Tech lessons learned from the wisdom of crowds | CNET News.com

Crowdsourcing is making its way into the corporation. A very interesting article on how this is happening:

Read more at news.com.com/2100-1014_...

histoire2femme.com

A very interesting discussion with David Sifry, from Technorati, on what is happening on the web and where this is all going.Thank you Estelle for organizing the meeting and capturing this moment.

Read more at http://histoire2femme.typepad.fr/histoire2femme/2006/12/interview_de_da.html

NewsTrust - Our Guide to Good Journalism - Beta Home

A great service launched today, which brings some balance in the distribution of news through a rating system that helps evaluate the neutrality of news articles. Definitely something that everybody should subscribe to...

Read more at beta.newstrust.net/webx...

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » BitWine Gives Access To Those In The Know

Finally something that will help unleash the voice services market, one of the huge potential offered by Skype that had not really been exploited so far.

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Smart Mobs: Boston Launches Small Business Incentive Card Program

This is great news, the Interra project is finally getting more visibility. This program has the potential to change how we function within our community, let's hope more implementations will follow...

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

Paris blogue t'il?

Maybe this is me being French, but I am amazed at the amount of activity in France around everything web2.0. I see people involved in Coworking, Pinkomarketing, I see great start-ups being represented at shows in the US. Maybe something that has to do with the online culture of people who were raised with Minitel?

I'll will not be in Paris for LeWeb3.0, but I will at least get a glimpse of who is involved in these events the week before:



I will be looking for the begining of an answer there, why so many French are involved in this? Is it me or is there really something?

I love Google :-)

I was not impressed by Google acquisition of YouTube, but since wikis are a key component of building a better web I really like this one:


>>

JotSpot is now part of Google

We're writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you'll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account. Both Google and JotSpot are committed to supporting our customers, and we understand that users have invested a lot in our products. In the near-term, we're focused on migrating JotSpot to Google's systems and datacenters. We'll work hard to make that move as seamless as possible so that customers won't be inconvenienced.

Why is Google acquiring JotSpot?

Google shares JotSpot's vision for helping people collaborate, share and work together online. JotSpot's team and technology are a strong fit with existing Google products like Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Groups.

What does this mean for JotSpot customers?

We believe that joining Google will accelerate our team's vision of offering users the best collaboration platform on the web. Google shares that vision and presents us with the world's best environment for delivering on it. We'll be taking advantage of Google's world-class systems infrastructure and operations expertise to ensure that access to your JotSpot is fast and reliable. We can't share any of our plans publicly just yet, but we can tell you that we're incredibly excited about the possibilities. We can't think of a better company to have been acquired by.

Will paying customers still be charged?

We will no longer be billing customers for the use of the service. Although you will still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won't charge you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.

What about security and privacy?

Your data is yours — that doesn't change at Google. We will continue to work to ensure the privacy and security of your data. Furthermore, Google is as committed to privacy and security as we are. Since the user information you provided to JotSpot will soon be transferred to Google as part of their acquisition of JotSpot, we want to provide you with the opportunity to retrieve your user information and cease usage of the JotSpot service before the transition. If you do not wish to continue using JotSpot, send an email to privacy@jot.com in the next sixty days and we will reply with instructions for retrieving your user information.

Answers to more frequently asked questions are available at http://www.jot.com/. If you have any other questions, please email support@jot.com.

In closing, we wanted to offer our sincere gratitude to you — our customers — for believing in us and helping us achieve success. We look forward to continuing that relationship at Google.

Best wishes,
The JotSpot Team

Blog for Change

A very interesting approach to mobilizing people to help influence the next election: the Blog for Change campaign from MoveOn.org, using blogs as a way to spread to word and recruit volunteers. Something everybody should consider doing...

Is the VC model broken?

Daniel Primack asks this question in his latest newsletter: Sevin Rosen Funds has indefinitely postponed fundraising for its tenth fund, which had been scheduled to hold a first close this week. This is being treated as big news in VC...

Interesting to see that some VCs are discovering that adding value in an investment should not be just adding money at a late stage, but rather getting involved early to help the company grow.
The "old school" VCs were doing, they may have to go back to it...

Read more

The Direct Economy document has been summarized in English

Following up on an earlier post , I have summarized the document published by Xavier Comtesse on Direct Economy .
The summary is available on the Cooperation Commons website here . A must read if you try to make sense of what is happening today with media, politics, and social networking in general...

Open Services

There is a discussion going on on the Open Business site regarding Open Services and what they should look like.
On this matter, as I see it, there is what would be ideal (from the theoritical point of view) and then there is economic reality.

We have gotten used to get all services for free, thank you Google and co for my email, calendar, text editor, web pages, blog, forums, photo+audio+video storage etc… This is great and it does cost money (lots of money if you look at how much YouTube was pouring down the tube every month). And while it would be nice to have truly open services, something where the company that owns the infrastructure behaves ethically (The famous Google “do no evil”), then I think that the fake open is a good compromise if it can keep the model sustainable.

It is the same concept as for open source: you get the code, but the experts who built it or improved it get paid to support you using it. Nothing is really free, just easier to access even if you do not have a large budget but lots of time instead. For Open Service, you get the service, but you agree that the content will be on that one website so that they can benefit from the mass effect to get some revenue from somewhere. After all we are talking Infrastructure, this is a better alternative than having the government provide it (and charge us taxes for the service).
My concern is actually that we are not even sure that this model is completely sustainable for the long term. YouTube was said to be loosing money all the way to the day they got acquired. Google is getting so big that they may end up imploding: just think of the payroll they carry for example, how much innovation can you sustain with such a big organization? Could it be why Google Video did not really take off (too much friction internally) and why they had to buy YouTube instead to keep the motion going?

A solid underlying infrastructure is healthy, having large companies to take care of it is ok: we have today at least 3 big players to keep the competition going (MSFT, Yahoo, Google). And it may come a time when P2P technology will allow us to get the same infrastructure from home computers all connected together and sharing resources (a la Skype for example). But even then we will have to figure a way to pay for these computers and these connections. There is no such thing as a free lunch…

Having said this, I am also sure that the day people really want to edit the content that is available and the issue of licensing is clear enough (a whole other subject) that they can do so without problem, then it will be easy for a GooTube to add functionality to let users do this. And if they want to keep their audience they will probably do it too, because somebody else could offer the option and attract users away from them.

The key to an healthy ecosystem is the balance between the investors who want to see some return on their investment, the users who want the service and the company employees who want a salary for their work. A good guideline for Open Services should take this into account. Assuming this, Open Services do not have to be about users doing what they want with their content, but about the communication between the 3 groups (investors, employees and users) and keeping sure it is open enough that all can function together with minimum or no friction.

Designing Business for an Open Model

Howard Rheingold just released on the Cooperation Commons blog a great document produced by Herman Miller and the Institute of the Future that provides an excellent view into the various concepts at play with web2.0 and the related changes brought by social networking and the use of new technologies of cooperation.

A must read for anybody interested in Open Business and how to make it happen...

The next frontier

The word is out, major companies are now moving into 2ndLife. Recently Sun Microsystems held a press conference in 2ndLife , from which you can see pictures here and here
Howard Rheingold also did a conference on the pedagogy of civic participation with even more pictures here .
It is time everybody gets an avatar, this new world is starting to take shape in a major way...

