1000 Times 1000

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I think I can say that I’m a good customer for our dear friends at Vodafone. A have a blackberry account @ 32,50 eur per month, a calling package @ 35 eur per month and on average (don’t ask me how it is possible) my bill is around 170 euros a month.

I’m the kind of user that actually pays his bill, although not very content with the delivered service. People who call me will recognize the awkward silence when I pick up the phone, because Vodafone thinks it is useful to cut me off for the first couple of seconds… forcing me to say something like this: “Hey Boris…. Boris.. Boris .. Boris Boris Boris aah there you are”

Now things get funny. I just received a bill stating that I had consumed for 423.87 euros of value during the October month. You can imagine that I was curious where the actual value kicked in. I couldn’t remember calling my ex girlfriend for hour and hours while on the middle of the ocean needing a satellite connection. I’m 100% sure that I watched ‘Blood Diamond’ from my hand held memory and not streaming (over GPRS :) ). So would it be the olllo service I tested once -well in fact that is owned by KPN and I did receive a hell of a lot txt messages with “I’m sorry we haven’t found any matches in your city, don’t worry, we will continue looking for you!” but that was in November as far as my mind tells me (meaning that I’m getting that on my next bill).

WOW. 299,87 EUROS Vodafone Live data traffic abroad!!! I have been for 2 days at FOWA, but all I did was checking my email (blackberry service pulls in the first 2 kb of every e-mail, that’s 500 mails for 1 MB). I received 85 emails in those 2 to 3 days. And as far as I know I never use Vodafone Live (which moron does?).

How come that I ended up with 299,87 eur of traffic costs? I called the Vodafone helpdesk and here is an overview of the conversation:
Vodafone operator “I can see that you had 10MB traffic in the UK”
“10MB!!!! ?” I asked with a bite of sarcasm
“Yes 10MB”
“Wow, that is like watching a youtube movie of 3 minutes.. or downloading 2 whole songs (at least the radiohead songs we’re for free)”
“Yes”, the kind Vodafone guy said to me
“ok, I understand that this is abnormal use of bandwith, but still 300 euros?”
“Well, 1MB of data is 12,50 eur and on a different carrier its 20 eur per MB, email data is 20 eur per MB anyways”
“WHAT!!! 20 euros for 1 MB of email??? holy shit, why didn’t you worn me?
“oh you weren’t aware of the costs of traffic when you’re abroad?”
“Well, I knew you guys would charge me a factor 1000 of what I would pay in the Netherlands for my internet connection, because screwing customers is what Telco’s are all about, but a factor 1000.000… no that I was not expecting” “and oh, 10MB times 20 eur is still 200 euros, so something is not right…”
“uuhm, I’m not specialized in data plans, you can write a letter to: Vodafone Klantenservice SSV, Postbus 1500, 6201 BM in Maastricht”
“ok, I will”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“no”
“Have a nice day mister de fevre” (thanks for not pronouncing my name right :) ).

I have send exactly this post to Vodafone (in print of course).

I FEEL ROBBED, NO… I AM ROBBED

I’m wondering how Vodafone will make this up to me.

Thanks for ruining my day and my precious time.

Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/323136/

This weekend I spent the entire weekend in my favorite coffee bar to catch up with things that needed to be done for a long time. Importing videos, writing some articles for third parties (which will be published in the near future) and updating my address book.

In total I spend 5 hours on updating my address book, I punched in contact information on 121 people, adding stuff like “we met at SIME, talked about fleck which can be interesting for their clients. Mail when the new version is out”. I still haven’t imported everyone I wanted to, nor do I have a good system of keeping my address book up to date.

If only there was a plugin for address book (or outlook express for that matter) that allowed me to attach tags to people. That would make my life a lot easier and I think it will allow me to get more business out of my contact list.

People in address book on 19-11-2007 (statistic for later reference): 1136

My friend Gijs gave a keynote to 500 people during Challengerday. He rowed the Atlantic Ocean in 2005 with three friends. read more about that adventure at OceanFours.

This is the video I made of his presentation. I had to run to get my camera, so I missed 10 seconds in the beginning :(

Click To Play

Splash of Red & White

Originally uploaded by caribb.

