Newstin Weblog

We invite all blog owners to add their blog into Newstin as a source. It is not important how big your blog is or what you write about. All that matters to Newstin is originality and courage to express your opinions.

Your blog post will then appear next to big newspapers if it is related to a story. Readers will then be able to visit your blog, and will see more than just one point of view. We in Newstin believe that nobody has the right to attempt to impose a single view of the world to anybody. You can read more about our mission if you find the idea of open news interesting.

Feel free to submit your blog through our webmaster section. Don’t worry if your site does not support RSS feeds. The submissions are not limited by technical capabilities of your website.

As you might already know, there is a developer contest with cash prizes worth lots of money plus a permanent link in a post on this blog to your website just for participating!

If you are a developer and can use our RSS feeds in your addon, then do not hesitate and participate in this contest! There are only 5 days left!

We are now accepting advertising placement offers. If you are looking for a great way to gain additional exposure for your company, or even if you are a blogger and want to add a simple text link to our website please get in contact with us and lets talk about a way to find placement on one of our 700,000 topical pages or purchase keywords for search.

One of the major benefits of advertising with Newstin is our ability to pinpoint a very specific target audience. Due to the fact that we organize our news by category enables us to fine tune the news categories as well as attract a readership that is interested in a very specific set of information.

Whether our readers come from a search engine (which finds our pages via search words) or directly they ultimately end up on a page that is specific to their content needs, which goes hand in hand with the need of any advertiser.

Maybe you are an international company or aspiring to gain an international audience, with our cross language navigation it is also now possible to advertise to our topic specific audience in the regions of the world you wish to reach. Do you need to reach an audience in countries that cover, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Czech, Arabic, Portuguese or Chinese.

Shoot us an email and let us help you find the best way to advertise on the first cross language news site in the world.

Keep your eyes open for upcoming “advertising page” for site statistics, campaigns and demographics.

If you are a web developer and have a favorite platform, or you even have your own? Why don’t you go ahead and make a nice addon to display news?! And even better, win cash prizes! You can take the Netvibes widgets as a nice example, but don’t forget Newstin has much more to offer!

Here are few platforms we were thinking about, but you can develop for any open platform that is used on at least 100 websites!

Wordpress addon
Joomla addon
Mambo addon
Xoops addon
Drupal addon
MODx addon
Textpattern addon
Zen Cart addon
osCommerce addon
phpBB addon
SMF addon
iGoogle widget
Facebook addin

In the administration part you can offer possibility to choose a category and a language, we have 10 languages and 700.000 categories to choose from, every single one of them with its own RSS feed!

You can even allow users to choose a category name based on text input, because our naming policies are very simple and you can simply check the validity of input by HTTP response!

The only thing we are asking for is taht the link to the category must be present within the widget/addon and remain intact without redirects. The article links can be redirects if you think it’s neccessary.

To be eligible for the Newstin widget contest, you must follow simple instructions
- you must publish the widget on your blog, website, make it publicly available by other means (for example via the platform support site) or eventually mail it to jan.jelinek [at] newstin [dot] com. If you are devloping for an open platform, publish the source code as well.
- the category link within the RSS feed you are going to use must remain intact- you post a link where the widget can be found as a comment on this blog entry

The deadline is 15th July 2008, the winners will be announced as of October 1st. The best widget gets $300, second $200 and third selected solution $100 in cash prizes paid via Check or Paypal. In the end, we will publish a list of all widgets that participated in the contest with permanent links to their developers websites. Even if you don’t get selected for a cash prize, you get a link on our blog ranked PR 5!

Good luck in the contest!

They are finally here! Anyone interested in using our open platform news widgets can find them here.  We recently partnered with Netvibes to deliver to our users 11 different widgets, that will work across 7 different platforms (for easy, one click implementation).  This is merely a start to our widget push which we will be expanding in the near future.  For all you news lovers there will no longer be a need to directly access the Newstin site as you can now install our widgets to your favorite applications.  Currently the widgets (created by Netvibes) serve across iGoogle, Apple dashboard, iphone, Opera, Windows Live, Windows Vista and on the Netvibes platform (coming soon Yahoo).  If you are running any of these platforms give our widgets a try.

We have developed a widget for each of our language editions so that no one is left out.  Below are the links to the Newstin widgets. Soon you will also be able to access these widgets from the Newstin site.

