Guy's the iPhone master !

So how cool is the new iPhone ? Today is lauch day in the US, and everyone on the planet is writing about this cool new phone. However only one person could do it in such a way that you need to read it twice before understanding the whole purpose of the post ... Guy !
The post is here, and the title is clear : "My iPhone review". However when reading it, it's more about AT&T and some stupid DSL problem he had with a truemors account. At the end of the reading you will be like "I though the post was about the iPhone, what a F&$££$$* ?"
Anyhow, read it again, and you'll find the one flaw that may be problematic for the iPhone because it seems granted it will a really great phone !

If you were a computer ...

What would be your most significant flaws ?
In this post, Steve Pavlina gives you the top 10 flaws that you, as a human, encounter or deal with everyday. Here are the first 5 listed, and I'll let you read the post if you want more details :

1 - Faulty Hard Drive
2 - Low RAM
3 - Slow CPU
4 - Infinite Loops
5 - Lack of error correction

My favorite you might ask ? Well I'll give you two : Lack of error correction, and legacy code. Those two clearly lead up to miscomprehension between people and/or people starting to get completely insane about certain things.
Fortunately, there is still one thing we can keep for us : Imagination ! Good bye computers, this is a human world ;-)

Office LipDub contest

The buzz has been around for quite a while now, but this crazy video of this crazy company was really something ! Don't tell me you've never seen these teenagers from ConnectedVentures (Whoops, we wondered for quite a while where they were from !) who sang Flagpole Sitter from Harvey Danger. If you missed it, here it is :

The company was in fact looking for some new people to join the company ... I'm sure they must have had quite a number of resume following this video.
Anyhow, the reason for my post is that, following this buzz, other lip syncing fanatics have walked in their footsteps. So here is one re-enactment (Watch out for hte last 30s ;-) ) :

Granted it's not as good as the first one ... But still funny !
A contest has even been thrown, which you can follow at OfficeLipDub. Only two contestants for now ... Ready to shoot a video ?

Good vs Bad presentation ... Or Jobs vs Gates !

I came across this article on PresentationZen ( a blog to improve your presentation performances), which highlights the difference of styles between Steve Job and Bill Gates.
As I stated previously, Job is a master of the art of presentation and his slides sure help in that matter. Simplicity, silences during the speech are as much pointers as you can get to let you know that he's good at presenting !
Bill Gates on his side has come a really long way. His powerpoints are still bullet point driven and far too messy, but the speech is getting better over the years. A pointer ? The jokes ! Whenever you can make the audience laugh, you know that you've got it somewher in you !

Google to buy Apple ? The world is next !

I'm sure that by now if you follow the Internet a little bit you've heard about rumors of Google buying Apple ... For me it took 5s after I started my laptop for VTH to message me about the supposed prank !
Anyhow, digging into my stash of feeds, I foud this article. It really highlights how a simple sentence can be turned around in something completely different than what is was meant for ! I really like the way the author shows that this would be the way in for Google into PC business for completely overpowering Msft ... Really nice thought ! Moreover with all the rumors about Msft buying Yahoo, this is even more of a powerful thought !
Maybe that example highlights the limit of the Internet and shows that you should always double check your sources before affirming something !

Future of video games ...

In a world where EA is king, and others are fighting for the crumbles of the cake, it is nice to see some original moves.
Telltale, the company behind the resurrection of the Sam & Max franchise after a long long time of inactivity, has just secured a $5M funding round to pursue its business.
The originality of this company is that they are not developing big ass games in the traditional way (spend 3 years in full speed development, be one year late, to provide a costly not necessary interesting game), but rather have an agile approach: They sell their games as episodes. This allows them to have quicker turnaround time, to have their customers hold their breath between each episodes release, and of course all of that for the good of the gamers out there.
So I give a big round of applause for this new approach and whish them a very successful list of episodes, specially with the Sam And Max franchise (nostalgy, nostalgy).

A real great clock !

