Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Breakfast with Steve Ballmer

A friend of mine just told me about his meeting with Steve Ballmer a few weeks ago. He works at a very innovative start-up and Microsoft was interested in their technology. You'll forgive me if I don't mention the name of the company or my friend. They met Steve Ballmer during a breakfast session and were given 30 minutes. They prepared a presentation which highlighted the technical aspects of their technology and were prepared for some tough questions. It turned out that Ballmer was only...

Public Speaking Tommorow…

Tommorow I will be a keynote speaker at the Week van de Ondernemer in Utrecht. There will be two 20 minute sessions where I will get a chance to impress (or bore) quite an audience. I have been told that only CEOs and people who own companies will be there. I always look forward to performances like this and already feel a strange kind of excitement when I think about tommorow. A few weeks ago I posted about this conference and asked for tips, questions and suggestions which I can use to...

Bizarre Spam Problem?

Here is the thing: I have an email address (boris@ipan.nl) which works fine. Saskia also has an email address (saskia@ipan.nl) and that doesn't work fine. Some people (30%) get an immediate error from their SMTP or MAIL server. It says: Cannot send message using the server mail.xs4all.nl The server response was: 5.1.1 <saskia@ipan.nl>... No such user The interesting thing is that the mailserver seems to reject the emailaddress right away without even accepting it. Normally email...

The dark side of blogging?

This Saturday at the Web2.0 meeting in The Balie I said "Privacy is overrated" and got some good laughs from the audience. Just now I read something that takes the fun out of that remark. Kathy Sierra received death threats on her blog and via other blogs and has canceled her public performances. Scoble has decided to stop blogging for a week. I wouldn't think of stopping in a time like this and would rather blog twice as much to show my outrage. But I do respect Scobles initiative and...

Live at the Balie…

In about an hour there is going to be a public discussion here in 'de Balie'. The other speakers are Ine Poppe, Tonie van Ringelestijn, Trebor Schultz, me and Joop Laan. Mark Deuze wil join us from SF via iChat. The evening is sold out. Not bad for a saturday evening. I hope I can keep awake because I took all the drugs I could find to get me through the evening. My ears still hurt and I feel feverish. UPDATE: here are a few links to blogs and photos from the event: Blueace...

New Word of the Week: Scotoma

Last week I wrote about the word Monocarpic which means to bloom once and then die. How sad. This week I heard someone use the term 'Scotoma'. I decided to look into it because it is a nice illustration of a common Entrepreneurs problem. But first: Scotoma An area of diminished vision within the visual field. You might not know it but everyone has a Blind Spot, which is the popular name for Scotoma. Your eyes don't actually see everything in front of you. There is a black spot somewhere...

Auction Ads – Link to eBay auctions and make some money?

You may have noticed a bit of new content in my blog sidebar. I'm experimenting with a couple of new services which have been launched recently. One is the Auction Ads service pictured here. Auction Ads displays ads to eBay articles on your blog similar to Amazon does with their widget. I don't think I will make ANY money on this but I like the idea and will try it for a month or so just to see if it works for people. So far I am getting a click through rate of  almost 3% which isn't bad...

Boris & Faye or Maria & Sith Lord?

My ears hurt and I can't hear very well. My head is buzzing and I'm cold and shivering. Faye is keeping me company on the couch and when she noticed I was wearing my bathrobe she went looking for hers. Now we are enjoying ourselves with my Blackberry Pearl camera (the onyl Camera I have left besides my iSight) and my new Blackberry 8800. I feel better already! Ah, and Tessa is back from Boston since this morning and went ut to buy french fries together with Loïs. Not the most...