Loïc Le Meur blog

Blackberry Pearl and 8800

It's been a few days I have been playing with the new Blackberry Pearl. The design is really amazing and it's incredibly small. The side selector typical of all Blackberries disappears for an Apple mighty mouse like ball in the center, which is pretty good and easy to use. I was afraid of not being able to type fast on the tiny keyboard with less keys than the larger one I have had for a while but it's actually ok even with my large fingers. I love the design. There is a camera on board which is also big news for a Blackberry but it's really disappointing in quality. I don't really care as I usually cary two phones, the second one being a Nokia n93 with great picture and movie quality. Blackberries have also a long tradition of poor quality to... call but this one is really much better and matches any good quality phone. While I'm testing this one, Engadget has already a picture of the future 8800 which has the same ball pointer in the middle.

Podshow raises $15M

Congrats to Adam Curry, TechCrunch has more, podcasting definitely hot...

Three years of blogging...

Precisely three years ago I wrote my very first post on this blog, I apologized for writing only in english. Today I write at least five times more in French... I wanted to do a podcast to assess three years of blogging, but I'm just back from Amsterdam and can't find enough courage to do it tonight, will do it over the week-end.

France loses six seats in the World Economic Forum rating

France loses 6 seats (fr) at the World Economic Forum global competitiveness ranking. The World Economic Forum explains this years' ranking in videoo. Disclosure: I participated to 5 Davos Forums, my notes and podcasts are archived, and I also think globalization is generally good, which does not always make me popular in France.

Space blogging

I would have loved to blog from space too. There is even a moblog.

The future of the Internet

Excellent survey of internet leaders by Pew, with the folloging predictions:

# A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
# Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
# Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
# Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
# People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
# English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

At the same time, there was strong dispute about those futuristic scenarios among notable numbers of 742 respondents to survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. Those who raised challenges believe that governments and corporations will not necessarily embrace policies that will allow the network to spread to under-served populations; that serious social inequalities will persist; and that “addiction” is an inappropriate notion to attach to people’s interest in virtual environments.

Should you videoblog ?

A good post by Robert, as always. For me the answer is yes, I just launched our new blogging tool Vox in France by videopodcasting members of the Six Apart France team (in french), Mathieu (who was a great trainee) and Yann, one of our best engineers. I really like it even though I can't say it meets professional standards, I did the video editing on imovie, I'm learning Final Cut, though.

Italian bloggers invited to political events

It's now standard in France, here it is in Italy too.

Becoming French by default

I have setup the domain name to point by default to the French version of this blog, it's very often quoted in French media so it makes it easier, but I'll continue to blog in english of course, the url of this blog is unchanged, at loiclemeur.com/english. I'm not sure I'll keep it this way, I am a bit confused between non french speaking people who wonder if I blog in french and french people who wonder why I blog only in english. Actually I wonder if I should not mix them up.

Back to english by default.

With Oliver Gassner, Netz Stimmen

Thanks for your interview, Oliver, too bad I don't understand the german comments :) Of course we talked about why blogging does not really start in Germany, without good answers, yet. I'm sure it's going to start one day !