UGC Skoeps already cash flow positive

At Blognomics 07 I again heard the story of Skoeps, a joint-venture of PCM and Talpa. Skoeps is a user generated and moderated content site where people can upload videos and pictures of news events and sell them. Excluded are photographs from VIP spotters, paparazzi and ambulance chasers. The site has now 1.2 million page views, 200.000 unique visitors and 4.000 reporters.

After half a year the company behind the site is cashflow positive. It makes money out of advertisements, sales of user generated content (UGC) video and photographs to media companies, delivering a video player, SMS and MMS shared revenue and a web shop. A reporter gets 50 percent of a video or a photograph, which is sold on to a media company. The videos do sell, but the sale of the photographs lag behind; part of the problem is the problem is the perceived amateur treatment of the photographs by professional photo-editors.

Part of the success is the technology, the upload software and the video player. Version 2.0 of Skoeps has been introduced in 2007 earlier than expected. Now the company can move internationally. There is now an English version in the Netherlands, filled with Dutch items as well as a German version. These versions are trials for foreign launches. Foreign services will not necessarily bear the name and logo of Skoeps. The concept and technology are available as white labels as well. For example Zoom.in produces the Flemish and French Belgian sites.

But it was a surprise to hear that Skoeps will be introduced in Africa to countries as Mozambique, Kenia, Nigeria, Ghana and South-Africa. These are not the countries you think first of for expansion. Normally entrepreneurs want to expand in Europe to countries as the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and last of all to France and using the UK as a stepping stone to the USA. But this service goes to Africa. A foundation has been instituted to steer the activities, which are in a certain way also non-commercial and idealistic. Skoeps wants to go to African countries as this will provide an opportunity to get out of that continent other pictures than the obligated and politically correct photographs. The company Africa Interactive has been set up to collect and distribute the news through internet and mobile. Eventually this company will in due time produce internet television, discussion forums, magazine, web logs, photographs and written news.

To my surprise I read in an Emerce article that Africa Interactive had been set up by an old colleague of mine, Pim de Wit. We worked together in 1979 in the Intermediair Library Project. He was the marketing man and I did the editing. We repackaged free articles of the Intermediair magazine into paid books, which was possible to good marketing (come to think of it: there should be room to repackage free internet info in paid books). We also published a series with titles as time-management and people-management. We called it business porno as we mailed those books in discretely brown paper envelopes. They titles were usually bought, but sometimes a manuscript was offered. I can still remember a book about careers of which the first sentence read like: Your job will come to an end. Hard-nosed Pim went on and made his career in VNU magazines, which were sold to the Finnish company Sanoma in 2001. In 2005 he was moved out of his job as CEO of the Dutch Sanoma magazine division. And this is where his link with Africa starts. After Sanoma he took a social job as the managing director of the Dutch Zoo Association and, amongst others, some elephants and tigers do come from Africa.

Blog Posting Number: 751

Tags: user generated content, user generated video, user generated photograph

Blognomics 07 in Amsterdam

Yesterday Blognomics 07 was held in Amsterdam. It was for the third time that this event, powered by Guido van Nispen and Krijn Schuurman took place. Last year's event Blognomics 06 (discovered that I misspelled the name last year) the event felt like a big hot sauna; this year the sauna cooled down. There was again a packed program with many speakers in 5 hours; new in the format were the forum sessions. Many professional and semi-professional bloggers were present; the total audience consisted of 200 registered people.


















There are many bloggers in the Netherlands. Estimates are usually made by putting the figures together of the Dutch language blogger collections like ilse/Sanoma’s Web-log.nl and de Volkskrant’s weblogs. These contain mainly the emo-blogs (emotional blogs about the lover, pet or drudge of daily life). Then there is a core section of professional and semi-professional blogs, who are writing in the Dutch language, but not necessarily. All in all some, the guestimate is 800.000 Dutch language blogs and blogs originating from The Netherlands.

Are blogs influential in the Netherlands? In the USA there is a serious debate about journalists and bloggers and the influence of bloggers. Some US bloggers can even protect their source. In the Netherlands the debate between the journalists and the bloggers is starting, but they still do not have much influence. Perhaps the shockblog Geen Stijl is a public platform. And Dutch bloggers still do not earn money.

