prolific.org

Zie.nl, the new Dutch video sharing site that I (and our team) have been working on for the last 4 months has just gone live.

We had cake to celebrate.

www.zie.nl

Yes, we realise it’s teal. No, we’re not that keen on it either. Yes, we’ll work on it.

Yush recently joined the team at DAG Media.

If you’re in the neighbourhood… tomorrow morning, Thursday December 6, I will be handing out DAG newspapers at Amstel Station in Amsterdam between 7 and 9am.

You can’t miss me, I’ll be the dwarf running around in a bright red jacket and matching pants.

Psst… wanna see my new website?

Um… that’s ‘our’ new website. DAG Media bv, my employers, launched Zie.nl today.

Zie.nl is a new smart TV and web video guide, which makes use of collaborative filtering. Tips are presented in a flash application, the ‘kijkwolk’ (viewing cloud). Viewers can influence their personal cloud by voting thumbs up or thumbs down on individual programs. The engine tries to predict and present other shows a viewer might want to see, based on their voting and other behaviour on the site as well as some other stuff behind the scenes.

I’ve been part of the Zie.nl team since I started work at DAG Media back in September.

It’s all in Dutch, beta, but it’s live, baby.

(Zie is the Dutch word for ’see’)

• You tell someone you’ve been in this business twelve years and they say ‘Why aren’t you mega rich?’
• You help people with their pc troubles and are told: ‘You could make a living out of that!’
• Twelve years and you’ve never
  owned a USB stick. Never bought one and was never given one as swag.
  Until today when someone passes on their second-hand 512mb.

Apologies to those of you browsing this site with MSIE. I’ve finally fixed the glaring javascript error that must have plagued you for the longest time. I had some time to waste here on my last day at NPO.

We wrapped things up quite nicely last night with drinks and dinner, enjoying some rare sunshine this summer at the restaurant’s outdoor seating. Boss W. made a lovely speech, reminiscing about the old days. My teamleader bought me a cute nerdy present and we had a really good time. Even if the dimsum starter was a little funny.

So now it’s time for me to relax and try not to stress out too much before joining my new employers on September 10.

Me + bureaucracy = head go boom. I have the shortest fuse.

Our secretary put her arm around me and gently lead me away from the office…

In slightly better news… my most recent blood and eye tests came out well. Blood pressure OK. Blood glucose level average 6.1. Thyroid operating ok. Consequently I’ve been taken off the crappy Metformin.

Medy van der Laan, Harm Bruins Slot, et al

Found myself in the company of at least three of my (ex-)bosses today, from ‘95 till now (AVRO, RNW, VARA, Publieke Omroep). Lots of other familiar faces from the early days of public broadcasting online were there as well. Highlight of the afternoon was supposed to be the presentation of a book on 10 years of Omroep.nl to State Secretary (for Education, Culture and Science) Medy van der Laan, but I preferred the showing of ‘Kwik’ (Dutch for Huey, as in Huey, Dewey and Louis). Kwik was the very first server our domain, Omroep.nl, ran on. A flat, blue Silicon Graphics machine that cost about 20,000 Euro. Aw, bless.

Took loads of pictures, only a few of which are presentable.