Blog van The Next Web

Regator Pro iPhone App To Launch “Any Day”

thenextweb — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:20:59 UT

Regator, the super popular blog directory and feed reader, is launching a pro version of their iPhone app.

Australian co-founders, Scott Lockhart and Kimberley Turner, say the app is currently in the Apple approval process but ” is expected to be approved any day”.

The new Regator Pro will be priced at $2.99 (USD) with a five-day launch sale price of $1.99.

It includes all the features of the free version (see below) but also gives users the ability to personalize their experience by saving their favourite blogs, topics, and posts for fast, easy access. In addition, this premium version supports in-app video viewing and adds popular Regator.com features such as Blog Monitor and Related Posts.

Both the light and premium versions allow users to:

Browse posts from more than 500 topics as diverse as beekeeping, geology, indie music, pop culture, job hunting, or basketball.
Search Regator’s archive of over four million high-quality posts.
See real-time trends to get an up-to-the-minute, spam-free look at exactly what bloggers in any niche are writing about right now.
View the most popular blog posts on your favourite topic.
Keep up with the newest blog posts, updated every few seconds.
Read the full text of posts on the original source blog.
Share posts via email, Facebook, or Twitter

It’s great to see a blog aggregating startup trying to monetise through adding value rather than plonking advertising between content. It’s also great to see them so heavily focused on ensuring the original content providers get as much traffic returned to them as possible

No doubt these are just two reasons why Regator has been, and will continue to be, so successful.

Finally an important part of today’s rich Web applications

thenextweb — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:27:54 UT

Almost all of today’s so called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) heavily make use of a technology named Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript plus XML.)

Essentially Ajax provides a mechanism to exchange data with remote servers and place incoming bits into a page without the need to refresh the page.

This helped making web pages look and feel much more like desktop applications.

It dramatically expanded the web as an application platform and is a cornerstone of many service we’ve gotten so used to. (Imagine for a minute how Facebook would feel if it would reload the entire page on each click you make!)

Technically Ajax leverages a programing interface of modern web browsers exposed through an internal object named XMLHttpRequest.

Taking into account how much we take Ajax-enabled web sites for granted these days, and how much we value the importance of standards for its evolution, it’s quite intriguing that the XMLHttpRequest details have never been an official W3C standard, yet.

This might change soon: On November 19th, the W3C officially changed the status for the XMLHttpRequest specification to “Last Call”.

According to the W3C guidelines final comments will now be accepted up to December 16th, 2009 before the document will likely become an official W3C Recommendation.

We’ll keep you posted!

Be the Twitter-Santa!

thenextweb — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:34:33 UT

With only 33 days left till Christmas, don’t you wish you could send a greeting card or maybe a gift to your favourite twitterers? Well now you can, thanks to SendSocial.com that launched today!

SendSocial allows you to send parcels to your friends on Twitter, without ever knowing their address. You can also use the service to send gifts even if the only info you’ve got is their e-mail address. The service notifies the intended recipient that someone wants to send them something via a tweet or email. The recipient chooses whether they want to accept the parcel, and in case they do they fill in their delivery address. This piece of information is stored encrypted on SendSocial. All the sender gets is a barcode addres, which he prints and attaches to the parcel. Afterwards the sender notifies the couriers that are working with SendSocial (right now their only courier partner is myHermes) and they collect and deliver the package.

So do you have a “naughty” and a “good” list on your Twitter? It’s time to make use of them!

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to tell a story via Social Media

thenextweb — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:16:40 UT

While most of us use Twitter and other social media for sharing what we’re doing (or indeed “What’s happening“) some use it to tell stories.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways social media can be used to tell a tale, from serialised novels to a multimedia approach.
The “Twitter Novel”

One method of story-telling via social media is the straightforward novel. Meet Mr Keihl is a novel that launches today and will take an astounding two years to complete at a rate of seven tweets per day. The story is a spy epic set in the year 2130 that recounts the exploits of a legendary agent.

The people behind the project are claiming that it is the first novel ever to be played out entirely via Twitter. This isn’t exactly true. Candyfloss and Pickles is one example of a ‘Twitter novel’ that has been running for well over a year already.

Is Twitter the wrong format for story telling? The author of Meet Mr Keihl seems to be in two minds about that one.

“The concept of the publication of a novel through this medium may be received as counter intuitive, too slow a process for the distribution of such a long format.

