Jambo

Very cool that Lance (an individual person) is in the top 10 (and he beat “nature”).

Here is a snapshot of the top 10 things that Jambo users are currently reading. An interesting mix of books. If you haven’t filled out your “Essentials” profile yet, there’s no time like the present – I’d love to bump into a fellow Freakonomist.

Charles and I had the distinct honor of opening for Rudy Giuliani at Washington University a couple of weeks ago. Everyone got to experience Jambo and play with some tech before we handed the stage over to a great man. Another great trip to St. Louis! Here’s a pic from the event:

Jambo is fostering some serious face-to-face networking at the Fuel Cell seminar. Here’s a pic of Charles and I manning mission control at the conference.

If you are like me, you’ve probably filled out a dozen profiles for all kinds of social networking, social bookmarking, web 2.0, online community, and e-commerce sites. I have a wish list on Amazon, I sell things on ebay, I have linkedIn, myspace, friendster, and facebook profiles, del.ic.ious bookmarks, flickr pics, 43 things that I do, epinions on everything under the sun, and many more. What I need is a place to put all these links so my friends can find them all in one spot.

The problem is that each of these sites exist in their own little world – sepatarate logins, separate users. Separate islands scattered across the Internet. And because these sites are ad-based, they will do anything they can to keep you on *their* island. Jambo is about to change things, drastically.

We’re going to open things up. No more islands. So beginning today, with Jambo’s Online Profile group, you can link your entire online identity together, weaving all of the facebook’s, flickr’s, and friendster’s of the world into an uber-network. You don’t have to fill out Yet-Another-Profile anymore, just link to the ones you already have.

To fill it out, go to Jambo and then fill out the Online Profile group and paste the urls for your other profiles in the spaces provided. Jambo will then notify you when there is someone you want to meet nearby, wherever you happen to be. Our hope is that this new info will help create even more stimulating conversations and connections with those around you. New friendships and partnerships will be formed, old friends reconnected, and ideas and experiences will be shared. The world just got a lot smaller.

Jim and I first met on a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) course in East Africa in 1993. We became best friends spending three months climbing Mt. Kenya, trekking through the Masai Mara, and trying to avoid any chance encounters with a carnivore. Unfortunately, after the program, we lost touch (Jim lived in Argentina and the UK, I was in NYC) . However, ten years later I was in a meeting in Dallas with someone that had the same first and last name as Jim, a chance encounter I didn’t try to avoid this time (maybe because he wasn’t trying to eat me). It turned out it was Jim’s father and within an hour Jim and I were reminiscing about NOLS.

Reconnecting with an old friend is one of lifes greatest moments, I remember how alive I felt reliving those stories. Within no time, Jim and I became best friends again and about a year or two later, we started Jambo to help people discover others they want to meet nearby, whether its reconnecting with an old friend or meeting a new one.

Jim and I are excited announce that we have partnered with NOLS to launch a Jambo NOLS Alumni Group. Created by NOLS grads for NOLS grads!

NOLS means a lot to us because the experience made such a strong impact on our lives. We learned a lot about teamwork and leadership and have applied those lessons to Jambo. Now, I am really looking forward to meeting and reconnecting with other NOLS grads and prospective students that are nearby. Who knows who I will run into next week? If I’m lucky, I might even find someone to go hiking with too.

You’ve gotta love the global nature of the Internet.

Here’s a cool article that came out today talking about Jambo in airports. Airports are such interesting transition points, always ripe for chance encounters! A few blurbs from the article below:

“The real power of WiFi is the ability to discover and connect with other people in proximity that you might want to meet,” said Charles Ribaudo, co-founder of Jambo Networks Inc., a WiFi-services developer in Dallas. “Until recently, people have been using WiFi just to access the Internet.”

A network developed by Jambo already has been rolled out at New York City’s La Guardia Airport, in partnership with Concourse Communications. The network enables travelers to discover and connect with other travelers who share something in common and are in the airport at the same time.

“For instance, Jambo can discover others from the same industry or company, those that went to the same university or that share a common friend,” Ribaudo said.

The Higher Education Wireless Access Consortium – what could be a better fit for Jambo?

They did a pretty in-depth article on us in their latest newsletter. You can download the pdf here. Enjoy!

Jambo in so many ways, is about mass customization. (as well as massive customization!) Customization of information about the people around you. I was so pleased to check my email this morning and receive a kind email and post from a complete stranger in Ireleand who writes about mass customization at Made For One and loves what we’re doing.

Read the post here. Its reading stuff like this that get’s me out of bed in the morning! I’m putting his last two paragraphs below:

“In the opinion of this website, Jambo.net could become the online world’s biggest success story over the next 1-2 years. It is a system of personalizing opportunities for human contact. It is a way of transferring the advantages of online tools like discussion groups from the virtual to the real world. With these advantages will no doubt come new concerns about personal privacy and safety. However, if past experience is anything to go by, convenience and benefit will outweigh reservations. A few years ago, some people raised concerns about privacy in relation to website cookies. More recently, Google’s Gmail program was criticised for targetting advertisements to users based on the content of their emails. However, none of these things actually halted the widespread acceptance and use of the technologies in question.

Normally this website is cautious in its predictions about the future, but in the case of Jambo.net, it must be said: It’s gonna be huge.”