In one of the forums as well as a presentation de-mystification (told you: theology is a perfect training for online!) took place. Politicians (see photograph) have taken to blogging, but in a forum with three politicians it became clear that many political blogs are the product of ghost-writers and when the politicians personally write blogs, they can not tell everything. In a presentation, a representative of a media bureau told openly how blogs were manipulated for commercial gains; the bureau had set up a blog to stimulate the sale of Sony’s PSP.

A high point for me was the presentation about bliin, a feature which lets you share your location and geo-tagged photos from your handset in real-time. There was a live demonstration of someone taking a photograph and the photograph appearing on a map; in the meantime you could also see who of your friends were in the neighbourhood. The demonstration sadly looked more like a demonstruction technically, but the result (see photograph) turned up on the screen eventually. It is definitely a feature I would like to link to my blogs and definitely during my travels.

Deep thoughts I did not take along from the conference. The key-note speaker Paul Molenaar of ilse/Sanoma shortly touched on the question, whether blogs are the wisdom of crowds: collective knowledge or idiocy. Whatever way it is seen: blogs keep stimulating communities and conversation.

As you can imagine, a conference for bloggers usually is heavily blogged by bloggers and photographers. So also Blognomics. Most blogs are of course in the Dutch language and hardly readable for the foreign readers. But there are many photographs of the event available on Flickr; Henk-Jan Winkelman took also one of me (centre) with my good friend Herman van Oorschot (left) and Eric Voigt of the NHL college (right).

Blog Posting Number: 750

Tags: blog

Secondlife.nl

In the past four years more than 364.000 Dutch inhabitants have registered with Secondlife.com. Three months ago Secondlife.nl was started. The Netherlands is now ranked fifth with 6,5 percent of total users. Compared to the worldwide figures: 5,6 million registered users, of which 1,7 million were active in the last 60 days. They spent 2 million US dollars per 24 hours.

Stats of April 18, 2007-05-10
Registered members in Secondlife.nl: 43.624
Average daily visitors to ‘0031’: 1500
Square meters bought on ‘0031’’: 111.776
Euro exchanged for Linden dollars: 35.000

The Dutch platform is also known as ‘0031’ referring to the international telephone access code for The Netherlands. It attracts on some days 1500 visitors; a company of temporary labour forces, Randstad, attracts some 186 visitors a day. Dutch companies and institutes are profiling themselves, mainly for marketing reasons. Big companies like banks amongst others the heavy battled ABN AMRO (no acquisition battle yet in Secondlife!) but also municipalities like Zoetermeer are present in this virtual world as well as the Free University. But also small and medium enterprises participate and have bought more than 11.000 square metres, if only to experiment. Also the association of Dutch nature monuments is active on ‘0031’; it offers a space to relax.

In the meantime a debate has started on the marketing blog Marketingfacts whether Secondlife is the next Internet hype. Reactions flooded in. Comments range from: Secondlife is an imitation of Habbo Hotel to Secondlife is a way for marketers to do the same as always and still be modern. Others think that Secondlife is a nice way to learn and only the beginning of something greater.

(I still do not understand why I should register for Secondlife.nl, when I can meet Dutch people all day. Do they have a virtual way to escape this 16,5 million inhabitants plot in the real world; then they start crowding together again. I guess that it is the same social habit of people with mobiles. If you do not use your mobile, you are socially dead. Would it be that Secondlife is there to see and to be seen; if you are not registered, you are virtually dead. It is not the ctivity, but the registration.)

Secondlife is a nice link to the virtual world and more attention will be paid to that in the coming years. In The Netherlands a Platform Virtual Worlds has been started to distribute knowledge about the development and application of virtual world and three dimensional internet. The technical universities of Delft and Twente, the Free University Amsterdam, the economic Erasmus University Rotterdam are partners as well as the companies ING, ABN AMRO, Philips and IBM. The platform will have its own website, where research results will be published.

Blog Posting Number: 749

Tags: virtual world, Secondlife

Europe Day

Today it is the Day of Europe. Normally it is a day on which attention is asked for Europe, the unity and policies. But this year it is 50 years ago that in Rome on March 24, 1957a treaty for economic co-operation was signed by Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. (see the story below).

Since high school I have known that I was living in Europe. Our family was living close to the German border and my boarding school was close to the Belgian border. During my period as a managing editor for a reference department, I was working with a Belgian publishing company in Antwerp. And from the early eighties I worked in the United Kingdom in London for the VNU publishing company.

