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Joi in the USA today and the same article in about 50 other sources.
Great PR, Joi !
Just imagine if a blogger did like this journalist, posting the same story to 50 different weblogs, I guess he would be flamed for polluting the blogosphere, right ?
NB. Joi can you tell the journalist he forgot the link to Six Apart :=)
Denmark is small, but some interesting facts could make it become an immigration place in Europe, even some Americans are thinking about moving there (see comments).
I have just played with Blogpulse, interesting toy that helps you compare trends for any search word.
Here is Bush versus Kerry:
Socialtext highlighted by Business Week as something that could transform Corporate America.
Congrats, Ross.
Disclosure: I invested in Socialtext
Very interesting report from Napsterization.org (Mary) on Henry's survey.
Blogads/Henry Copeland conducted a survey, where 17k people responded. Results are here.
Interesting things: respondents were women at 20%, men at 79%. Henry emailed that the women on average were 10 years older than the men.
Educators were the highest responding industry, at 14%, though computer professionals were the largest job category at 11%. 43% consider themselves opinion makers, 40% democrat, 91% from the US, and self-identified spending online was highest at $0 for every category (from travel to music to consumer electronics) except books, which had 23% of the respondents saying they spend $100-199 per year online. Amazon must be thrilled.
But the most interesting stuff for me is that 54% get their news primarily from the internet, and 55% find blogs "extremely useful," reading an average of 5 blogs per day. Also, they spend 10 hours per week on blog reading. Why? They reported that they do it for news they can't find elsewhere (79%) and for a different perspective (77%).
Wow. That backs up the surveys I did earlier this spring, where people self reported 45 minutes per day on average of online news reading, and said they read blogs primarily for the two reasons in the last paragraph. That demographics was a Craig's readership, with broadband at home. While the data from the Blogads survey is a sample of people who visit Henry Copeland's site, or were directed there by other bloggers, the information he has collected is extremely interesting of this subset of the populace.
Robert, I agree, bloggers have (almost) equal weapons with professional journalists. For the helicopter, ask one to Microsoft :=)
Really cool (I mean REALLY cool having seen the time it saves me). Post directly from iphoto to your Typepad account.
Good article on SFGate.com pointed by JLR (FR) where I learnt that:
-Daily Kos makes about $3000 a month thanks to blogads, here is the audience of the blog, impressive, especially the yearly growth !
-Instapundit makes $1000 a month and made $4000 the last two months whith 110 000 visits a day
Do you make money with your blog ?
via TJ's Weblog "Technology, Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship"
Phil links to Jeff Pulvers hot news about Skype. I had made some (fairly easy) predictions about Skype in March. Now the skype founders haven given the babies names:
"As previously hinted, SkypeOut will provide Skype users on a prepaid basis the ability to place calls to the public switched telephone network. During the talk, I found out that G.729a will be used as the codec to perform the PSTN interconnect, so at least for the moment, when SkypeOut launches, customers placing calls to the PSTN may not always be able to experience the higher quality sound that Skype normally uses for it's own Peer-to-Peer communication."
"SkypePlus will offer Skype customers value-added services including: Voicemail and the mapping of DID (Direct-Inbound-Dialing) numbers."
If there is something I am really bad at, it is fixing my house or fixing anything actually. Today I painted a few walls, you should see the disaster, there was more paint on the floor and my hands than on the wall.
The Guardian, just switched to Movable Type. Thanks for your trust !
Christian, me and Barak in Helsinki
Thanks again, Christian, for all the fish and the boat ride, I uploaded some pictures here.
This reminds me of the very first guides that appeared when people started using email. I guess we will see this type of guides for "How to use a blog" and in ten years people will have forgotten that we used to live without blogs, like email... Just a guess...
"How to Make Friends By Telephone" is a 1940s instructional booklet on using the new telephonic device network. Here's a scanned version -- it's a hoot.
via Boing Boing Blog
This NY Times article talks about addicted bloggers, close to a drug addiction.
Jeff says "when you start thinking in blog, it becomes part of you."
"There is this seductive thing that happens, this kind of snowball-rolling-down-a-hill thing" "and the absence of posting feels like - I don't know, laziness or something."says Bill Barol.
Am I addicted ?
Yeah, I guess so, when I don't blog one full day I feel a little bad, I enjoy sharing views with you and I got used to have your feedback, bad or good, on what I do or think, and I just feel my ideas get better with the permanent mirror of bloggers.