After finding cool desktops backgrounds, I recently foudn out a really nice screensaver.
It serves nicely the purpose for it since this is a clock, but definitely a nice one.
It's written as a flash application, but a little installer allows for easy installation !
Here is a screenshot (I was unable to reduce the flash embed, so you'll have to stick with the preview !)
Link to the real flash preview here.
Link to the home page here where you can find the screensaver installer.

Brilliant

Axe, a deodorant (not sure this is the correct translation) maker, has been making some real good advertising campaigns for quite some times now. But this new one I found via Blog de Nuit is simply brilliant ! The tag line really puts it on the limit of acceptable, but just on the limit ! And the more you look it, the more you are going to like it ! My congrats to the maker of this one.

Here are a few of previous nice ones I got by mail :

Guybrush is back ?

All of you nostalgics out there, get ready for a tremendous news that will give you a big ass smile !
Remember those great days of point-and-click games ... LucasArts main way into this world back then with the great Indiana Jones series for example. But certainly the best of the breed was and will always remain to me ... The Monkey Island series of course !
Well, according to various rumors here, here and here, Monkey Island 5 would be in the works ! So get ready for some schmoozy love with Elaine, old time rivalry with Lechuck and of course bad ass insult fights, poly wants a craker, and three headed monkeys !
Here is a supposed art piece of the game in preparation :
Official fan site here.

Update on 06/19/2007 : Apparently this was a fake information. This picture was actually supposed to be used for a Monkey Island movie, but the idea was abandoned. Some of the ideas were actually used in Pirates of the Carribean. Too bas anyway, but hopefully we'll see Guybrush anyway at some point in time !

Art ?

Technology and art do not really mix well ... However sometimes technology can produce some really artsy things. Here is a real nice picture :
Any idea on where it comes from ?
Get the answer here.

AppleTV killer ?

I'm sure that as a good blog reader, and techno fan out there, you cannot have missed the launch of the AppleTV. This is this cool little device sold by the Apple company in hopes to rule over the entertainment center world like the iPod did.
A certain number of competitors like Msft itself, Tivo, ... are also competing on the market, and some software providers like Joost are eagerly looking into that space also. So believe me when I say this is a crowded place.
But fortunately, no place is too crowded for opened and standard compliant innovative initiatives. DivX, the company behind the world's famous video encoding codec, has recently announced the release of the GejBox.
A complete post here on NewTeeVee describes the product, but this basically is a system similar to the AppleTV, but which will use DivX as an encoding system, use Stage6 as the content provider, and provide more standard and HD compatible outputs like HDMI. Connectivity will include WiFi and Ethernet. However no CPU or hard drive will be present on the box (CPU is replaced by a HW DivX stream decoder) which might be a little drawback but will certainly help making it unnoticeable in your living room. Finally the platform should remain opened for extension, living some room for all of you with imaginative minds to come up with some great usages for this platform.

Bud for ever !

Budweiser almost invented the Viral Marketing concept a few years back with the tremendous Waaazuuuupppp I'm sure you all still think about !
Although they are making some new ads every other day (Bier is somehow a competitive market in the US ;-) ).
This one I thought was worth sharing along... A good Biiiippp is so good sometimes !!!

Guy and Trumeors

I'm not sure I already mentioned that but since I watched the video The Art of the Start from Guy Kawasaki, I've become a huge fan ! From reading his blog, to looking at the company CogHead (he his on the advisory board), to following his advices, I've done it all ! You can see that in the presentations I made in tradeshows for my current company ... You should surely see the change of method ;-)
Anyhow, in a first post on his blog, Guy mentioned the Trumeors web site. And a couple of days later, the verdict got thrown out ... It was Guy's new company, with all the explanation in this post. The list of actions that lead to the current success of this website is plain dead simple, and simply shows how much Guy is understanding how current trends are going. This means how to go from a plain simple (but sure real and new) idea to a successful implementation. Nothing is really complicated as long as you know (the one about the legal fees is clearly interesting) about it. But clearly the starter point here is key : The one great idea that will transform an adventure into success.
I have made it clear to close friends that it was one of my goals to find this great idea and finally start on the entrepreneurial road. However I do think this is the key starter point that is the only way to success. So while looking for it, and finally finding it, I'll continue learning which I think is another key important point that must not be forgotten about !

