Loïc Le Meur blog

Diner with Marc Canter in Paris last Friday

It was great that you joined us all for the dinner in Paris last friday with Marc. Here are the pictures and the participants list.

Skype for Mac

Finally the good news, Skype available for Mac !

Update: now the bad news, I tried to buy some credit for my account and for a strange reason my credit card was not processed correctly twice by their system. Now they blocked me for adding money to my account for a couple of days. I had a chat with their live customer service and they answered me with standardized chat answers:

Welcome to Skype Support! One of our agents will be with you shortly. You are number 10 in the queue. Your wait time will be approximately 9 minute(s) and 9 seconds. Thank you for waiting.
All our agents are currently assisting other customers. Thanks for your patience. An agent will be with you shortly.
Hello, my name is 'Victor', how may I assist you today
loiclemeur: hello
Victor: Hello!
loiclemeur: I have tried twice my card
loiclemeur: and it does not work
Victor: OK
loiclemeur: it says cancelled
Victor: We have recently changed our payments processing system procedures. If you receive a message that your transaction has been canceled, it may be because it failed to clear our fraud filtering system. No money will be taken out from your credit card.
loiclemeur: that's fine but I want to credit my account !
loiclemeur: and you don't let me try another card because I tried twice
Victor: You would be able to purchase the credit after a couple of days.
loiclemeur: a couple of days !!!
loiclemeur: that is great customer support...
Victor: So kindly wait for purchasing the credit.
Victor: I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.
loiclemeur: amazing
Victor: Kindly bear with us.
Victor: Your patronage is important.
loiclemeur: well you don't have my congratulations for that...
Victor: As we have recently changed our payments processing system procedures. So a number of other valuable Skype customers like you are facing this problem.
Victor: Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?

Do you want a virtual girlfriend ?

She likes sweet talk, virtual flowers and diamonds, she will live in your phone and a virtual boyfriend will be launched too.

"If she is neglected, she'll be unhappy and she won't talk to you", check this CNN.com article.

Woaw. Do I have to tell my wife about a virtual girlfriend ? Too late. Geraldine reads my blog.

Pierre launches the Omidyar Network

Pierre Omidyar, founder of Ebay, blogged again yesterday and announced the launch of the Omidyar Network that just invested in Socialtext.

Disclosure: I invested too.

Join us for a dinner with Marc Canter in Paris on Friday, August 27th

Marc Canter will be in Paris on Friday evening.

I am organising a dinner for him so if you want to join us, please add your name to this wiki page or leave a comment on this post.

Marc Canter with Robert Scoble and Phil Wolff

I love my cab

Do you get traffic from Yahoo Search engine ?

Looking at my blog stats, I realized I was getting no traffic from Yahoo, which was not the case in the past and I actually ping them when I update my blog.

Do you experience the same ? Any idea on how I should fix this ?

For example, a search for "Create a company" puts me on top of 17M pages in Google where on Yahoo my old blog, that I have not updated for 6 months still comes on the top.

I like this Google-Yahoo search comparison by the way.

Blog engines and reference sites to ping when you post

When I post a note I ping the below urls:

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://ping.blo.gs
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/ (only when I post in French)

Are there any pingers of blog engines I am not pinging and I should ? Especially in Europe, I only know weblogues.com (French), are there any other ones in Germany, UK, Spain or other countries that exist and that we may consider adding to TypePad ?

Thanks for your help.

The best app to post on your blog, Ecto, is about to release version 2.0

I have been always using Ecto to blog on my TypePad blog. For those of you who don't know what it is, I really advise you to give it a try, it allows you to blog off-line with very useful tools to upload pictures, access and search your previous entries, etc. It is compatible with many blogging solutions and takes full advantages of TypePad and MT features.

Ecto has originally been developed for Mac, which is its most complete version available, and then it has been adapted for Windows. It is the best off-line blogging app to my knowledge, I use it every day.

