Written on May 9, 2008 – 4:04 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Since the iPhone was announced Blackberry users suddenly felt less special. Weren’t THEY the ones that were always connected, always on and always in sync? Flashing a Blackberry Curve or Pearl just didn’t make an impression anymore. But there was just no way we could switch from our trusted Blackberrys and get used to that innovative onscreen keyboard that the iPhone made such headlines with. As a RIM executive said
“I could just never get the feel for it because, well, there is nothing to feel.”
Fortunately you can now get a preview of Research in Motions iPhone killer. Will it kill the iPhone? Definitely not. But it will get us Blackberry back some self esteem:
Written on May 9, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Viewzi is a new player in the search engine world. They launched in closed beta at the end of april and have distributed about 50,000 invites so far. Fighting Google just on strength is virtually impossible. So, as most self appointed ‘Google Killers’ Viewzi focuses on displaying their search results more intelligently. First they try to guess what kind of information you are looking for. Is is a term, an image, a person or maybe audio of video content. Then they get a bunch of results from other specialized search engines like Google but also Flickr and Amazon.
Once they have gotten these results they present them in a ‘View’ that is optimized for the kind of content you are looking for. You can easily switch between different ‘Views’ and websites and images are previewed and preloaded so you don’t have to go back and forth between sites trying to find out which result is the right one.
I was skeptical when I looked at their front page. It just looked too black, image rich and bloated. But I decided to check out their video and than made all the difference. The implementation of what they call ‘Views’ is very well done and the idea of browsing through filtered content in their result pages actually sounds cool.
Google, and most other websites, aim to make the search experience as efficient as possible. You search, get results and click away to a destination site somewhere off the Google domain. Viewzi attempts to make the Search experience more than that. If they manage to deliver you will stick around browsing content on their site similar to how you browse through music in iTunes. browsing through beautiful results could be an joyful experience instead of a waste of time.
UPDATE: I have asked for few invitations. If you want one leave a comment and I will send you
Written on May 8, 2008 – 8:32 pm
David Petherick, Next Web WebTipr United Kingdom
Pownce, the “Send stuff to your friends” application and web service, announced some new features late yesterday, and most of the world has woken up to these today.
The official blog announcement from Pownce is brief, and says little more than “Tonight we launched the new feature of sharing files to the public… In addition, we’re happy to announce that we’ve increased the base file size limit for all Powncers from 10MB to 100MB!”
So you can share files not just with your fans and friends, but with everyone - and you can upload 100Mb of files - room enough for a few videos and audio files, and Pro members have a tidy 250Mb of space. Nice. And I think Pownce have simplified the thrust of their offering by saying “we let you share stuff with your friends”. (more…)
Written on May 8, 2008 – 3:58 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
A brand new music service has just launched an open beta version: Guitarati. Yes, yet another new music service, but wait, this one has a totally different approach then existing music start-ups. Founder Sonal Pandey explained me in an email that the world of music discovery is dominated by tag clouds and rating systems, yet they don’t have anything to do with ‘feelings’ about music. According to Pandey, Chicago-based and self funded Guitarati has found an intuitive way of music discovery based on music-color co-relation. And it looks like this:
Click on the color that you feel it represents your mood and Guitarati offers you a list of songs. Within this screen, you can either choose a lighter or darker tone. When it gets too new-age for you, just pick a familiar genre.
The business model is more down to earth, as users can listen to a high quality full-length song stream for a cent, and these cents get deducted from the download price - which is determined by the artist - when they download the song. 75% of the earnings go to the musicians and their label.
So the barrier for uploading your own music is pretty low, though I’m not sure people can get used to this new way of picking music. What does a yellow song mean? And what’s the difference with pink? Moreover, I believe every culture has different associations with colors. When western people are in a love mood, they might go for red. But will Asians as well? I wonder how this will develop. One thing is for sure, it’s really interesting to see how the lists of songs for a color will change when more people from all over the world will rate the music.
The biggest challenge for the Guitarati team will be to prove its users they’re not just a gimmick, but a serious way of finding music. Maybe they could get a music star to write a testimonial?
Written on May 8, 2008 – 1:48 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
The days that a Hollywood blockbuster gets the headlines when they break box office records are over. Gaming is hot, and you can be pretty sure that gaming is here to stay. Last week Grand Theft Auto IV was released and over 6 million copies were sold in the first 6 days, coining in a nice 600 million dollars!
To give you an example, the box office sale of GTA IV exceeds sales of all movies in theaters right now. It exceeds the $407 million that Pirates of the Caribean generated in the first week. It exceeds the 255.000 sold copies of Madonna her new album, Hard Candy, in the first week (not only in numbers but also in price per item sold. A CD is $20 dollars and GTA IV $90).
“Grand Theft Auto IV’s first-week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date” Strauss Zelnick (producer of GTA IV) stated.
The conclusion: Games are the new blockbusters!
Written on May 8, 2008 – 11:00 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One thing I enjoy most about services like Twitter and Friendfeed are the interesting links people post. Whenever I’m in a desperate need of some inspiration, I head over to social bookmarking sites such as Stumbleupon, delicious and some Dutch version. Yet there are more services like this, all offering different ways to present or save interesting finds on the web. Though they’re not that well-known. Let’s change that. Here are sixupcoming tools to share and find interesting links. Start sharing!
