Use 2012 to prepare great 2013

One major Good Resolution for the much awaited year of 2012, which starts in about 8,5 hours, is to be more active on this blog again. But why not throw in a few other good resolutions? To be less cynical. To be more optimistic. To spend more time with the kids. To love the loved-ones even more. To listen. To see. To think before speaking. To speak out. To be a better person. To take care of my back. To cook great dinners. To read more books. To be more open. To be there for others. To make it a year to remember.

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17-6-2010 to 17-11-2011

It all started on June 17th, at the start of the summer of 2010. Was it a nice summer? I don't remember. We always seem to think our summers were worse than they actually were. Then it continued all through four seasons, up to the next summer. Now that one definitely was a bad summer. Which we spend in Greece. A country in trouble but not so much in trouble that our mixed Belgian-Greek friends living in a small, charming village called Lafkos, would be considering rushing back to Belgium 2 months later. It still continues till today, November 17th. 17th. 17. 17 months of unending political negotiations. Europe's on fire and we are now fighting over taxes on company cars and first class airline tickets. If these are the luxuries we fight over, we do not yet know the meaning of the word crisis. And those that fight taxes on company cars are the same people who claim that the unemployed are the Great Mass of Parasites and the only way to kick them back to work is by cutting their unemployment benefits in time. But don't we need jobs for the unemployed first, if we want to do that? And if we tell everyone we will have to work longer (which we should, provided we are able to physically) or that the existing pre-pension systems used to help companies restructure, will be dispensed with (because, yes, 54 is too young to retire), are we not pushing a lot of people out of unemployment and into social welfare and real poverty? And then I consider myself: imagine losing my more-than-averagely-paid job. Too old to find something else, no pre-pension arrangement possible and after 2 years a lose my maximum unemployment benefit which will be less than 30% of what I earned before. I will have worked all my life, with a great carreer, and I will end in poverty after selling my appartment and eating up any savings I will have left. Too bleak a picture? So let's not negotiate company car taxes. Let's try and focus on what's really important?

#OA is a long way off from #OWS

Last Saturday, Antwerp had its own Occupy Antwerp event. For those of you who don't know Antwerp or have never been there: walk around in the center of town on any given Saturday and you get claustrophobic (at least I do) from the masses of shoppers occupying the streets. I had to do some shopping myself this weekend, I only go to the center of town if I really-really-really have to. And when I do I try to do my shopping in a record time, avoiding and evading the crowds. In the afternoon Occupy Antwerp gathered some 500 people. The contrast between the thousands of shoppers and the hundreds of Occupyers was embarrassing. We are living in a country where 'economic crisis' seems very far away, with politicians claiming 'everything is under control' and 'nothing as bad as Greece of Portugal could ever happen here'. So let's all go spend money buying stuff we don't need instead of thinking about what is happening in the world out there. We should be indignado about thàt.

"The Center", a real ghost town

Imagine building a real city where no-one will ever live, because you want a playground to test out new ideas and new technologies. It's exactly what Pegasus is planning in New Mexico, according to the website of Fastcompany. It's going to be a real, 20 square mile, city for 350.000 virtual inhabitants and we are talking a (mere) 200 million $ budget. Building is supposed to commence in 2014, if and when the project continues, which is not at all sure today. This would certainly mean taking the definition of 'playground' to a new level.

Ooooh!

Lego Angry Birds: sooo cute :-)
Copyright Chris Pirillo on Google +, picked up by @seroundtable 

Content marketing is growing up

Picked up an interesting Infographic on a blog today about content marketing. It sketches the relationship between a content type and a distribution channel from a buyer's perspective. Apparantly the guys who made this infograph won 6 awards with the previous one.

but check out this one first:

Happy Birthday email!

40 years ago the first email was born. 40 years! What a way to take over the world, from some weird communication tool between nerds to a life-encompassing way of communicating.

But will email add another decade? I dare think not: if you look at kids' behaviour these days they hardly ever use email. They never open a Smartschool inbox unless they absolutely have to, never check their g-mail (or, when older, hotmail) accounts and in general are becoming less and less email-savvy. At least, ours are. It's all (Facebook) messaging these days.(With thanks to Mashable)

the end of an era

25 flights, 4671 orbits, 122,883,151 miles and 299 days in space .... Endeavour returned to earth this afternoon, finalizing it's last mission and we're so used to it that we didn't even take notice. It wasn't the last Nasa mission (that honour is reserved for Atlantis in a couple of weeks) but still: definitely the end of an era.

Quite an unexpected result

Last Friday I spend my day at a seminar on Innovation, aimed at civil servants and focussing on new trends in social media, the cloud and crowdsourcing. Actually, we didn't get to know a lot about that last subject. The whole seminar was sponsored by the likes of Microsoft, Adobe, Cap Gemini etc and the host mentioned a Twitter account at the start of the seminar (forgetting about the hashtag, by the way, but that was remedied after the first coffee break).