Ecto is about to release a version 2.0 with even more features, can't wait !

I am glad Adriaan took into account my suggestion about being able to have the spelling checker automatically shift from one language to another as you change the blog you post to. Very useful for me as I blog in French too. Thanks, Ado !

The French CEOs bloggers strike back: wiki catalogs CEO Blogs: contribute !

A CEO blogs wiki. I have added some of the French CEOs blogging I know (sorry if I forgot you), add yourself if you are CEO or if you know one (if you don't want France to be the Country where the highest number of CEOs blogging is !).

"There's now a list of CEO blogs over at The New PR Wiki. This is the brainchild of Neville Hobson. If your CEO blogs and is missing from the list (or you know of others), please edit the page. There are two notable RSS feeds - one for the list itself (RSS) and another that aggregates all posts (RSS)."

Via MicroPersuasion (thanks, Stuart !)

No blogging at the Olympic games

"The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other Web sites." See this article, (via JLR [FR]).

My Blackberry finally syncs with my Mac

I got rid of my Treo 600 (remember, the one I kissed here) as I had too many crashes and I realized that out of its features what I used all the time was mainly email. So I came back to a Blackberry which is orders of magnitude better for email (better keyboard and email is pushed to it permanently, no need to "get mail").

I was just very frustrated not being able to sync it with my Mac, which has just been solved thanks to the team of PocketMac who released PocketMac for BlackBerry.

I paid $30 and the Sync worked perfectly in minutes. Cool. Too bad I cannot install Blackberry apps with my Mac and this software, there aren't much apps for the BB anyway.

Update: the sync does not like French charaters. Why do we speak French anyway ?

Macy's Robosapian Redux

My son already has the standard size (see it in this action video), now he will want the Giant Size (via Gizmodo)

Reader Rickie Chang took this sweet shot of the Macy's Robosapian (click it for higher-resolution). Could the Thanksgiving Day Parade be next?

See other Giant RoboSapian pictures

Fun ads

I have seen this ad a couple of months ago and I thought I had blogged about it but could not find it. So as a friend pings me with it today, I can't resist to blog it.

Want some sweet K-fee ? (QT)

Ah and you have probably seen this one I blogged in October last year but is is so addictive, here it is again:

Have a Schwarzy drink (QT)

"Illegal to link to any of WebMD's content"

I have no clue about the legal issues, but clearly, this is ridiculous.

Six types of Corporate blogs

A blog I did not know about, Corporateblogging.info, tries to classify the Business Blogs.

Dan live on The Guardian on Thursday

Dan will be talking about his last book, "We, The Media", blogs and journalism at 3PM UK time, in an on-line chat with The Guardian.

The future of marketing

Steve says Keiko Groves, a 19-year-old college student has discovered the future of marketing.

UN creates game to tackle hunger

I like this idea of using what Chilren play with to pass them UN messages on hunger in the World. Maybe a blog would be helpful, too.

Don't want a fine ? Here is an interesting way to calm down the police

From the BBC News: "The men were patrolling the West End on 26 July when the incident is alleged to have occurred in the film crew's van.
It was reported that they were sent to calm down the crowd which gathered to watch the film being shot."

I let you discover what creative means were used to make the Policemen ease their positions on the issue.

The latest trend in Hong Kong, speakeasy, let's go to restaurant at somebody's home

From this article in today's NYtimes: "After a visit to booming Shanghai, one might be tempted to relegate Hong Kong to has-been status. Don't be too hasty. Hong Kong is holding its own - especially in the culinary arts.

Take the concept of the speakeasy (si fang cai), the intimate eating places that have sprung up in people's homes and have become, for locals and those in the know, some of the best places to eat on the island. The speakeasies started several years ago when some Hong Kongese, gastronomes and cooks with limited means, decided to set up one or two tables in their sitting rooms and offer a fixed-price, multicourse menu of distinctive home-style dishes.

