January 20, 2010

Dutch children could not be any happier

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:26 am

Children in the Netherlands

We’ve said every year, we get to say it again: Dutch children are the happiest in the world, this time according to new research by Unicef Germany. The Germans founds themselves in 8th place out of the 21 industrialized countries they included in their report. As expected, the top five in so many of these reports include Scandinavian countries: Sweden, Finland, Norway, with Spain in 5th place and Denmark in 7th place, while Iceland is not there, due to problems such as their country’s bankruptcy.

Our past posts on the issue: Dutch kids are happy because they’re egocentric.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

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January 19, 2010

Design for a bank in Ethiopia

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 8:38 am

OIII Architects from Amsterdam designed this bank building for a competition for a new bank in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In the end, it was the design of German architects Henn that won, but the OIII entry still looks pretty amazing.

(Link and source image: Designboom.)

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January 18, 2010

Kyteman wins Popprijs 2009

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 11:02 am

Kyteman’s Hip Hop Orchestra won the Popprijs 2009 (‘Pop prize’) in Groningen last Saturday.

The 12-piece-band won one of the most prestigious pop music awards of the Netherlands for its contributions to the genre. The chairman of the jury, Hans Kosterman, called the orchestra “authentic, a source of inspiration, strong-minded and very successful.”

The prize consists of 10,000 euro and a statuette. The annual award was introduced in 1986, when it was given to singer Mathilde Santing. Despite having 10 MCs, the band is perhaps best known for its instrumental, Sorry.

(Link: Parool. Video: Kyteman.)

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January 17, 2010

Political feed aggregator

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 3:06 pm

Polifeeds.nl brings together all tweets and blog posts of Dutch politicians.

The site is an initiative of Geen Commentaar, the blog that earlier created a coalition checker and a parliamentary search engine. Although the default mode delivers an inane cacophony of local and national news, blog posts and tweets, the Advanced Search function lets you narrow the stream of opinions down to only what you need.

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January 16, 2010

Dutch national library wants to digitize everything

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 10:08 am

From the Strategic Plan 2010-2013 of the Dutch National Library:

Strategic priority 1: As a national library, the KB wishes to offer everyone everywhere digital access to everything published in and about the Netherlands. …

Main aims …

* We digitize all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals from 1470. …
* We make agreements about copyright in order to guarantee free access to our collections. …

The KB in 2013: …

* We offer a service for digitization on demand (digitisation of texts from the paper collection on request) in order to meet the wishes of individual clients. …
* We keep a digitisation register that prevents possible overlap of digitization activities by other institutions. …

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) will not only digitize printed works, but will also archive digital works such as web pages. According to Trouw, the first 10% of 600 million books pages to be digitized should be available in 2013.

Via Open Access News.

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January 15, 2010

Classic outdoor skating race with a major comeback

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:41 am
Veluwemeer

After a horrible farming accident involving many broken bones, a coma and a full splenectomy some five years ago, Geert-Jan van der Wal still won yesterday’s Veluwemeertocht (Lake Veluwe tour) outdoor skating race.

It wasn’t an easy win by the looks of it on television. It involved a gruelling last-minute sprint with fellow skater Jouke Hoogeveen, which had Van der Wal screaming out in pain. “I had to scream, my entire legs were in such terrible pain. I was exhausted. Man, I never would have thought this five years ago.”

Of course, he has his unbelievable determination to thank for his improbable win, but he also says eating his mom’s pancakes before the race gives him “the engine of a scooter”.

(Link: depers.nl, Photo of Veluwemeer by MPhernambucq, some rights reserved)

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January 14, 2010

Zwolle lends commuters electric bicycles

Filed under: Bicycles,General,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 2:50 pm

The city of Zwolle will start a 1 million euro trial this year to lend commuters electric bicycles, Z24 reports.

The bicycle is one of the most popular forms of transport in the Netherlands, but only for short trips of up to 5 kilometres. Zwolle hopes to raise this radius to about 15 kilometres for some by providing powered loaners.

Electric bikes are regular bicycles with an auxiliary motor that you choose to switch on for instance during a climb or when cycling in a strong head wind. Powered bicycles have existed for a long time in the form of mopeds with pedals, but these tended to look (and operate?) rather unwieldy. The new e-bike looks just like a regular bicycle, but with a small battery pack.

Slightly off topic, cycling awareness blog Amsterdamize (aimed, obviously, at non-Dutchies), recently had a very nice photo series on how the cold and the snow and the ice manage to stop cycling in Amsterdam, i.e. not.

(Photo of a Schwinn Tailwind Electric Assist bike by Richard Masoner, some rights reserved)

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January 13, 2010

A red bike that blogs

Filed under: Architecture,Bicycles,General,Photography by Orangemaster @ 5:38 pm
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The nice red Dutch bike that could, Drooderfiets, bikes in and around Amsterdam and blogs about its architectural, cultural and interesting findings in English and French. The puppet master is Alix, a French guy living in Amsterdam who takes very nice pictures with his bike in every one.

Disclaimer: I know Alix and I admit we should have written about him and his bike a long time ago. What’s nice about this blog is that not only does the red bike learn things, but so do we, Dutch or otherwise.

Check out all kinds of other pictures on the red bike’s Flickr page.

(Link: rooderfiets.tumblr.com, Photo of Kruiskerk, Amstelveen by Drooder Fiets)

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January 12, 2010

Artists sneak in and hang their works up in museums

Filed under: Art,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:20 pm
Bonnefantenmuseum

Last night, a group of young artists hung up their own works of art in three major Dutch museum, the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht and Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle. This act of protest was meant to draw attention to the fact that not just established artists should be in museums, but young, up and coming artists as well.

This morning the Bonnefanten Museum (shown here) said that they found a large black-and-white photo in the old art wing, while de Fundatie found a small colour painting among its collection. Both museums were closed at the time and neither of them has any idea how the art got there. Employees of the Groninger Museum saw a big object in their security cameras and when they went to check it out, the big object had disappeared. Spooky.

So besides this stunt making the news and all, it also tells me how useless the security actually is at all three museums.

(Link: depers.nl, Photo of Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht by Peter Zoon, some rights reserved)

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January 11, 2010

Dutch railways still has no iPhone app

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 6:03 pm
iPhone beaver

Way back in October 2008, we wrote about the NS (Dutch railways) not being happy about IT student Dennis Stevense kicking their butts and producing a quality iPhone application called Trein’ (‘Train’) for train schedules. Apparently, if there was any glimpse of copyright or database issues, the NS has done nothing about since then except whine that they don’t have an application after all. The NS has legally asked Stevense to stop with his application and he ignored them. What the NS has been incapable of doing since 2008 (or lied about) Stevense whipped up in three weeks.

With all the snow, delays and problems with trains as of late, ‘Trein’ has become very popular, as more and more people own an iPhone and are downloading his application. He even said he received numerous compliments from train staff that his application works better than the mini-computers they use for their work. He also claims he can live off the money he is making from downloads and will start his own business.

(Link: zibb.nl, Photo: Stevenojobs)

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