Reading a novel 140 characters at a time, however, may be just the right pace for many readers. People often complain that they don’t have the time to sit down and read a book. Subscribing to Meet Mr. Keihl will allow anyone to read a novel without taking time out of their day for it.”
The Fake Account

Fictional characters playing out their lives via social media are nothing new – just look at the success of Lonelygirl15 a few years ago. That used video though, making it little more than an online TV show. The brief text bursts of Twitter can make for a much more intimate experience.

At first glance this week, ‘dinner_guest’ appeared to be a possible serial killer sharing their gruesome pastime with the world.

While some thought it was a publicity stunt for a movie, we later uncovered that it was an artist exploring the use of Twitter to let fictional characters tell their stories in a new way.

Some might think that using a murderer as your chosen character is a step too far but it’s certainly an idea that has potential. It’s a twist on the joke celebrity accounts that are a popular part of the Twittersphere.

As the artist behind the project told us, “Some people have said they want to add their own characters now, which is great, maybe dinner_guest will get some creepy friends to play with”.

Which brings us to…
The multimedia crowdsourced approach

There’s more to Social Media than just Twitter of course. What if you gave your fictional characters a variety of accounts on different services?

November in Manchester is one project trying just that. Billed as a ‘Social Media Love Story’, its eight characters have their own Twitter feeds and blogs. By following the characters involved you can see the story unfold in a much more ‘personal’ way that you would if you were just being told a story in a traditional way.

With so many accounts to keep up on you could easily fall behind so the project’s website gives you a daily overview of the plot and a news feed of all the characters’ accounts.

There’s an interactive side to the project too. The author, Tom Mason, wants the city of Manchester to be a key part of the plot. Photos and videos submitted by readers have become an important part of the story. The characters have even ‘attended’ real events in the city as suggested by readers.

Unlike a many social media stories, November in Manchester is designed to play out over one month – much shorter than the traditional . When it comes to online attention spans, shorter is better.

November in Manchester will probably have a better chance of holding onto an audience over thirty days than Meet Mr Keihl will over two years. Will we even still be using Twitter then?

Why Music Is Broken – The Artist To Consumer Connection

thenextweb — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:42:20 UT

There is a fascinating story on TorrentFreak regarding the revenues for an artist from a streaming service such as Spotify. Or, more correctly, the lack thereof. The popular Lady Gaga makes quasi-nil from Spotify, despite being a top artist on the service.

This is an excellent example of the inherent problem in the musical industry. If we cannot fix this, piracy will never be abated.

The problem is the lack of a connection between the dollar of the consumer, and collection of that money by the artist. Right now, the lengthy and convoluted transfer process sucks the dollar dry, depositing a few spry cents in the hands of he artist.

Of course, this is supposed to be “the way it works,” due to high costs involved with music production and the like, but it seems to be nearly endless. Once an artist has paid back the recording costs in royalties, the rates that artist receives are still pathetic.

If I put my music on Amie Street, and I sell a song, I get the majority of the money. If I am a major label artist, and I sell a song on iTunes, I get a far, far smaller cut.

The connection from the fan to the band, financially, has been broken. The fan knows that their purchase will hardly help the band, or more precisely that the marginal benefit from their purchase to the band is near zero, so why do it? The cost to the fan is much higher than the marginal benefit to the band, so the fan just torrents the damn song.

There was a lot of noise when Brogan and Gary V wrote their books. Pundits said that internet people do not actually buy things, so both books were straight going to fail. Bullshit, it turned out. Crush It and Trust Agents both did well. People will still pay for quality, and they will pay if the know where the money is going.

How many people do you think bought Crush It because it was a good book, versus it being the Gary V book. Something to think about.

The vision from the consumer of the music industry is a dark room with cigar smoking lawyers. A far cry from the mixing board or the stage.

The point is, until there is a much more direct line from my purchase, to the coffers of my favorite band, I will (euphemistically) be inclined to take the lowest cost route, and fire up The Pirate Bay.

What to do? Well, artists need to stand up and attempt to take control of the situation, especially with emerging market openings such as Spotify. There is no industry without artists.

It has long been like this, out of proportion. But there was never an alternative solution to acquiring music. Now there is. I would make a healthy wager that if there was a way for people to buy music, where a full 50% of the total cost went to the band, sales would double. Overnight.

Food for thought. What do you think about the artist pay model with Spotify, and in general?

Wave Overload – Does Anyone Still Use This Thing?

thenextweb — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:44:24 UT

Wave is not doing anything for me, and I wonder if it does much for anyone.