Many speakeasies don't have restaurant licenses; the authorities look the other way. Nor do they advertise, relying mainly on word of mouth. Yet they have flourished."

I'd love to try that.

France and Germany lost control of Europe

This article of the WSJ today reminds me of Internet startups growing fast enough so that their VCs fire the CEOs to get going. France and Germany started it and they have just been fired, probably they are too slow now with the 10 new members.

"Since the European Union's birth almost 50 years ago, the Franco-German axis has been driving its agenda. So when the new president of the European Commission announced the composition of his Commission late last week, it marked the end of an era.

As Jose Manuel Barroso read the names of the Commissioners he had chosen for the key portfolios, it became clear that the center of gravity has shifted. France and Germany are no longer calling the shots. Almost none of the duo's central demands were met while all important economic positions went to avowed free-marketers.

It all began when 10 new members, mostly from the former Communist East, joined the EU in May. In contrast to Paris and Berlin, the newcomers pursue largely free-market policies and support the U.S. war in Iraq. Heralding that tectonic shift in the balance of power was Mr. Barroso's own nomination in June. France and Germany had pushed for Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. Particularly in foreign policy, Belgium had been toeing the Franco-German line.

But in this new Europe, Portugal's Prime Minister was chosen instead. With his free-market credentials and support of the U.S. war in Iraq, it was hard to imagine a greater setback for the Franco-German ambitions in Europe than Mr. Barroso's nomination. But last week it got even worse for Berlin and Paris."

Looking for Business blogging information ?

It is amazing how much information on business blogging there is on businessblogconsulting (thanks, Thomas).

Of course, I did not look at all at the commercial Hotpants Blog, only at SoapWire.

Update: Postlapsaria is a fashion clothes and accessories creators, is herself the model on the pictures, and sells the fashion articles directly on her blog with Paypal. New sales & marketing method ?

Discover Plazes: the social software based on your location

Congrats Felix and Stefan for having launched your new venture, Plazes.

I just joined this new social software and I like the idea, when you are in, Plazes allow you to fill-in new places you have been to (or you are at) and find people and things of interest around you. Really cool, give it a try !

There is also a Plazes blog if you want to follow how Felix and Stefan grow their startup.

Accelerating Change conference in Stanford

Many friends amongst the speakers and a content that looks interesting, too bad I am not sure I will be able to join Accelerating Change, a Conference that talks about Physical Space, Virtual Space, and Interface on November 5-7 this year.

OK, OK, I am on multiply

After 10 invites, I finally registered on multiply here is my page (I did not fill-in much up to now). This is called pressure :=)

A cool pictures of Kite Surfing Sails in the Sky

Thank you, Marc for having emailed me this cool pictures of Kite Surfing Sails in the sky.

Add live chat to your blog

Of course as Joi started to play with it, I had to play immediately too with Chatango. It is just great, you can create yourself a homepage like this (loic.chatango.com) in two minutes and add code to add live browser based chat to your blog:

I love it, I am sure it will spread like hell on blogs...

A French Employee's Work Celebrates the Sloth Ethic

This article will improve again France's image abroad.

"Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Paresse," a sort of slacker manifesto whose title translates as "Hello Laziness," has become a countercultural heroine almost overnight by encouraging the country's workers to adopt her strategy of "active disengagement" - calculated loafing - to escape the horrors of disinterested endeavor."

"But she works just 20 hours a week writing dry economic reports at the state electric utility, Électricité de France, for which she is paid about $2,000 a month"

Great.

"Her employer of 12 years was not amused. Irritated that she identified herself as an Électricité de France employee on the back cover of her book, company officials wrote her a stern letter accusing her of inattention at meetings, leaving work early and "spreading gangrene from within," just as her book advocates. They demanded that she appear for a disciplinary hearing, though the original Aug. 17 date has been pushed back to September. That's because Ms. Maier is going on vacation."

Shame on you, Ms Corinne Maier. No, all French people are not like Corinne, some work hard and pay taxes to pay your salary, I swear.

