1000 Times 1000

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

iphone

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

Tuesday there is a Apple Keynote planned in London. Speculations are that Apple will announce the introduction of the iPhone in Europe and that it will be supporting 3G.

Personally I don’t think that Apple will release a 3G iPhone for Europe, at least, not yet. Why? Well basically because they would screw their existing customers in their home country for the second time in 2 weeks (the first time was the 200 dollar drop in price).
I just don’t think they want to risk their outstanding reputation.

IMG00011.jpg

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

I’m really exited about my video sponsorship! Last Wednesday I wrote a post where I was in search of a video sponsor (read about it here).

On Thursday I got a mail of Ronald van den Hoff of Mindz.com that he was willing to discuss things. We had a good chat and agreed that Mindz will become my personal video sponsor for the next year.

I ran to the store, brought all my bankpasses, and bought a Sony HDR-HC7E a tripod and a Crumpler case to protect my camera. I had some troubles with the payment and had to pay from my private and business account, but I managed to buy it!

I’m really exited about this and I’m looking forward to my first video blogpost.

I’d like to thank Mindz for giving me this opportunity and for supporting me.

Apple store iPhone

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

Ok, I just bought the iPhone. It was really crowded in the Apple store and loads of iPhones were sold. There is no limit on the amount of iPhones you can buy, so we will go back to the Apple store to buy 16 more !
We’re trying to download some software to mold it, but the internet connection is very slow and it takes 2 hours to download :(
It is 399 dollars, but that is excluding 8% sales tax. So you end up paying 423,93 dollars.

It is so beautiful and cool, but the frustrating part is that I cannot use it yet….

Schiphol

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

I’m at the airport (schiphol) and waiting for my plane to San Francisco. The guy next to me is falling asleep so I thought it would be nice to give him some extra comfort :)

Inspired by my roomies at the office (boris and robert) I have a similar proposal.

I’ll be writing about business books on expertlog.nl (40.000 unique visitors a month), every month I’ll discuss one book. I’ll start of with Starfish and the Spider (by Rod Beckstrom). As I’m meeting him next week I thought it would be a good concept for the business books posts to add a video interview with the author of the book I’m discussing. So I will.

Furthermore, as I’m going to TechCrunch20 I want to ask all my heroes some interesting and funny questions for on this blog. I’ll be visiting a lot of conferences over the next couple of months so I expect a lot of content there.

I’m looking for a sponsor who can pay my video camera, microphone, and tripod (all together 1500 euro). I’ll include your company (or yourself in case your a personal sponsor) in front of all interviews and content that I’ll produce over the next year. more good news… it’s tax deductible : )

To top things of, I’ll add a web2.0 session to the package. In this session I’ll bring a whole company up to speed on the latest trends on the web and how you can get most out of it (marketingwise, efficiencywise, etc.)…. and yes I did this before with success.

If your interested… send me a mail, give me a call (+316 4200 4200), or leave a comment and we’ll work things out.

Today we announced a new web event: Bowlr!

We’re already in training to make sure we can make it to the finals. Our recipe to success is: once a month training in the bowling alley (coached by Bowling legend Tony van Wezep) twice a week, half an hour on the Nintendo Wii.

Go and check out Bowlr.nl and sign up for a team or even better; Get your own Lane!

This is going to be great fun and a great networking and teambuilding experience so make sure you are a part of it…

Here is the Press Release (In Dutch):

PERSBERICHT
Amsterdam, 11 september 2007
Internethype mondt uit in Bowling Bubble…

Bowlr het mashup bowling event voor de interactive industry
Op donderdag 31 januari zal in Bowlingcentrum Knijn in Amsterdam de eerste editie van Bowlr losbarsten, waar teams uit de hele interactieve industrie (Eerste aanmeldingen: Hyves, Emerce, Solv, WebAds en Innovation Factory) tegen elkaar zullen strijden om de Blauwe Bowlr Bal.

Bowlr mede-organisator Patrick de Laive over de reden waarom Bowlr in het leven is geroepen: “Het Bowlen is een perfecte analogie voor de interactieve industrie want zoals Bowl legende Tony van Wezep ooit zei ‘Er is de bal, de vloer en de kegels maar uiteindelijk gaat het om de spelers…’. Vandaar ons initiatief voor een jaarlijks bowling event.”

Bowlr is het web event waar gestreden wordt om de Blauwe Bowlr Bal. Er kan genetwerkt worden tijdens het ‘Meet the Bowlrs’ diner en de party onder het genot van de heerlijke drankjes van Angela Knijn.

De team-slots vullen zich in een moordend tempo dus schrijf je snel in op bowlr.nl.

De eerste sponsors zijn Pins, Q-Go, Solv, Wakoopa, Fleck en info.nl en het event wordt mede gepromoot door onze mediapartner Emerce.

I kept a list of my online purchases of 2007. I did 34 purchases with a dollar value of over 20.000 dollars! This includes, pizza’s, flights, hotel bookings, laptops, clothing, cameras, mobile phones, computer screens, and some pro accounts.

