June 1, 2021

Single mother turns to crowdfunding for house

Filed under: General,Online,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:15 pm

It’s only getting tougher to find a house to buy in The Netherlands. There’s a lack of affordable houses, often bought up at hundreds of thousands of euro above the asking price (according to Dutch news show Nieuwsuur on 31 May 2021), more often than not by investors who will subdivided the houses into small and make tons off renting them. By the way, this practice should be heavily restricted in 2022 if all goes as planned.

Nathalie, 40, lives alone with her daughter, a dog and a bunny in 46 square metres and pays €950 in rent before utilities. She pays more than most, and less than some. However, she is unable to put money aside to buy a house and cannot get social housing because her salary is often just above the limit. Many people are in similar situations.

Since she cannot find a house, she has decided to try her hand at crowdfunding to raise €1 million from 1 million people. “If everyone sends a euro, I’ll soon have my dream house.” Of course, social media has made mince meat of her cry for help, but I’ll give her points for trying and being honest about it. As I write this, she has raised €7.530, with about a year to go for the rest.

Back in 2005, Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald bartered his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of fourteen online trades over the course of a year and everybody through he was brilliant, just saying.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl, Photo: designboom.com)

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September 15, 2018

Amsterdam’s discarded mattresses to be published in book

Filed under: Literature,Photography by Orangemaster @ 6:05 pm

Earlier this month, we told you about French woman Nastassja Guay Bonnabel who draws naked people on mattresses. This week, Dutch documentary filmmaker Miguel Narings wants to put all his discarded mattresses pictures in a book, possibly including some from Bonnabel.

Why does a filmmaker want to make a book about discarded mattresses? Because Narings also has an instagram account where he has been posting pictures of abandoned mattresses in Amsterdam for a few years.

He has started a crowdfunding campaign to get this book published, and has a stock of over 1000 photos, including some sent to him from around the world.

The book will be called ‘Mattresses of Amsterdam’, of which the book’s graphics will be created by graphic designer Bella Donna. Narings needs 8,000 euro to publish his book and as I write this has collected 535 euro.

(Link and photo: parool.nl)

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July 25, 2014

Sad Dutch Kickstarter projects are sad

Filed under: Design,Food & Drink,Gadgets,Online,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:24 am

The Dutch have had their own Kickstarter site for a few months now and I have seen many interesting projects get the funding they probably deserve. However, they are a lot of ‘non-starters’ on the site because anybody can ask for money and hope for the best without being serious. The projects that get my attention usually fall into four categories: the good ones that usually get funded, the ones that don’t get funded or get insufficient funding, the ones nobody gives a toss about but could be serious, and the jokey ones. Let’s have a look at the last two categories, the losers and the jokers:

– ‘I need a computer to review stuff on the Internet and become a YouTuber’.
How about you get a job? It would go faster, too.

– Two guys want to deliver apple pie to their friend for his 17th birthday, but would rather someone else pays for it.
You can’t find 5-10 euro for your best friend? Ouch.

– ‘I make music. To make these tracks, I need money. You want to spend money on music’
It sounds more like you don’t want to spend money on music…

– Someone want to sell ‘trustee rings’ to prove their ‘fidelity’ and got 1 euro so far.
They have GPS and Wi-Fi to track your partner. Stalker alert!

– A statue for Louis van Gaal, but only if the Netherlands wins the World Cup, which it didn’t.
Nice try.

– Frying up extreme eggs.
Ever since a potato salad got funded, Kickstarter is full of food-related projects.

– ‘A story about a boy that lives in a crappy world.’
Buy a diary, write it down and take up drinking like the rest of us.

(Link: www.kickstarter.com/discover/countries/NL, photo of a lightbulb by Emil Kabanov, some rights reserved)

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September 26, 2013

A warm and fuzzy lamp without drilling holes in the wall

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 3:00 pm

My co-blogger Branko thought of me right away when he saw the Wooll-e, a lamp I could have in my way too dark office without drilling holes in the wall, which I’m not allowed to do.

No more need for screws or nails as wooll-e is a unique ready to hang lamp. The wooll-e is a lamp that doesn’t require any tools. Only a power outlet and blank wall space. Designed to be quick-‘n- easy. No more drilling holes in your walls. Simply stick the wooll-e discs on your wall and the wooll-e FIX will do the rest!

The felt sleeves of the wooll-e (hence the name is my guess) are handmade from 100% Dutch wool. Even the power cords come in different colours. For 5 euro of funding towards this Indiegogo crowdfunding project, you’ll get a thanks, and for anything starting at 95 euro, you get a lamp with combo packs going for up to 210 euro.

(Link: www.indiegogo.com, Photo of Lightbulb by Emil Kabanov, some rights reserved)

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November 7, 2010

Crowdfunded book agent tenpages.com wins Accenture Innovation Award

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 1:04 pm

Last Tuesday tenpages.com, a website that letd readers buy shares in upcoming books based on their first ten pages, won the Accenture Innovation jury Award 2010. The audience award was given to Catawiki, the personal-library-manager-meets-ebay.

Tenpages.com works something like this:

  • A writer writes the first ten pages of their book and posts them to the website.
  • The writer then tries to convince 2,000 people to buy a 5 euro share.
  • A renowned publisher has the option to commit to the book.
  • Once all shares are sold, the author gets 1,000 euro and the publisher 9,000 euro.
  • Presumably at some point, a book is published.

It looks to me like this could go one of two ways. On the one hand, this could finally free authors from some of the iron grip traditional publishers have, and on the other, this could turn into a vanity press scheme on speed. The safeguard against the latter scenario is that the publishers involved so far all have a reputation to live up to and we all know that serious publishers would never throw their good name away.

See also: Public Enemy to produce next album through Sellaband

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