Another idea for YouTube

I have already written here about one of the way I could see YouTube start to make sense from an economic prospective,as a way to foster candidates (people or stories) for reality TV shows. Another opportunity for YouTube would be to become a marketing arm for the Majors: imagine a service where you would ask fans to create their own trailer for a coming movie from carefully chosen clips that would be released to them. Guess how much they would do to spread these to their friends, and the buzz you would get around contests to figure out which one the consumers like best. Something I would not be surprised to see one day...

Tagami.com » Coworking Sausalito

A big thank to Ted Tagami for this great video of our recent Coworking day in Sausalito. The place is great, hopefully there will be more days like this one...

Read more at tagami.com/2006/10/12/c...

The sure sign of a bubble

Now it seems that it is true that Google is in talks to acquire YouTube (See Techcrunch )
While I understand audience as a value, what is really this for? From what I have seen, and despite interesting experiments on what can be done in terms of entertainment and next generation reality TV, why would Google care about YouTube. From the reports I read, YouTube is loosing money and had no real revenue model that is worth anything.
Google might as well let them disappear and pick up the left-overs.
If you were wondering whether there is a bubble looming behind the web 2.0 hype, now you know...

Investment discussion

I just come back from a seminar on Angel Investment, and there are a few things I noted that may be of interest to Entrepreneurs:

1- Beware of notes (bridge loans from investors until a round of financing can be completed): notes with discount are not a good idea above 20% of the amount you plan to raise in the coming round (notes typically are to bridge until you can get a real round of financing). The trap is that if you raise too much money that way, you may end up with a problem when the time comes to discuss valuation: if you raised $500K with notes and then you want to raise $1M in a series A round. If the VC/Angels ask for 40% of your company for $1M, then you will also have to give away another 20% to the people with notes (assuming no discount, it will be more if you had a discount included with the note).

2- The other trap with notes, and with friend and family money in general is that you may be tempted to take money from non-accredited investors which will represent a risk for the company, and therefore will pollute your negotiations with future investors. The issue with non-accredited investors is that they could decide to sue if the company does not perform as they expected. And if they are not accredited, they can claim that they were not familiar with investing and they were mislead. Not a good thing.

3- The funding gap (the funding levels that are too high for Angels and too low for VCs) is increasing. It seems that after the clean-up that has happened in the VC industry after the bubble, we have now the same amount of money invested through fewer VCs. As a result, an average VC deal is now closer to $7M (instead of $4M a few years ago). Something that is not going to make the life of entrepreneurs easy...

4- Some good news to finish: some people are trying to help reduce this funding gap by encouraging Angel investment through a tax credit:
"The Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE) Act of 2006 (HR 5198) was developed to fill a gap in current equity funding between venture capitalists and angel investors. This bill addresses that gap by encouraging accredited investors to increase equity investments in certain qualified small businesses through the creation of a 25% tax credit for accredited investors and certain partnerships (including angel investment pools if all are accredited investors) that invest cash or cash equivalents at an arm's length in a qualified small business (as defined by the Small Business Act)."
More info here

Coworking day in Sausalito

For those in the SF BAy area, I would like to suggest a Coworking day in Sausalito.

I have spent some time thinking about the concept of Coworking and Telecommuting. And while I am convinced that telecommuting is the way of the future, and Coworking environments a must to make telecommuting a more viable or pleasant experience, I also think that it will take time, and a lot of education, before it becomes something that can be truly sustainable.

In the meantime, as a smooth transition towards the ideal, I think that there is room for "Coworking days" where one day a month maybe I would go in a Coworking environment to meet other professional who like me work from home most of their time. This would allow the establishment of the coworking concept without a critical need for it to be completely sustainable from the beginning.

I was lucky enough that I have been telecommuting for a couple of years before going full time into working from home. I am also lucky that I have an office, and a complete setup that allows me to be self sufficient. But then going from telecommute where I was still going to the office once a week to full time working from home as meant that I do not get to socialize with corporate co-workers anymore. I meet clients and partners, but not this guy that happens to be at the watercooler at the
same time I am and with whom I can exchange and relax.

A coworking day event is the opportunity to do that: keep working from home where I have all I need, but go to a local Coworking place once a month, or once a week to see who else in the neigborhood works from home, and to get a chance to learn what they are doing.

I have a friend who owns a very cool space in beautiful Sausalito (http://www.studiomsausalito.com/), and she has been kind enough to let
us have it for an experiment, trying to make the idea happen.

I have created a page to explain the concept and allow people interested in the idea to sign up. check out details here

Let's see what happens...

Google User Experience Research

Crowdsourcing at its best - I love Google:

Read more at www.google.com/forms/us...

Notes on Techmeme's new sponsorship model - blog.memeorandum.com

A new model to provide advertising on a blog. Simple and brilliant. The concept is similar to adversing articles in magazines, with the advantage for the reader that it is clearly identified as sponsored content while being better integrated into the blog itself (you can hope for more relevant and more interesting content than just ad banners).

Very cool...

Read more at blog.memeorandum.com/06...

Mysterious Paypal Secure Storage

From Techcrunch at www.techcrunch.com/2006... Finally the service that I had been looking for: a place to store digital content. It may sound stupid, but one of the big questions I had was what happens when I die? I spend a lot of time online, and I have a lot of accounts in many places, and documents that I write for myself. I am sure a lot of people also have electronic documents that they care about, pictures or books they may have written but never published. And then nobody around them would really know they exist or how to access themClearly there is a need for an "electronic deposit box". I have seen MySpace setup some special places for their users who died, but this is really only the tip of the iceberg.With this new service from Paypal, we may finally have a solution for this problem. A secure place where we can save pieces of our digital personna for future. I hope now that they have also figured out a process for providing access to the Drop Box to family or whoever is named in a will. And maybe this is the next move for Paypal to provide a place to submit online wills that can be opened under specific circumstances. I am sure there is room for such a service as well...

Lunch over IP: Direct Economy

A very good summary of an article published by Xavier Comtesse - Read more here - original here if you can read French.

Xavier explains how the technologies available today allow the transfer of knowledge to customers, so that they can become more involved in the value chain, thus helping companies to become highly productive, as the only way to survive competition from low cost providers (which sometimes does not mean low value, there are a lot of good engineers in Eastern Europe, China or India).

Xavier Comtesse offers a great tool to help companies define their strategy and understand how to move forward and best use knowledge transfers to improve productivity. He also presents an example of how this can work in a presentation available here (in French as well), but the matrix is in english and give a good idea of what can be done).

Web 2.0

I was asked yesterday whether I think that Web2.0 is a bubble or not. And I think it is, but clearly nothing as bad as what happened in 2000.

There is a lot of hype, and there is a lot of unknown, but what cannot be ignored are the fundamental underlying trends that are shaping beyond the hype.

The buzz words are the growth of P2P, marketplace disruptions, swarm innovation, social webs, folksonomies, long tail economy, etc...

Many thought leaders have been preaching to the crowd already:

• Yochai Benkler describes in his book "The wealth of networks" how grassroot movements have been able to resist and fight against large corporations, for example on the voting machine issue. He demonstrates that the cloud is a very powerful and productive force.
  

