Written on October 10, 2008 – 12:14 pm
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
The Next Web talks with Tim Bray at Future of Web Apps, London. Tim gives us some tips for the tough times ahead. He knows that even if he’s wrong, we should listen.
Mobile post sent by davidpetherick using Utterli. 
Replies. mp3
I hope you like that post!
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.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on July 28, 2008 – 10:36 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
I was kicking off my daily late-night feed reading as usual, by firing up Netvibes and opening up a bunch of blogs in new tabs, when a computer voice started reading a post from ReadWriteWeb out loud. Besides scaring the hell out of me, it took a while before I realized that the audio snippet actually came from this post on Center Networks and not RWW.
The article teaches us that Swiss-based Dixero has just raised 1,5 million euros for their feed-to-audio conversion technology, bringing their total funding to 3 million euros. Allen Stern from CN embedded a conversion as an example, which started playing automatically. So my first advice for the company if they want to put their fresh funding to good use: loose the autoplay feature, and loose it fast. Having said that, let’s take a look at what Dixero does.
Based in Zürich, Switzerland, Dixero enables you to aggregate your favorite RSS feeds into channels and ‘vocalize’ them, so you can actually listen to blog posts while you’re busy doing other stuff, or download them as podcasts for when you’re on the road (it works on both computers as mobile devices). There’s also some pre-defined channels users can tune into, e.g. the Technology Channel.
Dixero lets you choos
e between different voices (one male, two female) and lets you categorize blogs into multiple channels. There’s of course also a social component, which lets you share audio clips with your friends easily.
The current voices sound a bit creepy to me, much like HAL 9000 from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (”Would you like to play a game of chess?“), and I know it’s a service that I won’t be using myself because I don’t see any added value that would improve my blog consuming experience in any way. But the voices are being worked on, according to the company, and who knows if I’m missing something here that you find incredibly useful for you. If that’s the case, be my guest in the comments and explain why you dig Dixero.
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.
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
Twitter
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. (
