Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

In February I blogged here about my very first homepage, The Photo Delivery page. The idea of the PhotoDelivery Page was that people requested photos they thought I wouldn’t be able to make and then, with the help of my Apple Quicktake 1.0 and Photoshop 1.0, I would produce them anyway. And within 24 hours. My page was so popular that my hosting provider shut it down to save bandwidth.

Today I stumbled onto the portfolio of Alison Jackson, an artist who makes incredibly smart and funny photos and videos about celebrities in weird situations. You can see Bush in the Oval Office working on a Rubik’s Cube and Michael Jackson putting lipstick on a crying baby.

The photos are very realistic and each photo makes you wonder if what you see could have actually happened. They remind me of the fun I had with the Photo Delivery but also of the work of Cindy Sherman who I have always admired.

Check out the M+B Gallery Los Angeles which shows a whole collections of photos by Alison Jackson

Alison Jackson: Bush Pumps Gas

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Want to ask me a personal question? Contact me at boris@bomega.com

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This Thursday we are hosting the first Dutch Bowlr competition. A lot of teams have been training for this event and we heard that people really look forward Thursday. The Twitter All Star Team has just posted a promotion video for our event which is simply hilarious. It starts a lot of well known Dutch twitter celebrities and details from a Twitter All Star Team training session.

The members in the Twitter All Star Team are indentified not by name but only by Twitter username: @Dutchcowboy, @Frankmeeuwsen, @Jimstolze, @Marjolijn, @Markies, @Marlooz, @Mathys and @Tonwesseling.

They also announced that they will cover the event live on Twitter and with photos via MobyPicture.

Watch the video here: http://www.vimeo.com/641606

As of February 2 I will be a professional shoeshiner. That is correct. I will be shining shoes. I am following in the footsteps of James Brown, Alejandro Toledo and Malcolm X and millions of other shoeshiners. I have updated my LinkedIn profile to reflect my new profession too.

You can read the whole story here on the New Tailor blog, in Dutch:
http://newtailor.nl/blog/

What it comes down to: I don’t like ‘networking’ much more than anybody out there. I talked about this with the founder of New Tailor (who happens to make my suits) and I told him he had an excellent network of clients who I would love to meet. We also agreed that a regular networking meeting would be boring. I suggested that everybody hates to shine his shoes, maybe even more than networking, and offered to do that during a monthly meeting. While I shine shoes I will be able to talk to interesting people and I assume that shining someone’s shoes makes a bigger impression that just handing our business-cards.

So now it is official. I’m shining shoes.

I hope to see you on Saturday, February 2 between 10 and 12 at new Tailor in the Honthorststraat 2a (between the Paulus Potter- and the PC Hooftstraat) in Amsterdam. I will only do one pair per person and you will have to wear the shoes.

Hope to see you there!

Dutch weblog Hyped has a very funny article about the fact that I am regularly featured in Dutch magazine Quote. They argue that I must know people at Quote (I do) to be mentioned that often in the magazine. Well, it is true that my name came up a few times in Quote magazine but not nearly enough make a fuss about.

More interestingly they say that I have been an important contributor to their latest ‘business babes’ edition having tipped most of the women in that issue. Unfortunately that isn’t true at all. I do know a lot of women (and men) in the industry but Quote doesn’t need me to find them.

Anyway, here is the article, in Dutch:
Internetondernemer Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten informant Quote? - Hyped.nl

So the Next Web Blog has taken all my time and energy these past few weeks. I posted a lot and talked to a hundreds of people. We have gotten a few advertisers, some traffic from Digg and a lot from Techcrunch. Our RSS feeds went from less than 100 to more than 3000 in a few days.

And now I am packing my bags to get ready for one week on the slopes in Tirol. I will be sending as many photos to Flickr as possible and might even Twitter a bit.

If you haven’t checked The Next Web blog yet do it now and please also subscribe to the RSS feed while you are there!

Happy 2008 everybody! I hope 2007 was a good year for you and 2008 will be even better. Thanks also for reading my blog and leaving comments. If you haven’t subscribed to my RSS feed now is a good time!

I have received a free .nu domain from the friendly people at Nic.nu and thought it would be a nice gesture to give it away to one of my readers. Would you like to have your name.nu or something else .nu? Leave a comment telling me why you deserve it and I will pick a winner on January 4th.

Looking forward to your comments!