Written on May 7, 2008 – 7:41 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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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 5, 2008 – 5:12 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Associated Press - one of world’s largest news wires - will launch a service on Monday that brings local news stories to your phone. AP teamed up with 100 newspapers to update readers about the latest developments in their local area by using ZIP/ postal codes. The PR circus is focused on the iPhone, as AP and Apple also took care of an iPhone-optimized widget (see iphone.com/webapps).
“We are excited to offer the first comprehensive mobile news web app and to have been selected by Apple as a Staff Pick. With a new generation of mobile devices on the market, like the iPhone, the time is right for AP to introduce a product that brings together our members’ local news brands with AP’s unrivaled coverage of international and national events,” said Jane Seagrave, AP’s senior vice president of global product development in a statement.
At first you might think, “what else is new?”. Yet existing services like Google Mobile News don’t offer you local stories in such a sophisticated way. And they weren’t smart enough to jump on the iPhone-means-free-publicity train.
Earlier today I wrote a story about the rise of mobile TV. I noted that other news services make 100-second news broadcasts on a phone quite useless. Well… AP just announced another one.
Written on April 26, 2008 – 8:26 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When going to an enormous event as Web 2.0 Expo you know on beforehand that some keynotes and sessions are sponsored. So I wasn’t surprised when I saw company presentations of Yahoo, MySpace, Automattic and Dash. Yet what DID strike me was the quality of the non-sponsored parts of the program. Like O’Reilly’s passionate talk (more about that later) and the funny, witty and motivational speech of mr. Fake Steve Jobs himself, aka Dan Lyons. This Forbes journalist is a genuinely funny guy who managed to work an audience in a way that was rather impressive for that time of the day (really early).
Dan Lyons
Lyons presented as himself. For one time, he didn’t act like he was Steve Jobs. After making a couple of jokes to warm up the audience, he made a fool of people who tend to overreact when it comes to social media. “I just want to apologize in advance for the next 25 minutes, for the 25 minutes you’re never going to get back,” he said. “Please don’t Twitter attack me.”
Lyons started Fake Steve Jobs partly out of boredom - “Writing about guys like IBM all the time is … dull”. Yet he was also driven by fear - the media business was changing. Bloggers were winning ground on print media. So he started to join the other side: “I’m not old enough to retire”. He applied for Forbes online and was rejected.
“Please remember”, Lyons asked the audience, “Forbes said no. That’s very important”. Still Lyons couldn’t stop thinking about starting a blog. The idea of imitating a CEO first appeared in his mind when he noticed most CEO’s would act like they were writing a so-called transparent blog, yet all they did was spamming us with PR talk. Lyons: “What if somebody would go nuts?” That somebody turned out to be Steve Jobs, as “he takes himself too seriously and has no sense of humor. (..) When Jobs launched the iPhone he said Apple is changing the world. Come on, it’s a fucking cellphone.”
Fake Steve Jobs had the same attractive power on people as the real one, as Lyons built up a readership of 90,000 people in just six months. Moreover, people from all over the world started a man-hunt to track him down. The man leading the hunting masses: Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes. After another rejection from Forbes.com, Lyons sent Karlgaard a line - offering to write for Forbes. “He wrote back, ‘Oh, Fake Steve, you’re a genius, we’d love to hire you.” As Fake Steve Jobs, Lyons finally got his job at the online venue of Forbes.
The blog is a “life-changing” publication for Lyons. “I wake up excited every morning”. What he digs the most about his blog is that people actually build characters in the comments: “people with nicknames like Fake Vladimir Putin are performing on my blog”. According to Lyons, this kind of interaction is THE power of Web 2.0. A beautiful media future is lying ahead of us. We’ve built a strong foundation for the online dream, and it will get better “when the big media companies jump in”.
So all the funny remarks aside, Lyons did have a clear message. “Media business are focusing on the destruction of their business and therefore loose sight.” Since with the online revolution, the media experience becomes bigger, wider and richer. There are plenty of opportunities there. “We, the Web 2.0 attendees, are in the eye of the storm. No, we’re creating the storm”.
Lyons suddenly transformed a sharp and funny talk about his blog in an inspiring and motivating message to all the new media creators out there.
