Written on 19th December 2008
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Google have just released a desktop gadget which lets you search and open all your Google documents from your desktop. You are able to drag and drop documents into the gadget and have them automatically uploaded to your Google docs account. What’s even more awesome is that you can bulk upload!
For the developer in you, the gadget has been open sourced in the hope that it will inspire developers to learn how to integrate desktop applications with Google Docs using the Google Documents List Data API.
The Gadget works will Google Apps accounts however unfortunately the gadget will only work with Linux and Windows versions of Google Desktop Gadgets. :(
What is the maximum period for a beta stage? Can you stay in beta forever if you want to? What are the downsides and the benefits for an eternal beta stage?
These questions arose when my mother saw me using Gmail. After explaining to her that this is like an online version of Outlook she got quite interested. So she could have her email at home as well as in the office? Without downgrading on features? That is something she must have! Up and until then she actually consulted her inbox through a free webmail service from her provider, but whenever she sent a reply she printed out a copy… she held these in a map called “webmail sent items”, because those mails sent didn’t reappear in her outbox at home.
A long, but funny, introduction for getting my mother into web2.0! But it seemed I had underestimated her. While I was still having fun about her printouts, my smile quickly disappeared when she nailed it with the following question:
When is this coming out of beta stage?
I was stunned, I didn’t know. And she was right on the money! When I told her I have been using this for about four years (2004), the tables had turned. She thought it was funny how I could use Gmail for personal and business use while Google had no reason to ensure my mailing was in safe hands. No obligations whatsoever.
Along with the IMAP function and Google Docs introduction a lot of users started using GMAIL as their professional inbox. Able to send out mails from their name@company.com address, it made their lifes much easier. But email is so important to companies nowadays that they back it up on their own servers. Not with Gmail though, it is stored safely on the Google-servers…
You think?
After reading the Terms of Service of Gmail, I noticed that they could never, under any circumstances, be held responsible for data loss… They can even change their whole service without having to notify you. For example, their “unlimited” storage that they always used as an eyecatcher. They are allowed to set a fixed upper limit at any time, whenever they feel like doing so.
In the end I believe Gmail is a great service, that really changed the way email worked for me. Fact is that there is a real threat for companies, small or big, who already started using Google’s mail. Or Docs and Calendar for that matter!
So, again, how long can you keep something in beta stage?
One of the genres in Internet virals I dig is the artsy scene. People painting the Mona Lisa in MS Paint, life-like airbrush pics of celebs on DeviantArt, or a billion-dollar company publishing a video about spreadsheet art. As you might have guessed by the headline, I’d like to share the latter with you.
Google asked Jason, Ethan, Anna, and Gargiulov to work together simultaneously on a single Google Docs spreadsheet. Each cell in the 100 row x 186 col spreadsheet was filled using 18 different colors. The entire process was captured in time-lapse.
When stating that Google gets “funky”, I refer to the process of promoting its products with fun videos. Not to the incredible dull holiday season picture the four Google adorers created. Anyway, if you’re interested in how they did it, here’s some behind the scenes action.
Every once in a while 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 Shafqat from NewsCred. He works from Geneva, Switzerland. Together with his Sweden-based business partner Iraj, he founded a digital newspaper that aggregates hundreds of news sources. The Newscred community votes on the crediblity of articles, authors and news sources. Iraj and Shafqat then apply their CredRank algorithms to ensure you only get the highest quality news from desired news sources. The quality is even higher than that from Google News or Yahoo News, the Swiss/Swedish company claims. I guess you can never aim high enough.
How did you come up with the idea of NewsCred?
“The idea for NewsCred originated during many late-night, coffee-fueled debates over the future of newspapers and traditional media between my cofounder (Iraj) and myself. It was the summer of 2007, and we spent a lot of time in cafes and bars on the banks of Lake Geneva brainstorming our crazy ideas. It was clear to us that the media industry was broken, and it seemed like the entire news space was one of the few traditions that wasn’t yet disrupted by the latest web technologies. On top of that, every single person we spoke to told us that they were getting fed up of news that was biased or inaccurate or just not transparent. It seemed like a big enough problem to tackle, so we decided to give it a go!” (more…)
Written on 19th December 2008
6 COMMENTS 
Written on 12th December 2008
These questions arose when my mother saw me using Gmail. After explaining to her that this is like an online version of Outlook she got quite interested. So she could have her email at home as well as in the office? Without downgrading on features? That is something she must have! Up and until then she actually consulted her inbox through a free webmail service from her provider, but whenever she sent a reply she printed out a copy… she held these in a map called “webmail sent items”, because those mails sent didn’t reappear in her outbox at home.
Written on 26th November 2008
“The idea for NewsCred originated during many late-night, coffee-fueled debates over the future of newspapers and traditional media between my cofounder (Iraj) and myself. It was the summer of 2007, and we spent a lot of time in cafes and bars on the banks of Lake Geneva brainstorming our crazy ideas. It was clear to us that the media industry was broken, and it seemed like the entire news space was one of the few traditions that wasn’t yet disrupted by the latest web technologies. On top of that, every single person we spoke to told us that they were getting fed up of news that was biased or inaccurate or just not transparent. It seemed like a big enough problem to tackle, so we decided to give it a go!” 
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 
