Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

A few times a year I order a bunch of books from Amazon. Every time I read about an intersting book or someone tells me I should read a certain book I look it up at Amazon and add it to my Cart. And now and then I make a selection of all the books in my Cart and have that selection mailed to me. Today I
ordered the following books:

“Next”
Michael Crichton; Hardcover; $15.37 (not available)

“A Perfect Mess”
Eric Abrahamson; Hardcover; $17.93 (not available)

“The World Is Flat”
Thomas L. Friedman; Hardcover; $17.99 (EUR 33.95)

“iWoz”
Steve Wozniak; Hardcover; $17.13 (EUR 29.95)

“Perfect Pitch”
Jon Steel; Hardcover; $19.77 (EUR 33.95)

“A Good Hard Kick in the Ass”
Rob Adams; Hardcover; $16.87 (not available)

“The Cluetrain Manifesto”
Christopher Locke; Paperback; $11.62 (EUR 17.95)

“On The Wealth of Nations (Books That Changed the World)”
P. J. O’Rourke; Hardcover; $14.93 (25.95)

“Eleanor Rigby”
Douglas Coupland; Hardcover; $16.29 (26.95)

“Blue Ocean Strategy”
W. Chan Kim; Hardcover; $19.77 (EUR 33.95)

“Small Is the New Big”
Seth Godin; Hardcover; $17.13 (EUR 29.95)

“Lifehacker”
Gina Trapani; Paperback; $16.49 (EUR 33.15)

That will be $201.29 for everything and then another $58.37 for shipping. Sounds like a lot? It is!

But it is way cheaper then getting on my bike and buying these books here in Amsterdam. I added the dutch prices to these books too. Three of the books here arent available but if you just add up all the books that are available (not counting cents) I get to € 258. Convert that to dollars and you get $ 339.

So even with the shipping costs and the extra books it is still a LOT cheaper to order at Amazon.com.

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Well yeah, if you don’t mind weird domainname extensions. Check these available Google domains:

google.co.tm - Turkmenistan
google.com.tm - Turkmenistan
google.com.ac - Ascension Island
google.com.hr - Croatia

All available for registration!

One condition: you will need a local precence and be prepared to get sued by Google. But at least you will be the proud owner of a Google domain, for a while.

You could also try to buy Google.ac. But there are a few restrictions:

“this domain is for sale,but never sell to any company which compete with’Google Inc’,in case they make any inconvenient to “Google Inc”.This Domain’s is for sale“.

I’m not sure but I also think that Google.by is not owned by Google. the front page looks slightly different than all the other Google pages and the Favicon is missing too. There seem to be Ads on that page (not a standard Google policy) but those are actually just links and not ads.

Google.name isn’t owned by Google either and is used to advertise the .NAME domains.

Google.net.pl redirects to a Pass.pl and is for sale. Make your offer today!

Google.net.ru is a page with links to other search engines and Rumanian information.
The following domains don’t resolve at all:

http://www.google.com.fr/
http://www.google.com.ro/
http://www.google.eu/
http://www.google.gs/
http://www.google.net.cn/
http://www.google.tc/

Also check out Google.vc. It is the ‘Unofficial’ Google page with lost of links to Google pages and shortcuts to Google searches but no Venture Capital information….

Why is this useful information? It isn’t. I just wondered if I could still get a Google domain somewhere and used Speednames.com to check it out…

So I’m in staying in bed today because I’m a bit sick. My stomach is upset. The doctor said it was either “Smoking, spicey food, stress or alcohol or any combination of those 4 factors”. I don’t eat spicey food and don’t smoke but stress and alcohol I have had my share of these last few months.

I have watched the directors cut of Blade Runner and a few scenes of Swordfish. Swordfish is such a bad movie that I couldn’t finish it.

Then I answered some email and started browsing through my RSS feeds. I stared for a few moments at a Bright post with this photo:

And this title: B R I G H T :: Een Easter Egg voor Kerst

That photo sort of looks familiar doesn’t it? It does, it is me!!! Can you image my surprise when I found out they atually used my portrait for that article!

It turns out that Flickr has an easteregg build into its software. If you type ‘ho ho ho hat’ and ‘ho ho ho beard’ in a comment on a photo you can add a beard and hat to that photo.

Check it out: http://flickr.com/photos/thenextweb/328067583/

Overheard during diner: Bimboware; it looks good but it doesn’t do anything useful yet

Arjen pointed me to a WordPress Plug-in that gives the WordPress Admin a new Look & Feel.

I didn’t feel like installing it at first because I was used to the standard Admin. But after checking the screenshots Idecided to give it a try. I installed “WP Tiger Administration v3.0” just now and I love it!

WP Tiger Administration v3.0 gives WordPress a Mac OS X Mail feeling and seems less like a website and more like an application.
If you use a Mac and WordPress give this a try.

Radio Studio.
Photo by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten.

Yesterday I was a guest in a radio show. Funny thing is that this show will be broadcasted on christmas evening. I don’t think a lot of people will listen but we had a good time in the studio talking about all the hip things you should talk about right now: Hyves.nl, Second Life, Digg and Web2.0 in general.

They gave me a bottle of wine after the show which I’m going to drink tonight.

UPDATE: the show has been broadcasteded yesterday. You can listen to it here:

Stream:
http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/radio1/tros/radioonline/20061226.wma

Download:
http://download.omroep.nl/radio1/tros/radioonline/20061226-20.mp3