That is what Andrew Keen said in The Next Web Conference some days ago. What was also mentioned was that every old-fashioned industry is on its way out. The first victim of the new age that is coming is the music industry. Torrents, Limewire, Rapidshare are some of the reasons that music industry is about to change. iTunes & Amazon MP3 are the most important reasons though.

These e-stores were able to understand the new conditions and they adopted to the new market. They made the right choices that helped them to gain a great market share while offering amazing services to their customers. You are able to download only one song, get all the metadata you want with just one click and the most important, the MP3s you are buying from e-stores are already in the format you want them. Nobody buys nowadays an album and he is not ripping it for his iPod, it is so much easier to already have an mp3 file in the first place.

The next victim is definitely the publishers. The days that the newspaper’s brand name was more important than the journalist are long gone. One of the main characteristics of that new era is that individuals are much more important than their organization. Writers websites are being visited much more than a publishing’s company, their twitter accounts have thousands of followers. People are more important than the brand.

Big publishing companies have no future unless they are able to rewrite their business plan from scratch. Very few magazines & newspapers keep making money the old way. News are traveling very fast thanks to the Internet and, lately, thanks to twitter. Just remember the recent earthquake in Italy, the riots in Greece, the plane in the Hudson river in NY and all these cases. Until now, I have never seen a media corporation to integrate a twitter search in their site. Can you think of a better way to inform your people immediately? You don’t need money to send your reporter on site, you don’t need somebody searching twitter, you only need a twitter script. It is FREE, DIRECT content, give me a reason not to want it on your website.

What else is really important is trusting the media. Come on, let’s be honest, do you totally trust news corporation? Because I don’t. In the other hand, I almost fully trust bloggers and twitter-ers. Of course I don’t mean that I trust social media personas with one blog post or one twit, but you get my point.. As Chris Sacca said, Twitter makes us more honest, and that’s the greatest advantage of all. Individuals have already risen above their companies, we are probably in the start of the individual’s age.. Think about Obama, do you believe that majority of people out of the US know whether if Obama is in the Democratic or Republican party..?

[photo via flickr.com, user: tayseerh]

I am flying at least once per month from Athens International Airport. What I am most happy about is the moment after check-in that I am diving into a bookstore’s International Press department. The magazine that I never miss is the British Car. As its title proves, it is a magazine about cars and generally about automotive news.

Some of you, may already know that I am blogging about cars in one of the bigger blogs in Greece, pestaola.gr. That means that I have subscribed in the most known web sites, both from Greece and abroad. I also have subscribed to some less known web sites. I get too many information from all these online sources. However, when I am reading Car’s latest issue I get all those *useful* information. Car has one advantage that I have not found (yet?) in any web site: every single car presentation has the right ratio of everything that is hidden under the “shiny new car”: technical stuff, market placement, journalist’s driving experience, even some times driving tips from the guy who actually tested and improved the car just before its launch (to name one, Walter Rohrl in every Porsche). If you add the great (love it or hate it) British humor in the equation, you can get the picture..

I don’t want to be misunderstood, web sites have all the information that I need to write an article but I have to read three or four web-articles before getting all the necessary information. And that’s ok when you are about to write an article, but what happens if you are just a car-enthusiast that simply wants to get all the latest information? Even in that web-driven era, certain things have not been replaced by the web. Will they ever be?

[photo via]

“Money makes the world go round” sang Liza Minelli back in the days. Although many years have passed since then, that song contains the biggest truth to be ever told: Money makes the world go round. I strongly believe that there is no such thing as free beer, especially when we are talking about business and web2.0 startups.

However, there are some people out there that can not understand that. Let me explain that. 2 days ago, a web-developer presented me a great project that was already built and ready to be launched.  To be completely honest, I liked it and I also liked the proposed role in the team. There was even a venture stake after a trial period that was really appealing. The problem was in the trial period.

To explain myself, I totally agree with trial periods, they are like a test drive before buying a new car. You have to understand how your colleagues work and vice versa, to check your compatibility and if both sides are satisfied you can keep working together. There is always a but though. My “but” comes when I was asked to work for free in the trial period. I didn’t expect a great amount of money and frankly, I wouldn’t believe that I deserve much money for the 3-4-5 first months.

You will probably think: Hey, you are about to get a venture stake and you are talking about 3 months work? I agree, if we consider that I will keep working in that startup. What will happen if not? As the owner of the startup told me, I ‘ll get a big, fat NOTHING. What I also didn’t like, was the attitude that he had: It’s your big opportunity to do something great, if there is somebody to ask money after a failed trial period that is me and not you. Take into consideration that we are not talking about somebody who is starting right now and has no cash flow but about a fully functional company with income and expenses that is just not willing to pay me.

The combination of these three things drove me to reject the offer although the project rocks. I value my time and my will to do things much more than “you ‘ll work for free for 3 months”. And that’s far from snobism, I am willing to work for free in a project that there are no money (yet), in a friend’s project or in a project that I will have asked to work, but working for free for someone who found me and made an offer is not in my to-do list.

[photo via flickr.com, user: Your Teacher]

I got an iPhone 3G in late October, so, after almost 4 months I think it’s time to write a review about it. To be completely honest, I was disappointed in the first days. The battery didn’t last longer than a day, some times even less. There were not so many great apps and -taking into account that I already had an iPod Touch- I was not really amazed by the simplciity and the innovation of its menu.

However, I wanted a mobile phone not running Windows Mobile or Symbian, able to sync with my email accounts and… pretty much only these things. I know, I am describing a Blackberry but iPhone’s looks (and me being a mac enthusiast) won the duel. In the first days, I had to answer million of questions from friends and not friends, about it. In fact, most of the guys already knew the cons of iPhone but they kept asking about them, like wanting a confirmation. Yes, many basic features are missing -copy/paste function, greek keyboard, camera (only 2MP? Are you serious Apple?), SMS delivery report, etc etc- but I believe that all these functions -except the greek keyboard- are only necessary to power users. I don’t feel like one, so iPhone is great for me.

How really did I change my mind from being dissapointed to loving it? I don’t know. I guess it grow on me and I got used to it. Many great apps appeared in iTunes Store that made my life easier (to name a few: Twitteriffic, Tris, Shazam, Air Sharing) and in addition to iPod function and Safari, it has everything that I want. What I also appreciated is Contacts and Calendar. Synchronizing with my MacBook is like heaven to me. All those small features that my previous mobile phone (K800i) didn’t have made me love my iPhone. However, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed a Blackberry more, but I am almost sure that the next mobile duel will be between an Android-powered phone and next-gen iPhone.

[photo via flickr.com, user Gojca]