In 1980 I took notice of the new EC datanetwork Euronet-Diane, which was introduced in The Netherlands in 1980 (with Ms Kroes, the present competition minister, who was a minister of Transport and Communication at that time). (See photograph). But by 1982 I got in touch with the European Commission. I met an EC official in London during a dinner of the Online Conference. He was part of the research department Directorate General XIII in Luxembourg. We stayed in contact and by 1983 I applied for a grant to introduce a daily electronic newsletter for the computer industry. It was to be an electronic counterpart to the printed newsletter. The grant of 60.000 ecu (roughly the same as euro) was awarded and the daily electronic newsletter was launched on December 1, 1984 and turned out to be the first electronic daily newsletter in Europe.

Ever since that project I have been involved in European projects, sometimes as a researcher or project participant, sometimes as an evaluator and reviewer of projects. In 1993 in the early days of multimedia CD-ROMs I was asked to write a report on CD-Data. In 2002 my company was involved in the ACTeN project a fully funded content project, which lasted two years. It took me around Europe for round table meetings, summer schools and lectures; besides the consortium generated one of the scarce books on content E-Content – Technologies and Perspectives for the European Market (2005).

It has been difficult for the European Commission to execute a coherent policy. This has to do with the division of tasks. ICT and especially digital media have different programmes: research, media and regional programmes.

An improvement in this fragmentation was the merger of the research programme IST with the EU Media programme. With coordination between research and close to the market projects results can be improved. The EU Media programme still has to be less dogmatic as to movies and interactive media as digitisation is influencing the production chain.

But these programmes (IST, EU Media and regional) can also be confusing to companies and especially Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). Especially since the EC started to introduce again big projects, in which companies like Philips, Nokia and BBC participate. Officially these companies should take in the consortium SMEs, but in practice this proves to be difficult. For an SME it is difficult to get in programmes as they are asked for accounts of three years and will have to do a lot of administration.

And not all consortia work. Only yesterday Germany in its function of presiding country noticed that the satellite navigation project Galileo had lost its way; head-banging did not help any longer, so another route had to be searched for.

Despite the political problems and programme problems, I am glad that there is a European Union. I personally think of myself as a European rather than a Dutchman.

(Preparing the blog I read the story that the Treaty of Rome was signed on 180 pages of blank pages in 1957. The printer of the Treaty was unable to finish the assignement in time for the signing ceremony. On the day of signing, the ministers were requested to sign pages without any text. The story was told by Professor Hendrik Vos of Gent University on 22 March 2007.)

Blog Posting Number: 748

Tags: European Union, European Commission, ICT

PCM's DAG launched

Wow. You cannot miss it between the other free newspapers, the new Dutch free daily DAG. It is colourful, it has an exciting lay-out, which changes on every page.



DAG was launched today and it is the fourth free daily in The Netherlands. In fact you can distinguish the free dailies in The Netherlands in two generations. Metro and Spits belong to the first generation. Metro, part of the worldwide franchise was the first to introduce free newspapers in 1999. It was financed by the NS, the Dutch railway company. Metro was a direct attack on the paid daily De Telegraaf, the largest newspaper in The Netherlands. De Telegraaf immediately reacted by publishing the free daily Spits. Metro and Spits form the first generation of the free dailies. Since this year the second generation has started. De Pers was the first one to appear on the market. This free daily is financed by the billionaire Marcel Boekhoorn. For a moment the Dutch national newspaper publisher PCM thought about stepping into this venture, but due to internal differences of opinion PCM left the negotiation table. Now PCM has come up with its own free paper DAG. De Pers and DAG form the second generation of free papers. And there is a difference between the generations. While Metro and Spits have become advertisement brochures for mainly mobile telephones with bullet articles and a few spreads, De Pers and DAG are more serious about the news. De Pers is almost academic, while DAG is more popular, mainly due to its lay out.

How does DAG distinguish itself? The lay-out of the newspaper is bold with colours. The articles are short with a few longer background articles. Photographs and infographics are abundant. But so far there is nothing new. But from the beginning the idea makers of DAG have stressed that it is not a paper, but a cross-media news service, of which the newspaper is one of its manifestations. The cross-media news service also serves the audience by internet and by mobile. Eventually DAG will also feed news into the narrow casting service used in the Dutch railways. A newspaper with an internet extension is no news any longer. All the free newspapers have their internet extensions as well as their digital counterparts to print. The distinguishing factor for the news eater will be the 24 hours news service.

