Written on 4th June 2009
8 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
It’s been some time since TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington initially announced his plans to create the ‘Crunchpad’, a “dead simple web tablet for less than $200″.
I will openly confess to admiring the ambition but doubting we’d ever get to see one before before a major computer manufacturer released the ‘ultimate’ tablet computer – most notably one from Apple. Whilst still very early days and a number of questions remain unanswered, Arrington and his partners have indeed managed to get us excited.
A number of images of the device were leaked back in April, followed by a video, and today a few more images have officially been released. They’ve caused a stir across most tech oriented communities, from Hacker News to Twitter to Friendfeed – and rightfully so.
The question for most people appears to not be a matter of whether they want one or not, but rather whether Arrington will be able to stick to the “less than $200″ price tag? Frankly, I would quite happily cough up up to $600 for the device if it offered good battery life, a stand and usb ports for a keyboard & mouse. The other question still remains, will Apple release something, albeit more expensive, but that completely blows the CrunchPad out of the water and makes it so most users – without hesitation - dump their pads and pay that bit extra for one device that does it all (a la iPhone).
Personally, its likely both devices end up with my money. The iTablet (if it actually ever arrives) will be used for meetings and work, whilst the Crunchpad for round the house, in each bathroom and of course, in bed. :)
What we know so far? It’s most likely to have:
12 inch screen. 18 mm thick
It has USB ports for Keyboard/Mouse/Whatever
Webkit based browser
Aluminum Casing
Linux based operating system
What we’d like to know:
Battery life?
Does it have a stand?
3G?
What’s it actually like to browse
eBooks/PDFs?
For a good overview of how the device works, watch this video – it will impress.
(There is to to be an announcement of some sort at an event in Silicon Valley in July, if you’d like to be emailed when new news comes out, send an email to crunchpad@techcrunch.com.)
Written on 17th May 2009
9 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
We posted a story last week about Ivy Bean, a woman who at 104 years old had become the worlds oldest Twitterer. We initially heard about the story via The Telegraph, thought it was rather interesting and shared it with you guys, and by the number of retweets, you rather liked it too.
A day or so later, MG Siegler over at TechCrunch noticed The Telegraph’s story climbing up the Digg ladder and wrote a story titled “Did the UK Press Con A 104-Year-Old Woman Into Joining Twitter For Digg Bait?”. OH THE IRONY.
Firstly, you might con a person into giving you their watch, you might even con a person out of their life savings but you don’t con a person to join Twitter. If they did get her to join, I’m certain they would have paid – and most likely rather handsomely.
Secondly, however she joined Twitter, she’s still Tweeting as we speak – in fact, her last Tweet was just 30 minutes ago (at the time of writing).
Thirdly, and probably most significantly, who cares? It was a story which intrigued people, made people smile and did absolutely zero harm to anyone involved. Sadly, that is not the case with other newspaper and blog stories which have of many occasion lead to individuals/company reputations taking a steep dive due to a completely fabricated story. This is clearly not a completely fabricated story.
Written on 23rd February 2009
15 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Techcrunch posted a story on Friday claiming Last.fm ‘may’ have given the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)a stack of user data. “So?” you say. Well, the RIAA could technically detect which specific users had listened to unreleased tracks, with particular reference to the U2 upcoming album which has recently been leaked.
In response, a Last.fm spokesperson told Techcrunch that to their knowledge no data had been made available to the RIAA.
Richard Jones , a co-founder, then commented on the blog post saying:
I’m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue. As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a ‘tip’ from one person and decided to make a story out of it. TechCrunch is full of shit, film at 11.
Russ Garrett, a Last.fm systems architect also categorically denied the rumor in a Last.fm forum:
“I’d like to issue a full and categorical denial of this. We’ve never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn’t consent to it. Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we’d never personally identify our users to a third party – that goes against everything we stand for. As far as I’m concerned Techcrunch have made this whole story up.”
Written on 5th February 2009
7 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Whatever you might think or feel about leading tech blog Techcrunch or it’s public persona and founder Michael Arrington, the site is an inspiration to new and established blogs across the web. Behind the controversy, breaking stories, rivalry and heated debates (which have taken their toll) is hard work and determination which Arrington and his team over the years deserve all the credit for.
Hey Robin! If you are too lazy to build your own forms at least make sure you change the details!
