Loïc Le Meur blog

The russian Who's Who (hilarious)

You MUST check this russian Who's Who wether you are thinking about going to Russia or not, it is just fantastic. Sample below. Thanks, Pierre.

"Meretrica Provincialis

Manezh Mall Rat
Distinguishing features: 15-year-old teenie bopper from the edge of Moscow who tries to look like she's a 23-year-old kept moll. Excessive make-up applied badly, fake designer jeans and t-shirts that promote clothing labels she clearly can't afford. Is usually extremely attractive in a trashy, Jersey-by-way-of-Moscow way."

Technorati Tags: russia

Saying fuck in front of 200 people...

Andy was doing a demo of blogs and different styles in front of 200 people. Euan was in the room, Andy showed The Obvious, and...

Big news: Technorati launches language filtering !

Congrats to David and his team, who has just announced (and make me test at 5 AM in San Francisco for him, go to bed, Dave) the brand new language recognition feature of Technorati, long awaited in Europe. Here is a keyword search limited to French on my name (you know my ego :p)

Currently Technorati supports Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

Technorati rocks currently, with the latest stats:
80 000 new blogs per day
900 000 posts per day
37 500 posts per hour
40% month-to-month growth
over 14 million blogs now indexed

and I like the integration with Newsweek, disclosure, I am an investor in Technorati.

Technorati Tags: blog, dave sifry, language, technorati

French bloggers launch Parisist for Gothamist

Parisist [FR], a cool collaborative blog on Paris, written by about ten parisian bloggers and published by Gothamist.

On Jeff Bezos' mind today

A note written by Jeff Bezos himself a few days ago during an internal meeting. Under torture I will not reveal how I got it (hint: it is on a wall in France somewhere). Gen Y is generation young, I let you make your own interpretation about the rest !

Technorati Tags: amazon, jeff bezos

Find a good blog designer

Hugh MacLeod and Alistair Shrimpton are assembling a central database of people who design blogs and websites professionally. Excellent initiative. via Heiko.

If you spam me, I kill you.

In Mosnews.com, thanks, Heiko.

"Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head."

Paris building in fire

It's happening currently, just went by chance in front of this building in fire on my motorbike. It's in front of the Saint Lazare rail station, rue de la Pepiniere. No news sources online report about it yet, it does not look like terrorism but more like a work-in-progress building that got in fire. Good luck to the firemen currently in the fog in and on the top of the building...

The well known clothing brand Celio starts its blog

After L'Oreal with Vichy blog, Nokia and Siemens, the clothing brand Celio just launched its blog "Vous les Hommes", written by a well known french blogger, Sophie Kune (in French). It looks like corporate blogging grows fast in France... Via Roland.

Rebecca goes after Cisco because they sell routers to the Chinese Security Bureau

Rebecca about Cisco training the Chinese Public Secutiry Bureau on how to filter the Internet for political reasons:

"The fact that Cisco clearly has no qualms about doing business with the Chinese Public Security Bureau is odious. We should change the law to make it illegal for companies like Cisco to sell networking and telecommunications equipment to police agencies in countries like China where the practice of law enforcement includes things like beating up little old ladies who demonstrate peacefully for their religious rights in Tiananmen Square, routine torture of people jailed without due process, and ongoing crackdowns against political dissent of all kinds."

Thomas Dahlgren, one of Rebecca's readers, says in comments:

"Apalling, but unsurprising. Cisco is engaged in business that is morally odious but potentially quite lucrative. Corporations do not have a conscience and it is unrealistic to expect them to limit their behavior in the absence of legal or financial consequences."

I remember Nestlé's CEO, Peter Brabeck, saying in Davos a few years ago that "the only goal of a company is to increase value for its stockholders".

Rebecca, what do you think then of Philip Morris killing millions every year ? Probably worse than Cisco selling routers to the Chinese Governement, as a company, they just do their job: increase sales and drive growth.

It is the business based model that is flawed, not Cisco. However, I have no suggestions for a better one at that time, being myself a business person...