Doodle and MyDoodle will remain free while the Doodle Premium will cost $28/year. Basically Doodle Premium allows the user to customize the look and feel of the site. It’s a way to personalize the events that Doodle users create and send to their participants. The price seems a bit on the high side as $9 or $14 feels about right but I am sure the Doodle team researched the right price. Pricing is always the hardest part of any business, whether web-based or brick-and-mortar.

The company also notes that Premium Doodle is ad-free and customers can also request personal information from their event participants, such as postal address, e-mail address, and phone number.

As you can see in the graphic below, you can setup the Sobees web application with as many panels as you would like. The panels can be setup as Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts (soon) and real-time searches. For example, I could have one panel for my @centernetworks Twitter account, one for my @cloudcontacts Twitter account, a search for “web blogs that don’t link”, a search for “great web startups”, etc.

Sobees is based in Switzerland and competes with London-based Tweetdeck (which moments ago announced a new round of funding in the amount of 2 million pounds) and valley darling Seesmic. Seesmic has been talking about a browser-based version for a while now but it hasn’t launched as of yet.

The big issue with Sobees in the past was that you needed a windows machine and some runtimes to get the service to work. With this new web-based version, you need only Silverlight which works on both Windows and Mac in any browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc.).

The tool also offers an anti-spam function which allows you to enter a variety of terms that will be blocked in your timeline and/or search results.

My only real suggestion for the Sobees team is to consolidate their product names – get rid of bDule and just offer Sobees Web, Sobees Lite and Sobees Full. I think it’s a bit confusing that bDule = sobees Web.

Update: Seesmic Web client is now live as well – read a very in-depth review by Frederic Lardinois at Readwriteweb.

PetSite

Each pet gets a profile page (like MySpace) where the pet can “talk”. The pet categories include dogs, cats, birds, horses, fish, rabbits, rodents (??), reptiles and ferrets.

This week’s featured pet is “Pepe” the cat – displayed to the right. Here’s how Pepe describes himself, “Hey there. I just wanted to introduce me quickly :). my name is Pepe and i live in Zurich, Switzerland in a nice apartment together with my brother Pepper. We are both 2 years old and love to sleep – play – eat – sleep every day (in this order). I will post some news from time to time here.” Pepe has a bunch of friends which include a dog, and a horse.

The pet profiles page also includes what the pets first day was like, what the pet enjoys doing, and things the pet likes/doesn’t like. Pepe notes he likes, “I  love to play with small balls, fake mice, my brother and everything else that i can catch.”.

Petsite also has polls and voting for the pet of the week. The site appears to be currently supported via advertising.

The companies note in the release that they will build a "unique and sustainable" cloud storage system. Wuala’s nine employees will join LaCie. The Wuala FAQ notes that they will be expanding the team in the near future.

Interestingly I just purchased a LaCie external drive a month ago and it came with a free year of Carbonite online backup. I wonder if today’s announcement will put the Wuala application in the LaCie package going forward. 

Check out my interview with Dominik from last year.

This morning Wuala is announcing the launch of a new interface for their Web client along with an API which will allow developers to tap into the Wuala platform. The API can be used to create or extend existing applications and mobile services. Wuala can be used either via web browser or via a desktop client for mac, pc or linux. I like how clean the new Web interface is (an example screenshot is below). Looks like it could be a good fit for sharing a batch of photos similar to Flickr.

Wuala self-reports 30 million files have been stored and shared on the service since their beta launch in August. Since it seems Wuala offers private storage and sharing, it could be considered a competitor to NY-based Drop.io.

Check out our full interview with Dominik Grolimund to learn more about Wuala, their technology and business model.

It’s interesting to watch the event planning category move to a crowdsourced model where polls are used to find a time and date that meets the needs of the group. The Doodle Facebook application allows you to poll your friends around an event topic. Facebook friends will receive a message inside of Facebook and Doodle will send emails to your friends who don’t have Facebook accounts.

Here’s an example of the poll page:

Check out our coverage of other event-planning services including MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, Center’d, Coordinatr and GoLark. Also check out our coverage of technology in Switzerland.

The monthly fee for the Zattoo HiQ service is 5CHF ($4.60) per month. Zattoo has a partnership with Swisscom and Swisscom VDSL subscribers get the HiQ channels for free. The channels included in the HiQ plan are: ARD, Canale 5, Eurosport, France 2, France 3, M6, Pro7, Rai Uno, RTL, Sat1, SF 1, SF 2, SF info, TF1, TSI1, TSI2, TSR1, TRS2, VOX and ZDF.

Moreganize

The site is easy-to-use and if the survey is used for an event, schedule invites can be automatically sent to the attendees. The service is available in German and English although I would suggest they make sure all of the content is available in English. I see a good bit of words and phrases in German even on the English version.

They also need to look at making it easier to create a survey. There’s no link to create on the homepage and while the text says "no registration required" the only link to get started is for "free registration".

Update: Our Switzerland connection Corsin Camichel tells me that the biggest competition for Moreganize comes from switzerland itself: doodle.

Here’s a Moreganize sample where John Sample attempts to get feedback on which type of movie his guests would like to watch:

Check out Mark Gibbs’ review of Moreganize at NetworkWorld. And check out our coverage of other event-planning services including MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, Center’d, Coordinatr and GoLark.

