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May 31, 2005

France says no to E.U. Charter: what did you hear in your Country ?

After 50 years of european integration, France said NO yesterday to the E.U. Charter. The first reason according to polls is fears from the French to lose their jobs on account of lower labor cost countries in the E.U.

What did you hear about it in your countries ? What do you think about this major event in Europe ? Has your image of France changed ?

Thanks very much in advance for your comments, I am very interested to have your perspective (don't forget to mention where you are).

I have played with a N90 phone

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Just arrived in Helsinki with Xavier, I have played with Christian's brand new N90 Carl Zeiss optics (rotating), very nice design, amazing picture quality you can check on Christian's blog (whose TypePad blog design is very cool too).

It will come with a new version of Lifeblog that can take pictures directly from the pictures and video application.

Ah, before I forget, my little finger tells me (as we say in French, no idea in english) that the Tiger Mac users will soon be happy with their Nokia phones...

May 27, 2005

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and... Mena Trott

Mena, speaking with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, cool.

Brands blog spam sucks

I was curious to query technorati for BMW tonight and have a look at the "blog" entries: most of them are fake blogs.

This is really bad.

Update: some of you understood I was criticizing Technorati on this post, it is really not the case, I was just using Technorati as always to search for this brand because I was working on a presentation about "blogs and brands". I did not express myself very well, I meant "the fact that these blogs appear all the time is really bad", nothing to do with Technorati, just a fact.

May 26, 2005

Microsoft employees have blogs in France as well

Roland has an interview with Vincent Lauriat, of Microsoft France, about their employees blogs.

French bloggers meet in New York now as well

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French frogs everywhere. Next saturday, May 28th, in a city near you in New-York City.

"Bringing CNET into the tent"

Jason notices that CNET talks about the French "bloc" word for "blog" when many blogs already talked about it and uses it as an example on why they should quote their sources if they are blogs. Obviously provided they got this one from blogs but it really looks like.

May 25, 2005

Blogebrity: do you want an intro to the Cannes Festival team ?

BlogebrityIf Blogebrity is not serious, it is very funny, I agree. I am happy to help you guys get an introduction to the Cannes Festival Team, bloggers could finally get the same entertaining events (video) happening ;-)

THE solution to your blogging problems

Try autoblogger. Via Joi.

May 24, 2005

Only on blogs and the Internet

This video was very appreciated by the audience during Joi's speech at the Senate, thank you Gopconstrm for posting it on Dailymotion I always see it again with pleasure...

Nick Denton's pie

Nick's Pie
Nick Denton apparently received a huge pie in the head. There is a lot of blogging about it even Jason has some comments. I wonder why it "raises questions about Denton's ability to report the truth about an event" as he posts about it, too. I probably did not read enough posts, can somebody explain ?

May 23, 2005

Ecto rocks but becomes a bit complex

At least for me. If you have a Mac and use TypePad or MT, Ecto is a must.

I only blog with it, but it has so many new features that it becomes a bit complex for me, it has support for Automator can create automatic tags using Yahoo term extractor and manages tags better than anybody...

I would need some training of spend more time in it to use it full speed, but anyway congrats, Ado.

Technorati Tags:

3373 posts and 9251 comments !

You write three times as much on my blog as I write myself and I am very proud of it:

Posts
946 - english blog
1463 - french blog
964 - moblog (images)

Comments
1954 - english blog
7015 - french blog
282 - moblog

I wonder why there are so many more comments on my french blog compared to this one. I must be less boring in french ;-)

What do you think is the reason ?

May 22, 2005

Joi wonders about his blog.

Joi wonders. I think you should be more natural and think less about what people could be offended by what you have to say. Hugh has comments as well.

Pierre Chappaz, founder of Kelkoo, blogs from Geneva

Pierre Chappaz founded Kelkoo and sold it last year to Yahoo! It was one of the hottest european startup with LastMinute.com, just sold as well. Both of them are owned by american companies now. There is only one pan-european Internet startup (successful) not owned by a US company left to my knowledge, Meetic, Marc Simoncini's baby going public in October in France.

Pierre blogs in French from Geneva, on Kelblog.

Want to say "weblog" in French ? Say Note Pad.

You know we want to preserve French. Well, our "Journal Officiel" has given an official translation to the word weblog:

"Weblog" should be in French "Bloc Notes"

Literally, "Bloc Notes" in english translates back to "Note Pad".

The "Journal Officiel" even thought about a short version, equivalent to "blog", it should be "bloc" which should translate back to "pad".

