Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 12th February 2009
42 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Last week, David Petherick addressed the first part of this unimaginative occurrence in “Imagine There’s No Google Part 1″. There he listed virtually every single Google service, the majority of which are completely free – the list is endless.
In this piece I had the pleasure of scouring the web for the best alternatives to each of Google Services, no easy task, however I was pleasantly surprised to find (nearly) ever offering had a close substitute.
Undoubtedly I will have missed a few and therefore will need your help, so please just leave any other alternative services you may think of in the comments and I’ll ensure I add them to the relevant section.
Google Mail
Yahoo Mail, Zimbra, Hotmail, zenbe, Mobileme,
Google Calendar
Backpack, Deadline, Mobileme, Toodledo, Yahoo Calendar, Zimbra, Tungle, presdo, jiffle, diarised
Google Docs
Zoho , Acrobat, thinkfree
Picasa
Flickr, Zooomr,
Google Reader
fav.or.it, friendfeed, streamy, bloglines, newsgator
Google Friend Connect
Facebook Connect (or TwitterRemote? ;-)
Feedburner
Pheedo
Google Adsense
AdBrite, Clicksor, Bidvertiser, Chitika, AdToll, Exit Junction, Yahoo Publisher Network, Target Point, Fastclick, ClickThruTraffic
Google Knol
Wikipedia, Answerbag, Mahalo
Google Alerts
Backtype, Yotify, Trackle
Google Analytics
Woopra, Clicky
Google News
BBC, Yahoo News, NewsNow
Orkut
Facebook, Myspace
Google Talk
Skype, aim, msn
Google Maps
Live Search Maps
Google Checkout
Digital River, 2Checkout, Alertpay, Trialpay, Paypal,
ejunkie,
Google Blog Search
trendpedia, feedster, icerocket, sphere,
Google Chrome
Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera,
Google Finance
Yahoo Finance, bloomberg,
Google Groups
Yahoo Groups, onehub, Tangler
Google Translate
Babel Fish, Nice Translator, Frengly, Jollo, Lingoz,
Google App Engine
Microsoft Azure, Mosso, Cohesiveft
YouTube
Vimeo, Viddler, Metacafe, Yahoo Video, Revver,
Google Search
chacha, faroo, kosmix, quintura, yahoo search, live search, twitter search, dogpile, cuil, Duck Duck Go
Written on 2nd February 2009
78 COMMENTS
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
…I wonder if you can? To quote John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, you may call me a dreamer, but when Google was broken for a while on Saturday, it set me thinking…
What if there was no Google – right now? Goog, gone! What would that mean for the way that I work online? So I’m writing this article in a theoretical situation, where suddenly, there’s no Google. (My colleague Zee will write a companion article to this later in the week, outlining the alternatives to these services.)
Although I use a number of email addresses, they pass through one anti-spam and anti-virus service, and then go to Google Mail (also known as Gmail). Where there was 1483MB of my stuff stored. Also gone – Address Book, Chat facility, labelled conversations. And now I look at the Optional Google Labs tools I have added into Gmail…
So I can’t get reminders by SMS and email, or share and edit colleagues calendars. Weather forecast was quite handy there too, along with all of my twitter tweets, added as 1-minute events retrospectively.
So all the documents I was sharing and placing online, to avoid endless ‘did you see / approve / change / update the latest version’ questions.
No easy sharing of photos and albums. And no Blogger pictures appearing there. So no Blogger, of course. It’s not my main blog, but it’s a useful pointer to my online presence, and it does bring traffic to other of my resources.
All my RSS feeds available on my mobile phone or any web browser – all gone. Good job I backed up the OPML file. But pity that was last month. No more shared articles for, or from my online friends – which also means…
So fewer connections and another widget to discard from my blog. And thinking of my blog…
So my Blog RSS and Email subscribers now get nothing in their RSS reader, or email inbox every day. I don’t use the AdSense option, but now there’s something…
I don’t use the service, but I do have an account, and manage a few for some customers. They’ll have to think of a new way to advertise – and new places to advertise. Speaking of which, some of them use…
(more…)
Written on 20th August 2008
5 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The iPhone App store is one of the many great features of the Apple iPhone. Hundreds (thousands?) of developers are tinkering away on apps that when launched are sure to bring riches and fame to its inventors. All you have to do is browse the ‘Whats New’ section on your iPhone or iPod Touch on a daily basis and you will be able to choose from a wide variety of innovative new apps. Some useful and some funny.
But there is more. A lot of ‘would-be’ developers are posting their ideas for the perfect app to their blogs and posting mock-ups of next generation interfaces to Flickr. These apps are nothing more than ideas waiting to be implemented and sometimes ideas mainly waiting to be ignored. Either way, here is a selection of inspiring ideas that I found on Flickr:
1. Fancy GPS app
Ricky Romero presents a screenshot, with a big proud smile, of his upcoming GPS app. What will it offer? We can only guess:
2. Parmesan cheese grater
This app is an example of some of the more frivolous designs. From the comments: “In my quest to find the best iPhone apps out there, I submit a Parmesan grater application for your approval. Steve Jobs has not returned my calls, but I think this is a pretty cutting edge idea. Pecorino plug-in sold separately.”
3. Horizontal keyboard outside Safari
A really simple concept for a horizontal keyboard. Of course, this one is already implemented by Apple but only used in Safari when you tilt the iPhone. Wonder when it becomes available for Mail and other apps that use text input.
4. Keep an eye on electricity in your house
A very cool concept which helps you manage energy consumption for your house: “Current State is a real-time energy use monitoring system and timer for powered devices combined into one. The Current State system is made up of two parts, a mobile application for you cell phone, which allows you to control and monitor electricity use from anywhere, and a series of Plug-Ends that give you control over the products around your house.”
5. Scan offices for certain rooms?
I have no idea what this is supposed to be and how it would work. But hey, it looks cool!
6. DJ on the move
This one shouldn’t be that hard to build for someone with Xcode experience. Right?
7. Take presentations to another level
One of the first Apps I bought was Stage Hand. It turns your iPhone into a remote control for Keynote. You can see a preview of your slide and highlight stuff on the screen or read your notes, all on the little screen in your hand. This concept takes it even further and it also look better:
8. Virtual ruler
This one might be one of the most interesting concepts I have seen so far just because it makes me wonder if it could actually work. What do YOU think? “Would be nice to display a virtual ruler over the camera picture to roughly measure distances. Certainly doable as we know the characteristics of the iphone lens. It could use the accelerometers to adjust the perspective (tilt, etc).”
There are a lot more impressive designs for imaginary iPhones, iMacs and iPhone Apps here.
What would your imaginary iPhone app do? Make coffee? Get you hot dates? Yeah, all that. But what else? Let us know…
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 
