virtua fighter 5R, bcp d'internet, bcp de logiciels libres, etc.

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Daily Soufron

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Jul 4, 2008, 10:19:44 AM7/4/08
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De la vente liée en informatique



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Luc Chatel souhaite que les consommateurs aient le choix d’acheter un ordinateur sans système d’exploitation préinstallé. Il reprend là une vieille revendication du monde du logiciel libre, qui espère par là réduire (un peu) l'écrasante part de marché de microsoft. L'idée, en apparence séduisante, est d'obliger les vendeurs d'ordinateurs à séparer matériel et logiciel, pour que l'on puisse n'acheter que le matériel, sans se faire refourguer d'office windows. La conversion du ministre semble être très récente, car il n'en a rien laissé paraitre le 11 juin dernier, lorsque le sujet a été abordé pendant les discussions sur la LME.




En fait, c'est une mesure qui n'apporte rien de plus au consommateur et qui se révèle source de complications inutiles.




On peut faire une distinction entre matériels et logiciels et considérer que ce sont deux produits bien différents. Mais on peut également admettre que l'un ne va pas sans l'autre, car pour l'usage que l'on fait ordinairement d'un ordinateur, il faut du matériel et des logiciels. C'est la même choses pour les chaussures et les lacets, toujours vendus ensemble, et pour cause. Ordinairement, le lacet, bien qu'étant un produit différent de la chaussure, est un accessoire indispensable pour un usage normal du produit (en tout cas pour moi).




Obliger le vendeur à afficher le prix du logiciel et du matériel n'apportera pas grand chose car microsoft va brader ses logiciels, affichant un prix dérisoire pour la partie logicielle, à condition qu'elle soit achetée avec le matériel. Rien n'interdit en effet de pratiquer une différence tarifaire sur un même produit suivant qu'il est acheté seul ou en complément avec un autre produit.




Si on souhaite acheter un ordinateur "nu", il suffit d'aller chez un assembleur. Mais cela n'intéresse que les geeks, capables d'installer eux-même les logiciels. Le client lambda veut une machine où arrivé chez lui, il n'a plus qu'à allumer, procéder à quelques opérations simples pour pouvoir utiliser son achat. Aujourd'hui, l'offre est très diversifiée, et en cherchant bien, on peut trouver des ordinateurs pré-équipés sous mac ou sous linux.




Ce débat est l'illustration même de la manière dont se font nos lois et règlements, qui sont davantage conçus pour servir les intérêts matériels ou symboliques des lobbies que l'intérêt des consommateurs, qui est pourtant l'objectif affiché par tous pour justifier leurs demandes. L'intérêt du consommateur, ici, c'est de pouvoir acheter un ensemble informatique complet, en ayant le choix de prendre un PC, un mac ou un linux, de rentrer chez lui et de pouvoir s'en servir immédiatement. Il peut actuellement le faire, pourquoi donc changer la règlementation ?

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Voir en ligne : De la vente liée en informatique

Normal-sized business cards at last from Moo



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Just as The Governator tries to pursue green policies, like keeping Tesla’s electric production car local, you’ll now also be able to hand out full-sized “green†business cards with Flickr images, courtesy of the same guys who brought us those cool little mini-cards, Moo.com. They are launching full-sized business cards with a new partner, LinkedIn, which makes sense in the business space, so maybe that be-suited VC won’t snigger at your tiny Moo cards any more. Moo already has partnerships with Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and LiveJournal so that people can turn their image galleries into cards. Their technology means they can put a unique individual image on every card you order - impossible with other printers. So far they’ve sold over 10m cards to more than 180 countries - even to some people in Afghanistan. They recently released an API, and have a cards designer reward scheme in the works. The new classic business cards are sourced from sustainable forests and the ‘Green’ business cards are 100% recycled, 100% recyclable and 100% biodegradable. Here’s an interview I shot to with CEO Richard Moross.




Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.





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Voir en ligne : Normal-sized business cards at last from Moo

Broadband Internet Adoption Stalls in United States, Says Report



"Broadband growth in the United States has effectively stalled over the past five months, a possible victim of the economic slowdown, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Some 55 percent of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection, or a broadband connection, in their home, according to the report, "Home Broadband Adoption 2008." That number compares with 47 percent of adult Americans with broadband in early 2007, and 54 percent in December 2007. Hence broadband growth over the previous 12 or 13 months has dramatically tapered off. More..."

