Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 12th May 2009
6 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Could it be that we pissed off someone somewhere recently on this blog? It certainly seems so.
In the last 2 days Zee’s email accounts and my Twitter account have been hacked. Zee is still working on fixing his stuff.
I was able to change my Twitter password pretty fast and take back control over the account. Unfortunately the hackers haven’t given up. This is what Twitter told me this morning:
Looks like your account was compromised and then suspended. I show multiple login attempts.
After that I received a new password (64 character hexadecimal) which won’t be easy to guess. But you can imagine my surprise when I logged into Twitter yesterday evening and saw this:
Unfortunately Zee is still locked out of some of his emailaccounts. I hope the damage stays limited to Twitter and email but if you see something out of the ordinary here at The Next Web blog do let us know.
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 7th August 2008
4 COMMENTS
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Balsamiq Mockups is a new product launched on the Adobe AIR platform which allows developers to make mockups of their designs in no time. Think MSWord for hackers. Since its launch a few short months ago Balsamiq mockups has taken the hacker community by storm. Why? This is one of those rags to riches stories that inspire us all.
Developed by Peldi Guilizzoni (a one man band) working out of Bologna (Italy) who was inspired by 37signals mantras and Paul Graham (HN) to ‘create something people want’. Balsamiq Mockups is now following in the footsteps of past masters and amazingly has gone into profitability from almost the get go. And what’s more this self funded project is now turning over thousands of dollars each month.
The beauty of this product is its elegance, it solves the pain of hackers who have long since forgotten where the pen and paper is located (bottom draw guys), it allows quick and editable drafts to be created of potential design ideas. The user interface is completely intuitive (no instructions needed) and results are quickly achieved.
When so many large companies with millions of dollars in VC backing are chasing the elusive Web2.0 biz model, hunting down huge numbers of users who they intend spamming later, this makes a very refreshing change. The execution of this plan is perfect. Peldi has managed to capture the attention of his target market (hackers and developers) with stories of his progress, which in turn have initiated interesting debates on Hacker News.
So far Balsamiq Mockups has been covered by over 100 blogs (this is the 101th blog post!) yet still absent from this entourage is any mention from TechCrunch. This is one of those products that will make it onto the stage of the foremost Tech startup blog, it’s a good human story and more inspiring than the news bites that so and so has just been granted another round of X. Come on TC, show this man some luv.
Way to go Peldi, have a bottle of Chianti for me.
A quick demonstration of Balsamiq Mockups: building an iTunes-like UI in two minutes:
Written on 20th February 2008
14 COMMENTS
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Until now it has not been possible for Flash developers to embed Adsense or any other ad-networks ads into a Flash widget. Adobe have made it clear from the beginning that this is something beyond the scope of the technology which has increasingly become a thorn in the side and ‘the most serious limitation’ for Flash developers to realize profit from their applications.
There are now literally hundreds of millions of Flash widgets embedded all over the web, mostly on third party sites, where the widget developers would JUST LOVE to monitise that content with Adsense and other ad networks. So a solution for this Major Dilemma is long over due and the prize for best hackers of the year goes to Scribd who have just launched a new product (IPAPER) that incorporates the said invention. In their own words and from their site come these lovely words:
Monetize Your Documents
If you have documents on your website, you could be missing out on a monetization opportunity. You advertise on your web pages, why not your documents? iPaper integrates a sophisticated ad system by Google that automatically targets ads to the content of your documents. By switching to iPaper, you can immediately begin to monetize your documents. All you have to do is collect the checks.
Click image to see a working example Flash widget with Adsense.
Hacked Solution
Now as they have cracked / hacked a way round one of the greatest limitations of Flash widgets this is going to revolutionize the web! Specifically increasing incentives for the hundreds of thousands of developers who are using Flash to make embeddable features for third party networks such as Facebook et al.
No one has yet come up with any serious solutions for monitising Flash content to date. (more…)
Written on 28th January 2008
2 COMMENTS
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This an article by Edial Dekker, a Dutch blogger and student, who witnessed the on-line attack on Scientology.
For many years there have been a lot of popular on-line partitions where people participated in to make a change to the world. Not only on-line injustice, but also world problems have always been part of the on-line communities. Recently did we not only give the Greenpeace-whale the name Mister Splashy Pants , but we have also saved a man’s holiday. This is very nice and all, but can social networks and masses of on-line Internet users really make a difference? Last Thursday we got some answers…
If you haven’t seen Tom Cruise movie in which he talks about Scientology, be sure to check it out because when it was taken down on YouTube by the Scientology [This video has been removed due to a copyright claim by the Church of Scientology] hell broke lose on many social networks. Last Thursday – a group called ‘Anon‘ (stands for Anonymous) – used Digg.com to plan an attack later that night against websites related to the Church of Scientology. Everything related to Anon, or the Scientology went to frontpage in just minutes… (more…)
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 