The first two sessions after lunch were so blatantly commercial Adobe talk that the people twittering started to be annoyed. Which led to an unexpected result: the host entering the auditorium and cutting the presentation short, quoting the negative reactions he'd seen passing on his Twitter account. (#inno2020)

One could argue that, in an auditorium of maybe 150 people, only 10% of them were actively posting comments. Maybe a little more. The tweets were, by the way, very polite: nothing nasty or indecent, just commenting on the commercial nature of the presentations and their lack of relevance. So yes, power to social media, if tweets can cut a presentation short. On the other hand: power to a very small minority whereas the majority of the people in the room had nothing to do with it - and no choice about it either.

And certainly very embarrassing for the Adobe guys ...

No comment ...

Copyright Smashing Magazine, check out all the other great cartoons!

Hmm .. Europe (and it's not meant nicely)

Spending two days in a depressing conference room in a depressing building talking about benchmarking and measurement of e-government initiatives, made me feel like I have landed on another planet. Portal presentations on existing initiatives that have been around for some time. Someone suggesting that it might be interesting to do some webanalytics if we want to learn about the usage of these e-government services (deuh? "Google Analytics, anyone? Heard of Alexa.com?" ... what?)

Meanwhile people from the European Commission and from the contracting party Cap Gemini pretend that the opinions of European experts around the table mean something. But I got the distinct feeling it doesn't matter anyway as decisions on what needs to be done won't be taken here anyway. And lo & behold: by the end of a long discussion decisions 'will be made' as what we talked about were just 'individual opinions'.A small survey with a number of other delegates confirmed my feelings.

Lot's of running around, travelling, leaving an unacceptable eco-footprint ... I don't have a lot of "European" mileage but it frustrates me when some of the clichés seem to be true.

Sue me, I said 'app store'

The New York Times had an interesting piece on the legal squabbles of tech companies when involved in the use of daily language and everyday words. Microsoft sues Apple and Apple sues Amazon for the use of the words "app store".

Suing over app store is not only an Apple privilege. Facebook has tried to trademark words like 'like' or 'poke' and also 'wall' and 'face' and 'book' ... And Windows is no stranger to trying to play at the same game, trademarking words like 'windows', 'office' or 'word'.

The New York Times cites a Web branding expert, Christopher Johnson, saying there is 'a land grab going on'. Apparently the US Patent and Trademark Office lags about 5 years behind in allowing companies to claim generic words. An basically, the giants can fool around all they want, it's the small companies that get hurt (like Placebook that changed it's name when lawyers came calling).

As always, it's the lawyers who benefit from these very expensive and lenghty trademark proceedings ...

When I try to explain what a personalised citizens' portal, containing government services, could be like, I use the term 'app store' instead of portal. Because portal is the wrong word whichever way you turn it. And because everybody understands "app store" Am I going to be sued now too?

better together, indeed

Last week, the 20 year old son of a well known and very much respected advertising professional, died in a stupid-stupid-stupid accident during a party with fellow students. The kind of thing that scares the shit out of you when you have teenage kids and the always present 'so-much-can-happen-to-them' fear pops up, again.

His friends have started a remembrance website where people not only can leave their condolences but where friends can upload pictures, video's, even songs.

The very thoughtfull thing about this very simple site is that it's really meant for the family. Apparantly thousands have already uploaded a personal note but except for the occasional quote on the homepage, you cannot browse them. Not like on other condolences-sites where you sometimes get the feeling that they are meant as public platforms ('see what I wrote? And how eloquently too?'). The upload function for songs and video's has been deactivated, probably due to too many uploads. If there are any, they are not for the public eye. And the small selection of images suggests that there's probably much more but that these are gifts to the family who lost a son.

This is actually what a condolence site should be about.

this is actually a good idea

Old people's mobile phones we already know: these strange looking devices with Big Buttons and without all the trendy and hype-y functionalities old people are never-ever going to use anyway.

Make way for the Internet Buttons!

When I look at it from an e-gov point of view, this is actually a good idea:make the Web more accessible for those users not used to it. Granted, the idea is not new but this initiative is fairly recent. Especially as I read somewhere last week that 1 million Flemish citizens are not online yet (which is like 15% of the population). Internet Buttons allows users to create simple personalised pages that contain clear links to sites or apps or services that they use or like.

Is Egypt About to Have a Facebook Revolution?

Is Egypt About to Have a Facebook Revolution?

When it happened in Iran in 2009, authorities were quick to close social media down; when following Twitter you couldn't be sure whether you were reading real live stuff or propaganda. Seems something is happening now in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, ...that cannot be stopped (even though Egypt has attempted to take the country out of the World Wide Web today).

The Jetsons, anyone?

At the latest CES Chrysler proposed this 'en-v' urban mobility tool of the future.

Which reminded me of stuff like this one, from 2008: the Personal Electric Vehicle build by Myers Motors

but come on: isn't that just a copy of this one?

The Jetsons!And if you start Googling Jetson-like cars, there's a lot more out there than here.