Archive for July, 2008

Google to start investing in startups

Posted under asides on Thursday, 31 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
David Drummondby darthdowney (CC)Google is ready to launch a venture capital arm, opening up the possibility to invest in startups, rather then just buy them. Senior vice president and chief legal officer David Drummond will lead the new investment part of Google. "The move would make Google the...
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Youtube to offer video annotation soon

Posted under Technology on Thursday, 31 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Google has acquired Omnisio, a service that allows users to annonate video's and mash-up videos. Omnisio was founded by three Australians about six months ago. Youtube had its own "remixing" feature before, but had been abandoned ever since. Google announced that the Omnisio team will join Youtube,...
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Fm transmitters, socializing in an offline world

Posted under Technology on Thursday, 31 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
This map represents how the Internet assets are distributed across the world; there is a lack of internet accessibility in big parts of South America, Australia and especially Africa. Without the web it's hard to get online information, and social networking is even harder to do. Or is it? Juan...
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MyYearBook is growing in US teen market, raises $13 million

Posted under Technology on Wednesday, 30 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
myYearbook raised $13 (€8) million, and the social network gained remarkable growth in the teen market, exceptional given the established presence of Myspace. A social website launched three years ago, myYearbook claims to be the third largest social network in the US. TechCrunch reports that...
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China retains Internet censorship during the Olympics

Posted under China, Technology on Wednesday, 30 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Contrary to earlier promises to foreign journalists, China will offer limited access to the Internet during the Beijing Olympic Games. Chinese authorities block information on the Internet that the Communist party views as improper, unhealthy or as a threat to its rule — essentially, all...
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The World Wide Web grows a billion pages per day

Posted under China on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
The growth rate of the Internet is accelerating in such a degree that a rather amazing related milestone was passed; Google's spiders discovered the trillionth URL. That's 1,000,000,000,000 WebPages indexed, Cuil reported to have indexed almost 122 billion pages with the help of the Internet...
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Online Financial Times readers increasing, fast!

Posted under Technology on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Its not a question whether newspapers are depended of their online services anymore. It seems that newspapers are making the switch to digital, and that income can be found in advertisements rather then subscription based income. An example is English business paper Financial Times, that recently...
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The World Wide Web is growing a billion pages per day

Posted under Technology on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
The growth rate of the Internet is accelerating in such a degree that a rather amazing related milestone was passed; Google's spiders discovered the trillionth URL. That's 1,000,000,000,000 WebPages indexed, Cuil reported to have indexed almost 122 billion pages with the help of the Internet...
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How Yahoo killed MyBlogLog

Posted under Technology on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Unbelievable, the MyBlogLog service announced another redesign of their website today! – unfortunately, again without new features. The update is followed by the updated design of their widget in February. As many know, MyBlogLog is a blogging network, subscribed users get a "blog community"...
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Online language learning becomes fun, Babbel.com receives funding

Posted under Technology on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
One of the problems with online language training sites is that the content is ridiculous, and the user interface usually is unintuitive and plain ugly. (Online) language programs come and go, but usually never really take off. The guys at Berlin based Babbel have made an interesting attempt to...
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Ex-Google engineers launch ‘Cuil’, the first results

Posted under asides on Monday, 28 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Search engine Cuil launched this Monday. Cuil is the brainchild of Anna Patterson, who sold her last internet search technology to Google in 2004. This time, she believes that the technology is more valuable and she is not planning to sell it. We wonder, is this a Google competing internet...
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Microsoft: Headed to be online hub, income from ads

Posted under asides on Monday, 28 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Steve Ballmer at the Max 08 conference, Picture by Gorriti (CC) Steve Ballmer held the keynote at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond last night and underlined the importance of succeeding in search and advertising. I have seen slides explaining that Microsoft wants to sell...
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Fast growing ad, gaming and education market in China

Posted under China, Entrepreneurship on Saturday, 26 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
A delegation of 40 Dutch entrepreneurs and investors visited China last April, they visited marketing offices, gaming companies, multinationals and telecom companies in Shanghai and Chengdu and got their eyes opened to the dynamics and potentials in China. Some participants wrote down their...
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Google does not Digg it, walks away from the deal

