Fill in the blanks, track your alias on Usernamecheck.com

Written on 27th October 2008                                                                                                              9 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Until two weeks ago, you’d regularly find articles of Robin Wauters on The Next Web Blog. The last post the next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer wrote, was titled Matt Mullenweg snaps up PollDaddy. The next day, Michael Arrington snapped up Robin Wauters. Yes, our Belgian editor got promoted to TechCrunch. Goodbye, farewell and trackback!

Well, yesterday I received the first trackback from Wauters, now it’s my time to return the favor. Not just because he’s a great guy, but mostly because he discovered a cool tool: Usernamecheck.com.

It took me or two or three usernames before I realized it’s better to have one. Not just because it’s easier to remember, but also for personal branding matters. So I chose “dutchproblogger”. I’m sure you have an alias as well: Usernamecheck allows you to see whether that nickname is still available on 68 services.

According to TechCrunch commenters, the service isn’t functioning perfectly, yet you’ll get the idea anyhow.

As you can see, I suck at registering with the right username, some are more fanatic about it:

So be ahead of the “asswipes” out there and fill in the blanks, a.s.a.p.!

Michael Arrington, personal branding, Robin Wauters, scobleizer, TechCrunch, username, usernamecheck.com

9 Comments »

Why TheNextWeb.org matters…

Written on 27th October 2008                                                                                                              21 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Robin Wauters recently moved from being a blogger for TheNextWeb.org to blogging for Techcrunch.com. Yesterday he published a post about MySpace leaving The Netherlands. This is the first comment on that post:

I know, it is JUST one comment but I showed it to Ernst-Jan and said “That is why TheNextWeb.org matters”. Techcrunch.com has 1 million+ RSS subscribers and a large part of those readers have no interest in the rest of the world.

We are here to serve those that ARE interested.

Are YOU interested in the rest of the world?

Netherlands, Robin Wauters, TechCrunch, the next web

21 Comments »

Twiddict: methadon for Twitter addicts

Written on 9th June 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

@robinwauters, @tomklaasen, @tijs, and @atog are Twitter addicts. So every time there’s “something technically wrong” on their beloved microblogging service, their world crashes into them. Basically a cold turkey is awaiting these guys every single damn day, over and over again. They HAD to find a solution, as their dealers Evan Williams and Biz Stone haven’t proved to be very helpful so far. So they used the last strength in their Twitter-tortured bodies to find a way to cope with this destructive life style. Well, in the end, these junkies found one and – self-conscious as they are – called it Twiddict.

One of the addicts used a probably stolen laptop to email me some background about Twiddict:

The way it works, is pretty straightforward: users can log in to their Twitter account and use Twiddict to keep sending their messages as they are used to. Twiddict then continuously pings the Twitter API to see if it’s up again, and routes the stored messages back as soon as it’s stable.

To see it in action, go to Twiddict and log in with your Twitter account details. Don’t worry, these guys are “maniacally protective of users’ data”. Sure, like you take an addict’s word for granted.

downtime, Robin Wauters, twiddict, twitter

3 Comments »