Normally, I’m not really that much into statistics but today, as I stumbled upon my old post of 2 January 2011 ‘More than 7 trillion SMS messages will be sent in 2011’, I decide to check if that is actually the case. So, trying to find any information on the issue, I ran into these stats that are pretty nice, at least for me. Please don’t bug me with any remarks on reliability in general and the stats in particular. They are just indicators, not religion.

So, what are the trends in Mobile? here are an odd fifty experts expressing their wisdom. What do you think? (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/rudydw/mobile-trends-2020)

Last Tuesday, secretary of state Verhagen (economic affairs) decided that carriers may not charge consumers for the use of certain Internet services on their mobile phones. Originally, the purpose for these charges was that it would guarantee ‘net neutrality’. Effectively, this means that consumers would not be allowed to decide what Internet services to use or not use.

The city of Utrecht has, as many Dutch cities and regions, a rich and well-documented history. There is a huge mountain of data of all sorts of events taking place in or around the city. And by mountain of data you can take that quite literal. If you would make a stack of all the documents it would form a pile higher then the Mont Blanc, with its 4811 meters the highest mountain of Europe. The preservation of these huge collections is a complex task, and making it easily accessible is even harder. Making it all something that a non-professional audience can experience in a fun way seems like an almost impossible task.

Yesterday the new batch of graduate students pitched for a place in the CrossmediaLab graduate program. There was some sweat, some anxiety and some stuttering, but all in all the students did good presentations. But now! Now the work starts, sculpting the students into researchers is a painstaking process. I know, I once was a graduate student at the crossmedialab. Frustration, tons of literature and blank sheets of paper (that always seem to be winning the staring contest) are just a couple of the things waiting for them. But as I recall from my own time as a graduate student at the Lab, I learned a lot and I had a lot of fun.

I’ve got a couple of things I would like to share with you. First of all: happy New Year! Since it is the 6th, this is still allowed in our culture and as our website enjoys an increasing number of viewers, I consider this my last best whishes for 2011 to all.

Yesterday, we experienced the graduation of Digital Communication students. I forgot how many there were but the organization had to split up the group into two. Otherwise the ceremony would have taken four hours or so. The mentors of the graduates were instructed to speak only two minutes at the most. Fortunately, most of them stuck to the rule.
I had only three graduates but due to the fact that Erik Hekman had left for Mexico the other week, my list extended to an odd ten in total (it didn’t taken me twenty minutes, though).

Everybody who knows me knows I’ve always been (mis)using my mobile phone a lot. It all started with a Nokia 3310, which I used for texting my footballfriends and composing ringtones. A couple years later I spent a lot of money on a Samsung with Vodafone Live! and today I’m cherishing an iPhone. This last phone makes it even hard NOT to use it: I find myself constantly browsing, mailing and playing games with it. While I’m working on my desktop it has even become a second screen for my email and/or twitterupdates.