With just a couple of hours in the year 2009 left and the 2nd decade of the 21st century about to start, it’s time to look back at what has been a very good year. 2009 has been a year with a lot of highlights, and in retrospect I can’t really think about anything happening that I didn’t like.

I am glad I was able to travel a lot in 2009. Jeanine and I visited The Gambia and Izmir even twice. I am writing this from the warm Canary Islands, a good place to be to welcome the new year 2009 was also the year I bought my first car, and although it immediately required a lot of fixes it’s still running happily Having a car is one of those things you can’t live without once you have one.

Another major improvement to my live was the laser eye surgery I had done to get rid of my contacts. Having my eye-sight perfected to 130% I can say it was a really good decision. I’m glad I finally gave in to Jeanine and just had it done.

So what will 2010 bring? Well, it’s bound to become an ever better year! Starting from February I’ll start working on my final thesis in my company: dotBlue. Also, I intend to do a lot more blogging (but probably Dutch only).

Regarding New Year’s resolutions: as every year I have quite a list. But I think it would be better to just keep them to myself, as I have a track record of breaking them within the first 2 weeks of the new year.

I wish everyone a very healthy and successful 2010! See you on the flip-side!

Since yesterday 1 pm 1 out of 4 customers of Vodafone in The Netherlands are unable to set up or receive voice calls, send text message or use their 3G connections. I am one of the happy few. Anyway, aside from this issue they have another problem: an unavailable website. The other Dutch telcos are probably throwing parties right now

Now the Halloween holiday is getting more and more popular in The Netherlands Jeanine and I decided to give pumpkin carving a try. Nowadays you can even buy pumpkins and carving tools at Intratuin (the local garden shop) so one could say Halloween really made it here. To be honest I was rather impressed with my own pumpkin (the ‘thing’ on the right) but when Jeanine finished her pumpkin it just looked so damn ugly in comparison. I was really impressed by Jeanine’s carving skills!

Happy Halloween!

Joseph Kittinger (born July 27, 1928) is a true hero in my opinion. Not only did the man win 2 Silver Star awards, 2 Legion of Merit awards, 6 Distinguished Flying Cross awards, 3 Bronze Star awards, 2 Purple Heart awards, a Meritorious Service Medal, 24 Air Medals and a Prisoner of War Medal but he also claimed the highest parachute drop in history. From a whopping 103,300 feet (31.49 km) he jumped from his gondola aircraft as part of Project Excelsior and descended for 13 minutes and 45 seconds during which he reached a top speed of 988 km/h. You really have to see it for yourself:

In a related video: some space enthusiasts successfully recorded HD video from the edge of space on a budget as small as $148 USD. Watch and enjoy

After months of hard work the E-mark Mail website has been released. The primary goals of the website are obtaining new leads for our E-mail Marketing platform and informing our customers. Free e-mail marketing whitepapers are available in the ‘Kennisbank‘ (Dutch only though). The E-mark Group corporate website remains at www.e-markgroup.com (available in both Dutch and English). Alright, time for beer!

Ok, I know, it’s a lame excuse for the small delay in my postings. But honestly, I am truly addicted to Plants vs Zombies. That game is said to be more addictive than cocaine. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it sure is a big time-waster. So, I’m warning you: don’t play it

Seriously though: PvZ is one of the most funny and original games I have ever seen. As you may know I really like games that allow you to play just a short while between work. This game really hits the spot: all levels last between 5 and 10 minutes. The problem is (like a good book): you keep on turning the page for the next chapter. But if you do have the self-discipline, I really urge you to give it a try.

How much fun is it? Well, if you ever had to kill a zombie bobsled team using hypnotic mushrooms before, you know what I am talking about. Guess what, even Michael Jackson makes a little appearance. Ah, just watch the trailer!

Following up Guy Kawasaki’s advice in Reality Check (great book, but ‘The Art of the Start‘ is still his masterpiece) I am claiming this blog on Technorati (claim code: i7zdtsfc9j). If you are down to your last $ 20.02, spend it on his fantastic book called ‘The Art of the Start’. If you are down to your last $ 39.99, spend it on ‘Four steps to the Epiphany‘, or so I’m told as my copy is still on back-order…

In my last post I reminisced about ‘The Secret of Monkey Island‘, a game from the early nineties. Since then I lot has changed. Indeed. the graphics got a lot better, but a lot of people are saying that mainly because of the incredible focus shift to graphics the fun and gameplay qualities of recent games have been lacking behind. Well, I would like to share two great game-related videos with you that show off just how ingenious and big games have become.