The internet site of DAG has signs indicating that the editorial staff goes after a 24 hours continuous service. The headline sector has time indicators, while a ticker tape runs across the screen. The headline sector leads to short news items from the Dutch press agency ANP (as Dutch is the language the newspaper can not use feeds from Reuters or AP). The earliest time stamp I saw on the site was 12:00h. But I missed a page with the headlines of the last 24h.

How did realise the cross-media factor? As said DAG is a continuous news service with sub-services through print, internet, mobile and narrow-casting. The news is being spread through all these media, making use of the specific characteristics of the media. A printed newspaper has news in text, photographs and infographics. An internet news service has text, photographs, infographics, animations and movies. The same goes for mobile and narrow-casting. From what can be seen on the internet site, DAG uses all these characteristics. The movies are prominent on the home page. Two movies related to Dutch news items of the past 24 hours (celebration of Ajax winning a Cup, the long traffic jams due to the long awaited rain). As far as I can see, the principle of day-sharing (print in the morning, internet in the office, mobile during lunch has not been applied yet). So the cross-media concept still needs some fine-tuning.

Interesting is the co-operation of the newspaper with a high-tech news service Bright. This service first showed up on internet with a site and later on started a printed glossy magazine. Now the editors deliver a page on technology in DAG, which means quality for DAG and promotion for Bright as magazine and site. It looks like Quest a popular science magazine fits into the same formula.

Will DAG make it commercially? Before the launch, the management of DAG announced a deal with AH, a food retail store. Part of the deal is that the store chain will distribute the newspaper to some 700 stores. This is a smart move, as the other free dailies are fighting for their spot near the railway stations and bus platforms. Of course AH will also use the newspaper for advertising. But the deal will not stop here, as AH is experimenting with narrow-casting in its stores. DAG will eventually deliver content for narrow-casting broadcasts of AH. Leafing through the newspaper, there are a lot of advertisements; let us say that there are much more advertisements in DAG than there were in De Pers when that was launched. Of course DAG has a news paper company behind it. It would have been a shame if the advertisement had been scarce; still there was duplicate of Partners in perspective. But what was remarkable was the number of advertisements for mobile telephones and mobile telephone services. It looks like Metro and Spits will loose market share in this sector; even more as KPN is partner in the DAG venture.

Altogether, I guess that the competition in the free dailies world are studying now DAG. There is new competition, a new concept, a continuous news service with all media types ranging from text to movies and a newspaper with a bold lay-out which functions as a sign for the entire service.

DAG means in Dutch DAY and HELLO, but also GOODBYE. One of the free papers will have to say goodbye in this crowded market; I guess that it will not be DAG.

Blog Posting Number: 747

Tags: newspapers, cross-media, day-parting

Flash: EUROPRIX Top Talent Award now open for entries

(non-commercial announcement)

The EUROPRIX Top Talent Award gives young professionals and top students the chance to be promoted and exposed on the European stage. The competition benefits those who want to know how good their university coursework, freelance work or hobby-projects really are in comparison with their colleagues from other countries. Projects which are well-received by the jury will be awarded a Quality Seal in recognition of their good work – a certificate to make good impression on future employers. Nominees will receive a host of benefits.

The registration for the new edition opened on May 1 2007. Deadline for entries is July 15 2007.
Projects online, offline, installations can be entered in the following categories:
- Broadband / Online
- Offline / Interactive DVD
- Mobile Contents
- Games
- Interactive Computer Graphics
- Content Tools & Interface Design
- Interactive Installations & Interactive TV
- Digital Video & Animations

This year EUROPRIX Top Talent Award celebrates its 10th birthday. Therefore all entered projects will automatically participate in the Diamond Awards and will be evaluated in the following categories:
- Most creative product
- Most creative interface design
- Greatest commercial value
- Outstanding entertainment
- Best social media / web 2.0
- Highest impact on sustainability

For more information go to the EUROPRIX Top Talent Award website.

Open consultation on open source software (OSS)

Last week something un-Dutch happened. Three organisations started a public consultation round about policies the government should execute in the field of open standards and open source software. The three organisations are the Internet Society Netherlands (the Dutch chapter of ISOC), Foundation Livre and Media Update Business Publications, the publisher of the Open Software Yearbook. The organisation has sent a survey with 12 questions to their members and clients.