How to avoid a likely to happen terrorist nuclear weapon

This nytimes article reminds us about Epicure "live the current moment" [hasardous translation from French] and enjoy life, who knows what may happen again:

"If a 10-kiloton terrorist nuclear weapon explodes beside the New York Stock Exchange or the U.S. Capitol, or in Times Square, as many nuclear experts believe is likely in the next decade, then the next 9/11 commission will write a devastating critique of how we allowed that to happen.

[...] Such an attack could kill 500,000 people."

Wireless Sushi

Via Howard Rheingold

"From Jonathan Cheng:: Kaiten-sushi restaurants are using RFID tags to facilitate checkout:

I was recently blown away by the Kaiten-sushi restaurant in the new Mori-built Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo, where the waitress came by at the end of the meal and ran a device up the stack of plates. Beep beep beep. "Thank you sir, the total is 8000 yen." Wait...how did you...? Seeing my surprise and ignorance, she turned over one of the empty plates, and on the bottom was a small square shaped bump, barely visible under blue lacquer. It was an RFID chip implanted in the plate."

Definitely addicted

Yes, Dina, I am addicted and I show many of the symptoms you list. Is it serious, Doctor ?

Want to blog with the World Economic Forum in China ?

Nina Joyce asks on the World Economic Forum weblog: are there any bloggers in China who want to join the China Business Summit ?

Review of VOIP

a Review of VOIP that Azeem got in today's Guardian.

In sum:

• Gossiptel if you already have broadband and a phone line and you want a cheap second line
• BT Broadband Voice if you don't have a BT phone line (e.g. a Telewest or NTL service)
• Vonage if you call the US a lot
• Skype: if you have a fast PC and can persuade your callers to get on Skype too.

	Gossiptel	BT Broadband Voice	Vonage	Skype
Service	Phone + adaptor & software	Phone + adaptor only	Phone + adaptor & software	Software only
Monthly rental  Includes	£0	£6.50 Free offpeak calls to UK landlines	$15 500 minutes to US	Free
Set-up cost	None for software only; £94 for ATA	None	None	None
Rates	Pay-as-you go billed by second,	Billed-by-second; free off-peak calls to the UK, international calls uncompetitive	Competitive rates	Pay-as-you go billed by minute
Cost of 10 min call to UK landline (peak)	25p	30p	16p	10p
to UK landline (evening)	10p	Free	16p	10p
to UK mobile (peak)	£1.90	£1.80	£1.20	£1.33
to USA	25p	40p	Free	10p
To China	29p	£2.30	40p	10p
To Zambia	£1.20	£8.20	60p	54p
Installation	Problematic	Difficult	A dream	Simple
Inbound phone number	0870	055	US geographical.	None
Sound quality & delay	Varied from excellent to acceptable.	Consistently good;	Suffers from echoes;	Skype-to-Skype calls are excellent; calls to normal phones variable
Overall	Excellent choice for a second phone line. Useful for those who travel.	Polished service. Most attractive to cable modem users who don’t have an existing BT line.	Best for heavy users who need to call the US. Exceptional customer support. Launching in the UK by December.	Doesn’t allow inbound phone calls. Most useful if you can persuade your callers to move to Skype.

If the world were a village...

Via Cyberlibris blog

"Two years ago I bought a nice and inspiring children book for my daughter: "If the World Were a Village" by David J. Smith (published by Kids Can Press, Toronto, Canada).

While surfing on the Net, I just bumped into a sequel to Smith's book written by Donella Meadows. Dr. Donella H. Meadows (Ph.D. in biophysics, Harvard University), the founder of the Sustainability Institute, was a professor at Dartmouth College, a long-time organic farmer, a journalist, and a systems analyst. She was honored both as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and Environment and as a MacArthur Fellow.

For 16 years Donella wrote a weekly column called "The Global Citizen", commenting on world events. It appeared in more than twenty newspapers, received the Walter C. Paine Science Education Award in 1990, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1991.