There's a Skype official blog

If you have not seen it yet, here is the Skype blog.

Cover page on blogs: Le Monde's turn

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Picture, PointBlog

After Fortune Magazine, Liberation and Business Week, it is Le Monde's turn to have blogs on its cover page.

There is an interesting article about how brands try to penetrate the blogosphere and are not all very successful up to now. In France, we have a few examples of brands, Nokia, Siemens, Nike and Vichy who tried to either sample products to bloggers or launch theirs. Tell me if you want me to describe more what they have done in France. If you read French, here are the Le Monde articles below, they will remain free on-line for 7 days.

L'univers des blogs, ses habitants, ses rites, son langage
Les grandes marques tentent, avec plus ou moins de succès, de pénétrer le monde des blogueurs
Pierre Bellanger, président de la radio Skyrock

May 20, 2005

Bloggers after locks again, computer locks this time.

Kensington LockAfter Kryptonite, it is now Kensington lock's turn. The blogosphere talks about it.

The brand has not learnt anything from their competitors' story and does not say a word.

I was getting bored of showing the Kryptonite locks video when I was talking about a brand crisis on blogs, so here is the Kensington video. Follow what the bloggers are saying here for example, because on the brand site it is total silence even though there is a PR crisis.

Brands cannot hide bad news anymore.

I wanted to write a post on how to get out of a blog crisis but as Steve already has a very good one I will just add a few suggestions.

Steve:
-continually listen and analyze
-develop a list of vulnerabilities
-build a lockbox blog
-build a network of blogging allies
-ride the long tail

I would add:
-talk about your mistakes or the problems, don't hide them
-ask bloggers their advice on how they would improve the product, the initiative
-write a summary of these suggestions and apply the best, they are usually very good
-blog, blog, blog. In these cases it is better than press releases.

Let's see if Kensington will listen to bloggers. I doubt it.

Traditional media eye blogs to boost revenues

An article by Christine Pouget, that talks about many european experiences by traditional media around blogs: The Guardian, Libération, Skyblog, Le Monde... (AFP)

Shel interviews Andrew Carton

If you want to know more about the amazing success of Treonauts.com as a brand blog / product blog written by Andrew Carton who has nothing to do with Palm, Shel Israel has a very good interview over at the Red Couch.

A citizen media launched in France, Agoravox

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Inspired by Ohmynews and Dan Gillmor's We the Media, Carlo Revelli and his team have just launched AgoraVox, a European citizen media initiative, starting first in French.

Anyone can become a reporter and already many bloggers and citizens have joined forces to contribute. Congratulations.

May 19, 2005

Apple, iSync our last Nokia !

257 Mac & Nokia users have signed the Petition to Apple's iSync team to make our last Nokia sync with our last Mac & Tiger.

It is not enough, please join us.

Dan Gillmor launches Bayosphere

OK you all know about it, I just want to congratulate Dan for Bayosphere and his new blog.

Procter & Gamble blogs

I did not know about this Procter & Gamble blog.

May 17, 2005

Podcasted breakfast with Mario Asselin

Blog Mario AsselinI had a very interesting breakfast with Mario Asselin this morning, he is the dynamic head of the Canadian school Institut StJoseph in Québec. Mario has launched one of the best initiative I know in the educational world as most of the 400 4 to 12 years old school kids and most of the teachers use blogs to capture everything and collaborate, it is called cyberportfolios.

 Albums Tronches Masselin.Thumb

We have discussed how Mario launched it, the first experiences and how it is evolving, fascinating. Now Mario is being asked to share his experience and help in similar projects around the world.

Here is the mp3 of Mario Asselin's podcast (in French, 21,3 Mo, about 43 minutes). I know it is not a real podcast as it should be in my feed, etc, sorry no time to do it right ;-)

Mario is in Paris all week, if you want to meet him, there is a dinner organized on Friday, May 20th.

May 16, 2005

Google serves the long tail

 The Long Tail Images Googlelt2 2-1
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO:
"And what about the individual contributor, the small business, the company where Joe or Bob is the CEO, the CIO, the CFO and the worker and the support person--a one person company, a two-person company, a three-person company? We built a whole bunch of small, self-service tools which allowed them to almost automatically use this service.


So [we went] in both directions last year. By going all the way to the top, we were able to capture very large and historically underserved businesses as well as a whole new area that never had access to these kinds of online services."

Over at the long tail blog, via John.

Star Pads, may the blog force be with you.

A French blogger (the anonymous strategic planner has he calls himself) has posted a picture with the faces of some very well known French bloggers in a Star Wars theme and has put a lot of work into it. He gives a description of all the players.

