9 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- Samsung and LG Windows Phone 7 handsets get official pre-release outings
- Amazon offers free delivery for an additional 17 european countries
- Startup Camp Sydney 4 – Meet the startups!
- Tumbl.in lets you stumble upon links in your Twitter timeline, favorites and lists
- 10 Services That Need iPad Apps
- What is the Future of Web Apps? [Video]
- How To Disconnect, A Primer
- The New Facebook Groups: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
- Microsoft accused in Angry Birds Windows Phone 7 mixup
- Our bodies are going online – but where will it lead us?
| Samsung and LG Windows Phone 7 handsets get official pre-release outings Posted: 11 Oct 2010 03:48 AM PDT
That’s great, until one of your worldwide offices push product pages early and official out devices, hours before they are due to be announced. This was the case for both LG and Samsung who inadvertently pushed live product details for their Optimus 7 and Omnia 7 respectively. Samsung Omnia 7The Omnia 7 leaked on Samsung’s Russian portal, highlighting that it would be Europe’s first Windows Phone 7 handset. It will feature a 4-inch Super AMOLED WVGA screen, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor, a 5MP autofocus camera and has 8GB onboard storage. The Omnia 7 can record 720p HD video and will have a 1,500mAh Li-Ion battery offering 520 minutes talk time and 390 hours standby. LG Optimus 7The LG Optimus 7 was pushed live on LG’s UK blog, announcing the launch of its first Windows Phone 7 handset. It was live for a matter of minutes before a LG employee realised the mistake and pulled the post (or was it a cunning marketing stunt?) but it was live long enough for us to get the all important details and for Google to cache the page. The Optimus 7 will have the following specifications:
There is no word on pricing or availability on both devices, we expect things to be a little clearer come 2:30pm (UK time) when Microsoft start proceedings. It’s going to be an exciting day, what do you expect from the launch events today? Are you tempted to grab yourself a Windows Phone 7 device? Let us know in the comments.Slashgear |
| Amazon offers free delivery for an additional 17 european countries Posted: 11 Oct 2010 02:47 AM PDT
Only customers from UK and Ireland were previously able to benefit from free delivery within Europe but after today’s announcement, customers from Italy, Greece, Norway, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Sweden, San Marino, Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal and Finland will now be able to take advantage of the service. Brian McBride, Managing Director at Amazon UK said:
As Amazon continues to incorporate more and more products into its shopping portal, this will be good news for customers in the above 17 countries, especially as the holiday season approaches, undoubtedly lining Amazon’s pockets in the process. |
| Startup Camp Sydney 4 – Meet the startups! Posted: 10 Oct 2010 10:56 PM PDT
The campers, most of who had never met before, were split into teams of 5 to go through the ideation, prototyping, launching and pitching of a business within 48 hours. It should be said that while the camp was for 48 hours in reality most of the work had been done in the first 24 hours in preparation for the launch session on Saturday night, making their efforts even more impressive Organised by Startup Camp founder and boss Bart Jellema, with the help of Patrick Dreissen this time around, the purpose of Startup Camp is to act as "exercise for entrepreneurs". The goal isn't really to create 10 viable businesses, rather, the plan is to show people how much can be achieved if you just get started and focus and to expose entrepreneurs to good (and bad) habits so that they can take the lessons learned onto their other projects outside of the camp. There is also the added benefit of acting as an intense bonding session between members of the startup community. I know as a participant in the first Start-up Camp Sydney , almost 2 years ago now, that I still keep in touch with many of the people I met on that weekend. Even though this is entrepreneurial "practice" I was really impressed with the quality of the startups this time around. Even more impressive was the air of confidence and excitement in the room on Saturday night. Normally teams are dead quiet before the launch session, working hard to get projects to a presentable level – but not this time. Instead, teams were chatting amongst themselves and with each other and talk was not so much about technical details but the commercial side of the startups – business models / traffic models / market focus and so on. It has to be said that if startup camp represents the standard of the local startup industry then we've matured immeasurably over the past few years helped, in no small part, by programs like this. So let's get to the startups (titles are clickable) — A much needed service, DealPinch is an aggregator of Groupon style deal of the day sites. There are a few reasons to choose DealPinch over signing up to every group buying site. First