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While waiting for my new toy to arrive, James from istopoe244 wrote in to inform me about a new game he has been working on for some time now.

isotope244, for those of you who have been in the scene long enough, is the developer of the brilliant Atomic Cannon (Pocket), a game that features two (or more) tanks with advanced weaponry, superb music, courtesy of subatomicglue and great gameplay.

I’ve only been playing Machines at War for an hour now, but I think that this will be another bestseller. The game has awesome graphics, even on Pocket PCs without a dedicated graphics chip, a nice score (not as good as the one from Atomic Cannon though) and even includes nice, military’ish radio effects.

Machines at War promises large battles, with a myriad of tools, such as Osprey VTOL planes, Artillery (with icons that look very familiar) and destructible terrain, something that many PC games don’t even have:

Grab the 1-hour-beta now, while you still can. This is definately a game you’ll want to play!

Back when mobileMinds was still a respectable site, I previewed, reviewed and discussed many great applications, games, accessories and sometimes even hardware. Haven’t done that in a while and I’m eager to get started again.

I just did a quick check up on some of the developers of my favorite Windows Mobile applications and found out that nearly half of them has folded over the years. Some have been replaced by newer, better applications, some are just gone. Luckily however, not all is sad: some companies managed to expand a lot and now have a whole portfolio of applications, which is, compared to the one or two little tools they had two years ago, quite a nice feat.

It’s going to be fun to be discussing (mobile) technology again. My previous site didn’t really offer an outlet for that, but here, I’ve got a whole new section to (ab)use. I’ll do my best to get my down-to-earth review style going again, after all, that’s one of the things people loved most about my articles.

So, while just about everyone out there seems to be waiting for Apple’s iPhone, I’m waiting for my very own O₂ XDA Flame.

People with whom I discuss technology will know that I’ve beeb waiting for this device since it was first announced on Pocket PC Thoughts, back in November 2006. Initally, O₂ planned to release the device in early spring, but delayed the launch till sometime in May.

After waiting for the first reports to come in, I finally decided to take the jump and replace my current mobile device of choice: iMate’s SP5.

It’s been more than two years since I last bought a Pocket PC and while my HTC Blueangel (Qtek 9090 in my case) still works fine, one has to spend some money on worthy upgrades every now and then. Gotta keep the inner-geek happy after all.

One might ask: what’s so special about this Pocket PC that I decided to get it? Well, for starters, there’s the 2gb of ROM, a lot more than any other Pocket PC on the market. Other features include nice things such as a dedicated graphics chip (nVidia, naturally), USB On The Go support, TV-Out and 802.11g WiFi. A more in-depth review of the hardware will be available here soon.

But, there’s a catch of course. The device is not yet available in Europe and chances are that it won’t be for another three to six months, so I had to order mine from an eTailer that, so far, does business the right way.

The first edition of The Next Web conference featured an after-party that was held at Boris’ private residence in the heart of Amsterdam, five minutes from the venue where the conference was held. While I’m certain that Boris could have rented a huge party area, I loved the fact that he managed to keep the whole thing on a very social level. Basically, it was like meeting some old friends for a quick beer after work. Only difference to a normal “Friday” was that those “friends” were specialists and gurus such as Kevin Kelly, AMS-IX and mabber.com representatives, among many others. The personal aspect, combined with a location that provided users with four (geographical) areas to hold conversations, proved most useful for networking purposes.

This year, Boris decided to rent the famous club / restaurant / all-round great place Odeon, one of Amsterdam’s hottest bars and the main location of the 2006 after party. Great move on Boris part, ‘cause it prevented the group from breaking up too soon. Out of the approximately 500 people that attended the conference, some 150 showed up for the Dinner at the Odeon and, after some small talk, enjoyed a great dinner, with each other.

Prior to the actual dinner, I came across Marjolijn van den Assem, Boris mother and engaged her in a conversation about the conference and the day’s events. Even though van den Assem isn’t your typical Web 2.0 conference attendee, it was obvious that she really paid close attention to what the speakers at the conference talked about.

