but first all the stocks went up.  Many businesses in the same category held out for more and ended up going bust. Even the guys who sold for a lot more, went broke when they didn’t sell their stock.

B) I gave 50% of my second company, Stockpickr, to thestreet.com for no money. Blog posts were written about how bad my deal was. But when someone owns 50% of your business, they care about what happens. They had to buy my company four months later rather than risk someone else owning 50% of it. For companies they only owned 10% of, they gave up on them. I was able to sell about four months before the market peaked. After that, it never would’ve happened. My one employee quit on me because he was so disgusted with the deal I did. [See, How I Sold Stockpickr, Osama Bin Laden, and the Art of Negotiation]

C) I sold my wife Claudia’s car for $1000 less than she wanted to. But now the car was gone. We didn’t have to worry about it. That was worth $1000 to me.

D) I got my old company to do websites for New Line Cinema for $1000 a movie. That was 1/200 what we got for doing “The Matrix” even though some of the sites were the same size. Why did I do that? The best designers wanted to be hired by us to work on those movies. Meanwhile, they stayed late on Saturday night to work on Con Edison sites that paid a lot better. I didn’t negotiate at all.

E) I gave away my last book for free and also sold it on the Kindle for $0.99 instead of a higher price. But this got my ideas out more and 20,000+ people have downloaded the book. See the above link for how to get the book for free.

F) I get offers every day to advertise on my blog. I say “no” to every one of them. Not my big picture.

The key is, only negotiate with people you really want to sell to. Else it boils down to money. Someone recently wrote to me that they wanted me to speak in Copenhagen. I didn’t want to go. So I said, “50,000 dollars.” I priced it so far out of a reasonable range that if they said, “yes”, I would’ve been happy to take it. I never heard back from them. That was fine for me. But if I really wanted to do it I would’ve done it for much less without even negotiating. Sometimes when you are selling to someone you don’t love and you price yourself way out of range, sometimes they say “yes”. That’s fine also. That’s the only thing I know about negotiation.

You don’t want to be stupid. Only sell something you love to someone you love. Always think “what is the bigger picture here?” In many cases in the bigger picture, the negotiation is not as important as the “sale”. Hence, the rise of models like “freemium”.

Ten Keys to selling:

1) Ask what’s the lifetime value of the customer? When I give away a book for free. It gets my name out there. That has lifelong value for me that goes way beyond the few dollars I could maybe charge.

2) Ask, what are the ancillary benefits of having this customer? When we did Miramax.com for $1000, we became the GUYS THAT DID MIRAMAX.COM! All of that helped get 20 other customers that were worth a lot more. I would’ve paid them money to do that site.

3) Learn the entire history of your client. You need to love your client. Love all of their products. Infuse yourself with knowledge of their product. I wanted to work at HBO because I loved all of their shows and I studied their history back to the 70s before I applied for a job there in the 90s.

4) Give extra features. Do the first project cheap. And whatever was in the spec, add at least two new cool features. This blows away the client. Don’t forget the client is a human, not a company. That human has a boss. And they want to look good in front of their boss. If you give them a way to get promoted, then they will love you and always hire you back.

5) Give away the kitchen sink. One of my biggest investors in my fund of hedge funds had just been ripped off in Ponzi scheme. They almost went out of business. I introduced them to reporters at every newspaper to help them get the word out about the Ponzi scheme. They were infinitely grateful and even put more money in my fund. Whenever the main guy was depressed about what had happened I would talk to him for an hour trying to cheer him up. I wasn’t just an investment for him but a PR person and therapist. Go the extra mile.

6) Recommend your competition. Think about it this way: what are two of the most popular sites on the Internet: Yahoo and Google. What do they do? They just link to their competition: other websites. If you become a reliable source then everyone comes back to you because your knowledge has value and they can only get that by having access to you. They get access by buying your product or services. [See, 10 Unusual Things I Didn't Know About Google, Plus my Worst VC Experience Ever]

7) Idea machine. There’s that phrase “always be closing”. The way that’s true is if you are always putting yourself in the shoes of your client and thinking of ways that can help them. When I sold stockpickr.com to thestreet.com the superficial reason was that they wanted the traffic, community, and ads my site generated. The real reason was that they needed help coming up with ideas for their company. I was always generating new ideas and talking to them about it. Often the real reason someone buys from you is not for your product but for you.

Show up. When I wanted to manage some of Victor Niederhoffer’s money I read all his favorite books. I wrote articles for him. At the drop of a dime I would show up for dinner wherever and whenever he asked me to. If he needed a study done that required some programming beyond what he or his staff was capable of doing, I would offer to do it and would do it fast. Nobody was paying me, but ultimately he put money with me (at ridiculously low fees but I did not negotiate), which I was able to leverage into raising money from others. Plus, I really liked him. I thought he was an amazing person.

9) Knowledge. When I was building a trading business I must’ve read over 200 books on trading and talked to another 200 traders. No style of trading was off limits. This helped me in not only building a trading business, but building a fund of hedge funds, and ultimately building stockpickr.com. I knew more about trading and the top investors out there than anyone else in the world, I felt. Creating value was almost an afterthought. When I was building websites I knew everything about programming for the web. There was nothing I couldn’t do. And the competition, usually run by businessmen and not programmers knew that about me. And knew that I would always come in cheaper than them.

10) Love it. You can only make money doing what you love. If you work a nine to five job that you hate then you’re on a leash and you’ll only make enough to get by and you won’t behappy. If you love something, you’ll get the knowledge, you’ll get the contacts, you’ll build the site with the features nobody else has, you’ll scare the competition, you’ll wow the customers.

I didn’t enjoy writing finance articles. I’d write a finance article for some random finance site and then repost this on jamesaltucher.com. I had zero traffic.

Then I decided to write articles I enjoyed. To get back to my true roots where I loved writing and reading. I also lwanted to really explore all of my failures, my miseries, my pain. In public. I love being honest and intimate with people. I love building community. I love emailing with readers. That was about 10 months ago I decided to make the shift where I was just going to open the kimono at jamesaltucher.com and say everything I wanted to say, and at the same time indulge in my love of writing, art, creativity, and reading. 2.5mm+ “customers” later I’m enjoying more than ever doing what I love.

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