1000 Times 1000

Speaking in Zagreb

patrick — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:59:53 +0000

On May 8 and 9 the first South European Internet conference will take place in Zagreb. Web.Start
The conference is divided into two days, Tech.Day and Biz.Day.

The agenda is promising and from a conference organizer perspective I can say that it is quite tight :)

I’ll be visiting Zagreb and the conference from May 7-10. I also do a keynote speech about Starting a startup in Europe on Friday (Biz.Day). I especially love this page about me in Croatian.

I think it is going to be a very interesting conference and I’m really looking forward to visit Croatia. The South and East European countries are full of great developers and hungry to build new companies, so I’m exited to get to know a lot of people in the web scene there.

I believe there are still some passes left (2-days for 210 euros) so if you’re in the neighborhood, sign up.

I don’t have had time to check out must sees or must do’s, but if you have suggestions or if you want to hang out with me please let me know.

First PDL shirt

patrick — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:15:49 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I had a brainwave, I wanted to print my own t-shirts as it is always a hassle to find a good and cheap t-shirts printer around the corner where you can print shirts with the freedom of printing on multiple sides or sleeves without the costs going through the roof. So I invested in a transferpress. Last night I made my first PDL Geek Shirt :) many more to come.
I already have some clients (all startups) like Wakoopa, Twones, Kings of Code, Fleck and The Next Web, but many more to come… at great prices.

I’ll have some busy Sundays coming up.

Student parody on Fitna — Lidna

patrick — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:40:50 +0000

A lot has been said and discussed about fitna (I actually haven’t seen it), the movie by Geert Wilders.

A friend of mine created a parody on this movie called Lidna (in Dutch). Very funny.

Homepage of Hyves!

patrick — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:09:52 +0000

Today, Hyves decided to go for Gold and asked their community to vote for them to win a The Next Web Award in the category “Best European Company”.

It totally crashed our servers, so I had to call Raymond to PLEASE take off the link from their frontpage. This is pretty weird because normally you would beg for the opposite.

Raymond to off the link, but put my profile back on the homepage, saying that I was dying for more profile views (Raymond, I thought that was a secret between us! :) )

Spread in Parool

patrick — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:46:50 +0000

Today I bought the Parool (twice). We got the spread!

COOL :)

The text can be read here

Holy shit! The Next Web wordt grootste internet conferentie van de wereld!

patrick — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:54:23 +0000

Wow,

Net een deal gemaakt met NOS, Team.tv, Cross Media Ventures en TechCrunch om DIGGnation live uit te zenden op TechCrunch! Hiermee wordt The Next Web waarschijnlijk de grootste internet conferentie van de wereld!

Lees ook:
NU.nl
Volkskrant
Bright wereldpremiere
Bright digitaal talent

En zo zijn er nog vele anderen die er al over geschreven hebben.

Ik verwacht vanavond een artikel op TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com

Morgen een split in het Parool.

Het wordt onwijs gaaf! Heel veel zin in!

The Next Web Awards - the battle has begun

patrick — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:42:18 +0000

Friday we announced the nominees for The Next Web Awards and it seems like a true war has begun! Loic Lemeur posted it on twitter and on his blog. frankwatching has a Vote for us button, likewise Dutchcowboys, Wakoopa, Loogic, Glubble and Fring.
It is getting even more interesting in the categories Best European Company and Best European Social site.
Bebo just posted a vote for us link in their Bebo Backstage section, which is gaining them a large amount of votes. Hyves, eBuddy, Xing, Netlog, Dopplr to follow…?

I’m curious to see who’ll win the Awards.

Back in Blogging

patrick — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:48:41 +0000

About three months ago, Iwanted to write a new blogpost but the admin system refused me… I didn’t know what it was but I knew I needed ftp access. Of course I forgot what it was and left it behind me. Now I finally took the time to fix it (and it only took me 3 minutes:). Well I’m back again..

Cool photo service

patrick — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:08:32 +0000

Want to do some tricks with your pictures? Dumpr is a great way to do so. It has flickr integration and works easy. good stuff.

Photo sketch at dumpr.net

Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos

Update: Tim Heineke made another cool pic for me :) Thanks!

Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos

Vodafone Heldesk: “how can we screw you, sir?”

patrick — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:56:02 +0000

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.