Recent during a parliamentary hearing on open standards and open source software, dissatisfaction was expressed over the government’s performance in the execution of a parliamentary motion of November 2002. Besides the actions that were taken such as assigning two separate bodies for open standards and open source software, did not help the cause. The new State Secretary of the Economic Affairs Department, Mr Frank Heemskerk, admitted that more should happen and promised new policies after the summer of 2007. That coincides with the general government’s policy of listening to society and groups in society during the first 100 days, after which new policies will be announced. The three organisations have accepted this challenge and make an inventory of wishes and proposals in the field of open standards and open source software. After the one month consultation round, the reactions will be bundled and offered to the responsible minister.

The inventory consists of 12 questions such as the government’s policy performance so far, openness of government software, government as launching customer. The questions are only optional, so other questions can also be brought up. In the end the answers most likely will be categorised, bundled and offered to the government. The civil servants charged with drafting the policies on this subject will be able to compare their notes with the answers coming from citizens and organisations. (For those reading Dutch, the consultation survey is available on the web).

It will be interesting to see number of reactions and the quality of the reactions. Open standards and open source software have so far not been on top the list of government policies in The Netherlands nor for that matter in Europe. With a population like Europe, the introduction of open standards and open source software should easily make inroads. A European call for proposals in the field of open source software and services did not yield spectacular proposals nor did it yield strong consortia of players in the field.

When I was in Beijing in 2005, there was a discussion of developing a Chinese operating system. Can you imagine? There are more than a billion Chinese inhabitants and fifty percent of them are in the age group between 18 and 35 years. When they all start using such an operating system, Microsoft would not have anything to do anymore in that part of the continent. On the other hand the example also illustrates the weakness of the open source software movement. It is fragmented and security about the software products is not guaranteed.

But once governments, provinces and municipalities as well as universities and schools are using open source software, spectacular savings could be made.

I look forward to the results of the Dutch consultation round, which will terminate by the end of May. And of course more interesting will be how much the results of this consultation round will influence the new policy on open standards and open source software.

Blog Posting Number 746

Tags: open standards, open source software

Belgian newspapers back on Google News

The Belgium French language newspapers are back on Google News. However the conflict is not officially solved yet between the two parties. But it looks like the parties are nearing an agreement.

In February, Google lost a court case about publishing newspaper articles on Google News. According to the judge Google infringed on the copyright of articles or parts of articles by placing the articles or parts of them on the Google site. In order to avoid heavy penalties Google removed all article from Google news and from its cache.

But since Thursday 17 French language newspapers, united in Copiepresse, are back on Google. In a statement Copiepresse says that Google can show articles despite the lack of an agreement. It means that both parties are close to an agreement. The newspapers might be back, but not all articles will be entered into the Google index. Archived articles, for which readers will have to pay, can not be accessed through Google News. These articles bear the tag NO ARCHIVE.

Representatives of Copiepresse and Google stated also that they do not want to fight the conflict in court. The newspapers are also talking to Yahoo and MSN.

Blog Posting Number: 745

Tags: Copiepresse, Google News

iRex on summer campaign

iRex Technologies, the manufacturer of the iLiad digital paper reader is on campaign in The Netherlands. I recently mentioned that the public library of my home town Almere is renting out an iLiad to its member, now the Dutch association of public libraries is organising a meeting on May 21. Announcements for that meeting are:
- The newspapers de Volkskrant and NRC are working on putting the dailies online witjh ilLiad (already announced);
- The Mobi pocket catalogue is available for the iLiad with 40.000 titles in English, German, French and Spanish; just in time for the holidays! (see iRex site)
- The Dutch association of public libraries will put together a holiday case of e-books;
- Seven public libraries with subsidiaries on the beach will demonstrate the iLiad to the sun seekers.