I logged into Wave today, for the first time in a week, to head to a wave that actually mattered. A friend is working on a secret project, and wanted to get my input. He dropped everything into a wave, and told me to take a look.

I still have yet to find that wave, but I did waste a lot of time looking.

Wave has a single innovation, that I can use, that I love: instant team typing. That alone is amazing. But, I came to the realization that if Google would take that and drop it into Google Docs, I would never open Wave again.

That said, who the hell is still using Wave? Looking at my “inbox” (or Tide, as a I call it, if you get it: incoming waves. Anyway.), let’s see.

Here are a few select sample waves that I am supposed to check out.

Eliminate Tournament – I have no idea what this is, who anyone in the Wave is, or what to do with this. I did read the whole wave. Didn’t help much.

hey everyone, this is just a wave to chat -What the hell? If you want to “chat” with me, either text, email, GChat, or Twitter me. God knows that the last thing that I need is to have another place to have to go to check. Just to chat.

Hmm wave – This explains itself.

I do have some useful Waves. Maybe three or so. They are of course buried under around 50 other waves that I did not create, ask to be invited to, or want to have a part in. But it gets even better: my friends, that I actually want to hear from, wave me as well. From what I can tell, they have nothing to do but say this:

“So this is Wave. Hey man, what are you using this for?”

You know it, and have 17 waves that just say that. Horrible and content-free as that is, it’s about as far as people seem to get with Wave. So much the revolution. Wasn’t this supposed to be a game changer? What happened to that?

If I recall correctly, people claimed that Wave was sub-useful at launch, but that developers were going to be building on top of Wave to make it “killer useful.” When will that be happening? I would love to know.

Until then, I will use Wave when someone else insists on it, but I refuse to check my Wave inbox. Doing so is an excercise in futility.

It’s Saturday, tell me why I’m wrong.

Tweet Wave – Lets 1 Million People See Your Tweet

thenextweb — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:33:11 UT

Tweet Wave is a Twitter app allowing your message to be exposed to a potential 1 million users in a ‘wave’ like effect through members of the site re-tweeting your messages, guaranteeing your Tweet substantial exposure.

Based in the UK, Tweet Wave is the work of Need Creative CEO Danny Whitehouse who has created other Twitter oriented apps including Twitter Me and TwitMoan.

Tweet Wave is his latest venture and by looking at the average amount of followers its users have, means at it’s current state, it can offer a reach of 987,823 users.

From the conclusions drawn from research, he believes that 0.01% click on a tweet and 0.0001% of users go on to make a purchase. This could inject a more direct revenue offering and value from Twitter, especially with the rumored Twitter ad platform approaching.

How it works?

Simply sign up and send a tweet through the service with paid for credits, with 3 thrown in for free upon joining the service. It’s worth noting you must have at least 1000 followers to be a member.

This restriction on users follower numbers is a spam prevention policy, though the threat of this service being used to send out shedloads of spam is still there in my opinion.

That message will then be sent in the form of a RT to everyone registered within Tweet Wave to be approved, before being sent on by those users. The key aspect of this that allows for the potential for your tweet to be exposed to so many Twitter users is the fact that the message will automatically be sent after 24 hours if it hasn’t been vetted.

As a tool for affiliates, it will clearly be useful, though it could induce a barrage of unwanted messages in your timeline. With more features on the way and hopefully a cleaner UI, it’ll certainly add continued value to the range of Twitter apps available.

Twitter ads are coming soon – will you love them?

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:32:37 UT

So it looks like Twitter is finally ready to get serious about making some money – ads are on their way.

At TechCrunch’s Realtime CrunchUp today Twitter’s COO Dick Costolo told attendees that Twitter ads are coming soon but they’re going to be a bit different from traditional ads.

“It will be fascinating. Non-traditional. And people will love it… It’s going to be really cool.” Costolo said. Aside from that the only extra detail he would give were that they weren’t tied to the new Retweet feature.

Non-traditional advertising is increasingly being tried by internet companies well aware that users expect to be able to use their services for free but have grown ‘blind’ to traditional banner ads. Most notably, Digg has ads that appear in the stream of articles on the site. The twist here is that users can ‘Digg’ and ‘Bury’ the ads, giving advertisers valuable data about what’s working with their audience.

Twitter is nearing the launch of ads at a time when it’s also about to introduce Pro accounts.

So, how might these ads work? Robert Scoble suggests that ‘Super Tweets‘ will intelligently link Twitter users with ads they’ll be interested. Sounds like something dangerously close to spam to me.

