A Dutch journalist named Rob Wijnberg has raised $1.3 million to launch a digital news site called De Correspondent that will focuses on context and quality content, rather than the hustle of the breaking news cycle. He pitched the project on Dutch national television in mid-March and in just over a week, achieved his goal of 15,000 subscribers and raised over a million dollars through crowdfunding.

Wijnberg formerly served as editor in chief of a daily newspaper called NRC Next the targeted young adults. Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab interviewed Wijnberg, who said he will work with individual correspondents who determine the news agenda based on what they think is important and relevant, rather than breaking news. His translated, ten-item manifesto reads:

• Daily, but beyond the issues of the day.
• From news to new
• No political ideology, but journalistic ideals
• Themes and interconnections
• Journalism over revenues
• From readers to participants
• No advertisers, but partners
• No target groups, but kindred spirits
• Ambitious in ideals, modest about wisdom
• Fully digital

This sounds a lot like Twitter founder Ev William’s current endeavor Medium, which he founded to address some of the pitfalls he saw in online journalism.

“It’s not too late to rethink how online publishing works and build a system optimized for quality, rather than popularity,” he said in a blog post.  ”Where anyone can have a voice but where one has to earn the right to your attention. A system where people work together to make a difference, rather than merely compete for validation and recognition. A world where thought and craftsmanship is rewarded more than knee-jerk reactions.”

Before starting De Correspondent, Wijnberg wrote a book about the current state of news media where he said ” “I don’t believe in ‘the news’ in the objective sense of the word. You can describe the world in infinite ways, and ‘the news’ happens to be one of them.”

The publication is still in its nascent form and it is unclear what it will look like. However, a community of more than 17,000 people are willing to pay 60 euros a year to this type of digital journalism. While the Internet has powerful abilities of breaking and distributing news, digital publications from San Francisco to Amsterdam have struggled to find stay on top of the constant churn, while also keeping readers informed, and building successful business models. At least in the Netherlands, they have space cake.

Photo Credit: Screenshot

Today, Google and its hardware partners Acer, HP, and Samsung will begin selling Chromebooks in six new countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands. And in the U.S., Chromebooks will now be available at over 1,000 Best Buy stores nationally, which doubles the number of physical stores that Google’s  the-browser-is-the-operating-system laptops are sold in.

International pricing will be roughly similar to the U.S., with Canada getting Chromebooks at $250-330, and $300-350 in Australia. But expect to pay a little more in Europe — in France and Germany, they’ll start at around 300 euros, which is close to $400 U.S.

It’s not exactly $99 education pricing, but it’s still fairly cheap.

Google’s first international expansion with Chromebooks to the UK appears to have been a success. Google reported that Chromebook accounts for more than 10 percent of laptop sales in leading UK electronics retailers Currys and PC World.

Google recently released a high-end touchscreen Chromebook for $1,299, which is not being released internationally, and with HP the biggest Chromebook yet, a 14″ model.

A Dutch court has ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets do not infringe Apple’s design patents on its iPad tablet. This new judgement follows Apple’s UK spanking over the same issue, and the Dutch judge referenced the UK ruling in his judgement.

In a statement to Reuters, Samsung twisted the knife:

We continue to believe that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners and that the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples.

While Germany has proved kinder to Apple’s design lawsuits, European courts in general have not been sympathetic to the U.S. corporations’ claims. And with U.S. courts having denied Apple’s calls for Samsung important bans, you might think that now would be a good time to seek patent peace.

Especially since Samsung unilaterally dropped all patent lawsuits against Apple in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and, yes, the Netherlands.

Apple has of course already buried the hatchet with HTC over its Android phones, and Samsung has won the right to see many of the details of that agreement. Now if only Apple and Samsung could come up with something similar, we could report more actual technology stories and fewer riveting (not!) courtroom dramas.

photo credit: mac morrison via photopin cc

The practice of treating all Internet traffic equally—whether it’s text, e-mail, audio, or video—is commonly referred to as net neutrality. This move makes the Netherlands the second country in the world to put net neutrality into law, after Chile.

The concept of net neutrality is contested by ISPs, which want the ability to slow down the traffic of customers using a larger-than-average amount of their bandwidth. Online gamers, illegal downloaders, and those who stream movies and music are likely the biggest winners under the new law.

The law also bans Web advertisers from leaving cookies in a user’s browser without first getting his or her consent. It will have a strong impact on mobile data usage as carriers will no longer be able to charge customers extra to use Skype or other VoIP apps to make phone calls. T-Mobile, which had blocked all VoIP apps, will now have to allow them on its network.

Some net-neutrality-informed rules have been issued in the U.S., but they have not been made into law. In December, the Federal Communications Commission outlined basic rules that banned ISPs from blocking specific kinds of content and websites, but did allow them to throttle web connections if they believed a customer was using too much bandwidth. Wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, are exempt from these rules.

Would you like to see the U.S. sign an official net neutrality bill into law?

Twitter is used by 26.8 percent of Cloggies and LinkedIn by 26.1 percent. The U.S. in contrast doesn’t even make it into the top 10 Twitter-mad countries. Instead, the list is dominated by Asian and South American countries, including Japan and Brazil.

The U.S. is number 3 on the LinkedIn list with 17.6 percent of Americans having an account.

The Netherlands is unusual in that the top social network in the country is a local, Facebook-like platform called Hyves. Facebook has been growing in leaps and bounds, however, surging 76 percent in the past year to nearly 6.6 million visitors in March (Hyves received 7.6 million visitors out of a total Dutch population of 16 million). Amsterdam was also the first European city to adopt location check-in service Foursquare.

So what does your average Dutch social media addict look like? Forrester’s Social Technographics tool defines 7 levels of overlapping participation for social media users, from Inactives to Creators. Overall, social media is dominated by Spectators (73 percent of U.S. users) who read but don’t post much themselves. 24 percent of U.S. social media users are Creators in that they write a blog, create music or video, etc.

Dutch users are much less likely to be Collectors, who collect RSS feeds and tag photos and video, than U.S. users (8 percent vs. 21 percent). Americans also like to post reviews and comment or participate in other people’s content more than the Dutch do (37 percent vs. 20 percent), a category Forrester calls Critics. The Netherlands has higher levels of Inactives but also lower numbers of Spectators (64 percent) than the U.S.