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.
If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Since the iPhone was announced Blackberry users suddenly felt less special. Weren’t THEY the ones that were always connected, always on and always in sync? Flashing a Blackberry Curve or Pearl just didn’t make an impression anymore. But there was just no way we could switch from our trusted Blackberrys and get used to that innovative onscreen keyboard that the iPhone made such headlines with. As a RIM executive said
“I could just never get the feel for it because, well, there is nothing to feel.”
Fortunately you can now get a preview of Research in Motions iPhone killer. Will it kill the iPhone? Definitely not. But it will get us Blackberry users back some self esteem:
Written on May 7, 2008 – 8:00 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You might have read about this on Mike Butcher’s TechCrunch UK: Hobnox, a Germany-based start-up that aims to become the next big thing for people in the creative industries. It’s an online music and video platform where users can watch, connect, collaborate and create. Co-founder David Noël sent me an invite so I decided to give it a shot, as his plans sounded very ambitious. What struck me the most when testing the service were the über cool flash-based audio and video Noxtools. I’ve made a screen shot of the audio Noxtool to give you an idea:
Once you’ve figured this tool out it’s possible to upload your masterworks to a personal library. You can then create a playlist that you can publish to the stage for everyone to see. There are also three Channels which are maintained by Hobnox’s own editorial team and streamed in high quality. This team is screening the work of the community to find some hidden talent.
It’s an original concept, yet I’m afraid it’s not original enough to function as a closed platform. To me it sounds like MySpace on steroids. The only part of the service I haven’t seen on the web so far are the super sophisticated Noxtools that bring the music and video editing to the browser. Therefore, the guys from Hobnox should work on integration with other services. I don’t feel like starting another blog, I’d rather import one. Same goes for pictures (Flickr), movies (YouTube), songs (MySpace), and calendar (Upcoming). If you want to show your ‘old work’ on Hobnox you’ll have to upload it all over again, or link to it from your blog.
I’ve e-mailed David to ask whether this will change or not. He replied: “Good point. We plan to add API’s to sync with other services but they haven’t been created yet. We’re still working down the list of features. Users can simply upload their content into a Hobnox profile.”
They’d better hurry, since David also told me Hobnox will launch a rather impressive marketing campaign this summer, aiming it UK, US and main-land Europe. “We will start a contest in the early summer with which contestants can win a 25K€ artist development package. We are also looking for other means of directly approaching creative people. Bar camps, trade fairs, events etcetera, all centered around music, film, and culture.”
Hobnox is one of the coolest start-ups I’ve seen lately - the design, high quality Web Tv and Noxtools certainly make an impression. If they take the walls of their garden down, I’m sure they can attract the creative crowd they’re aiming for.
Written on April 15, 2008 – 8:00 am Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Probably a lot of you guys went to The Next Web Conference. Though for those of you who didn’t, I’ve summed up the key arguments of the speakers in a two-minute a video. It gives a great overview of the speakers who attented there and shares some interesting insights. If you want to know more, browse to the live blog coverage of Anne and Ernst-Jan.
Unfortunately, it is only two minutes. So I’m afraid that you’ve to attend the full two days next year!
On March 30 a bunch of girls in Florida invited Victoria Lindsay over to their house after an online conflict on Myspace got out of hand. Instead of talking things over they decide to beat the 16 year old girl up and film the whole experience with their phones and digital cameras. Victoria passes out during the fight, gets up and gets shouted at and beaten some more. After she escapes she is treated for a concussion at the hospital and has severe bruises all over her body.
The parents of Victoria talked to reporters on Monday about the whole experience. Being a father of two daughters myself and having watched the video of the fight I relate to them as parents. But unfortunately the focus of the story starts to shift from the 8 girls (now arrested) to the websites that these teenagers are using. Apparently Victoria had a profile on MySpace which got ‘hacked’ and the parents, and probably some of the viewers, seem to think that The Internet is the cause of all evil.
Understandably the parents look for someone to blame. And in this case that should be easy. 8 girls beat their daughter up and have several videos to proof it. But Victoria’s father repeatedly mentions online services as the real cause of this tragedy. He goes as far as calling MySpace “the anti-christ for children”.
I remember getting beat up (not as bad as Victoria though) as a kid over marbles and toys. But nobody ever needed to blame the stuff we fought over or the tools* we used to organize these fights. (* = We passed pieces of paper to each other in class. Not very high tech but it worked.)
One thing is clear though. Social networks are becoming an integrated part of society and as such have to come up with rules and regulations for these kinds of cases. How do you deal with teenagers (or any people) using your service to start a fight? Do social networks have a responsibility towards their users to keep them out of trouble? Can a social network claim the same position as ISPs when it comes to data traveling over their networks or services?
