Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 31, 2008 – 8:18 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
We heard that Microsoft is preparing for a mass layoff of its employees/contractors in January.
Well, I guess they are doing a rehearsal today by “firing” their Zune users.
Zune is the Microsoft answer to Apple’s iPod and today many of its users reported en-masse failures of this music player (specifically, the 30 Gb version of it). The player began freezing at the loading point and become unresponsive (and thus useless).
This is what Microsoft support says:
Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!
Which, basically, means they don’t have a clue yet of what causes these “blue screen of death - Zune version”.
Some people came up with an un-official fix though (try it at your own risk!).
Many users are disgruntled by this failure and plan on being done with the device. Zune wasn’t anyway a real contestant for iPod with all Microsoft’s efforts.
But look at the bright side of the story: those people can go to a New Year party to listen music (and dance). Which is what I’m just doing tonight ;)! (even if I am an iPod user)
I hope you like that post!
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Written on December 31, 2008 – 7:44 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Rumor has it (here and here) that Microsoft is preparing for a worldwide mass layoff sometime in January.
The software giant has about 91,000 workers around the world and many of them are contractors, if Microsoft follows the typical pattern for corporate layoffs, it’s likely that the contractors will be hit first. The plan would be to layoff between 10% and 17% of the entire workforce in its worldwide army. For Microsoft, a layoff of this size would not be a small cut: as many as 10,000 to 15,000 workers would get the pink slip.
Microsoft’s layoff numbers will make a sizeable addition to the Techcrunch layoff tracker, and that will send a good signal to Wall Street. Since currently MSFT stock is in a free-fall along with other tech stocks, the company probably would want to make its cuts before the Q2 earning report is released on Jan 22.
Which MSFT division will be the hardest hit? We don’t know yet, MSN could be one, since it is not exactly the shining star in the Microsoft constellation. But Microsoft Europe, Middle East, and Africa might not be spared either.
If the rumor becomes reality, then Microsoft will find itself in the same league as Google and Yahoo, both of whom had to layoff large numbers of employees in the past year.
If the worldwide economic mess continues into 2009, then we might even see the entire MSFT empire collapsing and vanishing from the face of the Earth. Then Linux will declare “game over!” at last!
Ok, I was joking in the last sentences. I hope you all will have a Happy New Year and best of luck to MSFT employees who will be axed if the rumor is true!
Written on December 4, 2008 – 9:57 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Want to add social features to your site letting users share information and interact with friends while visiting some of their favorite websites?
Google Friend Connect lets you do that now. This service was in a limited beta since May but now it’s open to all webmasters (open beta). Friend Connect uses open standards like OAuth and OpenID to accomplish this task. The websites which uses Friend Connect can also run OpenSocial applications created by OpenSocial developer community.
It lets websites access username and password of the users along with friends list, feed massages, profile info, reviews and other info.
Google Friend Connect competes with Facebook Connect and Myspace Data Availability in taking control over you online identity. Which one will you choose for your website? (Update: Facebook Connect just announced the general availability too! See a presentation here.)
The learn more about Google Friend Connect watch their presentation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N94s7ix0JPo
Written on December 2, 2008 – 7:05 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Ok, here you go. This is the last web event I am presenting for this year which takes place in Romania on 3rd of December (which means tomorrow).
The event’s name is NetCamp and during this conference there is a section called NetStartup (where the internet startups have a chance to showcase their products or ideas and pitch potential investors - kinda Techcrunch 50, The Next Web Conference or Seedcamp).
NetCamp is at its second edition, hosted at the same Howard Johnson Grand Plaza Hotel from Bucharest which hosted other web events from Romania (Webstock, RoNewMedia). It’s organized by Evensys, a conference and seminar organizer, in partnership with Nokia and Beko as sponsor.
The event has some prestigious guests like Tristan Nitot (president & co-founder, Mozilla Europe), Alexandre Almajeanu (founder, Gentica), Alexis Bonte (co-founder & CEO, eRepublik.ro) si Jan Vichr (board member, Swiss Venture), Bobby Voicu (Yahoo Romania), Vlad Stan (Seed Money), Zoli Herczeg (Microsoft Romania) and others.
At this conference people will discuss about user-generated content, social web, online communities, new business models, blogs & wikis, web analytics, the challenges and opportunities on web. This conference is oriented towards internet professionals, telecom, software, hardware, advertising & media, creators and distributors of online products and services.
