Join the Buzzle!

Waiting at a bus stop is quite boring, right?
Well, we have a solution!

For the course User Interface Design we created an interactive game: The Buzzle!

The Buzzle is an interactive game for people who travel by bus. In order to pass their time at bus stops, people seek social interaction. Therefore, the Buzzle invites people to pass their time by playing an interactive and appealing puzzle game on a bus stop, alone or together with other people. This way, interactive bus stops within a city or in multiple cities can compete against each other by trying to solve the puzzle as fast as possible. You can also join the Buzzle-network on Facebook and look up interesting stats, facts, scores, and other people who also participated!

Watch the following video to get an impression:

How to gather realistic emotions?

In conversations, people try to express their feelings through non-verbal communication and emotions, which makes emotions very important for communication. As a result, there are many studies about non-verbal communication and emotions. However, given that you can't fake emotions, how is it possible to investigate them? To learn more about how to gather realistic emotions for research, we interviewed Martijn Goudbeek, who is a staff member of the Department of Communication and Information Sciences at Tilburg University. Martijn Goudbeek is specialized in the production and perception of emotion, nonverbal communication (voice and gesture), speech perception, and the production of referring expressions.

The following video is the result of the interview:

Spotify: a free jukebox

From the moment that Spotify was released in the Netherlands, the number of users of this online music service has been increasing. Spotify is originally a Swedish music streaming service, which includes more than 10 million songs. You have to sign up for one of the three services (free, unlimited, or premium), and subsequently you can download the stream and listen to music. The main difference between de free-account and the other accounts is the fact that you can listen to music for free, though up to a maximum of 20 hours a month. Furthermore, in contrast with the unlimited-account and the premium-account, the free service includes some advertisements.

Spotify makes it possible for the users to stream music online, and every account offers specific opportunities; such as the possibility to download tracks and listen to music on a smartphone. Furthermore, people don’t need CD’s or MP3’s anymore to listen to music.
Even though Spotify depends on whether you have access to the Internet, the number of users has been increasing over the past year, due to the large amount of music.


However, some things about the free account are going to change on May 1st. After you signed up, you can still listen to music up to 20 hours a month. However, after half a year the maximum will decrease to only 10 hours a month. In addition, free users will only be able to play each track up to a total of five times. Nevertheless, the unlimited-account and premium-account are not going to change at all.

Spotify seems to be a good alternative for illegal music downloading, because many people are obviously willing to pay for the service when it doesn’t costs too much money. However, I wonder whether Spotify actually will be able to break down music piracy.

Twitter from space

Did you know that not only people on earth make use of Twitter to share messages and photo's? You see; also humans in space make use of this social network. In general, several astronauts frequently send tweets to their followers, in order to inform them. Nevertheless, there is a famous astronaut who not only sends messages, but who sends photographs to his followers as well. Soichi Noguchi is a Japanese astronaut who is aboard the space station. He frequently takes pictures of the earth, and sends these photographs back to earth via Twitter. I think that this is a fantastic benefit of Twitter, because Twitter gives people -like astronauts- the possibility to share wonderful pictures with the rest of the world. In this blog post I will give you an overview of a few breathtaking pictures of the earth, taken by Soichi Noguchi.

Take a look at this amazing picture of the Maldives:

He also shared an image of Haïti, after the earthquake:

Furthermore, he made this picture of the Amazon River:

Moreover, an image of the Mount Kilimanjaro:

In addition, a picture of Moscow:

A few days ago (on the 3th of April) he shared this image of the northern lights:

At last, he also made a picture of Amsterdam at night:

If you want to see more; you can find an overview of these pictures from Soichi Noguchi at this website. And of course at his Twitter account.

Brand Dating

"It's all about the brand" was the title of my previous blogpost, and again I found evidence for this quote. Namely, if brands are really important for people, and if people actually choose a specific brand instead of the product itselves, why don't we create a dating site which is based on brands?

