Surviving on the Beach

Daymer Beach, Cornwall
(c) Amanda van Mulligen

"I don't understand this settlement behaviour," my husband said as we plonked ourselves down on Daymer Bay beach in Cornwall.

Couples and families were camped out on the overpopulated beach around us with fold away chairs with built in cup holders, portable tables, tents, wind breakers, transistor radios, enough reading material to stock a local library and a cool box filled with enough to satisfy the most ravenous of hungers for a few days should the world's food chain suddenly implode. One group had even brought their own full size BBQ and looked like they were there for the long haul.

"You don't see this in the Netherlands," he uttered, genuinely bewildered.

Anyone beg to differ?

The surprising boomlet in newspaper M&A

Beyond the headline-grabbing purchases last week of the Washington Post and Boston Globe, there has been a surprising recovery in M&A activity in the last 1½ years involving newspapers in places like Vicksburg, MS; Everett, WA; Nashua, NH, and Waco, TX. 

The boomlet has been fueled by an improving economy, the growing desire of many long-time family owners to exit the publishing business and

Smartphones are so 2012. What’s next?

With more than 50% of the population packing smartphones and tablet penetration not far behind, it’s time to start thinking about the next-generation mobile devices that will further disrupt the media landscape. 

The next wave of mobile devices will change media creation and consumption – and therefore, economics – by autonomously delivering unprecedented levels of personally relevant

Teeth Meat

That's right, I said teeth meat.
Photo: Pam Roth

Whilst I am on the subject of teeth (hop over to Expat Life with a Double Buggy for more on wobbly teeth and tooth fairies) I'd like to share my distaste with you of gums. Not about actual gums (not that gums are particularly pleasant - google gums and choose images and you'll quickly see what I mean) but about the Dutch word for gums. You know, the more I type the word gums (and hence read it in my head) the weirder a word it sounds. Gums.

Anyway, I digress. The word for gums in Dutch is tandvlees. A literal translation for that is 'teeth meat'.  If that isn't a word that conjures up horror films then I don't know what is.

Digital doctor Bezos takes on the ailing Post

The purchase of the struggling Washington Post by Jeff Bezos may be the best news the news industry has had in a long time, because it finally puts a true digital native at the helm of a newspaper company. 

Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.Com, is uniquely equipped to bring unprecedented innovation and fresh energy to an industry whose managers run their businesses like the people of

Digital usage overtaking all legacy media

Americans this year are likely to spend as many hours consuming content on digital devices as the combined amount of time that they devote to gazing at TV and paging through print, according to eMarketer, a research-aggregation service. 

After culling through reports from more than 40 institutions, eMarketer forecasts that the average amount of time likely to be spent on digital media this year