Written on January 7, 2009 – 1:54 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Have you ever retyped too many lines of text from a PDF doc because you couldn’t select it? Instead of a simple copy/ past action, you spend too much time on mindless work. CoverPDFtoWord.net is a nifty web application that makes sure you’ll never have to do this again. I made effort of writing an extensive manual for you, so using the tool mustn’t be a problem.
Step 1: Upload
Step 2: Download
I hope you like that post!
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Written on January 7, 2009 – 12:39 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Dagan Cohen presenting the list
My co-editor Zee reported about it last night, yet co-editors Boris, Patrick and I actually went there: Upload Cinema. A monthly gig in Amsterdam where organizers Barbara de Wijn and Dagan Cohen take web videos to the big screen. It’s sponsored by Amsterdam advertising agency Draftfcb and invitation only, however you can apply for membership here.
On Monday, Upload Cinema presented their fine selection of last year’s best viral videos. Cohen explained that they left out the Idols/ X-Factor stuff, as that’s sooo 2006. One of the most sexiest virals was also excluded by the strict judges, since they already showed that one during a previous edition.
We were all surprised by the original and sometimes artistic entries. So give yourself a well deserved break and watch the ones you haven’t seen.
Written on January 6, 2009 – 9:53 pm Zee M Kane, Internet Marketer, Design Connoisseur & Web App Devotee
You’ve got to love the Dutch, never running out of ideas and seemingly always a step ahead when it comes to innovation. This time they’ve turned their hands to a worlds first, YouTube at the Cinema, cleverly titled Upload Cinema.
Upload Cinema IS a wonderful idea. A members only film club that takes the best web films and displays them on the big screen for weekly get-togethers. Shown every Monday on a full-sized screen at the De Uitkijk theater in Amsterdam, the idea is to offer a feature length stream of internet shorts based on a particular theme.
According to Barbara de Wijn and Dagan Cohen, Upload Cinema’s founders:
Upload Cinema wants to take this exciting new way of making and sharing film out of the domestic realm, away from the internet and the tiny computer screen and into a space that’s designed for a collective experience: the cinema.
Sponsored by Amsterdam advertising agency Draftfcb, Upload Cinema is by invitation only, however you can apply for membership here.
Also, if you fancy setting up an Upload Cinema in your town/city, see details at the bottom of the page here.
Hopefully, the comments at the event are a bit more tasteful than the ones you’ll find at the bottom of a YouTube video page!
Written on January 6, 2009 – 6:29 pm Zee M Kane, Internet Marketer, Design Connoisseur & Web App Devotee
Earlier today we drew your attention to the release of Picasa for the Mac, well now Apple has made the next move and it hasn’t waited around, they’ve released iLife 09 with a variety of spanking new features.
The three most unique being:
Faces. An intriguing addition to the application allowing you to organise your photo collection by the people in the photos! Although not perfect, it’s far better than even I could have expected on viewing the demo.
Places. A way to instantly view your photos based on where they were taken. Thanks to built-in GPS and ironically Google maps, iPhoto translates the latitude and longitude into recognisable places.
Facebook Integration. iPhoto integrates with Facebook allowing you to tag the people in your photos with your friends names from Facebook. Definitely something i’m looking forward to incorporating.
Other new features worth mentioning include;
i) iPhoto has brand new slideshow themes bringing life to your photos and the slideshows can then be saved onto your iPhone or touch!
ii) Smart folders to organise your photos as you wish.
I have to say, I am highly impressed with this new release. For a split second there, I had abandoned the idea of using iPhoto and focused on a future with Picasa… Where do your photos belong?
Written on January 6, 2009 – 3:14 pm Zee M Kane, Internet Marketer, Design Connoisseur & Web App Devotee
Yesterday, Google announced the beta release of Picasa for the Mac, something which Mac users have been nagging Google for since it’s inception. With ‘most of the core features of Picasa on Windows’ Google proe
Picasa for Mac will have “most of the core features of Picasa on Windows” according to Google, “…we’ll be working on more refinements to the Mac interface and feature set as time goes on,”.
Impressions
For a first release i’m pretty impressed. Drag and drop functionality, decent integration with iPhoto, retouching brush, slideshow movie maker, autocropping and an auto red-eye removal is not a bad first line up. In addition, there’s the auto-sharing to Picasa web albums and tagging/organisation options which needless to say, work very well.
If you haven’t had a play yet, I highly recommend downloading the app here: http://picasa.google.com/mac. But most importantly come back and share you’re thoughts with us, enough to make you switch from Flickr, Smugmug or Phanfare?
