News about the site Absolutely The Hague and the community around it
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2010. That’s about 16 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 75 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 107 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 46mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was September 20th with 169 views. The most popular post that day was Prince’s Day (Prinsjesdag) .
The top referring sites in 2010 were networkedblogs.com, facebook.com, stumbleupon.com, twitter.com, and hofstijl.nl.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for rem koolhaas, absolutely the hague, biggest market in europe, koolhaas, and the hague market.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Prince’s Day (Prinsjesdag) September 2010
2 comments
The Hague Market, the biggest market in Europe August 2010
3 comments
M Building by Rem Koolhaas cancelled by The Hague August 2010
1 comment
Typical Coffee Candies from The Hague: Haagsche Hopjes September 2010
Ice is on it’s way to The Hague October 2010
4 comments
From all of us at Absolutely The Hague!
After some experimenting I managed to create an English language Daily paper based on Tweets: The Absolutely The Hague Daily. The Daily is aggregated on the basis of a small list of Tweeps who are connected to The Hague and who in general tweet in English.
It is a less flashy but better reading in English Daily than the Dutch version I reported about here..
Let me know what you think.
Our own Maurits inspired me to create The Hague Daily by Absolutely The Hague! as an experiment on paper.li. It is a good read on an Ipad!
It’s an experiment. The content is scraped from tweets of The Hague Tweeps. The disadvantage is most Tweeps there twitter in Dutch and not in English.
paper.li offers a widget, but that doesn’t work here, because the blog is not self hosted (yet).
More/better ideas?
Yes in jotting this down the answer is very simple: Just base The Hague Daily on a list of English Language Tweeps….
I’ll continue and try to fine tune this experiment.
Let me introduce myself as author of this blog
My name is Ellie Brik and I was born many many years ago in Rotterdam. Since 1999 I live in The Hague, in the so-called Statenkwartier; I love to bike to the Denneweg or to the beach and enjoy a good cappuccino on a sunny terrace. In 2000 I wrote for publisher Mo’Media in Breda (www.momedia.nl) my first book “52 zondagen wandelen & lunchen” (52 Sunday walks and lunches) which was very successful (100.000 copies and on the Top 100 list of best sold books in 2002). Uptil now I wrote 12 books all about the good life: visiting lovely towns and villages, having great lunches and dinners, and staying in the best hotels. Furthermore I wrote about lifestyle, fashion and furniture for Elsevier Thema. For a Belgian magazine I wrote about shopping, dining and sleeping in lovely cities in Holland and Belgium. I also write about the good life for magazine Heerlijkheid, published by Mariënwaerdt in Beesd (www.marienwaerdt.nl), see issue October and December 2010 and February 2011. In my blog http://elliebrik.web-log.nl you can read about my private and business matters.
Some tips for The Hague
At least try bread or the delicious galettes from Philippe Galerne. Try the shrimp croquettes at Dendy (www.restaurantdendy.nl), the Caesar salad at Oker (www.restaurantoker.nl), both at the Denneweg in the Hague, or the fusion kitchen of Wox (www.wox.nl).
Stay at the hotel of one of the authors here, at Hotel des Indes (ask for a room with a view on the Lange Voorhout), or at the Paleishotel (www.paleishotel.nl)
Visit the Gemeentemuseum (www.gemeentemuseum.nl), the Mauritshuis (www.mauritshuis.nl) and the Panorama Mesdag (www.panorama-mesdag.com) all three a must.
You can find me on Twitter as @EllieBrik
Photo by: Haagsche SuitesYesterday I had the opportunity to visit one of the Hague’s best kept secrets: Haagsche Suites, a hotel owned by Guido van den Elshout (@HappyHotelier). Behind the facade of a townhouse situated between the city center of The Hague and the beach resort Scheveningen, he and his wife Irene run a small but very luxurious hotel with three large suites. The interior is just fingerlicking gorgeous, and a beautiful garden tops it off.
The purpose of my visit was not a stay however, but a meetup with the bloggers of Absolutely The Hague and Hofstijl. A diverse group of people who share two interest: their passion for the city of The Hague, and their believe in Social Media and sharing stuff. Absolutely The Hague aims at English speaking people, be it expats, tourists or people taking interest in The Hague. The Hofstijl blog – on the other hand – is written in Dutch and takes a somewhat non-conventional view of our city with beautiful stories, photos and videos. The goal of this first meeting was to share experiences and see if we could collaborate in certain areas.
It was a nice meeting, and sure hope this will be the start of a fruitful collaboration. Thanks, Maurits Burgers (@MauritsJF), Melinda Roos (@MelindaRoos), Suzy Ogé (@suzyoge), Lisa Rouissi (@koffiekitten), Marco Raaphorst (@Raaphorst), Karin Ramaker (@metkcom), Ellie Brik (@EllieBrik), Niek ‘t Hart (@interniek), and of course, Guido van den Elshout (@HappyHotelier).
And here is our presence on Facebook: Facebook | Absolutely The Hague!. Please do come along and give us your feedback if you don’t want to comment here. Thanks to a couple of friends we had 25 followers within a couple of days and were eligable to our own name on Facebook. As of today we have already 53 followers.
The next step was implementing the Networked blogs app on Facebook (Networked Blogs | Absolutely The Hague) by which app posts of the blog are automatically syndicated at Facebook, err sort of. Do follow!
If you like to connect quickly with people based in The Hage I suggest you use Twitter and head over to the list of people who work or live in The Hague with a Twitter Account at Tweepml where you can follow the 213 listed tweeps with one click. All in all the total list cannot exceed 250 as set by Tweepml.
Update August 4, 2010
Originally there was a long list of tweeps, people who tweet, sometimes also called tweeple or tweople, here.
I’ve taken the list away, because it was very long and doesn’t necessarily add to the one click connect with many people experience. It also takes a lot of time to load. Therefor I’ve uploaded a click-able image of the list. In addition updating the list is a bit cumbersome as you have to copy and paste html code in a blogpost which is not easy. Now updating the list is a simpler undertaking and that is the next thing to do.
I’ve created Absolutely The Hague | Posterous, because I’ve had already received several positive responses via Twitter. One typical reactions is: “I would like to help you out guys and girls, but I’m not sure I’ve got the time to do so”. For instance by Soenarko who is a typical Posterous blogger.
I’ve been experimenting a bit with Posterous the last year and it is even easier to post something on Posterous than in a WordPress based blog.
Therefor I’m hoping we can tag it along this blog and Absolutely The Hague | Posterous and find a way of having a supporting community that sends stuff to the Posterous account so that we get ideas here to work out. We will see what happens.
Absolutely The Hague! 