Written on January 22, 2008 – 10:03 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
There are lots of books about Apple, the Macintosh and the community around it. As a devoted apple user I own a bunch of them. And it seems only logical that someone would make a documentary about Apple Fanboys, or Macheads. And now it is here: Macheads, the movie.
I must admit that this is not about the Next Web at all but I just couldn’t ignore it. If only your company could attract such a devoted community. Watch, weep and pray.
Written on January 16, 2008 – 6:50 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Pulse is now available for your Mac Address Book and takes care of all your syncing needs. The Plaxo service wants to stay an ‘useful social application that helps people stay connected’. In order to live up to that mission, integration with the Address Book was necessary, according to the press release: “Since most of our members are busy professionals, it’s not enough to enable communication just within the Pulse website; we need to bring Pulse – and the unified address book underlying it – to the communication tools, services, and devices that they use.”
Isn’t that against the trend of moving workspace from the desktop to the browser? We asked John McCrea, VP of Marketing. His answer: “We are working toward a vision of the ’social web’ in which the social graph is able to turbocharge any site, application, or device with users to take their local piece of the social graph with them wherever they go.”
So it’s basically a way of making sure that people have access to their contacts wherever they go. Until full wireless Internet coverage isn’t a dream anymore, this sounds like a plausible reason.
Yet I do think that this whole syncing thing also is a way to tempt people to move their workspace to online applications, such as Pulse. By giving people the feeling that their stuff ALSO remains on their computer, they’re willing to give the online application a try. So this won’t be the last integration tool we will hear of in the near future. What about Google Calendar syncing two-ways with iCal?
Written on January 15, 2008 – 1:04 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world, yet in Holland the wireless Internet coverage still isn’t very good. It even seems like that when you’re in desperate need of some entertainment - in the train or bus stop in the middle of nowhere -, the feeling of disappointment is stronger than the satisfied feeling when it IS available. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
So it’s not too surprising that developers world-wide work on applications that make the off line live just a little bit easier. Tooble is a recent result of those ambitions: ‘YouTube comes to iPod’.
Tooble automatically downloads, converts and imports any YouTube video to play on your video iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, or even on your computer with iTunes. Of course you could already watch videos on the iPhone and iPod Touch using GPRS/EDGE, but the only joy that comes from that is making up original ways of swearing about the damn lack of speed.
Google won’t be amused about this service. They’re probably working behind the scenes on some sort of YouTube function for off line applications service Google Gears. And now this small start-up called Gridlock LLC came up with it first.
Thank you guys, for entertaining me during those awful hours of no Internet connection. Want to meet these heroes from Gridlock/ Tooble? You can shake their hands at stand S-1338 at the Macworld Conference in San Fransisco this week.
Written on January 1, 2008 – 10:55 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Every year it takes webmasters a few days (or months!) to realize that it is a new year and they should update the copyright notices at the bottom of their websites. I know, it is trivial, but I just can’t help but smile when I see the most expensive and well watched frontpage of the world display ‘2007′ when it is actually 2008
Google and Yahoo: both wrong
CNN and Reuters: Reuters wins!
Wired and Techcrunch: both wrong
Apple and Microsoft: sorry Apple fans, both wrong
See any other funny examples of outdated websites?
Written on December 8, 2007 – 10:49 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
My guess is that 95% of all current businessplan mention Google at the first logical exit partner. It used to be Yahoo and Microsoft before that. But it seems that there is another company that is swimming in cash and looking for innovative companies to aqcuire: Apple.
“Apple can afford to spend a billion, or 2, to acquire your company”
With a cash reserve of up to $15 billion (Source: Fortune) they sure can afford to spend a couple of billion on your business. And you might say that they are a hardware company and are probably not interested in your little Web2.0 scheme. But Apple is so much bigger than just hardware these days. They are a hardware, software, telephony, music, ecommerce and multimedia company. One thing they aren’t yet is a search or social network company. But why not change that? iTunes was a Mac only product at first but then turned ‘PC’ after a year or so and is THE music player on Windows now.
What if Apple would acquire Facebook? They can afford it, in cash, and would suddenly become THE online social network player with the hippest offline social meeting places in the world: The Apple store.
Yep, it is time for Apple to start making some acquisitions in the Internet world. What will YOU sell to Apple in 2008?
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