Have you ever wanted to have soundz.fm as a standalone desktop application? Although there’s no way we could have had time to code the application natively, you can achieve a desktop-like experience of soundz.fm. You can do it with use of the app called Fluid, which allows you to create a desktop app from any website. Read more on how to do this:

1. Download and install Fluid
2. Grab the soundz.fm application, unarchive it and run it

That’s it! soundz.fm now runs as a standalone app. Some of you might be satisfied, but those that want to get rid of this iphone in the bottom and the feedback tab, follow these instructions:

1. Download the userscript
2. In the menu, navigate to Userscripts () -> Open Userscripts Folder
3. Paste the soundz.fm.user.js into the this folder
4. In the menu, navigate to Userscripts -> Reload All Userscripts
5. Navigate to Userscripts -> toggle soundz.fm to make it highlighted
6. Use Cmd-R to reload the window

The iphone and the feedback tab should be hidden now. Tadaaa, you now have a fully functional soundz.fm desktop app. How awesome is that?

As you might know, soundz.fm team has been selected and took part at the Mini Seedcamp Prague a year ago. And since our friends over at touchqode were lucky to be selected for the upcoming Mini Seedcamp in Berlin, I wanted to help them with some tips and tricks how to get the most of this wonderful event. I decided this information might be valuable to other startups as well, so here are a few key points we’ve learned, mostly from the mistakes:)

Don’t be lazy, do your homework

The Seedcamp team provides everyone with a guide and directory of every mentor and startup present at the event a few days before it starts. This guide has to become your bible for at least one day. Go through every mentor, use google, check their expertise. There are many questions you’ll want to ask during the mentoring sessions, so make sure in advance that you’re asking the right people.

The pitch is more important than the product

I think this was one of the biggest mistakes we made. We spent the last days before Mini Seedcamp working round the clock to launch our product, just to have it ready for the event. The truth is, we didn’t have the opportunity to demo it to anyone there, not to mention that most of the mentors usually don’t have time to thoroughly examine every single detail of every startup that’s selected.

Prepare your pitch. Make it those 5 minutes tops ( trust me, you WILL be stopped after the time runs out, no matter how great the pitch is). Rehearse it MILLION times. In front of your grandma. Make sure she understands what the hell are you doing, how are you going to make money and what do you need to make it happen. You’re not done until your testing audience smiles, laughs or applauds when you finish. Be a purple cow, swear if you need to, just make them never forget it. I still remember a few great pitches from last year.

Squeeze the most of every session

Besides the pitch, prepare and memorize two short sentences that describe your product and make them simple and clear. This is important in the beginning of the mentoring session, to remind your mentors what you’re about. Some of them arrive just after the pitches, some of them have bad short memory (especially if your pitch sucks). We didn’t do this and left the first mentors very uncertain of what the hell are we actually doing. We got better with every session and eventually at the last one it was great, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prepare upfront.

The sessions are not as long as you would like them to be, so make good use of the time you have. We’ve been divided into groups of two startups for every session, and if this is the case, make arrangements with the other guys on how to divide the time you have and stick to it. Gently remind your startup mates if they are out of time and suggest to continue the conversation after the sessions. If the time is up for you, do the same.

Network, network, network

One of the most important points – it’s a networking event. You’re there to get to know people, so get to know them! Make sure your pocket is fat with business cards (and don’t forget your own:). If you’re after an investment, go talk to investors. If you’re facing a problem some other startup has solved, talk to them. And there’s usually some afterparty being thrown after the event, so if you’re not rushing home, attend. The best discussions come usually over a pint of beer. We regret we didn’t go till today.

Time doesn’t stop at Mini Seedcamp

When you get back home, make sure you get in touch with the valuable connections you made. Add everyone on LinkedIn, write follow-up emails. Continue your conversations and nurture those relationships, you never know when they might come in handy.

Mini Seedcamp is a wonderful and unique event in Europe so it’d be a pity not to make it a great opportunity to jumpstart your business. And don’t forget to thank Reshma and the rest of the great seedcamp team.

@mhrescak / @soundz_fm

It’s been quite a lot of time since the last blog post and quite a lot of you have been wondering what’s up with soundz.fm, we’ve even received some “is soundz.fm dead?” messages. But today, we’re hoping to prove all of these things wrong.

We’ve managed to do what we’ve only dreamed of a year ago. You can now easily listen to your favourite soundz.fm radio stations on your phone, either an iPhone or a Samsung phone running on the bada platform. For that, we owe a huge THANK YOU for our friends over at Backbone for big help with the Samsung bada platform development.

Click here to get the mobile app now

I’d also like to clarify a few things about the supposedly slow development. Despite the fact that up until recently, soundz.fm had a rather hobby nature, we’ve managed to roll out a fully functional API ( should be public starting with the second version later this year), coped with a great amount of background tasks, learned iOS development and developed a fully functional app ready for the app store. With a small team, these are not easy tasks, and of course, the web frontend has been lagging behind other elements of soundz.fm substantially.

But we believe that reaching this milestone in our development helps us cross another chasm and brings us way closer to the awesomeness we have up our sleeves for you, our users and lovers of radio.

There’s nothing more to add than “stay with us”, and I can promise now, if everything goes well, you’re not going to regret it.

Good news, everyone! We have partnered with our friends from Radionomy to make Soundz.fm even more exciting. From today, you’ll be able to access the best user created radios from Radionomy and add them to the list of your favourites.

Radionomy is an online service ( techcrunch article ) that lets their passionate users create and run their own private radio stations and broadcast them to the world. Anyone can then listen to these stations, discover new music and be amazed. All of that for free. If this isn’t the new school style of radio then we don’t know what is. Soundz.fm database has been enriched with the top radios created with Radionomy and you, our users, now have a bigger selection of interesting and innovative content as a result.

We hope you’ll enjoy this addition and make use of a greater choice of new unconventional radios. Don’t forget to check them and Radionomy out!

We were planning on taking some pictures but we were rubbish as usually and took one and only photo. This is the unique piece with an immense artistic value:

On the road (to metalab.at)

The lesson to be learned here: Entrepreneurs, please don’t go all crazy buying unnecessary bandwidth and hardware and take an example from us. Spend your money wisely.

Download soundz.fm wallpapers here

After two-month private beta period in which we’ve received tons of valuable feedback from more than 300 registered beta users, it’s time we go public! Starting now, you can freely sign up for soundz.fm account.

What’s new? Well, quite a lot:) We built even more beautiful and usable interface, added a few features and removed lots of bugs. From now on, nothing interrupts your playback, browser can remember your password and you can browse radios and delete loved songs (in case you don’t love them anymore, you know:).

A big Thank You goes to those of you who helped with feedback, Sorry goes to a few which we haven’t had time to respond, don’t worry, your voice was heard. Your feedback and bug reports are always appreciated, either via our feedback center or directly via email, but most importantly, keep suggesting radios you want to listen to. And by the way, keep your fingers crossed for our Mini Seedcamp Prague presentation:)

Go check it out!