Dark Days at Lost Boys

Thanks to Jonathan Marks I found a pretty shocking news article about the dutch full service Internet company Lost Boys.

Lost boys, The biggest full service Internet company of The Netherlands has big problems. From the 180 people working at Lost Boys, forty people need to pack their bags. In the first quarter of this year Lost Boys had a 1.5 million Euro loss. The first 8 people are already kicked out of the company. The rest will be fired pretty soon.

The big financial loss can be thanked by the shortage of Sales and Account people at Lost boys. Thanks to that Lost Boys had a very little amount of new customers.

I guess I'm pretty lucky I ended up at Orange Aria and not at Lost Boys. The very cool lost boys transformed in literally Lost Boys.

source: http://www.lokaalnieuws.net

On Mobuzz Again!

I was pretty surprised when I saw that the Mobuzz team used my widget on the homepage. Last week I created a Mobuzz Newsroom widget with on www.widgetbox.com. With this website it's pretty easy to create a nice looking flash widget. I made a mobuzz version, posted it in the newsroom. And well, I came on dailybuzz.mobuzz.tv. You can embedd it on every site you want. You can get it over here, or on the mobuzz website. It helps you to be up-to-date with the newsroom of Mobuzz. Pretty cool, to see someone has posted something, without going to the newsroom page. You could check the widget and keep yourself updated, feel free to embedd it wherever you want.

Btw Mobuzz has Improved today! They added a fullscreen mode, and subtitles.

Mobuzz Rocks!

Why students don't blog

I think about 2 % of the students from my course have an active blog. Why should we use this medium? Why should we come up with stories people won't read. Why should we even bother to put time and effort in an article from which the quality won't be the same as that from proffesional bloggers. Why should we blog?

Interactive Media students, the new media experts. They can think cross-media, develop applications for new media, they can easily work in teams. But why won't they blog?

The interactive Media students are pretty fast in understanding new media. Who can you reach via a new medium? What does it cost? And what is the deadline? You should think a blog to keep up with yourself shouldn't be an extra luxury. Well it is.

The positive effects from a blog come on the long term. You can actually make an archive from your own interests. But on the short term, a blog just robs you from your time. Students don't want to produce news, but consume it. Have it the easy way. "just like everybody".

That way I get my news from 3 different blogs. I filter every site I'm on, and use gmail as my homepage. That way I get my information the fastest way. The most relevant information I want, ends up in my mailbox. As a somewhat different Interactive Media student I do have a blog. I also have twitter, jaiku and other mini blogs, but I do like to write. You must have passion for something, after that you can start blogging about it. I make time to let other people know what I find Interesting in the big world of new media. And well time is precious nowadays.

The reason for this post is that I find it very weird young people like myself, simply hate blogs. They think they are very subjective, just like wikipedia. I don't agree, I think a blog is a way of starting conversations, keeping friends/contacts up-to-date and for the proffesional ones publishing news on the web.

Well I think I'll just keep going with writing my opinion.

here are some of my favorite blogs,

Erick Alejandro
This blog is of Erick Alejandro who is a student in Guatemala. He is very up-to-date with new mobile developments and other tecky news.

Mobuzz TV
Mobuzz TV, well this is simply my morning ritual, I watch it every morning to keep myself up-to-date with Mobuzz News.

Emerce
This is a dutch blog which produces some cool news from the world of Internet

Orange Aria getting bigger!

I had a tough day yesterday, the Orange Aria team has moved to a new location. We are now based at Amsterdamseweg 188 in Amstelveen. Which is about 10 times bigger than our old location. I'll upload some pictures later this week.


I'm a projectmanager at Orange Aria. I'm responsible for the development of multiple workshops. These are all about Web 2.0. Tomorrow we are going in Beta and the first test training will be given. There will also be a website in the air at the end of the month whichI will show you guys later. At the moment I'm traveling towards the new location ( which takes me about 1,40 hrs.) Pfff lucky I have Internet over here in the Wifi-Bus. Thanks Connexxion!

A wixsite worth visiting

Last week I found out about Wix. With wix you can build flash based websites almost instantly. I just signed up for the private beta so I still need to investigate the website. However it looks promisly and I thought I would let you know about it. Check their demo in the video in this post.

Masterclass Simon Phillips

After a very busy Queens day, on which I had to work all day. I had my best night ever. It was the best 20 euro I have ever spend. I have been to Simon Phillips!

In the biggest drum shop of the Netherlands "Adams Drumworld" I arrived with my dad. Lars Nijman, a 13 year old drummer warmed us up. I was surprised with the technique of this young chap. He played stuff made by Simon if it was nothing. He certainly is a chap from which we'll hear much more.



When we were stunned about the performance of Lars, Simon Phillips came to his great Tama drum set and blowed us away with a great solo. He played on and on, and you saw a passionate man sitting behind Dream Drums. You could enjoy an hour of fantastic drumming by Simon, and as a drummer myself it was a Morale boost. I envy him and admire him. And like 10,000 of other drummers, want to become as good as he is.

Another very interesting thing in the show was the second hour. At 10 o'clock Simon took the mic and just began answering questions. How do you warm up? Where does your Inspiration come from? Ho do you keep yourself in control? Simon did a good job on answering these questions very specifically. He demonstrated techniques he uses and gave away some of his drum secrets.As a fan of Simon I was thrilled to see this all and was hypnotized for 2 hours. After he gave the audience a memorable experience he did an autograph session. And of course I got my Toto Falling in Between Live DVD signed. Also I managed to get on a photo with him.

It was 12 O'clock, and I awaited the 2 hour drive back home. I couldn't care, I have been to Simon Phillips!

http://www.larsnijman.nl
http://www.drumworld.nl
http://www.simon-phillips.com

This is a solo of Lars Nijman.


This is a solo of Simon Phillips.