A while back I did a brief interview with a local television crew about my apartment building. Ever since the AffiliateSupportTeam goes Miami movie, I’ve had a weak spot for video’s and recording because I now know all the factors involved in making a successful production. It was fun seeing the TV crew debate over where to get the best lightning inside the house etc. Anyway, we did an interview for about 20 minutes, mainly themes about why there we’re still a lot of apartments for sale even though it’s been on the market for over two years.
If you’re dutch or understand dutch you can watch the clip below. If you’re English, you’re out of luck because it was all dutch. But to give you a quick summary of my words. I basically say I think the Realtor is partially to blame because they still have me on the potential client mailing list, the garden is a mess and the advertisement in front of the building should be cleaned up. I question their professionalization.
Other than that living in this building has been more than great. It has a sauna, fitness area and concierge service. All the highways are no more than a quarter of a mile away, and we have a forest right at our footsteps. (I’m beginning to sound like a brochure, I know)
Anyway, I promised some of you the clip and not everyone of you is following me on Twitter, so here’s the clip..
Now that I’m finally on Final Cut Pro, things go a lot smoother. I still have some trouble applying effects to the time line. But I’m happy with how it turned out overall. This is a video of our puppy (which we can pick up on July the 14th)
Every since the summer of 2006 I’ve been playing around with Windows Movie Maker, and made some Holiday Compilation videos. I stepped it up a little bit with Premiere Pro and even Pinnacle Studio 12 to edit the AVCHD material I shot with my Sony Handycam. After the Ad-Tech Miami 2008 video we did last year, the guy I hired to do the project kept praising Final Cut Studio, so I decided to give that a go. FInal Cut was very stable and didn’t crash even once. I kid you not, I’ve had videos in Windows Movie Maker that crashed every 30 seconds in timeline workspace. So I’m glad that’s over. On the other hand, Final Cut Express (FCE) didn’t really let me export the file the way I wanted it to be. The Canon 5D Mark II records video in 1080p, really phenominal quality that far exceeds my Sony Handycam. So I’m a little bumped that the quality isn’t realy visible in this movie. But hey, we learn from our mistakes don’t we.
Like any sharp reader I’m sure you have noticed I changed the design of my personal blog. I was tired of the old design, it just didn’t fulfill it’s purpose anymore. It was time for something new.
Where to find what..
As you can see I’ve changed the functionality of my blog. I figured I wasn’t a writer anyway. My last post dated six months ago. I love writing inspiring sales copy, news letters, and high converting landing pages. But blogging just isn’t my thing. Sorry. So here’s a brief description of how my new home page works: in the footer you can find the links to my social networking pages, twitter, photo page (flickr) and vimeo.
Every now and then I’ll post some thoughts on industry events, happenings or just some random musings to the blog. But I don’t expect to do this a lot. I usually post daily on Twitter, so if you’re interested in what I’m working on go follow me on twitter. If you’re interested in the internet lifestyle and you want to find out if it’s really that great, I suggest you keep coming back to my site :) So to sum up; the site will be more about me, then it’s ever been before (don’t you love narcisme ;)) But it’ll more or less be a portal to my life online :)
2009 is supposed to be both an exciting and challenging year. According to ComScore, the number of people using the internet surpassed one Billion in December.
In the United States, which is our main market, 163,3 million people are currently using the internet. So we’re talking about unique, not devices. In the Netherlands 11,8 million users are currently browsing the web, which comes down to just a bit over 73%.
If I do the numbers on the U.S. 163,3 million users comes down to just 71 percent. I would have expected that number to be higher.
The Asian Pacific is responsible for 41,3% of the worldwide internet audience.. a tremendous market – obviously. But also a though market due to the censorship and all.
I’d love to talk to some folks and businesses who have proven success in the asian markets. If that’s you; please contact me.
Right before the year ended I reported we purchased a new web server in combination with a carbon dioxide free hosting plan. Today we were pleasantly surprised by a certificate from the International Tree Foundation, that notified us that tree’s had been planted in our name to compensate for carbon dioxide produced by our webservers.
Because webservers are constantly running and making calculations they are sucking a high amount of power, and creating a lot of heat which then needs to be cooled in order to maintain stability. Having a ‘green’ server changes nothing about this process, but ‘green’ labeled servers are often equipped with more energy efficient components and in our case we have an alternative cooling solution in place.
I guess the bottom line is; no matter what industry you’re in, you too have a role in the global effort to reduce levels of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere..
For those of you who read my old blog, you must remember that I moved into a new place this summer. My new apartment is overlooking a beautiful provincial park, as well as the local sport parks and educational and medical district.
Over the past couple of days I’ve shot some pretty spectacular sunrises and landscape pictures with my new EOS 5D Mark II, from the comfort of my own living room.
Check them out below.