Voir en ligne : Broadband Internet Adoption Stalls in United States, Says Report

For The Plushie Trifecta : Plush Guts



"plush-organs-1.jpg

First it was particle plushies, followed by microbe plushies, and now, for the win and trifecta, come plush guts. Each organ is about 6"-8" in size and run between $16-$20 (except for the limited edition heart of gold, that one will set you back $30). I personally just bought a backup liver and uterus but was disappointed to find they don't sell my favorite organ. You do know the one I'm talking about, don't you? The spleen, how can they not sell the spleen?

Hit the jump for a bunch more pictures of different organs, including the coveted heart of gold."

Voir en ligne : For The Plushie Trifecta: Plush Guts

New Illidan wallpaper from Blizzard



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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Burning Crusade, NPCs, Fan art, Hardware



Vaneras is apparently clearing house on cool Burning Crusade artwork before we get to the next expansion -- he's posted a new wallpaper up on the Blizzard site, and it pretty much rocks. Our good friend Illy D is still hanging out with that dusty old skull, literally dripping with demonic power, while a bunch of slimy Naga stand threateningly behind him. Very nice.

The second poster in the thread wishes Illidan actually looked like this in game, and to a certain extent, he's right -- Blizzard has always made games as easy on the CPU as possible, so ingame models, while usually textured very well, aren't quite as detailed as their concept art. But the concept art (and the cinematics) is what, I think, allows these characters to have so much of a life outside of the game. Most of us have never been told that we weren't prepared by Illidan ingame, but we surely remember him telling us the same thing before the last expansion.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Voir en ligne : New Illidan wallpaper from Blizzard

Blogged.com goes down the Google News path



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Blog directory Blogged.com has relaunched as a Google News style service.


The new Blogged.com, described as a “news portal for the rest of us†offers a hand-picked selection (yes, manual, I queried this to be sure) of compelling stories and organizes them by relevant categories including tech, business, entertainment, sports, politics, etc.


The Blogged.com blog directory isn’t going away, even if the front of Blogged.com looks different. The company is also offering automatic matching and recommendations of new blogs through an a strategic alliance with MatchMine.


I had the chance to test the service prior to today’s launch. My main observation: it’s different. Not different in a bad way, but the results are different then what you’d usually get from a news style site. The lead stories on the tech page as I write this post are about YouTube videos on Orkut and a story about MySpace proxies. Not exactly leading news stories, but different. The sources were all new to me as well, so they aren’t just linking to the same old blogs. Even Australia’s own social communities expert Laurel Papworth gets a link on the front page. The risk of course with anything made by hand is that the results can quickly become stale, and there usually isn’t staff around to update the site 24/7, but for now we’ll see how it goes post launch.





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Voir en ligne : Blogged.com goes down the Google News path

Why Online Merchants Should List Their Product Catalog on Comparison Shopping Engines



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I am asked everyday questions about why online merchants should list their product catalogs on comparison shopping engines.



It makes perfect sense that I am asked this question, because I am in the business of data feed management and helping small to mid-sized online merchants increase their return on ad spend when working with a variety of online shopping destination sites, comparison shopping engines, mobile commerce sites, and other marketing channels.



So What is The Answer?



Online merchants benefit from ANY marketing effort that gets their brand and storefront products in front of potential shoppers, wherever those shoppers may be. This includes traditional marketing efforts, as the yellow pages, emails, direct mail, catalogs, and modern marketing efforts as ecommerce, mcommerce (mobile commerce), blogs, bonded shopping networks, and social networking sites (we are still seeing if these work, but you get the point). This philosophy is intuitive, simple, and should be not an issue. 



Issues, however, do arise when an online merchant has to weigh the cost and time involved to market wherever a shopper might be using traditional or new marketing methods and strategies.  These marketing methods bring into play three main issues:



1. Where do I market?



2. Do I have the time to maximize these marketing efforts correctly? and



3. What will it cost me?



And then of course, after an online merchant asks these three aforementioned questions comes the most important issue/question:



"Did my marketing efforts work = Did my marketing efforts lead to sales and brand awareness?"



I am here to tell you that any small to mid-sized online merchant should experiment and try comparison shopping engines and other shopping destination sites, because they "can" work, if you find the right marketing channel for your products.



Not every marketing channel is right for your products -- that is why I say "can" work.  That's right. Online merchants have to test, often, numerous marketing channels to see which ones work for their online storefront/product catalog, as not every online shopping mall or comparison shopping engine may attract the right audience/shopper for your products.