• John Seely Brown talks about swarm innovation in ecosystems across Asia. In his book "The only sustainable edge", he describes how a network of independent subcontractors can produce faster better goods than a large corporation.
  

• Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore recently published a book called "Communities dominate brands", in which they show how the next generation is about more than just being connected, it is a Community generation. They show how start-ups with low budget can outperform large corporations by fostering a solid ecosystem around their business and by engaging their customers.
• Seth Godin talk about "The purple cow" and the need to move from push marketing to engagement marketing
  
• Chris Anderson exposes the power of the web to enable the long tail economy
• Thomas Malone predicts in his book "The future of work" that the technologies of cooperation available today will change the way we do business and manage organizations

• Michel Bauwens talks about Peer to Peer as the emergence of a new civilization

The online community is vibrant with creativity, and a lot of options/revenue models are being explored or are emerging:

• Virtual worlds are getting real (2nd life, everquest, etc...) with items sold on eBay and credit cards to cash money out at ATMs (gold farming)
• Online videos uploads and dowloads, IPTV and P2P are trying to offer an alternative to regular video content distribution. I have mentioned in my previous post that it is clearly a very good way to produce reality TV
• Social Networks are still the thing of the day, and to me another form (but only 2 dimensional) of virtual worlds
  

Meanwhile Interruption marketing is dying: for example I have read in "Communities Dominate Brands" that a study had shown that 71% of car buyers got influenced by word of mouth vs. 17% influenced by TV ads.

With all these changes come new challenges

• The explosion of services and communities results in content overload and creates the need for managing our attention and digital identities
• Ranking/ratings/reputation systems need to be enhanced and controlled, to prevent gaming, we need to understand whether trust can be transitive, and if so, in which circumstances. In this area, I like also like the concept of transparence: how much of your identity are you willing to divulge. I see it as a good indication of trustworthiness.
• Making sense through tags requires maintenance to aleviate overuse and obsolescence, and to better describe individuals semantic, context, and goals. How will we be able to manage all this content moving forward, at the global level and at the personal level (what happens to my content when I die for example)
  

The opportunity is for companies, large or small to make sense of what is happening. But overall, more than a technology evolution, web2.0 is really an expression of a sociological change that has been enabled by technology, and it goes far beyond just technology. Web2.0 is not about Ajax or the latest cool free service, it is not about cool phones or IPTV, it is about how people relate to each other, how they learn to trust each other, and how they learn to live and work with their neighbors.
And since we are talking humans and not technology, we'd better be ready for this changes to take a long time. The Internet bubble happened because people though the world would change in one day, the web2.0 bubble is another sign of impatience from the techies community and their investors, we should already be looking at web3.0 and beyond...

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Top social media users getting paid; is the balance shifting?

Here is something interesting: a few days after I was musing on the idea of YouTube videos being sold on DVD after a given video dialogue is completed, here comes the news that the amateur video from the popular lonelygirl15 were indeed shot by professional. If there is any doubt that we are experimenting with new ways of producing reality TV, this one is a good sign that we probably are...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Audience 2.0 Launch! — CooperationCommons

Something to look forward to: Issue one of Audience 2.0 will be released this week:

Read more at www.cooperationcommons....

How YouTube could increase revenues

I am looking at some videos on YouTube, and how they are linked to each other to create a complete dialog between a few individuals. The videos remind me very much of the reality TV shows that you can watch on MTV. And some of these discussions have gone long enough that you could make it into a season release on DVD.
I have not seen it yet, but I would think that there is potential for revenue in such a scheme. YouTube can print the DVDs and market them, and would share the revenue with the various participants in these discussions.
The whole thing reminds me of how Armistead Maupin book "Tales of The City" was originally released one chapter after the other as a chronicle in a Marin County newspaper. What I see on YouTube now seem very much like the same thing for videos stories. While the TV format was not really a good venue for this type of process, the web is perfect, and people are not expecting to get more than a few minutes of videos at a time, unless this is the video of a live event.
I am curious to see how long it will take before we see DVD releases of YouTube content...

Trustmojo » Facets of Facets, Tagclouds And Trust

I am happy to see that somebody liked my business card :-)

I have a tag cloud on the back, because I think that it is a good representation of who I am and what my interests are. Maybe this will inspire others....

Read more at trustmojo.com/2006/08/3...

Open Business as Entrepreneurs Lifecycle Management

After doing some research and experimenting with "collaborative entrepreneurship", this is how I see that Open Business should (and hopefully will) emerge:
Entrepreneurs Lifecycle Management:

- Entrepreneurs, because they are the drivers of the economy, the ones who create value from their ideas. They should be the clear focus for any business opportunity.
- Lifecycle Management, because throughout their life they will most probably succeed at some point, and they will succeed many times if they are good at what they do
The cycle includes starting a project/company, generating revenues, cashing out or growing through acquisition. All transactions that can easily be identified and measured.

So what's new?

The current model for business is based around corporations with many individuals and projects. The individuals inside the corporation are managed by the excutive team. The executive team ultimately answers to the investors. And the overall responsibility for actions is spread along the chain with enough intermediaries that none can feel entirely responsible for anything bad that the Corporation does.
Inside the corporation, the focus is on products or services issued managed as projects. And while everybody agrees that the people are what makes the difference most of the time between good and bad projects, the focus remains on projects, and the assumptions is that one qualified individual can be replaced by another qualified individual.

Instead, I would like to suggest that a better model would be to focus on entrepreneurs, and the team of individuals around them.
In this model:
- everybody is their own corporation of one individual
- the project is managed as a commons, with the entrepreneur as the benevolant dictator and with the other people involved as contributors volunteering to the project
- the entrepreneur carries the idea, and keeps the motion forward with the help of whoever is relevant at a specific time/phase of his project
- At each step of the lifecycle (where transactions are clearly identified and value can be measured), the entrepreneur will decide how much value was added by who, and will distribute the reaches accordingly

Yeah right, but how do you make it work?

There are many issues obviously with the model:
- it takes a while to see revenue: this all depends on where the entrepreneur is in his lifecycle when you meet him. If he is just getting started with a project, it may take some time. But if he already has revenue coming in, then it becomes much easier.
- it requires that everybody has access to an entrepreneur: this is what social networking should help achieve. Whoever comes out of school or is looking for a job is already using his/her network to find such a job. So people are already going through the motion, the only difference is that since the system is focused on people, it requires to focus not just on skills, but also affinity with the entrepreneur and the other members of the team. I believe that it is better to have such focus anyway, so this is not really a big leap from what we have today.
- it requires complex discussions to distribute revenues: yes, it may be complex, but no if the size of the "business cell" is small enough. In order for such a model to take off it needs to be constructed with a layer of small businesses rather than huge organizations. But we are seeing already that ecosystems of small subcontractors are doing very well if not better than large organizations in Asia (see the ecosystems studied in "The Only Sustainable Edge" from John Seely Brown). So if we are talking small business cells, discussions remain at the human level and are very manageable. If I do not get what I think should be my share of the rewards, I am always free to work with somebody else. At the same time, the entrepreneur has no interest in being unfair because the word would get out and nobody would want to work for him.
- It will be hard to get investment: who would invest in projects if they are not hosted within corporations? Well, what we are talking about is similar to what has been done to IP in the Open Source model. Everybody gets the right to use instead of the right to own. So now investors are contributors, except that they contribute money instead of just time. And they will get their share just as the other contributors (call them angel employees for this discussion, or think advisory capital as described by Stowe Boyd). The good news with this concept is that money will no longer get accumulated in stock, but rather it will be re-distributed to all contributors. As the result, it will also probably become a lot less sparse than it is today.