I’ll post some more shots as I figure out how this works more and more. Let me know what you think
I was lucky enough to be among the first to receive Canon’s new DSLR; the EOS 5D Mark II. The images this camera produces are just amazing. I’ve never seen so much detail in a photo before. I come from a compact camera background, so that figures.
But this is not the point of my post.
The camera was purchased for its unique image processor to capture full frame 1080p video we need for the video tutorials on our Affiliate Marketing Education Program. Shockingly enough no computer within my business was able to successfully edit the video stream. ..that sucked.
I did some research, and as I spent more time researching more people recommended a Mac to do the job. I was skeptical, boy was I skeptical. I’ve used Windows for as long as I can remember. I didn’t want to learn a whole new operating system. But Final Cut Studio is the best there is for editing video, so I was on board.
You know what they say, ‘if you do something bad; do it right !’ so I ordered the fastest Mac Pro available, packed with a big fat 30” flat screen. Where Dell takes weeks to deliver your order, Apple shipped within 7 days, and this was even between Christmas and New Years. I was impressed.
The Mac worked out of the box, just plugged it in and it told me exactly what to do. Honestly, a much better overall experience than I ever had with Windows. Editing pictures in Photoshop CS4 is a piece of cake on the 30” Flat screen. It saves a lot of time on zooming and overall positioning. Video editing is lightning fast, no more hangs and weird crashes like Adobe Premiere used to deliver all the time. As many people said, it’s indeed a trustworthy solution. A little side note, even my girlfriend understood the system right away. She used it to do some text editing in Word, and I didn’t have to help out once..
I’m happier with my choice then I could have imagined when pushing that ‘order submit’ button so I guess the overall lesson is. Don’t be afraid to try something new and don’t be afraid to make the investment into something that you work with. If you spend a lot of time on it, it’s usually worth it..
Update: Totally coincidental, I just came across this video on Matt Cutt’s Blog lol. Fits the subject nicely.
After weeks of negotiations, we finally pushed forward with the purchase of a new dedicated server for AffiliateSupportTeam. For the tech geeks, I’ll lay down some specs;
16 GB of RAM
Quad Core Opteron @ 2,5 gHz
10k RPM Raid 1 Array disks
Obviously a lot faster than most desktop computers, which on the other hand means that it consumes a lot of power. This is just one server and I expect us to soon scale up.
In a time where a lot of companies refuse to pay extra for anything, I’ve decided to set a company standard for Carbon Dioxide Free Hosting. Starting with this server, all our new servers will be upgraded to the Carbon Dioxide Free plan.
I’m not some weird bio activist, but I do believe that we should do everything in our power to avoid hurting the environment, and compensate for the damage we do to the environment. Heck, even Google with over 700.000 servers worldwide tries to build datacenters in the sea to reduce the carbon dioxide exhausted in the cooling of the servers.
If they set an example by doing it for datacenters of that size, you should keep it in mind when you make your next hosting purchase..
Just got back from another Holiday. This time I visited the realms of South East Asia. This was my first time to Asia actually, and I never expected it to be like this..
The holiday was a gift for my mom’s Birthday and kind of a thank you for the good raising she did of me, even though I still have horrible table manners. But I managed to find a period in which we could all free up our schedules and spend some quality time in a foreign country. Well foreign for me, my mother was actually born in Java, Indonesia and this was the first time she’d gone back.
We flew in from Amsterdam, and spend the first two days in Kuala Lumpur, where I understand MindValley moved their business last year. I can’t blame them; Kuala Lumpur seems like a great place to run a company in. And with the Asian economy rapidly growing, even while the rest of the world is in ‘recession’ it seems like they will be doing some great business there over the next couple of years.
I was amazed by the incredible difference between rich and poor there. On the one hand you could spend less than a dollar and have a complete rice dinner in the evening markets of the city, on the other hand you could easily find a restaurant that allowed you to spend a couple of hundred bucks for sort of the same food, only in a fancier environment.
Christine made me try the rambutan fruits, which she bought somewhere on the street for a couple of cents. The same fruit here in Amsterdam costs over two dollars. I didn’t like it, as you can see.
The morning after my heroic fruit eating experience we took a flight to Bali for the rest of our trip. If you’ve been there you know what I’m talking about; Traffic is crazy there! They have no idea how to steer, clutch or use the breaks! I’m just going to say it out load. Bali people cannot drive. Period. – No offense.
After a couple of days of well deserved relaxations we took a trip to the monkey forest, some temples, and the holy springs. I was really blown away by how different our cultures are. Our guide was married to a western man, so she totally understood the culture shock and told us that her husband still feels like this every day. It’s a hard time adjusting – I’ll bet.
Anyway it was a great insight, to see how our cultures connect and how we differ. There’s without a doubt a lot we can learn from each other. With both Kuala Lumpur and Bali somehow sparked some of my interest in Asia, I wonder what I should visit next.
2009 is supposed to be both an exciting and challenging year. According to 
