April 2005 Archives

Quack quack: Duck Ska.

In the last 12 months I haven't found a single false positive in the spam folder of my mailbox. I still receive some false negatives, but that doesn't bother me. No false positives means that I am able to change my processing workflow. Until now, all spam ended up in the spam folder, which I checked for false positives once a week. Today I changed my mail configuration to discard all messages flagged as spam. This saves me about 15 minutes of work every week!

One week ago I received my new mobile camera-phone. I was happy, since I wanted to use it for publishing photo's on Flickr. How disappointed I was when I found out that Amena had delivered me a half configured phone. No international roaming, GPRS, MMS or e-mail configured. :-( In short, my wonderful multimedia phone was delivered with all the multimedia functions disabled.

Now one week later, I have managed to get GPRS activated ---I have to pay activation costs!--- which also made MMS active. After talking 5 minutes with customer support they also told me that they have activated roaming, so the next time I go abroad I can call home. In theory, everything should be alright now, but... somehow I still can't send nor receive e-mail. And that is exactly the feature I want most!!!

To be continued...

The idea has been lying on the shelves for over two months now, and today I finally did it. Besides a big all--in--one feed, I have created some more specific feeds:

• Brain <Tags> (weblog): http://braintags.com/index.xml.
• Brain <Links> (linkdump): http://braintags.com/links.xml.
• Brain <Pics> (photos): http://braintags.com/photos.xml.
• Brain <Life> (all--in--one): http://braintags.com/full.xml.

All current subscribers will from now on get the weblog feed instead of the all--in--one feed. And of course, all these feeds have been outsourced to FeedBurner.

Why is it so difficult to do? When I buy a phone, I want all functions to work. Since yesterday I am using my new phone that came with the new contract. Since this phone has a camera, I would like to take pictures and send them to my friends or publish them on Flickr.

Well, that is not possible, since I do not have GPRS. Last year I had exactly the same problem with Movistar, but that solved itself after a while. But now I want to send my photos, so I checked the Amena site for instructions. Without success. So tonight I will try out the support department. And when I speak to them I can also activate roaming, since they have decided to deactivate it by default since most people never leave the country anyway ;-).

It's not that difficult to do it right!

People are individualists; we prefer to do things alone and don't care about the others. Fortunately, we are also 'intelligent' and realise that we need other people in certain situations. But if this is not strictly necessary, we are selfish. This is a big pity, since we can do so much more when we co-operate!

I was realising this when I was waiting at the luggage belt of the airport. As usual, everybody was bending over the belt to see whether his or her luggage was coming and thereby blocking the view of the people behind him or her, who in their turn had to bend even more over the belt to see something. In this struggle, only the first person is able to see the luggage coming, and is able to get the luggage without problems. All others have two problems: they cannot see their luggage coming, and when they finally see their property, they are not able to get it because of all the people blocking the way. The solution is very simple: if everybody keeps 2 meters distance from the belt, everybody is able to see their luggage coming, and everybody is able to get to the belt to pick up their suitcase. If it is that simple, why won't people do this? Well, mainly because there is no incentive for the first person that has the view and the space no matter the distance to the belt. And when the first person chooses to stay close to the belt, all the others have only one solution: get even closer to the belt!

In my work I encounter the same problem. Whenever I have contact with a possible dealer in a new country, the word exclusivity falls within the first two conversations. They have seen our product and think it is good and have the idea that they can conquer the whole market because they have a better product. They are so wrong. Dominating a market is extremely difficult and usually does not depend much on the quality of the product (Microsoft?). If you want to sell a lot of our product, all you need is demand, which is difficult to create. The best way to do it is to have many, many dealers. If many dealers are offering this product, it will become visible. And when it is visible, clients start asking for it. This is how we work in the Spanish market. There are 400+ dealers of our product, and in some branches our product has become the 'de facto' standard. Local dealers sell a lot more because there are many other dealers offering the same products; they would never have reached those sales using an exclusive product. If only our foreign contacts could have this insight and allow for more competition in their markets. I am 100% sure that they would sell a lot more!

If people would be less individualistic, we could do bigger things!

The main reason we went to the Netherlands last weekend was to visit our family. Finn is about a month old, so it was about time to meet him!

And babies are such a great subject for photos, so I uploaded some to Brain Pics.

It's a TV, it plays DVDs, and it's a beer fridge, all-in-one! What else could you possibly want?

[Via Gizmodo]

Tomorrow morning I will travel to Harmelen again. It will be a short visit to see Finn, the newborn son of Esther and Terry, and of course to visit the party of the 'Vrienden van JN Harmelen'.
Until next week!

Some weeks ago, we decided to change mobile provider. We have a contract with Telefonica Movistar, but most people we phone with are at Amena. We did some calculation and came to the conclusion that we could save on our bill by changing to Amena as well.

This weekend we finally found the time to head to the Amena office, and we explained out plans. The nice lady in the shop asked us some questions on our phone behaviour ---who, when and how much--- and she explained us about all the possibilities of the different packages. We made some quick estimations and selected the 'right' package.

Then the more important question came. Carriers earn so much money with all their inflated rates, that they can give away expensive toys. We could choose a new phone! MJ had prepared herself, and knew what her demands were: she wanted the cheapest phone that could flip open. Until now she always had candy-bar phones, but now she wanted clamshell. All other functions did not matter, since she only use the device for phoning and sending SMS messages. Her choice was the NEC e242:

Of course, as a reader of mobile expert Russell Beattie, I know that there is more. Russ has the most incredible applications and uses for his mobiles, and it seems that he uses his mobile for everything I still use a PC for. But his phones are ---even after the carrier discount--- so incredibly expensive that it would take me years to earn that back with the cheaper rate of Amena. I guess Russ lives in another realm, but most people here choose between the five cheapest models. So I set my mind together, and thought logically. I don't phone a lot, I use SMS even less, and once in a while I use WAP to spend some dead time. Basically, any phone would be enough. But hey, I am a gadget freak, so I should have something additional to wish for, right? Maybe I need a camera on my phone, to update my photo page more often. That's it! I looked around, and saw a nice and cheap Samsung phone that according to the specs had a camera. I asked if I could see it, and fell in love with the device. Cool design, very light weight ---they show the phones without batteries---, but... without camera. I asked the friendly lady if she could show me the camera, but no, they'd made an error in the specs. So I took the cheapest camera phone they had: the NEC e242:

Now we have to find a way to keep our new phones separated!

Will all these WordPress users now switch back to Movable Type?

Zie De Volkskrant:

STAP merkt op dat de drinkschuren zich ontwikkelen tot geduchte concurrenten van de plaatselijke horeca. Hoewel alcoholverkoop zonder vergunning illegaal is, wordt er veelal niet tegen opgetreden door de controleurs van de Drank- en Horecawet. De Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN) dringt dan ook aan op sluiting van de drinkschuren. Volgens een woordvoerder van de KHN werken de schuren alcoholmisbruik in de hand.

Jongeren gaan op zoek naar alternatieven vanwege de slechte kwaliteit ---en prijs!--- die de reguliere horeca biedt. Zolang er geen betere alternatieven zijn, lost verbieden niets op.

Overigens, hoe staat het met de Sjet?