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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:
Ever wondered who draws those Google Doodles? You know, those subtle variations on Google’s logo? Check out this Time Lapse video of Chief Google Doodler(!) Dennis Hwang drawing a real Google Doodle:
Google also announced today that they are going to give students a chance to get their own Doodle featured on the Google frontpage AND win $10.000. More information about this contest at the official Doodle 4 Google page.
A few nice Google Doodle examples:
And if you want to see some early alternative designs to the Google logo you all know (and love?) check this article at Wired showing some of the early designs by Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo.
Last week I had a video interview with Scott Rafer from Lookery.com. Unfortunately iChat screwed me again and this time recorded only 30 seconds of video for a 13 minute interview. Instead of having you stare at a black screen the rest of the time I filled it up with photos (zooming in and out) of Scott I found at Flickr. My advice: just listen to the interview. Scott is an inspiring and funny guy and he talks about a few interesting subjects such as why they decided to stop using OpenAds, how well Lookery is doing and even hints at how much they sold MyBlogLog for.
Written on February 5, 2008 – 7:45 pm Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
I’ve been checking out a lot of new companies and services, but this was the first time I took out my credit card to buy a Pro account within 5 minutes! The service is called Animoto and my prediction is that it’s going to be huge! So I have to share this with you.
Animoto will turn your photos into a video clip that will blow your audience away. Yesterday I’ve made a videoclip for the Bowlr event of last Thursday. You can upload your photos or import them from a third party. Imports from Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Photobucket and Picasa are supported by Animoto. After importing your pics you can upload any mp3 file or choose a song from their music store.
Their software will analyze your pics and music and compiles a sweet, sexy and impressive video clip for you.
Check out my first video clip: Chaos @ Bowlr 2008 (feat Lupe Fiasco).
You can try it yourself and make a 30 second clip with a free account, but be aware of the consequences. There’s a big chance you get addicted to the service, grab your credit card, click the ‘I’ll pay you 30 dollars a year’ button and start making clips of your holidays, events, marriages and may be even your pet.
Is it all one big hosanna? Well no, it doesn’t support MP4 files meaning that music bought via iTunes cannot be used in your clips. The interface works fine, but you need to upload your photos every time you want to make a new video. All together this is still my favorite web app of 2008.
Jerusalem, Israel based Dasur Pattern Recognition has just launched two new mobile applications that help your smart phone predict text input called SlideIT and ThumbKey. Both ThumbKey and SlideIT are based on Dasur’s pattern and word recognition technology which the companies founder, Dr. Daniel Suraqui, has been working on for 30 years.
The applications only work on touch screen enabled devices with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile installed. Once you learn how to work with the application you can type 50 words, or more, per minute. Instead of typing each character the user points to the first letter of a word and slides the stylus to the subsequent letters. Sounds similar to those cheaper GPS navigation systems that come pre-installed with some cars where you have to use a dial to navigate through maps instead of a touchscreen with keyboard. It also reminds me of a text-input method once available for the Palm platform called Quikwrite. Each corner of the screen represented a bunch of characters and the application guessed which character you meant. You can still play with it here.
Kind of difficult to explain but fortunately you can download trial versions of SlideIT and ThumbKey products AND they have videos demoing the products:
When we started this blog we quickly decided that we wanted to do more than just blog posts. One thing we came up with was the concept of VideoFridays. Every Friday we are going to post a video interview with someone where we talk, informally, about the next web. This week I invited Deborah Schultz who also spoke at The Next Web Conference 2007.
In theory this sounds great and if you have ever watched a keynote with Steve Jobs demonstrating iChat you would think that this couldn’t go wrong. In reality however iChat stinks. It works, sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t. You need a broadband connection that works flawlessly and you can just forget about using Wi-Fi. And then you both have to have the exact same settings and then sometimes it sort of works.
Anyway, enough excuses. After working with Deborah for about 2 hours we finally got to do the interview I wanted to do. Only to be interupted by an uninvited extra guest. Enjoy the interview.
Written on July 27, 2007 – 1:58 am Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Respectance just raised 1,5 million euros from Solid Ventures and Big Bang Ventures. Respectance did a showcase at The Next Web 2007 and left a very good impression with the audience and not surprisingly, delegates of Solid Ventures and Big Bang Ventures where in that same audience as well.
It seems like something nice sprouted out of that presentation.
Respectance is a social tribute network to honor the deceased.
TV4B did an interview with Richard Derks of Respectance during The Next Web Conference. check it out. (more…)
Written on February 14, 2008 – 11:35 pm
And if you want to see some early alternative designs to the Google logo you all know (and love?) check 
Written on February 5, 2008 – 7:45 pm
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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. (
