The Dutch Railways’ NS Hi-Speed brand has introduced a new train to the network: Fyra, which links Amsterdam central station and Schipol airport to Rotterdam, without going through The Hague as is usual for that segment. It uses the more direct, specially-equipped high-speed line that also enables the Paris-bound Thalys to ride at its top speed within Holland, as it does between France and Brussels.

NS just reported significant losses related to their high-speed operations. This Amsterdam-Rotterdam segment opened this winter after years of delay: they were talking about it in 1998 already as about to open, and trains aren’t delivered. Also, tuning difficulties are normal immediately after launch: late or canceled trains are to be expected for a few months. Perhaps it explains that no major marketing campaign has yet supported the launch of the new product.

But aside from those issues, Fyra has some pretty interesting usability flaws that might explain its apparent lack of success: pricing, frequency, and on-board experience.

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Open source software is an important pillar of humanity’s control over computers. Or at least used to be. Worthy systems like Mac OS X are built using open source components, and are built for human beings (read: they work out of the box for most people). Arguably, OSX couldn’t exist without open source. But such systems go beyond the premise of free software (free as in freedom), and deliver something of a mixed blessing: by hiding the innards of their components, and by delivering such a smooth user experience, they further reduce the need for people to understand the entire computing stack: this is New World Computing.

A few years ago, I firmly believed that people understanding computers better was crucial to us making meaningful use of their possibilities. Now I believe that understanding services better is crucial: how does Facebook deal with your data, how does Google index public and private pages, what traces are left of content that made it to the internet and was then pulled. It’s a large shift, I guess.

Every weekday, walking from my house to the Amsterdam Centraal train station, I cross De Ruyterkade, the street that runs along the northern side of the station, the “IJ side.” That street is a simple 2-lane, speed is limited to 30 km/h, and on the water side, there’s also a double bike lane.

This area of the station is undergoing major construction work, but speed bumps were recently added on the bike lanes, on either side of the pedestrian crossing, presumably to reduce collisions between bikes and pedestrians. Seeing people negotiate the bumps, I was struck by the idea they might actually have further reduced safety.

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6 weeks ago, I started experimenting with ads on this site. In this period, Google Analytics tells me it received 295 visits, 392 page views, plus 220 views through the RSS feeds, for a whopping total of about 600 views!

Google AdSense tells me there were 387 page impressions with AdSense for content (one click, page CTR of 0.26%), and 362 ad impressions with AdSense for feeds (zero clicks), which earned me a total of €0.34. They calculate my CPM (cost per thousand impressions) at €0.88, which means my site sucks as an advertising space, although I’m not sure how significant the calculations are with such low numbers.

I wasn’t going to get rich this way: time for me to remove all the ads–thanks for bearing with me through this experiment!

One of my bigger neighbors, Hunch, is making an interesting foray into what it means to be an advertising property: I imagine they’re hard at work developing concepts, technologies and partnerships to monetize all the information I’m giving them about who I am and what I think.

However, what’s amazing is that existing AdSense technologies, simply preying on the pages’ content, can already serve me ads that are incredibly targeted. They can be served at a time when I’m quite receptive (at the end of a quiz).

The proof-of-concept basis for Hunch.com is incredibly simple, and the power of its idea lies in how existing commodity technologies (simple web programming, content-aware advertising) and infrastructures (Google’s vast pool of advertisers) are arranged, and start making sense when they scale (enough people, content and ads to make sense on average).

If you’re located in the US, you can now read this blog on the Kindle, by subscribing here for $1.99 a month.

I don’t know what my cut is, and with my posting frequency that’s probably a bit expensive — but it reinforces the cohesive content experience on the Kindle (which I raved about here, in case you missed it). And it puts a price tag on that experience, which I think is the right way to go. Is a change of medium necessary, and sufficient, to introduce payment for content?