Some social networks are pro-active in their approach to these kinds of situations. I know of one example where a social network works closely with authorities when it comes to soldiers killed in action. The families of the soldiers are uncomfortable with online profiles of partying teenagers and would rather circulate an official portrait. Some social networks are giving in to requests to delete these profiles and the photos on them.
The question remains how far these social networks have to go in taking responsibility. If someone dies in a car accident, will they also take off the profiles? How about if someone is just very ill? Or not really ill but just a bad hair day? Where will they draw the line? They will have to decide what they think is their responsibility and what is not without making themselves vulnerable to the accusations that some people may throw at them.
Video Interview with Talisa Lindsay and Patrick Lindsay (quote at 4:15):
Written on February 21, 2008 – 5:06 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After an exiting week in Brussels, Gent and Paris, we’re now in London to continue our Next Web Open Office Road Trip. The entrepreneurial spirit of the London tech crowd really strikes us. Almost everybody tells with great enthusiasm about their start-up or job.
We arrived yesterday morning and headed to DN Captial, a venture capitalist. Marta Skundric was so kind to lent us a meeting room with Wifi. Check out yesterday’s posts to see how good the facilitations were. We also met venture capital consultant Lea Bajc Then we had dinner with our WebTipr of the United Kingdom, David Petherick. He’s a digital biographer, which means he manages the online identity of busy people. For instance, he’s a shadow blogger for several business men. “Best compliment I’ve ever had from a client was when somebody said he heard his own voice when reading an article by me”, Petherick told us.
After a good night’s sleep - Boris and Patrick suffered from a leak in their areobed - we joined the London web scene at Open Coffee. The initiator of this unique weekly network event, Saul Klein from Index Ventures, helped us organizing a sweep stake. The price: a ticket for The Next Web Conference. Check out the video:
Now we’re working at Piczo, a world-wide social network for teens. Managing Director Europe Chris Seth told us they want to help teens express themselves by allowing them to design and customize their profiles. They have 12 million monthly unique visitors and over a billion monthly page views, thanks to the viral efforts by happy users. Moreover, they’re quite successful in Europe. For instance, they have one million users in Norway, that’s about 20 percent of the whole population.
Once again, we had a blast meeting fellow web savies and hope to welcome everybody in Amsterdam this April.
Update: Vincent Camara from Intruders.tv send me this funny video. Patrick and Boris interview each other about The Next Web Conference and Fleck. It’s recorded during Open Coffee London, yet not at the actual location. They needed some privacy and went to a coffee bar in the basement. Check it out:
Leah Culver is Co-founder and Lead Developer of Pownce.com, a social messaging application. We talk about Pownce growth, the recent ‘going out of closed beta’ launch, Valentines day, the much awaited Pownce API (news!), what Kevin Rose REALLY does at Pownce, her ideas about the Yahoo/Microsoft situation, a strange situation involving Leah, oranges and lots of booze, her (very open) ideas about privacy, her upcoming trip to Amsterdam (she will speak at The Next Web Conference), about Pownce’s popularity in France and the differences and similarities between Pownce and Twitter.
Sit back, relax and enjoy:
Want to know more about Pownce? First, try it out and then read these excellent reviews at Mashable and/or Techcrunch.
Video Advertising service Overlay.tv has just launched (press release) in beta. The service provides (registered) users with tools to add content to existing movies in a new layer. Content means arrows, images, drawings, random stuff they find online and insert with a bookmarklet and, more interesting, advertisements.
These advertisements are supplied by one of the 700+ affiliate partners that Overlay.tv has deals with. It is an interesting model and so far it seems to work out. I looked at a few examples expecting them to be littered with ‘interesting’ content but people seem to behave, so far. Here is an example of a Sex and the City movie which has been enriched with a few links to ecommerce sites selling clothing, shoes (yep, Manolo Blahnik!) and The Complete Series (A link to Amazon).
In time you will share the referral fee 50/50 with Overlay.tv for all goods sold through Overlay.tv. But not during the Beta. Right now Overlay.TV will donate all referral proceeds to charity. Lets hope the Beta doesn’t take too long!
On your lunch break? Then watch their 70s inspired promo movie. It is not THAT funny so don’t waste too much time on it:
Written on May 9, 2008 – 4:04 pm
Written on May 7, 2008 – 8:00 am
Written on April 15, 2008 – 8:00 am
Written on April 4, 2008 – 3:41 pm
Email
Twitter
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. (
