Scred forms partnership with Alt Party for ticket system
Last weekend we launched a new cheap and easy ticket sales system for the Alternative Party. For us this is our first pilot of several technologies that we are developing, and builds on our fundamental accounting architecture.
Tickets can be reserved online at the ticket site, and then purchased with PayPal, bank transfer and (soon) credit card. Tickets are then sent to the user’s email account, from where they can be printed. The difference with this system is that the tickets are machine verifiable, with our own software. Many event sites only have non-verifiable tickets.
We are considering opening up this particular feature to third parties, and probably will do so as, to be honest, it’s actually a bit neater than what’s currently out there. Our main goal has, however, been to provide a pilot for the technologies that we are busy working on, bringing Scred forwards into new territories. Indeed, it is not something we just thought up overnight but one more step towards what we ultimately have in mind, and which will be revealed when the time is right.
Users need not fear, however. Debt tracking and shared expenses is still at our core and there will be more announcements for these areas in the coming weeks. Oh, and we also plan to remain a service which really is useful (and perhaps a bit fun), instead of being yet another place telling others what you do 
Arctic Startup also wrote about this.
As a side note we’re really excited about this 10th anniversary Alternative Party. More than ever before it will be combining competitions with highly talented people creating incredible visuals for their computers, but also art, science and even a few Finnish startups. The real cream for me personally is the appearance of the legendary industrial pioneer Front 242. It is one of the bands which has had a huge impact on me personally and one I have listened to for many years. In fact, we still regularly play their tracks at the Scred office. I fully recommend buying tickets right now!
No Finnish outrage at iPhone packages?
I’ve been looking around the few Finnish blog posts and comments online about TeliaSonera’s iPhone packages in Finland and, considering the backlash some operators are getting, it’s been almost a surprise to have heard nothing but silent grumbling here.
Let’s look at the basics. The iPhone is a nice device, no doubt about it. Sure, Apple is still messing things up by not offering an unlocked version, but it does something that phones have done poorly for quite some time: Internet connectivity. There is over-the-air syncing, a good browser, rich email, an in-built store, video features, maps and widgets. The kind of device to finally get people using the Internet on the go. Yet that usefulness has been all but destroyed by extremely poor packages under the TeliaSonera wing.
To put it bluntly, none of the packages offer the one thing you really want with an iPhone: unlimited data. It’s what the iPhone is about. Even worse, the small and medium package offer ridiculously low amounts: 100MB and 250MB respectively. Only the large package offers a fair, if not fantastic, 1000MB. However that’s 90 euros a month. OK, you do get the iPhone for free then, but you’re still paying for 1000 SMSes and 1000 minutes of talk time. I want neither.
TeliaSonera do offer a ‘My Sonera’ option, where there is a minimal monthly fee and you can build up the package as you want. Downside: you have to pay the full 400-500 euro price for the iPhone, which isn’t even unlocked for you. Additionally I still can’t figure out if I can get unlimited data for the iPhone with that and, if so, what exactly it costs. The My Sonera package builder doesn’t offer the iPhone and doesn’t offer an obvious way to add a data package, unless I can use their USB dongle package for that.
Whatever happened to the lovely “buy phone, pick an operator” model that worked so well here before?
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