Posted under Technology on Saturday, 26 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
A dispiriting update about Google wanting to acquire Digg, the deal is off! The guys at Digg were about to close the deal and walk away with 200 million dollars. But for some reason, Google decided to walk away from the deal yesterday, leaving Digg to be the ugly bride nobody wants to have. The...
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Ebuddy mobile IM client downloaded 5 million times

Posted under asides on Friday, 25 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
The popular independent IM messenger eBuddy seems to be popular on mobile devices, the mobile J2ME version has been downloaded 5 million times! These numbers are unreal to me, since I used the initial version of the IM service primarily for some quick-and-simple IM access at the office back in...
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3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia

Posted under Technology on Friday, 25 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Granted, most people do not see Knol as a direct threat to Wikipedia, and the title of the post might upset some people... Even Google noted that Knol is not designed to compete with Wikipedia, but you have to admit that from a online knowledge-base perspective, the sites are quite similar. Knol...
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Media-organizer Blippr public and packed with new features

Posted under Technology on Friday, 25 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Blippr recently removed invite-only requirements and entered into public beta, launching with the latest release a number of new features and a complete redesign. My colleague Ernst-Jan pointed out that the service allowed users to recommend things like music and films by writing reviews or rating...
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3 reasons why Knol will beat Wikipedia

Posted under Technology on Friday, 25 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Granted, most people do not see Knol as a direct threat to Wikipedia, and the title of the post might upset some people... Even Google noted that Knol is not designed to compete with Wikipedia, but you have to admit that from a online knowledge-base perspective, the sites are quite similar. Knol...
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Google maps: go take a hike!

Posted under Technology on Thursday, 24 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Google announced a new feature in Google Maps, letting you view the walking directions. And as Andy Schwerin puts, it makes me want to stroll through the city a little bit as well: "You'll notice shops, parks, and public art that you've been accustomed to zooming past, and come away feeling like...
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Nowdothis, maybe the easiest web 2.0 service ever

Posted under Technology on Thursday, 24 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
I am not a particular fan of GTD contextual todo lists, they make me grumpy and busy; instead I apply the just-on-time principle: I write down the five most important things in the evening on a paper, and try to accomplish that the next day. And with New York based Jakob Lodwick's new web...
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Google in negotiations to acquire Digg, good!

Posted under asides on Wednesday, 23 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Google's negotiations with Digg have become serious, and Techcrunch heard whispers at Google that the companies have signed a letter of intent and are expected to close the deal within a couple of weeks. With the acquirement, Digg will be brought under the Google News property. The acquisition...
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Garner warns US to hold off on WiMAX, Intel is furious

Posted under Technology on Wednesday, 23 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Picture from Erwin Boogert(CC)Yesterday, Gartner warned businesses to wait on investing in WiMAX, at least until more vendors actually create WiMax handsets. A analysis that upset Gregory Ofili, the marketing manager with Intel WiMAX. He reacted furiously, but Gartner may have a point. WiMAX...
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Automate your blog promotion with BlogUpp!

Posted under asides on Tuesday, 22 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. This time we're interviewing Valer Batcu, the co-founder of BlogUpp!. The service works as follows: BlogUpp! asks only for the link to the blog, automatically...
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Create 3d objects from your drawings with webservice (we have invites)

Posted under Technology on Tuesday, 22 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
We have seen online services for T-shirts, mousepads and tea. Techcrunch pointed us to a new Dutch webservice that can create 3d sculptures, the service understands various forms of CAD drawings, "print" them in 3d, and ships them globally within ten working days. Ever wanted to create advanced...
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Alternative film site Raindance.tv raises € 600.000

Posted under Technology on Monday, 21 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Good news for alternative movie fanatics out there, Raindance Festival has launched raindance.tv earlier this year and reports that they secured about € 600.000 ($1 million) to accelerate their online operations. The website also signed distribution deals with 8 partners to facilitate the movies...
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Qik opens public beta and announces new features

Posted under asides on Monday, 21 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Qik enables users to go live by streaming anytime, anywhere, right from your phone. The service has opened its public beta program. The streaming service has also announced a couple of new features on their site today, including groups, events and an embeddable player. New features: Facebook...
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Fast growing ad, gaming & education market in China

Posted under Technology on Monday, 21 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
The New Media Media group in China, photo by Marc van der Chijs A delegation of 40 Dutch entrepreneurs and investors visited China last April, they visited marketing offices, gaming companies, multinationals and telecom companies in Shanghai and Chengdu and got their eyes opened to the dynamics...
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Torrent-like live streaming invented in the EU

