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?

First challange, get my iBooks and iWork Apps.

Of course we all know, that the iPad is not an eBook reader pur sang. It can read eBooks very well and maybe even more comfortable than a Sony eReader, but I will come back to that  later. To read any books you first have to install the free Apple App iBooks on the iPad; strange that this program is not part of the system software itself, but anyway. So I went to the Apps Store with my current iTunes account. Of course this is a Dutch iTunes account and although there are already a lot of iPad programs to download from the Apps store, the most needed Apple apps were not available yet. So first I had to set up a US iTunes account. This is a little difficult without having a US Credit Card and a US address. But setting up an account without a credit card can be done and choose as your address the address from your most frequently visited hotel and your account is set up. On eBay you can buy iTunes credits for the US iTunes / AppStore and redeem the codes on the site. See instructions and cards at http://www.cardscout24.us/

Having written this, I just found out that this weekend, due to the introduction of the iPad in a few European countries, the Dutch Apple store is up to date and that the programs I just mentioned are available. Now I can shop where it is cheapest (I am Dutch).

Look and feel.

The iPad is really fantastic. It makes a very solid impression and it is really fast. Not only changing the screen from landscape to portrait or the other way around as you turn the iPad but also the apps itself are very fast. The normal iPhone and iPod Touch programs can also run on an iPad but only use a small part of the screen (just like the iPhone screen size). They can be pumped up, but that gives the effect of zooming in a low res photo. The battery is a story in itself, because I have not seen a battery that lasts for so long. Some people have some difficulties in loading the batteries, but I still have no issues yet.

So what apps did I install so far and do they work.

As I said I installed the iWork family (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) from the US Appstore and they were "translated" into Dutch on the fly. They work fast, but they have lost some functionalities compared to the iMac versions, I found out already. But after all you do not want to use your iPad for inputting and setting up big spreadsheets or whatever. I converted a MS PowerPoint presentation on my Mac to a keynote file and then transferred it to the iPad (you have to use iTunes for this by the way). It looked great on the iPad and almost every feature I used in that presentation worked on the iPad as well. But that is all basics. What kind of apps thrilled me as killer apps?

Goodreader
This application can read all kinds of different file types. But not only that, it retrieves the files from wherever you want the program to. So not only your own FTP site, but also from Dropbox, Gmail, Google Docs, MobileMe and a few others. It copies the requested file to your iPad and it is ready to "read".

Zinio
I have had a Zinio account for many years now. Zinio sells all kinds of magazines from all over the world and sends them to your computer or gives you the ability to read them online. I have subscriptions on magazines like MacWorld, Bloomberg Businessweek, iPhone Live and a few other (even Windows PC magazines). For the iPad a reader has been made by Zinio and it is really very good. The size of the iPad gives you a true magazine feeling and inzooming is so easy and of course all the Internet links in the magazines just have to be clicked to be taken to the site itself. So great!

Mobilenoter
This is a wonderful program for people that use MS OneNote very often. Mobilenoter can sync the iPad with your notebooks from OneNote so you can have all your notes, clips etc at hand and everywhere you go. I even got my Acecad A502 up and running again as the software now has a "Send to OneNote" button. Imagine that all the pages you write every day are all stored on one location (and back upped of course) and can be seen on your iPad. No more memory losses, always everything on your iPad.

Games
I only have a few up to now. Mahjong, iSlots and Solitaire are a few that I would like to mention. There are already a lot of dedicated iPad games to be downloaded from the Appstore, but I am still very busy in the productivity area of the Apple Appstore.

IBooks
Will this be the app that will people drive to buy an iPad? Is it better than the Sony Ereader. Well, being a very enthusiastic eBook reader I think the iPad will outperform all the ebook readers so far. Luckily the iPad uses the ePub format, so I was able to transfer my ebooks to the iPad. The quality of the screen is so much better and not only the size of the letters can be changed, but also the type font. There are 5 different fonts available. But what struck me most was the speed. On my Sony eReader it will take some time to turn the page and the button to push to make this happen is also not on the most convenient place. Now I just have to tick the right of the screen and in a split second the new page is there to read. I do not know if the screen of the iPad will get my eyes fatigue after a few hours of read compared to the Sony. Could be. With the iPad I do not have to put on the light to read, but in the full sunlight the Sony will be better that the iPad probably. I will continue in the third episode of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy Millennium on my iPad and will let you know. The joy of holding an iPad compared to holding a Sony eReader I did not take into account.

