Archive for December, 2011

Photos Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

During most of the big races in the world photographers take pictures of the runners and put them online so you can order them. For the Shanghai Half Marathon I ordered a CD with my pictures on it (price: RMB 298 for about 25 photos, which is less money than a single picture at the New York Marathon costs) and I received it a couple of days ago. They also put some general pictures of the race on there, quite nice to get them actually. Below a few pictures of me during the race. Start of...
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“A Friend’s Departure” – Horrible China Daily headline today…

I don't regularly read the China Daily, except when Elaine is featured on the front page or when Air China has no other English papers available. Today's headline confirms why I stay clear from this paper as much as possible. How in the world can you call an insane mass murderer who starves his own people a friend? It's a shame. I am not naive and know this is the Party's English mouthpiece, and that China considers the DPRK an ally. But the China Daily should know that its average reader...
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Hand, foot and mouth disease

There are some diseases that are not very common in Western Europe or the USA anymore, but that still have regular outbreaks in Asia. One example is hand, foot and mouth disease, a contagious viral disease that normally only affects children below 5 years of age. Last week Sunday Elaine suddenly got a high fever and when my wife on Monday morning saw some red spots in her mouth she took Elaine to see a doctor right away. On the way home she called me to say that Elaine had hand, foot and...
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A cheap ticket? Don’t lie to your customers KLM…

One of my business partners at unitedstyles, Xander Slager, was booking a ticket for a return trip Amsterdam-Shanghai when he got a very low price for the ticket. To be precise, he could book a return flight for only CNY 1621 (less than EUR 200). I have taken this roundtrip at least 70 or 80 times over the past years and I never paid less than EUR 500, so this seemed to good to be true. Xander flies even more than I do on this route so when he saw the price he took a picture of the screen...
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Give and you will receive: unitedstyles gift certificates

With the Holidays approaching we all know how hard it can be sometimes to find the right gift - be it for your girlfriend, sister, wife, mother, friend, lover, grandma, daughter, auntie, neighbour, etc Well, look no further!! Give the gift of designing at unitedstyles. Let her create her one-of-a-kind dream dress or top herself! We promise she will love it. To make things even better, buy a unitedstyles gift certificate now and for a limited time only you will receive another one for...
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Three days in Kyoto

Last week I was invited to speak at the Infinity Ventures Summit 2011 in Kyoto, Japan. It was an excellent conference and I learned a lot about Internet and investing in Japan. Because it is an invitation-only conference the level of participants is quite high, with lots of CEOs and founders of (mainly Japanese) Internet tech companies. The conference was held at the Westin Miyako in Kyoto, an excellent 5-star hotel close to many of Kyoto's temple complexes. Although I spent most of the...
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Spil Games launches Uphill Rush 4 and shows off some amazing stats

Today Spil Games launches the latest edition of its Uphill Rush racing game series, and this one is better than ever. As our press release says: Uphill Rush is Spil Games’ blockbusting, stunt-racing game for teens, and today it welcomes the fourth edition in the much-loved, high-speed, smash-hit series. To date, the Uphill Rush series has been played over 600 million (!) times, with the continuing popularity credited to the development team’s focus on ensuring the teen audience is...
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Shanghai (Half) Marathon 2011

This morning I ran the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011, a race I participated in a couple of times over the past years already (incl. the full marathon once). Because I did the New York marathon less than a month ago and I took a break in training after that, I did not really think I would be able to run a good time. My aim was to have a fun race and test how good my condition was after 4 weeks without hardly any practice. Because the start was at 7:30 I got up at 5 AM so I could have a decent...
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Google Analytics: A different perspective on Belgium

Joop Dorresteijn, who is co-founder and CTO at unitedstyles, noticed some interesting statistics in our Google Analytics about traffic from Belgium and wrote about it on his personal blog. I repost the full article here with his permission:   Belgium is about to reach an accord to form a government after a 536 day impasse, as we could read on bloomberg today. “A cut in Belgium’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s last week triggered the final push to end the stalemate...
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