Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 20, 2008 – 11:34 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Organizer Peter Robinett with Android
On January 8, Amsterdam will welcome a bunch of Android geeks from all over Europe. The organizers - who are also responsible for the Dutch MobileMonday and the iPhone DevCamp- want to offer the attendees the possibility to get a lot of hands-on experience with both the phone and the Android platform:
Google and Android specialists will be attending as well as developers of popular Android apps. Also we will have many APIs (some exclusively at this event!) available to use. Some API builders will be there to support you in creating your Android application
A quick Google Search finds that Bangalore and Dallas have also hosted a DevCamp for the platform that many see as the future for mobile. Now it’s time for us, Europeans, to learn how to master the fine art of developing Android apps. Sign up here.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on October 16, 2008 – 3:48 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Erick Schonfeld wrote an excellent review about the Android G1 yesterday, saying that it couldn’t compete with the iPhone when it comes to the user interface. But he did mention a figure that isn’t correct, as he picked up the rumor from Motley Fool that 1.5 million were pre-sold. Of course, several hundred tech blogs picked this up.
One of them lived up to his journalistic duty, Marin Perez from InformationWeek. He contacted the mathematician behind the 1.5 million calculation:
I was curious as to how he got these figures and he gave me his rationale.
He cited a Cens.com article that said, “according to industry insiders, T-Mobile is planning to order a total of between 1.5 million and 2 million units of G1 with HTC in the near future, including 400,000 to 500,000 to be sold in the fourth quarter of this year.”
Then, Bylund cited T-Mobile selling out of pre-order units, and tripling the number of phones initially available. He then tripled the 500,000 number to get 1.5 million.
I’m glad he did, as almost every other tech blogger just hit copy/paste. Don’t believe everything you read on TechCrunch, Techmeme, or - for that matter - this blog. Because yeah, I’d have probably copied the 1.5 million figure as well.
So let’s all learn from Perez; check everything. Perez:
“This story just didn’t seem right to me, no matter how many times it went through the tech echo chamber.”
Point taken!
Written on October 16, 2008 – 4:38 am
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
It’s interesting to see that so much attention is going to the iTunes Application store, don’t you think? When ‘experts’ stated that applications, email and games moved to the web, I never imagined something like the Itunes Applications Store to happen with such impact. With Android coming up, we can only expect more potential for application designers, good news! Granted, we discussed a number of amazing applications for the Iphone in the last few weeks but haven’t really touched upon handheld-ready websites here. Reason for that is that the browsing experience on these new handhelds are SO good – We never had the urge to find ‘n list optimized websites for the shiny gadget. When I got my device, I started looking for links to good websites but couldn’t find that much, actually they are hard to find. Here are some applications for you to discover new websites on your shiny gadget, and please while you are at it, leave your favorite mobile website in the comments! (more…)
Written on September 12, 2008 – 12:55 pm
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is a guest post by Dutch New Media student Edial Dekker
In 1986 Richard Stallman wrote his famous manifesto ‘The Free Software Definition’. It was later published by the Free Software Foundation. The text defines free software - free as in the ‘free as in freedom’ sense. The canonical lines of the text became the cornerstones of the GNU Project (later Linux). Today, the manifesto has been published in 39 languages. Open source isn’t new, it became viable when the first computer-like machine came down on earth.
Stallman wrote an impressive politically charged artwork of propositions and highly influential ideas about how free software should and could look like. Today, open source is, maybe more than ever, used as a very powerful political tool. Open-source has become a mean to become a serious competitor of large corporations like Microsoft, Apple and other giants. Led by Google and Mozilla, open source applications are a serious force to be reckoned with.
Chrome is a recent example of Google trying to make sure the competitors do not grow to large and competition is still on. Stallman formulated it this way:
‘The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies—such as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.’
Obviously, getting a large piece of pie, or the whole pie for that matter, gives you a lot of advantages when you try to control other businesses. And even when you are not making enough money to keep your head up, going open source is a good way to strike back. No wonder Yahoo was celebrated for going opening up her search platform (BOSS), and no wonder Reddit is back on track and with many cool offspring’s every day.
Open source has become THE tool to fight the giants that can otherwise be very difficult to challenge. While the popularity of open source applications is growing by the minute, large corporations, who are trying to protect their monopolization, are losing ground every day. Google uses Chrome and Android to achieve this.
When will there be a serious open source search engine that will challenge Google?
Written on August 29, 2008 – 1:10 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Friday Flashbacks is a new article series we’re going to try and establish here on The Next Web blog, in which we look back at what happened in this week one year ago. The aim is to get some insight in what had us - “us” being tech bloggers in general - buzzing last year, and if all that noise was worth it or not. (Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts on this in the comments.)
So where does last year’s buzz stand now?
August 26, 2007 - AllOfMp3, the infamous Russian MP3 retail site was rumored to make a comeback after being shut down by the Russian government after inmense international pressure. That didn’t happen, at least not under that name. The RIAA dropped its lawsuit against the website, but didn’t pay any attention to the fact that the site simply relaunched under a different name, MP3Sparks. That clone remained online for a little while, but now has been closed as well. Its predecessor seems to be GoldenMP3.
August 27, 2007 - Free Voip enabler Jaxtr raised $10 million in a Series A round, and reached 1 million users. The company is still going strong with over 10 million users, and raised the same amount in a Series B round announced just last month. Jaxtr is now operational in most of the world.
August 28, 2007 - Rumors about a ‘Gphone’ or ‘Google Phone’ were swirling, and some even ushered talk about a Google-powered OS. Back then, it was referred to as ‘Gphone OS’, even if Google had already acquired Android in 2005 (without making a big fuzz about it). Meanwhile, the first Android-powered mobile phone, the HTC Dream or T-Mobile G1 is well on its way, and just yesterday Google announced Android Market, an upcoming app store for developers, similar to the iTunes App Store (but not entirely the same).
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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. (
