raymondpoort.com

Some iPhone news this week:

– successful iPhone launch in France, it’s a nice mix of Apple(s) and Orange(s) in the country of pain, vin et Boursin :). There is also an unlocked, carrier independent iPhone!

– the dutch Crown Prince Willem Alexander (Wim-Lex for friends :)) bought an iPhone, as did his wife princess Maxima. The iPhone is not yet released in NL, so they will face some roaming costs (or hack it ;))

– AT&T confirms the 3G iPhone to be released somewhere in 2008…heyhey! THAT was the sole reason for me to hold of to an iPhone when I had the opportunity to buy one mid November!

Small site update:

Just added a Twitter-script showing the 10 tweets preceding my current Twitter status. It’s nicely put under the Twitter badge in the sidebar, handy for everyone who’s not reading my blog every day! 🙂

The Facebook hype reached close harmony already end 2006, can you imagine what it is like at the end of 2007? 😉

Am running Devicescape on my Nokia E65, a pretty neat application that makes the usual complicated WiFi connection process on mobile devices a lot easier…it does it for me, so give it a try too!

An alternate use of Google’s search engine; use it as spell checker!

Think about it…have the spelling of (obscure) words verified by Google’s ‘democracy’!

How?

Easy as a, b, c…whenever you’re not sure about the spelling of a word, just feed your best guess into a Google search box and see what it comes back with.

You might see a ‘Did you mean:’…with your suggestion, but then spelled correctly! If not, chances are pretty high that the initial suggestion was spelled correctly in the first place, especially when there are a lot of search results.

And, if you can’t choose between the initial suggestion and the ‘Did you mean:’ alternative, just pick the one returning the most search results! 😉

(in the top right: ‘Results 1 – 50 of about 122,540 for ….’)

Pure democracy…or? 🙂

Visited iFactors, the Apple reseller in Zoetermeer, yesterday…ultimate geek time: played with the 24" iMac, 17"Macbook Pro and the iPod Touch! 🙂

Then saw a 102" plasma tv at the MediaMarkt across the street, on sale for only EUR 79.999,-…ouch!!

As I said…geek time in NL!

A. J. Kitt: "You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do."

Since I’ll have a business meeting in The Netherlands coming week, I decided to fly back to NL already tonight!

Looking forward to spend some time ‘home’ again (will actually be working a lot in our house, to prepare it for renting it out from January!).

Our norwegian teacher Maja surprised us with a homemade cheesecake this week!

Actually her mother made it and since they originate from Bosnia, there was a Bosnian twist to the cake…she put pomegranate on top:

It was delicious, thanks Maja and mother!

Jason Calacanis: "The case for the community CEO… …someone who polls their user base openly, asks for feedback constantly, and engages their audience… …CEO 1.0 was defined as the all-powerful God-like CEO. That’s been over
for a long time–with the exception of Steve Jobs who is, in fact, God."

Excellent blogpost Jason, thanks for bringing this to the table.

This so much follows my ideas on leadership, CEO’s, managers, it’s a must read for people with CEO 1.0 / 1.5 mindsets…just imagine what can happen if they’re able to open up after reading it!! Society and organizations have clearly changed these days and being a teamplayer / people manager is key in moving an organization where you want it to go…it all comes down to;

Lead with passion and be INSPIRATION!

Yesterday I received the email below…hmm, what should I make out of this?

Obviously this is spam / spam related, then again…it’s very original and almost tempting.

A sad story, still somewhat entertaining to read…pity I don’t have any wood burning stove 😉

********************

Hello,

My name is Elena, I have 30 years and I live in province of Russia.

I
have a 6-years daughter, her father abandoned us and we live with my
mother. Recently my mother lost job due to old age and our situation
became very difficult.

The prices for gas and electricity became very high in the last months and we cannot use it to heat our home anymore.

The
winter is coming and temperature is very cold here already. The radio
say it will be up to minus 30 degr. Celsius in the near weeks. We do
not know what to do and we very afraid.