One of our friends checked out the sign-up form at Plugg.eu and noticed that one of the examples listed our Office address. He checked the source code and sure enough; Plugg copied our Start-up Rally form!
That street address example is our street address!
That Postal code is our postal code!
And just to remove any doubt, this is what it says in the source code:
Don’t you know: Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources!
But seriously: Plugg is a great event and if you are considering going we can highly recommend it. The sign-up form for the Plugg Startup Rally is here and ticket sales are here. And check out their excellent site here too.
PS: just so you know, Plugg and The Next Web are media partners and ♥ each other!
When Jobs spread the word about his weight-loss this afternoon, Next Web editors Zee and Boris immediately started typing an article. Since they’re not sharing an office (Zee lives in London, Boris in Amsterdam) and both were utterly excited by the words from Mr. Apple himself, they didn’t see each other’s post. Thus sharp readers might have seen two posts about Jobs’ announcement on The Next Web (We deleted Boris’ post. At first he was devastated, but he’s feeling better now).
Nah, it’s just Arrington force-feeding you some CrunchGear and MobileCrunch news. See the graphic Boris made to check out how TechCrunch’s 1.7 million RSS readers also get a load of John Biggs and the likes. Some of these articles also appear on the recently redesigned frontpage of TechCrunch.
This raises an interesting question: is it OK to show your readers posts from other blogs you own? Some readers are obviously not amused and speak of violating trust and all that. Others just ask the same question like me. I believe you can of course share news from your blog network, but doing without any notice or graphic hints is less stylish – if not confusing.
After all, you haven’t asked for Crunchgear posts, have you? Maybe you read Gizmodo for the latest gadget news because you like the tone of voice better. Who knows? Arrington doesn’t, that’s for sure. So there’s no motivation for him (except promotion) to shove it under your face.
Rumor has it (here and here) that Microsoft is preparing for a worldwide mass layoff sometime in January.
The software giant has about 91,000 workers around the world and many of them are contractors, if Microsoft follows the typical pattern for corporate layoffs, it’s likely that the contractors will be hit first. The plan would be to layoff between 10% and 17% of the entire workforce in its worldwide army. For Microsoft, a layoff of this size would not be a small cut: as many as 10,000 to 15,000 workers would get the pink slip.
Microsoft’s layoff numbers will make a sizeable addition to the Techcrunch layoff tracker, and that will send a good signal to Wall Street. Since currently MSFT stock is in a free-fall along with other tech stocks, the company probably would want to make its cuts before the Q2 earning report is released on Jan 22.
Which MSFT division will be the hardest hit? We don’t know yet, MSN could be one, since it is not exactly the shining star in the Microsoft constellation. But Microsoft Europe, Middle East, and Africa might not be spared either.
If the rumor becomes reality, then Microsoft will find itself in the same league as Google and Yahoo, both of whom had to layoff large numbers of employees in the past year.
If the worldwide economic mess continues into 2009, then we might even see the entire MSFT empire collapsing and vanishing from the face of the Earth. Then Linux will declare “game over!” at last!
Ok, I was joking in the last sentences. I hope you all will have a Happy New Year and best of luck to MSFT employees who will be axed if the rumor is true!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, especially when you’re a web professional. Not reindeers, but lists keep flying around your head. On The Next Web, we already presented the Five Favorite Apps – now it’s time to be more specific.
We have an international focus at this blog. When The Next Web launched on January 7th, we told you we wouldn’t limit our coverage just to the Valley. I think it’s safe to say we’ve kept that promise. Also when it comes to Russia. With the help of Yakov Sadchikov, we’ve covered almost every million euro deal, emerging trends, and cool start-ups coming from Europe’s largest Internet market.
Let’s celebrate that with a list of Russian start-ups that rocked the web in 2008. It’s compiled by Yakov, whose blog you should definitely check out. He’s the CEO of visual search engine Quintura and managed to get articles from his corporate blog on Techmeme, TechCrunch, and The Next Web on a monthly basis. How’s that for a successful blogger? Alright, here we go:
Written on 4th June 2009
8 COMMENTS 
Written on 27th May 2009
Written on 10th January 2009
Written on 5th January 2009
Written on 31st December 2008
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=d4c0c38c-4f35-42a8-9c0a-9f3fd8bfb622 "10 Russian start ups that rocked the web in 2008 Photo")
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 
