Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 17, 2008 – 10:34 pm
Zee, Internet Marketer, Design Connoisseur & Web App Devotee
The French competition regulator has ordered Apple to allow all French mobile phone carriers to sell the iPhone, as opposed to just Orange which is a subsidiary of France Telecom.
The competition regulator said Apple’s exclusive arrangement with Orange posed a “serious and immediate threat” to competition in the mobile telecommunications sector and increased costs for mobile phone users looking to change mobile phone carriers.
Bouygues Telecom SA, the third largest mobile operator in France, filed a complaint in September and today the Regulators have taken this action as a ‘protective measure’ while it continues its investigation.
Both SFR (the second-largest carrier in France) and Bouygues Telecom (the third largest) have (naturally) welcomed the decision and hope to begin selling the handsets soon.
via Business Week / photo credit
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Written on December 16, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Fruux, the free alternative to MobileMe, has been deemed too similar to Apple’s own MobileMe solution. The developers behind Fruux submitted their desktop App to Apple months ago to be featured in Apples’ Software Download Page. Yesterday they received this short but clear message:
Hi,
fruux’s feature-set is too similar to Apple’s MobileMe (http://www.me.com).
Regards,
Apple Downloads
Duh. That IS the whole point!
Fruux is similar to MobileMe except for one notable difference: it is free!
Fruux was planning on offering an iPhone version of its software too but is seriously reconsidering that now. If they can’t even get a link from Apple’s Downloads page they can be pretty sure they won’t be accepted in the iPhone store either. Why spend money, time and sleepless nights on a product you know won’t ever be officially accepted?
Apple thinks competition is good. Except when you are competing with Apple’s own products.
Written on September 27, 2008 – 5:12 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Quite a late report about who won the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition last night at Picnic, but anybody who has ever attended a web conference knows the valid reason for this. Vodafone Netherlands organized the Mobile Clicks competition to support Dutch mobile start-ups with €100k (and to get some good PR).
The last couple of months, 20 start-ups presented their ideas for a jury with acclaimed Dutch and Belgian mobile experts like Rudy de Waele and Yuri van Geest. I witnessed it all from close distance, as my friends Edial Dekker and Laura van der Vlies participated with MapTheGap. They want to create a tool that helps creative folks to easily store ideas - without them losing the context of time and place. It’s just an idea right now, development will probably start soon.
These were the other five nominees:
- Nulaz: interactive location based service that shows where your friends and interesting places (like restaurants and museums are).
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TipSpot: a social city guide with tips of friends and locals. Already active in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and the Hague.
- Mi-i: offers an extra TV experience by providing context-relevant social games.
-
Mobypicture: easy sharing of pictures on Flickr and co. Is hugely popular in the Dutch Twitter scene.
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Exphera: world-wide mobile broad band Internet access for a fixed price.
Yesterday was the day of the climax. The six finalists kicked off in the morning with presentations and the final judgment of the jury led to the show at 6pm. And a show it was. Vodafone Netherlands CEO Guy Laurence really knows how to pump up a crowd. He announced that the prize was split in three: 60k, 30k, and 10k. The winners are…. Nulaz (60k), TipSpot (30k), and MapTheGap (10k)! They were all ecstatic.
The jury picked Nulaz because of its great potential. With growth of 35,000 users in three months (from 25,000 to 60,000), this isn’t hard to understand. That the start-up also has corporate clients, paying customers, and a broad range of services also helped.
Despite these advantages, Nulaz does face ferocious competition, especially from operators who aren’t particularly fond of the service. These companies would rather offer a location based service themselves, especially now that they’re looking for alternative revenue sources. Therefore it’s actually quite ironic that Nulaz won this prize (only one member of the jury represented Vodafone), as there are no strings attached. But hey, if Vodafone acquires the service in a few months, they’ll have their investment back.
By the way, we have 75 invites for people interested in using Tipspot as a social guide in Holland’s largest cities. Get them here.
Written on September 7, 2008 – 11:31 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Organizing a competition on your blog is always mentioned as a good way to get your visitors love you more. When Problogger’s Darren Rowse writes a post about creating an active community, competitions won’t go unmentioned. But to organize one is a pain. You’ll have to make up all the procedures and logistics yourself. Not the kind of thing a busy blogger is waiting for. That didn’t go unnoticed by Crystalroot’s Savraj, Kalid, and Lee, who founded the service ContestMachine.
This Y Combinator backed start-up let’s you create a competition widget which you can easily place on your site. There’s your competition! You can specify the prize (of course), what users have to do (answer a question, poll, or just enter their name), customize the design, the deadline, and collect some user data for email news letters. Oh and do you want a random winner or pick the lucky one yourself? The service is free to try out when you organize two contests a month, and then charges $9 a month for ten contests or $90 a year for fifty contests.
It’s funny to see how a widget can make such a complicated thing as a competition really easy. I seriously expect this service to stir up the number of competitions on blogs. The little thing just arouses a feeling of “I have to organize a competition right now!”.
If you’re not a web publisher, you might wonder by this point what’s in it for you? Well, as I said before, you might see more competitions on your blog. But that’s just a wild guess. What’s more concrete, is ContestMachine’s live page. You can check all the running competitions in their network. So if you’re bored for a minute, start winning some prizes!
By the way, we’ll organize another competition this week with Adobe. Stay tuned to see the ContestMachine widget popping up.
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 24, 2008 – 3:30 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
The greatest threat to any successful startup is competition. The more successful you become, the more competition you will piss off, and each contender will bring with them a new strain of hassle.
I’m not talking simply about competitive products, no I’m actually referring to the many underhand tactics that will be employed by at least some of these so-called competition. So what are these threats and how to best deal with them?