How else could Twitter advertise to you without annoying you? If you have any ideas let us know.

The Next Web’s Weekly Recap

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:32:34 UT

Welcome to The Next Web’s Weekly Recap.

*** If you have a story we should include in our Weekly Recap please tweet it and include the hashtag #tnwrecap.

This week saw the first unveiling of Google’s Chrome OS, some big Microsoft announcements from their developer conference in Los Angeles as well as a bunch of geolocation news as Twitter and Foursquare publicly released their APIs and Google added features to Google Latitude.

A closer look at Chrome OS

The press coverage Google’s Chrome OS has received since it was announced back in June likely rivals the speculation to actual knowledge ratio that Apple products receive. However, this week’s Google Chrome OS event revealed a bunch of new information on what the OS will look like and how it will work (watch demo here or “Chrome for Dummies” video here). Headlining the announcements was it’s release date (which is still a year away) as well as its 7 second boot time and no local storage (100% cloud). As a result, all Chrome OS apps will be web-based (no native apps).

Big announcements from Microsoft

Steve Ballmer called Windows 7 a “fantastic” success so far. Windows 7 has sold 40 million units since it was launched on October 22nd. This week also saw some big announcements coming out of their Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles. Among the big announcements included a variety of new information on Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure as well as the introduction of Pinpoint and Dallas, two new and important components of the Azure Platform. Out of the conference also came the announcement that the beta of Silverlight 4 was available (Adobe also announced the release of AIR 2.0, their competing technology). Microsoft also revealed that they are still serious about building a world-class browser and promise that Internet Explorer 9 will be a “modern browser” and include support for HTML 5 as well as other emerging modern web browser standards.

Geolocation Heats up

This week saw two major releases of geolocation APIs. The biggest news came from Twitter as they officially released their geotagging API. As Twitter noted in their announcement, this will dramatically enhance users’ ability to have local conversations. Since geotagging is an opt in feature, make sure to visit your settings page to enable it. The other major announcement came from the red hot location-based social network Foursquare. They publicly released their API in the hopes that third-party developers will be quick to build applications for their platform and continue the momentum of the service. You can check out some of the apps already using Foursquare’s API. Foursquare was also in the news this week for expanding its service to 50 more cities. Not to be outdone, Google also updated their social location service latitude by adding two new features including the ability to store a history of your location as well as receiving proximity alerts if your friends are nearby.

What’s happening on Twitter?

In addition to the big Twitter geotagging API news, Twitter also made a small but noteworthy change to their site by replacing the question “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?”. Twitter also added the ability for users to add descriptions to their lists and made some UI changes to their site. In addition, Biz Stone revealed that Twitter will be rolling out Premium accounts before the end of the year. While the feature set of premium accounts is unknown, it’s sure to include analytics which many companies as well as regular users have been asking for for a while. In legal news, Twitter was once again sued for patent infringement by Cooper Industries. The company is calling for Twitter to pay a license fee for it’s mass notification technology.

Quick Hits

We were really excited this week to announce that The Next Web is coming to the Middle East, UK, Australia, Poland, Italy, and Bulgaria. Check out the Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages to follow.
Salesforce launched a corporate collaboration tool called Salesforce Chatter which goes head to head with companies like Yammer as well as SocialCast (which we use here at The Next We.
Two major sites got facelifts this week including the human-powered search engine Mahalo as well as the gadget blog Engadget.
Camino, the open source Mac browser that I’m a big fan of, released version 2.
Seesmic released of a native Windows Twitter client to compliment their browser and AIR clients. Hopefully there will be a Mac version soon.
Brizzly is now open to the public. It’s a great web app that provides an interface for interacting with Twitter and Facebook.
If you’re a fan of music videos make sure to check out TubeRadio.fm which we reviewed this week.
TypePad introduced TypePad Micro, a micro-blogging service to compete with the likes of Posterous and Tumblr.
The popular Android bar code scanning app ShopSavvy made its way to the iPhone this week.
The dominate URL shortening service bit.ly added a Click Summary dashboard which gives users the ability easily view overview stats on their links.
US President Barack Obama revealed while speaking in Shanghai that despite his millions of followers on Twitter, he has never used the service.
Oxford University Press announced on their blog that “unfriend” was the word of the year.
With the Internet becoming more important and vital in our everyday lives, countries are starting to categorize it as a legal right. The latest country to do this was Spain.
Techmeme is now 6 people. They also released a version of their site optimized for mobile.
Apple’s long battle with clone maker Psystar finally ended as a court ruling prohibits them from selling computers running OS X.
Interested in Twitter’s new digs? Check out some images of their new headquarters or head over to Officeal which aggregates workspace images from various companies.
If you want to punk your friends on Twitter check out FakeWhale. It’s an extremely juvenile but fun way to craft fake tweets from any user. Check out Alex’s nifty creations here.