Meeting:
Organisation: KIVA/iRex and ProBiblio
Location: ProBiblio, Hoofddorp (NL)
Date: 21 May2007
Time: 9.30h till 12.30h
For more info: evdmeer

(It is a good idea to promote e-books in the summer season. People read many books during the holidays and especially on the beach. But it reminds me of a marketing campaign of an encyclopedia company I worked for in the late seventies. The sales manager grounded all sales people (advisors you would call them these days) and told them to join the summer caravan organised by a broadcast station, which would broadcast from the beach. The sales people were supposed to sell the 25 volumes encyclopedia on the beach. Whenever they had a victim, they would invite him/her to the trailer and start the sales talk. There was the victim in swimming suit and the sales lad in summer outfit. In the end, when the victim was convinced, he/she was asked to sign an agreement. Officially under Dutch consumer law he/she would have another 8 days to reconsider. But by that time the agreement had been lost in the tent or camper!
Come to think of it: the encyclopedia was more expensive than an iLiad. The sales people sold more encyclopedias in 1977 and 1978 due to this beach campaigns; but after 1979 the whole Dutch print encyclopedia market crashed.)

Blog Posting Number: 744

Tags: iliad, digital paper, e-book, e-book reader

Flash: Buziaulane nominated for Blogs that Make me Think

The Thinking Blogger Award is a blog meme that was started by Ilker Yoldas. Details about his great idea are on his blog, The Thinking Blog.

Christy Dena nominated Buziaulane as one of the Blogs that Make her Think:

- Jak Boumans’ Buziaulane: Jak has been working with content and industry in all forms for a very long time. He is very generous and insightful with his posts.

Thanks Christy, after two years of writing a posting every day.......

World Online: an old sore of the Internet hype

On Thursday an Amsterdam court ruled in the case of World Online (WOL), a former Dutch ISP. The leading banks in the IPO of WOL, ABN AMRO and Goldman Sachs had mislead the buyers. With this ruling a the road is open to a compensation of 3 billion euro for 150.000 investors.

WOL went to the stock market in 2000 on top or just after the internet hype. On Friday March 17, 2000 WOL was noted on the Stock Exchange for the first time, it was listed for 43 euro. WOL collected up 1,8 billion euro. On the first day the quote went above 50 euro, but the next day the quote dropped and kept dropping. When the press reported that CEO Nina Brink had sold shares before the IPO for 6,04 dollar, many private investors felt fooled. It was the beginning of the end for WOL. On April 13, 2000 Nina Brink was dismissed and WOL was sold to the Italian ISP Tiscali for a fraction (5,5 billion euro in shares) of the estimated value (18 billion euro).

The court says in its ruling that the banks misrepresented information in the bidding document and did not correct the much too optimistic picture WOL drew. In December 2003 the court already ruled that WOL had mislead the buyers with too optimistic press releases and should pay compensation; the company went for another legal battle.

The court case had been brought by the VEB, a Dutch association of investors. Paul de Vries said to be optimistic now about compsenrtaion. He expects to get some hundreds of millions. Compensation will have to be gotten from Tiscali and WOL and it is not unrealistic that they will attempt to get money from former CEO Nina Brink, who had not been crystal clear about the sale of shares before the IPO; she claimed that the shares had been transferred, but no price was mentioned. The court indicated that officially the price did not have to be mentioned, but Nina Brink, WOL, ABN AMRO and Goldman Sachs had not optimally informed the investor. Ninan Brink had created uncertainty, a milder qualification than misleading.

The ruling touches on three points. WOL and the banks did not paint the right picture of Nina Brinks career with a slew of bankruptcies of former companies; also as a member of the board of directors of Newtron she was responsible for a failed IPO. Besides the bidding document mentioned the company Telitel as a subsidiary of World Online, while they still were negotiating. And a series of press releases painted a too optimistic picture of co-operations with blue ribbon companies. The court judged that the banks had not done anything to temper or correct these points.

This case might have been won now by the VEB, but this is not the end. The banks have the possibility to have the case annulled. If they do so, the VEB will have to wait to put down its claim. And once they can put down the claim, solicitors for the banks will fight it. So after six years of legal battles, the investors will have wait for some more years, before they will get paid.

(Just for the record: I did not invest in WOL).

BTW The ruling comes at a bad time for ABN AMRO, as the company was in court later that Thursday. ABN AMRO had sold its American branch LaSalle in four days at 21 billion euro without consulting its shareholders. Also here, VEB brought the case and won.