Some good things about this:
- no need for large corporations anymore, the corporation is used for individuals to be the recipient of their business personna. This will bring to an end a model where organizations will sometime knowingly do the wrong thing for the sake of generating revenue for their investors. In a one man corporation, nobody can hide.
- a much stronger focus on people: any contributor is no longer a pion in a large organization, but rather somebody who chose to work with a given entrepreneur or a given team, and who has been accepted for his/her contribution - a good thing for everybody's own self estim
- a "companion" model, where individual contributors will be included as part of a team, and where it is everybody's interest that each individual keep learning and growing.

So how real is this?

As I mentionned earlier, and as it has been presented for example in "The Only Sustainable Edge", collaborative entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing are trends going in the right directions. Meanwhile telecommuting is changing the way people think about their job and how they relate to their company.
I believe that change is on the way.
Let me know if you think I am dreaming...

How I would like to consume

I have read a lot about attention economy and how we could make it easier as consumers for brands to reach us.



Everything that I have seen or read so far requires extra work on my side, to install a piece of software or maintain my data somehow. I do not think than the average consumer would go for this. Who has time to install software so that we can receive targeted ads?

Meanwhile, it is also true that when I want to buy a car, or a camera, or a surf board, I am looking for information and it would be good to have it all in one place.



So far Google has done a very good job at helping me do this, and I suspect this is the reason for the success they have with their Google ads. But it is still a painful process, because the data I have access to is not always good quality.

Del.icio.us has also done a very good job at helping me if I am a geek and I want to get into collaborative filtering.



But what I really want is a repository of product information, a mix of wikipedia and YouTube, where all brands would agree to show their product information, including cool videos or cool ads that they may have. And if brands are really sincere about helping me, they would even allow the public to add their own comments or revisions to the information.

With this ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH, I will be able get the information I need when I need it, and then I will be able to decide what I want to buy.

It would be nothing different from what I do today, except that it would be designed from the beginning to work for me.



So what happens to competition?

Well, with this system in place, it will become more obvious than competing is not about luring me into believing something about the product, but rather it will be about truly providing value, through great prices (value to my budget) and through great features, which is what it should be about.



If any one brand cares about getting my attention, please listen to this...

Supernova 2006 - Weblog

Il y a de la vraie bonne action a Supernova, et les notes sur les sessions sont mises en ligne sur le blog de la conference. Un must read pour ceux qui n'ont pas pu se rendre sur place:

Read more at www.supernova2006.com/g...

Pinko Marketing - Commons based unmarketing.

[via AttentionTrust.org: http://www.attentiontrust.org/node/293]Une experience interessante a suivre:Pinko Marketing (http://pinkomarketing.pbwiki.com/Why%20Pinko%20Marketing), qui veut mettre en application les theories sur le pouvoir des communautes dans le domaine du marketing …

Read more at pinkomarketing.pbwiki.c...

Innovation through design thinking

Une presentation interessante sur le process de Ideo (en anglais). Le process commence par une approche entropologique, pour essayer de comprendre ce que l'utilisateur vit. Il s'agit ensuite de transformer les observations en idees, et puis experimenter pour pouvoir finalement executer

Read more at mitworld.mit.edu/stream...

Thumbstacks.com - Live presentations on the web!

Si vous cherchez a faire des presentations sur le web, Thumback vous permet de faire ca:

Read more at www.thumbstacks.com/

eyeOS | Web desktop - Web OS - Web office - your data and applications everywhere

Apres YouOS, il y a eyeOS:

Read more at www.eyeos.org/index.php...

Google Spreadsheets

Je viens d'avoir mon compte pour les Google Spreadsheet, this is hot. Pour l'usage tres basique dont j'ai besoin aujourd'hui c'est largement suffisant, une vraie revolution.

J'avais aussi essaye Writely, que Google a rachete, il ne manque donc plus que de pouvoir faire des presentations et la boucle sera bouclee.

Par contre je desespere encore avec le Calendar: pas vraiment convivial, rien a voir avec ce que donne evite aujourd'hui. Les gens de Microsoft ont donc encore quelques beaux jours devant eux...

Read more at kre.spreadsheets.google...

RED HERRING | VCBank's $250M Islamic Fund

Apres avoir vu certains groupes ou pays parler de mettre en place des internets indepedents dans lesquels ils pourraient mieux controler l'information, voici maintenant des investisseurs qui se specialisent dans les business qui respectent la sharia. Peut etre une tendance positive (il y a aussi des investisseurs qui se specialisent dans l'ecologique), ou peut etre encore un fosse qui se creuse...

Read more at www.redherring.com/Arti...

BarCamp

Encore un concept fascinant...

Read more at barcamp.org/

Skype Journal: Getting money via Skype

Skype avance encore d'un pas vers les services vocaux payants (tech support, legal, astronomie et bien sur les lignes "roses").

Read more at www.skypejournal.com/bl...

InstantAudio.com

Encore une idee excellente. De quoi vraiment "personaliser" un website :-)

Read more at instantaudio.com/

Rules, Roles, Personas and Goals - InternetIdentityWorkshop

A l'intersection de toutes les communautes auquelles j'appartiens, il y a moi. Mais qui suis-je?

Ma "personne" varie dans le temps et selon le contexte, un vrai probleme pour definir un systeme qui voudra gerer mon identite...

Read more at iiw.windley.com/wiki/Ru...

MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow? - Knowledge@Wharton

Un article interessant sur les opportunites et les challenges du Social Networking.

Read more at knowledge.wharton.upenn...

MOBILE SIGNAL - Make your life easier

Voila un vrai pas en avant en matiere de social networking sur telephone mobile. Une societe a suivre:

Read more at www.mobilesignalcenter....

www.buzzeebee.com

Une start-up qui peut faire la difference, en offrant aux communautes locales un moyen de communiquer a travers des reseaux ad-hoc qui utilisent des connections bluetooth pour transmettre des informations locales, petites annonces ou coupons. La beaute de Bluetooth est que ces reseaux ne sont pas controles par les Telcos...

Read more at www.buzzeebee.com/

All Marketers are Liars; - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video

Une video excellente sur le marketing, dans une presentation faire chez Google qui sert donc de "case study". Un must-see pour tout ceux qui n'ont pas lu les livres de Seth Godin...

Read more at video.google.com/videop...

Micro-loans et Entreprise

J'ai assiste aujourd'hui a une presentation de l'Institut du Futur sur les micro-organisations, avec des representants de SPARC, Village Enterprises , Interra, et quelqu'un qui a travaille dans le passe avec Grameen bank. J'ai retenu de cette discussion quelques points:

• Comme aucun des partis (banques et beneficiaires des prets) n'a acces a des informations tangibles sur le parti d'en face, le systeme repose sur un reseau qui permet a chacun de confirmer que l'autre est un interlocuteur fiable. Une composante importante donc pour que le systeme marche est qu'il y ait une communaute, et que la transaction se fasse dans le cadre de cette communaute.
  
