Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

5 Tips: Efficiently Communicating Your New Contact Data

A few months ago I received a message from someone I once met. He had moved from one company to another and wanted to let me (and the 400 other recipients in the To: field) know his new contact details. I opened the message and included was a 1.2 megabyte JPG with his new contact details, in an image. Can you imagine how inconvenient that is? Ever since then I have been paying special attention to how people communicate their new addresses and have now decided to write a 'How to' about the...

Need an excuse to buy an iPhone?

Patrick came up with a brilliant way to demonstrate the new version of Fleck. He uses his iPhone and a bunch of images he imported with iTunes and then flips through the presentation while occasionally 'pinching' in or out. The resolution and brightness of the iPhone makes it a great presentation device. It is also a lot sexier and more convenient than lugging around a laptop with Powerpoint. Last week Patrick and Arjen roamed the halls at FOWA in London and everybody who was interested...

How Patrick and I managed to get free iPhones!

Patrick and I gambled that Apple's stock would rise based on the iPhones success. I had this theory that, if the iPhones would not disappoint, Apple shares would go to $180 a share. Based on my theory Patrick suggested we invest €250 in options.I thought this would be fun and we ended up buying them when APPL was trading at $122. Our options were worth about $2 at the time and it meant that they would have to go up to $5.60 to earn us free iPhones. Yesterday we sold our options at $6.40...

FON & HubHop

Yesterday I received a Fon router. In case you don't know; Fon is a company that gives away free Wi-Fi wireless networking routers to anyone who wants to install one and make it accessible to other Fon users. FON received $21.7 million (in 2006) from Google, Skype, and Sequoia Capital to build a free network of Wi-Fi hotspots all over the world. The idea is that you set-up the Fon Access Point in your window and allow other users to access your Hotspot. If they also make their hotspot available...

Bunch of iPhones

We ended up buying 15 iPhones in San Francisco earlier today. Then we went straight to the airport to catch our flight to Amsterdam. We carried three extra bags with 5 iPhones in each bag to distribute the weight evenly. When we loaded the iPhones into the x-ray machine the operator of the machine called over another security person who stared into the screen and then yelled "Oh my god, RUN!!!!". First time ever that I met a security guy with a sense of humor. The stewardesses gave...

iPhone Hacking

On Friday we arrived in San Francisco. We dumped our baggage in our hotel-room and walked to the Apple store to buy 2 iPhones. Within 30 minutes we were back in our room hacking away at our shiny new gadgets. Now it is 48 hours later and we are still in the same hotel-room surrounded by empty coca cola bottles and Twix wrappers. The iPhones STILL don't work with our european SIM cards. Numerous experts have tried to help us but no luck so far. Every time we try another solution...

iPhone Love

the main reason for our trip to San Francisco next week (just between you and me) isn't Techcrunch20 or Fleck promotion... The real reason is we need to get our own iPhone! We plan to take a cab straight from the airport to the nearest Apple Store and buy 2 iPhones. So, if you have any tips for us about hacks, special software to install or other ways to get more fun out of our iPhones please let us know. PS: yes, that is an iPhone she is holding. It is one of the first...

The Future of iPhoto?

This is a short intro of a userinterface that works well for zapping through fotos, products and so on. Jens Schwoon developed the software and recorded this demo for me to demonstrate the technology. Some informations from Jens: this techdemo is 4 years old and is somehow copied in Microsoft Surface a bit. It is only a techdemo, but there are all things written down how to put a real product out of it. It can be "mashed up" as you like to make a PhotoUploader, a PhotoSharing, a...