This is the personal website of Derk Braakman from the Netherlands.  I'm working in Amsterdam as a API manager with the social networking site Hyves right now. I recently left my job at Endemol, some work from the time I worked there can be found on the portfolio from Endemol Crossmedia: cp.endemol.nl. My personal portfolio is a bit outdated but you can see it in the portfolio section (it's from 2006). The site derkbraakman.com is under construction (isn't it always???). It's about me and things that I like to inform you about. The del.icio.us, Bemba and intresting links are weekly updated, so that is something you could check for sure. Send me an email if you've any questions. derkATderkbraakman.com. I have started a blog about viral content on the web, you can visit it at blog.derkbraakman.com.

I've always used Outlook Express on my own pc at home. Reasons: familiar, easy to use and the real reason, Hotmail support. A few years ago, I looked at some alternatives, but after a few days I got back with Outlook Express.

About 2 months ago I finally made the decision to move to Thunderbird. This Mozilla based Email client is Outlook Express+++. You can use most email systems like Gmail, hotmail (requires webmail add-on), pop3 and imap. You can download add-ons to tweak al kinds of options. For example: you can embed a calendar in Thunderbird and sync it with Google calendar.

The only small thing I'm missing in Outlook Express is the font-size selection. If anyone know's a add-on out there that ads this functionality. Send me n email.

I don't know if you are familiar with the term web2.0. It's about using the content that's already on the web. This webcontent you can use and merge with other content to produce new content. I recently found out a new tool from Yahoo. It's called pipes. You can get any kind of data and organize it the way you want. Usualy it's published in a xml/rss feed. For example a guy made a mashup from Flickr and Nu.nl(ducth newssite). He combined the words that were used in the title of the newsitem and link this with photo's from Flickr.

I produced a little example of a mashup with traffic information and speedcamera's on pipes. This is from the road i'm driving every day from work to home (the A4). It's based on this one.

On the resently launched website seeqpod.com you can seach for music content on the web and listen to it with the sites web musicplayer. There is also a posibility to save a playlist of your selected songs. The files that get searched are found directly on the web. not only music songs but also images, presentations, textfiles, etc. More information about the special search engine they are using you can find on http://www.seeqpod.com/about_us.php. Have fun, listening!

What do you have to do to extract a dvd to your harddrive.

1. If you have a protected DVD you can download dvddecrypter and install it.
2. Decypt your DVD to your local harddisk.
3. Download the program called Staxrip and install, it's a opensource tool.
4. Take the .vob files from the dvd directory and convert them to .avi files(Xvid codec).
5. if you start the conversion the program will ask to install some extra conversion tools when you select to convert, these are all for the good purpose. I usually convert my movies to Xvid-codec-avi. This is widely used, so no problem for everyone to play on there pc.

Good luck and no converting of any illigal stuff...