Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 22nd June 2009
1 COMMENT 
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Besides blogging at The Next Web we also enjoy organizing conferences. This year is the 2nd time we organize Kings of Code, a conference for web developers. Last years conference was super! With 320 developers it was sold out, people learned a lot and were enthusiastic about this geek gathering.
Kings of Code will take place next week (June 29-30) at the extraordinary Tuschinski theater in Amsterdam.
Here are 5 reasons why you should send your (more…)
Written on 8th June 2009
0 COMMENTS
Ralf Rottmann, Serial Mobile Entrepreneur, Apple Addict
Planning to “build your own search engine”? Help might come from Microsoft’s Bing API, a much enhanced version of the Live Search API available at the Bing Developer Center.
Taken from a pre-Bing-launch blog post, this is what the Bing API delivers in a nutshell:
- Offers new interfaces: JSON, and XML over HTTP. The Live Search SOAP interface will also be maintained.
- Parsing out non-web results that had been shoehorned into a one-size-fits-all response structure, has been an issue with the Live Search API. Bing API results are strongly typed and offer access to seven different types of results (web, news, images, phonebook, spell-checker, related queries, and Encarta instant answer).
- The Terms of Use no longer contain any pre-set usage quota. Microsoft requires that the API is used for user-facing applications only.
- The popular Live Search API feature to batch multiple SourceTypes into a single request is still available.
The ProgrammableWeb states
“Note that the terms of use have also been loosed to allow more flexible presentation options such as no restrictions on ordering and blending search results.” We found it worthwhile to double-check the Bing API Version 2.0 Terms of Use.
Here is what you must do:
- Display all the results you request.
- Display attribution to Bing in a manner compliant with Microsoft’s branding rules.
- Restrict the usage to less than 7 queries per second (QPS) per IP address. Exceeding this limit must be approved with the team at api_tou@microsoft.com.
- Interleaving data from any source other than the API with data from the API requires developers to clearly differentiate the respective sources.
What you cannot do:
- Use API results for search engine optimization (SEO). In particular, using the API for rank checks is explicitly prohibited.
- Display advertisements in positions other than the mainline and sidebar.
- Change the order of results the API returns from a SourceType other than the Web Source Type.
We would be tempted to state that “no restrictions on ordering and blending” is not exactly what it is.
U.S.-based publishers can apply for a beta program to include search ads, thus trying to monetize their search applications.
Interested in building your first Bing based search solution? Read the API documentation available at the Microsoft Developer Network and don’t forget to send us links to what you’ve built!
Written on 19th May 2009
1 COMMENT
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Another great cartoon from the people at XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language:
Written on 6th April 2009
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Peter Robinett, Web Programmer and Founder of Lunch 2.0.nl
As you know, the Next Web Conference is next week in Amsterdam and there are a lot of cool things going on. To complement the main days (April 16 & 17), there will be three smaller events on the first day: Mobile Dev Camp, Music & Bits and The Current Web. On April 15 Mobile Dev Camp is teaming up with Music & Bits to talk about the future of music and mobile in the heart of the city at Spaces (Herengracht 124-128). While each event will have its own track, we’re taking care to schedule things so you can combine the two events.
This Mobile Dev Camp will be a BarCamp-style unconference, which means that you the attendees create the schedule. Want to host a discussion, run a workshop, demo your product or even just sit in the corner and code – you’re welcome to do it all! As with all Mobile Dev Camps the main goal is to bring together developers and, ultimately, create new mobile applications. To give you some added encouragement, Forum Nokia is sponsoring the Hackathon and giving away some Nokia 5800 XpressMusic devices for the best Web Runtime widgets. Vodafone and The Next Web are also essential sponsors.
Next Web Conference ticket holders get priority signup to the event, though we will open once the signups to everybody soon. We only have a limited amount of space, so watch your inbox in the next few days for the signup and be sure to sign up quickly!
For more information please check out the Mobile Dev Camp site.
