Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on November 7, 2008 – 6:03 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Did you stare at it for a while? See what it is? Yes, a hyper-realistic version of Adobe Photoshop CS4. It was made for an online software seller by an ad agency. You can see the whole process of rebuilding the Photoshop interface in a set on Flickr.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on October 28, 2008 – 9:36 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Pixlr.com is a Flash based Online Image Editor you can use for free. It loads faster than Photoshop, it’s a lot(!) cheaper and does a lot less. I know, for some of you that is bad news but for 90% of people that is good news. As you can see I imported a self-portrait straight from Flickr (just copy/paste the URL) and made it lighter, enlarged my nose and made my mouth smaller, and it took me only 2 minutes to do all that.
The application supports layers, filters and most basic editting tools and when you are ready you can save the image to your desktop as a JPG or PNG.
Written on October 8, 2008 – 11:45 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Most web-based games might appear innocent, but a blogger from GUYA.NET proves that they can function as a way for the web’s bad guys to take over your webcam. When this blogger first heard about this phenomenon clickjacking, he tried to develop a game that could do the same thing. He discovered that the Achilles heel of Flash was the Flash Player Setting Manager. Nice piece of citizen journalism.
By creating some sort of overlay in a Javascript Game, users just think they’re trying to click a button as fast as possible. What they really do, is granting some voyeur access to their web cam. Check it out:
Kudos for Adobe, who fixed this problem by “framebusting the Setting Manager pages“. Supposedly, 99.9% of the users are protected from spies, pervs, or whatnot. The issue still exists for Java, SilverLight, DHTML games and applications though. For details on this I gladly refer to ha.ckers.org.
Written on September 29, 2008 – 5:39 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The guys (and girls?) at freshheads have just sent us their design for The Next Web Conference 2009 website. We like it but what do we know about design, right? Maybe YOU have some ideas about how this looks and how you could improve it?
Well, here is your chance! Download the PSD file and edit all you want. All the layers are there and you can do what you want. Then upload your design to Flickr or send it to me and I will upload it to Flickr for you.
We can’t promise that we will use your ideas but if they are REALLY good we will happily steal whatever you show us. If we do, you will get full credit of course. Thanks in advance… ;-)
Download:
http://www.yousendit.com/download/bVlDYnU0QTZ0TWxMWEE9PQ
Design Preview (click for large version):
Written on June 26, 2008 – 12:33 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After six months of happy blogging and welcoming you and 3499 other RSS readers, we think it’s about time to professionalize the design of The Next Web Blog. We can’t do that alone though, as we need your opinion. To be exact: we need you to inspire us, as you’re the ones we’re blogging for.
That’s why we came up with this challenge: we would like to ask you to use our logo to create something that will inspire us while designing the new lay-out. There are virtually no limits, as long as the file extension is .jpg, .png or .gif. It doesn’t even have to be static. It can be a drawing, wallpaper, or icon set.
The designer who manages to take our breath away - or something close to it - will receive the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard. Yes, you read that right. Adobe is a really generous company and we’re delighted that they wanted to sponsor this competition. So thanks to these guys, the winner will receive programs like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat 9 Professional, and more.
Put your Next Web Blog creation on Flickr or another image hosting service and link to it in the comments of this post. Take your time, as the design competition is closing on August 1st 2008.
The jury consist of The Next Web Blog co-founder Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Adobe Marketing Project Manager Bert Hagendoorn, and undersigned. Our judgments will be based on originality - we want an out-of-the-box spirit - and the link with the actual subject of our blog: European start-up news and the future of the web.
We will send the winning design to our web designers, who will give it a prominent spot on their mood boards. So you can actually influence the new lay-out of your source for European tech news.
Written on May 19, 2008 – 10:17 am
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Hank Williams started a little shit storm in the hacking community recently claiming death to the content distribution networks with the launch of Flash Player 10.
It led to an interesting discussion among hackers and forced Adobe out of bed to respond. See live video is hot right now, but so are those bandwidth charges which are very limiting on profits.
Flash Player 10 coupled with Flash Media Server will be offering new features which will essentially allow some form of p2p streaming capability (though the details have not yet been released), thus possibly enabling live p2p streaming and according to Adobe “applications like chat and games are great examples of likely uses of this technology”.
Why pay charges if you can avoid them? RED5 an open source alternative to the 1K USD Flash Media Server, may well be interested in reverse engineering this new functionality, as will no doubt the 8 hackers at Justin.tv who claim to be one of the largest players in the live video biz and who have developed their own Python Media Server - “a custom built live streaming video server cluster. The network can support thousands of live broadcasts and over 100,000 simultaneous viewers and is 100% owned and operated by Justin.tv”.
Plus Justin.tv are currently leading the way in reducing bandwidth charges. “For most in the industry, live video streaming tends to be expensive - with costs ranging between 15-30 cents per user hour of live streamed video. The Justin.tv video network streams live video at 1/4 cent per user hour - by far the most cost effective live streaming ever built.”
So it looks like Flash Player 10 might help the ‘cutting edge providers’ of live streaming services to reduce those high bandwidth charges even further and maintain an edge over the mighty Yahoo who probably don’t care quite so much about bandwidth as those who actually need profits in order to survive this battle.
Written on May 3, 2008 – 11:24 am
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
It’s difficult for us developers, with tags such as ‘OCD’, ‘aspergers’ and ‘nerds’ to detach the word Macromedia away from Flash. But Flash has been playing Frogger for many years. Formally known as Splash, it has been jumping logs for a long time and with each new release and throughout its management changes, this single star has jumped itself into becoming one of the most dominant and integral players on the Internet today.
With each jump there has been thousands of dedicated and obsessive devotees simultaneously having ejaculations (metaphorically speaking) as the gravity settles to the new possibilities that the latest incarnation makes possible. These would not be apparent to a ‘normal’ person, for only those with the above mentioned tags have the capacity to really grasp the essence of the bifurcation immediately.
Flash has explored every area of the landscape, looking for acceptance, adoption and for an audience that truly appreciates their quests. I say quests because the team behind this baby are ruthlessly exploring new worlds, as and when they find a new feeding ground, they evolve with the terrain leaving little resemblance of their previous incarnation intact. This is one team that is highly interested in natural selection and breeding with aliens!
It is of little surprise that when Adobe Flash announces that they will now explore the mobile market further (code name: Open Screen Project) that when the fruits of this initiative are ripe, we will no doubt have strange new gadgets not even predicted by Philip K Dick, that we will use to navigate the new world around us, with unprecedented access to information and communication, but in an international timezone that has no on/off switch.
So what is it that Adobe’s crystal ball is saying this time about the future. Here are some predictions of scenarios that come to mind when I dare let my imagination go wild with the inevitable consequences of the Open Screen Project.
(more…)
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…)
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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. (
