published a story about one of the future locations of a Citizen M Pod Hotel in Amstelveen, a suburb of, and connected with, Amsterdam. It gives more insight about the format of the Citizen M Pod Hotel concept.
It appears that the neighborhood, a middle to up class residential area, is contending the plans of Citizen M in court, as the building permit has been granted.
First there is an office building that has to be demolished to make place for the new hotel. I would say the building is not that disgusting, that it has to be demolished.
The building that will be demolished
Photo Maurice Boyer
They don’t like the design of the new building as it is not consistent with the architecture of the neighborhood. This is off course a very difficult discussion about “taste”
Then they don’t like that the hotel will be located in a residential area. They fear too much traffic and too much parking problems, as no specific parking space is foreseen for the Hotel. The lawyer representing Citizen M claims that the guests will mainly arrive by international air transport and by taxi. I highly doubt that to be a truthful statement.
They fear it to become a by the hour rendez-vous Hotel and fear an influx of cheap backpackers tourism. The last argument is unlikely as the much cheaper hostel concept specifically caters for the backpackers.
They fear loss of privacy as guests will be able to look in their homes from the many windows. This is a bit strange argument if one knows the very Dutch habit of not closing the curtains when the sun sets, that many of our foreign guests find a rather peculiar typical Dutch habit.
It seems to take some time before the building permit will be finally granted….
The Delft Ikea shop is able to produce traffic congestions on the motorway on its own. To my knowledge it is the only shop with its own motorway junction here in The Netherlands.
Ikea has expanded the shop and will establish a center of excellence. That will serve as a pilot for new concepts and products and as training center for Ikea workers from all over the world. They need a hotel for all those students.
As a small aside: Approximately 25 years ago my wife bought curtains from the first Ikea shop in The Netherlands that they closed in the meantime. The same lady who then sold the curtains to my wife still works for Ikea, but now in Delft, and recently sold curtains to my wife for a friend’s baby room. Speaking of employee’s loyalty….
Contrary to Shell that operates its coworker/student hotel itself behind the facade of its head office here in The Hague, Ikea has outsourced management of the new hotel to the Golden Tulip Group.
Last week the groundbreaking ceremony was held. Usually that means in the low lands to drive a long pole into the ground that will form part of the building’s fundament.
The Ikea/Tulip Inn with 140 rooms is scheduled to open December 2008.
The Australian Panasonic World Solar Challenge is a bi annual 3000 km solar car race from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia since 1987, so this year it celebrates its 20ieth anniversary. The challenge is for student teams from universities and colleges to design and construct the fastest vehicle that is propelled on solar energy only and can endure the 3000 km distance. The 2007 challenge counts 45 entries from 21 countries.
I Love Nuna4
Along with other solar cars, Nuna4 will be competing under extreme weather conditions, having to navigate between other traffic on the road – with the notorious and dangerous Australian road trains – as well as avoiding kangaroos and other obstacles.
The competition will be fierce this year. The US team of the University of Michigan even managed to secure a very high budget for the construction of its solar car with the specific aim of dethroning the Dutch Nuna 4 team of students from the Delft University of Technology who won 3 prior editions of this race in 2001 (team Alpha Centauri and average speed of 91,8 km/h), 2003 (Nuon Solar Team with Nuna II and average speed of 97 km/h), 2005 (with Nuna 3 and average speed of 103 km/h) in a row. You can understand why I am proud to be a Dutchman with these results.
The team has successfully come through the wind tunnel testing sessions. Its top speed is reported to be over 140km/hr. It is a really professional operation!
Team Nuna4 consists of four Aerospace Engineering students: Susan Luijten, Hjalmar van Raemdonck, Oliver van der Meer and Demian de Ruijter. The Design Engineering Department is repreented by Joep Steenbeek, Tine Lavrysen and Ivo Hagemans. Mechanical engineer Rabih Alzaher and Electrical Engineering graduate Paul Beckers are also on board. Stefan Roest brings an unusual perspective to the project from his Shipbuilding studies and will be the team leader. The team members have either completed their Bachelor’s degree, or are about to do so in a short time.
Apparently Nuna4 is in the process of revamping its website. It is clear that the development of the car had their first priority.
Andrea Ragnetti and Magic Brush
(Photo: Capital Photos / Nils van Houts)
This post was an unattended UFO (Un Finished Object) for a long time.