Final

I am sure that the Apple iPad will be the biggest hit of 2010. It will bring the Internet and Computing to many more people and it will give a new dimension to the current playing field. When you hold it, you will love it and you will never want to be without it. For those who want to wait until July, when the iPad will be introduced in The Netherlands I only can say: May the force be with you! My iPad is not for sale!

In a few days my Weblog will celebrate its first anniversary. At 15th May 2009 I wrote my first weblog and telling my readers that I decided to start my own weblog and that the look and feel of the weblog would probably change over de the first few weeks. But nothing happened. The format stayed the same. But not the postings on this site. Starting with a few not much saying stories I more and more published stories on gadgets and my electronics. The most exciting time was of course the time I sent out my publications about the non-crisis at Audax. A link to my weblog was placed on a few sites and I had to think of bringing Google Ads to my site <grin>. So after a year it’s time to change the theme of this weblog a little bit. And on top of that it is time to share some figures, because everything you all do and don’t on this site is monitored (of course) by Google Analytics. And what did Big Brother Google tell me?

34 postings.

More than 2,200 visits

5.73 visits a day

4.742 page view a day

54 countries, USA and UK biggest after The Netherlands, but what did a visitor from Uzbekistan on my site. Probably lost.

Almost 58% used Internet Explorere, Firefox 18%, Crome and Safari both just above 11%.

More than 78% uses Windows and 18% Mac OS.

And most traffic came from pjvd.nl, fllowed by villamedia.nl, quotenet.nl and linkedin.com

Almost 40% was direct traffic, the same percentage as the referring sites. The remaining 20% was generated by search engines. These generated 419 visits and my name was the most used search item in combination with other words like Etam and Audax or CFO.

From the mobile users the iPhone wins it all, but Android is on the second place before Windows Mobile. That is really remarkable. But these people stayed the longest on the site (of the mobile users). maybe because their operating system is not as fast as the two others.

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!

You probably do not want to believe this. An iron? Yes an iron! And that is not because I recently found out that the local Media Markt is selling more things than TV sets, iPods and computers. It’s the Tefal GV9360. It’s now really fun to iron my shirts, as it costs so less time to get them done. Pushing all the buttons at the same time will let this beautiful machine produce so much steam that you have to look out not to burn your hands. At the end of the show some water is lying on the floor, so much steam was produced. But the iron itself is not that heavy as the others, that have to carry the water in itself. And as a matter of fact, I did not buy this at the Media Markt or Saturn. They did not have the product on stock and on the Internet I bought it for € 70 cheaper.

Again I have fallen for a product that did not have as many microprocessor chips as my other gadgets. It’s has also everything to do with steam, but based on the technique and the comfort it brought to my place, I consider this also as a gadget. By the way I received as a bonus an iron that can be switched on to the machine itself. But that I will of course not use. Anyone interested??? This steamy machine is very environment friendly, as I am not using any chemicals anymore to clean my floor and kitchen. These are the main area’s that this yellow device may show it’s strength. It remembered me at the time I used to clean some stairs in the flat I grew up. The instruction was to use a lot of water and afterwards mop up all the water. I used only few water and in that way preventing to mop up; I called it the Instant Dry Method at that time (35 years ago?). And after all these years I am still looking for possibilities to easy my work where I can and keeping the same result, outcome or quality standards.

Now maybe a real gadget? I guess so. This recently updated and newly designed piece of modern art changed my life again a little bit and it brought again some new capabilities to computing and the way I can express myself. It’s a lot of Fun, you can Touch it or use a Pen and it not made out of Bamboo and therefore it is called the Bamboo Fun, Pen & Touch. It’s a tablet you can connect to your PC or Mac through the USB port and works as an input device. It’s just like the track pad we are accustomed to on our laptop. It can help you with drawing on the computer and will be of great help for your photo shopping activities. But the most interesting thing I discovered up to now is the ability to use it in Office 2007. In Word you can use the pen functions and put your own signature under a word document or in a mail. Of course in OneNote (one of the most underestimated programs of the total Office package) you can fill your notebooks with all kind of quick notes. After buying and using this tablet I am really looking foreward to the new Packard Bell Butterfly Touch, a full featured Tablet PC, that should have been introduced already in January this year but still is not on the market.

