Q&A with Igor van Gemert

Igor van Gemert, Director, Founder, Innergy Creations BV

Club of Amsterdam: We now just launched the Jukebox, which allows users to download and listen to mp3 files with our lectures - a great new feature, which will certainly be appreciated by our global community. How do you see the coming development of services like this?

Igor van Gemert: I think this small application adds value to the website. We added some extra meta data to every lecture audio file. So you can search on topics, speakers etc. and listen to a preview without the downloading mumbo jumbo. We will also include a new release of the jukebox with RSS feeds and email alerts. This means you can simply subscribe to a specific field of interest. Also we will include specific author links to online user community’s like openbc.com. The next step would be streaming TV channels for all topics within clubofamsterdam.com ! I personally think that these small applications are the first steps in the development of clubofamsterdam communication platform which enables the user to speak out and enable them to harvest the insights in other disciplines.

The next version of Internet or Web 2.0 is going to have a deep impact on online communication. Can you give some outstanding examples?

Igor van Gemert: This is a hard question. So for the people do are not familiar with the term see this definition “Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes."

The web is so huge so I will give 3 examples and explain a bit why I like them.

www.thinkfree.com/common/main.tfo ThinkFree Desktop is the compatible alternative to Microsoft® Office. It includes Write (word processing), spreadsheet (Calc), and presentation (Show) applications that let users create, edit, and perfect their documents. This revolutionary software is platform independent and compatible with Windows, Linux and Macintosh systems; enabling almost anyone to use it-no matter what operating system they're running. It’s a new way to create you documents and work online with other people.

www.last.fm/join Your ticket to the social music revolution! With Last.fm on your computer you can scrobble your tracks, share your music taste, listen to personalized radio streams, and discover new music and people. Why do I like this ? It’s completely logic that these applications are evolved on the internet. Music is about communication and sharing emotions. It is very interesting to see how your music taste is "unique" related to other people. Music dating events are the next step I guess. It would be fun to meet people IRL who share almost the same music taste as you.

www.Youtube.com Why ? It’s about enabling people to become famous in 5 minutes and it’s a excellent example how IPTV will hit the web. It’s also interesting to see how community’s interact with the published media. What will it replace ? Your TV in 5 years. Who will be in charge ? In my opinion GoogleTV will be visible in every household in 2016 or even faster.

Personally I'm a lover of radio plays and am quite happy that the introduction of ipod, ebooks etc now gives us the tools to listen to this new version of radio whilst driving in a car, traveling by train, plane etc, jogging ... "Mobile" content seems to be high in demand. What developments can we expect?

Igor van Gemert: More integrated (location based) streaming media services like; you are listening to “The police” would you like to get 20% discount ? Go to the nearest Free Record Shop and show your personal discount coupon code with your mobile. It’s only valid for 1 hour… Integration of RFID in phones for (payment) services. So you enter the shop hold you mobile phone to a rfid reader. Show me something I like. The system automatically selects new titles based on my previous purchases. So the mobile becomes a smart internet browser, media player, communication and transaction/tracking tool. The mobiles phones are becoming more advanced every day. This means in a while you just buy and download your high quality track at your local telephone operator. Upload it in your pc, your hifi set etc.

Thank you Igor for this q&a and special thanks to Innergy Creations BV for sponsoring the Jukebox!