I am "Sidious Le Meur" who gets his force from his blog ;-)
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Lucky bloggers at the Cannes film festival

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Rodrigo does not look very bored with other bloggers in Cannes, following it on a collablorative weblog Glowria where Emmanuel, Mihai, Rodrigo, Galienni, and Fanny are authors.

Any other bloggers in Cannes this week ? I feel so bad for them for such a hard week.

Just bought LaFraise t-shirts for the summer

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Aren't they cool ? They are over at LaFraise.

Weblogs SL grows

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Nice graph Julio, congrats !

Republican vs. democrat bloggers

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Dana VanDen Heuvel over at Blogs Marketing Beyond the Website "What's it mean? Simple - niche, hive mentality, lots of cross linking amongst the bloggers. Want to reach someone in this community. Advertise here." Via Robert.

BLOGPOLY

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I like it. Link.

Via Boing Boing.

A breakfast at the Wharton Paris Club

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Bertrand Schmitt and Susan Lucas-Conwell have invited me (thanks !) last week to speak at the Wharton breakfast in Paris (where many Insead alumni were present too).

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Adrian Johnson has podcasted (french) my speech (mp3) and Bertrand has a few notes about it in English, as well as Per & Britt.

May 15, 2005

A very good Italian restaurant in Paris

Not easy to find a good Italian restaurant in Paris so let me advise you to check this one, the Chef is from Sardinia and the food is excellent. It changes from the Paris hip restaurant where the food is kind of average.

Fontanarosa
15th arrondissement
28, bd Garibaldi
Paris, France 75015
+33 1 45 66 97 84

The Kite Surf Jump video is back online

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As this amazing kite surf jump video has a lot of success and the original link was broken, I uploaded it on my blog and repaired the link on my earlier post.

May 12, 2005

A French blogger now sued by a city mayor

 Moiaout2004-1Christophe Grebert, citizen blogger who was already arrested by the local police for his blog, is now sued by the city mayor because he comments how he does not like the way the city is managed every day on his blog.

The city has voted a budget of 29 000 € (!) to attack him. Christophe will be in front of judges on June 21st and had to borrow money from friends to organize his defense. If you would like to support him, Christophe just added a paypal tipjar donation button and already received close to $1000 of donations from fellow bloggers. I can't believe this story and I hope of course he will win.

update, thanks Cory for your help to spread the word.

If you like this blog...

Yahoo! France has just selected my blog for the best web sites in France, I know this is super egocentric but you know how I am ! If you like this blog, it is at the bottom end of the voting form ;-)

Sabre acquires lastminute.com

Link. 577 million pounds. Congrats Brent, Fraser and Laurent.

IP Video Conferencing rocks

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Sam, product manager at Six Apart Europe, in a video conference IP with Antoine, engineer, currently in San Francisco. We have just started using one Polycom IP system and it is amazing. The video quality is very high (actually you can isight in it too with Tiger) as well as sound. Lots of costs savings and the feeling that your co-worker is just here with you. The world gets closer and closer. As the communication cost is zero, we just leave it open for hours for meetings.

Social engagement

David Tebbutt just wrote an article in The Guardian about how the lesblogs conference was organised: word spread on blogs and the conference mostly self-organised on the wiki page.

David says: "for most of those who attended, the engagement started well before the event.


People signed up for the conference by hitting the edit button and adding their details to Le Meur's Socialtext Wiki pages. They paid by clicking a link to the payment page. They entered their personal details, and added notes such as "Anyone need a lift from Amsterdam?" or "Anyone fancy dinner on 24th?" to the Travel/what to do page.

Pages materialised according to need, and adding and editing information was straightforward. Best of all, everything was always up to date."

The fact that most participants were not only participants but also helped getting the programme ready, helped us find speakers, filled-in the wiki with tips to travel to Paris, restaurant ideas (and even what do in Paris for five days ?) to help everybody and gathered all the posts, audio files, articles about the event was an amazing support.

I felt like we all organized the conference together. Obviously, there were still some heavy logistics left...

Thanks David for this article, to your question about the blog etiquette to talk about your own article, I think that's fine ;-) I would just regret they were no links in your article to get the Guardian readers to the blogs and conference pages you are talking about but I guess this is The Guardian policy outside of its own blogs, Neil ?

May 10, 2005

Tomorrow, bulletin of Singapore bloggers

Just launched, congrats, James It is written by top bloggers in Singapore, working together.

