Written on May 29, 2008 – 10:03 am Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
The value of an idea is often claimed to be worthless, those dismissing their value then claim execution is everything… On the contrary ideas are everything! They are mankind’s personal version of evolution and I’d say that was pretty important.
Execution is way down in the hierarchal list of elements that make a venture successful (IMO). If I was to make a quick list of crucial elements required for success, it would be something like this:
Idea
Luck
Technical understand / ability
Hard work
Investment capital
Marketing magic
But intellectual property theft is rife within innovative industries. If people actually knew the full extent of the problem they would be astonished. Naive and eccentric inventors who come up with a ‘really good’ idea (often their first is the best) are generally completely ignorant to the potential traps that await them which threaten to exploit their genus while giving absolutely nothing in return.
The law is totally inadequate in protecting independent innovators from plagiarism. There are many well known techniques employed by the unscrupulous to circumvent the law. In general the law only works successfully for corporations with clout (who do protect their own ideas) and of course who are well versed in using it to avoid comeback when they ‘borrow’ others genius.
Good ideas just by their nature are viral, therefore it is somewhat natural that others will also try to emulate them. But when someone else taps them without recompense, clearly that is wrong, but all too often it is reality.
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Written on May 29, 2008 – 12:09 am Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
Last week I attended two events in Amsterdam specifically aimed at women. What I took from those events as a message is interesting for men and women. At Diversity, a network event for professional women, female Internet hero Nancy McKinstry held a very clear and interesting lecture about her Wolters Kluwer, which generates 50% of its turnover of 3.4 billion from online products.
She concluded that because of macro trends affecting the information industry, all Internet and media companies need to deal with diversity. In 2025 Internet users will be diversified, mainly consisting of female information users and aging information users. And they use the information in a different way, other than all the white, geeky, male, young Silicon Valley whizkids may think! So try to get inside the brains of these women and senior citizens, try to understand the information gathering and buying habits of these groups.
A solution to the issue is to support this notion of diversity and to let those target groups jump on the band wagon of the Internet companies by letting them become part of the team. A company like Apple understands this trend; it may be the reason why it has appointed Andrea Young of Avon, the beauty power house to its board.
Another company which may have seen the start of a light in this issue is Microsoft. After my comments about the Dev Days and their lack of female speakers, I was invited to a small Women in Technology booth that was set up this year for the first time to try to meet the 2% women that visit this event. Female Internet hero Astrid Hackenberg, founder and CEO of Class-A and Jacqueline van der Holst of Avanade were invited to welcome other, younger developers, let’s assume the female CTO’s of the future. Here too, the notion of data being used differently by a diversified group led to solution of a diversified team.
But are enough internet companies taking this diversity trend into account in setting up their team?
Written on May 28, 2008 – 4:41 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Some media companies are still holding on to their old-values, desperately trying to make money like they used to. Take Copiepresse for example, this Belgian French-language newspaper company wants Google News to pay them 49 million Euros. Why? Because Google News drives traffic to their sites? Because Google News introduces kids to this strange phenomenon called newspapers? No.., the way Copiepresse sees it, Google News is stealing away ad revenue by indexing the articles published by Copiepresse’s newspapers.
Sad but true, Copiepresse has already won a case like this against Google in 2006. And now they’re after the money.
Apart from the fact that Copiepresse can prevent the indexing by creating a robot.txt file, their attitude is simply embarrassing. Instead of profiting from all the beautiful opportunities the new web offers, Copiepresse just focuses on destruction.
Not only symbolizes this complaints of many media experts like Dan Lyons - aka Fake Steve Jobs-, it also ruins the reputation of traditional media in general. There’s a lot of talent and potential in that industry which I and probably many others would like to welcome in this beautiful new world, yet their executives are way too busy looking backwards. I’m sorry guys, those good old one-to-many days are almost over.
Written on May 28, 2008 – 2:21 pm Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
I don’t often get excited enough about a new application to actually use it, let alone write about it, but given this is a European focused startup amplifier, there could be no better home for an article about this application.
