Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 3rd July 2009
0 COMMENTS 
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
Although I just recently returned from Internet Week New York, I’m about to set foot on another exciting, new adventure. From July 5 to July 10, I’ll be traveling around London together with my Geeky friends. aka The Traveling Geeks. The TG’s are a small informal group of technology bloggers and influencers who like to travel to various regions around the world, collaborate with technology innovators and leaders on interesting projects and then share everything with the rest of the world via blogs, videos, podcasts and social networks.
On this trip, we’ll be on the hunt for innovative uses of new technologies in Great Britain, especially by lesser-known companies, and spotlight how those innovations may improve people’s lives. We’ll also compare the thought (more…)
Written on 12th June 2009
24 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Today saw the launch of Building43, the latest project from tech evangelist and early adopter Robert Scoble. Over the three or so months of development, Scoble has managed to drum up a fair bit of buzz for the site – despite most people having no idea what Scoble had up his sleeve.
For one, as a follower of Scoble’s career, it feels like one of the first projects where he has been handed the reigns to control the direction and focus. Like everything Scoble’s done in the past, its web focused, however up until now, all he’s said is that Building 43 will be “a community for people passionate about the internet” and to be honest with you, I cringe a little every time I hear the phrase.
I want to make clear that I am an extremely big fan of Scoble’s, I think what he has done and continues to do for the internet and its geeky devotees is second to none. He has been, and despite what I’m about to say, continues to be an inspiration of mine – the web would be (more…)
Written on 13th January 2009
9 COMMENTS
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
At The Next Web, we keep our antennae tuned, and Microsoft has currently only announced Microsoft Tags Beta in the USA. But as the software and web site are available globally, we thought you’d need to know – now.
This is how Microsoft describes its new service, which has been available since the 7th of January 2009 and was showcased at the CES 2009 show: —
Microsoft Tag instantly connects you to more information and entertainment – without typing long URLs or texting short code. Simply snap the Tag with your mobile phone, and Microsoft Tag takes you there!
The idea is probably familiar to those of you who know about QR Codes, or were at The Next Web Conference in April 2008, when Robert Scoble gave a keynote address wearing a QR Coded T-shirt. (Photo of Robert Scoble by Guido van Nispen). And QR Codes have been around for a number of years – they are heavily used in Japanese newspapers and magazines, for example.
The main differences with Microsoft Tag are as follows: -
- Every scan your phone makes gets tracked by MS servers
- The Microsoft Tags are coloured, as opposed to monochrome for QR Codes
- Tags can be designed with expiry dates to encourage instant use
- Tags are designed to be scanned at scale (for outdoor posters etc)
Microsoft is using its formidable marketing skills to package this attractively for consumers and businesses – and from the promotional material, it’s doing a good job of avoiding the geeky, and keeping things simple and clear. You can download the free Microsoft Tags mobile software for your phone at http://gettag.mobi – and try it out on the tag below to grab the author’s vCard data. Software is currently available for J2ME, Symbian S60, iPhone, Blackberry and of course Windows Mobile phones. This is in fact, only Microsoft’s second iPhone application, after its image viewer SeaDragon.
I expect future developments of this will see more formats become available to allow, for example, pre-scripted SMS contact, and to allow ‘callback’ or text chat interaction. I also would expect this to be used, for example to provide data downloads back to the phone, which can then can be displayed at point of sale to redeem vouchers, or even act as an electronic entrance ticket. Integrate it with Microsoft ID and Passport services, and you might have something very powerful – especially as it can all be harnessed by a device that rarely leaves the side of its owner.
Creating and Managing Tags
In the back-end at the Tags site, creating tags is very simple. You need a Microsoft ID to create tags, and can create a PDF, WMF or XPS file in a variety of sizes. You can make the Tag have an ‘action’ of a URL, Free Text, vCard, or Dialer, and you can also set start and end dates on the tags – useful for competition-style entries. The fact that you can, as the creator of a code, view reports (aside from potential privacy concerns for users of the service) will help you track the return you get on a campaign. It’s easy to manage multiple tags, with icons to show what type of tag you’re selecting, and you can categorise, expire and delete tags readily. [screen shot]
The Next Web acknowledges Steven Livingstone-Pérez for alerting us to Microsoft Tags via twitter earlier today.
Written on 9th January 2009
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Germany’s no. 1 blogger Robert Basic: “I’m selling my blog!”. After a hundred blog posts, comments, a GPR increase of 2, and extra ad revenue. “Oh, you know what, I love my blog so much. I won’t sell it! Thanks for your support though”.
Whether he’s the Scoble or Arrington of Germany, one thing is for sure. Robert Basic knows how to get attention. After a few years of successful blogging – last month Basic Thinking attracted 85,000 unique visitors and served 254,000 page views -, he decided to put up his blog on eBay (expecting to receive an amount between €10k and €100k). Allegedly because he wants to “start from scratch again”.
