This article is better explained on my new joined entrepreneur blog: digigen.nl

Ok I think I will blog my idea’s more openly. Being afraid that someone might steal it is just stupid, for several reasons. As Clive Thompson correctly points out in the latest Wired businesses are starting to realize the importance of getting naked. Sharing the secrets, mistakes and hardships. Also in the great manifest Getting Real there is this simple equation:

idea can be:

• -10 really dumb
• 1 stupid
• 5 ok
• 10 smart
• 20 excellent

execution can be:

• 1 almost nothing
• 10 bad
• 1000 ok
• 10000 good
• 10000000 excellent

If you multiply these two variables, you will get the amount of cash you earn (in euro’s I recommend).

Confabio.com

This idea is not a 20, but it could be at least a 5. It happened while I was doing two things:

• communicating a lot overseas, for work and private matters
• playing around with my hot sexy black macbook (named burakubuuku) and its cool built-in webcam
• playing around with Adobe flex

This let me to make a little website that does the following:

• Show your head on the screen
• Recording your nasty head and broadcasting it to a Red5 server
• Showing your head again by streaming that same broadcast

Confabio will be as simple as possible. First it was intended to be an arty farty project, but I think it can actually be useful. When a person goes to confabio.com he will see his own video. When another internet user opens confabio.com a second video-stream will be displayed, a third, fourth and so on. Of course, the more people join, the smaller the screens become.

I haven’t really looked at so-called competitors yet and I don’t intend to. The only features I’m willing to add is:

• displaying your location discretely under your video-stream
• having tags/channels/rooms: confabio.com/dominiek_room, confabio.com/cooking

Techniques

Mochiron I will use RubyOnRails, but most of the stuff I will need to use flash for.

• RubyOnRails will facilitate metadata to swf: geo-location information, IP
• RubyOnRails will use the weborb plugin to facilitate serverside data facilities for the swf app
• Adobe Flex will be used to compile .swf files (using .as, .mxml and .css files)
• Red5 is a Java server that facilitates video play/publish streams (Note: I really hate this piece of software because it solves a solution and not a problem, checkout these 5 pages hello world)
• Adobe Flash Player > 8 is needed in order to access microphone and webcam

Why will Confabio.com work?

I don’t know and I shouldn’t care. Primary focus should be: getting this working and actually start using it. The factors that could make the execution a success:

• Simplicity, this is relatively not-complex as long as we don’t add too much features
• the need to use it, I really need a tool like this so I will start using my own product

Why will Confabio.com not work?

There is no business-model yet, and I think a nice extra in this project will be a bandwidth monitor to project expenses. Also, we need a good design and perhaps a better name.

de Europa Files

Ver achter Geneve, ver ver achter Geneve, daar begint de Rhone. Dankzij ExxonMobile, begint deze rivier dit jaar iets hoger en vroeger dan normaal. Het begint daar waar je van frankrijk naar zwitserland en italie kan skien. Daar waar mijn vader zaterdag op zn snufferd ging omdat er geen sneeuw meer lag. De rivier dat als een onschuldig beekje begint wordt al iets groter bij het plaatsje Chamonix. In Chamonix wordt de beek breder door het smeltwater van de Mer de Glace, de ijszee. Athans, wat daar nog van over is.

Chamonix, daar waar alleen het mannelijke gezelschap de prijslijst krijgt. Chamonix, daar waar de donkere allochtoon nog schoonmaakt. Desondanks de aggresieve verkoop van Zwitsers uurwerk loopt de tijd achter. Toch forceert het toerisme enige vernieuwing. 2x per jaar rijdt de Franse shinkansen, de TGV, naar Chamonix. Daar stappen dan allemaal rijke Fransen uit, de Britten reizen echter met de easy-bus.

Als je de beek verder volgt, dan kom je bij de grote niet-Europese stad Geneve. In deze stad versmelt je met Italie, Frankrijk, Zwitserland, het Socialisme en het Capitalisme. De vele privejets verraden een overwinning van het laatste.

de Europa Files

Aaaah even lekker zitten. Even de tanden op elkaar in het begin, maar daar zit ik dan eindelijk. Nog 10 uur, 10 uur ?! Dit keer heb ik een directe vlucht met KLM, lekker snel. Hoewel, eerlijk gezegt, ik had ook wel een langere vlucht willen hebben. Ik heb nu immers eindelijk tijd om te lezen en vrij na te denken. Zoiets als die ouderwetse 4-daagse vluchten van Amsterdam naar Jakarta lijkt me wel iets.