May 09, 2005

Noos launches its blog platform with TypePad

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Noos is one of the largest cable TV & Internet provider in France and has just chosen TypePad to offer a Noos blog to their clients.

We have now 11 partners in Europe who launched their blog platform on TypePad, Neufblog, Turboblog, Le Monde, VNUNet, T-Online, 01 Net, Europe 2, Cadres OnLine, Psychologies, Club-Internet and Noos.

May 08, 2005

"New-New Media Weblogs.inc slams Old-New Media Cnet"

Jasongaby
Jason (WeblogsInc/Engadget) and Gaby (Gawker/Gizmodo) at the speakers dinner at les blogs, that was one of the most interesting offpanel conversation.

Jason writes an Open letter to Molly Wood of Cnet who claims that Engadget has no ethics.

Jason: " We follow the same exact ethical standards as the WSJ, NYT, PBS, and NPR. We do not keep review units and we don’t get paid to blog about products. The fact that you’re insinuating we do is absolutely false.
Had you taken the time, as a “journalist,” to call me or do two minutes of research you would have found this out.

The fact that you’re losing scoops has nothing to do with ethics, it has to do with hustle—something you clearly don’t have since you couldn’t even be bothered to get your facts straight in this editorial.
Blogs are out-hustling you plain and simple. The audience is voting with their eyeballs as are the big companies who appreciate the transparency and passion of blogs."

Via Neville.

A Nokia product blog or not ?

Not. Rodrigo has tested a new Nokia phone (part of a VIP program) and created on his own a dedicated blog Stephen Baker, of Business Week thought it was a Nokia blog. Not at all, anybody can write product blogs now. Stephen Baker recognized his mistake and updated his post, I love how journalism changes. Via Corporateblogging again.

It's all around Europe

Blog Conference on May 28th in Sweden: Bloggforum Stockholm 2.0

Guillaume gives 19/20 to our technical support

Thank you Guillaume for all your good words (in French) about our TypePad technical support, it is one of our priorities.

The toilet corporate blog

Capture014-1Who said corporate blogging was still mostly done by tech companies ? Here is the toilet blog, envirolet, and it is not shit, it is a mix (without water) of product information and tentative community building. Via Corporateblogging.info

May 05, 2005

Mary has translated in Italian my post

... about the "blog culture". Link. thanks Mary.

Testing Indy

After last.fm, I am testing the collaborative filtering "radio" Indy

A new era in Television ?

Capture013-2It looks like an OhmyNews of TV. Interesting, I did not know about it when apparently thousands of people gathered in San Francisco last month for its launch. Current.tv do you know more about this ? What I can say is that unfortunately it is terribly slow from Europe.

1Gbps home internet access for US$215

Yat Siu at the lesblogs conference in Paris compared the prices of broadband Internet between asia and the rest of the world, as a few people including David were surprised by these numbers, Yat just gave me a link with detailed pricing:

-1Gbps for US$215 per month
-100Mbps for US$34 per month
-10Mbps for US$16 per month

This was pricing in Honk Kong. In China according to this article (in Chinese), "100Mbps service is approx. 26.5 euros and 1 Gigabit service is approx. 166.36 euros the 1 G service has an installation fee" says Yat.

I want the same in Paris, now !

update: Yat adds info about Korea and more:

"On 100 Mbps in Korea there is an article in Korean that discusses this:

http://zdnet.co.kr/news/network/0,39024416,39135927,00.htm

The government has been pushing to spread nationwide increase of infrastructure speeds to 50Mbps already in 2003 in Korea with the construction of the BcN following the goal to have 100Mbps by 2010. This is not a secret that the Korean Government has had super internet speeds as part of their National Agenda (ever since the Asian Economic Crisis for that matter) however ever since then the plans have been pushed forward significantly as Korea has been ever keen to maintain its top dog status as the leader in Broadband everything.

Continue reading "1Gbps home internet access for US$215" »

My new Nokia 6680

Nokia 6680I just got my new Nokia 6680 and it rocks. It is much faster than my old 7610, has one 1.3 megapixel camera in the back and a VGA one in the front, it is 3G to allow fast data transfer and video conferencing (I tried with the French operator Orange my first video call and it is really cool). The pictures and small videos are very good and the built-in flash helps. The design is cool and has no weird keyboard or other unnecessary toys.

I am trying to use it also to replace my keyboard blackberry but that is the only weakness, no push email and no keyboard. I tried profimail which is quite good but is not as fast as the blackberry application to read and answer emails. Now I need to find a bluetooth portable keyboard (or may be this one) to see if I can really get rid of my blackberry.