And is this a gadget or not? Or is this the mother of all gadgets? Of course it is of great help opening all these packages I receive after buying on the Internet. Why am I so attracted to this so well known device? Why did I buy already my third one? Because of the colour? Because you can see through and in that way find out more about the secret, why this Swiss Army knife is working that well? I don’t know, but remember the saying: The difference between men and boys are the size of their toys. Am I still a boy?

There is no excuse anymore. The web is everywhere and that means that the internet connection you need is also there to use. But do you want to send only some nice tweets to your friends? No of course not! Everyone is a publisher today and it’s always nice to be heard. It’s great to spread your thoughts and ideas to everyone who wants to read it. But what is the most effective way to do so? What kind of hardware and software do we need? Let me tell you how I do it. How I use my spare time to share my thoughts with you all and what kind of tools I use to create my weblogs.

First of all there is the hardware component. A lot of people know that I am an enthusiastic Apple user, but for this purpose it was the software that made me decide to use a Windows machine. As we are talking about using the spare time to produce those weblogs, I prefer my small netbook I discussed earlier on this forum. I use my personal unlimited data subscription at T-Mobile. The dongle in the USB port helps me with my UMTS fast internet connection, as there are still only few places to connect through a free Wi-Fi connection.

The software I use on the client side is LiveWriter or Microsoft Word 2007. The first one has been made especially for writing weblogs and in MS Word 2007 you can choose to write a weblog. In both programs you can make your choice from a lot of server products, like Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server and others. LiveWriter will even help you to setup a new account. And for most of these services you don´t even need own dedicated space at your own provider or on your own systems, but you can use the space and products available at Google and Microsoft.

I use WordPress as server software on my own dedicated pjvd2.nl space I hired at Hosting2Go. It´s not that I would not trust the availability or the professionalism of the earlier mentioned companies. At first I just used the built in editor of WordPress and was therefore working on the web, but after having discovered the easy way of working with LiveWriter I did not touch the web editor anymore. LiveWriter can even load existing weblogs and you can edit them locally on your machine. Of course you cannot write a weblog without using the web. Not only all of the photos are copied and pasted directly from the web to the weblog, but also the hyperlinks are transferred from their corresponding sites to the main text on the fly.

But finally: how do you generate traffic for your site / weblog? Of course you hope that you have many readers, who follow you and maybe have a RSS ticker set on your weblog, so that they receive automatically a notice that there has been a change on your weblog. I sometimes send people a mail, but maybe that is a little bit too much. But a tweet will be read by your followers. And of course – a plug in for WordPress is available – to send the actual data of your weblog to the Google search engines so anyone can find you (as long as you have the right words in your weblogs).

The last thing to do is to monitor your traffic. And then there is only one program that can perform this job best and that is Google Analytics. The only thing you need is an active Google account and that is free, just like the program Google Analytics. It’s like looking at the graphs of your favourite stocks at the stock exchange. And if you generate enough traffic you can even earn some money with it, by letting Google place some ads on your website. Maybe you can earn so much money that you can finance the newest gadget of Apple, the iPad. Maybe there will be a program on the iPad that you can use to create your weblog.

Tag Heuer Carrera

It’s already widely known, that I own maybe more computers per square meter than a lot of other people and not only because I live in a small apartment in the centre of Rotterdam, but also because a few computers are not that big. But the same feeling I have on computers I also have when we talk about watches. Why is that? Are there more people that have the same feeling about those two so different products? I will try to explain.

Of course the first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that computers and watches are both very sophisticated pieces of work. A small machine with big power. And although they have a complete different history, they both have a great attraction to me. Is this more common? And is it so that there are more men than women attracted to these masters of technique? Like men are Beta and women are more Alpha? Too many questions and far too many possible answers.

