The Next Web

Looking for a scoop? Just use your reading spectacles

Written on June 4, 2008 – 4:10 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

When I scanned email subjects in my inbox this afternoon, my eye fell on “Worldwide Me-the-Media Mars Scoop”. I recognized “Me the Media” from the title of a book Martin Kloos reviewed a month ago, but the rest of the line seemed kind of abstract. Mars Scoop? Are you kidding me? Although I have deep respect for the author, Jaap Bloem, you can probably imagine I opened the email with some skepticism.

Me the Media deals with the impact of web media on “hyper-individualization, ICTainment on top of ICTechnology, and of meaningful web conversations between organizations, customers and employees”. I met the authors during SocialStrategyTalk on May 22 and like the way they promote the book. They’ve made the whole book freely available online and… they have a blog. The latter isn’t that original, unless you publish some world-wide scoops. Then its pure solid PR 2.0 material.

You’ve probably heard of the Phoenix Explorer that landed on Mars on May 25. Next to the Star Spangled Banner, this little wonder of technology also had a DVD-rom on it - entitled “Messages from Earth”.

So if you’re like Bloem, you probably already wondered what the text box on the DVD says. Bloem wanted to find out, thus he grabbed his +1.0 reading spectacles, enlarged the picture within PowerPoint, focused his eyes, and tried to decipher the text. He succeeded to some extent, as he managed to read the whole text apart from one word. Not a scoop that will get you on CNN’s breaking news, but enough to start a modest hype in the blogosphere. Especially as the text is pretty funny and to the point:

“This archive, provided to the NASA Phoenix mission by The Planetary Society, contains literature and art (Vison of Mars), greetings from Mars visionaries of our day, and names of 21st century Earthlings who wanted to send their names to Mars. This DVD-ROM is designed to be read on personal computers in 2007. Information is stored in a spiral groove on the disc. A laser beam can scan the groove when metallized or a microscope can be used. Very small bumps and holes ( ? ? not sure about this ? ? ) represent the zeroes and ones of digital information. The groove is about 0,74 microns wide. For more information refer to the standards document ECMA-268 (80 mm DVD Read-Only Disk).” (source)

As you can understand, we’re on a mission here. What’s the word after “bumps and holes”? We might even be able to persuade Richard Branson and his Virgle guys to give away another ticket to Mars as a prize.

I hope you like that post!

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aliens, dvd-rom, funny, jaap bloem, mars, me the media, scoop, virgle

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Mars Landing Live

Written on May 26, 2008 – 12:06 am
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France

Mars Landing

This is going to happen at about 1 am European time. Courtesy of Nasa and brought to us by Ustream.

See The Mars Landing Here

Live From Nasa Here

mars, nasa, ustream

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Don’t you just love April 1st? Google is heading for Mars

Written on April 1, 2008 – 8:31 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Google has always been an ambitious company. You have to just listen to one of their WiFi stories and you know what I mean. So I wasn’t really surprised when Larry Page announced in January that they would team up with the one and only Sir Richard Branson. Especially since Branson had told us earlier that he wanted to use the web for his green crusade. “It’s an exciting project”, said mr. Branson back then. “Page also hopes to devote money to renewable energy, and that’s an area in which we’ll definitely collaborate.” The project was named Virgle.

For some reason, the domain Virgle.com wasn’t registered yet. Reason enough for Boris to jump in and claim the domain. It now forwards to the post I wrote in January.

Ok, so today is April 1st. A few weeks ago, Boris and I were driving back from PLUGG in Brussels and we talked about organizing an April 1st joke. ‘Why not use that domain Virgle.com?”, Boris asked. We came up with a plan, and we’re planning on writing about how Virgle was sold to Google and Branson. Yet due to the busy times and preparations for the Next Web Conference (only two days left!) this plan never made it to the drawing table.

Mars In the end that doesn’t really matter, since Branson and Page have decided to use Virgle for an April’s fool themselves! Branson wrote an article on the official Google Blog at 12:01 am today, saying:

In my life, I’ve had a lot of exciting adventures and launched a lot of ambitious business ventures. I’m delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google which qualifies on both counts. Virgle’s goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars.

The guys from Google are taking the joke pretty far, at least one employee must have worked on this project for a week considering the extensive plan they’ve designed. It comes down to this though:

In the years to come, we’ll be sending up a series of spaceships carrying (along with the supplies and tools needed to build the new colony) what eventually will be hundreds of Mars colonists, or Virgle Pioneers — myself among them.

Truth be told, I’m glad we didn’t use Virgle for April’s fool. We couldn’t have done such a neat job like Page and Branson did. Enjoy the hysteria guys.