I’ve been following the Database War Stories of O’Reilly Radar: how companies use text-based alternatives to classic relational database systems in order to cope with huge volumes. Check out the stories of Findory/Amazon, Google File System, Flickr and Second Life. Anyway, this seemed like a good moment to share some of my database war stories. Let me take you back to the early nineties.
Youtube seems to be losing some of its early adopters: Coolz0r quits the service, while Nathan even embarks on a grassroots activism mission to ruin the company (by getting its most popular uploaders banned – I have mixed feelings about that one). The issue is: to protect themselves from lawsuits, Youtube is taking the approach of deleting videos and even users upon first suspicion of (copyright) problems. They already received an ultimatum from NBC in Feb, then a proof to Jason Calacanis that it was ‘not a real business‘.
I remember when I started DJ’ing and going to parties (that would be the previous century, yes) that we used to have this whole ‘slow-dancing’ routine. Every couple of hours the DJ would play ‘La Bamba‘, sweaty teenagers would check each other out for a quick dance and a stolen kiss (on the cheek), and then there would be 3 to 5 ballads, or ‘slows’. Fifteen minutes of one boy slow-dancing with one girl. For those of you who have never done that: with the right kind of partner it is awesome.
Jim Emerson has listed the 100 movies (103 actually) one should have seen to form an opinion about film
More than a year ago, I wrote an piece on Playing mp3 with an embedded Flash player. Things change quickly in this area, so it’s time for an update.
I found some data on the first names parents gave their children in 2004 (data from statbel.fgov.be). It should come as no surprise that passe-partout names (used in both Dutch and French) dominate the first names hitparade.
Some more details on the Barcamp event of May 20th:
Blogcom in Antwerp was exactly what I had hoped it would be: an interesting mix of old acquaintances and new faces and lots of fun conversations. The event was organised by Jeroen and some 50 bloggers showed up. No speeches, but lots of mingling and chatting. We’ll have to remember that for the next Brussels blogger’s meeting.