Not many people realize Philips is one of the few remaining Dutch Multinational Companies. After reorganizing, reorganizing and again reorganizing the company is back to how it started, as a producer of electrical light bulbs.
Via Gizmodo I found the press page of the 2006 Philips Simplicity Event of London where Philips showed the road to future light projects they have in the pipeline.
The picture I choose is that of Andrea Ragnetti showing a wall you can write on with light. Its name Drag & Draw. The entire home becomes a virtual canvas for expression and play for young children, thanks to a magic brush, a magic eraser, a magic wand, and a laser projection bucket.
They forgot to mention that it is an ideal product to get rid of the overhead projectors…and especially the flip overs, the gadgets that hotels tend to overcharge when they rent you a meeting room.
I wasn’t aware it is almost completely new, at least for The Netherlands, as it appears it was available earlier in the USA, in Taiwan and in France: The Heineken 5 Liter DraughtKeg.
We hosted a party last Monday and someone took a cooled Heineken 5 L DraughtKeg with him and installed it. I noted the recent transport didn’t create any frothy problem when using it.
Installation was so easy and natural that it seemed the 5 L DraughtKeg was there already for ages…(off course similar systems are already on the market for ages). Not so: The guy who brought the keg is an early adapter.
Today, after having used 7/8 of the 5 liter keg on Monday, I took it out of the fridge and had another couple of nice draught beers.
What is it?
It is a mini disposable double walled beer keg. The assumption it being double walled appeared to be wrong after I had seen a video where they sawed the keg through.
It is pressurized and comes complete with an easy to install tap. Just tap the keg and draw up to 20 glasses of crisp draught beer.
And with Heineken’s patented Intelligent Pressure System, you can be sure every glass, from first to last will be perfect.
Getting Started:
It comes with a very simple plastic tap mechanism in a blister pack on top of it and picture instructions showing how to use it.
Chill the keg for at least 10 hours in your fridge.
Remove the tap components from the blister pack on top of the keg.
Remove the green plastic closing cap from the top of the keg.
Snap the ring on top of the keg.
Place the mini tap in the center of the ring.
Details:
After first use the beer stays fresh for 30 days when stored in the fridge.
You can take off the tap and re apply it.
You can store it on its site in the fridge.
No froth forming as with the traditional large keg in a tap installation.
Some foaming during the initial pour is normal. It should settle down after that. For best results, the beer should be cooled for at least 10 hours at 2-5 degrees Centigrade (40-45 degrees Fahrenheit). Do not store at temperatures above 35 degrees Centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Do not shake the keg before usage. Make sure your glasses are rinsed and cool.
Some considerations
There have been miniature beer kegs around for years, but thus far the tap mechanisms were horrible in use and you would hardly ever get the (at least in The Netherlands required) two fingers froth on your beer.
Apparently Taiwan served as a test market and the first 1,000 kegs imported were sold within two weeks (source Nation Multimedia).
Heineken introduced the Beertender in 2004 together with Krupps. Later Philips followed with a similar system in cooperation with Inbev. It sold tremendously, but the disadvantage was that chilling the beer in the beertender took a long time and storing a half used keg was only possible inside the beertender. So I take it that the introduction of this new 5L DraughtKeg will eat the market of this Beertender.
Dutch seafront bars are already complaining that the they sell less beer because of the 5L DraughtKeg (you have 3 to 4 hours of really nice cool beer after taking it from your fridge). The real reason is off course they charge horrible for a glass of draught beer.
Most important consideration: It is much handier than slaving with crates with bottles.
Most important question: Is it sustainable? Heineken claims it is recyclable….
Sources
More on Heineken Com
More multimedia about the DraughtKeg: Party Heineken
More on the USA introduction at Free Republic
DraughtKeg on YouTube:
On YouTube I found this instructive video about how to install the DraughtKeg. I do not exactly know which language it is, can somebody help me out?:
How to use it
This video hilariously addresses the old problems the DraughKeg solves:
What frothy problems it solves
Two Dutchmen hilariously addresses the sustainability problem: What to do with a shed of used DraughtKegs?
What to do with the empty DraughtKeg
It seems the last one is produced by Heineken itself.
The funny thing is that in order to see video on the Heineken site (Yuck a site entirely in Flash) you have to give some proof of your age whereas no such thing is asked by YouTube…..
