And the winners are...

The European Championship 2008 is over and the deserved overall winner is Spain, with Germany in second place...

For me personally this was the first "big" tournament which has been able to keep my attention until the end, even after the glorious Dutch team was booted out by the Russian team in the quarter finals. One main reason for this was the online pool we had going on between the colleagues at Indivirtual.

The extra competition element which went beyond the favorites of the Championship made me watch almost every game and hope certain countries would win just for the sake of the standings. Unfortunately I only made 5th place, but up until the last games the battle for 2nd and 3rd place was wide open. And the winner gets the glory for at least the next two years when the World Championship 2010 in South Africa starts.

The European Championship 2008 is over and the deserved overal winner is Arno, with Bjorn in second and Maarten in third place. Congratulations to all winners!

Amsterdam Office (Video with Dutch Audio)

For a new upcoming recruitment website we have shot this video. As a loyal reader of our weblog you get to see the sneak preview.

Cell phone popcorn

I like viral hoaxes and hypes on the internet. This one is no exception.

Cool Beemer

Do you like car designs? Check out this BMW GINA Light Visionary Model.






I see some practical issues, and probably it is not that safe. But who cares, it looks great, and if you don't like it you can shape it yourself ... from cruiser to racer ... over and over again.





Photo and video by BMW

Meeting people

In 1996 Philips published “Vision of the future”, a book with futuristic concepts from their designer lab. The concept that probably intrigued me most was the “Hot badge” . I quote “Increasingly, the pace of life and demands of work mean that there is often little opportunity to make social contact. Hot badges are simple short-range communicators which will facilitate initial contact between people who have similar interests. … transmit information … receive information … interests overlap … badges will signal … easier … break the ice”.
I can see some added value in the Hot badge. Since you can program it, you can tweak its parameters for a specific night out. Your badge then picks cherries, but you still have to do the hard work and eat them..

Well that was back in 1996, now, 12 years later Eugene Ahn takes the concept one step further with the CyranoSuit. The sensor filled CyranoSuit will judge your situation and give you conversation suggestions on a printout. The funny thing is that the device is meant to help you out in what should be a romantic situation. Can you imagine having a conversation and having to wait for a piece of paper from your pocket all the time? I guess you have to be a damn good actor to pull this off.

If I had a multimillion dollar budget…

A popular brainstorming technique is imagining that you have an unlimited supply of money and that everything is possible. For some creative agencies this isn’t just a dream, it’s their daily job. Yesterday I saw this mind blowing commercial in the halftime during the European football championship.



I don’t know if it was the commercial or the national result against the Italians but I got euphoric and suddenly I wanted to be a soccer player. The intensity of the first person view is great; it looks like you are standing on the pitch in a sold-out arena. At the end of the commercial there is a link displayed to Nikefootball.com. The site is filled with videos with interviews and tricks from the world’s best players. It’s not as exciting as the commercial but it still shows that Nike took their budget to the next level.

Gadget craving

Having to buy a new hard-drive, since my old one no longer spins its rounds, I got lost in the enormous variety of speeds, sizes and other specifications. It made me realize it sometimes just takes a day from must-have to has-been. Buying gadgets is great from an economic perspective and it gives an excellent thrill to hold your new toy, but what does it mean to our environment?

I’m talking about our hunger for whatever is new, shiny, fast or trendy. Whether it’s that extra inch, the additional megapixel, the extended memory or that telephone with new features. It’s what I call gadget craving. We long for goodies, sometimes with no other need then just to own them and identify with.

Do we ever realize what kind of waist we produce with all our devices? They contain heavy metals, high-end plastics and nasty chemicals. We still don’t succeed in real recycling, most goodies end up on our landfills.

Now that I’m all excited about my replacement, I’m afraid my old one will end up there as well.

SDL Tridion Softball Event

Last Saturday SDL Tridion organized a Softball event for their Dutch partners. Indivirtual competed for the 2nd year around. This year we did better than last year but still didn't manage to get into the final. Our own photographer / Ruby hacker Arie took some very nice pictures. If you were there, quickly see if you can find yourself. We would like to compliment SDL Tridion for this nice event.