Category: Blogging

Designboom weblog, design related news, reviews and previews

Trying to collect news via the Quickpost WordPress plugin…but the built in Press it Plugin would bring a better result for this post…darn am I a slow two finger typist. But I want to make this point: I believe Joern Utzon was the ultimate prove that one well designed building can change the future of a city as a brand It can add clout to a city. Everybody who sees this photo will immediately think: “Sydney Opera House”. It has embedded the city in collective memory. May Joern rest in peace…

danish architect joern utzon who designed the sydney opera house died yesterday from a heart attack aged 90. considered to be one of the great architects of the 20th century, utzon designed private homes in his early career before he drew up the opera house in 1957, which later became one of the most iconic landmarks in sydney, australia. utzon received the pritzker prize for architecture in 2003 for his design.

designboom weblog, design related news, reviews and previews

10 Questions For (18): Carl-Peter Echtermeijer of The New Vienna Ring Hotel and The Grand Hotel Wien

Happy to present a real hotelier to you. Ha, I should have known that asking him my 10 questions would create as answers: “The Ring, Grand Hotel Wien and The Ring”:-). The first photo shows him very proudly with the 2008 Tripadvisor award for The Ring.


Carl-Peter Echtermeijer with the 2008 Tripadvisor award

1) Who Are you?

I am currently Assistant General Manager of 2 luxury hotels in Vienna, the famous Grand Hotel Wien, part of Leading Hotels of the World and The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel, a luxury design hotel we opened in 2007

2) What do you like about what you do?

I like working with people for our guests, I like the fact that hotel industry is like theater, every day and every situation is different, I like facing challenges, making things possible to our clients and guests, having an overall thinking-out-of-the-box  mentality.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

This question took me a while to think about, I cannot tell you what I do not like, my personal opinion is that one should see this job as a hobby.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

The blog we recently developed and implemented (The Ring Press) for our The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel is meant to inform guests, journalists, actually the on-line community about who we are, what people think and wrote about us and with which partners we work. I personally see this blog as a very unique on-line marketing tool.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Thailand due to the spa experiences, France due to the excellent food and the French mentality, Holland due to the very open culture and off course Friesland.


Grand Hotel Wien with the Concierge and Bellboy in the cold

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Paris as I wanted to surprise my wife, Bratislava to experience this upcoming city, Garda lake as we (my family and myself) needed a summer break.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food experiences to date and why?

The famous Heuriger in Vienna and Austria, this is so typical and so nice. Google it and give it a try, our Japanese restaurant Unkai as it is indeed the best Japanese food in Vienna ..number 3 is yet to come

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I only had a very bad food experience in Bratislava due to the fact that 1.) the food was terrible and 2.) we were definitely treated like foreigners..one does not expect that anymore

9) Can you offer the readers 3 travel/ food / accomodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

Do stay at one of Vienna’s trendy design hotels or at the recently opened Hotel Stadthalle (a bit of a green hotel focusing on green travel), visit the Heuriger restaurants and do plan culture, culture, culture ..also nightlife is great in Vienna. For dinner : our restaurant At Eigh at The Ring : aroma cuisine, new and spectacular.


The Ring Hotel with its new led Xmas lights

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

No, I would have asked the same questions and I am so happy to have the opportunity to get presented in this blog. Thank you!

Thank you Carl-Peter!
First congratulations with the Tripadvisor Award! A great achievement! Secondly: I have been informed that your at eight Ring restaurant got a very high Gault Millau rating recently – you should update your Blog!

I started this presentation with a bit of teasing, but when I was new to the internet I think I would have reacted the same as Carl-Peter: “Don’t divulge too much of yourself: They can use it against you”.

I will be meeting Carl Peter soon and get a personal tour of this new Viennese Hotel The Ring. Looking forward to it. Stay tuned!

Quote of the Day (9): Blogs Influence Consumer Purchases More than Social Networks

The number of those who read blogs at least once a month has grown 300% in the past four years, and what they read strongly influences their purchase decisions, playing a key role in ushering them to the point of actual purchase, according to a BuzzLogic-sponsored study, reports Retailer Daily.

jupiter-buzzlogic-half-online-population-reads-blogs-october-2008.jpg

“Harnessing the Power of Blogs,” a research study of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US, was conducted by JupiterResearch, a Forrester research company.

Blogs Influence Consumer Purchases More than Social Networks

Storytlr: The Ultimate Mashup Tool for your (Travel) Stories?

A Dutchman and a Belgian started Storytlr

The storytlr initiative

Storytlr is not a startup, just a fun project that we are building during our free time. We are a two people team, based in Belgium & The Netherlands: eschnou is our PHP Wizard and alardw the CSS Ninja.

A few months ago we saw this video from Loic Lemeur who was asking about a way to help him build ‘the centralized me’. We liked the idea because it sounded like reinventing the good old ‘personal page’, realizing that a blog can only capture one angle of what we did online. More over, we felt that this page had to be personal, and not yet another profile page locked in a social network, and plastered with company branding. Storytlr brings you just that, a platform to build the centralized you, and it is really about you, not about us.

Loic also gave us another idea in this post, where he explains that he ‘lost’ all his youtube videos ! We felt the same when we realized that our Twitter archives were not available due to Twitter downtimes. This brought us to the conclusion that we needed to ‘own’ our data. We needed a way to easily archive our online data and even back it up. In Storytlr, you own your data, you can download all of it whenever you want. Of course, it would be even be better if Storytlr was an open source platform so all this data is where you want it to be. This is also part of the plans.

Finally we realized that our flow of Twitter messages, Flickr photos, Qik videos were in fact telling a story, the story of our daily lives, and that sometimes we wanted to repackage this story in a nice format (beyond a photo album) to share it with friends. So we decided to make it really easy to mashup all these activities into a compelling story that is easy to share.

I’m off testing it at Happy Hotelier|Storytlr

They are getting kudos by Mashable.

Update
Unfortunately they ceased their service as of February 28, 2010
Now it is a Apache licensed open source project.

Travel Blog Camp 2008 (#tbc08 02): Photos

I’ve edited and uploaded my photos to Flickr. All in all I’m not very satisfied with the quality. I’ve certainly not shot enough (quality) as Heather from Heather on her travels suggested “to start a Travel Blogger’s society page”. Alas the light circumstances were far from ideal.. The first lesson for the next Travel Blog Camp: more light please – or should I bring more professional lighting?

The first photo is of Karen Bryan’s presentation.

The second photo is of Darren Cronian, who organized the event.

This is Matthew Cashmore of Lonely Planet, one of few who apparently tried multitasking by both listening intensely and Twittering away at the same time. I don’t know who the lady to the left of Mathew is….(added: Thanks to Matthews comment on Flickr (see below) the lady in question is his beloved Mrs Cashmore. Hi Catherine!)

From left to right standing: Unkown, Anthony and Tamara from Mr & Mrs Smith, Detlef Meyer of German Roundtrip and Kevin May of Travolution.

I’ve added here some photos from those I know.

I would like to ask my readers to comment on Flickr and give names and details to the faces, because here is lesson number two for the next edition:

  1. What happened with the name tags?
  2. At least it would be helpful if there is a list with thumbnail photos and names and web presences of those who attended, but Darren informed me that such could be a violation of UK privacy legislation… Can’t we ask the participants to waive this?
  3. Isn’t that what networking is about: Knowing who is who?