The Murky World Of Business
The first port of call for underhand competitors will be to learn everything they can about you, looking for any weaknesses they can find. These typically involve ‘competitive intelligence’ techniques which is a fancy way of saying they employ private investigators who will even sniff through your garbage.
Competitive Intelligence
This typically takes many forms and practitioners are not afraid to stoop to low levels. Private investigators are generally extremely creative and efficient, not least cost effective, who have many contacts and techniques that they leverage to build a portrait around individuals within the company. They can get access (break in) to bank account details, tap phone lines, bug offices, cars, even homes, follow people, pose as reporters / employees (man on the inside) etc. to gain access to people and information that could be useful.
Utilization Of Competitive Intelligence
Depending upon the nature of the rewards, a campaign to ‘levy distress’ will be initiated with various arms but the same goal. The goal being to chop the legs off ‘metaphorically speaking of course’ the main targets.
Legal Assault
One of the most cherished methods is to create phony legal cases against the targets. They do not need to be serious, just a host of frivolous nonsense is sufficient. It is very cheap to send out threatening letters and tie targets up in court battles which can become exponentially destructive and costly to fend off. Typically they will be cases that are 99% twisted around so that the aggressors will be claiming the targets are actually distressing them.
Creating Havoc
Paying off disgruntled employees to cause hassle within the company, setting traps for the targets, reporting the targets (to officials and dependencies) for anything and everything they can. Disconnecting ties between targets and their networks (such as distributors, retailers, suppliers etc.) and any other psychological torture they can muster.
Intellectual Property Theft
There is nothing like learning from others mistakes, all services, products etc. will be reversed engineered to learn secrets from the targets, then the cream will be repackaged into similar offerings, where the ‘competition’ use the building blocks that have been successful along with their greater financial muster to encroach upon the targets market. Patents and copyright laws are of very little significance for young companies who have not the experience, nor resources to leverage the law to their favor. Further, the rogues will be carefully protected from legal assault themselves as they use ‘front’ (disposable) companies for their full on attacks.
David Vs Goliath
Typically the targets ‘upstarts’ that enjoyed early success will be naive to the murky world of ‘business’ where cannibals and dinosaurs await the fresh bloods arrival for their feasts. In order to survive, here are some practical tips:
- Remain focused on the ‘real problems’ within the business.
- Continue to innovate and move the market.
- Learn the tricks of Goliath’s trade, the more you know about him and his tactics the better.
- Be very careful who you trust, especially when it comes to these ‘pillars of society’.
- Learn how to bat!
Batting
If you do find yourself in the middle of a ‘war of terror’ then the quicker you learn how to fight, obviously the better. Understand that the world of business is much like nature, it is not personal and brutal. Speed, intelligence, posture, bravery and trickery are the necessary assets to be packed in your survival kits.
Good luck out there! You will need it…
Written on May 23, 2008 – 4:27 pm
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
Visibility is a major thing for start-ups, and one thing to be able to get that is to pitch your company in an event or for an award. Winning an award means media coverage, some times real money and access to investors. There are several competitions in which a start-up can submit its business. Strangely enough, there is no website which lists them all in an overview.., so I had to do some research on the web in order to come up with the following suggestions.
I want to create a complete list of awards here. So if you know of any other awards, please comment on this post so I can add it to the list.
Upcoming competitions
- Accenture Innovation Awards - Dutch companies in media, entertainment or communication that started in the last 3 years can participate.
- The Strands awards - competition for early stage international startups in the area of recommendation technologies with a very appealing price of $100.000.
- CNET Networks UK Business Technology - this competition has some 17 prestigious awards for UK business technology innovators. Final deadline to submit applications is May 31, 2008, but maybe it is enough to become the IT Community Hero of the Year.
- The Startup Awards major competition for UK start-ups in October 2008.
- Vodafone Mobile Clicks for mobile start-up companies to develop new, innovative, creative and technically viable mobile internet products and/or services. Date to be submitted June 25, 2008. Awards during Picnic in October 2008, Amsterdam. Awards of Euro 100,000.
- Google Android Competition, with total monies available of USD 10,000,000.
- Web Marketing Web Awards, in 96 categories, including best websites, to be submitted till June 15, 2008.
- Startup Awards in the UK, including the Online Startup of the Year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Innovative Business of the Year. Deadline entry 4 th July 2008.
- London Technology Fund Competition, for potentially high growth seed, start-up early stage technology companies, based in London. Price from 100,000 till 1M Pounds sterling. Deadline 30th June, 2008.
- DEMO GOD AWARDS and the DEMO People’s Choice awards.
Completed competitions
Make sure you set your agenda for next year awards.
- Blackberry Women in Technology awards - Female internet hero Professor Lizbeth Goodman of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute was named the BlackBerry outstanding woman in technology, while Beatriz Alonso Martinez of Avid Technology Europe Ltd was awarded the ‘Best use of technology within the multimedia industry by a woman’.
- The First Women Awards - UK competition created to acknowledge women who are pioneers in business. Female internet hero Fru Hazlitt, former Managing director, Yahoo UK and now CEO of GCap Media, was one of the price winners in the past.
- 2008 Fast Growth Business Awards - Margeret Manning, CEO of award winning digital communications agency, Reading Room won the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008.
- Broos van Erp Price, A Dutch ICT competition with an award of euro 50.000.
- UK Internet Industry Awards
- The Webby Awards, recognizing outstanding Websites in 65+ categories!! Ans also a Webperson of the Year. The Oscars of the Internet.
- Startup Camp, arranged through Speed Geeking sessions during the Camps in SF, London, with an impressive attendee list.
- Plugg Start-up of the Year Award, with the European Focus on web 2.0
- Innovation and Technology awards for Swedish startups.
Tech conference competitions
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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. (
