Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on August 12, 2008 – 3:28 pm
Tessa Sterkenburg,
Almost all the movies that I watch are in English. There must be an enormous amount of brilliant movies made in other languages, but I don’t know about them. Because of the language, these movies often don’t get reviewed by international journalists and are therefore not known by the larger public. Some producers, including some of the famous Bollywood filmmakers are even starting to produce their movies in English.
There is another solution: subtitles.
TVsubtitles.net is a site that enables you to find subtitles for most popular TV Shows and movies. Just download a subtitles file and install a DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player (called DirectVobSub), and if you have subtitles for movies or TV Shows that are not on the site yet, you’ll be able to upload them.
Subtitles are available in several languages including English, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian and Arabic. Most subtitles currently available are for English language shows, and it would be great if more English subtitles would become available for foreign language shows.
There are no subtitles for Indian movies and TV shows yet. While we wait, we count on Buffalax:
I hope you like that post!
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Written on August 11, 2008 – 11:30 am
Tessa Sterkenburg,
Last week the harddisk of my computer crashed and unfortunately there was nothing the repairshop could do. Of course this happened on the day that I realized that my last backup was 2 weeks ago.
Luckily, my spreadsheets and documents are hosted by Google docs, my blogposts and information about my company are in Wordpress, many of my photo’s are on Flickr, and my address book is in Plaxo. Furthermore, I can retrieve information via the mail that gets backed up by Apples new Mobile Me service. While the laptop is being fixed I simply borrow a computer and within a few minutes I am back in business. You could say that I store a lot of my information via online services and I access them via a web browser, a phenomenon that is called Cloud Computing.
Of course there has been discussion about the security and ownership risks of cloud computing. Yesterday, a new one came up: privacy risks.
The privacy risks of cloud computing
At the DefCon hackers gathering in Las Vegas, the US military academy professor Greg Conti warned the audience that a trend to push software into the “clouds” exacerbates privacy risks as people trust information to the Internet. Conti also said that “we already give away tons of information about ourselves by searching and mapping software and social networking services, records of email and text messaging are routinely saved and it is common for websites to use software that tracks where online visitors came from and where they go next.”
He continued with “Information on your computer may get protection under the law, but on someone else’s it gets less protection.” The US Department of Justice has tried to pry search data from Google, and China pressured Yahoo to reveal the identities of pro-democracy advocates voicing opinions online. “How hard would it be to target someone as a political activist or a person with AIDS?” Conti asked rhetorically.
The consequences of our online behaviour
I am surprised that privacy risks are linked to Cloud Computing. As Conti says himself: there is a lot of information about individuals online already. Even if cloud computing didn’t exist, information could be found through the way we use search engines and the information we share via blogs and websites.
It is not about how we search, share or host information, it is about the consequences of our online behaviour. You shouldn’t have to hide who you are and what you do. I expect the postman not to read my snail mail, just as I expect the government not to read my GMail.
It seems that we are being warned against using services based on Cloud Computing. However, instead of frightening everybody and talk people into deleting their Facebook profile, shouldn’t we make sure that there are laws to protect people online? Just as they are (or should be) protected in real life?
If someone steals my belongings from my house, he should be arrested. If someone steels my car he should be arrested too, even if I left it on the street.
Written on April 6, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Tessa Sterkenburg,
On Friday afternoon The Next Web Conference hosted the world premiere of the documentary The truth according to Wikipedia from IJsbrand van Veelen. The leading questions in the documentary were: Should we let just anyone state his or her opinion or should we leave the publishing of information to the experts? Could the openness of the web be dangerous? Who has the right to establish truth?
The people being interviewed are amongst others Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia), Larry Sanger (the since-fired (Correction: Larry was not fired but laid off when Bomis needed to scale down from 12 to 4 employees.) co-founder of Wikipedia) and Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy).
Andrew Keen is against the openness on the web, and argues that we should give the right to publish back to the experts, so that we know that what we read on the web is actually the truth.