I would have never done this speech without the feedback you gave me to prepare it.
I have managed to keep some control over it, even though my kids and my wife often get upset when I blog too much. It is actually quite sad to go blogging rather than spending time with your kids, I realize it and I try to control that.
How do you feel ? Addicted, too ?
Update: Robert feels addicted but says he has met so many great new friends that he does not mind. I agree.
 Kitty Porn Originally uploaded by Shadow. |
Sorry about being out of bandwidth to blog these days... I'll be back on Friday.
Maarten Schenk, the creator of Skynet Blogs, is joining us. Maarten has been visionary in launching one of the earliest and most successful blogging tool in Europe at Skynet, that has now more than 17000 blogs in Belgium (French and Dutch language). Or should I say Flemish ? Maarten has Dutch roots and is a trained linguist so I do not expect there will be much language related issues between Flemish and Dutch :=)
Maarten will prepare and launch Typepad and MT3 in Belgium and The Netherlands, in French and Dutch (and Flemish !), all our team in Europe is happy to welcome him on board.
By the way if there are any Dutch or Flemish people reading this blog, what do you think about the languages/cultural differences ? My opinion is that it is probably like the Walloons and the French, making jokes about it but finally not so many differences, right ?
Hugh has some good ideas about blogs and advertising.
1. The best advertising, the old maxim goes, is word-of-mouth. And luckily for marketers everywhere, people like recommending stuff to people. It’s a way of connecting.
2. I gave some advice to a company recently: "How you talk to each other is more important than how you talk to everyone else."
Thanks, Dan, for sending me the Galley Proof of your book, "We, the Media" that is an absolute read for journalists and bloggers, I had already read most of the Chapters on Dan's blog, the Galley will be my week-end read.
The book will be available for download for free for personal use on Dan's blog under a Creative Commons license, I hope we can help Dan translate it into European languages and possibly help him find editors here. Any volunteers ?
Here is what Joi says about the Galley.
Interested in observing the US Presidential Fund Race a little closer to home ?
Here is a map of the funding by US cities and also how much and to whom Barbara Streisand has donated (you can search on anybody's name). Quite transparent, the US politics...
Thanks, Bjoern !
I will travel quite a bit in the next two weeks, if you want to meet in Naples or Madrid, please let me know...
-I will be going to Helsinki tomorrow, with a packed agenda there, no blogger dinner unfortunately :=(
-in Naples June 3 and 4 where Paolo and Giuseppe invited me to talk to the Blogging Conference with Joi, same panel, quite funny
-and in Madrid on June 8 and 9, where I talk at the Instituto de Empresa, followed by a blogger dinner rvr has organized
Last week I had another great dinner in San Francisco with Reid Hoffman, founder of Linked In. Reid is one of the most impressive and visionary friends I know.
I am very proud to join its investors list. Reid has secured Series A financing of $4.7 million in November last year. The investment was led by Sequoia Capital, the venture investors behind well-known Internet brands such as Yahoo!, Google and PayPal. A round with business angels that I participated in will be announced within a few weeks.
Here is some information about Linked In's recent growth, if you are interested:
600,000+ users (30,000+ growth per week)
28,000,000+ email addresses sent through Linked In (3,000,000+ growth per week)
12 months old
Within the 600,000+ users:
265,000+ international users
120,000+ senior management-level users
8,000+ entrepreneurs
10,000+ VCs
100% professional users
and 28,000+ in France only.
Congrats, Reid !
Hundreds of developers have already joined the Movable Type Developers network.
In case you are interested and missed it on the Movable Type site, here is what Slashdot says about it:
"Are you a Perl hacker? Do you want a Apple G5 with a 23" screen, a 17" PowerBook, a Thinkpad or iPods? Six Apart, the company behind of Movable Type and TypePad, is running a contest of plug-ins for Movable Type 3.0. The total amount of prizes is $22,000. The deadline is June 18, 2004."
Maki Kimura (blog in Japanese), a Japanese journalist who participated in the Euro Identity Caravan with Heiko, Ulli and many other people from all around Europe, has just written an article about it.
I had unfortunately not blogged much about it, just my talks about saving the Planet with Tachi, and the discussions we had about changing the image of entrepreneurs in Europe, as well as some pictures of our trip (in the bus, Bratislava, Prague -and its nice hotels :=)-, Budapest, etc).
We visited 5 of the accessing Countries, quite a crazy trip, it was really fun.