It’s a fact, that men would like to wear some jewellery – just lilke women – and that it’s not for everyone possible to wear earrings, piercings, bracelets, necklaces etc. So the last thing on the list of bling bling items is then the watch. And how many times do we use it to really find out the exact the time, as there are so many places you can see the real exact time? I must admit that in the office I look at my radio controlled clock more often than on my watch. As a matter of fact, the Tag Heuer Carrera, an automatic watch, is always running faster than real time (but still within the (wide) margins) and has to be reset manually so now and then to be adjusted to the exact time. So why am I happy with that watch? Probably because it is a real jewel on my wrist and (again) I like the technique in the watch itself. Maybe I like the Tag Heuer more than the Citizen Eco Drive, that not only chargse its energy from the daylight around us, but – like a radio controlled watch – also seeks every night for that Atomic clock nearby Frankfurt to adjust its time to the exact real time. What more could a man want?

Yes, there is something more! If the technique and the look are OK, there is something more that can attract those spoiled men. And that is the Limited Edition. The latest I am aware of (and I like it very much) is the newest from Omega. It is a Seamaster Professional model, with a white dial and a red lunette. This watch has been issued during the latest Winter Olympics and only 2010 pieces are made worldwide. Its name is Vancouver (of course) and the thoughts behind the number of 2.010 pieces is also not hard to guess. You will not see this masterpiece in the jeweller’s window. You have to make an appointment with a prominent jeweller, who will try to find one of the (probably) 10 pieces that will be available here in The Netherlands. And if you then receive the call that the watch is waiting for you to see and to try it on, excitement is all over the place. And I must admit that at that time not only the art of technique and the great looking attracts,  but also that you can be one of a very select group of people (limited to maximum 2.010 people) who own the Vancouver Omega Seamaster 2010.

Are there any other jewels that a man can desire? And that can also be characterized as pieces of great technique? Yes there are: Fountain Pens. There are more similarities than only the Limited Edition. More on that topic later.

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!

The marketing machine from Apple is globally known for its success. They not only succeed in letting the greed for future products from their customers grow to incredible heights, but to sell the name Apple as well. I remember the introduction of the iPhone in the US. For months the American audiences have been bombed with smooth commercials and when the greed was on its highest reachable point, the introduction day was postponed by a few weeks. If you by then were not planning to buy an iPhone, you were certainly about to do so. It was just not possible to miss it. And when it finally was introduced, stocks were kept tight and availability was an unknown word in these first weeks, driving the people even more crazy and getting more people wanting that device.

The rest is history: we all know how the iPhone finally conquered the world. And now Apple is trying to do the same with the iPad. And again a great iPad commercial is running on the US television channels (you can download it from the Apple site also). And again – as with the iPhone – there is a lot of criticism on the capabilities of the iPad. Having its own iPhone Operating System, no “Office” like products, no flash and a few others. You can read some more iPad disadvantages here. But why are so many people already pre ordering now? Am I one of them?

I think it’s just like a virus. If you know Apple and you are accustomed to their products, you will stick to it. It’s not only the reliability of the products and the so much easier to use as their competitors, but Apple is some sort of believe. Long before companies were trying to create communities around their products, Apple did have one and it’s growing bigger and bigger each day. Maybe people want also to react against the “monopoly” of Microsoft, but others may have experienced that the total cost of ownership during the lifetime of an Apple Mac is lower than a Windows machine, mainly caused by the lower maintenance costs involved. But the way Apple develops its products is the main reason for their popularity. They are made from the customer perspective. As the short movie of the iPad says: I do not have to change to fit to the product, the product fits me automatically and I don’t even have to think about it.

Of course I already ‘bought’ the iPad. Not really, but in my head I have already made the decision to buy one. And what will it add more than my latest netbook? Will I be able to read books on the iPad, as the iBook store will only be available in the US and will they end differently from the version I am reading on my Sony E-reader? Will the music, that I usually listen to with my eyes closed, sound different from those of my iPods? Will it bring in more mails than my iPhone, that is always in my pocket, wherever I go? I know I know, it will be that feeling when you flip the device and the screen will change with you, it will be the slim design, it will be the great crispy clear screen, but most of all, it will be the logo on the back! I admit, I am infected with the virus, the Apple virus and Apple has US$ 40 billion on the bank, but that’s not enough to make an antidote. There is no cure for this disease!