As luck would have it, I managed to get a seat at the Veldhuijzen van Zanten table that was a bit more secluded that the rest and provided a great environment for interesting talk. I happened to know van den Assem from Boris blog and I have to say that I haven’t had such an interesting conversation in a long time. As a person who is deeply interested in Nietzsche, van den Assem devoted the last 30 years of her life to studying the teachings of the scientist. Her work was recently published in a book called “Seelenbriefe”.

Talking to van den Assem is a cleansing experience; she, unlike others, really listens to what you have to say and isn’t afraid to share her own experiences with you, basically, this is all you need to keep a conversation going for a long time.

Then, at 8 pm, Veldhuijzen van Zanten kicked off the The Next Web 2007 Awards show. The whole experience was great, especially because I got to accept an award that was actually destined for Wikipedia.

Jimbo, apparently, could not make it to the show, so they picked the next best guy, me (make sure to click on that link, it really is worth it!).

After a great Awards show, the real after-party started, but I will let the photographs speak for themselves.

All in all, The Next Web 2007 was as great as the 2006 edition, if not even greater. I learned a lot, met a lot of interesting people and had an awesome time.

Once again, congratulations Boris (and crew) for managing to set up something as kick-ass as this.

Just like the first edition of The Next Web conference, this year also provided an area for up-and-coming start-ups. The team of the conference selects a group of companies and or people who get to showcase their product during breaks.

Unlike last year, the 2007 edition of the conference was held at the beautiful Tushinski Theater in Amsterdam. While the venue in itself is a great spot for conferences and provided great seating for everyone, the start-up arena had to suffer from one problem: too little space.

In 2006, the venue had multiple stories and all stands had ample room to set up shop and present their products, this year, start-ups had to stand back to back with competitors. Not really a problem for visitors, but probably annoying for the companies that hoped to get a great spot.

Be that as it may, the start-ups I saw had some interesting ideas. All the stands I visited seemed to be doing one thing or another with crowds and that special community feeling.

The first start-up I saw was tipit.to. The site basically provides a way to compensate artists, bloggers, charities and others for the work they do. The idea behind the system is simple: you pledge to donate a certain amount of money and once the pot reaches a certain limit, the person / charity that is eligible for the donation gets it. tipit.to doesn’t charge commission and they hope to get you to sign up by relying on micro-payments. The site most certainly is capable of processing huge payments, but the real idea is that many small contributions also can make a difference. On a sidenote: this site is not a substitute for services like PayPerPost that pay people to blog about a product in a very distinct manner. tipit.to has no affiliation with manufacturers that I know of.

The second start-up I saw was Respectance. If I were to describe it in one sentence I’d say that it’s a mashup between Flickr, YouTube, TypePad and an active community. The idea is simple. Your direct environment will get fed up fairly quick when you “still” have to cope with the death of someone close to you for more than a couple of weeks. Respectance.com provides you with an outlet for your feelings. The site let’s you create a kind of profile for the person (hey, what about pets?) you lost and you want to remember. Sure, you could do the same with YouTube and Flickr, but then again, those sites aren’t really the environment you are looking for when you want to remember someone as good as possible. You don’t want to be looking at a clip of your passed-away grandmother and be greeted with a few childish comments from those who haven’t had a chance at experiencing the sorrow you are going through. While talking about the idea during the The Next Web Dinner party, someone mentioned that the site was like a remix between scientology and Flickr but I’d have to disagree. For what it’s worth, I’d much rather see people upload their videos to a site I won’t accidentally come across when I’m looking for home-made entertainment in the form of short video clips. This way, the users of YouTube won’t disrespect the death of a person and those that have to learn to live with their loss, have a community of supportive voices.

The third and last start-up I went to was Wakoopa, Boris’ newest project. In simple terms, Wakoopa is the last.fm of software tracking. The site provides users with a client that tracks how long you use any given application and lets you view stats about the software habits of your friends too. Too really monetize the content of the site, developers can get a special (for pay) account that lets them track how people use their application, when said application is used, how long it is used. Think of it as Urchin Analytics meets last.fm. Simple concept, good idea and you can even select which applications should or should not be listed on your profile.

All in all, it’s great to see that companies in and around Europe were able to come up with interesting and good ideas over the past year and I wish all of the start-ups best of luck for the future.