Blog Posting Number: 743

Tags: internet hype

Flash: 12,5 years of NL streaming

Today it is 12,5 years ago that the first webcast took place in the Netherlands. The initiative was taken by Stef van der Ziel. The webcast was broadcasted from the cultural centre Simplon in Groningen on November 4, 1994. The audience consisted of four viewers, who followed the webcast on their PC; two people related to the project stayed home to view the broadcast and the other two were two unknown people following the concert in Amsterdam. It was a webcast without sound; the technology facilitated only one frame per second. An anniversary party with a HD transmission has been planned with a larger audience.

A page from the historic transmission.

Watch out: the seniors are coming

Seniors and elderly have long been considered groups not fit for internet. Seniors are the 50+ years group, which is fast increasing in The Netherlands and Germany. The elderly group over 65 years has long been written off as internet potential. But a press release made clear that the situation is changing fast and that large groups of seniors and elderly are no longer just sitting in front of the window watching the world go by. They have become active on internet and almost as active as teenagers, although they use it differntly.

Recently the Dutch Social and Cultural Planning Bureau (SCP) published a report on seniors in cooperation with Seniorweb. From a survey among the members and visitors of Seniorweb it appeared that seniors use internet as much as teenagers do. No less than 58 percent of the seniors indicate to be more than once online daily, while 61 percent of teenagers do so. This is a big difference with the scores of five years ago.

Seniors prefer e-mailing; 96 percent indicates that, while 82 percent of the teenagers say so. Just surfing is done by 76 percent of the teenagers and 60 percent by the seniors. Real differences are there in other applications. 95 percent of the teenagers spend time on msn, while only 25 percent of the Senioreb people use msn. For both target groups msn is dominantly used by women. But also a typical teenage habit is downloading music weekly or more often; only 25 percent of the seniors download music weekly or more often.

As far as I can see there is no remark in this report on games. I personally do believe that games for seniors should be the replacement for the puzzles and sudoku to keep their mind agile. But I should perhaps ask the people of Seniorweb about this.

The Dutch organisation Seniorweb has 75.000 members and offers anyone senior not familiar with a computer the experience of e-mail, internet, but also a text processing program. Besides the organisation has a special helpdesk for seniors for problems with their PC; if it can not be solved by e-mail or telephone, help will come from a volunteer. The organisation offers also software, games and printer cartridges at a reduced price, while the membership magazine contains once per year a CD-ROM full of tips, games and software. The organisation is a real e-inclusive organisation.

The report is not online yet, nor is there a translation. There is however a report of 2006 with an English summary.

Blog Posting Number: 743

Tags: seniors, elderly

Bharain eContent Award Competition (5)

This morning I landed at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport at 6.00 am. It was a quiet flight and everything went to schedule, despite the fact that I changed my flight late.

The competition was completed yesterday with the recording of the 24 nominees and 4 special mentions. Having taken a photograph of the group of jurors, we said goodbye to each other. Of course, I hope to be back in Bahrain some day. This morning I received a series of photographs which reflect the jury event of the past days. (Just for contrast, I received today also a group photograph of the CMID07 conference in Lapland; I put them next to each other for contrast).









Reflecting on the content of the entries, it was clear that the category e-Business is the most important category of the competition. It is the only category which has 5 nominations. Followers are e-Culture, e-Entertainment, e-Government. E-Health and e-Inclusion, while in e-Science not one entry was nominated. It says something about the interest of the Bahraini. They are a busy business people and are serious about e-Government (more serious than many a European government). But the categories e-Culture and e-Entertainment do have 4 nominations in each category, but the spread of the subjects is not very strong. E-Culture has of course different entries than for example Egypt, which have the pyramids and the pharaohs, while Bahrain has little history. E-Entertainment has interesting entries, but games are not included. E-Learning has three interesting nominations and this category is improving over BEA 2005. The categories of e-Health and e-Inclusion have only two entries, while the entries in e-Science did not yield one nomination.

I personally conclude that the Bahraini are busy with e-Business and e-Government, in other words transactions and processes. Real content categories like e-Culture, e-Entertainment and e-Learning need improvement as do e-Health and e-Inclusion. The entries in e-Science did not come up to par at all.

In conclusion can be said that there are a few nomination which might be entered into the World Summit Award and will be serious contenders. It can also be said that there is still a lot of room for improvement of content. To raise the level of content some serious development and education is needed. Bahrain has the advantage that the lingo is Arabic; so there is no limit in the size of users (in comparison, the Dutch language limits itself to 22 million people worldwide).

