Patrick de Laive

I tried to meet all of them for some years already, but for one reason or the other they are never where I am, not even in my favorite coffee bar!
But, my luck might be changing!! I got an invitation for the DLD conference (Digital Life Design) in Munich this weekend. And guess who will be there as well…..?

Good guess!

Unfortunately I’ll miss the performance of Nicolas Negroponte because the cheapest airline I could find only goes once a day at 16:20 hrs.

I have some ideas for some cool podcasts live from the conference, so it is time to get myself an audio recording device. The problem is that my birthday is just after the conference (the 24th) and I can’t afford one at the moment…
So the question is… Who is willing to lend me (or even better buy me) an audio recording device this weekend?
How about this… if you can lend/buy me the device I’ll make each one of them say your (company) name

I’m pretty exited to go and I’m looking forward to meet up with Tariq.

It’s official!

The Next Web Conference will be held on the first of June in Amsterdam.

The Next Web is for technology entrepreneurs, VC’s, industry journalists, influential bloggers, Top Notch developers, forward thinking CEO’s and though leaders only.

At the beginning of February we will open up registration.

Yesterday we reloaded Macrumors 895 times within the hour to stay up to date on the announcements of Steve Jobs during the MacWorld Keynote 2007. It was a great experience, although there was no live stream we we’re very happy with our page every five seconds strategy to get up to the second information on what Steve was saying.

Steve rose in my top ten heroes with ease to the second place (after Johan Cruyff). Wow what is he good at that stuff!

Next to the five second reload strategy we opened up a real time connection with Yahoo finance to check the stock quotes of Apple, RIMM (creator of blackberry), and Palm. It was amazing to see how fast the information was incorporated in the stock prices of Apple and Rimm (Palm followed a little later).
Check out the three graphs for the different stocks. (first is Apple, second RIMM, third Palm)



The Keynote begun 15 minutes late at 12:45 pm Just before the start people were dropping Apple stock, probably because they were afraid that Steve couldn’t live up to the high expectations. RIMM investors were already having a hard time, because rumors of a blackberry killer spread throughout the internet. So the tendens of RIMM was downwards as of the opening.

12:45pm Jobs opens the Keynote stating that: “Today we’re going to make history together”
Apple jumps 2.5% immediately | RIMM falls 3 dollars in a split second (about 2.5%) to 135 dollar | PALM investors are still sleeping.

12:47 – 01:10pm Jobs introduced Apple TV. Nothing to be really exited about.
Apple stays around $88 | RIMM feww… its only TV nothing to be worried about. stays at $135 | PALM “huh, is Steve Jobs doing a Keynote?” no movement there.

01:11pm Jobs announced 3 new revolutionary products:

“The first is a Widescreen iPod with touch controls! (big applause)! The second is a revolutionary Mobile Phone (Crowd get wild!!!) The third is a Breakthrough Internet Communications device (small applause)! An iPod, a phone, and a internet communicator… An iPod, a phone, are you getting it? These are NOT 3 different devices this is ONE device and we are calling it iPhone (Standing Ovation)! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”

Apple ‘no stocks for sale, it’s a buyers market’ Boom up two dollars! | RIMM with the word Mobile phone there was no more support at 135, the trend was down. Down boy down | PALM ‘oh my god JObs just blown us away, we can pack our bags’ SEEELLLLLL!

01:38pm Finally Jobs gives us the prices! $499 for 4GB and $599 for an 8GB iPhone in combination with a two year subscription with Cingular!
Apple: KABOOM this will really boost revenues! up 8.3%! | RIMM and PALM keep on sinking to the bottom (respectively minus 7.8 and minus 5.7 percent off their market cap.)

02:00pm No more news, the show is over. Investors calming down and settling the prices.

At the end of the day Apple gained over 6.1 Billion in market cap. RIMM lost 2 billion and Palm only lost 800 million of their total market cap of 1.42 billion!

So it would have been a nice strategy to go long in Apple and short in RIMM and PALM, right?

See also:
Tracking 2007 Macworld Keynote and stock price AAPL
Engadget

OK lets start with a short story:
It started in Paris, during LeWeb3 conference.
During the Conference some politicians came by to tell absolutely nothing and attendees (a lot were -influential- bloggers) were obviously irritated (check also these posts) Then the second wave of posts emerged, feeded by a post from Sam Sethi (TechCrunch UK) who was a partner of the conference. It became really interesting when Loic LeMeur himself got into the conversation by calling Sam an “asshole” (His comment is deleted).
The whole blogosphere seemed to fall over each other posting stuff about Loic LeMeurs comment and then last night Sam was fired from the Techcrunch network. Mike Arrington explained why. The last word hasn’t been said about this (see here, here, here)

Fortunately, you can buy your Bumpersticker and T-shirts that wraps this whole story up

I arrived yesterday at about 6 o’clock in the evening at Le Web 3 in Paris. When I entered the main stage I noticed two things: 1. Wow, impressive… what a big room. 2. Hey, nobody pays attentions and everybody is just checking their mail, chat with their friends and call with their wives!
LeWeb 3 is a two day web conference in Paris. This year over a 1000 people attend, this is obvious a great achievement for the organizers. But what’s important is if its is an inspiring conference.
From the organization point of view it is very well organized, but I think leweb3 is failing on the inspiration point. There are to many panels, talking about crap and nothing and more of the same non inspiring stuff. The real internet vibe is missing. And as LeWeb turned into a kind of Politic stage where Ffrench candidates are telling us: “The web is great, thank you. The web is great for you, for us and for mankind! ” I almost threw up! Who is this nono, trying to get some attention, and press to win some votes by talking only in French ON AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE!! Go away!!

For me this is probably the last leWeb I’ll visit as I miss half of the content because I don’t speak french.

The Startup room is a lot more fun and has a good vibe. Boris pitched fleck there and he did it with flair and I think he got the attention of the judges, so in 10 minutes we’ll know if he can enter the main stage..

David Weinberger was the first keynote speaker who really told something interesting and inspiring. He’s a great speaker with a vision and he was the only one not talking about how great his company is, bla bla (he’s a writer). Thanks David! Hope to see you in Amsterdam.

This is the way a Dutch company launched a new service for homeowners who do not want to move (hmmm… that is not the best example of a: “why didn’t I think of this!” story)

Compare it with Zillow. Zillow is already great. They launched today a similar feature as the Dutch website, but the difference is that Zillow uses its ‘Make me move’ feature as a feature and the Dutch version think it is a whole new company.

My guess for woningpeiler is that is will not receive more than 10 real requests.

Next Friday (December the 1st) it is time for Bright Live. It’s a digital lifestyle event where a mixture of design and cutting edge technology is presented. I hope it will be the Dutch answer to NextFest!
Boris and I will be present to show Fleck.

We also host our first FUBB party! (check also upcoming)

It will be fun and your invited.

Tickets for Bright live are 15 euro and available on their website

It’s really hectic at the improvised Fleck office at 32nd street and Broadway. After the party I’ve been mailing almost all night long, to finally waking up with my head on my keyboard and an open email to my girlfriend looking something like this:

Hi amorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeihujjjjjkkkkkk kkkkkkhdfcccokoooooooooooooooodjjnnnnnnnnnffn

My powerbook was soaking wet (When I’m really tired I drool, sorry). Then at 6:15 one of our investors called, so I was awake instantly .

A lot of stories are written about Fleck. Check out the Techcrunch review with the great headline: Fleck offres zero friction web annotation

For my Dutch readers check out my comments on the Emerce post

It’s a great, but very long day. It’s time for my daily burger!

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)