Bloggers@large

YouTube or NoTube? I guess that you should not bitch about stuff that is “free” (if there is such a thing), but It is getting really annoying that YouTube is down about every two weeks or so for maintenance. What’s worse: it seems like they do not announce when they will be down. Especially if you use their service to put some movies in your blog etc. it is annoying as hell. I’m sure that thousands of other people who blog experience the same frustration. Also, the quality of YouTube (interface as well) isn’t really that great. If you compare […]

Today I was at the TINE 2006 tech show in Amsterdam to check out our competitors and scope out new trends in IT. While doing so I bumped into a booth run by what appeared to be the Dutch company that imports the I-Jam smartphones. As you might know (and if you didn’t: you do now) these phones are made by a Korean company called HTC and are sold under numerous names (I happen to own a Qtec S100 which is also a HTC made phone). Anyway, they also had some prototypes of new phones there – working! – and […]

Last night I had dinner in Amsterdam with a good friend who I have known since highschool. We always go to the same Indonesian restaurant: Kantjil & De Tijger and we always order the same food: “Nasi Goreng Rames” (fried rice with pork kebabs, stewed beef, pickled cucumbers, and mixed vegetables). It contains everything we like about Indonesian food on one plate and it is reasonably priced. Funny enough there was what seemed a Japanese camera-crew filming the food in the restaurant (unfortunately for some weird reason my video of that event is corrupted, so I can’t show it here). […]

Obsolete? As you might have noticed the consumer electronics world is eagerly awaiting the mass introduction (probably later this year – Sony already ships some devices) of the successor of the DVD. But the problem is that the ‘powers that be’ can not decide among each other which format should be leading (unlike with the DVD). The consumer is off course the one to suffer. Off course I was happy when some manufacturers announced they would produce some models that would play both formats. So I decided that when the time will come, I will play it safe and get […]

OMFG. I just caught a glimpse of Oprah on Dutch TV with of one of my favourite actors: Meg Ryan. OMG what did she do to herself? What the hell is wrong with people? They are afraid of getting older and then decide they need plastic surgery? People: we all get older and then we all die! Get over it! This is so wrong: she looks like a duck! Anyway: more horror can befound here: http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com. Man, I’m so disappointed here. “Vanity is definitely my favorite sin.”— Lucifer, aka Al Pacino, from “The Devil’s Advocate” Before After

As with all good satire this is funny in more than one way. 🙂

I just hate these useless error messages.

Just fake it! With the World Soccer Championship coming up this June, a lot of people are buying have found an alibi to buy a spanking brand new TV. And of course this means people are going from the old fashioned analog CRT TV to that new flatpanel digital LCD or Plasma TV. But finding and buying a good TV is not so easy. There is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo involved and it seems everyone is trying to dazzle and confuse us with tech terms. It starts of course with the question, which is better: Plasma or LCD? […]

Hypocrits About 1 hour after I wrote my previous post today about Yahoo! helping the Chinese un-democratic government in prosecuting political dissdents, the news came in that Skype (the voip company) also has caved in to Chinese laws and is actively censoring text messages that Chinese Skype users are sending one another: The Ebay-owned company admitted its joint-venture partner on the mainland, Tom.com, had edited messages containing words considered politically sensitive by the Chinese government. Among them were “Falun Gong”, the outlawed religious sect, and “Dalai Lama”, the Buddhist leader of disputed Tibet, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The Ebay-owned […]

Online KGB Obviously politics and technology do not mix that well: Reporters without Borders reports once again how Yahoo! has helped the Chinese police to gather evidence to implicate another political dissident. Reporters Without Borders obtained a copy of the verdict in the case of Jiang Lijun who whas sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for writing online pro-democracy articles. The copy of the verdict shows clearly that Yahoo! helped the Chinese police to identify him. It is the third case that proves Yahoo! was involved. In this case Yahoo! handed an e-mail to the authorities from […]