Neil has a good review on MT3 with screenshots.
Some of you asked me news of Christophe, who got nearly arrested for blogging last week, as he blogs only in French unfortunately.
Well, after the local Police stopped him in the streets of his city, Puteaux, the Professional Union of the "Police Municipale" (the city Police) has writen a letter to the Minister of Internal Affairs of France to ask him to open an investigation to understand what happens in Puteaux.
It looks like the City Mayor has abused his power and used the local Police to protect his own interests, irritated by the blogging of Christophe.
There is even a website of Police Unionists (down when I checked it, though), that talk about the story, let's hope they will start a blog, soon, too.
In addition to Technorati and Feedster, I have just started to test Pubsub, it looks very good, you can have the new links on any search term here, in RSS.
What time is it? See this amazing page. Amazing. Thanks, Dan
Via BBC News: Michael Moore's controversial anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 wins the Palme d'Or at Cannes, with a 15-minute standing ovation.
There are scenes from the movie here.
Not only do the French went against Bush during the War in Irak, now they make Anti-Bush films win in Cannes... I wonder if I will be allowed to enter the US next time...
The Terra review is here.
Terra finds it "genial", except the fact that we only take credit cards, which we will hopefully fix very soon.
"TypePad es una genial opción para los usuarios menos expertos que no les importe desembolsar como poco unos 5 euros mensuales, por tener un weblog con características que todavía no ofrecen los gratuitos."
"Calificación: Muy Bueno.
Lo mejor: La herramienta tiene una interfaz muy cuidada e intuitiva. Posibilidad de añadir álbumes de fotos. Soporte para moblogging.
Lo peor: Es necesario disponer de una tarjeta VISA para poder acceder al periodo de prueba."
Mena is asking for those of you who would be willing to pay for a Movable Type license such as the $69 version and blog/author limits do not work for their current use, to write it in a non-emotional trackback post to this entry.
Thanks for your feedback.
I am in the US this week. It is amazing how many Americans start a conversation by "I am sorry for my Country".
And we start talking about Bush, Irak and Torture. One year ago, I could usually feel a lot of aggressivity when people understood that I was French (and it is quite easy with my accent), I was a Liberty Fry. Six months ago, I took a cab in San Francisco and the driver started by telling me "Are you French ? You were right ! We have been stupid". Now most people I meet start by "I apologize for my Country".
What should I say ? I feel sorry for France for many things, too, but clearly, I am quite happy that Chirac took this public position against the War in Irak.
Are you sorry for your Country, too ?
Sorry about that, I had to move my trip to Madrid to June 8, thanks for all the bloggers who have added their name to Victor's wiki page, I hope you can make it to June 8, sorry again.
If anybody is interested to join us on June 8 in Madrid, please feel free to do so.
I will be available in Madrid on Wednesday 9 as well, with some meetings already organized.
Samantha has started blogging again from the Jordan Summit of the World Economic Forum on the blog we launched in Warsaw.
Too bad I could not be there, but I have also to work, sometimes !
Samantha will be covering the Summit throughout the week, and this time, there is wifi everywhere.
I'm sitting in a really in a fascinating debate here at the World Economic Forum in Jordan - and the question being asked is.
Is there a coherent US foreign policy in the Middle East?
William Burns, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs said Washington's priorities are: rebuilding Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and reforms in the Arab world.
Nabeel Shaath from the Palestinian Authority said that the US needed to get moving on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This issue, he argued, is the central factor dividing the Arab world, the west and holding back progress.
Ehud Olmert from the Israeli government said the Palestinians should not put sole responsibility on the Americans to resolve the conflict - Palestinians should fulfil their obligations under the Roadmap.
I'm not going to go on - I want your opinions on US foreign policy: is it fair? is it consistantly applied? [The World Economic Forum Weblog]
I have just read a good article of Andy Raskin about Creative Commons in Business 2.0, here are some notes:
An example of giving away music
Any Raskin talks about Allan Vilhan, a musician who lives in a small city of Slovakia and records under the name Cargo Cult. A year ago, after completing his first full-length album, he put MP3s of all the songs online and encouraged fans to listen for free. He's recorded to date a profit of more than $1000. Allan posted his songs at Magnatune.com, an Internet music distributor that replaces the traditional "All Rights reserved" by the CC "Some Rights reserved".