When I left yesterday for the third time, I left very good friends like Waheed, Achmed and Abdullah, but also Leena and her organisation team. The contact with the jurors broadened my scope about life on an island in the Guld region and about ideals for a population. I hope to be back soon.

Blog Posting Number: 742

Tags: content competition, World Summit Award

Bahrain eContent Award Competition (4)

The free day is over and you could see it on the streets. There were traffic jams again. Today is an important day for the Kingdom of Bahrain. Bahrain will be bustling as the Financial Harbour will be openen offcially. The Financial Harbour (see illustration - click to enlarge) is a spectacular office project for the financial world. With this project Baharain wants to superceed Abu Dabi in the United Arab Emirates, which has traditionally been the financial center of the Middele East. When I was here in 2005 the building of the office blocks had just started. Now the buildings are completed including airplane warning lights. The architecture is spectacular as more buildings show. The two sails building of the Chambers of Commerce are also spectacular. The building is still under construction.

I had a free day also and in the afternoon I had lunch at a tourist side resort, hotel, restaurants, a sand beaches and beautiful turqoise coloured water. We talked about some big plans for Bahrain. In the Gulf region usually Dubai is mentioned in television programs because of the palm tree islands and the many hotels. Dubai is fast becoming a tourist destination. People who have had it with Spain, Greece and Turkey, when they stay in Europe, and Thailand and Indonesia, when they go to Asia, will be happy with Dubai, especially during the European winter time. When I was there in 2003 I noticed especially Germans, well to do people, to be there. This time I even noticed two Dutch couples with kids going to Bahrain and I take it that this is not because Michael Jackson was/is here. So Bahrain might be the next tourist spot.

Today we are in the final stage of the Bahrain eContent competition. The nominations of the Bahrain eContent have been approved been approved: 24 nominations and 4 special mentions. Not all categories have 5 nominations, partly because there were not enough entries, partly because of the lack of quality. But I have seen some nice new sites. The nominations and the special awards will be made known at the Bahrain eContent Award Competition ceremony. A special commiittee will select the entries that will be forwarded to the World Summit Award, to be judged in Croatia coming September.

Tonight I will be flying home to Amsterdam. It will be a night flight.

Blog Posting Number: 741

Tags: content competition, World Summit Award

Bahrain eContent Award Competition (3)

Today there is good and bad news. The bad news is that my Dell Latitude X300 went dead. I can not start it up again. Tomorrow a techie from Dell Bahrain will have a look at it. The good news is that today I celebrate an anniversary of this blog (let there be pomp and ceremony as in the hotel lobby - see illustration). In 2005 I started this blog on Labour Day and have written a posting every day. And as I am enjoying it, I sign for another year.

The jury deliberations yesterday took more than 12 hours. The jurors finished the first round of judging and after the necessary administrative procedures, there were some 50 entries left, which were up for scrutiny. Eventually the jurors have to come up with maximally 5 entries per category. The debate about the nominees started late in the afternoon and continued into the late evening. Our Quwait jury observer Ms Manar Al Hashash (27) has left the competition as she has been asked by her government to be present at a meeting with the Japanese prime minister. Gabi Deek will leave today.

Having finished for the day, I had dinner in the hotel with Gabi Deek, the invited moderator of the Bahrain eContent Award Competition. He was also the moderator of the first BEA competition in 2005. He is a general manager for a computer company in Lebanon and is president of the Lebanese Professional Computer Association. He is a Lebanese and speaks Arabic, English and French. And he does it with a lot of passion. Gabi has also been a juror of the World Summit Award competitions in 2003 and 2005. He is really suited for this job.

So we had a late dinner at the hotel. And as he is a gourmet he could live it up with a grand buffet dinner. We got to talk about the Lebanese-Israeli war. As I have never seen a war nor have been close to a warzone (the closes was most likely driving through Northen Ireland in 1985), I was eager to hear how it influenced his life. For what do you do; where computer centres hit; was the telecom infrastructure paralysed. And of course the question comes up: what do you do while a war is going on; do you have a job; what do you do all day. He told that he had been doing something else than being busy with with computers and computer projects for four months. He had been working for the refugees in his country, housing them in schools and finding funds to provide them with food and shelter. Now he is back in the computer industry and everything is booming again. Computers centres were not really hit; so there is not much of a replacement market as one would think. But business is booming again.

Blog Posting Number: 740

Tags: content competition, World Summit Award