The recently launched website we made for giving away free tickets, Voornopnaarpop.nl ain’t dry yet and whoops there’s another website about music.

This time it is a groupblog called Eclectro. If the name rings a bell you probably know it from last year. We used the domain for organizing a contest to vote the best dance record of 2006. With 73.209 votes this was an enormous and unexpected succes.

Inge is the evil genius behind Eclectro. He build the website and is motivating a group of bloggers to post everything that has anything to do with electronic music on Eclectro. The website is in Dutch, but you know what they say. Music unites :) And music is what this is all about. I’m sure you know how to find some great mixes without reading a word.

Tonight we had a few beers and launched a quiz called mpwho/mpwie. You have to guess the song that is playing, out of a 10 second loop. I’m not sure if this is too difficult, let me know.

Michael Arrington has a dispute with Cnet. He finds himself attacked by a journalist of the tech website. The ‘why’ is a matter I don’t want to go into and have nothing to do with.

The thing that is very interesting is Michaels blog-respond to the Cnet journalist. He has a few strong arguments that can be applied to every news-organization.

“…Based on my estimates, the average A-List blogger generates 10x the page views that the average journalist does.”

“…CNET is but a shadow of its former self

I’m not saying bloggers are better journalists. Fact is bloggers are very good in creating communities. In a news-organization the individual isn’t important it is about the brand. No matter how you might think about blogs and bloggers, over the last years blogs grew in authority, trust, reach and revenue.

The question is not if a blogger is a journalist, the question should be if a journalist is a blogger. The skills of a blogger are valuable. In a web atmosphere they might be even much more valuable than the skills of a journalist. If you can successful combine both you’re in pole position.

Being a journalist on the web is not just about writing anymore, it is about communicating. Getting involved in the topics and with your readers.

And it should be over with the useless discussion that a blogger isn’t objective. His career is at stake, even more than with traditional journalists. A blogger isn’t protected by the editors and brand of a media company. A blogger has the same reasons as a journalist to be objective.

The quote above says that Cnet is a shadow of itself. Maybe they are still making profits and showing healthy growth. One thing they don’t do enough is engaging with the audience. And this is why Michael Arrington gets the stories Cnet should have.

Engagement is what makes Cnet an island (and this is not just about Cnet). Getting of this island is the biggest challenge that traditional media will have to overcome in the next years.

I work at a newspaper with over 200 journalists, these are very smart people who are all expert in a certain area; finance, politics, immigration, sports, European Union. If all these people would start writing a blog about the topics they are interested in I’m sure the combined reach of the blogs would be much higher than the reach of current website. And there would evolve strong communities around certain topics.

We just have to find a way to create a daily newspaper out of all these blogs without extra effort ;)

In this months Wired there is an article about Hasan Elahi, he uses his website trackingtransience.net to document what is he doing at any given moment of the day. And he has a reason for doing this, his name ended mistakenly on a FBI terrorist suspect list. He decided the only way out of this is by giving up all the privacy he has by creating a continuous alibi.

The rise of blogs and social networks redefines online privacy. New applications that focus on streaming your life like Twitter and Kyte TV are opening up more and more information about a character.

A character (identity) can be fictional or not. It doesn’t matter. The combined information of one person across many different platforms generate a – often public – profile.

Young generations think different about privacy. Parents try to warn them about all the hazards of exposing too much information, but they often don’t care.

Is a big brother controlled by yourself still a big brother?

Isn’t claiming your identity by expressing it in the real or virtual world the best way to protect your identity?

The power of identity is checking. We check identities all the time, when you go to a bank, the first day at your new job, when you travel abroad. We don’t care about the identity itself, we care about the records connected to an identity. Online identity isn’t anything different. If your identity is public and everyone can check it or contact you your identity is probably better protected than the identity of a John Doe. If you’re not visible on the web I can act in your name and nobody will ever know about it.

You think your parents are always wrong when you are young, somehow the were right most of the times when you look at it a few years later. Maybe on this topic the parents are wrong, you should create your identity online! Creating an online identity is the only way to protect it. Parents should still warn about the fact that you will build up a record (google) that will be connected to this identity.

To quote Adam Curry: There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have.

Today Netvibes had a so called European release with a number of Netvibes Universes build with hyperlinks from European content suppliers. De Volkskrant on Netvibes was one of the Universes released today.

All the great things I have been part of last year confronted me with the incredible power of RSS feeds and API’s over and over again. Information is more and more separated from presentation. Semantic information storage by use of XML is probably the best computer invention since the graphic user interface.

As a content provider we benefit enormously from presenting our information in human and machine readable XML.

In the next few years information will separate even more from presentation. Within a few years producers will just have to focus on keeping XML feeds and API’s online and up to date.

Being extremely compatible is the new distribution model.

Only one problem. There is no business model in XML. The only way to monetize your content on other sites is to mix advertisements with your content (advertorial) or make it available via paid subscription models. Maybe we should design a XML tag for advertisement links.

update earlier this week the Volkskrant / VK.tv YouTube channel was officially released.