A programmer in Alabama downloaded the free versions of two tracks and later paid $450 to license them for use as background music in videogame and a San Francisco design firm paid $370 to use one of Vilhan's songs in a client's Flash presentation.
Magnatune.com encourages listeners to voluntarily pay for downloads of Vilhan's music, which brought in $1487 more.
"Creative Commons is like a marketing tool" says Magnatune founder John Bruckman, who has grossed $180 000 for 126 musicians since May 2003.
For those artists, sharing and free distribution generates exposure, builds commercial demand and is the cheapest way to move from unknown to known.
An example of giving away a book: Cory
In January 2003, Tor Books published Cory Doctorow's hardcover novella, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Simultaneously, Cory released the book as a free download on his website, hoping the electronic version would generate buzz and spur bookstore sales. "I didn't do this because I'm a big hearted slob", he says, "I did it because I saw an opportunity to make more money".
In the 15 months that the book has been available online, Cory has recorded more than 300,000 downloads from his site. It's impossible to measure the effect that had on book sales, but the initial print run of 8,500 copies sold out, and the title is now out in paperback. Cory estimates that the speaking fees he received from people who hired him based on the buzz surrounding the giveaway version exceed the advance he received from his publisher.Meanwhile, after the commercial success of his first book established his credentials as a marketable writer, Cory received a much bigger advance for his third and fourth books.
I am joining our second international meeting at Six Apart (Asia, Europe and the US will gather there), small company, already global. Of course, we'll discuss the MT3 launch.
We are preparing the launch of MT3 in Europe, too, and continuing the Typepad roll-out, German and Dutch versions are next.
I am happy also to be able to join the Technorati pizza on thursday.
See you on the other side.
It can't be more clear:
"Six Apart announced new pricing for Movable Type and hell breaks loose. The users are acting as children, saying somehow they didn't know that eventually Six Apart would charge for their software. I knew they were going to charge, why didn't you? I can say this because I'm not a customer (I do use their software, but I didn't pay for it) and I'm not them. But I've been where they are and it sucks. No one's perfect. If you use their software, you owe them some money. If you don't like the price, don't use it. Amazingly they're not asking for money if you use the new software in a limited form, or continue to use the old software. Users who can't get behind that are people we don't need to work with. Everything costs money. When you drive to the gas station, try whining at the attendant, and see how much gas you get. Do it enough and they'll call the cops."
"Yesterday we saw people complain about spending $60 for a big useful piece of software like Movable Type. I paid $60 for a cab ride in Geneva. A good dinner is $100. A hotel room $150. You want the software, find a way to help companies like Six Apart instead of making them miserable. You've now got the tools to communicate. Use them well. Use them better."
Christophe blogs on monputeaux.com. He is a citizen of the city Puteaux that is close to Paris.
Christophe does not like the way the city mayor manages the city, spends the public money and says it on his blog, every day. He has been very successful doing that, with hundreds of inhabitants of Puteaux reading and commenting his blog everyday and many national newspapers that talked about his blog.
Christophe criticizes the city management so much that they have tried to stop him for months, the city mayor has even sent him threats over the phone that he recorded and blogged, of course.
Today, he has been stopped in the street by the Police Municipale (the local French Police) who tried to arrest him for his blogging. Fortunately for Christophe, the National Police arrived immediately as they found what was happening weird, and let him go.
It is such a shame. Let's not stop the bloggers express themselves (as long as it is legal, of course, and it is legal here) !
Do you know any other story of a blogger arrested by the Police ?
* Update: Christophe just filed a complaint at the National Police for "abuse in power", good luck, Christophe ! *
Earlier this year, at E-tech, I went to a Dan Gillmor's presentation about Blogs, Journalists, and Publishers. I enjoyed it very much, as well ad Dan's upcoming new book, "We, The Media" that I definitely advise you to read and buy when it is out. Last week, Dan agreed to send me his slides and I incorporated many ideas into my presentation to Media companies around Europe, so I thought I could also write a post about it. Of course, I adapted and commented Dan ideas so look forward to the original author's voice, I hear that Dan is going to launch a blog about his book.
Journalism's New World
Journalists and mass media now publish their news amongst more than 5 million bloggers. Anyone can publish easily information and also most sources are available to everybody. The tools available allow them to report and publish in a very advanced way at low cost, using multi-authored blogs and moblogging.
In the past, journalists were saying "This is the news", and "buy what we sell" (or don't). The readers feedback was generally difficult to get (snail mail) and usually not published.