of all you can receive all the deals in a single email instead of having to subscribe to all the individual sites. Secondly, you can filter your interests so as to receive offers only for things you really want. I really liked DealPinch and see aggregation services like it becoming a key part of the increasingly massive group-buying ecosystem iapps 4 me is a site that connects people who have problems that could be solved with an app, and developers who might want to create those apps. The reasoning is simple. You have an idea for an app but don't have the skills and don't have the desire to get the app made. With iapps4me you give away that idea in the hope that it will get made by someone who is capable. For developers there's a market research tool built in where you can find out how many people might be interested in buying your app and what price they would be willing to pay Uni Whiteboard aims to make it easier for students to share and collaborate on class notes. Students can also vote on notes and contributions. The site was created by a couple of uni students who obviously see a need for this type of service, so it should be interesting to see how it goes. uInfluenceMe is positioning itself as an open competitor to things like LinkedIn recommendations. The site is incredibly simple, which forms a large part of its potential. Putting out a positive message about how someone has influenced you can be done in seconds. People who have been recommended can then display badges on their website or blog. There's also the option to put a call out for recommendations, something that I'm not sure I'm as much of a fan of, but that aside I'm digging the fact that the team has created a site that uses social media to share the love. MyMedistats aims to help with the task of monitoring basic medical details like vaccination reminders, allergy information and so on. eHealth is becoming an incredibly crowded industry but MyMediStats aims to differentiate itself by focusing on specific parts of the the game and making the collection and sharing of that information as easy as possible. Mix education and social gaming and you get GradeGame – a new site which aims to turn your grades into a game that not only sees you compete against classmates but also against other people in your year and across your whole university. As one of the founders, Sean Marshall explaines "A student who is already achieving at a high level has very little incentive to push themselves for additional marks under the current system. By showing them that by scoring 2 additional marks they can improve their ranking within the course, students have that reason to try a little bit harder". Using the site is as easy as uploading the electronic transcript the uni sends out to students. Within seconds that information is turned into comparative data based on other students' results. At the moment the team is focused on allowing students to earn badges and awards, view leader boards and build a profile of their academic and non academic achievements while at university. The profiles students create will then be used to create a recruitment portfolio for their resumes, and to qualify students to tutor their peers in subjects in which they have received high marks. As Seth Priebatsch said in his TEDx Boston "School is a game, It's just not a terribly well designed game". Word! Polycloset is a site that taps into the unbelievable success of Polyvore, the online style and shopping website. Polyvore has a feature called "sets" which allows users to mix and match clothes on the site to create style collages. Users can also add in their own clothes to Polyvore but the process of taking pics, cutting out the clothes in those pics then uploading them can be beyond the skills of many people. That’s where Polycloset comes in. For just 35c an item, the Polycloset team will do all the hard work of cutting out the actual clothes from your pictures for you creating what is essentially a digital closet. This also enables users to mix and match their existing clothes with clothes for sale on the Polyvore site. Sounds like a much needed tool. TrendingLimit is a social media monitoring service that focuses on keeping results simple and of high quality. They do this by focusing not on monitoring all the information on the net but just the important things. They do this by appointing field experts to ensure that only quality sources are being checked. Their theory is that "High quality sources results in high quality outputs, the information that’s actually worth knowing about." DateRate is an anonymous feedback tool for people who have been on a date. Simple and quick to use, DateRate allows you to provide your dates with with short links to your profile, through which they can then rate you according to different criteria. The whole process takes your date 1-2 minutes and they will be incentivised and compensated through promotions the site aims to run. DateRate compiles aggregate data which is randomized to protect the identity of dates people who have rated you. Checking into FourSquare can be a pain sometimes. QRmeHere aims