• Une fois le pret fait, il faut aussi etablir une relation reguliere avec les personnes pour venir collecter les remboursements, mais aussi pour eduquer et apporter de l'aide dans le developpement du business. Typiquement Grameen bank organise des groupes de 5 entrepreneurs qui permettent cette entraide et un auto-controle sans avoir a voir les entrepreneurs individuellement. Moyennant quoi les emprunts sont rembourses, et les personnes voient leur situation economique evoluer de facon radicale.

Ce qui est interessant est que les meme principes pourraient sans doute etre appliques pour construire des communautes d'entrepreneurs:

• Communaute qui permettrait d'etablir une certaine transparence des individus qu'elle regroupe, avec des individus par le groupe
  
• Communaute qui pourrait s'organiser pour offrir du financement a ses membres (par exemple avec un mechanisme d'emprunts sur un modele prosper.com), mais aussi du conseil sur la facon de faire grandir leur business

Une experience qu'il serait interessante de tenter...

IT Conversations: The Profession of Blogging - Darren Barefoot and Jeremy Wright

Un podcast tres interessant sur le monde du blogging et les problemes ethiques lies au fait qu'il faut pouvoir en vivre.

Listen at cdn.itconversations.com...

Cybernomadic Framework

Un document excellent sur le fait que nous sommes en train d'evoluer d'un monde de frontieres a un monde ou les frontieres s'effacent (globalization, world wide web). Et nous sommes en consequence amener a devenir des cybernomades, pour qui les reperes et le sentiment d'appartenance se font plus pricipalement autour de centres d'interets. Avec toutes les consequences que ca peut avoir pour la vie sociale et le business.Le document fait une comparaison entre la vie des nomades telle qu'on la connait aujourd'hui (basee sur l'histoire) pour extraire les points cles a prendre en compte pour gerer cette evolution.

Read more at www.iftf.org/docs/SR-84...

John Seely Brown on the challenge and opportunity for technologies of cooperation — CooperationCommons

Aussi poste sur Cooperation Commons - Un podcast interessant de John Seely Brown, qui analyse des ecosystemes en Asie pour en tirer des lecons sur la facon de gerer l'apprentissage au sien de l'entreprise:

Read more at www.cooperationcommons....

The experience edge - James Hilliard - CNET News.com — CooperationCommons

Aussi poste sur Cooperation Commons - Voila une bonne video sur les Wiki, y compris des infos sur comment ca a ete implemente:

Read more at www.cooperationcommons....

OpenSource Biotech

Je poste aussi sur Openbusiness.cc - De l'Open Source dans la Biotech:

Read more at www.openbusiness.cc/200...

TribalWeb

Via l'Atelier: Voila un software qui peut vraiment aider a faire la difference pour duu business. Possibilite de partager des fichiers avec un groupe restreint de personnes, qui permet donc d'etablir un "espace de travail" entre colloborateur meme sur des projets qui sont realises entre plusieurs entreprises differentes. Pas besoin de se soucier de qui est en charge du serveur central, puisqu'il n'y en a pas. Et puis cette approche P2P est une excellente reponse au probleme de l'email sur les projets de groupe, ou on ne sait jamais quel attachement correspond a la derniere version et ou les emails avec attachement finissent par remplir les boites aux lettres.

Read more at www.tribalweb.net/tour/...

Encore un bel exemple de "The web as a platform":
YouOS

Au dela d'etre une simple "home page" avec des applets cool, c'est vers ce genre de concept que Microsoft live.com (et autre Netvibes et Google home page) devrait se pencher. Avec quelque chose qui fait une vraie difference, c'est que les developpers peuvent construire des applications sur cet environnement...

WAY Systems - Mobile Payment Solutions for 100 Million new Merchants

Voila un projet vraiment interessant, qui permet d'utiliser un telephone comme POS (point of service). Encore un bon moyen de fluidifier les transactions commerciales...

Read more at www.waysystems.com/inde...

FON: WiFi everywhere!

Ce que j'aime avec FON, c'est que c'est encore un bel exemple du fait que le concept de peer-to-peer est ce qui permet de faire changer les choses. A la base, les utilisateurs peuvent mettre leur bande passante a la disposition des autres, et le modele permet de deployer a cout reduit un vrai reseau d'acces wifi. Aucun doute que c'est une vraie bonne solution pour des deployment en ville (ou les besoins sont aussi les plus importants).

Read more at en.fon.com/

Smart Mobs: Smartmobs and the art of tuangou

Un exemple tres interessant de ce qui peut etre fait avec l'internet pour faire des achats de groupe et reduire les couts.

L'info me vient d'un blog que je recommende: CooperationCommons Blog

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

Box.net - Free Online File Storage, Internet File Sharing, RSS Sharing, Access Documents & Files Anywhere, Backup Data, Share Files

Encore un service pour virtualiser le bureau: storage gratuit jusqu'a 1G, de quoi garder quelques documents en ligne.

En attendant GDrive...

Read more at www.box.net/home

Open Business

J'ai vu recemment une presentation de Steven Weber, auteur de The Success of Open Source et j'en ai retenu les choses suivantes:

- la force de l'open source vient du fait que le concept des droits utilise est base sur les droits de distribuer, et non autour des droits de posseder
- le modele utilise aussi un modele ou l'innovation est produite en mode "distribue"

Des evidences peut etre, mais il sait bien les formuler...

Grace a ces 2 moteurs, on a vu l'emergence de meilleures organisations, et non pas seulement d'une meilleure economie de marche ou d'un modele de revenu different. Le modele a permis la mise en place de reseau "ouverts", par opposition aux "chasses gardees" que represente les corporations qui produisent du software de facon traditionelle. Dans ces reseaux ouverts:
- le code est distribue facilement et utilisable par tous
- les utilisateurs contribuent aussi a l'amelioration du produit, et donc il y a un vrai echange ou chacun profite et contribue au bien commun
- les joueurs qui ne respectent pas les regles sont exclus de la communaute, et il y a donc une vraie motivation a jouer le jeu.

Je pense qu'il est possible d'appliquer ces concepts au business, ou de facon plus generale d'elever ce qui se fait avec du code a ce qui pourrait etre fait avec des idees ou de l'information de business (par exemple des contacts):
- dans un mode de business "open", chacun doit donc penser a faire circuler les informations plutot que de faire de la rentention, avec des regles de conduite qui implique de n'utiliser ces informations que pour faire avancer les choses plutot que de faire de la "competition" (le fameux "don't be evil" de Google).
- du coup, c'est par le reseau que se resolvent les problemes ou que ce font les affaires plutot que par des groupes fermes.

Une objection evidente est que le systeme risque de vite etre sature par le nombre de participants sur chaque projet, mais je pense que la realite est qu'il difficile a chacun de contribuer utilement a plus de quelques projets, et il est difficile a travailler avec plus qu'une poignee d'individus sur un projet donne. Et donc finalement les choses doivent pouvoir naturellement s'equilibrer...

