Written on 27th April 2009
0 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
“Periscope have updated their Folio booklight case to fit the Kindle 2, which still houses a little memo pad, a pen, and a retractable light for covert reading. At $50 it’s not cheap, but since Amazon charges $30 for a book cover already, you’re only really paying $20 more…” via Gizmodo
Written on 4th March 2009
11 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Amazon has taken us all by surprise and released a FREE Kindle App for the iPhone. The app, as you would imagine, lets iPhone and Touch users read Kindle books on their iphone. This comes just a few days after Amazon released the Kindle 2 in the US!
So iPhone users can visit www.amazon.com/kindlestore on their computers, order books and have them available to read on their handsets.
Wonderfully, the first chapter of every book is free and if you do happen to own a Kindle, you can sync your reading between the two devices so you know where you ended the last time your read.
This is pretty incredible but clearly Amazon have picked up on the popularity of reading books on the iPhone. Only yesterday, Ben Lorica highlighted the fact that the fastest growing category in the iTunes app store is books…
The sad news is the app isn’t available to us in Europe yet. However, we do have alternatives with Stanza and of course, The Classics.
If you are in the US, you can download the app here.
Written on 29th January 2009
20 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
In Greece the government pays for 99% of students’ textbooks which as you can imagine is no small cost. Well, in the video (below) Greek opposition leader George Papandreou recommends all students be given a sum of money each to purchase a Kindle (or like device) to replace the typical textbooks that students are given and the government spends a fortune on.
As John Aravosis from AmericaBlog points out, there is the issue of getting rights to the books required, as well as the costs involved in converting old books into digital format. Also, the cost of replacement should the child lose/break the Kindle is worthwhile considering, because lets face it, 5/10 kids are likely to have theirs lost.
Nevertheless, that aside, will ebooks lead to the death of textbooks?
When will we see foldable e-paper on the street? Will advanced algorithms and Internet eventually put publishers out of business? – Nobody knows… But we do witness a devastating momentum for traditional publishers, how can these companies reinvent themselves? Are they doomed?
Chosun media, showing off newspaper 2.0
Doomed? Not by a long shot! at least, if we have to believe the marketing manager of Chosun. Chosun is a Korean newspaper giant, based in the heart of Seoul. I have to admit, I never heard of the company before I visited them today. But like many unknown Asian companies, Chosun is a prominent player with amazing proportions, newspaper circulation surpasses that of well-known newspapers like the USA today. The marketing manager believes that businesspeople will always appreciate an edited and selected overview on the daily hot topics. And if it isn’t on paper, it would be on a different medium. And as much as I like to argue the contrary, he might have a point. Financial Times recently announced that their amount of online (paying) subscribers is increasing fast. We got a tour at the HQ, and they actually got excited of the Nintendo Wii again! (has been a long time)
Epic 2015
But if you ask me; newspaper publishers are biased towards their believe that a good paper requires manual work, something that will seize to exist in the future. This three-year-old videoclip made by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson try to sketch that situation. Skip to 6:40:
We would like to give you an early suggestion for the holiday season, Crunchgear heard an “insider” whisper at Amazon about an update to their electronic book reader. The electronic book seller is planning to release the first as early as October 2008. The “insider” told Crunchgear that Amazon has “Skipped three or four generations” in comparison to the iPod releases.
There is a lot of criticism about the original Kindle in terms of ergonomic use, some say that it is hard to read from the device and accidentally pressing one of the buttons. The first expected model would have an improved interface and setup with the same type of screen but a smaller form factor. The second expected model would be considerably larger and shaped at the size of an A4 paper. Both models are expected to be available in trendy new colors, there are no price indications yet.
We were hoping that Amazon would take the Kindle a step further and supply the nifty device with some foldable LCD screens. But who knows what the future of this device might bring, A4 sized reading would at least improve the experience dramatically, and we look forward to get our hands on one of these babies.
In 1998 I got my first always-on Internet connection via my cable provider. The move from dial-up to cable was huge. Speed was an important factor but the fact that I could access the internet at any time had an even bigger impact.
After the shift from dial-up to always-on came mobile. Mobile hasn’t caught on as we hoped it would. And it turns out it might look different than we thought. No ordering pizza on a black & white WML generated iMode site. The future of mobile internet looks different. It looks like the iPhone and more important: the Amazon Kindle.
The interesting thing about the Kindle isn’t so much the fact that it has a Wireless Connection built it. It is the fact that this Wireless Connection is free and comes bundled with the device. The seperation between gadget and mobile connection is gone. The Kindle comes with Ubiquitous Internet.
2008 will see more evidence of the Ubiquitous Internet. SanDisk launched a new USB stick today called the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus. This storage device, which SanDisk believes is the first of its kind, will automatically save all data stored on it to Amazon’s S3 storage service via a synchronization service called BeInSync. The device is cheap but comes with a $29.99 a year subscription to the BeInSync online back-up service.
The interesting thing about the Cruzer and Kindle is that they simply provide you with a service and you don’t have to think about this data being on of offline. It is simply there for you and available everywhere.
There have been indications that Google is working on an offline client for their Google Docs Application suite. The interesting thing about an offline client would not just be to work offline instead of online but again to remove the distinction between the two. With a client installed at your computer your documents would simply be everywhere, and always available, forever.
The question is if Ubiquitous Internet will dramatically change business models and enable new companies. Obviously BeInSync will do well and so will Amazon. But what start-ups can we envision taking advantage of an always-on economy?
Written on 27th April 2009
0 COMMENTS 
Amazon has taken us all by surprise and released a FREE Kindle App for the iPhone. The app, as you would imagine, lets iPhone and Touch users read Kindle books on their iphone. This comes just a few days after Amazon released the Kindle 2 in the US!
In Greece the government pays for 99% of students’ textbooks which as you can imagine is no small cost. Well, in the video (below) Greek opposition leader George Papandreou recommends all students be given a sum of money each to purchase a Kindle (or like device) to replace the typical textbooks that students are given and the government spends a fortune on.
Written on 24th October 2008
Written on 3rd January 2008
After the shift from dial-up to always-on came mobile. Mobile hasn’t caught on as we hoped it would. And it turns out it might look different than we thought. No ordering pizza on a black & white WML generated iMode site. The future of mobile internet looks different. It looks like the iPhone and more important: the 
2008 will see more evidence of the Ubiquitous Internet. SanDisk launched a new USB stick today called the 
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 
