Written on August 7, 2008 – 12:03 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Balsamiq Mockups is a new product launched on the Adobe AIR platform which allows developers to make mockups of their designs in no time. Think MSWord for hackers. Since its launch a few short months ago Balsamiq mockups has taken the hacker community by storm. Why? This is one of those rags to riches stories that inspire us all.
Developed by Peldi Guilizzoni (a one man band) working out of Bologna (Italy) who was inspired by 37signals mantras and Paul Graham (HN) to ‘create something people want’. Balsamiq Mockups is now following in the footsteps of past masters and amazingly has gone into profitability from almost the get go. And what’s more this self funded project is now turning over thousands of dollars each month.
The beauty of this product is its elegance, it solves the pain of hackers who have long since forgotten where the pen and paper is located (bottom draw guys), it allows quick and editable drafts to be created of potential design ideas. The user interface is completely intuitive (no instructions needed) and results are quickly achieved.
When so many large companies with millions of dollars in VC backing are chasing the elusive Web2.0 biz model, hunting down huge numbers of users who they intend spamming later, this makes a very refreshing change. The execution of this plan is perfect. Peldi has managed to capture the attention of his target market (hackers and developers) with stories of his progress, which in turn have initiated interesting debates on Hacker News.
So far Balsamiq Mockups has been covered by over 100 blogs (this is the 101th blog post!) yet still absent from this entourage is any mention from TechCrunch. This is one of those products that will make it onto the stage of the foremost Tech startup blog, it’s a good human story and more inspiring than the news bites that so and so has just been granted another round of X. Come on TC, show this man some luv.
Way to go Peldi, have a bottle of Chianti for me.
A quick demonstration of Balsamiq Mockups: building an iTunes-like UI in two minutes:
I hope you like that post!
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Written on February 20, 2008 – 4:29 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Until now it has not been possible for Flash developers to embed Adsense or any other ad-networks ads into a Flash widget. Adobe have made it clear from the beginning that this is something beyond the scope of the technology which has increasingly become a thorn in the side and ‘the most serious limitation’ for Flash developers to realize profit from their applications.
There are now literally hundreds of millions of Flash widgets embedded all over the web, mostly on third party sites, where the widget developers would JUST LOVE to monitise that content with Adsense and other ad networks. So a solution for this Major Dilemma is long over due and the prize for best hackers of the year goes to Scribd who have just launched a new product (IPAPER) that incorporates the said invention. In their own words and from their site come these lovely words:
Monetize Your Documents
If you have documents on your website, you could be missing out on a monetization opportunity. You advertise on your web pages, why not your documents? iPaper integrates a sophisticated ad system by Google that automatically targets ads to the content of your documents. By switching to iPaper, you can immediately begin to monetize your documents. All you have to do is collect the checks.
Click image to see a working example Flash widget with Adsense.
Hacked Solution
Now as they have cracked / hacked a way round one of the greatest limitations of Flash widgets this is going to revolutionize the web! Specifically increasing incentives for the hundreds of thousands of developers who are using Flash to make embeddable features for third party networks such as Facebook et al.
No one has yet come up with any serious solutions for monitising Flash content to date. (more…)
Written on January 28, 2008 – 1:53 pm
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This an article by Edial Dekker, a Dutch blogger and student, who witnessed the on-line attack on Scientology.
For many years there have been a lot of popular on-line partitions where people participated in to make a change to the world. Not only on-line injustice, but also world problems have always been part of the on-line communities. Recently did we not only give the Greenpeace-whale the name Mister Splashy Pants , but we have also saved a man’s holiday. This is very nice and all, but can social networks and masses of on-line Internet users really make a difference? Last Thursday we got some answers…
If you haven’t seen Tom Cruise movie in which he talks about Scientology, be sure to check it out because when it was taken down on YouTube by the Scientology [This video has been removed due to a copyright claim by the Church of Scientology] hell broke lose on many social networks. Last Thursday - a group called ‘Anon‘ (stands for Anonymous) - used Digg.com to plan an attack later that night against websites related to the Church of Scientology. Everything related to Anon, or the Scientology went to frontpage in just minutes… (more…)
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