Une autre objection est que chacun voit les choses de facons differentes, et il peut donc y avoir des divergences. Il faut donc dans un tel systeme un mechanisme de "regles" qui aide a resoudre ces differences. Mais si tous sont d'accord sur le but ultime a atteindre, et agissent en toute sincerite, ces problemes doivent pouvoir etre resolus. Si le but final n'est pas le meme, alors que chancun tente sa chance, et se retrouve plus tard quand les choses ont evoluees.

Ce principe rejoint d'ailleurs les concepts de "collaborative entrepreneurship" et "project economy" qui existent deja. Il s'agit donc principalement de continuer a definir les outils qui permettront de gerer un tel mode de fonctionnement. Je pense en tout cas qu'on risque de voir une augmentation de ces modeles d'organisation...

TechCrunch » Writely Confirms Google Acquisition

Apres une abondance de start-ups qui font toutes la meme chose, des features web2.0 avec le seul but d'accumuler un minimum d'audience pour pouvoir se faire racheter, voila la consilidation qui commence a s'accelerer sur ce marche. Le debut de l'ecatombe pour ceux qui ne seront pas elus...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

TechCrunch » Thumbstacks - Ajax/Flash Web PowerPoint

Apres le text editor, les spreadsheets, voila le Powerpoint ajax. On a donc maintenant la suite au complet, bientot plus de raison d'installer Microsoft Office sur son PC...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Feed43 (Feed For Free) : Convert any web page to news feed on the fly

Il etait interessant de s'abonner a des feed RSS existants, voila qu'il est maintenant possible de s'abonner a n'importe quelle page web pour en tracker les changements:

Read more at feed43.com/

IFTF_New_Literacy_of_Cooperation1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Pour ceux qui ont le temps, le Institute For The Future a produit une etude fascinante sur la Collaboration dans le business. En regardant le comportement de groupe de differentes especes, ils etablissent 7 criteres qui permettent d'evaluer et d'influencer un groupe pour en ameliorer la collaboration:

- Structure (dynamique vs statique), Regles (Internes vs. Externes), Resources (Public vs. Prive), Niveau de transition (Haut vs. Bas), Feedback (local vs. systemique), Memoire (ephemere vs. permanente), Identite (Individu vs. Groupe).

Avec des exemples a la cle de ce qui c'est fait autour de ces differents aspects, avec des technologies ou des business qui ont apporte de vrais changement: Google, eBay, etc...

Read more at cooperation.smartmobs.c...

MIT World » : Innovation Everywhere—How the Acceleration of “GNR” (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) Will Create a Flat and Equitable World

Encore une brillante presentation de MIT: Raymond Kurzweil presente le resultat d'etudes de modeles mathematiques sur l'evolution, et nous donne une vision tres optimiste des annees a venir. Rien de vraiment nouveau, mais cette fois ci il y a une theorie et une justification derriere ces predictions- prolongation de la duree de vie- des ordinateurs en 3 dimension- des nano-cellules pour soigner les maladies, avec des download de software pour mettre a jours ces cellulesetc...

Read more at mitworld.mit.edu/video/...

Smart Mobs: Employees blogging what they know

Maintenant que le blogging est passe dans les moeurs, et qu'on en comprend mieux les avantages et les inconvenient, et les regles de conduite a adopter, les entreprises vont pouvoir commencer a utiliser cet outil. Un article parle de blogs pour faire du knowledge management, ce qui semble une excellente piste a explorer...

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

EarthLink offers new VoIP service | CNET News.com

Un vrai progres dans le domaine de la voix sur IP: un service qui ne demande aucune installation, ni boitier, ni client software. On branche le telephone dans la prise, et on peut acceder au service, qui est de la voix sur IP. Du coup, plus besoin de client Skype ou boitier vonage, un vrai plus pour les non "techies"...

Read more at news.com.com/EarthLink+...

Le web 2.0, c'est pas du buzz: What is Web 2.0 par Tim O'Reilly (version française)

Une excellente analyse des tendances qui se sont creees autour du "Web 2.0":

Read more at web2rules.blogspot.com/...

IBM: Untangling Office Connections

Le social networking est en train de faire son chemin au sein des corporations. Un article interessant sur ce que fait IBM dans le domaine:

Read more at www.businessweek.com/in...

TechCrunch » Technorati now has Authority

Pour resoudre le probleme de "information overload", Technorati met en place un moyen de faire un tri pour extraire d'une recherche sur les blogs ceux qui sont les plus "reconnus".

Il est donc possible de ne voir dans les resultats de la recherche que les blogs qui sont lus par plus d'une personne, ou une dizaine de personnes, ou une centaine.

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

» Online Ajax "desktops" try to change the rules of the game | Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Apres le "Software as a Service", voila le "Web as a Platform": un bon article sur ce qui est en train de se passer autour de web2.0, et qui va ouvrir des portes en matiere de travail en entreprise et de collaboration. Voila qui va favoriser le "Collaborative Entrepreneurship"...

Read more at blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcl...

ASPnews.com -- News : Plaxo Opens Its API

Un pas dans la bonne direction, enfin un moyen de centralise des informations de contacts qui pourront etre utilisees dans d'autres applications sur le web. Voila qui devrait faciliter l'utilisation d'outils de collaboration sans avoir a eparpiller et dupliquer les informations de contacts. Le concept du "one source of truth". On avance :-)

Read more at www.aspnews.com/news/ar...

E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago

Avec l'apparition de nouveau outils de collaboration, il semblerait que certains commencent a renoncer a l'email pour adopter des methodes de communication plus efficace (on parle de 60% de spam dans les boites d'email, et en fait de 8% d'emails vraiment legitime dans le cadre du travail. Et donc les blogs, wikis et instant messengers offriraient une meilleure alternative (sans parler de la flexibilite - one source of truth accessible via internet de n'importe ou). Une tendance qu'il sera interessant de suivre, bien que je pense que l'email a encore de beaux jours devant soi :-)

Read more at www.businessweek.com/ma...

U3 brings the power of portable software to your USB flash drive

Dans le dernier RedHerring il est mention d'un "desktop in your pocket", un smart drive USB qui permet de garder avec soi les preferences de ses applications preferees, pour pouvoir donc se brancher sur n'importe quel PC et retrouver son environnement de travail habituel. J'avais deja vu un concept similaire en 1995 chez Sun Microsystem, mais il semble que l'idee a fait son chemin vers une offre plus "grand public". Un vrai bonheur pour les telecommuteurs...

Read more at www.u3.com/

TechCrunch » TechCrunch, Now in French!

Un grand pas en avant pour les bloggers francais, TechCrunch est maintenant traduit en francais :-)

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Workforce Insights

10 millions de telecommuters aux Etats Unis: le telcommuting permet une vie mieux equilibree, et des economies importantes pour l'entreprise qui n'a plus a fournir de bureaux. Sans parler de la flexibilite que ca apporte en cas de catastrophe. A noter que ce phenomene permet aussi maintenant aux entreprises d'envisager de faire du "homeshoring", de la main d'oeuvre pas chere mais locale, des agents de customer service qui travaillent de chez eux. D'apres IDC, on parle de 330,000 postes de ce type d'ici a 2010. Vive le Telecommuting :-)

Read more at www.veritude.com/Resour...

