A hashtag in Twitter is a word or phrase preceded by the pound sign (#). If it’s a sentence, like #whatsontelly, it is written without spaces. It gives a certain punch to tweets, as a tweet is only 140 characters long. It is also used for people to search for subjects like #obama #oilspill #tigerwoods and so on.

Our favourite Internet-savvy lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet explains how some Dutch folk have missed their mark.

First of all, the trademark claim for #weetjevandedag (roughly, this day in history or what happened on this day) was claimed on an image (a square, black-and-white, cartoon-like smiley face), not on the hashtag expression. If you don’t use the image, it’s not an infringement. Second, such an expression is general and does not differentiate the trademark in question from other things. Third, the trademark claims it already won a court case on someone using their trademark with no proof anywhere to be found to back it up. In English it’s called ‘hot air’, in Dutch it’s lovingly called ‘baked air’ (‘gebakken lucht’).

(Link tip @wilbertbaan (Twitter), blog.iusmentis.com)

Meet Peter Smaardijk and Ilse Segers, twittering cops. These two police officers from Etten-Leur and Breda respectively have started posting about their beat from their Blackberries last week.

Together with two officers from Tilburg they will post tweets about their daily police life in order to be more accessible. The Noord Brabant police also hopes to increase its network of eyes and ears this way.

In practice, the four officers twitter both standard police announcements (“watch out for pick pockets”) and their day-to-day affairs (“Spent the rest of the night writing the report.”). The police recommend citizens do not to use Twitter to report a crime.

(Photo: Twitter.com / Politie Midden en West Brabant. Link: BN/De Stem.)

Not only have three Dutch guys (Barry Borsboom, Boy van Amstel and Frank Groeneveld) managed to make a point about privacy on the Internet, they have attracted the international blogosphere with their site Please Rob Me, “Listing all those empty homes out there”.

Please Rob Me basically shows you how much info you are giving out through social networks. You Twitter ‘Stuck in traffic’ or ‘I’m in Rome for a week’, you use Tripit to announce where you’re jet-setting off to next, Facebook to update your ‘friends’ on your whereabouts and Foursquare to tell people you are the ‘mayor’ of that noodle place downtown because you chow down there so often.

Boy van Amstel said on telly that he had no bone to pick with Foursquare, but did say it was the prime example of telling potential thieves when someone is not at home. Although other sites tell people where you are as I mentioned, Please Rob Me is aiming its guns at Foursquare with a Twitter account showing all the Foursquare tweets.

In a long blog posting, Foursquare tell us they are not happy campers and that they do respect privacy. It’s how people choose to give out information that is the problem. Two thirds of the Western world is not at home during the day and geo-location services like Foursquare will probably not lead to more robberies. However, on both Twitter and Facebook, you get to choose who follows you and therefore who reads your information. With Foursquare people tend (my Dutch friends do this) to push where they are to Twitter and Facebook, letting everybody read it.

But do we care? I don’t get why these guys felt the need to make this site or target Foursquare. Many Dutch houses don’t even have curtains (an old Dutch tradition!) and you can see the entire living room, flat screen TV and all. This site has the finger wagging ‘Dutch uncle’ (someone who always knows better) all over it.

So don’t overshare (most of us already do) and go easy on the drunken photos or photos of you drinking booze, it will damage your chances of getting a job (that’s me finger wagging now).

(Links: Please Rob Me, Foursquare, Photo of Living room window by Jimmy2000, some rights reserved.

I just got back from the Onze Taal (‘Our Language’) congress in Utrecht, where the word ‘twitteren’ was elected Word of the Year 2009.

The word, which simply means ‘to twitter,’ was chosen over Koninginnedagdrama, the deeply racist kopvoddentax, Mexicaanse griep and vuvuzela by 600 of the attendants. Another candidate was mama appelsap, for a misheard lyric. Mama appelsap literally means “mother apple juice,” but is Michael Jackson’s misheard lyric “Mama-se, mama-sa, ma-ma-coo-sa.”

The 27th congress featured talks about language by Princess Laurentien, writer Kristien Hemmerechts, and performances by comedians Paulien Cornelisse and Kees Torn.

Family doctors Erik Jansen and Bart Brandenburg from Nijmegen have taken their pratice online and become the Netherlands’ first Twitter doctors. By following @tweetspreekuur you can ask questions about your health. They provide as much advice as they can, and will tell you to consult your own doctor or to call an emergency number if they think something is really wrong.

Of course, you can also get some privacy by getting a login at tweet.webspreekuur.nl (type it in your search engine).

And I’m very happy the working stethoscope I bought for EUR 0,20 on Queen’s Day from a nurse this year was put to good use.

(Link: componence)

Yesterday around 4 pm families on bikes and on foot dragged their Christmas trees to the Museumplein, the huge park in front of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where people can skate on the pond this winter. They piled trees as high as they could and at 5 pm they set the whole thing on fire while hundreds of people watched with friends and families. Not many events have this spontaneous community thing going for it, but this one did. I managed to join up with at least 10 people I know from Twitter (aka Tweeps) and their children for the event.

Just when I thought the security for the bonfire was exaggerated in a country that does not allow even the smallest of campfires at camping sites in the summer, the pile of trees set aside to feed the bonfire caught fire. A fire truck had to disperse the crowd while people just laughed and cheered on.

Just like a real rock show, there was a spontaneous afterparty at Blog08 which consisted of a bunch of speakers and attendees taking a ferry boat to Amsterdam North and knocking back some bottled Heineken out of crates in a bunker. Here you have Pete Cashmore of Mashable (I said he was American, but he’s Scottish) being vlogged by Gabe Mac of Mobuzz.tv in the perfect grunge setting.

I had a great time, met tons of people from the Netherlands, England, Estonia, Slovenia and what have you and have enough tips to keep me and 24oranges busy for a while (see photo below). I very much enjoyed the casually dressed atmosphere and my first time using a Twitter back channel (constantly updated micro-blogging comments on screen), which was a real source of ‘infotainment’.

Blog08, the one-day extravagaza dedicated to blogging, vlogging and the blogosphere organised by Einstein generation hopefuls Ernst-Jan Pfauth and his mate Edial Dekker was a success that needs an encore in 2009.

Check out more photos here on Flickr.

(Photos: Natasha)

We’ve been there for a while, but we invite you again to follow us on Twitter. Click on “follow us on Twitter’ under the “Static” menu on the right-hand side.

If our nerding attempts actually work, our readers should be able to follow us on Twitter shortly, where the freshest of the fresh hang out.

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