Category Archives: Technology

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!

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!

HP: It’s all about the CEO stupid

Add one more item to the list of things that we relearn every five years…

The secret of IT transformation: It’s all about the CEO stupid

The same thing was written about SAP installations, LAN installations, PC roll outs and moving to Windows (in about 92)!!!

This is news?

Telcos give their business away

Saw this while surfing…

Strategy: Nokia jealous of Apple, wants cut of the action

What amazes me is that the Telcos have given their business away to the handset companies and they don’t seem to have realized.

If I understand what Apple has managed to do here it is probably the end of the mobile network operators. Apple gets the brand, Apple gets the client relationship (you need to activate the phone through iTunes), they get the options revenue (you buy music and applications through iTunes), they get a cut of the call revenue and the best of all (as far as they are concerned) they get the subsidy for the phone. What have the networks got out of this deal?

There is a chance that Apple could start giving phones away and living off the 30% of the call revenue. Where does that leave the network operators?

Why less is more…

I always wondered about the total number of hit in a Google search. The Google Operating System Blog explains the process in more detail; Google Finds Less Search Results.

The surprise to me was here:

“When you perform a search, the results are often displayed with the information: Results 1 – 10 of about XXXX. Google’s calculation of the total number of search results is an estimate. We understand that a ballpark figure is valuable, and by providing an estimate rather than an exact account, we can return quality search results faster.”

I’ve seen business plans based on that estimate. That it is;

  1. An estimate.
  2. Likely to radically change overnight.

is shocking. Just proves that you should never assume.