Written on January 6, 2009 – 2:59 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
If you’re not a professional designer, it might be hard to come up with the right font for the right message. Stuart Robinson wants to make your life easier by offering you a new to explore the popular typefaces on your computer. It’s called Flipping Typical and it’s actually really handy. Just type in the test text and make your pick out of the results:
He has created some hidden elements and measured them before and after changing their font-family to figure out which fonts are on your computer. It works with on Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, IE7+ (OS/X a fair bit nicer than Windows).
By the way, Zee wrote about another interesting font tool last week. WhatTheFont detects fonts from images for you.
Is ‘Inter-net’ a French word? Where does TCP-IP come from? What was Arpanets role in the History of the Internet? It is all explained in this beautifully animated small documentary. We played it during lunch at the office today.
Written on January 6, 2009 – 1:36 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One of our favorite sources for discovering new services is the Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB). It has an impressive track record, as the blog - founded and painstakingly maintained by Saurier Duval - reviewed the 6000th beta last October.
MoMB’s Duval is the perfect example of somebody who has put his heart in something and creates something really useful and beautiful over the years.
The betas blogger has the tradition of publishing a short list of the year. Although he skipped it in 2007, he did rank the betas of 2005, 2006, and now 2008. Here’s the top three, but make sure you browse to MoMB to check out the runner ups. They’re also rather interesting and different than the ones you see on the major tech blogs.
1. Goosh - The Unofficial Google Shell
This google-interface behaves similar to a unix-shell. You type commands and the results are shown on this page.
// Goosh.org
2. 280 Slides - Presentations made easy
Create beautiful presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world.
// 280slides.com
3. Google Insights for Search - See what the world is searching for
With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.
// Google.com/insights/search
Written on January 6, 2009 – 12:03 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last night, editor in chief of Lifehacker - sixth blog of the world - Gina Trapani announced that she will pass the blog torch to editor Adam Pash:
After a wild and woolly four years at the helm, I’m stepping down from the site lead position to work on Some New Stuff on a day-to-day basis in 2009.
An ultra short bio
Trapani a a Sun-certified Java programmer and builds Firefox extensions and web sites. She has written two books about the Lifehacker philosophy and authored articles for Popular Science, Wired, Women’s Health, PC World and Macworld.
The Wall Street Journal Online wrote a piece about her and some of the world’s largest magazines couldn’t resist the temptation of mentioning her.
You just gotta love her GTD tips
The last couple of months, her Getting Things Done tips really improved the way I work blog. Therefore, I might as well share my two favorites - as they can be projected on other professions too. She has mentioned them in an interview with Michael A Banks for his book Blogging Heroes:
When you get stuck writing a post, step away from it for a while and work on something else.
If a feature doesn’t come along easily, it’s probably not the right topic for you to cover.
Another favorite is the interview she had with the king of eliminating work, Mr. Tim Ferriss.
Trapani told Ferriss that she rejects the super-structured, old school of time management thought. “As a “web worker,” by nature I embrace serendipity and tangents, and like to keep myself open to working on unexpected things that excite me, even if they’re not in the plan”, Trapani said. Read the rest of a summary I made on The Next Web.
Will she share her secrets for blogging?
Many people have wondered how Trapani is able to pump out so many posts as she does. Will she share those secrets a few months after she stepped down? Let’s hope so. It’s gonna turn the blogosphere into a GTD battlefield. Interesting…
Written on January 5, 2009 – 8:09 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When Jobs spread the word about his weight-loss this afternoon, Next Web editors Zee and Boris immediately started typing an article. Since they’re not sharing an office (Zee lives in London, Boris in Amsterdam) and both were utterly excited by the words from Mr. Apple himself, they didn’t see each other’s post. Thus sharp readers might have seen two posts about Jobs’ announcement on The Next Web (We deleted Boris’ post. At first he was devastated, but he’s feeling better now).
Nah, it’s just Arrington force-feeding you some CrunchGear and MobileCrunch news. See the graphic Boris made to check out how TechCrunch’s 1.7 million RSS readers also get a load of John Biggs and the likes. Some of these articles also appear on the recently redesigned frontpage of TechCrunch.
This raises an interesting question: is it OK to show your readers posts from other blogs you own? Some readers are obviously not amused and speak of violating trust and all that. Others just ask the same question like me. I believe you can of course share news from your blog network, but doing without any notice or graphic hints is less stylish - if not confusing.
After all, you haven’t asked for Crunchgear posts, have you? Maybe you read Gizmodo for the latest gadget news because you like the tone of voice better. Who knows? Arrington doesn’t, that’s for sure. So there’s no motivation for him (except promotion) to shove it under your face.
Written on January 7, 2009 – 1:54 pm
Written on January 6, 2009 – 9:53 pm
You’ve got to love the Dutch, never running out of ideas and seemingly always a step ahead when it comes to innovation. This time they’ve turned their hands to a worlds first, YouTube at the Cinema, cleverly titled 
Written on January 6, 2009 – 2:21 pm
Last night, editor in chief of 
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