This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://testingnexus.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://testingnexus.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Clean at the Marriott

So here I am checking the room if I have everything packed... and what do I find under the bed? It made my day (ok, I do realise it may have been there since the last century).

World statistics

I don't really believe their "updated in real time" claim, but still, interesting yet scary figures are to be found on the World statistics site (link here).

So true: relationships between the advertiser and the consumer

From BringTheLoveBack, found through the Muse blog.

Hm, I think this is also what the relationship between the customer and the agency is like sometimes.

Mobile advertising the shanghai way

Here I was, standing at shore of the Huangpu river, quietly overlooking Shanghai, when this came floating by.

Now, there are a lot of screens already all over the city: huge LED billboards on buildings, LCD screens in taxi's, plasma screen in subway stations, gyms and whatnot. You name it, they have a screen with advertising in or on it.

So when the whole city filled up, someone had the genius idea to throw a huge LED screen on a boat, put some ads on it and take it up and down the river. I guess this qualifies as "mobile" advertising. Or visual pollution if you happen to be in the mood to stroll by the water and take in the city views. Nothing is sacred any more.

Passing through China

Well, I'm not exactly passing through China, but rather visiting Shanghai for the Intel Developer forum. It's an interesting city, and with a population of 18 million people there are actually more people living there than in my own country. Go figure. Actually, that could be a scary thought... or a comforting one, if you take into account the saying that "No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, 1.3 billion Chinese couldn’t care less." To be honest, it might be up to 1.4 by now as the 1.3 figure was almost a year ago. Oh, and did I mention that they likely have the largest online population too now. Well, almost.

On board of my KLM flight was also a Dutch delegation on a one-week china trip. Follow their journey on marketingfacts.nl (Dutch only).



On a side-note, It was a bit of an adjustment to see all those people smoking everywhere again, as we've had so many bans on smoking in Europe, that it's hard to imagine that many smokers all over the place again. I was also surprised that I didn't see that many fancy new cars all over the place... mabe I was just in the wrong district.

Trevi fountain

Over in rome on business

How I lost my faith in wikipedia

I used to be a big believer in wikipedia and looked up references and information on it for, well, just about anything. Up until now, when I experienced firsthand how factual information can be removed and you're left in the cold when you'ry to do anything about it.

Here is what happened: I'm a member of an official federation (International Krav Maga Federation in Belgium if you must know), so I added a link to the federation's belgian site on the Krav Maga page on Wikipedia at the end of January. After all, we're an official federation, so no harm (note: I didn't remove any links to other federations, not even "competitive" ones. We all want to be known and it's a free world.). One week later the link was removed (by someone from another KM club in The Netherlands, but that's beside the point). I mail the owner of the page and the one who deleted it, and asked for explanation. None received. "OK, an error", I think, and I place the link again (after mailing the helpdesk at wikipedia what to do). It gets deleted again, this time by another user, and I get what seems like an automated comment that I shouldn't place links, and that if I do it again it will be considered "vandalism" (really!). That kind of puts me off ever wanting to contribute anything there again.

Actually, the exact post is:

"The external link(s) you placed in one or several articles, have been removed. Although we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, we strive to keep the number of external links at Wikipedia as low as possible. Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopedia, and not a collection of links to other websites. We prefer that you add any relevant encyclopedic information to the articles themselves. Thank you for your understanding. Adding the link again without any discussion in advance may be regarded as vandalism. You may provide links like these to various portals on the internet.

Let me take that reasoning apart.

• "We appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia." I don't think you appreciate it at all, because you just delete my contribution without ever inquiring or even pretending to check.
  
• "Keeping external links as low as possible". There are four at the moment, including the link to the Dutch IKMF federation and another Belgian federation (VKMF). But yet our link is not allowed. Can someone define what is "as low as possible"?
  
• "We're not a collection of links", translation "we don't like to send people off to too many other sites that may have information you cannot find here"?
  