Now, Journalism becomes a conversation:
-we tell you (we, journalists) what we have learned
-you tell us if you think we are correct
-then we discuss it
-it is self correcting to an extent
Journalists who say something wrong in the Media, don't have much feedback, if they say it through blogging, feedback may arrive in minutes, "Fact check my ass" as many people would say.
I experienced strongly these conversations and the way all speakers where fact checked, in real time, at E-Tech.
"It means less bullshit in Public Events" (Howard Rheingold).
What is also new to Journalists is the feedback they can get on their articles immediately via comments, trackbacks, Technorati and also see if they are popular instantly in Technorati's News Talk. Note that both in News Talk and in Current Events, most original sources are from the well known Publishers, fewer from bloggers, but some bloggers of course get a big audience (often more than some regional newspapers) and are even invited to join certain events with the same treatment as journalists.
The immediate feedback is probably bad news to many journalists, because they are not used to it, but here is the good news: Bloggers link to Publishers' articles and increase their reach (The Guardian online has a huge US readership) and audience, much more than their traditional website would do.
Of course, if their content is by subscription only, it is a disaster, let me illustrate this by comparing the Technorati Cosmos of some titles, showing their popularity and reach in the blog World:
-CNN: close to 30 000 links
-BBC: more than 28 000 links
-The Guardian: more than 16 000 links
-USA Today: around 5500 links
Compared to subscription based Publishers:
-The Wall Street Journal: 400 links
How to communicate to Journalists in this New World ?
Traditional press releases are going to die soon. Journalists get hundreds of them everyday by fax and email. This is one of the reasons why we (companies) pay PR agencies to call the Journalists and try to get their attention. This is not the way to go.
How many people are still interested in the Official Story ? Not that many.
Journalists and everybody's interest in the voice and stories of people working in these companies will grow. I really prefer to read what Microsoft employees have to say about Microsoft (see Robert Scoble of course and I understand that hundreds of Microsoft employees now blog too) or what Macromedia has done:
Macromedia has a dedicated Macromedia blogs section, where you can read everybody's blog at Macromedia. They also have created an aggregated feed of the weblogs. Want to read and talk to the Chief Software Architect ? Here is Christian Cantrell's weblog, with links to all other Macromedia blogs. I really think that it is the way to go.
Of course, Companies need a blogging policy, and Groove Networks has a very good one.
More bloggers in businesses means more transparency, more personal messages, a "face" or many faces, instead of the official story.
Of course Publishers get it. Many have started their weblogs, such as The Guardian, Time, Liberation or the French Computer Mag SVM (and so many others).
What is interesting is that some Publishers position the blogs as "The blog of the Publisher", some others do blogs for events, other ones launch blogs by journalists. Approaches are very different and I guess they are all testing the blogs up to now.
I really think Publishers should promote the use of blogs to avoid their journalists starting confidential ones, which also happens a lot, and promote their use internally.
In summary, to embrace the blogging phenomenon, Publishers may consider:
-promoting the use of weblogs for their journalists
-"being linkable or die"
-using RSS (see Reuters RSS of videos, or Nokia Content Syndication Program)
-defining the rights, let the bloggers use some articles if it is for personal use, use Creative Commons
-using bloggers as sources too (like The Guardian did with Salam Pax)
-linking bloggers when they talk about them in their articles, which is so rare
The above are very obvious, but far from being used in a broad way.
What do you think about these suggestions ?
Mena answers many questions about the MT 3.0 launch.
Really bad, each time a different IP, a different name, and really hardcore like rape, etc. This is terrible, welcome soon, Typekey.
I wonder, this is done manually, right ? Looks like they carefully chose the pages too.
Paolo and me exchanging our G4s, Andrew got us...
Thanks James for having organized this great dinner with so many bloggers.
I uploaded some pictures there, I have to run to a meeting now but will blog more soon about it !
Thanks again everybody for coming, was really cool.
Just launched, the new Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition, here is what Mena says about it.
There continues to be a FREE version for personal use. People who donated get credits for it.
Excellent article of George Packer on blogs, journalism and politics, thanks Doc for the pointer.
"All of this meta-comment by very bright young men who never leave their rooms is the latest, somewhat debased, manifestation of the old art of political pamphleteering, a lost form in this country through much of the 20th century."
"blogs are a new way of doing politics"
Jesse Taylor, a 21-year old blogger, got invited to join this summer's Democratic National Convention with the TV networks, newspapers and radio stations.
