The great thing about analogies is that when you place a certain situation into another context or circomstances it often helps to make things understandable. This video is doing a great job at that, showing something that is very common between clients and agencies today into a fresh context… have fun ;)

Found this video via Druppels on Facebook – I love stuff like this. It’s a concept created by Multitouch Barcelona and you simply cannot not like this… see for yourself:

One of the perks of being unemployed is that you actually have time for a few things that you didn`t really have time for before… like reading books for instance, so that`s what I`m doing… well one of the things I`m doing – looking for work is another one ;) One book I read a couple of days ago was Hugh MacLeod`s upcoming “Ignore Everybody” of which I had received an advance copy thanks to Hugh and the fine people at Penguin Group.

Long time ago – while reading something on Hugh`s blog – I stumbled onto a series of posts/writings that were all tagged with “How to be creative”. It was a good read, so finding out it the content was also available on a free PDF on changethis.com made it even better. More than 1 million downloads don`t lie of course, I still have a printed copy of that PDF right here. When Hugh mentioned he got a book deal on this which involved writing some extra chapters I was a bit sceptical though. I totally loved the series but all of that stuff had come about quite organically, there`s a difference when you write things when you think about them basically whenever you feel like it… or when you have to write chapters for a book. Hugh proved me wrong about being sceptical, there`s now way you could tell which chapters where there first or which ones are new, the book is rock solid. It`s an easy read in the typical style of Hugh MacLeod – unique, smart and funny – and with a good dose of cartoons in them. My favorite one in the book? Especially while jobhunting… is this one (from 2006):

So pre-order the book now, you won`t regret.

Yes you`re reading it right, as of May 5th I am no longer working at Microsoft. Didn`t see that one coming? Neither did I. As part of the latest round of global lay-offs in which probably some 3000 jobs were lost, I also was told my job was made redundant. So here I am at home thinking about what I`m going to do next. Does that mean I`ll going all Mac etc all of a sudden is what people ask me most, next to the question about what plans are for the future. It`s too soon to tell what the future will bring but I have no grudge against Microsoft so the answer is no I don`t intend to change my opininion on what I`ve been doing the last few years. I always enjoyed working here there and especially my last job felt like a good bet for the future… I still think it is but probably it was just too soon.

Next up? Some time off, talk to people about possible opportunities, write that paper I had been thinking about for a long time and probably blog a bit more again. I sure have the time now. And train a bit more to be able to get up that Mont Ventoux with my racebike in August, all on the plan. In the jobhunt I`m pretty open about what and where that can be right now – full time or project-based, employee or independent, Belgium or elsewhere. Time will tell. In case you think you have or know something for me, feel free to let me know in the comments or via email (kris@crossthebreeze.com) or just help me spread the word that I`m jobhunting by a simple Retweet or something similar. Thanks in advance.

Probably some more updates on all this soon, the jobhunt starts now. Wish me luck ;) Here is more about me on LinkedIn in case you want to know more.

Rant alert. I got myself a new racebike about 2-3 weeks ago and also received a Garmin Edge 605 bike GPS for my birthday a few days later. Started using both straight away… well kinda. I am a bit of a web & gadget addict (I am sure you had that one figured out by now) and can only say that it has been a very long time since I last had a user experience so awful as the one with my Garmin Edge.

As usual I started using the device without reading any of the documentation and obviously Garmin is not to blame here, it’s just how we roll :). It didn’t take long before I did look into the user guides as I couldn’t quite figure out some of the main features. It took me a while to find the Garmin Training Center software, which doesn’t come with the device but is offered as a download via the user guide, you do need it though when you want to look at the data you gathered while cycling with the GPS tracker on. Later on I also found out about Garmin Connect, which is the ‘old’ Motionbased web service. Not all very obvious either because when you sign up to Garmin Connect you land on My Garmin where all immediate links to Connect are hard to be found… you just wonder that’s all there is to it at first.