Yet some sources believe it’s just another trick from Basic’s sleeve. Linkbaiting so you will. If that really is the case, Basic did a great job. The auction goes on for six more days, he already has coverage from major blogs (including an article from Robin Wauters on TechCrunch).
The question is, can he resist the temptation of just taking the money and run? The score already is €20.150,00. Let’s see what happens!
Written on 16th December 2008
9 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I’m sorry, we’ve been posting an awfully lot about funny Twitter apps lately. The thing is, you seem to love them. Every post welcomes a wealth of comments. So here we go again:
With Tweetwasters you can calculate how much time you’ve wasted on the beloved microblogging service. This is the result for Robert Scoble:
As you can see, Tweetwasters counts thirty seconds per tweet. I think that’s a bit modest. First of all, most people take more time for a tweet than that (making it fit the character limit) and secondly, what about reading other person’s tweets? So to get a safe estimate, you might as well multiple the result by.. uhm… four.
Don’t forget to check out the Tweetwasters Hall of Fame, by the way. It’s far away for me, I’m no. 6832.
Written on 13th December 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Ever since Twitter mash-ups have come into fashion, Twitter rank check tools have been booming. There seem to be hundreds of ways to check how good your Twittering is – in a statistic fashion. Some even aroused rumors of being a scam. But I think this is the definitive tool. In the end, most people get really annoyed when you update too much (The Scoble syndrome). It’s up to you whether you want to take that in account, but if you do, check Follow Cost.
follow cost measures how much people tweet. We use an absolute scale (average number of tweets per day) but also measure tweets in milliscobles, or 1/1000th of Robert Scoble’s Twitter output. More about milliscobles.
I tried to come up with the most active Twitter user I follow, which wasn’t all that hard. During my recent China 2.0 trip, Mr. David Feng manged to get himself blocked from Twitter several times because he posted too much. Obviously, @davidfeng has a nuclear follow cost.
Nice detail: there’s a bookmarklet too!
Written on 19th October 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When George Godula from Web2Asia (story here) invited me on a trip to China with bloggers like Robert Scoble, Sam Lawrence, and Shel Israel a few weeks ago, you can imagine I didn’t hesitate for one second. Who doesn’t want to gain a deeper understanding of China 2.0? Spil Games is sponsoring my trip, for which I’d very much like to thank Marc van der Chijs and his team!
But you know what? Mashable and VisualCV might sponsor your trip! None of the full time Mashable bloggers was able to join the China 2.0 trip, so they partnered up with VisualCV.com. Tamar Weinberg writes:
We’re going to send one of our dedicated readers to take the trip. The winner gets their airfare paid for, can post about the trip in their blog (if you have one), post on the official China 2.0 blog and may even get to report back to the Mashable community throughout the week-long trip to China.
The trip is led by The China Business Network and co-organized by Web2Asia and CNReviews, the inaugural China 2.0 Tour is sponsored by Edelman Digital China. The tour leaders are taking an interdisciplinary approach by looking at social media, clean technology, gaming, wireless, and other areas where trends in China will affect markets around the world.
I’ve written quite a bit about China, especially their online video market – which looks like one big soap opera to me. Thus I can’t wait to actually visit the offices of the companies that are building the structures for world’s largest Internet market. And thanks to Mashable and VisualVC, YOU might be able to join me. Check out the Mashable post here.
Update: These bloggers will join the tour as well!
David Feng, @davidfeng, TechBlog86.com
Elliott Ng, @elliottng, CNReviews.com
Sheila Scarborough, @SheilaS, FamilyTravelogue.com
Written on 5th August 2008
9 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The press loves entrepreneurial kids. Every time a young kid pulls something special off, a newspaper is eager enough to give the lad an wide-spread page. The new press, bloggers et al, seem to have the same habit. Teenage entrepreneurs like Jessica Mah (who was a speaker at The Next Web Conference) and Zooomr founder Kristopher Tate have been receiving a fair amount of attention, partly thanks to their age. And now there’s a new kid on the block. His name? Daniel Brusilovsky. His age? 15 years.
Daniel has just launched Teens in Tech, a publication platform for kids who fancy new media, in private alpha mode. Basically, it’s a Wordpress multi-user installation with a fancy layer – really cool logo – and a forum.
Daniel Brusilovsky at Supernova
As TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid notes, Daniel seems to know everybody. His board of advisers includes web influentials like Loic Le Meur, Robert Scoble (old enough to be Brusilovsky’s father) and some folks at TechCrunch and Apple. When we – meaning The Next Web team – visited the Valley in June, we met Daniel at Seemics’ HQ and Supernova.