The Beatles: Rock Band

What’s so impressive about this game? First of all: the licensing. It’s not often that you see a game based (or rather dedicated) to such a huge popular influence as The Beatles. Even after all those years, The Beatles are still at it in this shiny new form. Secondly, this is probably the best game intro movie I have ever seen.

Milo Project

What’s so impressive about this game? You really should see for yourself If this is the future, I rejoice it in all glory because this truly removes the limits between the virtual and the real world. I also fear it. If people can get addicted to fantasy games like World of Warcraft and totally immerse in its world, what about games like these? I am sure lots of lonely teenagers will lose track of the first and the second world. But hey, it sure looks incredibly cool!

Way back in 1990 Lucasfilm Games released an incredible game called ‘The Secret of Monkey Island‘. This very video game is often hailed as the first family-accessible adventure game. I remember being frustrated by being unable to understand this game when I was about 8 years old, as my English reading skills were very limited.

Although the game sprung many a sequel, it was never as great as the original first episode. So of course I had to install ScummVM and run the original (DOS) game when I bought my first Linux PDA (Sharp Zaurus Z-5500, extremely buggy but oh so cool) way back in 2002. And I did the same last year when I acquired my Nokia E-71 smartphone. Somehow, this game keeps it fun-factor, even after finishing it ten times (in 15 years).

The saga continues!

Most of the fans of the series thought the franchise had died after ‘Escape from Monkey Island’, the fourth installment of the series. However, this year the surprising news was released that Telltale Games had acquired the Monkey Island license from Lucasfilm Games and announced a new Monkey Island game called ‘Tales of Monkey Island‘, a whole new sequel to be released in 5 episodes. On top of that great news LucasArts  announced a remake of the original game, ‘The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition‘!

I bought episode 1 of ‘Tales of Monkey Island’ as WiiWare and played it a bit. Apart from the bad graphics, Telltale Games actually did a good job capturing the whole Monkey Island feeling. It’s not bad, but couldn’t catch my attention as the first game in the series did (which had rather great graphics for the time actually). Much rather I would had played the remake of ‘The Secret of Monkey Island’ but that game was only released for Windows, XBOX and iPhone (none of these platforms I own myself).

Guybrush Threepwood’s Crysis

Okay, that’s quite a lame pun. But yesterday (through Spectives.com!), I found another great Monkey Island initiative: a demo of LeChuck’s Revenge’s Tri-Island Area in Crysis’s Cryengine! Check out this impressive video and the project page with before and after screenshots of the environment of the game. I don’t know what I like more, this demo or this Monkey Island comic

This week ilse media launched its latest start-up concept: Spectives.com. Spectives.com was founded by Rutger van Waveren and soon thereafter bought by my alma mater in the internet world (I worked at ilse media back in 2003). ilse media, once famous as the company behind the first Dutch search engine ilse.nl, is one of the biggest internet companies in The Netherlands. Of course Google won the search engine wars, but ilse media is still a big player in the market with websites like nu.nl and startpagina.nl. Since then ilse media has launched a lot of different concepts but none of them have grown to be as successful as the fore-mentioned sites. Let’s hope that Spectives.com can change this.

Tweeps could get access to the beta preview by sending a DM to @spectives. After I got the general login credentials I was able to peak around in this new concept. Oh wait, let me first explain the concept! It’s rather simple (as most successful concepts, so they are on the right track): Spectives.com is a visual feed reader. Whereas other (RSS-) feed readers focus on the headlines, Spectives.com focuses on the visuals in the feed. A picture says more than a thousand words, so their aim is right.

Well, time for a wrap-up of my first beta preview. On the high note: the people behind Spectives.com managed to create a website which combines visuals from all different sources, yet deliver it in a non-overwhelming way. The problem with most visual-rich websites is the enormous clutter and user-unfriendliness that comes with it. This problem is addressed well by the easy-for-the-eye design they opted for. Another plus: being one of the first people to access the new concept, I was able to register an account and collection with only my first name

The site is extremely simple and within 30 seconds you understand the concept and are happily adding collections to your follow stream. The next step: adding your own feeds. This is where it gets messy. I started the webcomics collection, but had a hard time to find webcomic feeds that actually shared their comics in a feed. Of course, XKCD.com happily shared the comic in its atom feed, but I wasn’t successful in finding other well-known webcomic feeds. That’s the problem with launching an innovative idea like this one: if all feed readers are visually impaired, why serve visuals in your feed? Hopefully this will change as Spectives.com gets more populair.

If you would like to participate in the beta test as well, try DM’ing @spectives and beg for an invite. And share your feedback with the team. It’s a beta after all.