[NOTE: Please do not let "experts" tell you that they know all of the right channels for your products, especially if they have not tested your products in a particular channel.]



The good news for online merchants is that there are a plethora of shopping destination sites and comparison shopping engines to pick from, each bringing millions of people each month to their online mall to find your products.   



Some of these channels include: Amazon, Become, buySAFE bonded shopping network, Cooking.com, eBay!, GourmetFoodMall.com, Google Product Search, Greenzer, Like.com, MachineTools.com, Microsoft Cashback, myCoupons.com, PriceGrabber, PriceRunner, Pronto, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Smarter, SortPrice, theFind, ToolCrib, Yahoo! Shopping, and many others.  I know of over 250 marketing channels, so don't think that only the bigger, well known comparison shopping engines are the only marketing channels available to you.  <<<CLICK HERE>>> for a more comprehensive list from MerchantAdvantage.



And the better news is that many comparison shopping engines have business models that ARE AFFORDABLE to work with right away.  Some comparison shopping engines only charge when a sale is made, others have a flat rate per month, and others are FREE, ergo, not all comparison shopping engines charge on a pay-per-click/pay-per-lead model.  Such examples are: Google Product Search; JellyFish, Microsoft Cash Back; MSN Shopping; myCoupons.com, and theFind.com.



I have many clients who are very selective to which comparison shopping engines they send their product catalog data.  For instance, some of my clients only use niche comparison shopping engines that specialize in selling machine tools, gourmet food, or golf related products. Other clients use over 60 comparison shopping engines in order to saturate the marketplace with their products and be wherever an online shopper might be to build brand awareness.  The strategy each client takes depends on budgets and time, but, in each case, comparison shopping engines work for them.



At all times, when working with comparison shopping engines, online merchants must ensure that the product catalog they send to a comparison shopping engine is perfect and up to date, so that the comparison shopping engine lists your product catalog in all of the appropriate places on their site. 



This can be done directly with each comparison shopping site, i.e. feeding them a file each day that follows their feed specification document, OR you can use a cost-effective, Web-based tool that takes care of these issues for you. But...



Before You Work with A Comparison Shopping Engine



Online merchants must ensure, before using any comparison shopping engine, that their online storefront is worthy of marketing in the first place.  What do I mean by this? 



As an example, I had a client two months ago who was frustrated. He was getting a lot of hits/clicks to his website from comparison shopping engines but these hits/clicks were not converting to sales.  This means that all of his fields were properly mapped to the feed spec document of each comparison shopping engine and he opitimized his data properly, but the clicks to his site were not converting to sales.



When we talked directly and both went to his online storefront, I was dismayed to find that his online storefront was a mess, was not professional looking, was hard to navigate, and the check out process was not easy.  I asked him:



"If you came to your storefront, the way it looked and fucntioned, would you buy a product from you?"



At that point we made an assumption that most of his problems might not be with his comparison shopping engine marketing strategies. Instead, we agreed that he had to clean up the look, feel, marketing language, pictures, special offers, logos, and functionality of his storefront website before marketing anywhere.



Over the next three weeks, he cleaned up his storefront and then started his comparison shopping engine marketing efforts over again.  I had him look at REI and ProFlowers, two websites/webstores that work very well and can show an online merchant what "not to do" when building your storefront, which is as important as what "to do." He could not afford all of the functionality of each of these sites, but looking at them and learning from them certainly helped.  The results -- sure enough, clicks from the comparison shopping engines started to lead to sales.



Rei_site_2 Proflowers_site_2



The point of this example is that often online merchants fail to recognize that leads from comparison shopping engines do not always equate to sales, for numerous reasons beyond the control of comparison shopping engines, and that their online storefront must be professional and "worthy" to complete a sale. 



Okay, now back to comparison shopping engines and what an online merchant can do right now to gain success on comparison shopping engines.



Comparison Shopping Engines: 7 Steps to Success



1. Professional Look, Feel, and Functionality: Clean up your online storefront/website.  Ask your friends to go to your website and ask them this: "If you were a stranger and you came to my website would you buy from me?"  If they say no, ask them why and remember that you only have one chance to make a good first impression.



2. Start with 4 Free Comparison Shopping Engines: Send your entire product catalog to 4 FREE comparison shopping engines: Google Product Search, theFind.com, MSN LiveSearch, and Microsoft Cashback.  They are free, may lead to some sales, and will certainly help with organic SEO search.  Where else can you get FREE marketing and also learn how comparison shopping engines work before making a larger time and financial commitment?