The BBC recently wrote an article about the hyperconnected generation, I like the name of this. I like everything with hyper because hyper goes beyond an existing word and there is nothing next to hyper. You can’t say hyperhyper. Hyper is always temporary, until it becomes mainstream. In time it will just be ‘connected’ again.

Every new (micro)generation is more connected than the generation before. We use all kinds of different applications or methods to connect to ‘friends’. (the definition of the word friend needs a serious update within the next years).

Since a few weeks I have a continuously broadband internet connection on my mobile phone. Now the web, my e-mail, IM and more travels with me and is continuously within ‘live’ reach. After these two week I realized the next thing is definitely going to be in the mobile phone. It is so much more than a computer.

Sure the device lacks usability, screen estate and a keyboard. These are just small things compared to the advantages a small connected device has. You can’t design a website on your mobile phone, but you can read one. You can watch video, listen to audio, stream, IM, text and talk. And the most important one; It is always there.

The computer is build around composing things. And this is what it does best. In the same way as television is very good in entertaining in a non-interactive way. You will immerse in a movie or a film without interaction. Just sit and let it happen.

The immersive character of a television is very strong. The immersive character of a computer is within work (Mao would have loved computers). You can completely forget about the things around you when you are composing something. A piece of audio, a design or a text.

The mobile phone also has it immersive key-points. A phone is about communication, about what is happening ‘right here, right now and right there, right now’. This is what makes a phone different from a computer or television. It is always there, ready to communicate with the world. It’s another device that combines earlier media. Like the computer did with television, newspapers, diaries, telephone and radio. The mobile phone takes and disconnects the social functions of a computer from time and place.

Social networks evolve around contacts. It is all about being connected. Livecasting is all about streaming you. Creating your personal Truman Show. The paradigm in this is that we are talking about protecting our privacy on the one end, on the other end we are giving more than ever before. We’ll see how this ends.

Today I finally tried Kyte TV and it is a great piece of software. The mobile client enables you to broadcast and create a program/items on your mobile phone. At the same time you can interact with your viewers.

Now we have to see what great things we can make with this.

I just installed Kyte TV on my mobile phone. The thing above is my stream. An update explaining what is cool about it will follow later. My channel can also be found here kyte.tv/wilbertbaan

Sometimes I’m amazed by the things software can do already. This video recorded at TED is a perfect example of something you think would be great in the future but can be done already.

Over the last years we have seen many great research projects by Microsoft. Amazing features doing amazing things with technology and usability. These features often don’t make it back to the Windows mothership.

Microsoft is an enormous company, building one major product. To build anything as big as this you have to compromise a lot. Compromises made to build a generic product for every user from newbie to advanced.

What if Microsoft released Windows as a simple, solid and free platform where you can buy the plug-ins/add-ons you need? Like the frame of a bike, a solid foundation to build on. You buy a computer with a simple Windows installation, if you want to use it to organize your holiday pictures you buy an extension. If you have trouble reading the small fonts, you buy an extension, and so on.

The rise of widgets is already ending the existence of small programs. Could widgets also make an end to the generic interface? Why isn’t my interface widgetized? Why do I have to use the same interface a coder uses or my mother? This is extra luggage that can be left out the core of my operating system.

If we let a user decide what his interface, usability and functionality would look like research groups can really use their power to focus on problem solving. They can develop an interface and sell it as an addition instead of creating something beautiful and losing the best things in compromises.

Some of us like the interface used in Minority Report, others like the one used in the Matrix. It’s all about what you want to do with your computer.

Read more about the software Photosynth at Microsoft Live Labs

Michael Arrington created an startup / entrepreneur-news-magnet with his Techcrunch blog. Last weeks I heard a few times people saying that we should have an ‘European Techcrunch’ with all the great startups that are based in Europe.

I think some focus on European concepts, startups or bloggers would be good. We have a diverse and small communities in every country, with cultural differences and global similarities. We have a great infrastructure, great universities and last but not least we have great food. I’m sure that we build massive amounts of cool stuff, only compared to international standards we seem to be hiding it pretty good.

Who are the European Bloggers / weblogs that are good?

1. The Ludologist, Jesper Juul (Games, Copenhagen)
2. Textually (Mobile phones, Switzerland)
3. We make Money not Art (Art, I’m not sure, all around Europe)
4. NEW: Vecosys (Startups, United Kingdom)
5. NEW: Veerle (Design, Belgium)
6. ….

And the topics or companies? What are European start-ups / success stories?

1. Netvibes (France)
2. Last.fm (United Kingdom)
3. Jaiku (Finland)
4. Wakoopa (Netherlands)
5. The Internet Address Book (Netherlands)
6. ….

Help to create the list about other great European bloggers and startups that should be on a list. Leave the names in the comments.

Listen to the interview with Michael Arrington by Iinovate (subscribe with iTunes)
[audio:http://www.hipcast.com/export/Pdc9739dba03a3ca00dd1156dc1aad182YVB6SlREYmZ3.mp3]