Got myself the Treo 650 today, a so-called smartphone: mobile phone and organiser in one. Why? Because my mobile phone contract was at its "end", KPN has a very compelling offer subsidizing the purchase, I like these kind of gadgets and because I am in the process of establising a mobile venture so need to know what’s going on first hand. Hmm, enough justification for this toy I guess. The KPN package does not only contain the Treo, but also TomTom navigation software, a Bluetooth headset and a car cradle. What more does a man want? Well, a good price for my Sony Clie TH55 that I have put on Marktplaats for sale. Put the Clie up for sale last night, first offers arrived but are not attractive enough. Meanwhile I need to spend some time on getting my Calendar and Contacts data transferred to the Treo and synced with Outlook. Few hickups, other than that I hope it will turn out to be a smart move.
Getting venture capital for your company isn’t easy and it starts with getting the attention of a VC. Do you send him an email, an old fashion letter, a cold call, stalk around his office or better, an introduction through someone you know well? Venture capitalist Fred Wilson received his first Elevator Pitch Podcast: fitting nicely in today’s blogging, tagging and Podcasting buzz. For the techno entrepreneurs among us and early adopting VCs who know all about this stuff or better invest in it. Innovative clearly, but even more so another example of the continuous flood of new applications created by combining existing technologies. Apple has released a new version of iTunes that supports Podcasting, so get the elevator pitches out!
UPDATE: the new iTunes version 4.9 even seems ready for syncing with your mobile phone - if not the iPod enabled phones were still missing.
…sometimes seems to be hiring people, I mean the right people. Found an excellent article about how to identify a product manager that fits a start-up environment. I have had my share of blunders in hiring people, will see that I post one or two of these stories in the near future.
Since a couple of months I have been working only part-time for ThreeFive Photonics, to be able to establish a new mobile venture. Yet, this week it became clear that I will have to increase my involvement with ThreeFive unexpectedly, at least until September 1. More about that later, when the news is "fit to print".
On Tuesday I hosted a press conference at press centre Nieuwspoort in the Hague. After extensive lobbying and networking for about 3 weeks, I was able to get the weak position of European SMEs on the agenda in the Netherlands. As the Dutch representative of SUN&SUP, the "voice of the European start-up community", we are arguing that the European Union must act now to preserve rights for European SMEs in the new WTO agreement, equal to American SMEs. 
On the photo left, Prof. Henk de Haan, member of parliament for CDA, on the right Loek Hermans, chairman of MKB Nederland. A story in Dutch can be found here, English press release and all supporting documents here. While you are at the SUN&SUP website, please sign the on-line petition. All those who helped me getting access to the right people in the last couple of weeks, thanks again. Hopefully we’ll have the necessary impact!
The new version of WordPress (1.5), makes it so much easier to change the skin of your weblog, that I could not resist the temptation. I picked the (appropriate) theme Relaxation with a visual of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York at sunset. No particular reason for that choice, other than that it’s a beautiful picture and the Dutch once owned Manhattan…
While blogging is mushrooming towards 50 million blogs worldwide, true bloggers consider each other still one big family. Chances that your real world brother, sister, nephew or grandson starts blogging increase as a result. I found another Deelman family member here, who even helped me upgrading to Wordpress 1.5. Thanks a lot Bert, hope to meet you in the real world soon! …after helping me get some bugs out of the way…;-)
So indeed, after 6 months of absence I am back in the blogosphere. The much improved user friendliness of Wordpress together with some fresh discipline hopefully provides more blogging frequency!