Written on 5th March 2009
11 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
The news from Spotify being hacked once again shows that your data is not always safe. Even if you trust the company that holds it for you.
Most users know that they should use a different password for each service they use. But from personal experience I know that we don’t always do what is right. Most people use the same password for all their services.
The danger of using the same password:
Most web developers know that you should never save a password in plain text format but sometimes that just isn’t possible. Take Twitter, or any company with a popular open API.
While Twitter (hopefully) uses a hash for their users passwords, it is the Twitter ecosystem (the hundreds of services that are build around Twitter) that you should be worried about. Since Twitter doesn’t have a safe authentication method for their API (like oAuth) these services need to know your username and password in plain text (ie unencrypted) to query the Twitter API.
If you are a passionate Twitter user you probably use a lot of external twitter apps. What you get is hundreds of places where your Twitter password is vulnerable to hacking attempts.
As it is so easy to build a service around Twitter, and many of them have been build in less then 1 day or week, you can imagine that security is not the highest priority for these Twitter projects.
A hacker could probably hack Twitter services more easily than Twitter itself. What he/she would find is your Twitter username and password and in some cases even your email address. Obviously the hacker could abuse your Twitter account, change your password, sell your credentials, stalk you followers and more.
Given that many people use the same username/password combination for many different online services these hackers could also try to log into other web services such as gmail, flickr, Google docs and Yahoo.
In short, it’s a good idea to have a separate password for services like Twitter and don’t use the same password for different services. Use a password generator such as 1Password if you want to make sure your passwords are secure.
An extra benefit to changing your Twitter password is that you automatically filter out the services you don’t use anymore.
Thanks to Robert Beekman for the input.
Written on 26th January 2009
3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday’s code.”
— Christopher Thompson.
But in case you got up anyway here is some Monday Morning Madness to get you distracted from the work you should REALLY do. Like introducing a few new bugs in that clean code you wrote last week. Enjoy!
“My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.”
“To err is human, but for a real disaster you need a computer.”
“It is twice as difficult to debug a program as to write it. Therefore, if you put all of your creativity and effort into writing the program, you are not smart enough to debug it.”
“The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back.”
“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”
— Martin Golding.
Written on 20th December 2008
7 COMMENTS
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.
Written on 7th October 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Almost everybody is eager for feedback. Although the positive remarks are pleasant, in the end it’s all about the criticism. Like Paul Arden, marketing visionary who died this year, once said: “Seek criticism, not praise”. I’m more than happy to hear that you like our news selection, but if there’s something bugging you every time you come here, I rather learn about that.
Israel-based Yossi Vardi start-up Kampyle will help you gather that so-wanted feedback. It’s a tool for webmasters and software developers to gather remarks easily, as Kampyle lowers the barriers for giving feedback. Partly by presenting a Feedback button on every page and also with their very user-friendly forms.
I had an interesting Skype chat with co-founder Eran Savir today. He told me they started developing the service in 2007, went in closed beta in March 2008, and are publicly available since July. That was just the website version, which has 3000 customers world wide. But Kampyle now broadens its target group by launching a new application today, aimed at software developers.
25 percent of software installs go wrong
Savir: “Of all the people who start a software installation, 25 percent decides to cancel it. That means every software developer misses 25 percent of its potential users for reasons unknown. They don’t even know where in the installation process the user pressed the cancel button”.
Where did it go wrong?
Kampyle aims to give more info about these unsatisfied users. Therefor they developed a tool that leads people who’ve just pressed cancel to a feedback page. You can see it for yourself at Mailinfo.com, an email tracking tool that has been testing the Kampyle tool for a while. “About 5 percent of the people who canceled the installation posted feedback”.
Although this doesn’t seem much at first hand, it’s better than nothing. Thanks to the clear and well-designed admin panels of Kampyle, you can easily spot certain trends in feedback. What’s the most problematic place? What’s the most reported feedback on that page? Painful places show up pretty fast (Click for a larger version).