to make that easier for end users by using QR codes placed strategically around cafes/bars etc. so that checking in is as simple as using a QR code reader. The extra upside for the business is that they can embed a suggested message in the QR code e.g. "I'm at Bob's Café where the coffees are the best in Sydney" so that not only are they more likely to get more check-ins but also more likely to get positive messages associated with those checkins. —– There they are. "Winner" on the investor pitch day was PolyCloset with 2ndplace going to QRmeHere and 3rdgoing to MyMediStats. Honourable mentions also went too DealPinch and DateRate The "winners" in my mind were PolyCloset and Dealpinch because they left the startup camp as genuine businesses with potential (amazing that they could do that in what was essentially 1 day!) Other than that I think Gradega.me has massive potential in that it's at the intersection of a couple of huge trends and that uInfluence.me, while not having alot of business potential at the moment is a great example of the type of positive social entrepreneurship we'll see more and more of in the future. Congrats to all the teams as there were no dogs this time around. I'm keeping a close eye not only on their projects but the entrepreneurs who attended. Something tells me we're going to be hearing a lot more from many of them over the coming years. And if you’d like to check out videos from throughout the whole weekend, you can keep entertained for hours on the Startup Camp You Tube Channel |
| Tumbl.in lets you stumble upon links in your Twitter timeline, favorites and lists Posted: 10 Oct 2010 09:35 PM PDT Every once and awhile, you stumble upon (get used to that reference), a service so simple and cool that you ask yourself right away, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, Tumbl.in is one of those services. So what is Tumbl.in? It’s StumbleUpon for links in your Twitter timeline, Favorites and maybe most importantly, Lists – and it’s brilliantly done. As we said, it’s dead simple too: just go to the site, login/give permission to the app with you Twitter credentials and then you’ll see a screen like this where you can choose where (your timeline, Favorites and/or any of your Twitter Lists) Tumbl.in will look for links to show you as you tumble/stumble upon (see, we told you to get used to it):
You then save your preferences (you can go back at anytime to change them) and then you start tumbling. Just like in the video below. Brilliant idea for an app, well executed in a straightforward manner, and as all you’re doing is tumbling/stumbling through a curated people/lists that you’ve already chosen to follow, you get a kind of personalized StumbleUpon that quick, timely and most importantly, relevant to you. With well curated Lists, Tumbl.in could be extremely useful to quickly find really interesting articles, images and videos. Take a look at the video and then go ahead and check it out yourself, we doubt you’ll be disappointed. |
| 10 Services That Need iPad Apps Posted: 10 Oct 2010 11:17 AM PDT
However, there are ten apps that I just can’t take off of my iPad still, even though these companies haven’t yet rolled out iPad apps. That said, other than Skype, which I sometimes use on my iPad to do a quick message or call, I’m basically not using any of the ten apps below anymore – I keep them on my iPad in the hope that one day soon I’ll get an update telling me that these companies have finally gotten around to getting an iPad app out (for some of these apps we wonder if they’re waiting for a iOS 4.2 and/or a camera…) So here they are in no particular order: FoursquareFoursquare is a service I use everyday on my Android phone, but as I’ve written before, I would really like a Foursquare iPad app. Of course, the focus shouldn’t be on checking in (though I would certainly do so once in a while), it should be on providing a dashboard type of view of my and my friends’ activity, as well as enhanced venue pages and mapping. What are they waiting for? Most likely, this is in the plan, but the rapidly growing service (that’s had growing pains lately) just hasn’t had the time yet to build it. iPad addict alternative: Gowalla YelpA Yelp iPad app would most likely function as an optimized version of the Yelp website, and that would be just fine with me. Again, enhanced mapping features and venue pages, as well as a cool way to visualize reviews would be much appreciated. What are they waiting for? Most likely a camera. iPad addict alternative: OpenTable SkypeAs I said above, this is the app that I use the most frequently on the iPad even though there is no iPad version. Again, some kind of version of the Skype desktop client optimized for the iPad would be ideal here, as would Facebook Connect integration. What are they waiting for: Definately for iOS 4.2 so Skype can run in the background, and even perhaps for a front-facing camera for video calls, which would be awesome on the iPad iPad addict alternative: None. Yes, there is Friendly for $0.99. Yes, there is also touch.facebook.com and yes, Facebook.com itself looks perfectly fine on the