Photo by F33
1. Iterasi, save your webpages (private beta)
So you’re now checking out a list of social bookmarking services, yet I can already tell you that not one looks as fancy as Iterasi. It’s a browser-based service that not just saves a link to the preferred page, but includes ALL the information - even links and images. After logging in to Iterasi, you can just scroll through those pages you wanted to save for later. One of the most important advantages is searching through the text. So searchability doesn’t just depend on your tagging skills anymore. For more info I gladly refer to Eric Eldon from Venturebeat , who has published a review.
www.iterasi.com
2. Fleck, annotate the web (beta)
Full disclosure: I’m sitting next to talented developer Lenniez (he’s a good photographer as well) whose actually responsible for this groundbreaking tool. Inspired by Kevin Kelly’s story We are the Web, three entrepreneurs in white suits have started this service that offers you the possibility to note specific places on any web page with a bookmarklet or fancy flash browser tool. Comes in very handy when you are reviewing a website or if you want to point out a spelling error, to name a few examples. I specifically use it to enrich my links on Twitter (example of the Twitter integration here).
www.fleck.com
3. Socialmedian, social news aggregator (private beta)
New kid on the block by Jobster founder Jason Goldberg that got some blog coverage last month. It’s a social news aggregator which allows you to clip interesting stories. Browse through various News Groups and share relevant links with other news group members. Perfect for folks who want tips from like-minded people. Read the review by Mashable’s charming Kristen Nicole to learn more about this service. Oh and by the way, according to our UK WebTipr David Petherick, it “might be a next big thing”.
www.socialmedian.com
4. i-Lighter, save parts of the Internet
Remember that yellow marker you used in high school and university? Well, I certainly can recall hours of highlighting important stuff in my textbooks. Now there is a digital equivalent to mark text and images you want to save or share. Just download the Windows or Apple desktop app and relive that yellow marker experience for your social bookmarking convenience. The traditional press - such as The New York Times - love this service, probably because the yellow highlighter is such a familiar tool. They’ve probably ignored the useful Twitter integration, as they didn’t use that in highschool.
www.i-lighter.com
5. Bemba
The two kind guys from Bemba aim for people who don’t why complicated services, they just want to get the job done. After these people have installed the Bemba plugin — there’s no bookmarklet — they can share anything entertaining they find on social networks with just two clicks. I interviewed the CEO Aaron Peters a couple of weeks ago and he told me that “Bemba provides the easiest way to share web content with friends, on any social network or (micro)blog. This way we make the web more fun.” So they’re basically competing with the Share option of Facebook. Read the rest of the interview for more info about this challenge for Bemba.
www.bemba.com
6. Instapaper
Instapaper helps you to get rid of the ‘2read’ tags in del.icio.us by offering a simple bookmarklet and even simpler website. Developer Marco Arment left every fancy function out and focused just on the basics: temporary storage for long articles. Therefore, the site is easy accessible - even with my crappy mobile phone and iPod Touch. After I wrote about Instapaper on April 1, I started using it a lot and browsed to the web page every Saturday for some serious reading.
www.instapaper.com
So that’s it for the new and upcoming sharing and saving tools. Now it’s up to you — which service will you use? Or did I forget your favorite one? Please share it in the comments, so we can create one helluva alternative social bookmarking list.
Written on May 7, 2008 – 7:41 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
When the iPod was becoming popular a few years ago and other manufacturers started to realize they were missing out on a huge opportunity there were frequent (daily!) reports of the next ‘iPod Killer’. Eager to find out what innovations were being made we checked them all out. Generally it didn’t take more than a few seconds to realize that the moniker ‘iPod killer’ was born more out of wishful thinking than true product innovation. The Zune, and countless other iPod rippoffs, came and went. But as we know now, nothing could kill or replace the iPod.
Then came the iPhone. And yes, again there are several companies announcing their own ‘iPhone killer’. Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, is secretly (but not TOO secretly) working on something they call their iPhone Killer. The Verizon Voyager is another example of a phone branded as the iPhone killer. But one look is enough to know it isn’t. And HTC was rumored to be working on their own ‘iPhone killer’.
Yesterday HTC unveiled their HTC Diamond. And I must admit: it looks pretty cool.
You might even say that the interface looks slightly cooler and more futuristic than what the iPhone currently offers. The interface is completely dynamic and fluid. Screens blend into each other with great effects. The weather screen doesn’t just display a static image of the sun or a few clouds but actual moving images of clouds or even a thunderstorm.
I’m not claiming that this will be an iPhone killer but I can image a lot of Windows users who don’t want to switch to Apple products being very happy with this gadget. Check it out yourself:
Written on May 7, 2008 – 6:46 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
It might take a while before we can welcome Pope Benedict to Facebook and Twitter but in July he will text message thousands of young Catholics on their mobile phones during World Youth Day in Sydney. The catholic church hopes that going digital will help them connect better with younger people.
The Pope will personally send daily short messages to the estimated 225,000 youngsters attending the event. Next to texting they will also erect digital prayer walls at event sites.
The church will set up a Catholic social networking Web site that will compete with Facebook. So much for adopting existing technologies.
The technology will be provided by Australian telecoms firm Telstra. They plan to connect 8,000 volunteers, 2,000 clergy, 3,000 media and an anticipated 225,000 pilgrims to more than 700 locations around Sydney.
The Catholic church is the biggest in Australia with about 5 million members. Lets hope they all sign-up for GodBook, Godtube and Praytter.
Amen.
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