The odd thing is that Garmin Training Center and Garmin Connect are not connected. They pretty much do the same thing – one on the PC, the other online – but you got to upload data separately, it uses other user accounts, … I guess Garmin hasn’t heard of Software+Services just yet. Very unfortunate. One of the things I also wanted to use is RouteYou (or similar services) where you can download and share tracks from and with other users. Downloading tracks to your device is easy, although can be improved quite a bit. You can download in several formats (GPX, CRS, TCX, …) but it’s not clear which one you’re best off downloading. Garmin also offers a Communicator website plugin that transfers the track straight to the GPS device… but since it always used the same name (garmin.gpx) you can only use that for one track at a time… silly I’ll tell you. Uploading tracks that you’ve done to the site is even more difficult. Both Garmin Training Center as Garmin Connect only allow to export tracks in the TCX (Training Center) format… but RouteYou and others need the GPX file to upload. So you need a TCX to GPX converter after exporting a track before you can upload it to share with others… not sure if I want to go through all those efforts. Garmin Connect allows for one-click easy sharing of tracks though… on Digg and Facebook, how useless is that.

Yes I’m frustrated. And I haven’t even started talking about the questions I still have on the UI of the device itself, or on Mapsource (the additional software to create routes), … Hopefully I’ll find out at some point, feel free to point me in the right direction. For now I can just repeat what I said before, Garmin you got some work cut out for you because the UX of your devices and software just sux.

I have to say, if I got to name what I like to do most in my job at Microsoft then it is stuff like this. Yesterday we had a meetup at the Microsoft office in Athens to with Greek bloggers to talk about the upcoming release of MSN.GR. Typically we will talk a bit about what it is that we have been working on over the last few weeks and months to then open it up the a discussion about what people think about it, what they like, what they don’t like or what might be missing in their opinion etc.

And I can hear you say ‘portals are dead’ and ‘why do we need another portal’ but I genuinely believe there is a place and an audience for sites like this, and I also believe that with this concept of the more ‘social portal’ that we try to build (where there is a deep integration between the MSN content and the Windows Live sharing and communication services) we have a product that differentiates from the competition as well.

Obviously the part that interests me most of all is the discussion piece after showing the product. I quite enjoyed the discussion and I think some valid points were raised, all making for a pretty engaging conversation.

If there’s one thing that I didn’t like about this then it is the fact that I took quite a bit more photos than I uploaded to the Flickr set, but let’s just say my already poor photographic skills seemed to have let me down a bit yesterday ;) Oh and yeah, both Stefanos and myself tried to arrange for a Tweetup later that night but we didn’t get to eventually. Nevertheless, great time in Athens, hope I can be back soon. Thanks all for joining us – to be continued.

Keeping a little tradition going here …

Kudos to Evan for the great photo btw.

Who says you cannot do funky advertising on billboards anymore. You gotta love stuff like this, I know I do :)

Via Absoluut Matth

Traditional TV to be correct. Over the last few weeks and months we have been studying a number of European statistics coming from our own services as well as external data and that resulted in some interesting findings, one of which that says that by June 2010 people on average will spend more time online than watching traditional television. Here’s a graph with several possible scenarios:

I wasn’t involved in the project (at least not in the research part) but did get an early view at the data which led me to create this presentation that offer a quick look at some key stats. The full report is available as PDF and can be downloaded from Scribd right here.

Amongst these statistics you will learn that 50% of all Europeans are now connected to the internet but that there’s a clear north/south divide showing the Nordic countries with an internet penetration rate of 76% versus 45% in Southern Europe. Here’s the presentation:

Something I also found rather interesting, and which I had also noted during the live blogging of the Reality Bites event (where he was a speaker) is this comment from Jeffrey Cole:

“Broadband has changed everything.  And it’s not speed of access that has made the biggest impact, its having a direct connection that is always on. This has changed the internet experience dramatically. It’s no longer a disruptive experience where people have their PC in the backroom of the house and where they use a dial-up connection a couple times a day to do some specific tasks. Now, the PC has moved to centre stage in the kitchen or living room where it does not interfere in the family conversation or TV viewing but is integrated into everything we do.”

You would sometimes forget that broadband changed the internet indeed a lot more than just making it faster. Going back to dial-up would not be just going back to a slower internet, it would be equal to going back to planning tasks for when you will log on. Fundamentally different :)

I’ve been working on a theory that relates a lot to the content of this presentation. The theory is something I need to blog about later (once I get it all nicely lined up) so take a look at this in the meantime.