3. Use a Cost-Effective, Web-based Tool to Handle Technical Issues with Analysis: There are solutions in the marketplace that, for as little as $145 a month and no transaction fees, no listing fees, no revenue share, and no set-up costs, can get you up and running in less than 48 hours on the 4 FREE sites mentioned above, with analytics included. What other marketing methods are available to you for only $145 a month?



4. Test, Test, and Test Various Comparison Shopping Engines: Even after you "worked" a specific comparison shopping engine for 60-90 days, optimized your feeds properly, and used the SKU level bidding feature of some comparison shopping engines, sometimes a particular comparison shopping engine still may not lead to sales. Instead of getting upset, try another comparison shopping engine. There are a lot of comparison shopping engines out there that may have a more appropriate audience for you. And, since most comparison shopping engines charge on a month-to-month basis, can you afford not to try them?



5. Educate Yourself: There are many resources on the web about best practices when working with comparison shopping engines. As an example, as a client of MerchantAdvantage, MerchantAdvantage offers weekly client-side webinars directly from the technical staff of both MerchantAdvantage AND the technical staff of a comparison shopping engine to keep you up to speed on the best way to work with a particular comparison shopping engine, how to use SKU level bidding features where supported, what products sell best, how best to optimize a feed, and the like. You also can access several FREE webinars, whitepapers, and other sources of information, with no obligation, from the front of MerchantAdvantage's website.



6. Catalog Dipping: Not every product you sell will sell well on every comparison shopping engine: we all know that fact. Try adopting a strategy of only sending products that lead to sales and not just clicks. You can do this easily when using a Web-based tool, with robust analytics, to manage your product catalog feeds and start to have some fun when working with comparison shopping engines.



7. Choice: Make sure you have the option and choice to send your product catalog feed to any marketing channel available to you on the Internet.  That includes over 150+ comparison shopping sites I know of, affiliate sites as Commission Junction and Linkshare (that can get you to the smallest of sites where your products can be found), eBay! and Amazon. Why? Because you never know into which comparison shopping engine your product catalog will lead to the most sales. MerchantAdvantage offers the broadest possible choice in the marketplace and you can start with a pretty comprehensive list here. 



I hope this information helps friends of eTaildTail prepare your marketing strategies for the online holiday shopping season over the next few months.



Happy 4th of July weekend.



Chip Arndt




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Voir en ligne : Why Online Merchants Should List Their Product Catalog on Comparison Shopping Engines

Nouveau blog officiel de Google : sur la publicité offline



"Google vient de lancer un nouveau blog consacré aux solutions AdWords déclinées pour les médias traditionnels (c'est-à-dire en dehors d'Internet) : TV, radio, journaux. Son nom : Let's Take It Offline..."

Voir en ligne : Nouveau blog officiel de Google : sur la publicité offline

Rapport annuel 2007 de l’INPI



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Sur une des pages web de son site, l’Institut National propose le téléchargement de son Rapport annuel 2007 (pdf - 1,6 Mo). Il ne semble pas que cette parution ait fait l’objet d’une annonce ou d’un communiqué…


On peut notamment constater que malgré les avantages non négligeables que représentent les sytèmes des marques internationales et communautaires, les dépôts de marques nationales ne cessent de progresser en nombre. Concernant les Dessins & Modèles, en revanche la stagnation laisse supposer que l’OHMI attire plus facilement les déposants.



Retour en arrière : le rapport annuel 2006.

"

Voir en ligne : Rapport annuel 2007 de l’INPI

Taxe sur les FAI : Éric Besson envisage des contreparties



"Et si la future taxe qui touchera les FAI et les opérateurs téléphoniques afin de financer en partie la télévision publique française, pouvait avoir un effet bénéfique pour ces derniers ? Éric Besson, le secrétaire d'État chargé de ..."

Voir en ligne : Taxe sur les FAI : Éric Besson envisage des contreparties

Another Big App Disappears : This Time, It’s Social Me



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socialmeFive days ago, the Facebook Platform policy team made waves throughout the developer community by suspending Slide’s Top Friends application, the third largest application by daily active users, for a privacy violation of the Developer Terms of Service.


