Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 5th February 2009
2 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
It’s Christmas all over again for Google fans this week with offline Gmail access, the introduction of Latitude and now with offline Calendar access (albeit only for Google Apps users).
Google Apps users will notice an “Offline (beta)” link in the top right corner of their Google Calendar. Clicking the link will request that you confirm you would like offline access to your Google Calendar and if you’ve got Google Gears installed this set up and sync should be a breeze.
Unfortunately this is the point at which you may realise why this is very much in “beta”, Offline Google Calendar is “read only” which means no editing or adding events when offline which is both a tease and highly frustrating to say the least.
Let’s hope Google steps up a few ‘gears’ with development of this as soon as possible.
Read More:
Google Calendar FAQ’s, LifeHacker,
Written on 17th November 2008
6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
What a week. I’ve visited over twenty companies and a conference in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. What a blast. Problem is though that I’ll have to find a way to process all the information and inspiration. One of my fellow travelers, Bart Lapers from Brussels, told me how he would do this. “I just flip through my tweets and it all comes back to me”. Hm, what a smart way to use Twitter as a personal archive. Tijs Vrolix, also Belgian, had the same idea a few months ago. That’s why he and 10to1 developed Twistory, a mash-up that imports your tweets into your favorite calendar tool.
According to some of my sources, Vrolix is the Mr. 2.0 of Belgium. Well, judging him by his design and developing skills, they sure have a point.
Twistory launched in public beta a few days ago and of course I gave it a spin. Normally I use Google Calendar, so I figured it might be wise to import all those tweets in iCal. This is how it looks:
Every tweet is registered as an one minute occasion, so you’ll have to click on one to read it. Twistory won’t be useful for the (often self-proclaimed) mass tweeters, since the calendar will turn into one big mess.
So whenever you’ve had a chaotic week, month, or trip: use Twistory to grasp what happened to you.
Written on 21st May 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You know, forgetting birthdays is such an embarrassing phenomenon that I just can’t stop blogging about it. I’m a nice guy, really, and pretty social. But when you’re a friend of mine, I just tend to forget your birthday on the day itself. So I’m on this ongoing quest of finding THE perfect birthday reminder. I’ve tried Time Machiner, Skype, Plaxo, Hyves, Hallmark and have several yearly Google Calendar reminders. Yet there are days I still fail. I’m sure it’s not just me, so here we go again with yet another reminder service: Remime.com.
The three guys who have developed Remime, experience the same problem as me: they suck at remembering dates. They live in different countries and have built the service by extensive usage of Skype. So what’s the result?
Remime asks you to add important dates, which they will store. You can then specify how you want to be reminded and when. Also, you can buy gifts (there’s your business model). Sounds simple, right? Well, it is. And simplicity is good. Just look at the success of Twitter. Yet I believe Remime is a bit too simple. I want more! What about SMS integration, syncing services with other online calendars and other ways to keep with those oh-so important dates?
Luckily, the team from Remime promises to include some of these functions. They might not realize it, but those new features will probably life-savers. Otherwise it’s just another reminder service which a desperate birthday-forgetting type like me will just skip.
Written on 16th January 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Pulse is now available for your Mac Address Book and takes care of all your syncing needs. The Plaxo service wants to stay an ‘useful social application that helps people stay connected’. In order to live up to that mission, integration with the Address Book was necessary, according to the press release: “Since most of our members are busy professionals, it’s not enough to enable communication just within the Pulse website; we need to bring Pulse – and the unified address book underlying it – to the communication tools, services, and devices that they use.”
Isn’t that against the trend of moving workspace from the desktop to the browser? We asked John McCrea, VP of Marketing. His answer: “We are working toward a vision of the ’social web’ in which the social graph is able to turbocharge any site, application, or device with users to take their local piece of the social graph with them wherever they go.”
So it’s basically a way of making sure that people have access to their contacts wherever they go. Until full wireless Internet coverage isn’t a dream anymore, this sounds like a plausible reason.
Yet I do think that this whole syncing thing also is a way to tempt people to move their workspace to online applications, such as Pulse. By giving people the feeling that their stuff ALSO remains on their computer, they’re willing to give the online application a try. So this won’t be the last integration tool we will hear of in the near future. What about Google Calendar syncing two-ways with iCal?
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