53MILES

Het was ongeveer een jaar geleden toen ik als blogger aanwezig was bij een productpresentatie in Maarssen. Aangezien ik al een beetje laat was stormde ik het kantoor binnen en nam direct de trap naar boven. Ik had geluk, ik was de tweede, en schudde meteen wat handen. “Kom even mee” werd me verteld en ik liep een lange ruimte in met in het midden een vergadertafel. De andere blogger zat aan het einde, starende naar een soort spiegelende TV. Ik werd kundig naar een stoel verwezen en stelde me voor: “Hallo, mijn naam is Robert Gaal en ik ben internetondernemer”. De spiegel lachte en sprak: “hi Robert, ik ben een ouwe grijze man en ik heb dit gebouwd”. Ik kende de partij aan de andere kant niet en wist dus eigenlijk niet wat ik moest zeggen behalve “wow, dit is gaaf”. Ik stond op van m’n stoel en liep een beetje rond het apparaat. M’n collega was veel scherper en vroeg direct wat over het “groene” aspect van deze uitvinding. Het gesprek eindige daarna snel want veel tijd was er niet. Na de presentatie vertelde de andere blogger me dat deze man Eckart Wintzen was, ex-directeur van BSO/Origin. Dat hij tegenwoordig veel deed voor het milieu enzo. Helaas zei dat me nog steeds niet veel maar Wikipedia gaf me al snel wat meer ontzag.

Flash forward naar gister avond. Tijdens een etentje met bevriende (jonge) ondernemers hadden we het over innovatie. Over het onvermogen van grote bedrijven om te innoveren in een bureaucratisch klimaat en hoe te pioneren in Nederland. Hier pitche ik het celdeling principe waar ik over aan het lezen was in Eckart’s Notes, een ontzettend stijlvol boek door Wintzen. De rest van de tafel luisterde geinteresseerd naar dit stukje geschiedenisles en er kwamen hier en daar wat nieuwe inzichten boven. De volgende ochtend las ik direct de laatste drie hoofdstukken van het boek uit. Het laatste eindigde met zoiets als “ik hoop dat je de parels in dit boek hebt kunnen vinden, maar anders hoop ik dat je van de oester hebt genoten”.

Nog geen uur daarna sla ik m’n laptop open en zie ik een bericht op Emerce: Eckart Wintzen is gestorven aan hartaanval op 68-jarige leeftijd. Oef, dat is klote. Maar zeker weten dat deze parel van een Nederlander van de oester heeft genoten.

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One of the podcasts I enjoy the most is The 1UP Show. It’s a series of video’s by the late Ziff Davis Media covering new games and the people who love ‘em. As an entrepreneur focused on the web I do enjoy how they look at innovation as consumers in the gaming space, instead of outside folks analyzing a vaguely defined market. Their latest episode contained a few interviews with up-and-coming small game developers. It struck a certain cord with me that I really felt like sharing with you in this post.

When I grew up games where something very trivial, it was either for geeks or for youth. I had a NES and played on it with friends, yet we never considered ourselves “gamers”. I bet if you’d ask my past self what I liked I’d answer skateboarding, climbing trees and shooting paper arrows in my neighbors roof window. The fact that I played Kirby, Mario or Pacman for hours a day wouldn’t matter that much. But over the years I changed my mind and gaming became something I am. It did for a lot of people, and series like The Sims and Half-Life triumphed on it. Games became mainstream. Huge budgets our now needed to bring ultimate experiences to a mass consumer audience. Game studio’s can sell 100.000 copies but aren’t really opening any champaign at that point. “Woohoo, we’re bankrupt!”, that just doesn’t feel right. Because for all the investment that need to be put into a large title, an multiple sum has to come out. The BBC wrote a lenghty article about it: how can there be innovation when the industry is forced to built safe titles to sustain profitability?

Some of the people interviewed by 1UP are the developers of flOw. One of them used to work on Spore, an innovative multi-million budget EA Games production with unique gameplay that’s getting all the attention right now. However, this developer couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take that it took years for the game to get released. And so he made the simple version of Spore in Flash and stuck to one thing: the starting sequence.

flOw is based on the amoeba-phase of Spore and takes the player for a dip in the primordial soup, collecting little blobs and evading the bad ones. All engulfed in a unique atmosphere with a great soundtrack. It started as a Flash game but later was released together with Sony on the Playstation Network (PSN), where it quickly captured al lot of attention. People are falling in love with it’s design and the zen-like relaxing qualities of the game. Not many titles have that in them. Most huge game titles like Halo 3 sure don’t, they’re about shock and awe. That’s something not all audience like. But times are changing and flOw was able to grab a niche by the throat: casual gamers looking for a relaxing experience. This works great for them because if something cool can be built with a small team, it can be profitable when consumed by a small audience.