That is an interesting statement. If we draw a parallel to the description of World War II in the Netherlands then Andrew Keen wants us to read Lou de Jong only, even though many people want to hear the opinion of the famous 14-year old ‘blogger’ of those days: Anne Frank.
(Lou de Jong was the official Dutch historian during World War II and author of “The History of the Netherlands in the Second World War”. Later, this book series received a lot of criticism, as Lou de Jong was accused of misrepresenting the truth by being too favorable towards the role of the Dutch resistance during the German occupation.)
Rita Verdonk is a Dutch politician who recently set up a new political party in the Netherlands. During the launch of her party on April 3, she had lots of one-liners, but…no program! Rita is going to set up a Wiki and let the people, collectively, determine the program. Power to The People!
When I came home from The Next Web Conference and saw her on TV, my first reaction was: “Oh my God, we should really leave this to the experts”. I want someone who knows what he or she is talking about, studied it, balanced all the pros and cons of the problem, takes informed decisions. I want experts to do this! Not a crowd of uninformed civilians!
Similarly I have many American friends who are disgusted with the politics in their own country, and seem almost embarrassed about the fact that most people vote without really understanding the issues and the consequences.
In 1995, a poll on capital punishment in the UK showed us that 76% of British respondents supported the death penalty the UK. Yet, I am very glad that the British government then decided not to re-instate capital punishment.
At the same time I am very much in favor of democracy and freedom of speech. In 1994, I spent some time in Malaysia, a country that officially embraces democracy but didn’t always seemed to practice what they preach and, at the time heavily censored the media. I concluded after 5 months that I could never live there, because of the political system and their views on freedom of speech. However, my Malaysian colleagues insisted that you could just not let everyone say what they wanted. The government knows what’s best for you and you should let the government determine the truth… Hmm, doesn’t that sound like Andrew Keen?
Democracy is what everyone wants, but that doesn’t mean that every single decision should be made by the majority. A democracy means that we vote for someone who makes those balanced and informed decisions for us based on expert analysis. So when actual decisions are made we don’t want the people to be directly involved, but when it comes to information we do. What does this mean for our valuation of information? Do we take our information seriously enough?
Where do we draw the line? Obviously we value democracy highly. Wikipedia is a great resource as an instant and reasonably reliable reference. But do we want The People to determine our economic policies? Do we re-inforce the death penalty when the majority of people want this? Is the majority always right? And who are the Experts? The Malaysian government or the 14-year old blogger?
Considering that even scientific authors have to continuously revise what has been written: What is The Truth?
You can meet Andrew Keen personally during his European book promotion tour in April. Email him (ak@ajkeen.com) if you want to meet him in either Brussels, Amsterdam or Helsinki.
Written on January 29, 2008 – 9:02 am
Tessa Sterkenburg,
Since online user generated content is picking up, newspapers get continuously slashed for their inability to adjust to modern times and the demise of the old media was predicted. Now it turns out that the old-fashioned publishers are still going strong.
Newspapers were late to the game because, for years, they had near monopolies and fat profit margins, and therefore weren’t pressured to innovate. In 2005, all newspapers were still earning most of their profits from the print versions, and young people turned away from papers, leaving newspapers with a declining reader base, and declining revenue potential.
Last week The Newspaper Association of America announced that a record number of readers visited U.S. online newspaper sites last year. The number of unique visitors to newspaper websites rose more than 6 percent to a monthly average of 60 million. Monthly visits climbed 9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago.
So, all is going well then and newspapers are finally becoming innovative news sources online. Indeed newspapers are making steps in the right direction. They are embracing RSS feeds and video, ask their best journalists for their online versions, make more content available for free and there is even some collaboration. I can’t help noticing however, that this news comes together with reports that the biggest growth group online today are the baby boomers… coincidence?
Maybe not. The Wall Street Journal recently announced that they will not go along with the trend and hold on to their subscription model. The reason: it pays them good money. Not only in subscription fees but particularly in advertising revenues. Their well-defined paying user group of affluent 50-year old male decision makers turns out to be an attractive group for advertisers. Great model.
Unfortunately, as a new generation of decision makers is approaching, it might not last.
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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. (