Sony to Offer Online Download Service

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:46:09 UT

Sony have announced plans to launch an online download service next year. It will see the ability for Sony product users to download media content such as music and videos to their televisions and other Sony devices. The move is part of Sony’s Chief Executive, Howard Stringer’s aim of converging their strengths in electronics such as Bravia televisions and the Playstation console with its music label and movie studio productions.

The company aims to have the service up and running at somepoint in 2010, “and earlier in the year would obviously be a lot more preferable in my mind”, adds Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s Executive Vice President.

The service will build off of the current Playstation Network system, which currently boasts over 33 million registered members who can play games online along with purchasing and downloading content such as game demo’s, HD trailers along with themes and other media.

“There are already a lot of services out there but we want to try to bring something that is uniquely Sony to the experience. One of the things we really need to get into is the whole concept of user-driven content”, Hirai said in an interview.

Sony also stated that while some of the features on the service would be free, others would be paid-for, although there was no mention of a monthly subscription fee so whether it’ll be pay-per-use/view or a fixed fee is still to be confirmed.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Sony can do with this, Playstation Network is built with a solid infrastructure and it’s a great service all in all. I hope they can follow on from that with a content-rich download service.

How Mozilla Makes Money and Why It Had Better Start Explorin

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:59:55 UT

A post on ZDNet today took me back to when I first considered how web browsers like Firefox made their money.

Many believe that Mozilla, known generally as an “open source” alternative to the likes of Internet Explorer, survives and thrives off donations. That is not the case. While the Mozilla Foundation does accept donations, Firefox , Thunderbird, Seamonkey and it’s other products are part of The Mozilla Corporation.

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity. It reinvests some or all of its profits back into the Mozilla projects. The Mozilla Corporation’s stated aim is to work towards the Mozilla Foundation’s public benefit to “promote choice and innovation on the Internet.

So how does it make money. In one word, Google. Mozilla makes money by partnering with the likes of Google who pay Mozilla a publicly undisclosed amount for each Google search query made from Firefox by a user, reportedly between $50 to $100 million a year.

Hence why you’ll find Google as Firefox’s default search engine on its default homepage, and top right search bar.

Mozilla’s predecessor, Netscape, was also available for free but did not have the benefit (at the time) of a paying search partnership.

It’s unclear whether Mozilla has another revenue-generating option from within the browser itself, but what is for certain is that according to audited PDF of Mozilla’s financial results approximately 91% and 94% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2008 and 2007, respectively, came from Google.

With Google now promoting their own browser (and OS), Mozillaneeds to get thinking fast and exploring other revenue earning options. Of course, if Microsoft were to step in and offer Mozilla a hefty sum to replace Google as default search engine, then things might just get very interesting indeed.

Gmail users tweet twice as much

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:42:31 UT

A recent study by RapLeaf shows that Twitter and LinkedIn are at least twice as popular amongst Gmail users as they are with Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL users.

RapLeaf looked at social network memberships of 120,000 users of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts to gauge where they spend time online and found that AOL and Gmail users tend to favor Facebook, while Hotmail and Yahoo users tend to use Facebook and MySpace equally. The study also showed that within that user-base, Twitter is the third-most popular social network, followed by LinkedIn.

Social networks versus email users breakdown

Results

Over 29% of AOL and Gmail’s user base have Facebook memberships, but only around 13% have MySpace memberships
Around 20% of Hotmail and Yahoo users are on Facebook and MySpace
On a percentage basis, Twitter and LinkedIn are more than twice as popular with Gmail users as they are with AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo users

MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn versus Facebook

Results

Twitter is around 4-5x less popular than Facebook with AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo users
Hotmail and Yahoo users tend to have similar social network preferences
The substantially low user-base of LinkedIn can be attributed to high probability that LinkedIn users register with their business emails instead.

Are Hotmail and Yahoo users a little behind? Is MySpace’s known connection to music the reason why Yahoo users favor it? Are Gmail users more hip and tech-savvy? Although this study cannot answer all our questions, it has certainly provided a somehow clearer insight. We’d love to read your thoughts on this.

