Born On The Web

I’m explaining this to a lot of people recently so I guess it was time to make a blogpost about it.

I manage a few domains, mostly for myself, but also for a couple of friends. I do this because my hosting packet is pretty extensive, it doesn’t cost me more if I add extra domains to  it.

The only thing I found that was a pain, was managing dozens of emails for each domain. Most hosted mailboxes get pretty spammy after a while and have a limited storage. So for me, google for domains really came as a solution, and now I use it almost exclusively for handling my emails. Here are a few reasons why :

• It provides unlimited storage , well not unlimited, but I haven’t met anybody who came close to the limit.
• It has a nice and lightning fast interface (a real upgrade for users who are used to work with squirrel mail)
• It supports imap and pop3 access
• It’s free
• It can be accessed on a mobile phone.(via web or a mobile tool)
• Easy to use control panel to create new users, you can create extra administrators, administrators can create aliases for email addresses. (so most of my friends can manage their emails themselves)
• Easy to create mailing lists
• Possibility to use more than only email: docs, chat, sites, …

However changing email provider without any problems is considered impossible. Since I’ve done it a few times now, I think I’ve found the best way to do it. Without loosing any mails.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yipikajee!

The written part of my final thesis is finally finished. Just like Jesse I spent the past four years studying Communication & Multimedia Design in Genk, Belgium.

I’m heavily interested in rich media user experiences and decided that it was a research subject I wanted to explore further. The thesis examines the role of interface metaphor in rich media web experiences.
Much research has already been conducted on interface metaphor in the light of usability. I tried to broaden these views and place interface metaphor in the domain of experience design.
download thesis (pdf, 1 MB)

The presentations of the final thesisses are September 4th and 5th in the Media & Design Academy in Genk. Feel free to join us.

This week was a great week. It was extremely busy, I had my thesis presentation on Thursday. I was very happy with the experts that were in the jury. They were a good representation of the web and marketing landscape in Belgium. I don’t think I was nervous, but there was a little pressure to explain everything really clear in my presentation. You can find the presentation online. Like usual I make very minimal slides, just one or two keywords on a slide. So without me chattering, you probably won’t understand what the slides mean.
Friday I got the news I passed for my thesis + project, so this was good news. Tomorrow, Monday, I’ll know my exact grades.

Friday I was in the newspaper “Het Belang van Limburg” because I was nominated for a prize called Wanatoe (article, in Dutch). Wanatoe is a prize organized by the same newspaper and is for graduate students, for their final thesis project. All last year students from the “KHLIM” and “PHL” school could participate. I was a bit surprised I was nominated and very glad the jury saw some potential in my project.

Reading your own interview is kinda strange. I’m not sure the interview was a good representation of the person that I am. I don’t like to be called a web designer, but I understand that this is term everyone knows, so it is logical that a mainstream medium like a newspaper likes to use this term.

Yesterday evening I went to the official awards ceremony of Wanatoe. And completely unexpected I got a prize !? I was already pretty surprised to be nominated and now I have the chance to work further on my project in a very good environment. I’ll get coached for over one year by the people of “Z33″ and “platform vormgeving limburg”. The first prize, so the actual Wanatoe prize, went to Heidi Ector. She made a kind of dance choreography, so something very different from my project. I hope I get the chance to check out what she made. It seems pretty cool. Just like the other nominations.

This all came very unexpected but I’m very glad the jury saw the potential of the new media in my project and acknowledged it. I’m getting pretty excited what the rest of the year will bring.

I saw back a friend I met in Africa Friday. All of a sudden he turn up on our traditional after school year BBQ, very unexpected but extremely nice to see him again. Welcome to Belgium Patson.

Next week will be very different. Wednesday night I leave for Rock Werchter, it will feel good to have a no-computer-week. I’ll prove to you all, I don’t have problems going trough the days without a computer or the internet. At least as long if there is beer, women and rock’n roll. :)

Well I’m a bit embarrassed I didn’t really got a decent “thank you” in my paper. I should have noted my friends explicitly. But the only thing I could think about was getting the damn paper printed.