OK, I know I have a certain weakness for small PC’s. A few years ago I bought one of the first Netbooks (the word was not invented at that time). A very nice Asus (the S6F) with a beautiful 11inch screen. The price of the computer was at that time almost € 2.000 and it was for years my companion on various vacations. Not only to read my mail and to keep up with the latest news, but also to watch my own digital television from home on any place in the world.

But this weekend the local Media Markt (after opening a third store in Rotterdam) had a few special offers. One of them was a new netbook from Packard Bell, the Dot.s/NL 305. A look-a-like of my Asus?. And now a few years later, a faster processor, Windows 7 and a LED screen and only a tenth of that price of a few years ago. Only € 239 for a piece of the newest technique.

OK, it takes some time to have this little monster configured just the way I want, but its speed is really astonishing. Not only Wifi is working fine (and of course a wired connection will also do) but the T-Mobile dongle is also doing its job just from the start. I remember to have spent a full day in my short Christmas Holiday to have it working on a that same Asus.

And of course equipped with the newest software that comes with Windows 7. And my newest discovery is the program LiveWriter. This program is part of the Live family and is the ultimate program to write weblogs. And it works with this WebLog. What a magic. It’s now so easy to write a weblog and have it instantly published at my weblog. Also inserting pictures and links is very easy to do. I almost forget my Apple Mac’s <grin>. Yes the Packard Bell is my newest friend and has earned a trip to my next vacation location. But only as an extra machine, the MacBook Pro is still the first choice. I am sure the little one will understand!

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.

How much more specific tools / machines can be put in a little tiny device as the newest Nano? Of course it can play music, that’s obvious and it was the basic function the Apple iPod had started with. Playing games and have your contacts and diary is also not new, however many people do not know that these features are also included. And that the nano now has it’s own speaker is nice, but the quality is of course bad, especially compared to an sophisticated in-ear earphone. But the latest nano has two big new functions. Two new features you wondered how you could live without.

The first is of course the video. On the Apple site it screams: Nano does video. And yes you are capable to record moving pictures and put it on your device and have a look to it over and over again. But what people want to do is to share that video and that is more difficult. Of course there are some tips on the Internet, but you would suppose (it is Apple) that iTunes would take care of that automatically. I managed, but I also have to search the nano (not in iTunes) to find the movie itself. I used iMovie on my Apple to publish it on YouTube. This could and should be more easy. One other disadvantage is the place where the lens of the videocamera is placed. It is so easy to put your finger before the lens when you start the recording with your thumb, but that is just learning how to hold this beauty.

The other new feature – and that is greater news than the video capability – is the radio feature. For the old iPod models you could buy an extra cable, that must be put in the Apple connector and to which you could put your ear phone in. It added already the radio capability to these old models. Newer models did not like that official Apple cable and therefor could not be used anymore. Maybe to make the newest nano more popular. I older days we used a transistor radio to hear the radio report on the soccer games on the Sunday afternoon, but now we have the nano. The earphone is used as its antenna. Favourite stations can be stored and the quality is crispy clear. This is the greatest new feature in my opinion.

Movies is great, but why does he nano does not make any pictures? Maybe in the next version (generation 6)? Other possibilities above pictures? Yes sure: Wifi and GPS. Or will its name then be: iPhone?? It should not be crazier!

Is there a lottery where everybody can win and will win? No of course not! Do chances go along with risks? Yes of course! But why do we not want to believe it? Why don’t we act this way? Why are we putting out money at Icesave or DSB Bank?

This week we had our own bank that went (almost) bankrupt. Not as a result of the global credit crisis, but as a combination of bad management and the idea of somebody that  it would be a good thing to make a call for everybody to withdraw their deposits from that bank. And so it happened. The main cause was that not the creditors of the company, but the mortgage debtors, who received their (too high) loans in combination with very expensive insurances. There were some Robin Hoods (really!?) that tried to solve the problems of these people, who were not able to pay their mortgages anymore (as the DSB Bank had given them too high loans). And one of these Robin Hoods suggested that the mortgage victims would be better of with the bankruptcy of the bank and suggested a bank-run.

