Normally three times is a charm, but for Holland it has become more like a curse: again we failed to win the Holy Grail of Soccer, the World Cup. After ’74, ’78, now 2010 goes into the Dutch history books as the third national soccer trauma. We all knew it was going to be a tough match against Spain – the ruling European Soccer Champions – but nothing in this world could have prepared us for this match. Until the final, the tournament went very well for Holland: our National team won 14 straight games, counting the qualifying matches and […]
D-Day for Dutch soccer team
Today is the chance for the Dutch national soccer team to write soccer history (in more than one way) by becoming the World Soccer Champions for the first time in Dutch history. In order to get this privilege we need to defeat the current European Soccer Champions: Spain. And that is going to be a very difficult task. It has been 32 (!) years since we played in the World Cup finals. We lost in 1978 (against Argentina) and our whole nation is eager to see us all win the World Cup this time, for the first time. Although everyone is […]
Holland vs Spain!
Now that Spain has beaten Germany (shocking!) 1:0 we will play against Spain in the 2010 World Soccer Championship. Whoever wins: there is going to be a new World Champion Soccer as neither country has ever won the world cup before. Everyone in Holland would have loved it if we had to play against Germany (revenge for 1974 when they beat us), but Spain it is. No doubt it’s going to be a historical match. Is 2010 the year in which we finally win the World Cup for the first time in our history? Holland has had it’s best tournament […]
Apple’s response to Grip of Death: you’re holding your iPhone wrong
My initial enthousiasm for the iPhone 4 has faded within a week. Yes, once again Apple has lived up to it’s reputation of delivering bad crappy 1.0 products. No kidding: as long as I have been following Apple (basically since 2002) they have been delivering their new products with some sort of problem. So it’s no surprise that the beautiful iPhone 4 has problems as well. For starters the special glass casing (advertised as “…20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, the glass is ultradurable…”) seems to not nearly as scratch resistant as Steve Jobs wants us to […]
Skynet lives
Ok, am I the only one that is creeped out by this latest development in robots? Check out the video below and see for yourself. Yeah, you might argue that this is new marvel of technology, but it does have a creepy side to it. I have never seen a robot move in a way that it really looked like an animal. A scary animal I might add. It could be an invention by Skynet, the nefarious computer network that tries to kill all humans in the Terminator movies. Actually it think also looks like some weird monsters from the […]
Home improvement Amazon.com style
If you ever ordered something from Amazon.com, or you have an account there, you know that Amazon likes to spam mail you with a lot “special deals” and such. Usually you receive them after you searched Amazon for something or just looked up a product or two. Anyway: the recommendations are usually spot on and do trigger users to buy more stuff (which is the whole idea off course). I think I heard somewhere it works automatically and somewhat along the lines of Google ads, that are triggered by your searches or – in Gmail – by keywords in your mail. This […]
Election day
Tomorrow it’s election day in Holland. I have been voting since I was 18 (legal age to vote in Holland) and this is the first time in 25 years that I will not vote for the political party that I like, but I have to vote for the most likely political coalition I want and trust to be good for Holland. What? Yeah, that was what I was thinking too. But the reality for the 2010 elections is, that coalitions need to be formed to get a majority in parliament. And this election the voters are so divided that you […]
Damn, I’m converted
Ok, <insert confession mode here> this is a big step for me, but I confess that I have been converted. I just saw the new iPhone 4 revealed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as only he can do. It’s gorgeous – and – I want one. There, I said it. I want an iPhone. Finally iPhone is up to par – and now even trend setting – feature-wise – with other phones. They finally added multitasking (my phones did that 4 years ago already) and a front cam (both my Nokia E71 and HTC Diamond Pro have that already). But also a gyroscope, dual-mic […]
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated by the Orange Fever!
There is no escape. If you live in Holland you will get caught by the “Orange Fever” that currently sweeps our country. It happens every year on Queens Day, but even more so during any national or international sporting event that involves fellow Dutchmen. May it be soccer, cycling or – our national pride – skating. The phenomenon manifests itself very visually as people start wearing orange clothing, like T-shirts, hats, shawls etc.. Some people even paint their hair orange and decorate walls, rooms. Even whole houses and or the streets are adorned with orange beams. What most people do […]
Minority report
Back in 2004 and 2005 I did some presentations at my work about the future of print. In my presentation I used many examples from the 2002 movie Minority Report. In that movie many futuristic gadgets where shown and 8 years later a lot of them are actually working. I strongly believe that digital will replace anything analogue. E-paper is one of the new media. But we all want color and not just black & white. Well, Sony is now showing off a OLED rollable display prototype that look promising. I can imagine many useful purposes for such a device. For instance, […]