Written on July 23, 2008 – 4:09 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Allen Stern over at Center Networks writes about the launch of Gloss, a custom edition of the Flock social web browser. The customized editions comes with pink flavors, a new set of badges with lipstick on them, and custom pre-filled content mainly around the topic of entertainment, gossip, celebrities and fashion.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Flock Gloss is targeted primarily at women. Launch partners include Glam Media, Glamour, The Budget Fashionista, TMZ, Cosmo, DesignerApparel, PopSugar, iVillage and others.
I think these customized versions are an excellent way of introducing Flock to users who’ve never tried an alternative browser before. Previously, Flock created a German edition of the browser and an environment-friendly Eco edition. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they’ll come up with.
Last May, the company announced a new round of financing in the $15 million range.
On a personal note: I used to live Flock once but was repeatedly disappointed with the memory resources it consumes, the lack of speed, and regular crashes. It has led me to conclude that Flock may actually not be for internet power users, but rather for regular users who like to interact with each other socially on the web.
I hope you like that post!
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.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on April 7, 2008 – 9:44 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
This is a live screenshot from a Turkish television show where the host wants to type in ‘Youtube’ (on a story about hidden camera recordings of some government officials) but gets a few unfortunate suggestions from his browser Auto Complete feature:
previously Dugg here.
Written on January 30, 2008 – 12:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
On-line research institute XiTi has published a study about Firefox’ market share in Europe. I think I speak for most web developers, if I say that the more Firefox users, the better. Well, ‘we’ won some more souls:
After a period of stabilization from June to September 2007, Mozilla Firefox’s visit share, for the average of European countries of the XiTi perimeter, is again growing at the end of the year. Thus, over a one year vision, it gains 5 points in order to reach 28% in December 2007.
The growth isn’t spectacular though and in some countries the user rate of Firefox is actually shrinking. In Denmark, Firefox usage falls back with 0.6 percent. In Ukraine this is in 0.3 percent and in the country where The Next Web Blog is based - The Netherlands - it’s 0.1 percent. To make it even worse for me and my fellow Dutch developers, we’re the country with the lowest user rate. It’s only 14.7 percent.
Maybe web developers should move to one of the three leading countries in Firefox share: Finland (45.4%), Slovenia (44.6%) and Poland (42.4%). Or the Internet community should try to create a ‘Spread Firefox‘ revival. It would save us all lots of time:
Taken from: theMaablog: Where Does a Web Developer Spend Their Time
Written on January 12, 2008 – 1:59 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Have you ever seen a 12 year old behind a computer? It is amazing what the youngsters do and how they communicate. Ten different chat screens open, chatting and sharing pictures at the speed of light, while playing a game and browsing through their friends’ photos on their social network. Beep-beep… text message number 351 of this month just came in.
Most of the times the chats and websites visited are harmless, but kids have access to some things you, as a parent, don’t want them to see. Enters Glubble. Glubble is a free add-on to Firefox that keeps your children away from all ‘unsafe sites’. I have been playing around with it, and after I finally decided that my future son should be named Beppe (don’t ask me why), I got started.
Basically, you have a Firefox browser where you can make multiple identities for your children (and maybe your wife). As a parent you can make full use of the web and if you’re on a site that may be seen by your children you can ‘glubble’ it. When a child tries to visit a site that it not approved, they are blocked and instead the parent gets a message asking them to approve the site. I can already see a new weekend to-do thing for couples, instead of accepting ‘friends’ on Facebook, you’re approving websites your son and daughter want to see…
To speed up things you can team up with other trusted parents, this is the social aspect of Glubble, and then all trusted websites are shared. Search engine results are filtered as well.
It will be interesting to see how this will evolve. Their target market will probably be Internet Explorer users who don’t have a clue how their kids are using the web let alone how to install and use Glubble. Another problem I can foresee is that children might not accept that they are limited in their browsing behavior and this might end up in big discussions during dinner. They will have their share of challenges to face, but a good team and a fair amount of money could do the trick.
Glubble is backed by Morton Lund and Soren Kenner and word goes around that Dutch multi millionaire Marcel Boekhoorn invested in the company as well. It is founded by Ian Hayward and Willem Jan Schutte. Ian worked at Firefox and is the brain behind the hugely successful Spread Firefox campaign. They have a development team in Costa Rica, Birmingham and Amsterdam and offices in San Francisco and soon New York.
If you don’t have children, but do want to get rid of your online gambling addiction and other adult stuff you always deny watching at, Glubble might be of help.
They are now in closed-beta, if you want to be one of the first beta testers once they’ll go in private beta, leave a ‘child friendly’ comment and Heleen (Glubble Biz Dev) will make sure we can give them to you.
Written on January 8, 2008 – 5:58 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
I remember downloading the first VRML browser in 1999. It promised to show me the web in 3D fashion. Unfortunately it never went anywhere. Until now, maybe.
Check this video of a 3D browser built by SpaceTime and demonstrated during CES yesterday. It shows an Apple CoverFlow like interface to many popular websites. In this example eBay is used. The first 10 seconds are boring but don’t look away:
Can you imagine browsing the web like this? What would your site or this blog look like in 3D? What would be the advantage of browsing like this? One thing is for sure; don’t try this on dial-up.
Want to try it yourself? Download SpaceTime 1.0 (Windows only, for now) and let us know how it worked for you.
By the way, have you checked out this 3D post as well? It allows you to search through the web cover flow style.
Written on December 28, 2007 – 11:04 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Once upon a time I decided to check out this thing called the World Wide Web. I bought a modem, signed up with a local Internet Service Provider and borrowed a disk from a friend with software to ‘browse’ the Web. That piece of software was called Netscape.
Since then a lot has happened. On February 1, 2008 AOL will stop supporting Netscape. It is the end of an era and I think everybody who got online before 1999 feels kind of sad (and old?) when they hear about it.
As a small tribute to an old friend I am proudly displaying this button, one last time:
Obviously this is big news so expect a lot of articles about it on- and offline in the following weeks. Here is a small selection:
Official Netscape Blog: End of Support for Netscape web browsers
http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/
BBC News: Web icon set to be discontinued
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7163547.stm
Techcrunch: A Sad Milestone: AOL To Discontinue Netscape Browser Development
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/28/a-sad-milestone-aol-to-discontinue-netscape-browser-development/
Email
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. (