When browsing to the papers of my friends Johan and Lev I found following lines in the acknowledgments:

• Alle bewoners van Berebroek studentenhome met in het bijzonder de heer Van Hove en
  de heer Wynants.
• Lev en Jesse voor hun vriendschap, optimisme, humor, werklust, spontaniteit en de zotte
  stoten,…

Well they should be thanked properly, so here is the official thank you specially for my friends at C-MD:

Bedankt beste bazekes,

Bedankt!!

With the upward spiral of syndicated content in mind, I can’t understand bloggers / news platforms who only publish a small abstract from their blogpost into their feed.

The whole syndication story gets absurd when you only put the first 3 sentences of your blogpost into the feed. I understand you like people to see your nice site design and your google ads, but I believe the value of your content goes down if you only publish an abstract. Look at feedburner or other services and put the ads in your feed.

Ok, half-bred feeds still notify me when you have posted something new, but what if you wrote something really cool that I want to save in my feed reader: impossible. The reason for you to provide a feed has to be the user. You want to make your content as available as possible for anyone, don’t degrade your feed to a promotion tool for your site. It’s much more than that. For your readers your feed is probably the most important part of your site.

Users who like your design, will still choose to go to your site to read your content, but let the user decide how to interact with your content.

Clo hitted me with a stick. I’m pretty honoured to get hit with a stick by the BBM, which stands for the Belgian Blogging Momma!
So momma here you go … ;)

One year ago, 21 years old
I was following the module infotainment in my third year C-MD. We had to communicate very difficult information on a simple and entertaining way. We worked in a team of 7 persons (Johan – Hoi Yan – Daniël – Lev and Frits as freelance consultant). Like always we saw us project very ambitious, maybe a bit too ambitious. Me and Lev were the Flash developers in our team. I think I never flashed that much as last year. Well it ended in an online game with a lot of video. When I look back at it a year later, I’m still pleased with the way we integrated the video and how we bring information to the viewer on the other panels.

5 years ago, 17 years old
I was already into web developing. When I started flash really was “the shizzle”. Long flash intros, the skip intro button. I had to be part of it, I probably had my part. I could make websites in flash, but never heard of html :p . Because I eventually needed to publish the intros I had to learn some HTML.
I had my first community named “forumfun” based on a phpBB RC1 forum. We had a sponsored hosting and the board was actually pretty popular, we almost had like 100 members and like 30 really active members. It shut down because our sponsor cancelled our PHP – Mysql hosting. It was hosted by siteraiders who have a site that is soo old and soo flash that its getting cool again. :p

10 years ago
In 1996 I was almost 12 years old and ready for the big jump to high school. We shared a dial-up internet connection with a friend. Pretty illegal huh ! The company who provided us the lightning fast 33.6 kbps internet connection called Tornado. Tornado later became Ping, where we got an official login and payed around 12.000 BEF (300 EUR) a year + the always-frightning telephone bill, crazy internet times. Ping became Planet Internet and Planet Internet became Scarlet and we’re still customer, we still have the same internet login and password for our internet connection. They should reward faithfull customers.
I remember my sister was a IRC fanatic, #belgium on undernet (not sure of the network). So she actually got me hooked to the net. Back then, almost nobody of my friends had the internet. Some didn’t even knew what it was, so you see how fast it got adopted. I think I can say that I grew up with the internet, for some reason it was always there.

I will pass the stick to my friends and talented collegues Hoi Yan, Lev and Frits. Next year when we’re graduated we’re not going to see each other that much, so I need to stimulate them to seriously start blogging. I want a decent RSS feed to subscribe to.

If we, Belgians, should be happy with one thing, it’s definatelly our summer music festivals. The line-ups are always very impressing, the atmosphere and the surroundings are so cool. Werchter is just 20 km from home, but Rock Werchter always feels like going on holiday.