Numbers : Porn ! And More !

No this is not a cheap attempt at driving trafic to this blog ! (I already have a dedicated website for that :-D) But some might say it will ;-)
Anyhow, you know how sometimes you look at these powerpoints/movies that gives you some numbers about a certain technology, habit, or anything for that matter. Well Good Magazine made a nice little video about the industry of porn and the traffic/money it drives on the Internet.
The video is slightly sexy which is kind of a real eye blink to the subject and is really the only reason for me posting this video, although the numbers are quite impressive ... Specially the fact that 70% is watched between 9 and 5, that is business hours !!!

Just to show you that the subject was really more about the numbers than the subject itself, here is another one that is presented in a funny way ! The top 5 more expensive domain names ... Guess which one is the winner, and play the video ! Just to reassure you, I did lose ;-)

PS : This will also get you a way of looking at the new YouTube player in action ;-)

To Wordpress or not ?

When I started this blog, I clearly did not search around for the various blogging platforms available out there. I followed Sebz instincts although I had a previous experience with Serendipity with my son's blog.
Blogger seemed like a good platform (aren't all Google tools one of the best ones ever ?), and I had previously chosen s9y only because it was easily installable on Free. And since I mainly use Google Reader to read my blog feeds, I do not often see the real platforms being the blogs I read.
However I have been quite disappointed with the platform. First of the preview is really lame since it does not take into account the template chosen for the blog, and so alignment and spacing often need some fixup once a message published. The HTML edition feature is nice although it seems that there always is some reprocessing once you edit the code. Another thing that troubles me is the lack of possibility to reference posts via meta keywords. This means that visibility of your blog is not really controllable and I would like to have better control over that.
As a result, I have been looking for other platforms available out there. Wordpress seems to be plebiscited as one of the best ones. Vince has recently made this choice, and so did Guy ! (Vince you can thank me later for the comparison ;-)). So my question is simple : should I switch over to a WordPress platform ?
I already do like the multi-tab possibility which allows to go beyond blogging and add extra functionalities. This might be why WordPress defines itself as a "semantic personal publishing platform", not only blogging platform ! It seems that on the edition side, it is more than OK. The missing thing might be the limit on the images (50Mb) although I'm not sure about the limit in Blogger. One deal breaker seems to be the impossibility to add flash content on the hosted platform wordpress.com :-(
Anyhow I'll continue to look into this... If you have any comment to make, do not hesitate ! And you might see some changes in the near future !

Elections Législatives

This week end in France is the first round of the legislative elections. These two rounds of voting follow the ones where we elected Nicolas Sarkozy as our president for the next 5 years. The goal of this election is to define who will be sitting at the "Assemblée Nationale", which represents the Legislative power in France.
The point of my post is not really to give you a detail explanation about this process but rather to understand how to vote ! I recently received by mail a letter with a leaflet of each one of the 17 people that I could vote for ... Yes you read right : 17 persons ! So my question is dead simple how do you make your choice ?
So the first answer is simple : vote for the candidate which represents the person you voted for during the first round of the presidential elections. Easy you might say ! The only little problem is that there were only 12 candidates ! So the whole post comes to that : who might vote for these 5 "extra" persons ? Family, friends, ... ? But whats the purpose ?
It seems most of these people are using ecology as one of their key driver, or they are yet another candidate of the "far left side". Don't get me wrong, I do like freedom of speech and republican rights, but at some point you got to wonder the point of having so many different trends and people, whom are mainly interested by their own interest of being elected, and do not really worry about us electors. In that sense I really do like internal debates within one party to designate the best candidate (like the PS has done this year, or like this is done in the US). Of course pushed to the extreme this would mean limited number of parties and we need diversity, but come on, do we really need 17 people thinking they have completely different strategies from one another ? This does not make any sense to me at all !
So this might be the "rosé" speaking, but clearly I wanted to share my astonishment in front of the number of candidates I needed to choose from ... But do not worry, my choice is made ! Is yours ?

More on skinning !