Here is Donella's Meadows' sequel:

"If the world were a village of 1,000 people, it would include:

· 584 Asians
· 124 Africans
· 95 East and West Europeans
· 84 Latin Americans
· 55 Soviets (including for the moment Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and other national groups)
· 52 North Americans
· 6 Australians and New Zealanders

The people of the village have considerable difficulty in communicating:

· 165 people speak Mandarin
· 86 English
· 83 Hindi/Urdu
· 64 Spanish
· 58 Russian
· 37 Arabic

That list accounts for the mother tongues of only half the villagers. The other half speak (in descending order of frequency) Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French and 200 other languages.

A Kite Surf simulator

Via Smooze.net

If you have not time to go kite surfing, as it is often the case for me, check out this Kite Surfing Simulator, it looks fun.

Lexblog: building blogs for lawyers

I am amazed by the quality of the blogs produced by LexBlog, a Company launched by Kevin O'Keefe who was a trial lawyer for 17 years and marketed his business on-line. He decided to offer his expertise to all attorneys and launched a Company focused on blogs for lawyers. The graphical charter of the blogs are just amazing.

I also like the way they describe blogs to their potential customers: "Web sites? They're so 90's, it's law blogs now".

Lexblog has a very clear & clean product offering, check out their references.

Congratulations lexBlog and thank you for using MovableType.

An excellent Interview of Jimmy Wales, founder of WikiPedia

Via the Creative Commons Weblog, Slashdot has an excellent interview of the amazing founder of WikiPedia, Jimmy Wales

The online collaborative encyclopedia WikiPedia has already more traffic than its commercial competitor Britannica. Here are some quotes:

[I] "Was wondering if you view the Wikipedia as a competitor or an additional tool compared to a World Book or an Encyclopedia Britannica?

Jimmy Wales:
I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years.
[...]
It is my intention to get a copy of Wikipedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. It is my intention that free textbooks from our wikibooks project will be used to revolutionize education in developing countries by radically cutting the cost of content.
[...]
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.
[...]
I have every confidence that we'll be just fine. The thing is: everyone loves Wikipedia. When I asked the world for $20,000 last January, we raised nearly $50,000 in less than a week."

Google in the 60s

I know this is already a week old, but I still like it...

(via James Seng's blog via MrBrown)

PR rocks, advertising sucks

Via Sippey I discovered The Origin of Brands Blog, that talks about PR versus Marketing and Advertising.

French ringtones and logo mobile content firm for €120m

Via Rodrigo

If this is news... what an astronomical amount for a mobile content company (see previous transactions here): Index corporation, leading vendor of mobile content in Japan, buys 66,65% of French mobile content aggregator and wholesaler 123Multimedia for €120m. This values the company at 180m€ ($216m), at c. 1,5x turnover (119m€ for 2003), and 12x operating revenue (15m€ for 2003).
Their new objective is to go after the US market. Not bad for a ringtone, logos and picture business...

(via Journal du Net and the company web sites: 123multimedia, Index).

A blog tools market analysis

Here is an interesting blog tools market analysis, not only because it gives TypePad a 15% market share of all weblogs content. This study is based on the number of URLs and quotes of the tools in Google.

Quite true, TypePad being a paying only tool, its users tend to write more and use it more than free solutions I believe. Any blog tools market analysis being quite difficult, please make your own opinion about these...

Of course I can only be even happier to see that Movable Type is also the first server tool for blogging in this study.

Thanks Marc for the link.

I broke my kite surf board

Today I broke my Kite Surf board, a wonderful radical. I was at full speed, too close to another surfer that did not look behind him and suddenly changed direction.

What's fun is that he also had a radical board even though not so many people have one and his board is not broken. I guess I touched the ailerons, which are rock solid on these boards.

a "colleague" in the middle of a rotation

I could still kite surf today, with some tape on the hole. It did not change much to my speed as I had a 14 square meter kite, as usual, 2 to 4 meters more than the other kite boarders as I am much heavier. I jumped like hell, the 20kt wind was really sportive with a 14 meter, but took me to the sky.