The experience I have had with this new 6680 phone is excellent, I just need to get a copy of Tiger now to see if I can even sync my Mac with it.

Looks like Israel MSM pays attention to bloggers

Hey Robert, great article in hebrew, I am not jealous, I had one too.

Is there a "blog culture" ?

A discussion has started on my french blog and I was curious to get your ideas about a question a Le Monde journalist asked me two days ago: "is there a blog culture" ?

Here is a summary of what I answered as well as my french blog readers in comments:
Yes, there is a blog culture defined by:
-the willingness and pleasure to share his thoughts and experiences with others
-the growing importance of getting what others think about an idea or on opinion. As soon as a community exists around a blog, the author tends to ask more and more questions to them.
-bloggers help each other a lot, they are also capable of launching collaborative projects that would be very difficult or impossible to launch alone.
-getting information from a high number of sources every day becomes very important to most bloggers who end up reading tens of blog feeds (if not hundreds in some cases) every day.
-bloggers want to be in control on how they read the news, they don't want it served like a gospel, as most newspapers do
-bloggers tend to be global, read international sources and want to meet other people (one of my french blog reader quotes the "les blogs" event as a proof of that, so many people who travelled so far just to meet the bloggers they have been reading for so long)
-bloggers want to meet in real life, once they formed a community online, they organize dinners, parties, conferences, to meet
-there is a "common code": a vocabulary, a way to write posts, and behavior codes (quoting other sources when you use them, linking into them, etc)
-bloggers get so much used to providing feedback themselves that they are very frustrated when they read, listen or view MSM as they are not able to comment them
-the fact that bloggers invest so much time in their blogs, usually taken away from MSM, leisure time and sleep time, this irresistible will to share with others is a strong common point
-the culture of speed: the need to post or react instantaneously
-a need for recognition, bloggers want express themselves and get credit for it, resulting in many outside observers talking about bloggers as "huge ego-centrists with too much time in their hands"

Do you think the above describe a blog culture or is it just fake ? Do you see any other characteristics of a "blog culture" ?

May 02, 2005

My virtual me is quite impolite

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Eyal Gever of Gizmoz, during my trip to Tel Aviv, had created my virtual mini me. With a few digital pictures of somebody, Eyal can create its mini-me and make him say or sing anything as well as behave as he wants. Don't forget to open the window before you try this video. I swear I behave like this only in virtual life !

Thanks Eyal...

May 01, 2005

Joi breaks the blogger code of behavior for a bowl of soup

Joi breaks the blogger rules. I hope it has nothing to do with his visit in Paris.

Rupert Murdoch announces the end of newspapers as we know them

Here are some quotes from a paid only (be linkable, Economist, or die) Economist.com article:

Rupert Murdoch:

 Wikipedia En 4 43 Rmurdoch"I BELIEVE too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers," Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, one of the world's largest media companies, told the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week. No wonder that people, and in particular the young, are ditching their newspapers. Today's teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings "don't want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what's important," Mr Murdoch said, "and they certainly don't want news presented as gospel." And yet, he went on, "as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably, complacent."

"Mr Murdoch said that news "providers" such as his own organisation had better get web-savvy, stop lecturing their audiences, "become places for conversation" and "destinations" where bloggers" and "podcasters" congregate to "engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions." He also criticised editors and reporters who often "think their readers are stupid".

"In 1995-2003, says the World Association of Newspapers, circulation fell by 5% in America, 3% in Europe and 2% in Japan. In the 1960s, four out of five Americans read a paper every day; today only half do so. Philip Meyer, author of "The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age" (University of Missouri Press), says that if the trend continues, the last newspaper reader will recycle his final paper copy in April 2040."

Announcing the end of the press as we know it is not really new, what's new is that it is Rupert Murdoch himseld announcing it...


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About

Welcome to my blog. Based in San Francisco, I am an entrepreneur and a blogger. I just started my fifth startup, Seesmic, a community driven video social software. Here is what TechCrunch says about it.

I am blogging every day a video on loic.tv about (almost) everything I do as I start Seesmic, I also constantly post short thoughts to twitter and often my pictures on Flickr.

I also organize every year in Paris the conference LeWeb3 that gathers more than a thousand bloggers and entrepreneurs from 40 countries on Dec 11 and 12.

If you would like to learn more, here is a bio, my LinkedIn profile, my wikipedia pages in english and french. Sometimes they are subject to changes that do not always reflect what I consider the truth but that is the principle.

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