The only way for us to
heat our home is to use portable wood burning stove which gives heat
with burning wood or coal. We have a lot of wood in our region,
therefore this way is very good for us
and it will heat our home the whole winter with minimal charges.

I work in library and after my job I allowed to use computer. I finded your address in internet and may be you can help us.

We
need portable stove, but we cannot buy it because it expensive for us.
May be you have any used wood burning stove which you don’t use
anymore, then we would be very grateful to you if you can donate it to
us and organize transport of its to our address. This stoves are
different, and they weight between 60-150kg.

The Christmas
coming and I would be very grateful to you if you could send some
sweets for my daughter. I will then put them under Christmas tree and
it will make my daughter very happy.

I send you best wishes.

Elena.

********************

Some more investigations show that this ‘Elena’ has sent the same messege to more people…now I don’t feel that special anymore, NO wood burning stove for her, nor any sweets to put under the Christmas tree!

Following my earlier post on the return of the Gillmor Gang, aka Gillmor Group; Steve now rebranded it to ‘The Gang’…he put the two last shows out there, with the third one up soon, yay!

The RSS-feed is available only for people who joined the ‘Gillmor Group’ on Facebook and its members are asked to refrain from distributing the URL, sorry…:)

I listened to the first episode on my commute this morning, it’s great to have the Gang back together after nearly one year…sjeez guys, I missed you!

Ben Stein: "The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want."

Sinterklaas has arrived with his ‘pakjesboot’ (boat full of presents) in The Netherlands today (check the link if you’re not familiar with this dutch tradition)…I wonder if he’s able to bring me some presents here up north in Norway. 🙂

I never realized how dutch this tradition actually is…my colleagues in Norway had no clue when I explained it (guess they’re completely Santa Claus’ed :)).

It’s one of those things you miss out on when living abroad…the special atmosphere in the cities, coziness in peoples homes, children going crazy when Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten are present, lovely sweets like speculaas, pepernoten and kruidnoten…yeah, it’s a nice tradition!

Hehe, it would be interesting to have Sinterklaas visit Norway, am pretty sure the people here would have a hard time getting the story behind Zwarte Piet (Black Pete or Blackface).

Plans for the weekend:

– relax

– clean up (we’ll get visitors Sunday, Kristel’s dad and brother, so we’ll make this place look shiny as new!)

– finish some things on a website I made earlier

– RELAX

– dig further into social networking

– watch a movie (any suggestions?)

– chop some more wood (am diggin’ it ever since I bought a motorized chainsaw)

– pick-up Kissy from the airport (she’s in New York at the moment…uhh, can you believe I told her NOT to buy an iPhone?? Screw me!)

– did I mention relax?

…guess I need more than 2 days, again…:)

Picked up the repaired family car today…the garage gave her a special prep-for-winter treat, heyhey, let it snow let it snow let it snow…it’s currently -4dgr C, oof!

A nice bonus was the fact that the guy helping me spoke no english at all…first time norwegian class on a Thursday! I managed to understand what he was trying to explain, so I guess I passed the test, yay! 🙂

Mike, my best buddy from Down Under pointed me to The Science Show podcast…will check it out in my commute tomorrow, it’s always great to find something new in podcasting land! 🙂

Good news! After going down from two to no cars yesterday, today one car got fixed: the Honda turned out to have a problem with one of the (new winter)tires, the remedy was relatively easy (and free :)).

The Scénic is at the garage at the moment, fingers crossed for a fast and not too expensive repair…

My happy friend on the road, the infamous Renault ‘the family-car’ Scénic needs to be repaired, something wrong with the frontwheel and axis they say…estimated 3000-4000 NOK, damn!

Luckily there is the second car, the old Honda ‘red devil’ Civic…hmm, todays latest news on that one is that it uhhh, broke down! Probably the exhaust…damn again!

2 down in one day, it’s certainly NOT a great day to be my car…

Last night I played Guitar Hero for Playstation 2 for the very first time of my life…a true virgin. 🙂

I totally digged it, what a game, great with friends! A perfect combination of music and play, adrenaline running through your veins like you’re performing on stage!

Hmm, wonder what Santa is gonna bring me for Xmas. 🙂