From an ideas point of view, it is very interesting. Using the bombardment technique abused by marketeers to indoctrinate you, Learnit are instead using indoctrination for a productive purpose, teaching you a new language.
Teachers know something, they say you have to repeat the process you are trying to learn 50 times before it sinks in. Learnit does this by repeating and repeating the ten words that it allocates you to learn that day.
As an analytical mindset, I find learning French very hard, I don’t do well with teach-yourself CD’s, schools seem to be inefficient and a drag on time. There must be a better way to learn a language.
The beauty of Learnit is the elegance. It tells you what the curriculum for the day is and then silently just hangs around in the background waiting for that moment that your attention wanders and you’re ready for another dose. It’s like learning in your time when you want rather than having an agenda that is set, such as traditional methods - miss this class and you miss an episode.
A great example of elegant design
From a technical point of view and as an app developer myself, I’m also impressed. This is a fine example of merging and mashing up data and tools provided by others to create something unique and, most importantly, elegant.
So if you’re struggling away learning a new language, try Learnit. It just might stick on my own radar for longer than most of the ‘five-minute wonder’ apps you see these days.
Written on May 28, 2008 – 1:07 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Swedish start-up Squace has introduced a new way of browsing the internet on your mobile. They’ve developed a service that allows users to browse without typing. Instead of a list of headlines, Squace shows a grid of little squares.
Each square is linked to a Web service such as a newsfeed, web site, game or widget. When you hover over one of these squares, a pop-up revealing the connected content and share feature appears. With a click, users open a new page with the desired content. According to the founder, Aage Reerslev, it’s a “game-changer”.
He might be right. Mobile browsing isn’t easy for not so tech-savvy people and Squace has been putting quite some effort in developing a new way of intuitive browsing. The company was founded in 2006 and privately funded by more than 30 private investors. While developing the service, it was thoroughly tested. In a study by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, participants were asked to solve 10 information-searching problems. With Squace, they did it with up to 88 percent fewer clicks in nine out of ten problems, and up to 78 percent faster in eight out of ten problems, compared with a leading carrier’s mobile Internet portal and software.
Although the statistics are impressive, I’m not totally feeling this new way of browsing yet. Especially when it comes to news, I prefer to see a list of headlines. It’s quicker for me to scroll to list like this than to hover over a dozen squares. Yet the sharing function does gets me excited. With a few clicks, my friends receive the content I want to show them. Also, I can easily bookmark interesting pages. But of all of this is only worth it if my friends join. How can I lure them into the world of Squace? Maybe they would come and check it out if I could put a widget with my shared Squace items on my blog. Solutions like these will help Squace to become viral. There’s your new top priority, Squace team.
Written on May 28, 2008 – 10:31 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
For me, the digital revolution that has been raging on for quite some years makes perfect sense. I don’t look back at another era of media usage, but I can imagine others do. All those weird Web 2.0 services that fulfill needs people couldn’t think of having ten years ago can make you nostalgic. Right?
I think BBC editor Darren Waters agrees with me. In his dot.life column of May 25, he looks back at those good ol’ water cooler moments. Colleagues used to chit chat about last night’s television show, as they had all watched the same one. But all the new technologies like video-on-demand, DVD boxes, torrents, and YouTube killed that precious daily ritual. Everybody is watching something different.
Yet Waters has now found a new way to discuss the highlights and low points of modern television: Twitter! The microblogging service honors the water cooler as the perfect metaphor. When Waters watched the Eurovision Song Contest a few days ago, he didn’t just turn the tube on. He also browsed to Tweetscan and Summize (Not Summarize, Mr. Waters) to see what others were saying. It’s like putting the TV next to the water cooler. Moreover, people posted links to background stories, which makes watching television and Twitter at the same time “informed viewing”, and that, my dear readers, is “exciting”.
