Patrick de Laive

I just got of the phone with Remco Tomesen of emerce. It was a 40 minute interview about the launch of Fleck. 40 minutes at a rate of 2 EURO per minute is like 100 bucks (dollars) for the phone call.

I’m not sure if this is my most expensive phone call ever, but it will for sure be in the Top 5! At least its my most expensive interview:)
I hope it’ll be worth my Benny!

My mobile phone refuses to mail, so no pictures here. But we’ve changed sceneries. We left the suite 804 in Amsterdam and opened up our computers at 43 West and 32nd street (at the corner of Broadway) in a coffee bar next to our hotel.
We got ourselves a 25 dollar internet connection and took over the place with computers, camera’s, phones and iPods sucking electricity out of the wall.
Arjen got really sick this morning. I hope he will be able to make it to the party tonight.

I’m going to buy some permanent markers and grab a burger (rumor goes that Americans know how to make good burgers I’m gonna find out in a minute)

It seems that Xing (formerly knows as Open BC) is pulling off an IPO on the German stock market!
On their site they announced a ‘Borsengange’ and as far as I know that means IPO in German.
They reported a 2.8 million dollar revenue in the first quarter of this year.

I personally don’t use Open BC (although I have an account) and are more in love with the US version of online networking of Reid Hofmann: LinkedIn (I tipped them also in my FIVE must haves -in dutch-).

Well I think I have to congratulate Bob Stumpel and Jan Karel Klein……

A while ago I wrote a post about why Vodafone should buy ABN AMRO
It says:

How do you pay for a Mars-bar, or your coffee at Star Bucks, your new fake la fraise tees from the market, the parking lot, etc. ? Well, in most cases you’d probably answer or a. cash or b. credit card. But what to think of C. Your Mobile phone!

The news got out yesterday that Rabobank just announced to launch a new Telecom company that enables payments by telephone just as easy as with your ATM- or Credit card.

I guess it was a pretty good guess :

It would make sense if your telephone bill is incorporated into your bank account. The costs of mobile payment would decrease to virtually zero and before you know it you’re paying everywhere with your Nokia F2.0. One way this could be done is if a Bank starts his own Telco (or vica versa), another way is if a Bank and a Telco merger (or one acquires the other).

They have arrived!

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

It was a real hasle, but finally the white suits have arrived! Thanks to a die-hard customer of the Otto, we were able to order the suits just in time. (thanks Mai).

Hope they fit

The first fleck interview

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

Boris, Arjen and I are in a bar in Amsterdam and we’re having our first interview for fleck. Erwin van der Zande is editor of Bright and he got the first view on fleck.

He cannot write about it until the 17th of November, so he still got a week to think .

Erwin looks happy! So far, so good

For the TechCrunch party I ordered a very nice white suit at Otto.nl (with the intention to order 4 suits in total for the Fleck Launch). Otto is an online store where you can buy a lot of stuff and among it this nice Berto Lucci Suit! (White size 98).
They deliver within 10 days (if its your first order). But as always when you really need something, the shit hit the van. After 5 days I called Otto to ask about the status of my new Fleck Suit. They told me that my address was not correct so they could not deliver (As if I wouldn’t know my correct address!!!). Of course the address was correct but I asked to deliver it at the Fleck office, as I’m here day and night. “AHA!”, the lady told me, “we don’t deliver at offices”. That is pretty stupid, right, but no worries We still had 15 days until take off, so I gave her my home address.
Today I called again to check if everything was OK.

Guess what!! They don’t deliver to home addresses where multiple people live!
So I asked if she could switch the address (keep the same order) into Boris’ address. That was possible but it would take another 10 days to deliver.
They don’t take credit card payments, iDeal, Paypal, or any other online payment system!!! And they call themselves an internet warehouse?

So, if anyone out there is customer at Otto, please order my suit (you’ll have it within 1 day). Of course I’ll pay back the whole 48,99 euro including transport costs, but you’ll get a free Fleck Gold account as well (and I owe you one).
All others that have their own suit company and want to help us out, your more than welcome!

The Otto had a great flat screen incident last week. In the Fleck office this is already called the White Suit incident

Today the Fleck extension for firefox is ready. You can install it in Firefox 1.5 and 2.0. But I have to tell you that you still have to wait for 10 days until you can actually do something with it. The extension you can download is a test for us if everything is working ok.

Once we will put the beta service live you don’t have to download it again, it just works.

So if you have 10 seconds, get Fleck here

thanks!

This is very cool! Tomorrow it is Museum night in Amsterdam. Over 40 Museums are open for business at night and this time it is not business as usual, it is Art, Music, DJ’s, Food, Drinks, a lot of cool stuff everywhere in Amsterdam.

These guys really did a good job, their website is awesome. Check it out on N8

Sorry Yuha, I didn’t have time to make my N8 top 5.

I haven’t been able to post a lot this week. We were all working very hard (late hours). But, we’re progressing! I can’t wait to show Fleck to you!