On NetStarup section projects or products already on the market will be presented having these themes:
• Content Websites
• Online Applications
• User Generated Content Websites
• Mobile Applications
• eCommerce Sites
• other projects and products (internet & mobile Internet)
This year there are 10 finalists which will showcase their startup to the jury of six members (mostly investors). Each member of the jury can award a 5,000 euro amount to the starup they choose (approx. $6,300). In exchange, the investor gets 10% of the company (sounds like YCombinator investing style).
The investor will be involved also in the next round of financing once the project reached a certain level.
There’s the possibility that all investors could invest in the same project and they will share those 10% of the company (a company can get as much as 30,000 euros - $40,000 without giving up more than 10% of the company…or get 5,000 euros and give up 10%…or get nothing).
And that’s it for this year for Romania.
I’m expecting other people to present web conferences and web festivals from their countries (if there are any).
If you want me to write about them please use my contact page and email found here.
Written on November 21, 2008 – 6:44 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Having big problems at home where the stock is still plummeting Yahoo, finally, sells Kelkoo, the Paris-based shopping comparison search engine, according to Techcrunch.
Kelkoo was bought by Yahoo in 2004 for 475 million euros. Sadly enough, Yahoo couldn’t make it more profitable and known among other international shopping comparison search engines and thus Kelkoo usage has fallen down the hill (see the general trend record on Google Trends - the trends might vary for different Kelkoo domains).
Nothing new here, some of the acquisitions Yahoo made had the same fate…falling down to the competition.
The new acquirer of Kelkoo is Jamplant, a UK-based private equity firm (some details about this company here) and the amount they have paid is around 100 million euros.
Kelkoo will still continue to power Y! Shopping, Cars and Travel.
You can read the announcement from the former Kelkoo CEO Pierre Chappaz here (in French) and here is the internal email Glen Drury, Kelkoo’s managing director for the UK, sent to the employees.
Written on November 20, 2008 – 11:47 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Today, (well, it is yesterday at the time you read this) Google will roll out a new feature to its well-known search engine: custom search results. That is, you can now edit the search results. More power to the masses. The feature’s name is Google SearchWiki and it has been in an experimental phase the last several months (only some users had access to it).
“This is a search feature that gets a user more control over their search results,” said Cedric Dupont, Google’s SearchWiki product manager. That means you have to be signed into your Google account in order to have the possibility to use SearchWiki (the changes you have made will be saved in your account so next time you come to Google you will see your previous work).
You can see the SearchWiki feature to the right of each search result title: an up arrow lets you move a result higher on the page and an X will remove the result. After moving the result higher a down arrow shows up (of course) so you can move it back down the page. After editing the result the icons will turn green and that’s a reminder for you that you edited that result. There’s another icon, a bubble, which lets you leave comments for others to see.
Of course, if you can move and delete results you can also add your input. There’s an “Add a result” link at the bottom of the search results page which lets you do just that. Now, if you removed a result how would you bring it back? No worries, there’s an Undo kinda feature at the bottom of the page.
People can share their SearchWiki notes with others by clicking a “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link at the bottom of each search results page.
Will this feature help Google become even better at sorting out the search results? I wouldn’t be surprised if they would use the data collected to improve their search engine and other services Google has.
By tomorrow (today, at the time you read this) all the users should be able to use this feature and you can tell us your experience with it.
At the time of writing this article I didn’t yet have access to this feature…
Written on November 19, 2008 – 9:18 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Seven years from now The Netherlands will be covered in a web of fiber-to-the-home network thanks to KPN and FTTH operator Reggefiber (according to deVerdieping Trouw).
Of course, the cost isn’t small: about 5-7 billion euros needs to be thrown at the task
KPN and Reggefiber setup a joint venture (KPN wants a 41% stake in Reggefiber) which has to be approved by the authorities.
The places where the fiber cannot reach will be covered by wi-fi network access.
Written on November 15, 2008 – 2:10 am
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
If you are an user of Pandora, the provider of online personalized radio service, you now have the chance to interact and discuss with other users about your favorite music and bands.