Tonight I bought a Hyves Gold Account, and that is not because I want more smileys. It is just because I think my dear friends at Hyves HQ just deserve my support (they do not need it, but that is something else : ) ).

Normally you buy your friends a couple of beers or a ticket for the movies, but as these guys are working their asses of I do not have any time to spent money on them. So Raymond and Floris, this is my way of buying you guys a Heineken

and oh… Floris I picked you as my dinner date over Raymond, Koen and the rest of the Hyves team. 2 reasons:
1. Raymond is probably the most wanted (as number 1 most wanted bachelor of the Netherlands with over 900.000 profile views) so my chances are smaller to be picked out : )
2. I couldn’t choose between all those gorgeous women!

Sometimes I wonder what kind of people are working at the tax office?
I don’t want to spend to much time thinking about taxes, the people who work their, the money we all pay to keep this utterly inefficient company keep on going (I’ll spare you the numbers), so this is a short and out of the blue post about the Amsterdam Tax administrators.

On September 30th, 2005 my company got a tax claim of 138,56 euros for something… All I know is that I disagreed and actually took the time to write a letter stating my disagreement, at least that is what I have to conclude when I received a letter today (September 7, 2007!) with a reply to my objection letter (uitspraak op bezwaarschrift). They rejected my objection and I have to pay the 138,56 euros to the government.
Ok, no worries, I’ll do that right away.
….
Where do I have to transfer the money to? hummm, There is no account information on the letter, neither an “acceptgiro”. This must be a mistake… Let’s call my dear friends at the Tax office.

“Tax office Amsterdam, what up?”
“Hi, This is Patrick, In 2005….. bla bla… I owe you guys money according to a letter I received, I’d love to pay, but to whom and what account number? I cannot find it anywhere?”
“according to our system you received payment information on September 30th 2005″ !!!!

DO YOU WANT ME TO PAY THE BILL OR WHAT?

Imagine that this is a real company… how many people would pay invoices if there is no acoount information whatsoever? I guess your pretty fast out of business!

The worst thing is that we take risks and do everything to run companies properly and make some money in the middle, then the government reaps up 30% to pay these idiotas!

I know that I can’t blaim mr Ananou, he is just oing his job. But I can give him an advice: Please tell your supervisors to add one sentence to every letter with a euro sign (€) in it….

Gelieve bovenstaand bedrag binnen 14 dagen over te maken op girorekening nummer 4585272 o.v.v. uw Biljetnummer.
(it means something like Payment term of 14 days. Please transfer the funds to 4585272 and put your ID code in the description).

Funny : ) if you think of their slogan: Leuker kunnen we het niet maken, wel makkelijker!

Well one thing is for sure… If the ‘belastingdienst’ ever knocks on my door to help them out with their hopeless web-strategy I’ll charge them 10 times my normal fee (and why not, I’m 5 times more efficient then all consultants they hire, deliver quality -at a multiplier of at least 2- and can save 10 million on a yearly basis in 1 hour…. shit still too cheap… ok, compromise 20 times my normal fee : ) )

It is hard not admit it that this is great marketing and it is coming from… (you guessed it right) The Porn Industry. (Dad, mom, I hope your internet connection is not working properly)

Some smart guys/girls at imagebeaver came up with a great way to get traction for their site and a (presumably) porn-model: “What if we come up with a story about a girl losing her camera with all kind of hot photos on it which is publicated on Facebook in a group called: Help Us Reunite This Lass with Her Camera

The group description said:

“We are trying to track down the lovely lass in these photos so she can be reunited with her lost digital camera. She certainly knows how to use it! “Please get invites sent out to all gents in your friends list as if we all work together we can hunt this lass down.”

The group got thousands of members within a couple of hours! Here you can find the reason why.
Facebook erased the content of their site, but the goal is already achieved. Everybody is writing about it (including the Sun and the Dailymail)

Great way to spread porn : ) I guess sex still sells….

Update: I erased the links, because Imagebeaver chenged the content behind the links

After advertising, Friendvertising, now we have.. iVertising
Now that we run Google ads on our first names, we have to come up with a name for it (according to the Sapir Whorf theory, nobody will understand a concept if there is no name for it).

In this particular case you are advertising yourself, so iVertising seems like a good name for it (MeVertising or MyVertising might be options as well).
Actually, ifyou think about it, everybody is iVertising him/her self all of the time, at parties, at business meetings, while having coffee etc. I is one of the most used words in the world together with Coca Cola, sex and OK.
I’m curious to see if this form of iVertising will pay off…. Will I get new and valuable business contacts? Will people recognize my name when I make a reservation at a restaurant : ) ?
My gut feeling tells me that iVertising your first name is cheaper than to become the number 1 in google organically, but the future will tell.

At least I have a nice story to tell at parties and business meetings.

iVertise, do you?