Stay personal
The Kampyle dashboard also contains the option to email all the feedback submitters back by using a email client with a BCC field. If I were you though, I’d send a direct message. Why would you screw it up in the end with a not so personal email if you’ve taken all the trouble to fix a problem?
Let’s start using the web version
Although Savir showed me around in the program, I can only write a good review when I’ve tested Kampyle on you, dear reader. So consider this to be a news post about their new software application and expect a extensive review of the Kampyle web tool later. You can register for the software version here.
Written on 5th October 2008
5 COMMENTS
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Following on from Patrick’s wish for a specific tool to edit the theme of Wordpress blogs, I want to introduce a company that I would love to use and have been drooling over but can’t because it is PC only and I am strictly a Mac man. However, they do solve a very real problem that I am constantly grappling with, they make money, and they could make a ton more if they designed a Wordpress plug in that solved Patrick’s problem and pain.
To edit a website’s design is currently a real hassle, as a developer you have to constantly fath about in a sort of trial and error mode, adjusting one color or parameter at a time. Of course once you change one, that changes everything so you often end up going around in circles for hours until you no longer know whether you’re coming or going (in my case it’s mostly the latter).
Styling is a very time consuming task which generally causes many arguments and frustrations between developers as they try to attain a unique, fresh and interesting look for their projects. With a product like Stylizer this pain is alleviated and the cream works in minutes. One can control the styles in a live fashion seeing how they change the overall look while simply turning knobs and watching the changes take place before your eyes.
As a nuts and bolts developer I personally struggle tremendously with creating a fresh clean look for my own projects. Only after attempting to create graphics yourself do you really gain respect for graphic designers. Earlier in my design carrier I have been constantly disappointed with graphic designers thinking they overcharge, are slow, produce substandard work, etc. In many cases it is often true and one area where I struggled to find a outstanding professional artist. Though I did eventually it is clear to me they are few and far between.
What is now also clear to me is how frustrating and difficult this task really is, I am certainly in the market and will pay good money for an elegant solution to this personal pain, hint, hint, Stylizer Mac version please!!! It is also a little odd that there is not a Mac version of this software (unless there is by someone else and I dont know of it?) given all graphic designers I have ever worked with only ever used Macs.
So if your in the same boat, struggling with creating a shit hot look and feel for your own sites and you use PCs, give Stylizer a shot and let me know if this software is really as good as it looks! Do also do let me know if there something out there similar for the hardened Mac users.
P.S. This article was written by a human not a machine and following on from last weeks huge outcry about the automatic article generating software, we at The Next Web have pledged never to use such software, but the question remains! are the top blogs actually using it? As many sources I have spoken to still think they are :).
Written on 7th February 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Gen Kanai
This year, LIFT will also organize an Asian edition of the conference. With the session ‘A Glimpse in Asia’, they wanted to warm up the current visitors for LIFT Asia-style. Gen Kanai, a business developer for Mozilla Asia and director of marketing and partner relations for Mozilla Japan, offered an overview of open source in Asia. According to Kanai, there’s a lot to win on the field of open source developing in Asia. He summed up the barriers for open source programmers in Asia:
- Asians have a different style of communicating. They’re not comfortable with the direct way Western people confront each other. According to Kanai, Asians ‘might be intimidated’ when working with people from the West.
- Open Source defacto language is English, so the hurdle for non-native speakers is higher. Also Asian people tend to create islands of groups, such as Mozillagumi.
- In the US and Europe, most programmers work on open source projects after their daytime jobs. Most Asians however, don’t have any free time. Kanai points out that most developers in India work for Western companies and can’t choose how much work they accept.
- Asian open source programmers need institutionalized support.
Despite all the barriers, Kanai urged the attendees to look beyond the stereotypes about Asia. “The continent has contributed to open source”, he said, “Yet we need to do more”. After this visionary speech he couldn’t resist the temptation of promoting Firefox: “Anybody who tells a friend about Firefox, helps the open source community. We can all affect the future of open source”. Next time keep the marketing talk to yourself Kanai, and the applause will be even louder.
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 off, the future of the Web. (More info 