iPad in Safari. Nonetheless, and as the Facebook iPhone app has shown, a customized interface for Facebook can certainly bring in the users. What are they waiting for? Almost certainly, Facebook is waiting for a camera, as photos are just too important to its service to waste time building an app for a device that doesn’t have a camera. iPad addict alternative: Friendly HootsuiteWe’ve said it before here at The Next Web, and I’ll say it again, we use Hootsuite everyday. That said, a full featured Hootsuite iPad app would probably be one of the top five or so apps I would use everyday, so please Hootsuite, please give this to us soon! What are they waiting for? Most likely, this is a time and resources issue for Hootsuite iPad app alternative: Twitter for iPad The more the iPad gets used more in the business world, the more glaring a need for a LinkedIn iPad app. Having worked in companies where LinkedIn is a central part of the everyday marketing environment, I know how frustrated I would be at this point if I had to used LinkedIn everyday and I didn’t have an iPad app. What are they waiting for? No idea. iPad addict alternative: Gmail PlancastPlancast is a great way to organize and share events, as well as to see what is coming up and who is going. A strong iPad app with integration into other services would certainly up my usage of the service a great deal, and I suspect it would for others as well. What are they waiting for? As with Hootsuite, time and resources. iPad addict alternative: Friendly (i.e. Facebook events) PayPal, Mint and banking appsPayPal has really been rapidly innovating with its iPhone and Android apps lately, and I’d really like to see what the widely used service could do with an iPad app. Also, popular finance app Mint, and banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which already have iPhone apps, should really roll out iPad versions as well. What are they waiting for? Well, it certainly isn’t money or resources – my guess is that all three have iPad apps in the works. iPad addict alternative: Many, though if you’re a Chase customer, you’re in luck, as Chase has a nice app. Whitehouse.govOf all of the apps that I would like to see ported to the iPad, this is probably #1 on my list, not for utility of course, but just for the experience, especially with video playback. Here’s hoping it comes to us soon. What are they waiting for? Probably already in development (or perhaps the economy to pick up?) iPad addict alternative: MyCongress CNNAgain, this is an app on the iPod Touch that I used daily, but since moving to the iPad, I’ve barely touched it, instead getting my news from the BBC and Reuters iPad apps. CNN really did do a great job on its iPhone app, so I’m expecting to be blown away when the iPad version comes out, otherwise, it would be a major disappointment. What are they waiting for? Perhaps a camera, as the iReport function kind of needs it. iPad addict alternative: BBC News & Reuters Ok, so those are my ten (well, 13 if you count the extra finance apps) services that I would love to have on my iPad. What are some of the others that you would like to see? |
| What is the Future of Web Apps? [Video] Posted: 10 Oct 2010 10:48 AM PDT Last week saw the annual Future of Web Apps conference take place in London. Chloe Nicholls was there to talk to founder Ryan Carson and some of the attendees about the event and what the future of web applications really is. |
| Posted: 10 Oct 2010 09:16 AM PDT
It is even worse if you are a blogger; the data influx can be numbing. Between the 300 SMS notes that I get a day from Twitter, my separate monitor for TweetDeck, 6 tabs open in Chrome at all times just to handle team communication and news gathering, not to mention around 1,000 updates a day from my RSS reader, plus email and gchat, and now Facebook groups, Buzz, and Twitter lists, life can be hectic if you live and die by breaking information. Sometimes you need to shut down and go into offline mode, but the more dependent you become on social media and real time information the harder it can be to actually unplug the Cat-5 cable from your forehead, take out all your USB IVs and actually breathe in some out of date information and non social air. I’ve been struggling with this task for quite some time, and after making actual progress wanted to share what I have learned. The first and most important step to removing yourself from the digital rat race is to get up from your desk and go into a room where you have no computers. Secondly you need to plan something ‘analog and IRL.’ If you have any non-tech friends (worth the effort) get them to your house and barbecue. That’s just an example, but you get what I mean. If you don’t force yourself out of the online bubble for at least an hour, you will slink back to your desk “just to check something” and never get up. Alternatively, go to your favorite bar, and leave your smartphone at home. That little sucker is just a little computer and if you bring it you are going to use it instead of talking to people. Make the calls that you need and then leave it at home. Your iPad can only be used to play music while you cook if you are trying to disconnect. It’s important to note that the harder the recipe you are working on the less you are wondering if that rumored acquisition has gone through, or how many @s you picked up on Twitter. Go crazy. Unplug your TV, you don’t need it. Finally, make a damn strong foo-foo drink, and read a book while you sip it. The trick is to employ your mind enough that you don’t miss being plugged into the lives of so many other people, and into the news of the world. Information is addictive, and like any other addiction it is potentially harmful. Cut back just a little, and you will reap the benefits the rest of the week. Pick a day, for me it’s Saturday, when no one at work can get a hold of you in any way other than a phone call. I don’t read text messages at all on Saturday, it’s my Fortress of Solitude. You and me have access to information that people would have literally killed for just a few hundred years ago, and that makes us lucky. We just can’t let it run us completely. Do yourself a favor, pick a day in the next week to turn off. Plan ahead, go grocery shopping and cook for some of your friends. Fret over the wine, and worry about the weather. After all, nature is still the best app of all. So tell us, what do you do to switch off?Image Credit |
| The New Facebook Groups: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Posted: 10 Oct 2010 08:56 AM PDT
Now all of you that know me, know what a strong advocate of Facebook I am. However, I’d like to point out two major things I don’t like about the new Facebook Groups: 1) Spammy - Each time someone writes something in a group I belong to, I get an email notification. In order to edit notifications, I need to go into each specific group and change my settings. I think it would have been a better product if I could just remove the group notifications via email from my general account settings in one click. 2) Automatic Membership - When someone adds you to a group, you automatically become a member without any need for your consent. This will eventually lead (and for many of you, has already led) to many spammers abusing this feature just like they do now with tagging you on specific photos just to get your attention or promote on your page. Apropo photos, I am hoping that this abuse will soon be resolved with the new facial recognition technology Zuckerberg talked about during Facebook’s last press conference. After you were added to a group, the only way to leave it is by actually going to the group’s page and hitting “Leave Group”. Why is that? Shouldn’t I need to confirm my desire to become a member? With almost 5000 friends, I am fearful of what my future Facebook user experience will become. This leads me to wonder that perhaps Facebook is doing this only for a limited time to increase number of page views, traffic, and the overall viral effect of Groups. I posed this question on the Tech Leaders and Influencers group on Facebook and Justin Shaffer, head of the Facebook Groups project replied:
But Yahoo to me is not the equivalent of Facebook and I don’t think Facebook ever intended to be the new Yahoo Groups. I live on Facebook and spend a very big chunk of my day on Facebook. I don’t live on Yahoo. Yahoo is not my social network. I don’t spend hours a day on Yahoo nor do I have thousands of friends there. Most of my Yahoo emails actually go to an inbox I almost never go into. I don’t think that Facebook wants this to happen as well, right? Don’t get my wrong, I am very much in favor of Facebook Groups. I just think the product can be improved. I think that Facebook Groups are a game changer and will change the way people utilize Facebook for good and bad. I am sure it will also increase our usage of Facebook as a place of dialogue and communication as well as increase Facebook’s data about each and every one of us. On the downsides, I do think that Groups will soon emerge as a vehicle for spammers to get your attention and this is not a good thing for Facebook. This will especially damage the Facebook user experience for those of us who are deeply rooted in the platform. I hope that Facebook listens to people’s feedback and responds accordingly. I have all the faith that it will. |
| Microsoft accused in Angry Birds Windows Phone 7 mixup Posted: 10 Oct 2010 08:04 AM PDT
Responding to the WMPowerUser blog, which spotted the Angry Birds logo on a Microsoft web page, Rovio has tweeted “We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version. Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission.” Of course, this doesn’t mean that the game won’t make it onto Windows Phone 7, just that it isn’t as yet a done deal. We’ll get in touch with Microsoft to see what their side of the story is, but for now you can dash those hopes of flinging birds at green pigs in a couple of weeks’ time. UPDATE: TechFlash reports a statement from Microsoft admitting the error: “It appears information was mistakenly posted to Microsoft’s website, and has been removed. We have nothing new to share, but stay tuned for announcements from Microsoft and its partners on Monday.”