• "You may provide links like these to various portals on the internet". Done that already, just thought it would be a good idea to add the information also to wikipedia. You know, people tend to go there because they still believe it's a good source of unbiased information.
• "We prefer that you add any relevant encyclopedic information to the articles themselves."Like hell I will mess in that system again. True, I'd prefer to update the article itself with a paragraph of information about the different federations active in the Benelux, but now I won't because I don't feel like making the effort to just have my stuff deleted again by someone who doesn't agree, or being banned from wikipedia for trying to add to the system. Don't want to be a vandal.

Over at CrunchNotes they seem to have experienced the same:

"While wikipedia appears to be open to all, I’ve seen numerous examples of changes getting immediately deleted for what appears to be political reasons rather than the pursuit of pure knowledge. And I’ve also seen people be attacked for making changes that appear to be factual and correct. The TechCrunch listing on wikipedia has a number of errors. But there is no way in hell I’d ever think about fixing those errors. The wikipedia community has completely intimidated me to the point where making a change to that site is unthinkable. So I do think Wikipedia needs to be fixed."

I couldn't agree more with them. Sadly. The system is flawed. Well, maybe not the system, but it has not accounted for human nature.

More on the International Herald Tribune and The Register.

Nokia Morphing

Ok, impressive. I didn't think they had it in them anymore (I've been a Sony-Ericsson convert for a number of years now), but the Nokia Morph concept looks very interesting.

From the press release: "Morph is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes. It demonstrates the ultimate functionality that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering: flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces."


More here on nanotechnology and the future of mobile phones. Now to make it come true.

Will we be matched by machines by 2029?

Tagging on my previous post on "shift happens", ever serious site BBC Machines states that machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029. And we'll be having nanobots inside our bodies.

Click here for the full article.

Shift happens

.. and it is still happening. At an ever increasing pace. Check out the presentation.

| View | Upload your own

"Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational power of the human brain." I'm especially interested in this one; I should be around to witness it. Let's just hope that supercomputer doesn't turn out to be Skynet.


Here is the original "Did you know 2.0"

Read more at Shift Happens

*Update*
There is also a Shift Movie in the works. Watch it here.

We have come a long way since 1996

Since 1996,the WayBack Machine site has been archiving about 85 billion web pages. I've gone in and looked at the history of my site ... boy, have I come a long way too. :-)

Over at this site someone went in and looked as some big brand names like MacDonalds, CocaCola, Pepsi and Lego. It's "interesting" to see how primitve websites were back then in what we seen now as the stone age of the Internet (but which very exciting and cutting edge at the time.)

Where is Marc Wallis?

I ran into my friend and colleague Marc Wallis again at the Mobile World congress this year. Why would I care to mention that on a blog you ask? Well, because exactly one year ago (ok, give or take a couple of days) we were exchanging ideas on blogging, and I showed him how I blogged from my mobile phone (I think I actually explained it to him again this year, but that's beside the point).

So he went on to register a site to track himself, got a blog account, and started to take pictures of wherever he was on his travels.

And so the whereismarcwallis.com photoblog was born. Happy first anniversary, Marc!

Blogging over at the Mobile World Congress

I'm officially one of the bloggers at our Technology Blog over at the Mobile World Congress.

So go over there and see what we're thinking about the new technologies we see at the show.

Spotted in Barcelona

Mobile WiMAX demo

Party over at google's place

Who would be on the invite list if there was a party at Google's place? See if you can recognize them all.

Link through Flabber.

They key to life is ... running and reading

Wise words from Will smith: Running and reading are the key to life. Look here as he explains why.

Found through StrongLifts. Have a look there for his analysis. I'm off to running now. ;-)

Wired on the iPhone history

Wired's report on the history of the iPhone and its impact on the US carrier market.
Read more here

Wildbeaming

It's all about getting people to notice you, so here is a nice video of how they did it by wildbeaming, a form of beamvertising. Pretty cool. Limited to cities though.

Video also available on YouTube

101 dumbest moves in business

It's list time again ... check out the 101 dumbest moves in business for 2007.