I’m just checking out this years’ line-up and it’s looking very promising. I think it going to be better than last year. There are a few bands I really want to see, I tried to give you an impression by linking to some live videos, quality isn’t always good:

• Manu Chao: I saw them in 2001 in Werchter, they were absolutely incredible ! One of the best shows I saw live ever. Even if you don’t like their music, you will find their show great. Only for this band I will pay my ticket. Live videos : 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 (this last song is great)
• Roger Sanchez: Simple, if you want to party he is your man ! Also saw him in 2001 on Werchter. A memorable moment. Live video : 1
• Soulwax Nite versions: We know them all from soulwax and 2 many dj’s , it is always a great show when they’re playing. I saw them in this concept last year on Pukkelpop. Live video : 1 – NY excuse – E-talking
• Vitalic: If you have to much energy, this guy can help you. He always takes his crowd to a higher level and never fails, I experienced this last year at pukkelpop and I love techno. Live video: 1 – Poney Part 1 (very cool clip)
• Mogwai : I’m a fan of these guys. This is my kind of music, I never saw them live so I’m curious how they going to bring their music. Live videos : 1 – 2 – video clips on their official site
• Arctic Monkeys: the next hype … Live video: 1 – 2

I’m probably going to see others like deus, eels, … but the above are already on my schedule.

I’m astound by the amount of video data available on YouTube, just try searching for your favourite band.

In my daily reddit check, I found a great article. The author wrote down the same thing I experienced in november 2004 when I was in South Africa.

As often in SA we were in the middle of nowhere, just relaxin’, fishing, watching animals, eating, … We stayed a weekend at a hunting ranch in Rustewinter, about 50 km outside pretoria. No no, not for hunting, just for heaving fun. Closeby there was somekind of town, it was actually more a collection of a few shacks. A friend of us worked sometimes with the people that lived there. We went for a drink in the local “shebeen“. A shebeen is nothing more then a small shack where they sell beer. There were like 20 people sitting outside in a circle, we just joined the circle and ordered a beer. I’ll never forget you had to buy the beer in a 1 litre bottle, so we got drunk in no time. After my first bottle of “black label” under the afternoon sun, I felt already dizzy drunk but it felt great:

I spotted almost only men in our cosy circle, there was one elder women. She was definatelly the village oldest and was constantly drunk as hell. She had a small plastic cup and everyone who opened a bottle needed to give her a sip. That was the courtesy of the shebeen. I still remember she was constantly talking to us in a very strange language we couldn’t understand. But she seemed very friendly so I tried to talk to her, but I’m not sure she understood any word of my english. With the younger men we talked about a lot of things, we asked if they solded sigarettes and from the moment we said the word ’sigarettes’. We saw a man rushing away to the neighbour village to get us some sigarettes, about half an hour later we got our sigarettes! My friends called it the bush radio. Before we got our sigarettes, our shebeen friends helped us out with rolling some “tobacco” (?) in newspaper paper. I remember a big guy lighting the funny sigarette and passing it to us, it tasted like BBQ.

I think we sat there the whole afternoon, just doing nothing besides drinking beer and it was so fun. I think it was one of the best experiences I had in SA. Just talking, making jokes and doing nothing ! I wish we had bars like that in Europe… Those people have almost nothing, no money, no tv, no cellphone, no work. They don’t complain and keep smiling, they have beer and eachother, that helps them trough the day. I wouldn’t like to be in there place, but if I was, I would do exactly the same…

The article made me very nostalgic …

I’m a Benevolent Director, Yeah ! :p . Well not everything is correct but the most of it seems true.

Reading this article makes me wonder where I’ll be next year? I have to admit, graduating frightens me a bit. It’s exciting that things will change after 4 years, but what to do, where to go, I’m not sure yet… I’d love to see the world like every dreaming, adventurous guy…

How do(did) you handle(d) it? Straight from student to carreer?