May 6, 2007
The 1,400 or so residents of the wee village of Knegsel in the province of Noord-Brabant are the first in the Netherlands to get to use a new wireless Internet service via Wimax. Internet company Casema expects much from the possible successor of UMTS. It is 13 times as fast and is perfect for areas where residents are spread thin. In and around Knegsel there are three antennas, which provide wireless broadband Internet over distances of up to 25 kilometres.
(Link: Omroep Brabant)
Tags: broadband, Casema, Internet, Knegsel, Noord-Brabant, wimax
May 5, 2007
The employees of Dutch supermarket C-1000 have compiled a list of the items that are the most difficult to find in their supermarkets and placed it on their hyve, according to personnel magazine, Club1000. Interestingly enough, in most stores, the same products are difficult to find.
Top 5:
1. Cocktail toothpicks
2. Toasts
3. Salt
4. Corn Starch
5. Eggs
A note to foreigners:
1. There are no signs in Dutch stores to give you a general idea of where products can be found.
2. If you ask the staff, they point, but won’t bring you to the product (In North America, they are taught to bring you to the product – it increases the chance of a sale).
3. Every store of the same chain has a different layout, as buildings differ greatly.
4. And stores stock up during opening hours (!), especially on Saturday when it’s busy, and cannot be bothered to help you then.
In a C1000 in Delft, I found sardines with the Indonesian products. Why? Because the sardines were from outside the EU. The ‘normal’ sardines were from Britain with the tuna and salmon, but the ones I found were from Canada. Very logical.
(Link: zibb.nl)
Tags: Hyves, lost, supermarkets
May 4, 2007
In June, world-famous DJ Tiësto will be opening his own restaurant on the Reguliersbreestraat in Amsterdam. DJ Tiësto (we’ll call him Thijs) loves cooking as well as spinning records. The restaurant will name the dishes according to his greatest hits, so you can order a ‘Flight 643’ and a ‘Traffic’. The chef is not yet known, but apparently he is very creative.
(Link: Blik op nieuws)
Tags: Amsterdam, DJ Tiësto, restaurants
Mama, the oldest Dutch chimp in the Netherlands, turned 50 yesterday. She is already a great-grandmother and helps settle fights between many younger, fighting males. The Burgers’s Zoo in Arnhem is the first zoo in Europa that let chimpanzees live together in a group, something that was never allowed because biologists were afraid that they would fight and contract diseases. Mama is world-famous. Many biologists have written about her behaviour and social intelligence. She is still very healthy.
(Link: RTL Nieuws)
May 3, 2007
Dutch scientist Gatze Lettinga has been awarded the Tyler Environmental Prize for a wastewater treatment system that is making an impact in the developing world. The process offers inexpensive treatment of industrial waste and sewage in countries that cannot afford centralised systems. The system was developed for agricultural industries in the Netherlands and is currently used in industrial installations around the world. Lettinga refuses to patent the system in order for it to be freely available throughout the developing world. He wants sustainable systems like this to become the norm.
(Link)
Tags: environment, Science, sewage
May 2, 2007
The Dutch never really warmed to the idea of the credit card, and generally consider it unsafe for online transactions. The new kid on the block, the iDeal system, is rapidly gaining ground, according to the organisation controlling several popular payment methods for the major Dutch banks, Currence, who also run the iDeal system (press release in Dutch). It works like this: at the check-out of an online store, a customer clicks on the iDeal logo, and gets the electronic banking interface of their own bank. In this interface, the required sum is transfered immediately to the shop keeper.
iDeal has shot up from being used for 1% of all online payments in its first year, 2005, to 15% in 2006. Paying by credit card has dropped in popularity from 19% to 13%. Of all Dutch online shoppers, 73% consider iDeal to be a safe system, whereas only 32% think the same of credit cards.
According to ZDnet (Dutch), using acceptgiros (deposit transfer cards) and a bank’s online banking system directly are the most popular forms of payment.
(Image source: Lotus Head.)
Last Tuesday night, two men climbed into a hoist vehicle and stripped. The neighbours got annoyed and called the police and fire brigade, who couldn’t get them down because the hoist vehicle’s controls didn’t work. The rescue services were called, a ladder was extended and the two men were brought down safely. The men were extremely ungrateful and aggressive towards the rescuers, who calmed them down with a faceful of pepper spray. Then one man jumped into the canal and the firemen got him out with a boat. Both were arrested for being drunk, stoned and disorderly.
(Link)
May 1, 2007
Can’t get enough of A-Team reruns on Dutch television? There’s always Dinner With Hollywood Stars on 12 May at the Dutch Star Con event, held at the Best Western Hotel de Druiventros in Berkel-Enschot near Tilburg in Noord-Brabant. Hollywood stars such as Billy Boyd from Lord Of The Rings, Dirk Benedict from the A-Team and the original Battlestar Galactica, Dwight Schultz from the A-Team and Star Trek The Next Generation, and Mira Furlan from Lost and oddly enough not mentioned in the link, Babylon 5. They’ll be signing sessions and they’ll be some Q&A.
Notice how 24oranges also used a picture of Mr T. from the A-Team even though he won’t be attending. Is he really afraid to fly?
Tags: A-Team, Berkel-Enschot, Billy Boyd, Dirk Benedict, Dwight Schultz, Tilburg
April 30, 2007
On the orangiest holiday of the year, we at 24oranges are taking the day off. Back tomorrow!
Tags: Queen's Day