Interesting conclusion by Waters. But it wasn’t the only thing about his article that struck me. Waters is twittering with people not because they’re acquaintances, no, because they’re watching the very same show. Is Twitter moving towards some sort of revamped and improved chat box?
According to Technorati there are more than 120 million blogs, up from 100,000 in 2003. Starting a blog is easy but maintaining it is harder. Only 7 million are actively updated at least every 3 months.
“Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.”
As you know this blog is updated every day and 7 days a week since we officially launched on January 7, 2008 and it seems that we are doing a good job because today we entered the ‘top 5000′ of the most authoritative blogs in the world.
We still have a long way to go (our rank is Rank: 4,564 so there are still 4463 in front of us) until we make it to the top 100 blogs. But we can dream, right?
Written on May 27, 2008 – 1:20 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In January 2005, three young Dutch guys started a new torrent site as an alternative to SuprNova, the former popular torrent service that couldn’t cope with the legal pressure. Yesterday, these guys celebrated the fifth billion download.
Mininova has been growing with an incredible speed. Last November they reached the third billion download, 78 days later they counted four billion downloads and now another billion milestone has been reached. TorrentFreak reported that when Mininova went offline due to hardware problems a couple of weeks ago, its competitors Torrentz.com and SumoTorrent almost went down as well. They couldn’t handle the traffic of the Mininova refugees. Impressive stuff..
But it isn’t all party hearty at Mininova’s HQ, as Eric, Matthijs, and Niek face a lawsuit by the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN. This organization wants Mininova to be history, since they think 90 percent of the files on Mininova are illegal. Mininova’s counter plead? We’re not afraid as we’re just like Google, only referring to other sites. This isn’t just youthful recklessness, since Bright reports Mininova has hired lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, the same guy who won the Dutch lawsuit against Kazaa. Exactly the track record Eric, Matthijs and Niek need.
Written on May 27, 2008 – 11:55 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Netlog, Europe’s social network darling, will announce at Google I/O tomorrow that OpenSocial support is on its way. Technical director Folke Lemaitre just said this at Kings of Code, a web developer conference in Amsterdam.
Although the official announcement will be made at Google’s largest developer gathering in San Francisco tomorrow, coders can already play with the new application possibility on this page. The public launch will be in June. When Lemaitre asked the Kings of Code crowd who already has developed an OpenSocial app, only one hand was raised. As you can imagine, he stressed that “everybody should now develop lots of OpenSocial applications”.
Netlog is still going strong. Although they had a small dip a few weeks ago, the number of members is growing rapidly. “The dip was caused by a failure in our private messaging application. It’s interesting to see what the influence of one single tool is”, Lemaitre told the audience. Other numbers are impressive as well, Netlog now has 35 million unique members and four billion page views per month. Moreover, the Belgium-based social network supports 19 languages and has more coming up. Oh and by the way, they sponsor our blog too. And that’s just one of their many smart strategic moves.
Written on May 29, 2008 – 10:03 am
Execution is way down in the hierarchal list of elements that make a venture successful (IMO). If I was to make a quick list of crucial elements required for success, it would be something like this:
Written on May 29, 2008 – 12:09 am
Written on May 28, 2008 – 4:41 pm
He might be right. Mobile browsing isn’t easy for not so tech-savvy people and Squace has been putting quite some effort in developing a new way of intuitive browsing. The company was founded in 2006 and privately funded by more than 30 private investors. While developing the service, it was thoroughly tested. In a study by the 
Written on May 28, 2008 – 9:17 am
According to Technorati there are more than 120 million blogs, up from 100,000 in 2003. Starting a blog is easy but maintaining it is harder. Only 7 million are actively updated at least every 3 months.
Mininova has been growing with an incredible speed. Last November they reached the third billion download, 78 days later they counted four billion downloads and now another billion milestone has been reached. TorrentFreak reported that when Mininova went offline due to hardware problems a couple of weeks ago, its competitors Torrentz.com and SumoTorrent almost went down as well. They couldn’t handle the traffic of the Mininova refugees. Impressive stuff..
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