Tonight, it appears that another Top 25 Facebook app has disappeared from the Platform as well: Social Me, normally with over 280,000 daily active users, is showing the same signs that Top Friends did a few days ago:



  1. Going to the Social Me app page redirects to the Facebook home page

  2. Searching the application directory for “Social Me†yields nothing

  3. The Social Me box is missing from all profile pages


If two’s a coincidence and three’s a trend, then the disappearance of Social Me tonight should raise all developers’ eyebrows. Several of Social Me developer SocialHi.com’s other applications have gone missing as well. If this turns out to be another case of application suspensions due to user privacy concerns, then Facebook is definitely making a statement with its actions. We’ll have more soon.


Update: Social Me has indeed also been suspended from the Facebook Platform due to privacy violations. According to Facebook, “The Top Friends and Social Me applications have been temporarily suspended by Facebook due to their violations of Facebook’s privacy policies.â€

"

Voir en ligne : Another Big App Disappears: This Time, It’s Social Me

La folie « dramas Â» gagne le coeur des jeunes Françaises



"Tokio Hotel, M Pokora, Justin Timberlake sont les idoles de nos chères adolescentes. Mais c'est en train de changer. Les stars de la télé asiatique pointent leurs museaus enjôleurs. Bientôt, les teenageuses voudront épouser les bimbo-boys Yamapi, Joe Cheng ou Jang Geuk-Suk, et ressembler à Song Hye-Kyo (photo), Ariel Lin ou Inoue Mao, actrices et top-modèles. A l'origine de ce changement de cap d'ouest en est, le phénomène « drama », en pleine explosion sur les écrans d'ordinateurs de nos jeunes groupies.





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Voir en ligne : La folie « dramas » gagne le coeur des jeunes Françaises

Dan Gillmor : Mainstream Media vs Bloggers meme, & advice to young journalists



"Dan Gillmor runs the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, a new project of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I ran into him at the Reboot conference in Copenhagen in June, 2008, and asked him a quick question about the obsolete "mainstream media versus bloggers in pajamas" meme.


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Voir en ligne : Dan Gillmor: Mainstream Media vs Bloggers meme, & advice to young journalists

Kodansha Coming to United States



"At least according to ICv2.com's reading of the Nikkei wire. This went from "you crazy" to "although you know, that sort of makes sense" to "Oh yeah, that's totally true" since the rumor was all the Internet rage a few weeks back, so it's mostly been a matter of it slipping in some official capacity. The friendly non-denials David Welsh got seemed to indicate something was up pretty early on, at least to me. All hail the Ancient Ones. I imagine David will have something in terms of analysis at some point.

Dallas Middaugh notes that Del Rey will indeed continue licensing manga and is now working on its 2010 slate. This fact was previously used as a denial of the rumor, although as I pointed out at the time, a company can certainly publish some stuff and license other stuff."

Voir en ligne : Kodansha Coming to United States

Data Portability and Pushability with Gnip



"

GnipGnip today announced a much needed piece of the web services infrastructure - a proxy service that sits between Data Publishers (like Digg, Flickr, and Twitter) and Data Consumers (like Plaxo and MyBlogLog) as a means to make moving structured data between services more efficient, flexible and scalable.


Up until now the systems for consumers to monitor the activity of publishers have been ad-hoc and typically based on polling their individual APIs. This is challenge for data consumers and as well as providers. For API publishers they face issues like multiple protocols and data formats to support, the need for API throttling and management, identity and security, and not least of all, scaling the service if you’re successful.


Gnip hopes to change that into a standardized model that combines both push and pull elements. This can benefit publishers and consumers by improving the latency from hours to seconds, solving the scaling problem of the API load, and removing the hassle of data conversion. From the blog post announcing today’s launch:



We built a system that connects Data Consumers to Data Publishers in a low-latency, highly-scalable standards-based way. Data can be pushed or pulled into Gnip (via XMPP, Atom, RSS, REST) and it can be pushed or pulled out of Gnip (currently only via REST, but the rest to follow). This release of Gnip is focused on propagating user generated activity events from point A to point B.