Twitter Confirms Plans for Paid Accounts

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:35:44 UT

Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed the introduction of paid-for business accounts at some point in the near future. In an interview with BBC, Stone confirms the rumours that floated around the web earlier this year; “Twitter will always be free to everyone whether it’s commercial or personal. But you’ll be able to pay for an additional layer of access to learn more about your Twitter account – to get some feedback, to get some analytics so that you can become a better twitterer.”

Stone also hinted at the possibility of offering licensing and syndication solutions to companies such as Google and Bing to offer them a real-time feed of data to enhance the accuracy of relevancy of search results.

He also states the potential for Twitter growth is massive and they have set a goal to reach 1 billion active users by 2013, an optimistic one perhaps but from February 2008 to February 2009, we saw an increase of almost 1,400% from 475,000 users to over 7 million so I wouldn’t put it by them to do everything they can to try and hit the target.

Despite its growth and the recent success of securing a $100 million investment, which increased the value of Twitter to around $1 billion, the company is yet to make any profit and critics are quick in pointing out their predictions to how profitable, or unprofitable rather, Twitter actually is.

I think Twitter have been rather clever in their decision to focus on creating a service that satisfies its users and optimizing that service prior to monetizing it, now time will tell whether or not the plans that Twitter have in place will work and if so, to what degree.

You can watch the BBC interview with Biz Stone here. What are your thoughts on the initial plans to offer a paid account type?

Apple taking iPhone app design tips from Android?

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:03:45 UT

Apple is widely regarded as the master of mobile software design, but is it about to copy a key feature of Android?

The reason iPhone apps are so easy to use is that Apple enforces strict design rules on third party developers. Those rules could be about to change, we’ve heard.

The familiar bar of icons across the bottom of the screen on many apps could be replaced by one of Android’s most popular features – the pull-out menu.

Android has a notification menu that updates when you receive new emails, SMS messages and the like. To access it you pull down with your finger from the top of the screen, revealing a menu containing all the notifications. It’s a feature that has been praised by many and it appears Apple may be preparing to introduce something similar on the iPhone.

What we hear is that Apple has advised some developers to replace their bottom-of-the-screen icon bars with a menu that you pull up from the bottom of the screen with your finger. Sound familiar?

Why would Apple advise developers to take this approach? Apple likes to provide a unified approach to apps across the iPhone and iPod Touch platform. If third party developers are being told to take this approach, it points to the possibility that Apple may release something similar for the iPhone’s built in apps.

Something here doesn’t quite add up. The next full revision of the iPhone OS isn’t expected until summer 2010. While Apple regularly offers small OS updates throughout the year, changing something as major as a central part of the user interface is something they would probably want to wait for iPhone OS 4.0 in June or July to introduce. Why would Apple tell developers about such a major change so far ahead?

Still, we have heard this information from different sources over the past few weeks so there may well be something in it. Let’s sit tight and see what unfolds.

Watch Kevin Kelly Answer “What Technology Wants” Live at

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:19:45 UT

Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture and today he spaeaks about “what technology wants” at TEDx in Amsterdam. You can watch it live here:

Facebook costs Canadian Woman her Insurance

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:15:29 UT

We’ve all been warned by career advisers about how we use Facebook. They give you advice on who to friend, what to say, and what pictures to post. We’ve also heard of people being let-go because of things they said of the popular social networking site, so this story should come as no surprise.

Nathalie Blanchard enjoying the sun while on Sick Leave

Insurance companies are notorious for hiring Private Investigators to snap shots to help them build a case when fraud is suspected, so why not do a quick search of Facebook/ Flicker and cut out the middle-man?

A year and a half ago, Nathalie Blanchard, of Quebec, Canada was diagnosed with severe depression. She has been on long-term leave from her employer, IBM, and has been receiving monthly payments from her insurer, Manulife.

This all came to an abrupt end when Manulife checked out some pictures on her Facebook profile which show her at a bar,having fun on her birthday party, and soaking up some sun on Vacation.

I guess Nathalie is not in the habit of posting pictures of her in a dark-room with a shot-gun pointed at her head!

So, basically the insurance company has not disputed her illness but rather they don’t want her having some fun while recovering from depression.

A quote from her lawyer, Tom Lavin: ”I don’t think for judging a mental state that Facebook is a very good tool,” he said.

Who needs psychiatrists when you’ve got Facebook?

