Willem-Alexander now King of The Netherlands

Willem -Alexander now King of The Netherlands

By a simple signature from his mother, Queen Beatrix, under an abdication declaration, Willem-Alexander became King of the Netherlands in the Amsterdam Royal Dam Palace today at approximately 10.35 hr AM local time.

Thereafter the new King will be inaugurated by swearing to be true and loyal to the Dutch Constitution before both Houses (Chambers) of Dutch Parliament.

Thereafter the two houses of Dutch Parliament will swear their loyalty to the King.

Queensday 2013: Best Whishes to King Willem-Alexander!

Actually there is no Queensday today. It is Abdication and hence Inauguration Day today.

Tooting my own Horn

On my significant other blog I’ve featured 100 chairs in celebration of Inauguration Day.

Brass Balls – Arthur Frommer

brass-balls by hartfordtechnologies

Brass Balls – Arthur Frommer

I post this in my What are you Thinking About? category. Why? Read the intro for an explanation. I mean I don’t want to be disrespectful towards Mr Arthur Frommer. Not at all. It is the first thought when I learned today from the NY Times that he has bought back the publishing rights for the Frommer’s Travel guides from Google: “The man must have Brass Balls!” Mind you! The man is 83! He sold the brand eons ago (in 1977) to Simon & Schuster who sold it to the ones who sold it to Google. I really admire the move.

About two week ago I saw Skift mentioning Google quietly planning to ditch the paper travel guides of Arthur Frommers.

I just love one comment made on Skift:

“Do they [ed:Google] really think the content that they acquired from the Frommer’s deal has a longer shelf life than yogurt?”

At about the same time BBC sold Lonely Planet at a hefty loss (bought it for 200 million and sold it for 79 million) without being it certain the new owner would continue with the paper guides.

As a side thought: Just wondering if Tony Wheeler would show the same balls…

Arthur Frommers

BTW by the looks of this photo (thanks to Darien Library, Flickr) at his age Mr Frommer is still in good shape.

Frommer started the guidebook enterprise in 1957 with a self-published book called “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day.” It was an expanded version of a small travel guide he had written for American soldiers in Europe. With its emphasis on budget travel, it became an immediate best-seller and launched a guidebook company that became one of the world’s most recognized travel brands. Frommer’s daughter Pauline Frommer also has written numerous guidebooks for the brand and, like her father, is a much-quoted expert on consumer travel and related issues… .

And his daughter Pauline Frommerpublishes guide books of her own. Essentially Frommer now seems to be back to a Dad and Daughter business.

My Second and Third Thoughts

To come back to the yogurt shelf live Frommer will be facing: A lot of stale info bought from Google….

Happy Hotelier's Momedia Guides

MoMedia is my fave travel guide for European cities, small so it fits in your pocket, good city plans included and over 50 European Cities in their portfolio, all reasonably up to date. I just have scanned some 100% city guides of them I’ve lying around here.

I believe it is worthwhile that Frommers has a look at MoMedia and MoMedia has a a look at the new Frommer …to see if they can work out something together..

Oh Yesss! Maybe I can be of (translation) assistance, as I see that although MoMedia moved from The Netherlands to Berlin and now have a German Language presence, they don’t seem to have a sound English Language presence…Just my 2 cents as Frommer started in Europe…

p.s. I borrowed the Brass Balls photo from Hartford Technologies

How to open your Wine without a Corkscrew

How to open your Wine without a Corkscrew

Want to open a nice bottle of wine without a corckscrew? Watch this little video which shows your the trick that doesn’t make you push the cork into the bottle. It is in French, but easy enough to understand the trick

Clothespins Wrapped Trees by Gerry Stecca

Clothespins Wrapped Trees by Gerry Stecca Wide

Clothespins Wrapped Trees by Gerry Stecca Long

Clothespins Wrapped Trees by Gerry Stecca

Now that is something else than knit covering trees: Covering trees with clothespins. I came across Miami, Florida, based Gerry Stecca via his first Kickstarter Project where he seeks funds for wrapping 4 trees in front of a newly opened museum, the Forth Smith Regional Art Museum in Arkansas, Arizona.

You can also find more about the project on Behancé

Says Gerry:

Well over 7000 wood clothespins are being drilled and connected by wires, creating the “sheets” which will wrap around the main trunk of 4 trees facing the front of the museum.
April 16-17 and possibly the 18th, 2013 will find me on site, mostly on tall ladders, adapting the pieces made in warm Miami to the cold Arkansas trees. On site changes will be made to accommodate branches, etc and secure the work against weather and passerby’s touch, which is encourage as it is an interactive piece.

Upon completion, the work will remain for an undetermined amount of time for museum guests and regular city traffic to discover and enjoy.

The project is partially funded however I need to cover personal and production cost.

But there is more

Wrapping trees is not the only way Gerry works with clothespins: What to think of this magnificient Hammer Shark?

Clothespins Hammer Shark

De Correspondent – Dutch Journalists’ Crowd Funding Success

De Correspondent Logo

De Correspondent – Dutch News Crowd Funding Success

We all know the paper press is in Dire circumstances. To Paywall or not to Paywall your content? What about the Paper Guidebooks apparently going down the drain now that Google has announced to ditch the paper Frommers Guidebooks. What will happen with the Lonely Planet Guidebooks? We all know there is an ongoing battle between Travel Journalists, Travel Writers Travel News sections of paper press and so on and so forth.

The more refreshing is the outcome of this experiment:

Target met within 8 days

De Correspondent- First Masthead
Only 8 days ago a group of Dutch reasonably known journalists, column writers and bloggers (see the above picture of their first “masthead”) teamed up and launched a membership site De Correspondent with the intention to source 15,000 members who solely based on the good name of the founders and a promise to start an alternative only online news presence, without a very clearcut idea of the form or the content….

Within 8 days more that 15.000 Dutchman have signed up and have paid their membership fee and the number is fast going up and counting (at the moment of publsihing this post the counter shows 15.239.

Very interesting to see how this experiment will go on.

Update

The final number of members after 30 days:
correspondent_counter_end_result

Counter copied from their blog post.