TJ's Weblog - "Technology, Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship" - WestLB quits venture capital

Un commentaire sur les changements que la technologie amene dans le monde des VCs: Il est devenu tres facile et tres peu cher de demarrer un business, avec une abondance de softwares et de services gratuits. Mais ce phenomene est vrai pour tous, et donc ca augmente juste la quantite de candidats (voire la dessus le nombre de services de "collaboration" qui sont offerts aujourd'hui sur le web par exemple). A la sortie, il reste que les VC permettent quand meme de faire la difference parce que le cash qu'ils apportent permet de se payer la main d'oeuvre qui permet d'accelerer le mouvement. Le vrai impact donc de la technologie sur le Venture Capital, c'est pricipalement que ca va encore plus vite aujourd'hui pour produire des solutions et atteindre une masse critique...

Read more at www.tjacobi.com/5022671...

Digital Media Europe: News - Municipal broadband deployments to double in 2006

Et pour continuer dans la serie "broadband" comme infrastucture de base, DMEurope parle de 400 villes avec des projets de deployment: broadband as the 5th utility.

Read more at www.dmeurope.com/defaul...

PlaceSite - Reinventing Wi-Fi Community

Je viens de faire un post sur le wifi qui s'etend pour recouvrir maintenant toute la valley. Dans la foulee de ce post, je rajouterais que ce qui sera interessant, c'est de voir comment cette infrastructure va aider le developement de services comme Placesite pour re-definir le concept de communautes locales:Placesite est un service qui permet a des gens qui frequentent regulierement un hot spot donne de developper une vraie communaute en ligne. La convergence du virtuel et du local. En tout cas on s'en doutait mais c'est de plus en plus evident, il n'y a pas vraiment de reseaux "virtuels" qui tiennent la route sur le long terme. Seuls un lien avec le monde physique permet d'avoir une vraie connection entre les membres.Par contre les outils mis en place sur le web pour faire du "social networking" permettent vraiment d'etendre l'efficacite et la puissance d'un reseau, dans la couverture geographique et dans le temps...

Apres San Francisco, la Silicon Valley: RFP Under Development For High-Speed Wireless Data Network to Cover Silicon Valley - Jan 27, 2006

Apres que Google est offert d'equiper San Francicso de Wifi, il semblerait qu'il soit prevu d'etendre ce genre d'infrastrucutre a toute la Valley. L'access a l'internet tombe dans le domaine de l'infrastructure publique, comme les routes et autres utilites de base. Un vrai bon moyen de garder le lead...

Read more at www.govtech.net/news/ne...

ASPnews.com -- Weekly News : Salesforce: The New Microsoft?

L'internet est une platforme de development, c'est toute la beaute du modele Open Source, et il y a maintenant Salesforce comme plateforme de development pour tout ce qui "Enterprise Software". La on rentre dans une phase nouvelle, qui va enfin permettre la realisation des promesses du "Web Services". Un modele souple, qui encourage la creativite tout en garantissant une base solide sur laquelle les entreprises et les developeurs (ISVs) peuvent s'appuyer. Vive SalesForce...

Read more at www.aspnews.com/news/we...

Teaming with bright ideas | Economist.com

Les nouvelles technologies amenent de nouvelles methodes de travail. Rien de nouveau la dessus, mais The Economist a un article interessant sur le sujet, ou ils citent notamment un article du Havard Business Review qui decrit comment --20 personnes qui se connaissaient a peine, employees par des entreprises differentes, vivant dans plusieurs time zone et s'engageant dans une activite n'ayant pas toujours grand chose a voir avec leur "job description" ont accompli en 29 heures ce qui aurait pu prendre a des collegues travaillant dans des bureaux adjacents plusieurs semaines voire plusieurs mois-- ceci a propos d''un virus sur Linux pour lequel ces personnes ont mis en place une protection.

La conclusion est que les methodes de travail au sein de la communaute Linux etablissent de nouveaux principes qui permettent de former des equipes dynamiques qui fonctionnent a moindre coup. Je crois d'ailleurs que c'est ce qui va permettre aux pays developpes de continuer a rester competitifs face a la main d'oeuvre pas chers des pays en voie de developpement. Ca n'est d'ailleurs sans doute pas une option...

Read more at www.economist.com/surve...

Le syndrome "Tour de Babel" - Smart Mobs: In Threat to Internet's Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives

Apres les pas en avant, des pas en arriere?

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

Google - Google Pack

J'ai enfin trouve le temps de regarder le Google Pack, et c'est encore une avancee interessante: Google est clairement en train de prendre possession de nos desktop. Le Pack est tres interessant, c'est en fait un moyen de garder a jour les software installes sur le systeme. Le pack contient bien sur tous les gadgets Google, mais aussi Real Player et Norton Anti-virus. Une bonne facon de pouvoir garder la trace d'un inventaire de software sur la machine. Windows offre des automatic updates pour leurs software, Google offre des updates automatiques pour des partenaires egalement. Peut etre un jour auront nous un equivalent de Synaptic pour Windows, c'est un vrai plus sous Linux en tout cas. Merci donc Google pour ce software, la bataille avec Microsoft pour le desktop continue :-)

Pour charger le Google Pack www.google.com/intl/en/...

Dans la section Tools, cliquez sur "Pack"

Smart Mobs: Accountability, not anonymity, key to workable reputation?

Encore un element cle pour construire un web meilleur: un systeme de "reputation". Pour l'instant on voit des systemes de ratings qui fonctionnent bien sur eBay, Yahoo Shopping, etc...

Et puis il y a moyen de mettre des "references" sur son profil LinkedIn par exemple. Mais je pense qu'il y a encore des progres a faire dans ce domaine, qui aiderait a crystalliser la valeur des reseaux de "social networking".

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

entreprise_et_blog: Fin des blogs 1.0 ? vers les blogs 2.0 ?

Un article interessant sur l'evolution des blogs. Apres le bouillon createur des premieres annees, il semble qu'on retombe dans un mode plus classique de production et de consomation de l'information. Reste qu'on en a pas fini avec les blogs, c'est une information plus facile a consomer que les articles de news standard. C'est d'ailleurs a mon sens un des grands plus de ce phenomene: un niveau de granularite plus optimal pour les infos couple d'un mode de distribution viral vraiment efficace (RSS)...

Read more at tubbydev.typepad.com/en...

YubNub

Encore un grand pas vers un nouveau mode de fonctionnement pour les applications sur le web, du "Web Services" a un niveau de simplicite interessant: YubNub permet d'utiliser des "commandes" sur le web. L'internet ramener au niveau d'un "Operating System". Brillant...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

MIT World » : Play: Can a New Theory of the Neocortex Lead to Truly Intelligent Machines?

Interessante technologie qui va peut etre nous amener une nouvelle generation de machines pour resoudre des problemes que les machines ne savent pas bien gerer aujourd'hui:

Read more at mitworld.mit.edu/play/3...

JotSpot melds spreadsheets to Wikis | News.blog | CNET News.com

Il y avait Writely pour creer des documents et collaborer en ligne, avec y compris la possibilite de sauver ces documents en format MS Word ou bien sur un website ou un blog. Il y a maintenant aussi grace a JotSpot Tracker la possibilite de collaborer sur des spreadsheets en ligne.

