Great article about Velib

Here is a great summary about what Velib has managed to do.

Re*Move: A lesson in business from the French

I don’t think that people either inside or outside of Paris have really realized what has happened in the last six months. There has been a revolution but nobody seems to have noticed.

If we’re to meet the challenge of climate change I think that we’re going to have to see far more of these hi-tech, low-tech mash-ups. I just can’t imagine what the next one will be!

Review: Le Web 3

Last year it took me a while to recover from Le Web 3. There was the blog war and I never got around to writing what I thought of it all. This year it’s taken a week.

In summary; Le Web 3 has become the best couple of days in the year for me. I loved last year but this year I actually felt comfortable and had a real ball.

There are still areas to improve;

  • the panel discussions are often too laid back and the “on the sofa talks with Loïc” need more preparation. Otherwise, the time time slips by without any real discussion occurring. As good as the discussion with Janus Friis was, Dave Winer’s chat never really got off the ground.
  • Q&As never really happened and the mobile microphones just don’t work. Can’t we just have somewhere to queue? And please limit the number of questions per person otherwise we get the same four people over and over again.

Otherwise, all the organization was better. The speakers were fantastic, although I think that we can invite a politician back; maybe someone from the UK to talk about data privacy!

Special appreciation goes to:

– Scoble for chatting at 8am about his Kindle and being so nice. He’s far nicer in person than via his writing and videos.

– Starck for proving that you don’t need to know a language to speak it!

– Joi Ito for a fascinating talk that I’ve referred to seven times in the last week.

– Evan Williams for reteaching the importance of Zen in design without knowing it.

– JP Rangaswami for proving me wrong about BT.

– June Cohen for reminding me that it’s about the story not the technology. Interestingly, I signed up for LeWeb3 last year after seeing the TED Talks films. Everything is a circle!

Best blog title of the day…week…and month.

Daring Fireball: Yet Another in the Ongoing Series Wherein I Examine a Piece of Supposedly Serious Apple Analysis From a Major Media Outlet and Dissect Its Inaccuracies, Fabrications, and Exaggerations Point-by-Point, Despite the Fact That No Matter How Egregious the Inaccuracies / Fabrications / Exaggerations, Such Pieces Inevitably Lead to Accusations That I’m Some Sort of Knee-Jerk Shill Who Rails Against Anything ‘Anti-Apple’ Simply for the Sake of Defending Apple, and if I Love Apple So Much Why Don’t I Just Marry Them?

I saw him there; but I don’t think he actually arrived…

Jason Calacanis talked about LeWeb3 on the latest episode of TWiT.

Before today I had him down as a generally intelligent person with a big mouth (not that a big mouth is a bad thing; I hope). And then on TWiT he said that about 5% of people at LeWeb3 were French.

Seems he wasn’t at the same event as the rest of us. If he looks LeWeb3 site here he’ll see that over half the people who listened to his talk were French. Or at least came from France.
He also said that Mahalo announced something at the conference but that was it. Erm, didn’t GooJet announce something and win a prize? Didn’t Dave Winer announce something?

If I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes on stage and wandering around on his blackberry I’d have to assume that he’d not attended.

BTW – I was dying to ask him after his talk about if he considers his behavior on the Gillmor Gang as SPAM.

OLPCs start arriving…

I’ve now heard from multiple places that OLPCs have started arriving in letter boxes. Fantastic news; it means that mine is now only weeks away!

Of course, the first thing that sprang to mind was “what can I install on it”.

The answer is here… http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

Actually, some of these things sound very cool. MikMik: Distributed wiki editor sounds like great fun to start with but there is one application that steals the show for me.

Tux Paint: Paint program for young children. Both my children love Tux!