All around us are small independent teams who don’t have big budgets but do have great unique ideas suitable for a certain audience. Web entrepreneurs have the pleasure of riding this long tail for years: the web has been a great open distribution sandbox for everybody to play in. A lot of game studios have found their way on the web as well with some great Flash games coming out recently. Now they can take it a step further with networks like PSN, Xbox Live, WiiWare and Steam, not to mention mobile. They’re not fully open yet, but maybe they will learn something from the web or even make the full shift as a web platform. Either way: new possibilities have arrived and we’re already seeing the gaming market changing because of it.

When I still worked for gaming sites I remember bitching about innovation in a lot of articles, and thanks to the indie developer it’s something we’re seeing more often. As with numerous area’s of business like the web (open and widely spread) innovation will not come from the larger companies. It will be thought of by somebody inside a large company, in a mathematics class by a college student or behind the counter at a McDonalds by a bored drop-out. And because of the limitations they are facing they will mostly likely do it faster, better, more creative and especially more driven then anybody else. What area of business will be next?

This article was also features on The Next Web.

For the past year now I’ve wanted to do something with tumblelogs. If you don’t know tumblelogs, it’s a new type of structured mini-blogging that’s gaining popularity. One of the most famous being Projectionist. It’s basically fun and short, yet structured and a good read.

Recently I re-discovered Tumblr, a tumblelog host, and was surprised again by what they offer. They let you make a tumblelog in seconds, but they still give you the option to make it as custom as you want it to be. They have a pretty sweet template language, and they even let you put it on your own dotcom name. Yet they’re still hosting it for you and giving you access to all kinds of tools. For instance: they have a great bookmarklet that adepts to the pages you’re on and let’s you post stuff in seconds to your tumblelog. Recently they also added the option for you to automatically import bookmarks from del.icio.us, videos from YouTube, and every other RSS feed you want. In short: a kick-ass way to aggregate your online discoveries.

I also discovered Cameron’s site. He uses a tumblelog as the frontpage, a seperate blog for the more in-depth articles and other subdomains for pages. But that’s just the structural stuff. The whole layout also comes of very cool to me. The way posts of different content or origin have different icons, the simplicity of it all. I mean, I hate to rip off design elements like that, but I think he’s made a new set of guidelines with this. Some guidelines to stick to just because it works so well. So in fear of being called a copycat I contact Cameron and he was cool with me using his concept in a different design.

And there you go, 53MILES.com is now a tumblelog, powered by Tumblr, with a new grungy design as well. Just to test how this will effect my communication of course, but I think I’m gonna like it. I’m already kind of addicted to finding new quotes and conversations every day, not to mention adding bookmarks or video’s. You can import Twitter messages too but I think tumbling is more about sharing discoveries than sharing presence or chat, so I’ll leave that to be for now.

I’ve moved my past Wordpress blog to articles.53miles.com, which you can subscribe to seperately through this feed. All articles will be mentioned in summarty on the tumblelog, with a link pointing to the page where you can comment. My current existing feed will be attached to the tumblelog. Every little piece of information about me and this site has moved to about.53miles.com.

So stay tuned for some tumbling and let me know what you think.

After 2,5 years of blogging, I’ve decided to quit my Dutch Web 2.0 blog BlueAce. Read more about it here (in Dutch). It will merge into a bigger and better blog together with The Next Web. Kind of a difficult decision for me, because without this blog I wouldn’t have been where I am today. However, when you want to be The Best in startups, you can’t dedicate yourself to writing about them that much. With the acquisition of BlueAce by The Next Web I’ll have the opportunity to still write whenever I wish, but leave the day-to-day operational always-on stuff to others.

I feel sad and happy at the same time, but in the end I think I’ve done the right thing. This gives me a lot more focus when it comes to what I think I like most: making stuff. Check out thenextweb.org, because we’re gonna kick serious ass in the near future.

I could spend the day making a cool original christmas greeting to post here. Or I could check out what kind of stuff others have posted already regarding the holiday theme, and just hotlink it up. Instead I’ll just be lazy and say: happy holidays everybody.

I’ll spend my christmas with the family in Papendrecht, which might be a good opportunity to recharge for the upcoming year. I have the feeling this year was all about starting things and preparation, so hopefully next year will be about kicking ass and taking names. Bring on 2008!