In a recent post, I presented a company that offered skins for your laptop. Looking at the comments and speaking with some friends, turns out laptops are not the only things that may be skinned !
Of course T-Shirts have long been an apparel that may be customized through various sites like Spreadshirt, lafraise, or others ... Even got some really close friends who are deep into that (Free pub, sorry :-p )
Anyhow, turns out other sites like or are letting you skin pretty much anything ! From iPods to laptops to mobile phones, anything can be customized to make your latest devices as cool as it should be ! You can even choose your own photo as a motif for your skin !
So now you don't have any reason for sticking with the default Dell or Apple shinny but so everyone cover ;-) And who knows you may even get to know this cute blondie afterwards :-)

Lego Forever !

As a young kid I always loved Legos. It is really a cool toy which lets you crank your imagination up and build thing from the ground up. I'm sure all of you fans out there had the same idea to build a gigantic full size statue of your biggest idol, preferred car, or other toy. Well, Mr Sawaya actually went past the dream, did it, and is now exposing he's art in museums ... Isn't that the best proof that some people actually do succeed while keeping the child in them ;-).

Here are two nice realisations. On the left is a tribute to the city of New Orleans following Katrina. On the right is of course Mr Solo !

Museum Link here

Doooohhhh !

This video really gives you shivers all over the place !
Okye I'm driving fast, but there, it really gives you some material to think about !

The Sécurité Routière has been using some really shocking vidéo to promote safe driving for quite a time now. Sites like SortezRevenez really tells you that you can be the government, use modern communication techniques, and make work its way through crowds.
On a more funny side, this video talks about a completely different matter !

The O.C. is back !

And its called Friday Night Lights !
Remember the other day when I mentioned the TV.com 2007 Upfront ? Well, I told you then that this was a great way to discover tv shows you might have missed during the season ! And so did I with this new show from NBC. For all of you nostalgics of the once craved for now dead The O.C., this is a must see !
This show is about a little town called Dillon, Texas (Hence the marvelous accents from most of the actors), and its high school team called the Panthers. The show follows the top players of the team and their adventure in this little town where every friday night (game night for those not familiar with High School Football), the whole town stops breathing and craves for their players to bring another win to town. So what you are going to get is the crippled QB Jason and his love story with the star cheerleader Lyla, the on and off relationship between Riggins and the bad girl Tyra, the difficulties of coach Taylor and his wife who is the school counselor, the bad ass running back "Smash", and of course the impossible love story between the coach's daughter Julie and the new QB1 matt.
So ok it's more of a soap than a drama, but its a good one, and the 22 episodes (45 minutes each) of the first season will for sure higher the amount of time lost in front of your TV ;-)

Cast presentation here.
Official website here.
TV.Com link.

Google and it's defects

So you really like Google (let me reassure you, I do to !), and you are eagerly waiting the latest service from your favorite web goodies provider.
Last few weeks have been rich in news with FeedBurner acquisition, iGoogle, or bigger attachments in Gmail.
Another service that made it is Street View, which is a new feature of Google Maps basically letting you see in pictures the actual streets. This is a really great way to look at nice scenery that exists in the US biggest cities.
At this point I think I have to mention that PagesJaunes, the original french provider of yellow pages, has had this feature to identify businesses for quite a while now.
Anyhow the purpose of this post is more related to Street View. I guess that when you take pictures automatically, you can not always proofread every single one of them, which as a result, gives some nice instant photos of captured moments. Mashable has a list of the Top 15 views that may be found out there ... Really funny to read how lapdances are better than the internet or to see a burglary in action !

Steve and Bill ... The two oldest pals

I came across this video of Bill and Steve discussing about their lives, experience and more during the D5 conference (Conference about everything digital).
What truly amazes me is how Bill has grown to be a real good speaker (of course Steve is one of the top ones), and how spontaneous these conversation can be ... Don't know why but I cannot see that happen with a Louis Gallois or J3M !
My best passage clearly is the one about the secret mariage between the top two companies that has been going on for decades ... That would really be a true revelation wouldn't it ?

Video of the best exchanges :

More videos here