New Blackberry!!!

This morning I picked up my new Blackberry 8707V from the Vodafone Business centre. Besides the new hardware I also got a new contract which gives me VIP service in Europe. This meand that if (when?) I brake it they will pick it up, anywhere in Europe, within 4 hours. I also get a replacement phone and my fixed Blackberry back in 24 hours or a new one.

I love this service and only wish I had it earlier. My Blackberries always seem to break at the most inconvenient times when I’m on a trip somewhere.

I also got 300 free minutes per month.

And the hardware: I love it! The screen is much brighter. The whole design looks a lot less like a calculator and it is considerly lighter than the Blackberry I used to have.

The only thing I have to get used to is the graphical user interface. This Blackberry comes pre-installed with the Vodafone Theme which I don’t really like. I would prefer to use the old standard Blackberry theme.

New Blackberry tommorow

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Originally uploaded by gehtdichnixooo.

Last night my Blackberry suddenly stopped displaying anything on its screen. For a moment it displayed everything upside down, then it flickered red and green and then nothing.

All day I had to navigate my Blackberry by memory, trying to guess what menu I was in and just hoping I was answering the phone and not dialing the emercency number.

I only received this Blackberry 3 months ago and it was a replacement for my previous replacement which I received as a replacement for my first Blackberry.

My next Blackberry is going to be the 8707v pictured here. Looking forward to playing with it!

Belgian Humor

I guess only in Belgium you can have two conference rooms with the same name. Sigh.

So Tim O’Reilly was waiting for me in the other one, the one that didn’t have our names on little notes on the door.

But the meeting was great! I’m sure I could spend hours talking with him about almost every subject. Unfortunately we had to discuss only one subject and that was The Next Web Conference. He kept laughing and smilling and asking good questions. I told him a bit about what I would like to do together with O’Reilly media and he was very interested.

We will see what this turns into.

Oh, and I even got a chance to make two photos which I will post as soon as I can find the connector cables for my camera and here is one of them. The room was a bit dark so I had to use the flash.

I made it black and white just now because the flash overexposed our faces which makes it look horrible.

Meeting Tim O’Reilly

Tommorow I’m meeting Tim O’Reilly and I’m already nervous. What should I say? What can I ask? What shouldn’t I forget?

I’ll write about the reason for meeting and the result of the meeting tommorow…

So I’m in the meeting room, in Brussels, at he right time and in the right place. But no Tim! I have checked all the information three times and I’m sure I have the time, date and location right. There is even a sign on the door outside of the meeting room that says I have a meetingg here, now, with some people. Do you know that feeling when you are waiting for a meeting and suddenly you start to doubt if you are in the right place or maybe you got the day wrong or maybe you’ve missed a message somewhere?

The good news is that there is an excellent Wifi connection that I can use to blog and mail a little.

Trying to look like an expert?

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Originally uploaded by Guido van Nispen.

Yesterday I was invited as an expert to the Digital Pioniers meeting. Knowlegdeland has selected a handfull of entrepreneurs, given them some money and help in the form of experts to work on their businessplans.

Guido van Nispen was there as an expert too and made a few beautiful photos.

We also watched a presentation by someone from OpenBusiness.

Little Brown Ball

This is camel harball. My mother brought this big one with her from France for me as a souvenir. You can find them on beaches in the south of France where they end up after falling in the sea in Africa.
And that is ALL I know anout these funny brown balls. I can’t find any information about them on the web, anywhere.

Google AdMoney: gone

Preople.com displays Google Ads. It has been displaying these ads from the beginning and they have been generating a modest 50 to a 100 dollars a month. I don’t pay much attention to the ads or to Preople.com because I’m busy with other stuff.

Then a few days ago I got a message from Google that they closed my account and gave back the money (my money?) to the advertisers. Apparently a red flag went up somewhere indicating that Preople was generating fraudulent clicks. I do understand that Google has the right, and obligation, to investigate click fraud. But just taking all the money I had saved there and terminating the account seems a bit, well, unfair.

They gave me a chance to request another chance. So this morning I received this message:

We are in the process of reviewing your account with the additional
information that you have provided. Please understand, however, that there
is no guarantee that you will be reinstated into AdSense. As outlined in
the Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to cease any
publisher’s participation at any time. We are acting in the best interest
of both the advertisers and publishers but Google will use its sole
discretion when determining instances of invalid click activity.

I don’t feel better yet…

Proud as a peacock: my first Firefox Extension

Yes it’s true. Today I finished my first Firefox extension. Took me less than a week from the first time I started reading about it. I anticipated that it would be difficult and annoying work but I actually liked it. It reminded me of the first time I opened a HTML book after I decided I wanted to build a homepage. The same kind of logic and excitement.

As you can see in the image the extension adds a button to the Firefox Button area. When you move your cursor over the button a small + sign pops out. I spend a lot of time on the icon. I wanted it to look like it was a natural part of Firefox, not an Extension.

If you want to develop an extension too I would suggest starting at The Extension Wizard. This service generates an extension skeleton that you can build on. It is intended to save the time you would normally spend copying and pasting from other Extensions or from one of the tutorials you find online.

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensionwiz/

After that go to Eric from Roachfiend.com and read his tutorial. Reading that feels like sitting next to an expert friend who quickly takes you through the whole thing, makes everything seem easy and shows you what you can ignore and what is important.

http://roachfiend.com/archives/2004/12/08/how-to-create-firefox-extensions/

If you want even more then take one or two days off and read the excellent Toolbar Tutorial at borngeek.com. In an easy and practical manner they they explain everything you need to know about building a great Extensions and they don’t leave anything out.

http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/toolbar-tutorial/

I developed the Extension for Searcle.com which won’t be opened up for a few weeks. But if you want to test the Extension or Searcle just contact me.