Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 12, 2008 – 4:14 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Youthwatching ‘09 is a Belgian conference about youth culture. Luckily, they realize that such a conference is a pure fake when they’re no youngsters around. Thus they’ve invited young lads and girls to the give a short presentation about their projects and dreams.
Turns out that some guys have really noble goals in mind. Toon and Bert hate the taboo on masturbating girls. To combat this general perception, they’ve started an online initiative called WeMasturbate. With pages on MySpace and Netlog plus stickers, t-shirts, and buttons in the off line world they gain attention for their cause:
Boys masturbate and can talk and show off about it. But when it comes to girls and masturbation, ieeeuw.
The guys believe in positive discrimination, so only girls are allowed to befriend them. So far, 14332 Netlog chicks have joined their cause. Netlog founder Lorenz Bogaert also gave a presentation during Youthwatching and he advised Toon and Bert to expand their business to Turkey, where in a recent research 42 percent of the youngsters acknowledged they had stripped in front of a webcam.
I felt pretty dull when I had to give my talk about problogging…
I hope you like that post!
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Written on November 30, 2008 – 4:43 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
On November 18th, Dutch blogger Nathalie Lubbe Bakker wrote a controversial post. She worked in a bar in New York and was rather surprised to see the Belgian minister of Defense Pieter De Crem stumbling in. According to her, he was absolutely drunk. One of De Crem’s men told Lubbe Bakker the reason to come to New York: he had nothing better to in Brussels and had never seen the Big Apple.
Of course this post was a hit in the Belgian blogosphere - with quite harsh results for Lubbe Bakker. A week later she was fired. Then the mainstream media picked up the story - as they had prove something had happened in that bar. 311 people commented on the post in which she questions the freedom in speech in 2008. Even some major tech blogs, including TechCrunch, covered the incident.
Still, the minister isn’t too pleased and made a remarkable statement about blogs (probably out of anger). He told a journalist the Belgian house of representatives that blogging is “a dangerous phenomenon”. According to the minister, everybody can throw with mud and make random accusations. He says that the targeted person has no possibility of defending himself.
Yes, that darn blogosphere can be scary. But for heaven’s sake, hire a PR person who knows how to deal with it. Don’t start a fight, since you’ll never win it. Don’t focus on destruction mr. De Crem. Instead, try to profit from the endless source of opinions. You want to know what ordinary civilians think about your country? Read some blogs.
The campaign by Adhese might teach De Crem a lesson. Blogger Stefan asks everybody to showcase a Flash badge on their blog (pictured right). ‘Cause yes, bloggers are pretty damn dangerous - especially when they rally together. Cheers Mr. De Crem!
Hat tip: Polle de Maagt
Written on October 30, 2008 – 2:24 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When I received an email from Alard Weisscher, saying he’s working on a lifestream project, my first reaction was something like: “not another one”. And yes, when I browsed storytlr and clicked on one of the showcased lifestreams - it looked rather standard. Well, just the lifestream bit, because the rest of the site looked rather smashing (see picture).
So much for the standard lifestream part. Apart from Storytlr’s basic lifestream service, they also offer a “story” feature. This is a cool and different visual approach to lifestreams. Imagine you go on a hiking trip, somewhere in the United Kingdom. You tweet, you make photos, and you film. Nice to combine that in a book-like concept, right? This is what Belgian-based storytlr makes of it:
Now all they need is a partnership with Blurb and the lifestream-book circle will be complete.
Written on July 8, 2008 – 12:12 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Belgian artist Jan Leenders is one of those artists who uses new technology to create an exciting art project. He started @twit2art, an idea that revolves around people sending him messages, which he turns into a 18 x 12 cm art piece. Like this one:
That’s an interesting idea, but it’s getting more exciting - as Leenders rewards the people who reacted the fastest, have to pay less. He writes:
“If you’re fast, it’s cheap. The first twit (thus the first painting) costs € 1. The second € 2, the third € 3 and so on. The price includes everything. Material, packaging, shipping, taxes. Everything.
So the people who made Twitter big - the ones who have the guts and the curiosity to try new things - are the ones who have the opportunity to buy a real Leenders for an affordable price. The piece featured in this article for example, was sold for 11 euros. And this one for only 1 euro.
Eventually, Leenders will make some money out of the project. Making him, says Paul Bradshaw, a true punk capitalist. More and more D.I.Y entrepreneurs find new and unconventional ways of making money, some even by making beautiful things.
Here’s my Twit2art. Update: Leenders has sent me a confirmation, it will cost me 45 euros.
Written on July 2, 2008 – 11:31 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
About a month ago I reported that Belgian newspaper publisher Copiepresse demanded that Google should pay €49 million to compensate for the damage listings in Google News had caused them. A weird case, and not just because Copiepresse can easily prevent these listings. What struck me the most was the old-fashioned attitude of the Belgian media company. Call me naive, but I expected the executives of traditional media companies to be visionary enough to realize Google News brings them nothing but traffic. Was I shocked back then, now I’m really amazed by the next step of Copiepresse: they’re suing the EU’s news aggregator NewsExplorer.
This aggregation service from the European Commission wants to help visitors to grasp cultural differences among the EU by showing articles from all countries concerning the same matter. This unique piece of technology is a bit too modern for the Copiepresse conservatives, who prefer officials that use scissors and scrap books to collect the latest European news - behind closed doors. Just imagine helping out citizens by publicly organizing news.
Forgive me my cynicism and lack of respect for traditional business models. It’s just plain frustrating to see a large media company trying to destroy an emerging world of news and information. Copiepresse fails to see threats to their business models as challenges and tries to keep us in a bygone age of information.
There are only two positive notes here: the court has tossed out the case, based on jurisdictional grounds (so there’s hope for Google too), and what goes around, comes around. A company that only sees threats in the digital revolution, will find itself dismantled in a few deccenia. The only thing that bothers me about that, is the waste of journalistic talent.
Written on April 10, 2008 – 8:30 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.
This time we’re interviewing Sam Desimpel, founder of IntroNiche.com. That’s a Belgium-based start-up which helps webmasters and bloggers to find a match for cross-promotion. I absolutely dig this idea, since cross-promoting is a perfect way to reach your target audience…, without spending any money! It reminds me of the good old days in high school, when I owned a humor site and asked other humor webmasters to exchange links. Well, I’ve grown up, and so has the Internet. Read the interview to get to know how it look likes according to Desimpel.
How did you come up with the idea of IntroNiche?
“I used to work at eBay. I had to find low budget and credible ways for eBay to attract clients in various collectibles niches such as stamps, coins, toys, comics and so on. Indeed, eBay also doesn’t like to spend on marketing unless it has to.
The solution was usually a cross-promotion deal between eBay and a local collectibles tradefair and magazine. eBay would eg. promote the tradefair in it’s newsletter and the tradefair would give eBay visibility and a free stand on the fair. They were good win-win deals and I loved doing them.
Finding these deals however took a lot of time. So I wanted to make cross-promotion easier by creating a classifieds marketplace for cross-promotion. IntroNiche’s only purpose is to allow easier cross-promotion for freelancers and small companies.” (more…)
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