Joe Trippi said, will "help pull in a lot of younger voters and a lot of younger people. They'll have their reporters, for lack of a better way of putting it."
Why not ? Well, some bloggers already have more audience than some regional newspapers, right ?
from the Boston.com News, who could have really linked to the bloggers they talk about in the article ! (and it would have made my life easier for this post...!)
The FBI director Robert Mueller briefed about an evil millionaire who was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. It was just a game character !
"The Google Terrorist
It was the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April. Don Emilio Fulci described by an FBI tipster as a reclusive but evil millionaire, had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. That day even FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed on the Fulci matter. But as the day went on without incident, a White House staffer had a brainstorm: He Googled Fulci. His findings: Fulci is the crime boss in the popular video game Headhunter. "Stand down," came the order from embarrassed national security types."
Oh my god, when I started this wiki page, I thought a few people would jump in to have dinner, then James and Cory changed the date of a blogger get together in London to match this date, this is really cool, it is now a crazy evening, could not expect better !
So now, I counted quickly but around 50 people will join, and it is becoming not only a London get together but an international one with Paolo from Italy, Andrew from the US, Heiko from Germany and other people who make it too...
James organizes it and I thank him for that, please email him (see details on the wiki) to confirm your presence.
I will be in London as of Wednesday May 12, 10 AM, to Friday May 14th, around noon.
Can't wait to meet you all there.
Blogging at 35 000 feet, chatting with people in the plane, maybe even playing online games with them, dating (not me, I am married, of course :=) and reading your neighbor's blog will finally make it interesting to talk to him...
I can't wait for this social networking on planes. Actually we will all lose something, being quiet and cut from the World during 11 hours, which is so good too...
Will we be able to chat the pilots, too ?
"Lufthansa plans to unveil Wi-Fi on May 17 on non-stop flights between Munich and Los Angeles. It becomes the first commercial user of a Boeing broadband system that's been four years in the making," reports USA Today.
Thanks for the pointer, Rebecca. Now I am subscribe to Reuters' video RSS feeds too. I love RSS. Stop the newsletters, stop the spam, stop the... TV !
Here is what Rebecca says about it.
Bjoern Ognibeni sent me an email after our blogger meet up there about True Majority. Probably most of you know about it but sorting out my emails I watched the flash animation and the initiative is very interesting (and the flash very good !).
One of the founders of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Ben Cohen, launched this initiative to "Take Action": "give us two minutes a month, we'll give you a better world. I share Bjoern's views that we would need something like this in Europe. More than 300 000 people signed up and they send thousands of faxes to Congresspeople on action points, such as support affordable housing, support a real peace plan, censure Bush, tell the FCC Democracy needs quality news, etc.
Each time someone signs up to "take action", they send a fax to Congresspeople. I may be the last one to discover this, but I like the idea... I agree with Bjoern, we need something like this in Europe !
On May 31st, I have been invited to talk about entrepreneurship at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, from 6PM to 8PM.
I thought it was maybe a good occasion to meet as many Spanish bloggers as I can there, so if you are interested, I have put up a wiki page (on my brand new Socialtext wiki, thanks, Ross), so please add your name to the wiki if you like, thanks !
Of course, would love to meet the new Typepad Spain bloggers too !
I wish it would be the same in Paris, I had two fines in the same day in Paris last week, because you have to buy there a street car park paying card available only in certain shops, then get a paper ticket, put it on the car and it is only good for two hours, so if you don't come back, you get a fine. Paying by mobile phone would be really cool.
Micah Sifry pinged me after my speech on the Future of Business in Europe at the WEF, as I quoted some numbers that really impressed me in Estonia.
Here are some hard facts I got from this document on E-Estonia, really interesting.
Ministers peruse draft bills and regulations, make comments and suggestions, and vote entirely online at computer terminals. The system, coupled with the use of digital signatures, eliminates the need to send mountains of papers between ministries for consultation. It gives ministers a possibility to participate in the session from any location. The system, created by Estonian IT companies, saves approximately three million Estonian kroons (192 000 EUR) per year in paper and copying costs.
In the summer of 2001, the Government created a web page Täna Otsustan Mina ("I Decide Today"). Ministries upload all their draft bills and amendments there, allowing people to review, comment on and make proposals on the legislative process as well as propose amendments to existing legislation. Ideas that gain substantial support will be reviewed by competent bodies. Approximately 5% of all ideas are used as amendments to bills.
