Archive for June, 2011

Tokyo thoughts

Note: The original post partly disappeared after a Wordpress update, so I restored it to an earlier version. The pictures and some revisions have not survived the restore, but at least most of the text is still here. I am in the Narita Express from Tokyo to Narita airport after a 24 hour trip to Tokyo for some meetings. Just a couple of random observations, first a couple related to the huge earthquake: - I had not been here since the 9.0 earthquake and nuclear disaster (except for a...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Just finished: The Snowman – Jo Nesbo

A quick blog post about a book I finished a couple of days ago and that I truly enjoyed. I first didn't plan to blog about it, but on the plane today I was thinking about the novel again and thought it was actually so good that I should share it with my readers. If you love the Stieg Larsson trilogy you should read Jo Nesbo's latest thriller The Snowman, set in a snowy Oslo and Bergen. It's one of those books that you want to keep on reading, it only takes a couple of pages to get completely...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Social Games: Same Meat Different Gravy?

Cross-posted on the Business Insider: Social Games: Same Meat Different Gravy? One of the biggest trends on the Internet over the past 3 years has been the rise of social games. Much of Facebook's growth came from these games, and some of the biggest and most valuable Internet companies are social game companies. But are social games really something new? And what kind of social games can we expect in the future? The revolution in gaming is that the most popular online games are now...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

3D Printing – take a look at the future

Today The Next Web had an excellent infographic about 3D printing. I have been following the technology for about a year now and think the next Google, Microsoft or Apple may come from this part of the industrial world. If you are new to 3D printing go through the below graphic, it's a fascinating industry. Not just to print your own cups or plates (which is fun of course), but also for more serious things. Did you know that in the near future you may be able to print your own new organs?...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Ready for a vacation

I somehow thought 2011 would be a more relaxed year than the past years, but that seems to have been wishful thinking. The past months have been at least as busy as last year, work wise but also privately. I am more relaxed in my day to day work after leaving the CEO position at Spil Games Asia, but I am still spending way too many hours behind my laptop or on the phone. That in combination with a lot of business trips with major jet lags (I would need to check this blog to see how many...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Jimmy’s Kitchen – excellent Western retro food in a historical setting

Last night my wife and I planned to have a dinner together and we had decided to try out Jimmy's Kitchen in the old Jinjiang Hotel on Maoming Lu. Late afternoon Sam Flemming got in touch with me to see if I knew a place that would still have a table available for him and his wife (if you don't reserve in advance on a Friday night it's almost impossible to still find a table in a good place), so we invited him to join us at Jimmy's. He had also not been there yet and it turned out to be a...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Chinese satellite data randomly manipulated?

During my last trip to California I bought a Nike+ watch to record my runs. The watch (powered by TomTom) uses satellite navigation to calculate your position, so you can get all kinds of statistics about your runs. A cool gadget that worked flawlessly in the US, Germany and Luxembourg over the past 2 weeks. But not in China: when I did an outside run today and looked at the map of my run afterward I realized that the data are incorrect. This is the map of my run: My start and end position...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Short trip to Duesseldorf and Luxembourg

Last Thursday I flew to Duesseldorf (Germany) to speak at the Persgroep Advertiser's Summit. I hadn't been to Duesseldorf in several years and it was nice to be back there. The Persgroep is a Belgian/Dutch media conglomerate (mainly traditional media) that invited its top advertisers to a yearly event with speakers, good food & drinks and excellent entertainment. I arrived on Thursday morning, but the rest of the group only arrived at 2 pm (they had their own chartered plane from...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Books I am reading

Since finishing the Emperor of all Maladies a little over 2 weeks ago I read a couple of lighter books. Some were quite good, so I decided to put them on my blog. The Hampton Affair - Vincent Lardo In the 1990s I was a big fan of Lawrence Sanders books about Archy McNally. After Mr. Sanders passed away Vincent Lardo took over and wrote a couple of great books in the McNally series. But eventually he stopped writing them, so I started looking for other books that he had written. On Amazon I...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Travel Mask

I spent quite some nights on airplanes over the past couple of months, not something I'd recommend but something that's unavoidable. One of the things I always wear on a plane is a travel mask. Using this gives the impression that it's dark around you and makes sleeping a bit easier. Most airlines provide you with an eye mask, but they are not very comfortable. The elastic starts hurting after a while and the eye masks are made of cheap synthetic materials that cause me to sweat. I never...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Lose The Heat 2: Spil Games latest racing game hit

Today Lose The Heat 2 was launched on agame.com and several other Spil Games' portals, the sequel to mega-hit Lose The Heat. The original game was launched in August 2010 and has established itself as one of the most popular games in its genre, with an average of 6.1 million game plays per month. And Lose The Heat 2 is even better, it's one of the most action-packed games...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Five Ways for Game Developers to Become Less Dependent on Facebook

Note: Cross post of an article that I wrote today for the Business Insider. You can read the original article here. Development of casual and social games is generally not very ...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>