DutchClick

Early this morning I talked to my buddy amoebe. He was driving to work and
this time he took one of the ‘powerdrinks’ (energy drinks) I gave him last month.

While talking about the price of these drinks I did recall my talk with a guy from the HQ
of one of the supermarket chains in The Netherlands.
I send them an e-mail about the raising of the price of the powerdrinks I prefer. It went from
€ 0,37 to € 0,43 (for 250ml), I think. I didn’t understand and he had to explain that to me.

So he did! He gave me a nice practical lesson of product marketing.

The drink I liked was positioned under the (I think) market leader here in Europe “Red Bull”
and they were working on a product for the lower market at that time.
About that time I had discovered a new (cheaper) brand of ‘powerdrink’ in this chain, so this was correct.

He told me that every product has it’s place and that ‘my’ product had been put a little lower for
a while to serve both markets, high and low.
When they came up with the new brand the had to put it back to its real place and this was at this new price,
right between the cheap and and (very) expensive one (which I really don’t like).

I even believed him…

[Maybe more about powerdrinks later (health related, I think). I had some thoughts about this already, but just a minute ago I read this Red Bull-story at Wikipedia (see up). OOOOwwwwwww....]

In a traffic jam in Sunnyvale, Southern Calfiornia? I know why!

A traffic light hacker fooled around and changed the direction the lights were facing, by using a cherry picker truck.
But this is not all. This was the ‘easy’ part

He also managed to turn off lights, have them flash red in all directions. The electronic way. And he knows something about it….

I like the joke. From here in Europe I haven’t the slightest idea how big Sunnyvale is. To me it sound like one of these
senior citizen town that are populair in the US.

I really like the prank, but serious, this could become really dangerous.

I hear they started a Traffic Light Watch today. ;)

article from AZcentral

The three raiders of a McDonalds restaurant in the US were tracked because they left traces of DNA on the burgers they were eating before the raid.
They had been waiting for a good moment to hit and what do you do in that case? Right! Eat a burger…

So, if you have any plans: DON’T!

Without Jack Kilby I wouldn’t be here sitting behind a keyboard and thinking about him. Or at least it would have taken more time before the invention on the microchip would have taken place. I am not sure.

It is indeed the start of our life with computers on large personal scale.

Thanx Jack, you were a clever dude!!

The article says it all…
Thank you from Texas Instuments (the address of the memorial service is also here)
Story about Jack Kilby in Computable of october 1997 [dutch only]
Autobiography for Nobel Prize Committee

Mapping isn’t an easy job. Even for moloch Google.
We know we are on the other side of the ocean, but we were here (and there!) first… ;-) OUR (Dutch) forefathers founded New York … ;)

The amount of online maps at Google Maps have been increased with maps from all over the globe. There has been one (found) mistake:
Belgium and The Netherlands have been swapped.

No, the footprint is correct, only the label is wrong… Belgium is Netherlands and Netherlands is Belgium.

This would be nice for a few days… :)

Steve found it!
Trackback Steve
NavTeq is supplier of the Google Maps
Teleatlas is another big supplier of maps

New technology is pfun! I really love new technology.
But sometimes borders are being crossed by the possibilities of these new technologies.

A UK insurance firm tested a system that was fed by information from a GPS driven device to give information for “pay as you drive”. The system collects information on when you use the car and where. But is isn’t that difficult to extend this to how you drive, on what lane and so on.
Just a little privacy would be nice…

from ZDNet