Pandora just launched a music discussion forum for its legions of music fans. The new forum provides Pandora’s robust user base with a platform to interact with each other once they’ve discovered new artists and bands. The forum can be accessed here: www.pandoradiscussionarea.com (they could have chosen a better name, I think)
This forum is opened in cooperation with Energizer (remember that pink bunny?), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of primary batteries, battery-powered devices and flashlights. Energizer and its iconic Energizer Bunny® will be presented as a branded skin framing the forum content and will encourage Pandora users to talk about music by creating a user profile complete with avatar choice, share their Pandora music discoveries, ask questions of other users, give opinions on bands and artists and interact with musicians who want instant feedback on new material.
This forum is a good way for Energizer to brand its name more to users (that is, it’s a marketing tool after all).
The forum will be promoted to users via co-branded ads from Pandora and Energizer on Pandora’s home page with a link to the forum and email announcements to registered users with a link to the forum as well.
We will see how much traction this forum will have among music fans around Pandora service.
Written on November 10, 2008 – 7:43 am
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
In the past posts I presented two Romanian web festivals/conferences: Webstock and Internetics
You might wonder “How many Romanian web festivals will you present? And how many of them are there??”
Well, I have two more for you and we are done for this year :).
The newest entrant in this area is RoNewMedia conference. The first edition was held on May 29, 2008 and the next edition is being held as we speak (11 November) at JW Marriot Grand hotel from Romanian capital, Bucharest.
This edition there are even more speakers than the last edition: 34 (many international speakers too)
Last edition drew 450 participants and this number is expected to rise this edition.
In this edition new web projects will be presented and discussed, case studies will be analyzed, real life examples will be shown, networking between participants will be made possible.
There are some high profile international speakers like:
- Alexis Bonte (Investor - erepulik.com and trilulilu.ro)
- Miguel Ripoll (Creative Director - cesserdigital.net)
- Luca Passani (Mobile consultant - WURFL-Pro)
- Marvin Liao (Director of Sales Development for Yahoo! Inc’s Emerging Markets Business Unit)
- Matthew Bowden (Project Manager - Inside Mobile)
- Attila Bihari (Founder - ConQUIZtador.com)
- Lampros Latsaras (Managing Director - CareerBuilder.com.ro)
- Alexander R. Trommen (Marketing director - United-mobile.com)
As well as some local speakers:
- Marius Ghenea (President - pcfun.ro)
- Gabriel Sora (Product manager - Vodafone)
- Dragos Manac (Founder - ghelir.ro)
- Orlando Nicoara (Director - Media Pro Interactiv)
- Anca Fieraru (Director - eResearch Corp.)
- Lucian Despoiu (Founder - Kondiment.com)
- Ionut Oprea (Director - IAB Romania and Blogagency.ro)
- Dragos Novac (Director - Metropotam.ro)
One of the main attaction of this conference is the RoWebDesign Awards section which will select and award the best designed romanian websites which are totally original (it is called “anti copy-paste” award). There are no competition categories. The only criterias for a site to enter in the competition is to be absolutely original in design and to be romanian.
This new festival managed also to attract powerful partners and sponsors like The Money Channel, Vodafone, Business Standard, Cotidianul, HTTPool Marketing.
The fact that there’s so many web conferences and festivals shows the apetite of Romania in digesting this new communication media.
I will not be surprised if other new events will pop up next year.
Written on November 5, 2008 – 5:42 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Bad news doesn’t seem to stop for Yahoo. Several days ago they killed Yahoo! Live, the live video streaming service.
Now today Google decided to pull the plug to Google-Yahoo advertising deal, a deal which would have brought around $800 million/year to Yahoo and would have filled partially the hungry-for-cash pocket of the old search engine and portal.
The main cause which made Google walk away seems to be that the government regulators and some advertisers still had concern about this deal and Google didn’t want to get into a legal battle, according to Google blog.
“However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn’t have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.“
Google probably didn’t forget the advertising deal with MySpace where they paid hundreds of millions/year in exchange of having Google search on the well-known social networking site. Probably they don’t want to repeat that with Yahoo (especially in this bad economic time), but this is just a assumption.
Anyway, Yahoo now has an even rougher road ahead. It has to find another cash cow or it has to improve its advertising technology to make it more competitive. If that means sacrificing Jerry Yang and the rest of the staff, then so be it.
Surprisingly, Yahoo stock went up 5% after this announcement while Google stock went down 1.4%. That won’t last long probably.
Either way, I hope Yahoo will not fade out totally and leave behind only two major Internet players: Google and Microsoft.
Good luck, Yahoo!
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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. (