In April 2002 the Look @ World Foundation started an ambitious training project – the goal being that by spring 2004, 100,000 Estonians will have been taught basic computer and Internet skills. In October 2003 more than 75 500 people have passed the training. Primary feedback indicated that 59 per cent of the participants have become regular internet users.
Since January 2002, the Citizenship and Migration Board (www.pass.ee) has been issuing a new primary domestic identification document - the ID card. In addition to many advanced security features, the card has a machine-readable code and a microchip containing the visual data on the card and two security certificates (long number series), to verify the individual and supply digital signatures. Possible future uses of the card include integration of ID cards and banking cards and various access cards. By the end of 2003, 350,000 ID-cards were issued.
By 2004, all state and local government agencies should be providing services through the Internet, 60 per cent of the population are everyday Internet users.
People all over the country can access the Internet from over 700 Public Internet Access Points (PIAP), 51 PIAPs per 100 000 people (autumn 2003). The PIAP has a special traffic sign, with the @ symbol, showing its location. Most of PIAPs are located in libraries and other municipal buildings across the country.
A survey conducted in the Autumn of 2003 by TNS EMOR indicated that 47 per cent of the Estonian population aged between 15 and 74 regard themselves as active Internet users. Almost all public employees have computerized workplaces. 38 per cent of the population have computers at home and 71 per cent of home computers are connected to the Internet. Most home Internet users have high-speed Internet connections.
Is Estonia leading the way in E-government ? Ross, may be some thoughts ?
Mike, blogs with his Apple Newton (not only) on his Typepad account (Wired News article), unusual, he ?
I still have my good old Apple Newton, may be I should boot it again to blog with it too.
After having launched Typepad France last week (many French bloggers already chose it as their blog tool in France, thank you for your trust), we are happy to announce that we have just launched Typepad Spain today, congratulations, Victor, thank you also Fernando Tricas, Pedro Jorge, Diego Lafuente and Bárbara González who beta tested, and the team in the US and Europe that made this launch possible.
El Pays, one of the main daily newspaper in Spain, already talks about it today (pdf) as well as the blog offer of ya.com.
Robert Kaye at E-tech, founder of musicbrainz.
Robert rents his head for your company logo for the duration of the conference, here is the bluetooth logo.
I like this topic of blogger-friendly conferences a lot, having seen the incredible difference between a conference blogger friendly (and with bloggers) and a standard conference.
Lee has a good post about it here, I had also blogged my thoughts about the future of conferences, when I came back from E-tech:
Summary of my thoughts:
-Prepare the sauce ingredients on a wiki and let it grow during the conference
-Make wifi and juice available everywhere
-Gather some of the most authoritative bloggers and mix them with baby bloggers
-Add a lot of Apple juice
-Add a conference moblog
-Open a conference chat room
-Project the chat room when the panel talks
-Create a trackback link for all conference sessions so that people can find quickly what bloggers think and say about the sessions
-Technoratize the sessions
-Manage the side effects
Here is what I expect in the future to happen in addition:
-The participants will create even the programme of the conference
-The participants will self organize conferences, using tools such as meet-up
There are too few blogger friendly conferences in Europe. Who is in to launch a European E-Tech ? Culture Digitali may be the next one.
Just for one meeting, too bad, I could not stay this time for the dinner to see my Frankfurt friends, see you next time...
Then Wednesday in Paris, maybe Thursday in Denmark, next week in London and then to San Francisco. Lots of traveling, but I like it of course, who would not ? My kids for sure don't like me traveling that much.
James has read the SEC Google filing. Interesting notes, especially that only 30% of the income is generated outside the US, room to grow. James has some good links there too about the Google IPO.
I'll buy a few shares too, being part of Internet history is important I agree and also supporting my fellow GLT Larry... We played together with a huge screen, the size of a wall.
Congratulations, Larry, and the idea to let anybody get Google shares at the same price has the big shots is really good. Sure, the Google IPO will be the beginning of a second, post bubble Internet period, with profitable and growing companies changing our World.
The European edition of The Wall Street Journal today calls it a "Dutch Auction";
Even more remarkable and welcome, Google is trying to bring some transparency to the insider game of Wall Street IPOs. The company plans to distribute its shares through a version of what is known as a "Dutch auction" that will allow any investor to bid for shares at whatever price he is willing to pay. The totality of bids will then help to determine a "clearing price" at which shares will be offered.
