Digitale Pioniers meeting

The Wolvenstraat bar is my favorite public office. I have spend the whole morning here reading 13 businessplans AND rating them. There is a public meeting today in pakhuis de Zwijger where a winner will be announced based on the ratings of a bunch of ‘experts’. I’m one of those.

Why I dislike people with short last names…

I don’t actually dislike people with short names! How could I? A short last name doesn’t tell me anything about a persons character, habits or personallity. It can’t tell me if he or she is trustworthy or not.

This is all clear. And you would guess that the same is true for longer last names, right?

Wrong.

I have gotten into a habit of only saying “Veldhuijzen” as a last name instead of “Veldhuijzen van Zanten” if a salesman or helpdesk person asks me for my name. It tends to keep prices low and service better. Ofcourse if I want to get into a fancy restaurant I slowly pronounce my complete last name and might even throw in some of the 4 first names I have. And when I get a speeding ticket I actually get to spell my complete name which means that I have to spell all 52 characters, not counting spaces, making the officer regret ever having pulled me over.

But it seems that some developers and start-up companies dislike people with long names too. I noticed a new service by 30 boxes that lets you build a commenters profile. I tried it out but it is still in beta. As you can see in the image I tried to sign-up for an account and got an error.

Some developer figured that 20 characters should be sufficient for any last name in the world. Are they afraid that their database will fill up to fast if they allow more than 20 characters for a last name? Or do they just dislike those fancy long last names? It clearly wasn’t just an error because they went through all the trouble of adding a Javascript error message.

I know that in the US most names aren’t longer than 8 characters but I indian, spanish and chinese names are often a lot longer. Why exclude all these people? What is the added value of limiting the last name field? I can imagine you don’t want people to post too many characters in there but how about limiting it to 255 characters?

That way even Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff wouldn’t have a problem signing up for your service…

ParaPlay

My good friend Diederik Martens has been working on a great new system for social networking through music.
Well no, it is more like Music recommendations.
Or no, it is actually a digital and connected jukebox.
Or no…

Oh well, find out for yourself: ParaPlay

Don’t forget to sign-up and download the software!

The first party based in his technology is being held at Paradiso on:

Donderdag 26 oktober
Doors open: 20:00 uur
Party starts: 21:00 uur
Tickets: 10 euro

I’ll be there too with a few friends.

Do they have a VIP area and champagne in Paradiso?

I’m a criminal…

…I must confess: I have been using an illegally downloaded version of Macromedia DreamWeaver.

But not anymore!

I accidently deleted the application from my Powerbook yesterday.

So today I decided to buy Dreamweaver officialy from Adobe (which aquired Macromedia recently). It felt good to do the right thing! I went to Adobe.com and into the shop and there it was: DreamWeaver 8 for only $399 which translates to €317. Not too bad!

So I decided to buy the application. I clicked the buy button and Adobe asked me in which country I wanted to shop. I selected the Netherlands and chose the download option so I would have the application right away instead of shipped to me in a box. Then they showed me the price: €570 excluding taxes.

Excuse me?

Yes, if you want to download Dreamweaver from Europe instead of the US you pay €253 extra. Hey, it’s my fault that I live in Euope, right!?

So I called Adobe and asked what was going on. The helpdesk guy explained to me that prices for Europe are decided in the european office and might differ from the US prices.

For the same products, yes.

I told him what would stop me from downloading the application from the US and he told me that he couldn’t offer me support in Europe then.

One of the arguments of buying your software is that you get support. That is besides doing the right thing and feeling good about it ofcourse. But I’m not sure what to do now. I don’t want to pay the €253 european fine but I do want support and do the right thing.

Now what?

Boring executive cars are bad for employee motivation…

A few days ago I was driving along in my car when I noticed a Renault in my rearview mirror. It passed me by and I looked inside. The car was driven by a chauffeur and a CEO type was sitting in the back reading papers.

A few months ago a CEO I know showed me his new car. This man makes close to a million a year and he can afford pretty much any car money can buy.

His new car was blue. And that is all I can remember about that car. It wasn’t a Jaguar, Daimler, Bentley or Rolls but a simple but expensive Renault, Audi or Citroën.

I asked that guy why he didn’t drove a flashy car? A red Porsche or a black Maserati or something cool and with character to which he replied that as a dutch CEO you can’t drive a hot car like that. You have to act ‘normal’ and try not to make anybody jealous in your organisation.

As I noticed the nondescript Renault pas me by I suddenly realized that these CEOs got it all wrong. I think it would be a huge motivator if your boss would show up in the most beautiful car that money could buy. I think you wouldn’t be jealous or annoyed but you would think:

“I have to work harder so I can become the boss one day and buy a car like that too”
I can image that if you drive a Renault as a junior manager and you see the BIG BOSS driving by in a Renault (even an expensive one with chauffeur) you just think:

“Why should I work my ass off to be like him? He drives a Renault, just like me. I don’t see the upside”

So lets try this for a while. If you are a CEO please buy a red Ferrari, a silver Maserati or a turbo charged Porsche and see if people get more motivated in your organization.

Funny story, if it wasn’t so sad…

A few years ago we sold HubHop to KPN. During the negotiations we talked about a lot of stuff as you can imagine. One of the subjects was that we all wanted a lifetime subscription to HubHop (later rebranded to KPN Hotspots). The guys we talked with laughed and assured us that that wouldn’t be a problem. After all; it is always good to have the founders of a company using your service and saying positive stuff about the product.

After a few months I was sitting somewhere with Caspar Wenckebach (also a founder of HubHop) and stared at his laptop as he was logging into a HubHop Hotspot. My own account was valid until 2040 which seemed long enough to me. But Caspars account was valid until 2041! I immediatly emailed one of the technical guys and asked him to upgrade my account until 2080. He did and I felt better. Caspar and I had a good laugh about it and that was that.

Last week Caspar tried to log on to a HotSpot and couldn’t. His account had expired. I checked my account and it suddenly expired in 2007. Caspar emailed the new CEO of KPN Hotspots and asked him what happened and put my address in the CC field. The answer was this:

“I checked at KPN and nobody knows about the arrangement you mention. Your subscription will now expire on january 1, 2009″

I wrote back that the ‘lifetime subscription’ was a gentlemans agreement between us and KPN and that I hoped they would honor that agreement. A day later I got the reply:

“It is not possible to give someone a lifetime subscription with our current administration system. The best I can do is upgrade your subscription to 2010. That seams to be a reasonable compromise”

A subscription might not be expensive. And I can afford one. And in 2010 the whole world will look different. And I know there are more important issues in the world.

But come on.

How small can a big company get?

the Coca Cola bottle: I have been outbid!

The current bid is more than $20. Who is willing to pay $5 for the chance to taste a 100 year old glasss of coke? If I can get 5 people to join me I’ll make another bid. The bottle contains 0.2L so I could divide it into small 0.02L cups which is just enough to get a taste.

eBay: 1905 - 1916 JACKSONVILLE FL COCA COLA “UNOPENED” BOTTLE (item 290039157763 end time Oct-19-06 18:34:22 PDT)

Sony BRAVIA - The Advert

Just go and see it.
Sony BRAVIA - The Advert

First spotted by Bright…