Peter van Dongen's BLog

With the current techniques it becomes more and more possible to organise your work in a more convenient way. The accessibility of the Internet everywhere you are is also helping a lot. But with all the different ways of working and all the different devices it is also getting more and more difficult at the same time to make the right choices. Is it that our thinking about the best possibilities is already demanding a proper organisation of our way of working? Maybe this is a little bit the case, as I have been looking for the most efficient way of working for a long time. Maybe I can make a next step with the following combination of hard-, software and people. Let’s have a look.

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Of course everyone has read my tweets and watched my FaceBook entries, so I do not have to tell you here that since last week I am the proud owner of a 64GB Wifi Apple iPad, bought in New York and legally brought into the Netherlands (after paying € 108 for VAT). So now having played with this astonishing device for almost a week I want to share with you my first impressions. But be prepared: I will only have positive comments, but had anyone expected anything else?

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People have asked me to give them an update on my new gadgets. But how can I tell you something on that as I am still not the owner of an iPad yet? Although that will not take long, I will then maybe write a separate  blog about my first impressions of the iPad. But let me now try to update you on the most remarkable things that entered my life recently. You maybe a little bit surprised. Not that many chips involved I can tell you!

Wherever we are, we have access to the web. We can see if in another part of the world the weather in the mountains is good enough to ski. We can watch the ships entering the harbour of Willemstad. We can watch our assets are doing on the Dow Jones stock market? But we are mainly lurking. We are downloading all kind of information from the net. Enriching our minds and broadening our knowledge or just enjoying the music, video’s or photos. But what about giving back?

People are wondering why I don’t have the iPad yet and it is hard to explain to them that it is still not available on the Dutch market, correction: on the world market. On April 3rd the newest gadget from Apple will be available in the United States, but the exact release date for Europe – and of course in particular The Netherlands – is not yet known as the availability of the different models is also a question that is not answered yet. But how is it possible, that people are already asking me where I hide my new gadget, as only a few people have had the chance to hold it in their own hands? It’s the marketing machine again, that did its job so very well. It’s really Apple again!

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This title is a famous sentence of a dutch economic pessimist (Kees de Kort) who has his daily column on Business News Radio in the Netherlands. Every time he thinks he has seen it all, but even then he is also being surprised about what is going on in the economic world and on our stock exchange in particular.

As I am writing this weblog, I am sitting in the train to Cologne to meet there some European financial executives working in retail and of course it is very normal to have an internet connection and have the 230V power provided by the Dutch Railway Company (NS). But what about the latest Apple iPod Nano.

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It is perhaps not the right sequence, but after first looking at my agenda when I could have some time off, I then began to think what to do with this ‘earned’ free time. First I thought it could be a good idea to visit Austria, to read some books (on my new Sony E-reader of course), play some golf and be pampered in one of the most luxurious hotels in Tyrol: Stanglwirt in Going am Wilden Kaiser. But after being there this summer already I got a better idea.

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Drobo is my new friend. He (or she?) lives on my desktop. Just next to my Apple iMac. And although I had a lot of peripherals in my network, this is something I have seen and never heard before, until a friend told me about the Drobo last week. Drobo is not only a very safe backup system, but it is also giving my old hard drives a new life.

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Being a CFO of a publishing company and also a gadget man, combined with MY love for reading, you can imagine that I have to discover the world of e-books and e-magazines. Combining all the good things in life. Reading, playing with one of your PC’s and feeling that it helps you with your work. But why is the world of electronic magazines so different from their books counterpart? (more…)

We know that the Chinese are having the same strategy as the Japanese: better copy it right than to fail on an original. But the Japanese maybe did copy (mainly) electronics some 40 years ago, but now they provide the world’s leading brands. And they did not make exact copies. They embraced the ideas and put some Japanese sauce over it and tried to sell it much cheaper than the equivalents that dominated the market.  China is doing it another way. They are making exact copies of everything you can imagine and sell it to the world. And of course for much lower prices. Internet is of great help for the Chinese.

If you have a look at www.dhgate.com or www.dealextreme.com you will find out that these sites are not aiming at individuals, but that they are looking for small companies to sell (in huge quantities) all kind of products. Those little companies can then sell the goods on their home market below the market price and still making profit. But is it legal? (more…)