That might be the thought of the person who invented Brand Dating. This dating agency allows people, who are looking for their true love, to find the perfect match based on brands. The procedure is simple: you select your favorite brands, and you also choose the brands that your 'true love' must prefer. Subsequently, the agency will find profiles from people who can be your perfect match.

According to this dating site, you can tell more about people from their brands than from common messages (such as: "I'm spontaneous and sporty"). For instance, you can create a mental image of someone who drinks Coca Cola, has a Harley Davidson, and likes to eat at the McDonalds. However, I think that a person is more than just a brand. When you select the brand 'McDonalds' because you like to eat there sometimes, it actually doesn't mean that you eat a Big Mac every week. But how do other people know that? Your 'match' may think that he/she needs to take you out on a date to the McDonalds, because according to your profile on the website you love to eat there.

Therefore, the effect of Brand Dating mainly depends on the selection of the brands: when you only select the brands that are really important to you (ask yourself whether you would buy the same product from another brand), than brands can expose a lot about you indeed.

So, are you looking for a reasonable dating site because you haven't found your true love yet? Perhaps Brand Dating can help you to find your Brand-Match. But be selective! You select your partners carefully, but you should select your brands precisely as well.

It's all about the brand

After many rumors, it was confirmed last week: the new iPad 2 will be released on March 25. This news was published on many international websites, and of course on social media websites as well. However, why is this such a big deal? Obviously Apple has nice, fast, good-looking products, but is the iPad really much better than the tablets from Samsung, LG, or Dell? For instance, Dell just launched the Dell Inspiron Duo Tablet:



This tablet looks great as well, and since I don't know anything about the technological characteristics, I'm questioning the reason why the iPad is so much better than - for instance this Duo Tablet.

From my point of view, the huge success of Apple is not just the result of the products. It's mainly because of the brand, which has become really powerful. Products are temporary, but brands can last for ever. Consequently, businesses like Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, and any other company, don't need to learn more about the technologies, since they are all experts. In fact, the major aspect they have to improve, is the marketing.

In the next inspiring video Simon Sinek clarfies his vision towards the power of Apple:



However, despite my criticism, I must say that if I would want to buy a tablet or a new laptop - and if I would have enough money to buy one -, it would be absolutely from Apple. Not mainly because of the apps or the technology, but because of the brand experience. So yes, after all it's all about the brand indeed.

Egyptian revolution 2.0 (or not?)

January 2011, the month of the Egyptian revolution. It all started on 25 January with demonstrations, marches, labour strikes and fights between demonstrators and supporters of the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Every country in the world was focused on the Middle East, wondering what would happen. Everywhere in Egypt people were gathered to demonstrate against the government, often combined with many violence.

It was possible to follow the developments in Egypt from every place in the world by watching the news or reading newspapers. In addition, everywhere in Egypt people communicated by leaflets, playcards, graffiti, and of course all the TV cameras with life footage. As mentioned in this BBC article: "When one communication channel is blocked, people try another." Meanwhile, this time another communication channel showed up: the internet.

The use of internet and mobile phones to organize demonstrations increased over the past few years. The internet showed his power several times before, and again that power was visible in January 2011. Many protestors in Egypt used social media to spread the news about developments, and to gather people for the next demonstrations. As mentioned in the article, "The Facebook group set up to protest at Khaled Said's death is "liked" by nearly 600,000 people and was a key organising centre for the current protests." However, next to Facebook, mainly Twitter was utilized for communication (#egypt), followed by an almost complete shutdown of international internet access between Egypt and the rest of the world. Nevertheless, on the historic 'Day of Rage' nothing could stop citizens from communicate which each other, and a huge number of citizens came together on the streets. These demonstrations resulted in an historic event: Mubarak resigned as president on 11 February and left Cairo.

From my point of view the internet was truly an important factor in this Egyptian revolution, but it was not the leading factor. I think this revolution would have happened anyway, perhaps just a little slower. After all, it is not the internet that brought this revolution in Egypt. It was hope.