My turn to welcome you on Board, Michael !

Michael joins Six Apart as VP, Product. Great to have you on Board, Michael !

If you want to learn more, you can also read Mena's post about Michael.

Using Movable Type as a Content Management System

Many Internet sites use Movable Type as a Content Management System for their "corporate" or content sites, MT being very powerful and much cheaper than most of the high-end Content Management Systems.

A good example is MuniWireless.com, edited by Esme Vos and her Company, LemonCloud in Amsterdam. It is a content site fully powered by MT even though its excellent design does not look as a traditional blog while taking all the advantages of blogs (RSS feeds, comments, etc).

MuniWireless (about page) is focusing on "municipal wireless broadband projects worldwide that are funded or supported by cities and towns. These range from downtown hotzones to city-wide wireless broadband networks." Congrats, Esme !

If you want to make sure that your guests never use the toilet flush anymore

For sure, none of your guests will ever use the toilet flush again with this amazing toy. In fact, it has two separate tanks to prevent you from flushing an entire ecosystem in a snap !

Read - the product page [via Gizmodo via PopGadget]

News talk more about blogs than Britney Spears

According to Google News, we talk more about blogs than about Britney Spears, see this post of Micro Persuasion (thanks, Heiko)

Were bloggers Cybertourists in Boston ?

I wanted to take some time to read again Charles Cooper's article, "Cybertourists in Boston", following the Democrats issuing credentials to bloggers at the last national convention party in Boston. Here is a quote:

"With a few exceptions, most of the credentialed bloggers came off like cyberhayseeds in the big city. Many dared for the painfully obvious as they updated their posts. Most of the blogging entries I have read ranged from the insufferably pedantic to the sublimely mediocre. There were exceptions, of course, but the see-me, hear-me tenor of their reporting was only exceeded by the vapidity of the banal commentaries peddled as analyses."

and David Weinberger's answer in the form of a video blog, here are some quotes:

"We did not put up so we should shut up. I am not a journalist, just not, I am a blogger.

We looked like journalists: some bloggers have mass audience such as big media and we were covering the event like journalists.

Why are we not journalists ? I don't have an editor, I don't have stories assigned to me. I worry about what I want. I am writing in public but not for the public, not for the masses, I am writing for the people who know me through my blog, I write for them.

We are writing for our friends, this is trivial. It is a social phenomenon that is tremendously exciting.

I recognize we were an anomaly at the convention. I don't think it is going to happen again. The blogging will be done by the people who go to the conference, they don't need any special access badge.

To judge us through the lenses of the media and draw a conclusion is just not right."

I fully agree with David, when I write on my blog, I don't pretend to be a journalist and will never pretend to be one. I write as if we were having lunch together, I just try to write as I am, with my non-native english, my mistakes and my feelings.

Do you think more bloggers should get press badges in future big events ?

Your wife shoes blogged every day

Alistair Shrimpton blogs every day a picture of his wife's shoes, she has 400 different pairs. Blogs reveal interesting things, don't you think ? Shoes for Alistair, daily picture at 9h09 for Jean-Michel...

Microsoft launches a blog service in Japan

See this Reuters article. Welcome, Microsoft.

Sociology on the beach

Where to Put the Blanket is an interesting article (from the NY Times) about Sociology on the beach.

CIA Asks Bush to discontinue Blog

Read this article (thanks, Luca) and here is George's blog:

"WASHINGTON, DC—In the interest of national security, President Bush has been asked to stop posting entries on his three-month-old personal web log, acting CIA director John E. McLaughlin said Monday.

According to McLaughlin, several recent entries on PrezGeorgeW. typepad.com have compromised military operations, while other posts may have seriously undercut the PR efforts of White House press secretary Scott McClellan"