Op mijn vorige Japan vluchten met overstap was het heel anders, langer en meer Japanners. Misschien is er toch nog een soort van Dejima/VoC band te herkennen? Ik kan hier ook gewoon Nederlands praten met de stewardess. Ach ja, de stewardess, wat een bitch is dat zeg! Athans, dat was mijn eerste Japans-verwaande indruk. Toen ze de bagage van een kortbenige klant in het rek duwde snouwde ze: “Can’t you help? I have only one leg you know?!” (ze stond op 1 been). Na het opstijgen kregen we warme doekjes van Rituals. Rituals, dat hippe Nederlandse zeep bedrijf (die overigens een goede marketing-relatie heeft met KLM). Here’s a towel, hot towel, anyone hot towel? (uhoh, daar komt ze) plof “Een Lappie!” EEN LAPPIE! Haha! Wat gebeurd hier? waarom krijg ik een lappie dan? Zie ik er zo Amsterdams uit? Waarschijnlijk is mijn Engels accent net zo Amsterdams als het Rotterdamse Engels van de piloot.

Een uur vliegtuig later, ja hoor, ik zit weer achter een TFT. Drankjes worden uitgedeeld. Shit, zoveel keus, wat zal ik nemen? “Bitter lemon, heeft u dat?” “Nee, tonic heb ik wel.” . Een suggestie?, een iniatief, iets wat erg raar is voor Tokio-aanse maatstaven. Ik was helemaal verbaasd toen mevrouw stewardess mij vroeg of ik aan het werk was en vervolgens een heel gesprek aanpapte. Wat, geen script? Geen automatisch dankuwel? Een menselijk gesprek!

This weekend my dad made a stopover in Tokyo for two days. Timing was great, because this week is the world famous cherry blossom season here. The cherry blossom season comes with a typical Japanese tradition: get drunk and eat under the pink flowers.

I had to confess to my dad that that’s basically what we do here in Tokyo, if we’re not working, we drink and eat, there’s not much more to do here.

Ofcourse I try to fill up all that little non-working time with Japanese learning and other cultural activities. But here in Edo nowadays, consuming is pretty much equal to culture, isn’t it?

My dad was – like any other ‘Temporary Visitor’ – amazed by all the capital spend on shopping and dining facilities and the Japanese’s complete inability to speak English. Of course this gave me the opportunity to impress him with my ‘two beers please’ Japanese!

After an awesome weekend and talking a good amount of Dutch again this weekend I celebrated my Dutch pride by cooking a traditional Dutch dish called Hutspot, here’s my recipe on OpenSourceFood

Update: Haha, by coincidence I stumpled upon these two blogs about living in Japan and thus about food/drinking: yongfook.com and gajintonic. Quote of the latter:

Japan is a pisshead’s paradise! It’s a land of happy drunks, relaxed alcohol laws, and hilarious novelty bars which are open all night. arrived in Japan expecting a spiritually-enriching cultural experience. Five years later, all I have is a truckload of dodgy drinking stories…

First of all, I bought a Macbook too, finally. I’ve been wanting to switch for a while now, but for some rational reasons I didn’t. The strange thing about my purchase is that it’s a pure luxury item for me. I have a good small fast Dell laptop, which I will also continue to use.

As a software engineer and geek I live in an abundance of gadgets and technology. After reading this book by Dan Pink, I’ve started to become aware of the trend of non-rational consumer behaviour.

Why did I want this Macbook? Because I like the product. Like? Yes, attraction, something you can not rationally define. Also, I like how it limits my choice, less worries.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not really attracted to the material object. Infact, I’m rather an anti-materialist. They’re tools that I use and abuse. Karim Rashid, a famous designer, conveys it in a much nicer way: Consume experiences, not things.

In the new age – named wisdom age by some people , conceptual age by Dan Pink – non-rational behaviour will become increasingly important. As a result design, opinion and communication will become more important (the first and latter can be observed in the current Web 2.0 boom too I think).

Also, when I relate this to Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity , this makes sense. If current technological trends continue and nanotechnology will be fully realized, we will live in a world where material is no different than information. With current information-communication trends, the information will be easily available. Wouldn’t this be a world where creativity and human ingenuity is the most important?

This week I discovered that the Sense in Sense and Simplicity can have a deeper meaning for Technology.