Archive for July, 2011

KLM Surprise

Two days ago I needed to check a KLM reservation, but I could not log onto the KLM site with my frequent flyer number. So I tweeted about it and KLM later sent me a reply wishing me a good flight, which I retweeted to my followers. A few hours later while boarding for a flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam, I gave my boarding pass to one of the ground staff at the gate and instead of the usual green light a red light turned on... She didn't know why but told me to go to the desk to find out what...
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Running holiday

One of the goals that I set myself for our summer holiday in Europe was to get into a much better running shape. I will run the New York Marathon in just over 3 months, and because I likely won't have a lot of time for the necessary long training runs, I at least wanted to make sure my basic shape is in place now already. Next to that I wanted to run outside on my Vibram Five Fingers. In Shanghai I mainly run on the treadmill in my home gym, both because of the air pollution and because it's...
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Visiting the Circus Sydney show in Ommen

The last time I visited a real circus was probably when I was in primary school. At that time there were still a couple of local circuses traveling around The Netherlands, but I think most of them stopped operating many years ago already. I have seen other top circuses such as the DPRK State Circus in Pyongyang (amazing acts, but you can only see them if you manage to do a trip to North-Korea), some circuses in Shanghai and of course the Cirque Du Soleil. But they are different from what I...
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Chinese Youth And Mobile Phone Usage

Enovate, a Chinese research company focused on the Chinese youth, published an interesting infographic about the usage of mobile devices. Although I am not sure how scientifically valid their findings are, the results are worth sharing. Some of their findings include: - 18-22 year old people spend more time on their mobile phones than on a computer. The 23-30 year old group still uses the computer a bit more (35% vs. 31%) but when you also take tablets into account (14%), mobile also wins by...
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Scott and Elaine watching cows

A few kilometers from my parents house is a farm that sells its own cheese. My parents and I drove over to buy several kinds of cheese and took the kids with us. Right at the moment we were there the cows were herded back into their stables so they could be milked. Scott and Elaine had the time of their lives watching the huge animals fighting to go through the narrow door. Scott was not afraid at all, but when we later walked through the stable Elaine held me very tight and only...
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USA Inc.

Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley's former star analyst who is now a partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, created a report called USA Inc. back in February this year. The report explains the financial problems in the US and then compares the country to a company (USA Inc.) and how this corporation would solve its problems. Because since then the fiscal problems in the US have grown a lot worse and the country could theoretically go bankrupt in a few weeks, she now created a 90-slide presentation...
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One week on the Cote d’Azur

The past 7 days I took my family to the south of France for a relaxed holiday in a villa in St. Paul de Vence. I had the idea a few weeks ago while I was working late at night in Shanghai and immediately searched for (and booked) a nice place not far from the Mediterranean coast. The house was quite big (4 bed rooms & 4 bath rooms), so that next to my wife and kids I was also able to bring my parents along and even my sister flew in for a couple of days. St. Paul de Vence is a medieval...
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The end of my iPhone4

No comment, except that I should be a bit more careful in the future. It happened to me before with my first Android...
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An alternative to Facebook for gamers and game developers

I published this article today on the Business Insider, the original is here. Facebook is not only the biggest social network in the world, but it has also grown to become the biggest online game destination. People that did not play online games before, started playing them on Facebook when they saw their friends also doing that. Because Facebook does not develop the games itself, many companies were started to create content for Facebook. Some of these have even grown into huge companies...
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Spil Games company outing on Vlieland

I spent the past couple of days on the Dutch island of Vlieland for a Spil Games company outing. I hadn't been to this island in about 20 years and it was nice to come back here. The place had not changed much over the past 2 decades, something which is hard to imagine when you are used to the fast pace of life and constant changes in China. It's a beautiful island with long white sandy beaches, high sandy dunes and even some forests on the island. Because cars are not allowed here, it is...
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“Google Streetview” for China: www.city8.com

Google Streetview does not exist in China, and considering the problems that company has here I don't expect it will come anytime soon either. A pity because it's very useful when you travel to a new place and want to check what the surroundings look like. A few weeks ago Joop Dorresteijn pinged me about a service he had found that does something similar for cities in China: city8.com. You select the city you want to look at and then you get a streetview-like interface. It works pretty...
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How to easily delete many pictures from your iPhone

This afternoon I got the iTunes message that my iPhone's memory was full, so I looked at what filled up the memory. Next to lots of music (that I did not want to delete), pictures turned out to be a major reason. I had imported these pictures to iPhoto before but did not delete them from my phone at that time. With an Android phone it's easy to select several pictures at once and delete them all, but the iPhone is a bit behind in this regard. Deleting hundreds of pictures one by one is not...
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Google+ first impressions

Also published on the Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-first-impressions-2011-7 After playing around with Google+, the new social network that Google launched this week, for a few days I really start to like what I am seeing. I am still a bit skeptical, but Google is doing some things better than Facebook is. It actually reminds me a lot of Sina Weibo, the Chinese Twitter clone that will soon surpass Twitter - and may even be a threat to Twitter. First of all I like...
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