Encore un pas en avant. Il ne reste plus qu'a attendre que Microsoft ne devoile OfficeLive pour savoir jusqu'ou va la competition sur ce secteur. UN bonheur pour les small business en tout cas :-)

Read more at news.com.com/2061-10798...

MIT World » : The Hundred Dollar Laptop-Computing for Developing Nations

Encore quelque chose qui risque de changer la face du monde. Negroponte parle de 150 millions d'ordinateurs qui seront distribues gratuitement aux enfants dans les ecoles. Autant de machines pour acceder a l'Internet dans des endroits ou ca n'est pas envisageable aujourd'hui. Et tout d'un coup aussi le potentiel pour la creation de nouvelles economie: une fois que ces enfants auront goute a Linux, ils pourront se batir online un nouveau monde. Le seul cout sera celui du travail qu'ils auront a fournir...

Read more at mitworld.mit.edu/video/...

Smart Mobs: Smart lampposts

Dans la serie infrastructure ecologique: le reseau wifi sur des lampadaires, avec du solaire pour l'alimentation. Si on combine ca avec la technologie de mesh network, il y a de quoi couvrir facilement des villes entieres...

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

Et pour continuer sur theme, je suis alle hier dejeune a San Francisco, et j'ai decouvert qu'il est des aujourd'hui possible de se connecter a l'internet en utilisant le reseau wifi Google. L'infrastructure se met en place et il est donc de plus en plus facile d'acceder le web de n'importe ou.

Un bonheur pour checker ses emails entre les meetings ou regarder les infos sur son telephone :-)

The VoIP Weblog - Your idea of Voice over IP - DEMO Included Iotum

Une nouvelle solution interessante qui devrait aider chacun a gerer sa communication vers le monde externe a travers les differents outils qui sont disponibles aujourd'hui selon l'endroit et l'heure. Iotum offre un "relevance engine" qui permet de faire un tri.

Read more at www.voip-weblog.com/502...

Skype Journal: VoSky introduces two new Skype products at CES

Encore un grand pas en avant: une boite qui va permettre de faire une transition en douceur entre le telephone classique et le VoIP. Grace a VoSky il va etre possible de brancher un "exchange" sur un reseau interne classique, pour disposer de 4 lignes Skype pour passer et recevoir des appels. Une vraie bonne reponse a ceux qui craignent le changement, ils vont pouvoir faire des economies sans prendre de risque...

Read more at www.skypejournal.com/bl...

Pour commencer...

Pour commencer ce blog, et la nouvelle annee 2006, un petit point sur ce qui compte aujourd'hui:

- Linux et Open Source:
La Silicon Valley a voulu aller trop vite, et la bulle a explose, mais beaucoup de chose sont restees, dont le concept d'Open Source. L'idee que les developeurs, dans leur temps libre ou au travail contribuent a construire une infrastructure commune et gratuite, et qu'on peut autour de ca batir des business qui tiennent la route.
Linux a aujourd'hui une vraie masse critique et un niveau de maturite qui font qu'il peut etre utilise en entreprise. Une bonne facon de reduire les couts pour ceux qui s'y risquent. Mes preferes dans ce domaine:
http://www.mepis.com/


- Creative Commons
L'Open Source et le Peer-to-Peer ont cree un vrai besoin en matiere de legal, et Creative Commons est en train de mener cette bataille pour nous, pour essayer de garder l'Internet ouvert et accessible a tous, et pour eviter que les lobbies des grosses corporations ne vienne tuer la creativite qui sort des nouvelles technologies.
L'Internet doit rester un bien commun.
http://creativecommons.org/
Lessig's Blog

- VoIP
L'internet, c'est une infrastructure de communication. Et donc apres les websites, les "instant messengers", est venue la voix. Skype et Vonage sont les figures de proue de cette revolution. L'un est parti avec une approche hardware, une boite qui permet de brancher un telephone sur le reseau pour communiquer a des prix beaucoup moins cher. L'autre fournit un client software pour faire la meme chose a partir d'un ordinateur. Avec VoIP, le cout des communications peut etre considerablement reduit, et cela ouvre des opportunites de business fantastiques. Je suis convaincu que les vrais benficiaires de ces technologies seront les pays en voie de development, ou les communications restent tres cheres aujourd'hui.
Je crois en tout cas que l'approche Software est la plus prometteuse:
Skype
Gizmo Project

Software As a Service (SaaS) et Web 2.0:
Il y a bien sur le poster child de SaaS, Salesforce.com, dont tout le monde a entendu parler. Et d'autres suivront pour servir les entreprises et leur fournir l'infrastructure software dont elles ont besoin.
Mais il y a aussi pour l'individu des services qui se developpent qui permettent de transferer sur le web des choses qui se font aujourd'hui sur un PC. Mon favori dans le domaine est writely.com qui permet d'editer en ligne des documents, y compris en collaboration avec d'autres utilisateurs. Et les changements peuvent etre traques grace a un feed RSS. Un vrai bonheur, et surtout un grand pas en avant vers plus de flexibilite pour travailler a partir de n'importe quelle machine.

Au dela des services, il y a aussi des technologies qui permettent de deplacer le client software vers un serveur. Ces technologies permette de donner une plus grande flexibilite a l'utilisateur, qui n'a plus a gerer les upgrades des differents clients qu'il utilise. Un bon example de ce que cette technologie peut apporter:
Gtalkr qui permet d'utiliser le client Google talk pour faire de la messagerie instantanee sans avoir a installer le client.
Du coup la meme fonctionalite peut etre accedee avec n'importe quelle machine n'importe ou: PC, telephone, tablet PC, etc... L'infrastructure de base pour le telecommuteur :-)

Et puis toute cette technologie permet de mettre en place des modeles de business nouveaux. Le telecommuting devient de plus en plus facile, et certaines societes s'y mettent serieusement comme une facon d'ameliorer la productivite de leurs employes.
Et puis on voit des discussions apparaitrent autour de nouveaux concepts qui permettent d'entrevoir ce que le futur nous reserve:
Thomas Malone parle du Future of Work
Raymond Miles parle de Collaborative Entrepreneurship
Pleins de bonnes bases pour etre optimiste :-)

PS: je realise que je n'ai pas parle des blogs, ils sont devenus une telle evidence dans ma realite que je ne les considere plus vraiment pour ce qu'ils restent encore: un truc "chaud". Les blogs sont en eux meme important parce qu'ils changent la facon dont on communique, bien sur, mais ce qui m'a le plus marque sur le sujet est le fait que l'information devient plus granulaire et nous amene le concept de "swarm". Plus que des grandes analyses, on trouve souvent des references a des infos qui viennent d'un autre blog. C'est donc de la communication virale, avec derriere une dynamique interessante.
Et la dessus, le monde animal a des choses a nous apprendre, nos amis les insectes n'ont pas attendu l'internet pour utiliser ces techniques de communication, mais aussi d'optimisation:
Eric Bonabeau nous raconte des choses interessantes sur le sujet

J'ai failli appeler ce blog "convergence": les blogs, le VoIP, le P2P, l'Open Source nous montre tous une convergence tous vers la "Collaborative Entrepreneurship", une organisation plus tribale que ce que nous connaissons aujourd'hui. Nous verrons dans la chronique de ce blog si la roue continue de tourner dans ce sens...