Google’s Doodle: It’s Universal Children’s Day

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:53:06 UT

I have a confession to make. I rely on Google for pretty much everything! It’s scary, but I actually rely on Google to remind me of Valentine’s day, Halloween and a string of other occassions that would wizz by without so much as an aknolwedgement from me.

And that’s not good… I’ve learned the hard way, as a young pimple-faced teenager, that girls aren’t being serious when they tell you that: “We don’t believe in Valentine.”

Bu today was a little different. Today, Google’s Doodle reminded me that it’s Universal Children’s Day. In India, the Doodle was designed by a 4th Grader, Puru Pratap Singh, who wants to be a dentist when he grows up. It’s titled: “My India, Full of Life.”

According to Wikipedia, Universal Children’s day has its origins in Turkey, but was first celebrated around the world in 1955. Many countries around the world already celebrate children on various days.

This year is special, however. It marks the the 20th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Convention of Human Rights, the Decleration of the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Convention.

So, why is this important? Well, despite the advancement in science and technology nearly 8 million children lose their lives from six treatable and preventable causes: diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, premature birth or anoxia (the lack of oxygen) during childbirth. This is by and large a problem that children face in the developing world.

In the developed world Children’s Day could take on a different twist. Children today spend way too much time staring at blinking lights on a screen. A friends child uses Mind Manager to draw mind-maps of his plan for the day. The kid has an excel sheet to track his scores on Wii, and plots them on a chart in PowerPoint. This kid is 7!

So, for one day only, why don’t we just send the kids out to play?! They could go to a park, slope or field. Anywhere but here. I know it’s easy for me to say, I live in Dubai and the weather is beautiful, but hey, I didn’t grow up here and getting muddy, wet and bruised was the order of the day!

One thing that does erk me about Google, however, is that it doesn’t do remind me of my anniversary!

Puru Pratap Singh displays his doodle

What does the future hold for our personal data?

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:41:49 UT

On an increasing frequency, UK consumers are opening their evening newspapers or sitting down to their TV dinners to the news that more of their personal data has been lost, stolen or hacked.

I’ve been taking a increasingly keen interest since my own personal information was stolen following the Guardian Jobs website being hacked back in late October.

With two more occurrences taking place since then including my home towns (St. Albans) postal voters data going missing and more notably the recent T-Mobile debacle, security is simply not improving. It doesn’t help when in T-Mobiles case, their own staff were selling on customers data for their own financial gain.

Technology has brought us far over the last 2 decades, solving many a problem, so why not data security and access? Admittedly, it will be very difficult to knock it out for touch for good, though there’s definitely scope to improve things drastically.

When discussing the possibilities with colleagues, a common trend continually appears. Resting the responsibility of the storing of your personal information with multiple parties on various different infrastructures and well out of your control.

With so much of our data held in the clouds, surely it’s time to revolutionise the way we hold and secure our data. Having it in so many locations at once is simply not viable long term and with the technology and developers at the world’s disposal, it’s time to find a better solution.
My opinion

We need to store all of our data in one place, my ideal system is one some may feel unrealistic and out of reach at the moment, but I believe it would put trust back into consumers.

In the same way we approve APIs to access our data with the likes of Twitter and Facebook apps, websites and companies would have to do the same.
They can then outline any information that they require that’s missing and allows us to choose the information we give to them.
The consumer would be able to remove data too and see which organisations held their data.
Where would this be held? Harvesting it all with everyone elses on a large database via Google, Facebook or Governments would be asking for trouble. I see us holding it ourselves, maybe even on our mobile phones or other mobile devices, that way the risk is just for ourselves and less of a reward for hackers.

How to prevent companies from storing our data following that would be another hurdle, though essentially I believe we need to flip data handling on it’s head and put the control back with us, the consumer.
Your opinion

As our readers, we want to hear your opinion too, how do you see the future of data handling?

One things for sure, we cannot continue for much longer with the manor of which our sensitive data is currently dealt with, i dread to think how many websites and companies hold mine and in particularly, what their doing with it!

Susan Boyle Makes Amazon History

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:18:12 UT

Susan Boyle, the singer who shot to fame after her stint on British talent show Britian’s Got Talent has seen her new album become the biggest CD pre-order in Amazon.com’s history.

The Scottish singer’s debut album, I Dreamed A Dream, is to be released by Sony Music Entertainment on Monday.

Amazon confirmed that the album has surpassed the previous record set by Japanese rock group Mr Children’s Supermarket Fantasy in 2008.

