Archive - Internet RSS Feed

Sorry, this blog post is not available in your country.

January 29, 2012 in Internet, Personal with 23 Comments

It would be unimaginable. Unthinkable. Only making my blog available to people using the internet from within The Netherlands. Imagine you would only be able to visit websites hosted in your own country. This would drastically change the way and scale we use the internet. For me the internet is global. A place where you don’t have to think about borders, continents or countries.

So my biggest frustration is that I’m still (we are living in 2012, the internet is around for over 20 years now!) unable to access certain content. Content that is available to roughly 312,928,899 people, but not to me.

Netflix:

Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country… yet

Hulu:

Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States.

Amazon:

We have detected that you are not located within the US. Due to licensing restrictions Amazon Instant Video customers must be located in the United States when viewing videos online.

These are not the words I like to read when browsing the web. And, yes I know, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon had tough negotiations with book publishers, record labels and people from Hollywood to get the rights to publish their content in the United States. But don’t stop there. Netflix and Hulu are promising me to email me when their service becomes available outside the United States for almost 3 years now. And don’t get met started about Amazon. Amazon, you used to be the king of personalization and targeting. Why keep promoting a Prime account and after signing up let me discover I cannot watch videos, follow TV shows or even borrow books since i’m not located in the US? You already knew that.

Talking about this with other people, the most of the time offer me a solution: start using a American VPN to trick the system. But that doesn’t solve the problem. I want to same benefits and features on my Kindle as my American friends have (lending!). I dont want to wait months before a movies hits the theaters here in Amsterdam. I want to see the latest episode of Breaking Bad before somebody posts a spoiler on Twitter. I want easy access to content, everywhere. I want the promise of the borderless internet becoming a reality.

100 Things to Watch in 2012

December 29, 2011 in Coolness, Internet, Marketing with 0 Comments

Internet of Things

November 22, 2011 in Internet with 0 Comments

With all objects in the world equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on Earth would undergo a transformation: The Internet of Things, in a presentation by the Danish Board of Technology.

The Future Check-In. Up Next?

July 20, 2011 in Entrepreneurship, Internet, Marketing, Mobile with 0 Comments

Most used social media is all about what you did or what you are doing. Facebook wants to know “what’s on your mind”, Twitter asks “what’s happening?”. Both mostly describing events that already occurred.

Then Foursquare launched. Ignoring the past, Foursquare is about the present: where are you now? Inviting your friends to drop by and say hi. Having covered the past and present, it was only waiting for the new wave of social apps covering the future.

What are you up to?

When you see your friends party pics on Facebook the day after, you might think: I would have joined that party. And how many times did you actually went to a bar because one of your Foursquare friends checked-in? Most people didn’t and for the few times it actually happened, a big chance it was awkward (running into a breakup, or accidentally joining a business meeting).

Ditto
Ditto is trying to fix this. Founded by Jyri Engeström, who before Ditto was co-founder of Jaiku (acquired by Google), Ditto is about what you’re up to. Using Facebook to register for Ditto you immediately start of with your current social network. You can see what your friends plans are or share what you are up to. For example see a movie. Add a location and a small text (did you already see the latest Harry Potter?) and share this plan with your friends via Facebook and Twitter to get them to join your future activity and make it happen.

Forecast
Another notable example in the future check-in space is Forecast. As for Ditto, Forecast is now only available on your iPhone and is using the Foursquare API to build the future layer on top of the already existing and successful check-in network. Via Forecast you can let your friends know where you are planning to go and immediately check yourself in on Foursquare once you are there.

How sustainable is this third layer?

Don’t we have more than enough ways to connect with friends to make plans for the weekend? And aren’t websites like Meetup and Plancast – though always linked to events and conferences – already kind off covering the future space? Let alone the Facebook Events feature or, as some of my Foursquare friends tend to do: check-in an hour before with a short message “let’s meet here at 21h”.

Forecast, as already based on the Foursquare API, is a logical feature to add to Foursquare. Ditto is trying to be more useful to friends making plans by also moving in the recommendation space, helping you to find the best pizza place and adding features to make the planning process easy (which movie is showing where?). Features that are already available in dedicated mobile apps, only now being combined into one tool.

Jyri Engeström is definitely right, we have more than enough apps that cover the past and the present. And the ‘future’ market is not yet defined and dominated, so changes are there is place for another player. However, with Foursquare drastically improving the Explore feature, is there room for a dedicated app in this future space? Maybe a nice buy for Groupon – combining future planning with coupons :)

Gamification: Future or Fail?

June 10, 2011 in Internet, Marketing with 0 Comments

Gamification – future or fail? Gamification is not about video games. It’s about the integration of the mechanics that make games fun and absorbing into non-game platforms and experiences in order to improve engagement and participators.

Google Demo Slam: Epic Docs Animation

link January 3, 2011 in Internet with 0 Comments

Ryan Singer at Future of Web Apps

link December 29, 2010 in Design, Internet with 0 Comments

Zeitgeist 2010, the year in search

link December 10, 2010 in Internet with 0 Comments

Currently watching the movie – must see: CATFISH

link December 1, 2010 in Coolness, Internet with 0 Comments

Follow up: How I try to work completely in the cloud

October 29, 2010 in Internet with 2 Comments

A few weeks ago my MacBook Pro needed replacement. And since I always predic working in the cloud I told the sys. admin he could just remove everything and give me a clear new MacBook. And that was what I got. Was I back up and running in no time? Yes! Mainly thanks to Google, giving me instand web based access to my e-mail, calendar and documents and not to forget Salesforce, my online marketing and sales dashboard. Dropbox took a little longer, re-syncing over 20gb back to my harddrive took some time. However, I discovered I still had to install some ‘offline’ programs to do my daily work / life stuff:

  • Spotify: yup, Spotify is ‘half-cloud’: I don’t have to download my music anymore, but still need to download a client to listen to music. Solution: Spotify web based, so it will just run in your browser (or Google Chrome extension!)
  • Adobe Creative Suite: this bundle of programs takes most of my harddrive (and CPU when running). No cloud / web replacement found yet, I use Dreamweaver for basic HTML editing and Photoshop/Illustrator to edit and check art-work.
  • Transmit: If you create work offline in Adobe Creative Suite you have to get it in the cloud. Transmit by Panic is defenitly the best FTP suite for the Mac.
  • Cornerstone: Same as Transmit, if you have some offline work you need to check into SVN or Git, Cornerstone is your friend.
  • LastPass: same as Spotify, half-cloud, I have to download the Google Chrome extension to sync my passwords back again, however, I believe this is the only option, so quite happy with it :)
  • OmniGraffle Pro: indeed, there are some nice mockup/prototyping suites available online, but they lack the simpleness and intuitive interface OmniGraffle offers
  • Limewire: I like to watch movies and TV shows. I would like to pay for them, the same as I pay for Spotify. However, they don’t let me! Hulu offers what I like to see but Hulu is still not available in The Netherlands. Opening Hulu international will definitely perfect my ‘working in the cloud’ life
  • VLC: to play the files I download with Limewire

So, my lessons learned: there is no cloud replacement for Adobe Creative Suite yet, and therefor also FTP and SVN commit software is still needed. Online prototyping software a la OmniGraffle is available but needs improvement. Also, Spotfiy could be even cooler with a web-version. But above all: we need a Spotify for movies and TV Shows. Bring Hulu to the Netherlands!

Page 1 of 41234»