Are the debtors of the bank better off now? No probably not, because they cannnot make a new arrangement with the bank. But now we have a lot more victims. Al the people that have savings above € 100K and have bought subordinated deposits will probably loose a certain percentage (and maybe all) of their money.

But who is to blame for all of this? Is that the Robin Hood with his great idea? Is that the bank director / owner of DSB Bank, Mr. Dirk Sheringa? No I do not think that they are too blame, although they all are not clean either. But the people who put their valuable money in that little bank have to be blamed. They did it themselves!

They followed their greed. They wanted the highest interest rates for their money but they did not (wanted to) realise that there is no such thing like a free lunch. And also taken into account the recent past. Since last year we must be aware of the fact that you better can have debts to a bank than receivables. We have seen banks going into serious trouble. We transferred our money to other banks. But have we forgotten that all? I do think so. The greed wins again. And as we know greed is one of the 7 deadly sins. How deadly will it be for all the people who trusted their money to the DSB Bank? I think not. “Things can always be worse”, optimistic people like me would love to say.

Why do I spend a lot of money to fly to the other part of the world just to shop (till I drop?) and why don’t I just use to the Internet? I am the one who is telling everybody, that Internet shopping is more convenient from your couch instead of walking in the rain and having to spend a lot of time and energy to find all the goods you need. Is something wrong with me? Did my ISP (Internet Service Provider) cut me off from the outside world? Or am I as human as all of my friends? Or is off line shopping more fun?

More and more products are sold on line. Of course we all now the electronics, like computers, camera’s and other peripherals. Dell is a great example (but what happened to the cow friendly organisation Gateway here in The Netherlands?). Everyone has probably ever booked a flight or a vacation on line. And in this country www.bol.com and www.wehkamp.nl are very well known and very popular. Maybe the possibility to pay afterwards is part of their success; the conservative Dutch want to keep their money as long as they can in their wallet. And all the stores of Coolblue are growing and growing, selling the products you just want to have and where decision making is based on specifications; Coolblue now has 38 specialised shops and its paper brochure (to be sent with everywhere package) is also digital available on line.

One of the fastest growing product ranges on-line is fashion. More and more people are shopping on-line to buy their clothes. Without feeling the fabrics, without really experiencing how the clothes will fit and will ‘behave’ in real life. Of course the return policies of these web-shops are really important and also the on-line support. But I still wonder why (especially) women are shopping on line and not taking all their friends to the shopping mall.

So back to my question. Why am I going to Hong Kong? Shopping is not only getting the goods and services you need by sending the cash the other way. Shopping is emotion. Buying things gives you not only the satisfaction of possessing the goods, but also the feeling of the moment of the purchase itself. Maybe it is the feeling of power that appeals to our primal feelings. Some will like the idea that they can afford to buy something (and show it around) that most other people can’t.

But when you buy online don’t you get that feeling? Knowing that your credit card is still not used up to the limit. Knowing you can show the latest gadget to your friends in a few days. That seems the same as a normal buying transaction. But can you share the good feeling of the moment of buying with others? Can you look in the sellers face? Can you bargain at all on the Internet? No you can’t and I think these are the main differences between buying on and off line. And that’s why the classic stores will never cease to exist. That’s why new retail chains will start and new shopping centres are still popping up everywhere. Shopping is so much emotion!

On some moment of time, we will have the opportunity to shop from our homes on a sort of Holodeck (Star Trek) and feeling and experiencing all the emotions of shopping as if we would be shopping off line. The first web shop that will succeed on this will be able to sell anything he wants. It would be perfect to be welcomed by a (virtual) sales representative who not only knows your name and your preferences but also will look exactly as you like it. Probably the other customers of the shop will not see you or ‘your’ sales person, so that can lead to some weird preferences. Webshops should already think about their restrictions on customer wishes I think. For me, the future may start now! I am ready for it, although I think that Hong Kong will not loose its attraction. Where can I have a decent diner for about € 5?