US -  http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240611/newstin-us 

Czech -  http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240613/newstin-czech-republic

UK -  http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240615/newstin-uk

Spanish - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240616/newstin-spain

French - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240617/newstin-france

Arabic - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240618/newstin-arab

Portuguese - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240619/newstin-portugal

Italian - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240623/newstin-italy

Chinese -  http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240624/newstin-china

German - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240620/newstin-germany

Russian - http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/240703/newstin-russia

Also, do not forget about the Newstin created webmaster widgets as well for personal webpages. You can locate these widgets at the bottom of each category page on our site, or you can simply go to tools and search for your preferred widget category. (ex: http://www.newstin.com/webmasters.a?edition=us&category_id=top_stories)

Refer back to our blog in the future for updates on further reach of the current widget set and also for information on new widgets being built now.  Anyone interested in a desktop widget that will not only give you access to the news categories but also to corresponding discussions around them, as well as interaction capabilities…??? Look out for it!

TechCrunch in Prague a huge success.  This last friday, the 23rd of May saw over 200 people in attendance at the Tech Crunch event in Prague.  Individuals from as far away as the United States were in attendance to enjoy the food, drinks and networking.

The event kicked off with 5 short presentations from each of the sponsors, of which we (Newstin.com) were one of.  Following the introductory speeches a competition was help for the best 2 minute elevator pitch, to the winner went a new mac book.  The rest of the evening brought to light many interesting concepts from companies that I have never heard of before (quite common at these web 2.0 events as there are many local intenet startups all over the world).

A few companies that crossed my path which I found to be quite interesting.  www.toksta.com, a German founded company that is working with a new instant messenger…which interestingly enough can be embedded in different locations.  Right now they only have a German language working version but said they will be launching their English counterpart in the beginning of June.    www.wirenode.com, simply here is a list of things you can do with wirenode:

• Create mobile websites with multiple pages.
• Create a simple demo page with one click.
• Include your images.
• Include images from Google Image Search.
• Create a table of content page.
• Include simple widget on your page.

the last presentation that I quite enjoyed played more to my leisure/fun side.  Its a gaming company called Geewa, www.geewa.com.  Geewa specializes in multilayer games for both internet and mobile users.  The thing I really liked about Geewa’s products is that you can imbed them on your website and play whenever you want or allow your users to play.  And mobile gaming with a live component on the other end, “get outta here”…I am going to have to start taking the trams and stay away from the metro so I don’t lose signal!

From the Newstin team…a quick thank you to John Biggs and Jack DeNeut for organizing the event, and also to the other sponsors… we had a great time!

With the diligent work of our dutiful taxonomy team Newstin.com now organizes content into over 700,000 categories. The 1 million milestone is within our grasp and we will be there soon.

Additionally to their work on the continued growth of the number of categories within each of our current 11 editions our team is also prepping to launch 3 new editions to the website. Newstin will now facilitate a Brazilian, Mexican and Indian (english) editions for our users.

Red Herring Europe 100 Announced

on 15 April 2008, 14:50
by Red Herring Staff

A Danish company that provides switchboard services for corporate mobile phones, a Czech startup that organizes Internet news into more than 650,000 categories, a Swedish maker of technology that lets users control their computers just by moving their eyes, and a French startup that simplifies the problem of creating content for hundreds of different brands of cell phones. These are some of this year’s winners of the Red Herring 100 award for the best startups in Europe in 2008.

Award Recognizes the 100 “Most Promising” Companies

Driving the Future of Technology

Malta, April 15, 2008 – Red Herring yesterday announced that Newstin a.s. is a recipient of the Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year.

“This year’s impressive list of winners demonstrates Europe’s emergence as a major player in the global technology sector,” said Red Herring Editor-in-Chief, Joel Dreyfuss. “The exceptional accomplishments of European technology companies and entrepreneurs are a testament to the rapid advancements being made in building the European innovation ecosystem.”

Red Herring’s lists of top private companies are an important part of the company’s tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work.

Red Herring’s editorial staff rigorously evaluated more than hundreds of private companies through a careful analysis of financial data and subjective criteria, including quality of management, execution of strategy, and dedication to research and development.

To honor the CEOs of Red Herring 100 Europe companies, Red Herring has invited each CEO to present his or her company at its Red Herring Europe 2008 event. Scheduled for April 14-16, at the Westin Dragonara Resort, this intimate, three-day event is themed “Ahead of the Curve” and will explore how European firms are leading the charge in many technology sectors, gaining the competitive advantage, and driving entrepreneurial success in ways that create business opportunities for challengers and incumbents alike.

About Red Herring

Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available on the Internet at www.redherring.com.