It is kind off surreal to me, that 9/11 is already 10 years ago! It was a Tuesday afternoon for me (6 hours of time difference with New York) and I was at my work at my former employer; Internet company Lost Boys (Business Solutions). Around 15:10, which was about 20 minutes after the first plane hit the North tower of the WTC, the news trickled in at my work. The initial reports where that a “small airplane” had hit the WTC. My first thought was, “wow, that’s a freak accident.” I also thought about the fact that in 1945 […]
Occam’s razor
Here’s how you spark a true Internet meme: you spot something funny in an old B&W 1928 Charly Chaplin movie, post it on the Internet (YouTube) together with a ridiculous explanation. And with this simple post the guy gets over 4 million hits and a lot of debate, varying from plain stupid to intriguing. Just watch this video from this guy called George Clarke (if you can make it past the annoying self-promotion – just skip it if you need) and hear and see what the fuzz is all about: So, did that make you go “Hmmm”? Don’t you think, […]
Google bashing the new fashion
This week Google launched yet another service to enhance the experience of Internet users in general and Google users in particular; they came up with their own public DNS services. For those who are not tech-savvy: when you type in an address in your browser, your PC sends of a request to what is called a DNS service (Domain Name Server). This will translate the easy to remember name (i.e. www.cnn.com) into a not so easy to remember IP-address like 157.166.226.26. You could look at DNS services like a postman; he knows where to put your mail – well, most […]
What is a browser?
Ok guys, I was pretty much amazed when I saw this video, showing people fail on a huge scale when asked: “what is a browser”. Flabbergasted is actually more like it. It’s like people not knowing the answer to the question: “what is an engine”? This video shows people trying to come up with an answer. There is actually a Dutch version of this video as well (crappy), shot in Rotterdam and it shows exactly the same result. Sorry, how can millions of people use a browser, but not know what it actually is? Well to answer the question: a […]
Google Chrome OS hype
Big news in IT land today. Google announced officially it’s working on Chrome OS. As usual the press immediately translated this news into something like “Google declares war on Microsoft Windows”, which is complete and utter nonsense. I used to be a journalist myself and I find it increasingly annoying how the press nowadays is just giving a twist to news that is besides the truth. Just another hype then? Don’t get me wrong: I love competition and the choice for consumers that comes with it. But Chrome OS is not intended to compete with Windows per se, simply because […]
Do the Google Wave
Forget about Bing. Do the Google Wave! While the evil forces of steve Ballmer were introducing their feeble attempt to regain control over the Internet with their search engine ‘answer machine’ Bling Bing, Google had their own party. While Steve was trying to do his best to convince the press why Bing will be important, Google VP of Engineering was rocking with his own keynote speech. The same developers that gave us Google Maps (it’s just brilliant), came up with a new technology called “Wave”. And yes, as with all Google products, its going to be available for everyone and there will […]
Twitter shitter
It’s funny how people think very different about using Twitter. After all the new social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook and Hyves (most popular in Holland), one might think the market for these kind of initiatives would be full. So when Twitter came out in 2006, I did not see the relevance of it. I mean: who wants the restriction of posting within 140 characters – including spaces? It is like SMS for the Web. Needless to say, I wasn’t convinced that there was a need for ‘micro-blogging‘ as it was soon dubbed. Also: who is interested in all this personal […]
Mayday! Mayday! Gmail down!
Hmm, I don’ t hope this is going to be a trend, but this morning around 10:20am (GMT) Google Gmail went down globally! Since then it has failed to come up again. I noticed it because my Gmail checker on my Mac ceased to work and said it timed out. Off course I tried to find out if it was just my connection or if something else was going on. I soon ran into a page in the UK that confirmed what I figured out already: Gmail is down globally! And it’s the second big outage in two months. On […]