Posted under asides on Sunday, 20 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Do you have an event that you want to cover live, but you lack the budget to cover bandwidth costs? Researchers from 21 different European countries have developed software that can stream video over a peer-to-peer bittorrent network, an open source initiative that might change the way we stream...
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China is paying commenters to say the ‘right’ thing

Posted under China on Saturday, 19 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
This article was origionally posted on thenextweb.org The Chinese government has a long tradition of keeping an eye to the media in order to prevent critical messages towards the communist party, a task that has become difficult since the rise of the open and worldwide Internet. The...
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Facebook sues German copycat, more to come?

Posted under Technology on Saturday, 19 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Facebook has started to take action against their copycats, and filled a copyright lawsuit against German copycat StudiVZ, in what they claim is an infringement of Facebook's "look, feel, features and services". This claim is filled a month after Facebook won the accusation filled by ConnectU,...
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Glam Media expands to Germany, acquires Codex media

Posted under Technology on Friday, 18 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Samir Arora (left) together with TED founder Richard Saul WurmanGlam media is expanding to Europe and has announced another acquirement in their pursuit. We reported that the female-orientated vertical-advertising company had used their last funding round of a whopping $85 million (54 million euro)...
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If you like the web, I bet you love South Korea too

Posted under Entrepreneurship, Korea, asides on Thursday, 17 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
This is the conclusion of my web series about the internet in South Korea, published on ReadWriteWeb and TheNextWeb.org two weeks ago; I put it on my blog for completeness of the serie. That is, if you like to be connected to the Internet all day, while enjoying the fastest connections in the...
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China is paying commenters to say the ‘right’ thing

Posted under asides on Thursday, 17 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
The Chinese government has a long tradition of keeping an eye to the media in order to prevent critical messages towards the communist party, a task that has become difficult since the rise of the open and worldwide Internet. The government started attempts to control the content on their domestic...
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SnagFilms brings documentaries to widgets

Posted under Technology on Thursday, 17 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Serial entrepreneurs Ted Leonsis (AOL) and Rick Allen (National Geographic Society) started producing documentaries and launched SnagFilms.com earlier today to distribute them, SnagFilms also acquired IndieWire, a online resource and community for independent filmmakers from GMD studios to...
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Rumor: Amazon Kindle 2 Coming This Fall

Posted under Technology on Wednesday, 16 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
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...
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Working at Meganova, because sitting at home is a bitch

Posted under Internet, Media / In The News on Tuesday, 15 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
"Finally a holiday!" I yelled earlier, but soon I found out that sitting at home was not as good as I imagined in the first place, don't get me wrong, I have enough work but I realized that I felt tired all day long and couldn’t get any work out of my hands; do you know that feeling? I...
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Twitter acquires Summize for about $15 million

Posted under Technology on Tuesday, 15 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Twitter reports on their blog that they acquired Summize, a search engine that indexes twitter posts. As Twitter co-founder Biz Stone puts it: "The folks over at Summize discovered Twitter and significantly improved on this idea of filtering and search.." Techcrunch reports that Twitter...
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Another Dutch web host prosecuted for torrent website, end of one more torrent safe haven?

Posted under Technology on Wednesday, 9 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Another Dutch host has been challenged in court to hand over personal information of a torrent website. The accusing party claimes that host Euroaccess facilitated violations of copyrights on the internet, and that the site torrents.to, has an illegal character and should have been taken down by...
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EU Parlement in Brussels (pictures)

Posted under Review on Saturday, 5 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Visited the European Parliament Espace Léopold in Brussels today; The complex is not the official seat of Parliament, which is the Immeuble Louise Weiss in Strasbourg, France, but as most of the other institutions of the European Union are in Brussels, Parliament built the Brussels complex in...
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Wordpress 2.6 adds revisions, Gears and Tumblr style blogging

Posted under asides on Tuesday, 1 July 2008 by Joop Dorresteijn
Matthew Mullenweg has just announced Wordpress 2.6, the latest update of this popular blogging platform. The release is almost a month ahead of schedule, and it seems that Wordpress is maturing into a full functioned content management system. These are our top three favorite new functions: 1....
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