Pirates Day

I had my six year old nephew over for the weekend. We went to the Pirates Festival in Lelystad. In Lelystad is the Batavia, a replica of an old VOC ship.

The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in old-spelling Dutch, literally "United East Indian Company") was established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock. In addition, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies.

It remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years, until it became bankrupt and was formally dissolved in 1800, its possessions and the debt being taken over by the government of the Batavian Republic. The VOC's territories became the Dutch East Indies and were expanded over the course of the 19th century to include the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, and in the twentieth century would form Indonesia.

 

So now London, bad mayor

If you have seen the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics with the new mayor of London, Boris Johnson, you could have seen what it will become ... He was totally out of order by not conforming the dress code, actually it was almost as on the picture. How could people have chosen this "clochard" .... a real mistake I think. Also the presentation of London was extremely poor, just showing Beckham as the biggest asset ... hm ... I hope it will be a big success, but the start was rubbish.

Final logo 2

  

Final logo 1

Well I got 2. I think i can use them both, the one with the plain when I am traveling, the other when not :-).

 

Apple Worth More Than Google

Digital Daily notes that Apple's market capitalization at $159.37 billion is now worth more than Google's which is at $157.56 billion. Apple's market cap first exceeded $100 billion in May of 2007. Apple was included into the S&P 100 index at that time. For interest, MacDailyNews compiled a list of the market values of other notable companies:

• Microsoft (MSFT) - $255,648,204,000
  


• IBM (IBM) - $169,964,678,000
  


• Apple (AAPL) - $157,012,662,240
  


• Google (GOOG) - $156,392,862,560
  


• Cisco (CSCO) - $142,125,692,160
  


• Intel (INTC) - $135,658,860,000
  


• Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) - $111,866,423,760
  


• Nokia (NOK) - $97,746,699,520
  


• Research In Motion (RIMM) - $71,143,935,000
  


• Disney (DIS) - $59,257,501,500
  


• Dell (DELL) - $50,483,256,060 
  

iPhone leads in Flickr cameraphone uploads

Well I do not have one, I use the Nokia N95, but the Apple iPhone is by a wide margin the phone most used by Flickr uploaders, updated charts from the site suggest. The charts track the number of people with a particular device "who have uploaded at least one photo or video with a particular camera on a given day over the last year," according to Flickr, and show the iPhone as nearing 100 percent of site cameraphone users. Nokia's N95 has an overlapping figure of about 70 percent, but the N73, N82 and Sony Ericsson K800i are the only other phones on the list, at just over 20 percent each. The N73 and K800i are in decline, while both the iPhone and N95 are increasing in popularity.
Flickr cautions however that while the charts are normalized against increasing site membership, only phones that identify themselves can be recorded, and these are likely a minority.

In the realm of regular cameras, the three most popular compacts are variants of Canon's PowerShot series, led by the SD1000. The two most popular DSLRs are versions of Canon's Digital Rebel, while Nikon's D80 is in third place. The only professional-grade camera on the list is Canon's EOS-40D, ranked at fourth.

Amsterdam Tournament

Yesterday I visited the Amsterdam Tournament again. It is something I yearly do with my father. Although Ajax lost again, now 0-1 from Inter Milan (after loosing Friday from Arsenal) I think there is some potential in the new team.

Marco van Basten (the new coach of Ajax) started with a B-team, bad, bad move ..... 30.000 paying spectators thus saw several players most probably not even playing for Ajax this season. 

The other game of the evening; Arsenal - Valencia, was especially from Valencia's perspective a nice one, although the end-score only was 1-1. Meaning Arsenal won the tournament.

Some revisions

These are some revisions after I told them I like water and mountains and that when you minimize them they were difficult to read. I think these are already much better.

 

 
 

 

Logo Design for "Yes It's Me"

I have asked my favorite Logo Design company; Create Logo Design, to make me a new logo for this "Yes It's Me" website.

I asked for a "Blueish" one, based on Holiday and Travel entries suited for a personal Weblog.

Some of the first drafts: