Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 1st July 2009
17 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Google has today added a number of updates to the way labels work in GMail.
The popular email app now lets you drag and drop your labels to see them act more like folders of sorts. They can be placed above your chat list and sit along side drafts, starred and the other core labels.
You can now also hide labels that you just generally don’t use. They’re not technically hidden of course, they’re simply placed in a “more” section, making them convenient to access when you might need them again.
You can edit labels in bulk in your settings panel too, but most excitingly (at least for me), you can now drag and drop messages into labels – making the app more desktop like than ever before.
The blog post announcing the update, highlights the fact that this will mean the end of one of Gmail’s first lab features – Right-Side Labels. Google say they always had aimed to make the most popular Gmail lab features an fully integrated part of gmail in the long term, and it appears that Right-Side Labels is the first to make the cut.
Disappointingly, I can’t see the new features enabled in Google Apps just yet. If anyone does, please do let us know.
Written on 15th June 2009
25 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
When we needed business cards for one of our start-ups a few years ago we decided to put only our names on the front and our email address on the back.
By reading the email address you would know the name of the company and the domain name.
We still use the same format for all the other start-ups we used since because it works so well and people seem to love it. The most common remark we get is “yeah, that is really all you need right? A name and an email address”
In 1997 there was an advertisement for Honda on the back page of (more…)
Written on 9th June 2009
12 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Do you ever get email from consultants, lawyers, and other ‘experts’ with disclaimers in their signatures? I do and seriously dislike them. The usually go something like this:
‘if you are not the intendent recipient of this message please delete it…’
What I’m reading between the lines:
‘I might be billing you 300 an hour but I have no idea which client of mine you are. I’m too stupid, lazy or ignorant to look who I’m emailing so you might be ‘Bart’ instead of ‘Boris’. Oh, and don’t worry, l will bill you both anyway’
I don’t think they intend to send me THAT message, but that is what I read. Am I paranoid? Am I overreacting? Maybe I am.
Do you use a disclaimer on your email? Do you mind them? Tell us why in the comments please.
Written on 18th May 2009
2 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
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Written on 14th May 2009
0 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
A few of my friends are still stuck at Hotmail. I know because at least one a month one of them unknowingly spams his or her AddressBook when their accounts get hacked. I don’t even warn them anymore because I find the whole issue just too embarrassing.
Sometimes I ask them why they don’t move. The usual answers are that they don’t see the benefit, are used to the interface but mostly it is because they have an email archive dating back years and all their addresses in there.
For that last issue Google has now released a very useful “Import everything into Gmail” feature. It will be available to new accounts and they will slowly roll it out to all existing users over the next couple of months. This is how it should work:
- Click the Settings link.
- Under the Accounts and Import tab, click the Import mail and contacts button.
- In the new window that opens, enter the email address of the account you’d like to import contacts from. Click Continue.
- Enter the password for your other email account and click Continue.
- Select all the checkboxes that apply:
- If you choose to import contacts, the information in your contacts list in your old account will be imported to your Contacts section in Gmail.
- If you select the Import mail checkbox, your existing messages in that account will be imported to your Gmail inbox.
- If you want, you can also select the Import new mail checkbox so that messages sent to your old account for the next 30 days will be imported to your Gmail account. These messages won’t appear in Gmail immediately once they’re sent to your other account, but should update within a day or two.
- Finally, you can automatically apply a label to your imported messages to indicate that those were sent to your other account.
- Click Start Import. The import will continue if you leave the Settings page or sign out of Gmail.
- Your contacts and/or messages will be imported. It may take 24-48 hours before you see your imported messages, so don’t worry if they’re not there as soon as you click OK. You can check the status of your import by clicking the Accounts and Imports tab on the Settings page. Once the import is complete, you’ll see a confirmation message at the top of your inbox.
If that doesn’t work the feature isn’t rolled out for your account yet. More information can be found at this “Importing contacts and mail” document at Gmail. Let us know if it worked out for you!
Written on 23rd April 2009
9 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Actress Salma Hayek has had her MobileMe account hacked and people are apparently accessing it at this very moment in time.
The login details were posted on anonymous forum site 4chan.org, responsible for some of the web’s biggest viral hits. The anonymous poster supposedly found it remarkably easy to access the account, posting the details on the site for the world to see.
Her email address is shayek@mac.com
Go to me.com, forgot password, type shayek@mac.com
Her birthday is Sept. 2
Answer to change password question is: frida
Celebrities, like most average folk, have email addresses with most popular web services and Hayek is no different. Nothing of real significance was uncovered but nevertheless, surprising how easy Salma AND Apple have made it to actually gain access.
Here are a few screenshots that have already been posted publicly.
(more…)
Written on 21st April 2009
3 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
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Written on 9th March 2009
13 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
We reviewed Topify just last week, and it has without question been the most useful Twitter tool I have come into the contact with.
To summarise..
You are able to receive full user profiles of every new twitter follower in your inbox, rather than being forced to visit their profile. If you should then decide to follow your new follower back, you can simply reply to that email. Finally, if you want to send or reply to a DM you can do also all via email.
My only real frustration was that I wasn’t able to tell via email whether I was already following the person who had just followed me. Aside from that, absolutely no complaints.
Ok ok, you just want the invites…first twenty people to click here gets them!
Written on 4th March 2009
10 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Blogger and Entrepreneur Ouriel Ohayon, previously of Techcrunch.fr, and Israeli developer Arik Fraimovichis are about to launch what I can only describe as the most useful Twitter app I am ever likely to use – it’s called Topify.
Yes, I said this just yesterday with a similar app called Twimailer which sent you full profiles of new followers via email , but Topify takes things to a completely different level. Let me explain…
How Does Topify Work?
Once you’re all signed up, Topify hands a unique email address over to you which you insert into the “settings” of your twitter account. Once you’ve done that, you are all set and you will now be able to do the following:
- Receive full profiles of new followers via email. The profile includes bio, location, follower counts, updates count, date they joined Twitter and their last update.
- Reply to Follow To follow back new followers simply hit reply and send! That is it. You’ll get a confirmation via email that you have started following them too. (One small request here would be to be made aware if I am already following the person.)
- Reply to DM’s via Email Quite possibly the sweetest icing on the cake, you can reply via email to Twitter direct messages. Again, you can receive confirmation your message has been sent.
Frankly, I am not only excited but extremely impressed with the work put into the app and the results. The app works smoothly and whilst I don’t often say this – I can’t recommend it highly enough.
One concern I had as I’m sure many others will have too…privacy. I addressed the concern over whether private DM’s would be viewable by the Topify team. Ohayon replied stating
“we would have to change the way we conceived the service. security and privacy are top priorities for us”
I believe him however frankly whether this service existed or not, I would never recommend sharing any private or intimate details via Twitter DM anyway.
The service is currently in private beta but should be opening within the next few days – so sign up here to get involved.
Written on 24th February 2009
11 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Gmail is having serious troubles and loads of people are complaining that Gmail is down. Just go to search.twitter.com and check out how fast this is spreading. While writing this short post 1033 2061 people have mentioned it on Twitter!
No email today, maybe we can get some real work done :)
Update: apparently this is a worldwide problem. Google has not responded yet.
Update: the IMAP functionality of Gmail does work
Read also our posts on “Imagine there is no Google” and “The Day Google Broke”
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 