When I interviewed Wuala founder and CEO Dominik Grolimund, I asked him how he defines the Wuala service. He replied, "Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This enables its users to trade parts of their local storage for online storage and it allows us to provide a better service for free."

The big news today out of the Wuala camp is that today marks their public opening. Previously the service was in a closed alpha for just under a year. The company is self-funded. The Wuala team is based in Switzerland and has worked on the product for three years.

I asked Dominik about the Wuala business plan as many online storage companies have tried a variety of models. Dominik noted, "At the moment, we’re experimenting with ads in the public (World) area. Since our costs are lower, this might work. However, there are also other possible business models such as photo finishing, buying additional storage (you can trade if you want, if you don’t, you could buy some additional online storage for a really low price), or also other forms of sponsoring that we’re working on."

Check out other Wuala reviews on Download Squad and Profy.

babyZbook

I created a babyZbook and the process was easy overall. You can add information about the baby’s birth, events, photo albums, measurements and graphs. The photo feature only offers an upload option – it would be good if they could pull in photos from online sources like Flickr or SmugMug.

The design of the actual baby book is pretty nice and has tabs for the different content options (see example below). The only major change would be to look at the ability to customize the background and allow for comments on the appropriate content. I want my family to interact with my baby’s book not just look at the content. What about allowing my family to signup for email updates? And videos?

On the admin side where you enter the content, the interface feels very thrown together and really needs more work for people to take the tool seriously. All measurements within the service are in metric – they might want to offer the option to switch it if they are looking to enter the U.S. market.

There’s certainly a business model in this type of site – from the simple ad-based model to premium upgrades to printed services, there are many options available. Other services in this area include Kidmondo and Lil’Grams.

Here’s babyZbook’s 20-second pitch from the Techcrunch meetup in Zurich last week:

One of the highlights of the evening was the 20-second pitches each startup had the opportunity to give. We have compiled together a video with all the pitches. If you have 14 minutes and want to see a variety of Swiss startups, check it out below. I’ve also included some photos as well – over 150 people attended. Please share your thoughts on any of the startups represented in the video.

Editor’s note: Corsin Camichel covers technology and European startups on his blog, Geekness. Also, we’ve provided reviews of two of the startups from the event, Poken and Mixin.

Poken

When you signup for Poken, they send you a keychain fob which contains your social networking information. When you meet someone at a conference, event, mixer, etc and they also have a Poken fob, you tap the fobs together and instantly you are connected on the social networks where there is a match.

Since most people have only one social network they are attached to, is Poken really necessary? Apparently the Poken fob costs about $3 and the team is working on securing advertisers to "own" the Poken fob. For techies the idea seems more interesting and feasible. Also, enough people you meet and in your circle would need a Poken to make the system work. The first person you try to poke (?) and they have no fob, it’s done.

It seems like for this type of application to work, it has to connect to the devices we carry already. Poken has an API and perhaps they should be working to integrate their technology (including the fob) into mobile devices? Maybe it could replace the infared port on many mobiles and actually make it more useful. Overall I like the concept and see it as moving the business card conversation forward.

Paul Stamatiou has a good look at physical social networking. Poken is currently angel-funded and is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Here’s their quick pitch filmed by Corsin Camichel at the TechCrunch Zurich event last night:

Mixin

Here’s an example Mixin activity page. It’s basically like a messageboard thread where you start the thread with your event. Your friends can then note if they plan to attend, leave comments and embed photos and videos. Events can be sent to Mixin by mobile sms, IM and email as well. Then you can post the event to Facebook and/or Twitter. There’s also an API so developers can build on top of what Mixin offers.

There’s color-coding for event types so you know whether to pull out your finest shoes or flip-flops. When you setup your friends list in Mixin, you can decide if they person is just an online friend, or if they are a "real" friend by placing a star next to their name. Friend updates can be sent to your email or mobile.

Notifications can be setup daily to remind you of upcoming events. It would be great if you could include an address for the event or a conference URL. There’s a link to Google Maps but without a specific address it won’t work correctly. A connection into Google Calendar and the other online calendar applications would also round out the service.

You can also embed your timeline into a blog, Website or email. Here’s what my embedded Mixin timeline looks like:

Mixin supports OpenID and the overall interface is pretty slick. The "how to use" guide is very interesting as it actually layers on top of the service so you can interact with the service while looking at the help.

This is one of the most interesting services I’ve seen as of late. It aggregates and leverages content from other sources but can also survive alone. I could see Mixin doing very well if it can gain some level of traction.

Check out our interview and the Wuala product page for more technical details about the Wuala service.

Wuala will be opening up their service on August 14 but they are opening up the closed alpha for a sneak preview beginning today through July 21.

Wuala will demo their service live at the big TechCrunch party in Switzerland this evening. We will (most likely) have a reporter at the event and will provide photos and videos once the event has concluded.

The current "seller expectation" on the auction is 25,000 Euros or $40,000 USD. If you are interested in the auction, it’s being held on Sedo.

The site features a very interesting geo-location map which shows bloggers by location. Click a blogger and see his or her latest posts.