Two weeks ago I had a brief discussion with the CEO of Corendon Airlines, Atilay Uslu, about his business. He told me that the airline sector is going to test out some new business models in the future. One of the ideas was to give away flights for free and earn on sponsorships, advertisements and sales during the flight. This is a pretty interesting model and I’d love to test it out once. How would a flight like that look like? (I’ve put a € sign on every revenue stream).

Your seat would be sponsored by a Telco of the country you’re flying to (€ fee per passenger)
The entertainment system would only show programs like: home shopping (or better flight shopping) (€ cost per item sold and cost per view), the best commercials (€ cost per view), infomercials full of advertisement about the city of your destination (€ cost per view).
Of course there is the opportunity to gamble (€), just sweep your credit card and start earning back your vacation!
Maybe you can win a Nokia cell-phone (supplied by Nokia, with widsets preinstalled -barter deal-) via a game of Bingo (€ per ticket).
Sweepstakes, win a holiday for the whole family, sponsored by travel agent x (barter deal with travel agent) (€ per lot)
Everything can be purchased via your credit card, with cash or by reversed billed SMS messages (for micro payments).
Do you want an internet connection? and power for your laptop? no problem, your credit card please (€ per flight).

Then of course there is the food and beverages department. Corendon signs of a deal with the Coca Cola Company and Unilever to sell only their products (€ flat fee per year), to make sure that you’ll buy enough food and beverages they have the Climate Control!! Chances are that these flights will be hot, the air will be dry and it will smell like your favorite bakery (€).

These are just some things I’ve made up during my 1.5 hours flight from Stockholm to Amsterdam (the climate control forced me to buy a water, crisps and a tonic). I think it is quite an interesting case and would love to take part during the brainstorm sessions of Corendon, Easyjet, KLM, etc (I know a way to do that for virtually free as well :) )

I’m in the hotel lobby of some hotel in Parma and just had a meeting with David Weinberger (author of ‘Cluetrain Manifesto’ and ‘everything is Miscellaneous’)
David is a very smart and interesting guy and it was a great meeting. We were having coffee in the centre of Parma on a beautiful square.
David just came back from a speech he gave for the happy few of Academia Barilla (apparently one of the biggest Pasta companies in the world) on Pasta2.0 :).

We had some interesting conversations about the web and his book. I videotaped an interview with him that lasts almost 30 minutes and I’ll post that later on when I review his book on expertlog.

I’m really glad I traveled to Italy to meet him. Now I have another appointment with one of the few internet entrepreneurs of Parma (that is at least what they say): Alessio Garbi.

Once again it has been confirmed: We’re only at the beginning of the all the exciting stuff the web will bring us. The next billion people will decide where the web is going. Thanks David.

Check out his compelling book: Everything is Miscellaneous

Dit zegt genoeg over de Google…

Originally uploaded by sandervdv.

We’re (The fleckers) in Berlin at Web2.0 Conference, produced by O’Reilly. Yesterday we arrived at the venue (which is around 20 km outside of Berlin) after an all night long Road trip in Boris’ car (really fun).
I’ve been to several sessions and one of them was about OpenSocial, given by Google.

I’ve seen multiple talks of GOOG representatives and they all had one thing in common: They were all boring. I think the reason for that is that they always talk about things everybody already knows and do not elaborate about the future of Google, their strategy and thoughts. They do not inspire the audience.
Yesterday it was the same all over again. Google talking about OpenSocial sounds really interesting and inspiring, but I didn’t hear one thing I didn’t know, not one thing that made me think, not one thing that grabbed me and gave me an excuse (if you need one) to discuss things after the session with other participants.

Disclosure: I fell asleep during the session, so I might have missed the interesting parts :)

I love to cook, but lately haven’t found much time to do so. In my search for new good recipes I found this talented cook (age 2) making the best dishes ever. It is really funny and as it turned out (by a real coincidence) that this is my 2 year old cousin, I checked with the mom and she secured me that it was 100% safe…

So enjoy the next Jamie Oliver, his (stage)name is: Le Petit Chef

I already heard rumors that Le Petit Chef is in the making of his own cookbook :)

Next week I’ll go to Parma and Florence. In Parma (Thursday) I’ll meet David Weinberger (my favorite author on technology and business) and will go to Florence to work there for 2 days out of some local quality coffee bars.
If you have tips for Parma or Florence, please let me know. Also if you know of any cool startups there, I’d love to meet up and hang around (or work at their office for a couple of hours). My network in these cities is very limited, so every help is welcome