In a sense, this auction is the perfect IPO expression of Google's own business model. The company's success has derived from its ability to democratize access to information via the Internet, and its auction will likewise open its shares to a wide spectrum of investors.
Sure, Google's offering document takes this close to self-parody with its boasts that it is "not a conventional company" and that its mission is merely to "make the world a better place." (And here we thought its purpose was to help locate the nearest pizza joint.) But you don't have to buy this philosophical bluster to appreciate that the Google auction will mean that IPO allocations won't be reserved for investment bankers and their favored clients as they often were in the 1990s.
This is especially good for Google because it means the company will itself get the bulk of the proceeds from its public offering. Too often in the 1990s, IPO companies watched as others benefited from the speculative run-up in their shares because their bankers had set the offering price too low. With an auction, Google will reap the benefit of such speculative bidding -- which may explain why most of the major investment banks were advising Google against it.
Ah, and no, The Wall Street Journal is still not linkable, let me repeat again Dan's words "be linkable or die".
I am really glad to announce as well that Heiko just joined us. Heiko has been a fan of Movable Type and Typepad since the early beta days, Heiko is also one of the most popular bloggers in Germany.
And, yes, I have met Heiko via his blogging (we met in reality, too).
All our team here in Europe are bloggers. So I thought may be I should also post this to my own weblog and try to find a Business Development Person in the UK who may also be a blogger !
If you know anyone or would be interested, please send me an email, we are looking for a business development person based in London who would
-launch a customized Typepad and Movable Type offer for the UK market
-promote Typepad and Movable Type in the UK
-contact and build partnerships with major Internet providers, telecom companies, popular portals who would be interested in launching Typepad as a co-branded offering, hosted by us or hosted by the partner (as Six Apart already launched in Japan, NTT and Nifty).
Thank you for your interest.
Paolo, Giuseppe and other Italian bloggers are organizing Culture Digitali in Naples June 3 and 4, check it out and join us there, I will definitely love to meet the Italian bloggers !
Congrats for organizing it.
Joi and I talked about Creative Commons today. Very interesting conversation that Joi already talked about.
To really understand what's happening, I *REALLY* advise you to see this 5 minutes flash presentation to understand how everybody is going to *SKIP* the intermediaries.
Joi says Copyrights is technically impossible in a fully digital environment because from the users' prospective you say "look at this, hear this song, etc", share it with your friends is a natural thing. Culture spreads from sharing. Only in a brief period of history is broadcasting the way for people to find out about things. Blogging and adwords are growing crazy because people want this information, they want to share.
The model where you have a monopoly on someone's attention like tv channels and other mass media use that audience to buy content breaks down.
How much time are you spending reading blogs? More and more. These mass media where people want to get paid to make you see it is competing against make it available for free content. Professionals are competing against amateurs, the tools are cheaper and the amateur quality content is growing. The amount of money people can pay to get copyright content is decreasing, it is a broken model.
Hollywood will fight but lose.
When you start getting videos from friends and sharing them is natural and increases quality of our experience. If the mass media and majors make it available so that you can't copy it, can't read it more than once, can't share it with your friends then users will just go more and more to the non professional content.
Lawrence Lessig's book was made simultaneously available on line and in print, and it makes the sales of the book higher, just because people can share it and talk about it. Most of them still want the physical experience of the book and that will stay.
Dan Gillmor's upcoming book on the future of journalism with the blogs has been online since the beginning and Dan is getting incredible value for the book from the comments people made, I guess some ideas that came from the comments Dan would not have even think about. And if Dan is doing this, he bets that it will not hurt the sales, and I am sure it will not. Check Dan's book as it is being writen, it is really good.
People buy no more packaged content. In Japan the girls are spending their money 1/3 on their cell phone, 1/3 on food and 1/3 on clothing, so there is no market for mass media anymore, demand. Mass traditional media models are based on advertising, they try to impose a brand or an artist to the masses. It worked when they had the monopoly of the audience, not anymore. People will just watch TV less and less.
It will hurt Madonna but 99% of artists don't make money anyway so it will help the 99% others.
So how are you going to become famous if you are an artist or a writer if copyrights and mass media do not allow people to share and discuss the content you created? Well, make it available with some rights reserved, share it as much as you can and understand if people think it has value. Then you will be famous if people like it. The old model where people would try to push a brand or a music band to you through a mass media to you is just over.