Loic Le Meur told us he expects the young entrepreneur to create value by creating a community of young folks engaged in new media and tech and that is a great platform for companies (like Seesmic) to plug their service. The old marketing formula still works: teenagers have plenty of money to spend and they’re the future. A 1000 teenagers armed with webcams would be a welcome crowd to the Seesmic community.
Le Meur and others also know that young lads like Brusilovsky still attract enough media attention to create a hype. A young entrepreneur is just plain charming – so the group of web influentials happily welcome him in their circle of Internet fame and fortune.
The question is though whether the public thinks the same. Kincaid’s post got 159 visitors to comment and most of them were angry. Like Zack Meyerson:
I can’t respect this kid, or his company. As Luke said, its a complete joke. I have no intentions at even visiting Teens in Tech. Also, watch your acronym, people may think its a naughty site.
This post has also lowered the journalistic quality on TechCrunch.
Daniel Brusilwhatever has only been featured because of his connections. Shame on TC.
We experienced the same when we posted the announcement about Jessica Mah coming to Amsterdam:
She is 17, ok, and made high school with 15 years. 600 people read her blog, and dices will be thrown to see if someone will be talking about her in 2 years time. She is not a great speaker! (Drivingsouth)
Although some people support Mah and Brusilovsky – “I wish I was that productive back then”, the general opinion seems to be that the young entrepreneur must really have something special to offer. They get the attention, but then they have to prove they’re worth it. I’m sorry Brusilovsky, but the teenage charm factor isn’t here to stay.
Written on 20th May 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The idea of Robert Scoble wandering around in an African village, looking for another child to adopt with his lovely girlfriend Angelina Jolie might sound odd to you. But according to Picitup’s Celebrity Match it wouldn’t be all that surprising. This service finds your celebrity look-alike, and matched Scoble’s face with Brad Pitt. Oh and not just him, as our web celeb also looks like Danny deVito, Jim Carrey and John McCain. Scoble sure has universal looks.
Celebrity MatchUp is an initiative by the Israeli-based visual image search engine Picitup. Smart move, as celebrities always attract a huge crowd. Why do you think I’ve mentioned Jolie in the first place? They’ve got some bad coverage on TechCrunch, so a little media hype won’t hurt them. But why isn’t there a Facebook app? With services like these, adding a Facebook app is almost like 1 + 1 = 2.
Picitup allows you to specify image search by requesting similar images. You can also filter by color, landscapes, products and faces. Although the service linked Arrington’s face to Obama and McCain’s at the same time, the matches aren’t always that bad. For example, when I uploaded quite a manic picture of myself in which I jump around, Picitup matched me with the always-shouting and acting all ecstatic Asthon Kucther. I wonder when Demi More will drop by my house.
Written on 4th April 2008
16 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You probably know Nicholas Negroponte, the man who tries to supply every student in the developing world with an laptop of 100 dollar, The Children’s Machine, to extend Internet access in the third world. While that large problem still exists, according to Robert Scoble a new digital divide is emerging. He calls it the friend divide. “In the beginning of the nineties, everybody had the same experience on every computer. The digital divide back then was that some people had a computer and some didn’t.”
But when ICQ was launched, the experiences of people started to diverge. ICQ users with a hundred friends had a different experience than those with only two. With the new web, version 2.0, this diversion becomes more significant. Scoble proved this by showing versions of Google Reader, Twitter, Pownce, Friendfeed and Upcoming, one version with only one friend and the other one with Scoble’s famous collection of friends. 1000+ on Google Reader, 500 people on Upcoming, 3000 Powncers and over 17,000 Twitter contacts. So we got to witness two extremes here, one with no activity and the other version that was flooded by updates. Those are totally different user experiences, the consequence is the friend divide.
When ‘normal people’ decide to sign up on a service, they enter a pretty lame environment since there are no friends. Or as Scoble puts it: “The first experience is a real crappy experience, since there’s no input. And it’s all about input from other users”. According to Scoble, social networks should work on improving this first experience. One network that tried this a bit was MySpace, as they introduced you to Tom. But they can do better, says Scoble. For example, if a construction worker signs up, why not introducing him to a group of construction people? He could meet an architect and find relevant construction info through him. The same goes for techies, why not immediately hand them a contact list of established tech bloggers?
I think Scoble has a point, yet I’d love to hear a more thorough analysis of this new friend divide since I don’t see the importance of it yet. The problems that emerge from the digital divide are obvious: a part of the world lacks skills and knowledge about a digital phenomenon that is changing the world. But what are the consequences of the new digital divide? A small group of people finds more info than an immense group of people? I think Scoble is so involved in the tech scene that he tends to overestimate the influence of nice services like Twitter and Friendfeed.
Would there be a friend divide that influences millions of people, I think it comes down to this question: “Are you on Facebook or are you not?”
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 