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| Our bodies are going online – but where will it lead us? Posted: 10 Oct 2010 07:03 AM PDT
The fact is, as time goes on our bodies will have increasing opportunities “Go online”, and it may well become the norm. The consequences of that could usher in a brave new frontier in human evolution, or end in horrific new possibilities for warfare and dictatorship. Where we are right nowThere are already ways for us to share basic body data online. The Withings Scale can send your weight, body mass index and fatty mass to an online service that allows you to track your health over time, accessing your stats via the web or an iPhone app. You can even share your latest weight reading via Twitter or Facebook if you like.
Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are among the services that allow you to pull your health records into one place. Products like this are particularly useful in countries where there is a competitive private health market, such as the US. Being able to keep your own record of your health (entered manually or in some cases fed in automatically by healthcare providers that offer the ability or via telehealth services) is useful if you’re likely to be changing providers regularly. So, we’re already able to upload and share a wide range of health information online, but this is just the beginning. It only takes a small leap of imagination to see where we may well be headed. The future of our bodies online
Imagine a microphone you wear around your neck that monitors your voice. Google has shown that mass-market voice recognition is perfectly possible now. With a microphone worn at all times, brands could offer competitions which track how often you talk about them in a positive light and give prizes to those who are the best “brand ambassadors”. Speakers at conferences could “live stream” a transcript of their talk as it happens. A range of sensors could be used to monitor all manner of body activity, either for health reasons, for entertainment or for monitoring wider social trends. Streaming your heart rate, breathing rate, sweat levels and location simultaneously could be used for measuring what places are making people anxious, excited or calm at a particular time. Lots of people getting anxious at the same time in the same place? There’s likely to be something notable going on. Internet-connected implants
This may sound like science fiction, but our knowledge of how the brain works is increasing, with brain-controlled movement of prosthetic limbs and even “mind reading” developing. It may not be next year, or even this decade but our brains could well be Internet-connected eventually. You think people would reject such an idea? Not everyone would opt for such an “enhancement” but if the benefits are great enough, some would. Back in 2007, 11% of respondents in a survey said they were very or somewhat likely to accept an online brain implant if it could be done safely. Dictatorship: Why 2084 might be like ’1984′If we do go down the route of Internet-connected implants, the potential for governments to monitor their citizens in the same way pets are “chipped” is disturbing. Dictators so inclined could keep an eye on citizens in real time – their locations, their thoughts, what they say, via an implant inserted at birth or later in life. Consider also the possibility for people finding out how to attack the Internet-connected implants. The line between computer virus and “real” virus could be crossed with disturbing consequences. It may sound like a distant nightmare but it’s a perfectly possible conclusion for a sequence of technologies that are already being developed. Just be thankful that you’re likely to be dead before the scenario rears its head.Image source (1), Image source (2) |
I love the new Facebook Groups as they allow you to engage in an open forum with others who share your interests. They do remind me a lot of FriendFeed – as 
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