IDSVANDERMOLEN.COM

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Ids — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:17:31 +0000

Another inspiring video from TED.com. Very interesting point of view. Focus on the why, then how and last what you do or create:

Got Google Wave invite

Ids — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:44:48 +0000

Yes, finally!

just scored a Google Wave preview invite, from a colleague at work. I just have to find some time to experiment with it ASAP. I’m very curious about the possibilities and hope to also try out the iPhone app.
Hopefully Google or someone else will make it possible to run a Wave server within intranets (corporate or private). Would be even more beautiful if a “standalone” server could connect to the intertubes… Maybe finally also an opportunity to try out my VMware server farm

Mmm, too many fun things to do, try and think about

Google Wave

Ids — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:46:05 +0000

This is just another amazing innovation from Google, the next communications platform to replace email, IM, IRC, Twitter and all that. Checkout this video:

At about 1:12 there is a really amazing demo of real-time language translation (English-French)… And the stuff is even going to be open source! More info at wave.google.com, code.google.com/apis/wave, and www.waveprotocol.org.

The Long Tail in Digital economics

Ids — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:01:27 +0000

In the digital age with dropping costs for inventory storage and distribution, the traditional economy is (partially) transformed to a new economy where products which are part of the Long Tail suddenly become available almost for free. The articles linked to (from Wired magazine) for the most part refer to entertainment industry products like music, video, books etc.

Fig. 1 The Long tail “Power Law like” graph from Wikipedia

What’s interesting is that because of scarce (physical) resources in the traditional economy , only about 20% of the products, – the most popular ones -, are available to consumers. But with the digital economy it is feasable to deliver the other 80% of the products (like Amazon is doing). Even more remarkable, this 80% share amounts to a larger profit than the small 20% population because the costs of storage and distribution are almost the same for all digital products. Apparently Amazon makes most of its profit from the niche products.

I suppose the Long Tail could also apply to any other product or service which can be delivered through the Internet. Software and software development seem to follow these same rules (with the open source software movement). You could probably find the right software for any niche, with varying levels of quality. But isn’t that similar to finding niche music, where you’d find different levels of quality as well?

So maybe every product or service that can be transformed from physical to digital form can be delivered (almost) for free and still give consumers an almost unlimited choice.

The age of the universe reveiled

Ids — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:50:22 +0000

Finally! “She” has tried to conceal it for a long time, but now we know the universe is about 13.73 billion (+/- 120 milion) years old. Although Christopher Columbus might not agree, the universe also appears to be flat. Also the stuff we are made of (called “matter”) apparently is less than 5% of the whole universe. The other stuff in the universe is 72.1% dark energy and 23.3% dark matter, which we can’t even see or sense in any way…

I’m glad I know these details now thanks to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe

New wordpress + theme

Ids — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:09:09 +0000

So, I finally got rid of that Misty theme, and replaced it with the GlossyBlue theme. Had to do some hacking and tweaking to loose the sponsoring part, because I do not want someone else to earn money from this blog Also upgraded the wordpress software to a newer version which supports tagging. So if you notice anything weird, let me know.

Amazon Bic Crystal ballpoint pen reviews

Ids — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:30:13 +0000

Check out these brilliant customer product reviews for this Bic pen!

Strangled creativity

Ids — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:19:05 +0000

You all knew this, of course, but the laws need to change to support the modern and digital ways of creativity. Larry Lessig is talking about the need to change (US) law, but it also applies to other countries, like the Netherlands. So go watch this TED talk from Mr. Lessig.

BTW. also check out his Free Culture book.

TED.com

Ids — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:15:48 +0000

Thanks to David Ascher I rediscovered TED, with just amazing stuff like this acrobatic dance “Symbiotic“. While I have seen the site before, for example with the famous demo of multi touch displays from Perceptive Pixel by Jeff Han, it is just fun to watch videos and find intriguing ideas.

History and architecture of Youtube.com

Ids — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:57:48 +0000

Nice talk by Cuong Do about the history of developing a scalable architecture at Youtube.com. Proves again that you can do a lot with a few good men ™ and python.