Thursday, April 12, 2012

Non-commercial announcement








On April 28/29 at Bloomsbury in central London: two days of coding, creativity, challenges….and fun. The Spring Hackathon draweth near! (http://hackathoncentral.com/overview).

The focus will be “Apps for the High Street”, in which developers will compete and collaborate to build web and mobile apps for small high street businesses located in the London Borough of Islington. We’ve interviewed dozens of local SMEs and selected six candidates from a broad range of business types. Developers will be presented with six profiles of the SMEs and challenged to create apps tailor-made for the individual businesses. The profiles: http://hackathoncentral.com/overview/

We'e trying a new approach for this hackathon by offering the devs three routes to crafting their apps: Natively, via APIs or templates. Let's see how it works out. Developers may sign up on Lanyrd here: lanyrd.com/cgcrc

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

1599 Why I like Life Online

I became all exited when I discovered Life Online. I  discovered that it was a permanent gallery of the National New Media Museum, which is part of the National Media Museum in Bradford (UK). I did not know that it existed and did not know that the National Media Museum consists of: 
- the National Photography Collection;
- the National Cinematography Collection;
- the National Television Collection;
- the National New Media Collection.

I like that combination of collections in one museum. In the Netherlands we have two photo museums in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The Cinematography Museum has just openend with a beautiful designed building in Amsterdam. The National Television Museum is located in a beautiful building in Hilversum under the title Institute of Image and Sound; besides an experience center it is also an expertise centre for radio and television archives. And as we spend so much money on separate buildings, no more money is left for a New Media Experience in the Netherlands, certainly not in this economic dip.
In line with the publication of my book on Pre-internet history (Toen digitale media nog nieuw waren - Pre-internet in de polder (1967-1997)) I produced a presentation of a New Media Experience and Expertise Centre and called it Digiworld. Having seen the National New Media Collection, it gave me more inspiration and I will have to update the presentation.

I made some presentations to municipal institutes in Almere, my home town. The city is the latest new town in The Netherlands and belongs to the Northern New MediaWing, ranging from the cities of Haarlem, Amsterdam, Almere, Hilversum, Amersfoort and Utrecht. Almere is in need of a real attraction, according to Almere City Marketing; so why not a New Media Experience Centre and Expertise Centre.

Another venue in The Netherlands could be the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, started by Philips and recently bought for 450 million euro by a group of investors led by Marcel Boekhoorn. In this way a very innovative environment would be put into perspective by a New Media Experience Centre and Expertise Centre.



The story of the internet (1969-1983) in 6 YouTube instalments

Part 1 - The First Time Two Computers Were Ever Connected
Part 2 - Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn Invent Code of Internet (TCP explained)
Part 3 - Three Networks Connect for First Time
Part 4 - Vint Cerf on the Birth of the Internet in 1983
Part 5 - The Rise of the Network
Part 6 - The Impact of the Web for Life Online