Gnip can be thought of as an ‘activity bridge’ for the social web, or as Nik Cubrilovic of TechCrunchIT put it, doing for social activity what pinging services have done for blogs. Except that the activities include more than blog posting - commenting, rating, sharing, tweeting, purchasing, attending and more. Gnip would like to normalize the names of all online activities - the full list of their initial set is here.



gnip


The advantage for publishers is that their activity streams can be posted once to Gnip, who will offload the push and pull servicing to many consumers,and provide the data translations. The advantage to consumers is standardized and timely notification. As Joseph Smarr of Plaxo describes it



For Plaxo users, the benefit is simple: when you digg a story or bookmark a link with del.icio.us, etc. you should see that activity show up in Pulse a lot quicker–often within 60 seconds, whereas before integrating with Gnip, it might have taken an hour or more. Starting today, Digg and del.icio.us should be very quick to update, with Flickr and Twitter hopefully following shortly.


The initial version of Gnip offers the notification service. Future versions scheduled for this year will include some very interesting enhancements:



  • Gnip Notifications: For “Data Consumers†they can poll for new data the moment it exists. Avoid throttling & decrease latency from hours to seconds. For “Data Providers†it lets them reduce API traffic by an order of magnitude while increasing distribution through aggregators.

  • Gnip Polling (coming soon): Offload API and RSS polling to Gnip and receive full content updates via your preferred protocol (REST, XMPP, ATOM, etc).

  • Gnip Transformation (coming soon): Receive standardized cross-service XML markup and turn integrating with new APIs into a plug-and-play experience.

  • Gnip Identification (coming soon): Let Gnip offer suggestions for your users’ profiles through a variety of identity discovery mechanisms.


In the initial version of the notification service Gnip is only reporting to consumers that an activity has occurred, with the identification of the source and the guid of the item that was rated or consumed. In later versions the activity itself will be part of the transmission.



gniparch2.png


The protocol bridge graphic above shows the different formats that Gnip will support. The Gnip API shows standard REST calls for both producer and consumer, and includes language specific convenience libraries in Ruby, PHP, Perl, Python, and Java. We have created a new Gnip API profile here.


The company is lead by Eric Marcoullier, who founded MyBlogLog and sold it to Yahoo last year. The full list of partners on the Gnip community site includes delicious, Digg, Flickr, Twitter, MyBloglog, and Six Apart.


For more details on the service see good writeups from Marshall Kirkpatrick and John McCrea.



Related ProgrammableWeb Resources

 Gnip API Profile and Mashups

Share This




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Voir en ligne : Data Portability and Pushability with Gnip

Confirmed : Microsoft Acquires Powerset



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pset-livesearch.pngWe wrote about Microsoft possibly acquiring semantic search engine Powerset just a few days ago when it was still a rumor. Today, both Microsoft and Powerset have confirmed that they have reached a deal. When rumors about this acquisition first appeared, the price for Powerset was supposed to be somewhere around $100 Million, though neither company has disclosed the final prize so far.



In a statement about the acquisition, Powerset says that it needed a bigger partner to expand its product beyond its current state of only searching Wikipedia - something we had speculated about when the rumors of the acquisition first appeared. In its own statement, Microsoft stresses how useful Powerset's technology will be for improving Microsoft's own search products and to "take Search to the next level."



So far, none of the larger search engines have been able to capitalize on the promises of semantic search. Most of the innovations in the space so far have come from small start-ups and even those never made any real inroads in terms of market share when compared to the keyword driven search engines of Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Microsoft.



Powerset's technology might just give Microsoft the ability to differentiate its Live Search product from the competition.







"

Voir en ligne : Confirmed: Microsoft Acquires Powerset

Japanese military shamed by USB device



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Stolen, found, loaned, lost


Like ball point pens, cigarette lighters, and the occasional key, flash memory devices have a nearly unstoppable need to be set free upon the world at large.…

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Voir en ligne : Japanese military shamed by USB device

Katoa un nouveau réseau social à la sauce orange



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Katoa est un réseau social créé il y a deux ans par les labos de R&D d'Orange. Le site est aujourd'hui ouvert en beta. Il permet de créer un wall de contenus trés simplement en glissant déposant des magnets multimedias. Vous pouvez déposer les medias depuis votre disque dur vers le site mais aussi récupérer vos photos Flickr (bientôt Youtube?). Pour en savoir plus je vous conseille de visionner cette petite video enregistrée ce soir à la soirée Geekement Correct.