“Just eight months ago, no-one was aware of the talents of Susan Boyle. Now, she has generated more Amazon pre-order CD sales globally than any other artist,” Julian Monaghan said.

“That is an incredible achievement and is testament to the fact that she has captured the hearts of people all over Britain, America and the rest of the world.”

Columbia Records Chairman Steve Barnett added: “One of the things that is so unique about Susan Boyle is her ability to touch people around the world. We’re excited that I Dreamed A Dream holds the new record for global pre-orders and that Amazon’s customers have supported her album in this way.”

Susan has already performed her first single from the album, a cover of the Rolling Stones “Wild Horses” at American Idol’s final this year.

The lead song from the album is due to be released on 23rd November 2009 after she launches it using Simon Cowell’s other entertainment show, on the X Factor live results (see her performance at the American Idol shows earlier this year below).

Tech21 Offer Next-Gen Device Protection

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:31:43 UT

Tech21, a recent UK startup based out of London have taken device protection in the form of cases, to a new level. You might have heard of the company before, they were featured on Dragon’s Den UK and were one of the few companies to win investment – a healthy £150,000 injection in return for 40% equity.

You might be thinking here’s another brand to saturate an already over-populated market, however Tech21 utilise a new technology called d3o – a specially engineered material made with intelligent molecules. They move freely in a normal, resting capacity but when it comes in to contact with something hard, the molecules interlock and provide an extremely strong bond to protect your device, whether it be your iPhone or Macbook!

So the technology is quite complex, but actually getting it in to the cases would prove to be even more difficult, how do you get a rather slimy orange material to become a suitable case to use with your beloved iPhone? The answer…inject it. By using a special process, the d3o is injected into a case mould, of course it’s not that simple but that’s the process in its simplest form.

So the material is inserted in to the corners of the case and upon impact, the shock is absorbed and dissipated around the device stopping your iPhone or iPod from becoming damaged. Nifty eh?

Tech21 claim that by using d30, your device is “protected by up to 150% more” than any other case, although the price of an iBand can have about the same markup as its competitors. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

With d3o being a very new technology with alot of potential, I think Tech21 have done well to get in early with signing a 3 year exclusivity contract with them for the mobile and technology market. Along with having 2 extremely experienced business angels on board, Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones. Tech21 has a bright future ahead and I hope to see a multitude of new products from them.

Twitter, now in French.

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:34:47 UT

Twitter has just pushed an update that see’s the site now available in four languages; English, Japanese, Spanish and now French.

The move is the second stage of a push to get Twitter into as many languages as humanly possible. I say humanly intentionally as the entire translation process is being open sourced.

Twitter appear to be working round the clock these days, with two solid updates in the last 24 hours, the first being the most significant, with Twitter providing geo-location access to developers via the API.

Nevertheless, this is bound to bring a smile to the thirty French speaking countries active on Twitter. To see Twitter in French, visit your settings and select “French” from the menu.

Gmail Mobile Gets A Little Less Ugly

thenextweb — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:55:56 UT

If you are addicted to Gmail like I am, and are an avid iPhone user, you will appreciate this. Gmail mobile has recently been redesigned. While there is no official word from the official Gmail blog about the redesign, it seems improvements in speed have been included. The interface is also less cluttered than before and is definitely more aesthetically pleasing.

Screenshots below:

Goodbye #PDC09 – It’s Been Fun

thenextweb — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:59:40 UT

The developers are leaving, the last sessions wrapping up, and TheNextWeb is rocking out from the PDC in short order.

If for some reason you have missed the whole shebang, take a look at our recap of the major announcements from the event here.

We leave you with this last image, courtesy of the Microsoft Surface team letting me tinker with their machines:

Official: Ebay Sells Skype. Receives $1.9 billion cash as pa

thenextweb — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:17:33 UT

After being quoted as saying Skype had “limited synergies” with it. eBay has just announced that it has completed the sale of Skype, at a valuation of $2.75 billion.

In a blog post Skype’s John Silverman says:

“The investor group is led by Silver Lake, and includes Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPI, Joltid Limited and our founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis.”

eBay retains approximately 30% of Skype, and the investor group led by Silver Lake controlling the remaining 70%.

The new owners are Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures – which originally invested in Skype – as well as private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Ebay bought Skype, which allows users to make telephone calls over the internet, in 2005 for $2.6 billion but has admitted since then that it hugely overpaid for the business. The software was developed by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a team of software developers based in Tallinn, Estonia.

via Techcrunch