Live From Brussels

BarCamp Video

I was at BarCamp Brussels 2006 yesterday and took a lot of video, which I posted on my Dutch language blog: http://www.blogologie.be/2006/05/accessibility_d.html#more

There are some English language presentations there too, so if you don't speak Dutch, have a look anyway!

New site

I just opened a new blog (blog.maartenschenk.be) in Dutch, because I keep feeling the urge to write about local Flemish issues, family stuff and other personal things that I don't feel 'Live from Brussels' is the right place for.  And because English is not the right language for it.

So if you read Dutch, check it out.  If you don't, don't worry: updates to this site will continue.  Just more focused on things I'd like to share with an international audience.

Telenet Launches Weblog Service

For those of you who don't read my Dutch language work related blog: a few days ago Telenet, the largest broadband cable internet provider in Flanders, launched its blogging service, and on TypePad no less.  More info on Blogologie, my other blog.

The Angry Economist

I just added The Angry Economist to my blogroll, something I should have done a lot earlier.  Russ Nelson, the writer, is an economist who gets really angry about people not understanding economics who then start to believe in all sorts of things like communism being workable, minimum wages being good for employment and many other leftist dogma's.

Take this quote, which I found really funny (from an article about growth):

...leftists (by which I mean non-economists; leftists who understand economics become libertarians)...

Oh, and by the way, the blog's lay-out is really cool too.  I guess he must have reasoned there was no economic benefit in making his website pretty, when most readers probably use RSS to read his articles anyway...

Meeting the Samizdatistas...

Last monday I was in Paris for the Les Blogs conference (I blogged a lot about it on my Dutch-language blog, in fact).  During the breaks, I recognized a couple of familiar names on some badges: none other that Perry de Havilland and Adriana Cronin from Samizdata.net!

Here is Adriana talking to Hossein of Hoder.com (he is also known as the Father of the Iranian blogosphere)

And here she is showing off the cool Samizdata logo on her phone:

I immediately thought:

And so I did!

(Sorry, Perry, I wasn't able to find a picture with you in it...)

By the way, we had a very enjoyable conversation at the party later that night, in which high taxes were deemed to be a bad thing, Monty Python was refered to and the possiblity of getting subsidies to start a Belgian Samizdata site was briefly entertained.

I hope to see them again some day at one of their famous London blogger bashes!

Rhymes with...

For my Dutch-speaking readers, I just started a new weblog called Rijmelarij & dergelijke, containing some Limericks I wrote after feeling inspired again by seeing some posts about limerick-writing on another Flemish weblog.  Let's see if I can keep it up, if not, it'll be some fun.

SuperBlog Launched...

I alreaday posted it on my Dutch language blog: last night I released SuperBlog, a small hobby project of mine that I threw together over the past two weekends.  What is it?  Basically a Dutch-language service that allows anybody to quickly set up a PlanetPlanet RSS/ATOM-aggregator page with the latest entries from a number of other websites that provide RSS or ATOM feeds.

The reason I wrote it is that is just too hard for a 'regular' weblogger to install and configure PlanetPlanet (you need a webserver, you need to edit configuration files, you need to set up crontab jobs...).  Basically with SuperBlog all of that is taken care of automatically, all the user needs to do is enter a site name, some URLs (feed autodiscovery is supported) and click a button.

Maybe I'll do an English version if it takes off in Dutch, who knows...

Blogologie: My Other Weblog

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Blogologie, my newest weblog.  It is primarily aimed at a Dutch-speaking audience, hence it is also written in that language.  This new site is going to be about all things blogospheric, with a special emphasis on what is happening on Flemish and Dutch weblogs.  That means links to interesting weblogs, the latest controversies, useful tools for bloggers, tips and tricks to get the most out of your weblog, news about Six Apart in general and in the Benelux, scathing reviews of the competition... (Just kidding about that last thing).

Planet Vlaanderen

In the past few days I've been diddling away during my spare time to set up an aggregator site containing the latest posts of the best Dutch-speaking Flemish weblogs.  It uses RSS to gather and combine them into one blog-like site (without comments though), where each entry links back to the original entry on the excerpted blogs.

The site wasn't completely ready yet, but this morning I managed to call into a national radio show that was talking about weblogs, and I took the opportunity to plug my url on the air, so check out Planet Vlaanderen (if you read Dutch).

Weblog Tools Market

Very interesting post at elise.com: Weblog Tools Market - Update February 2005.  At least, if you're interesting in weblogs, weblog tools, market shares and that sort of stuff :-)

Very interesting tidbits:

• Ultimately, the debate about which weblog software package is best is not as important as some people think.  Less than 1% of the potential bloggers know how to set up such a system anyway.
• Of these 1%,  many are corporate users, and that means the tool with the best salesforce and support has a huge advantage.  Yay us!  I guess this means I'll still be able to afford shoes for my daughter in the future.
• For hosted weblogging services, quality and reliability are enormously important, because a weblog represents hours and hours of hard work from it's author.
• In this space, TypePad seems to be doing very well, despite being one of the very few paying services around.  Must be that quality and reliability...

But enough tooting our own horn, go read it for yourself...