May 1, 2011

Flickr set ‘Queen’s Day 2011’

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 10:39 pm

I added the rest of the photos we took on Queen’s Day to our Flick account: Queen’s Day 2011 set.

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December 29, 2010

Favourite 24oranges facts of 2010

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:02 pm

I noticed a few neat things this year while working on 24oranges and I want to share them you:

– Our most used Flickr photos are by Peter de Wit, aka FaceMePLS. He has great everyday Dutch stuff that we just can’t seem to get enough of.

– Our most popular Flickr photos are Red thumbtack and Red thumbtack 2, followed by Old books. The message seems to be that simple, everyday objects are what people really like. Co-blogger Branko has taken most of the pictures, he has a fancy DSLR camera while I go through life with a small pocket thingy.

– Our most popular tag is ‘Amsterdam’ because that is where we live, followed by ‘Rotterdam’ and a tie for third place: ‘Groningen’, ‘football’ and ‘law’.

– We’ve added some categories this year (or late last year): ‘photography’, ‘bicycles’ and ‘sustainability’, three topics that come up often.

– We started a Facebook group that has news other than on the blog, with a few exceptions. A big thank you to the 140 members for joining!

– We had our best month yet in November 2010 with 23,562 unique visitors. A big thanks to Global Post and many other sites for linking to us.

Our resolutions include more of our own pictures, a new header (we need sun and oranges at the same time), more videos, (join our 24OrangesTV channel) and one day hopefully more co-bloggers.

Thanks to everyone who submitted and forwarded stories, and took the time to comment on our postings, you make us want to keep going. Cheers!

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December 28, 2010

Branko’s favourite stories of 2010

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:17 am

It is that time of the year again, the looking-back-at-the-past-12-months-and-saying-what-you-thought-about-it-all time.

I don’t know if it was something in our drinks or the company in which those drinks were drank, but we went out a lot to collect our own news. My favourite of these stories has to be the one about

  1. The house that Hitler built

If only because I had no idea…

In the Lost & Found section, there was the remarkable news about the discovery of

  1. A new painting by Mr Vincent van Gogh

You may also want to relive:

  1. Sex with animals: finally forbidden
  2. Holocaust survivor to receive Dutch apologies (after the death camps we, her own people, bluntly told her she was not welcome in her own country)
  3. Bicycle rush hour in Utrecht
  4. Berbice Dutch from Guyana is now extinct
  5. But also: the last of the Frisian students
  6. Mr. Strubbe will keep using MS-DOS and Wordperfect 5.1 (but a new contender for his computational affections is lurking just past the horizon)
  7. Homeless man discovers his father was a millionaire (and then he gave it all away!)

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November 13, 2010

Nothing

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:23 pm

OK, so I am told that this happens to all bloggers… I have no story for you today. Nothing. Zip. Bupkis. The great donut in the sky. Etc.

Maybe later today.

In the meantime, news about the Netherlands in English can be found at the following great sources:

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September 25, 2010

Intermittent glitches keep us from posting pics

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:46 pm

In the past few days, uploading illustrations has been breaking down regularly. Please bear with us while we try and convince our hosting provider that this is not acceptable.

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July 20, 2010

24oranges is now on Facebook

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:44 pm

Yes, we should have done this a while back, but later is better than never!

Join 24oranges on Facebook.

And we’re always glad to share pictures on Flickr.

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September 2, 2009

Past the 1000th posting

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:24 pm

Here is a little tidbit you might like to know: a couple of days ago Orangemaster posted the thousandth 24 Oranges posting: Trading in your old bras for new ones.

We almost let this milestone pass unnoticed, mainly because we originally failed to notice it ourselves. This because Orangemaster is fighting both a nasty cold and a web radio server, and because I am currently hired (“kept off the streets,” as we say in Dutch) by a company that demands lots of my attention.

If you only hopped on board recently, here are some of my favourite postings of 2008 and 2007, but do not hesitate to add your own favourites to the comments, as mine is but one voice.

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August 13, 2009

Flickr update

Filed under: General,Photography by Branko Collin @ 3:53 pm

We have upgraded our Flickr account to the pro version, which means we can now put more and larger photos there. We use a lot of CC licensed photos as illustrations for our posts, and we’re returning the favour by publishing our own photos on Flickr using an equally liberal license.

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May 9, 2009

Twenty thousand visitors and counting – a milestone

Filed under: Architecture,Food & Drink,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:29 pm

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We once set ourselves a goal of reaching 20,000 unique visitors a month (no one shot posting about something woohoo and then back to 6,000 or something) and thanks to everyone out there, we did it!

But first, about this photo: this is Gibeau Orange Julep ‘stand’ in Montréal, Québec. It serves orange julep, hotdogs and the likes. It’s a huge orange and the weather has a Dutch thing going for it.

As for what got 24oranges this far besides nicely pressed content, two words: Twitter and Flickr.

1) 24oranges is on Twitter and is getting lots more mobile phone and PDA visitors.

2) 24oranges is on Flickr. We share the photos we take ourselves and are proud to say that other blogs and sites use our photos.

Of course, the recent addition of 24oranges to Globalpost will definitely count for something soon.

Cheers!

(Photo by Bah Humbug, some rights reserved)

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February 16, 2009

24 Oranges turns 2

Filed under: Event by Branko Collin @ 4:04 pm

We started in February 2007 with a posting about Dutch comics website Clogwork.net, which by the way is still going strong!

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