Pour le fun voici mon Showroom Katoa 



 
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Voir en ligne : Katoa un nouveau réseau social à la sauce orange

A Year of GPLv3



"javipas writes "GPLv3 and LGPLv3 were released one year ago, on 29 June 2007. Palamida, who tracks Open Source projects, has made a study of the current situation of these licenses along with AGPLv3, which was released later, in November. The number of projects that have made the transition to these licenses has grown over the last months, and it seems than AGPLv3 has captured a great interest lately. Black Duck Software, a company that tracks Open Source projects too, has made its own study with similar results, and although GPLv3 and its variants have a good adoption rate, the interviews published on the Palamida site (Stallman, Chris Di Bona) show that the acceptance of GPLv3 has still a long way to walk."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Voir en ligne : A Year of GPLv3

Cyberguerre & Cyberterrorisme : Etat des lieux



"Ce jeudi 3 juillet à 19h15 à l’ESIEA (Paris 5eme) à lieu une conférence sur le cyberterrorisme à laquelle j’ai gracieusement été invité par Jérome Bondu le responsable du Club IES. Je ne pourrais malheureusement pas y assiter mais pour les personnes qui seraient intéressées voici les sujets qui vont être [...]"

Voir en ligne : Cyberguerre & Cyberterrorisme : Etat des lieux

Buck Goldstein : Beyond Science Fiction



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As you head for the beach with a canvas bag full of science fiction, the activities of one of the world's great inventors will top anything you or your favorite author can possibly conjure up. This year's winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT award for invention, Dr. Joe DeSimone, (full disclosure -- the author is a shareholder and advisor to Liquidia, a company founded by DeSimone) has been designing nano-particles in his lab at the University of North Carolina that are 100 times smaller than a red blood cell and as smart as a microprocessor. He has discovered that size and shape really do matter and when these properties can be precision-controlled the sky is the limit. Lately DeSimone has been concentrating on nano-medicine. He's been working on some remarkable projects.



-- By altering the size, shape and modulus of particles substantially smaller than a human cell DeSimone can direct them to a particular cell or group of cells within a particular organ in the body. He can also load the particles with a particular drug therapy by constructing nano-sized compartments within a tiny "ice tray" and filling the compartments with the desired drug or therapy. At MIT on Thursday night, DeSimone showed You Tube quality videos of his particles approaching and entering targeted cells and then dropping their cargo virtually on demand. This performance created audible gasps from a group of distinguished scientists of all ages that had assembled for the ceremony.



The first frontier for this breakthrough may be oncology where such targeted drug delivery is obvious. If you can kill the "bad cells" without touching the good ones entirely new ways of thinking about cancer therapies are on the table. The work is still in its infancy but good results have already been obtained in prostate and ovarian cancer cells.



-- DeSimone is using these same principles to produce particles that mimic red blood cells. Not only do these particles look and act like red blood but they are "smart" as well. What this means is they can be designed to circulate in targeted parts of the body and not others (their shape and modulus confine them to specified parts of the circulatory system). They can also be designed to circulate for a specified period of time and then be excreted (this is effectuated by the particles changing in shape and flexibility over time). A therapy that can be infused into a particle that will circulate like blood in the body for a given period of time and then be excreted would have profound implications for the delivery of all kinds of drug therapies. Intra-venous transfusions might be replaced by drug infused particle injections. Vaccines that require multiple doses to be effective may be delivered via a smart particle that can achieve the same result. Again, full implementation of the technology has not been achieved but the platform has been created.



-- Even further out, at least from the perspective of a non-scientist like me, DeSimone and his colleagues are working to deliver a therapy called "silencing RNA" or siRNA. The theory behind this approach, which many believe will be foundational for the future of drug therapy, is that certain diseases can be cured even before they manifest themselves by identifying the proteins that cause them and then preventing those proteins from every firing. The trick is achieving "knock down" by altering the functioning of targeted proteins within a designated cell -- no trivial task. Because DeSimone can produce smart but tiny particles and they can be infused with a cargo that may achieve "knock down" one of the big barriers to unlocking the promise of siRNA may be addressed with revolutionary consequences for the way we think about treating disease.



Of course, there are huge hurdles associated with each example, not the least of which being how to produce huge quantities of custom designed particles all with exactly the same characteristics. But even what has been achieved so far provides a sense of what's possible and will provide the basis for scores of other ideas some of them conceived on the Fourth of July in between sessions with a great science fiction novel.




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Voir en ligne : Buck Goldstein: Beyond Science Fiction

Virtua Fighter 5 R Location Test in Akihabara



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TOKYO -- Sega can't very well let Capcom and their frequent Street Fighter IV location tests get all the attention, and so the company was holding one for its latest update to the Virtua Fighter series.



The location test for Virtua Fighter 5 R I checked out was being held at the Club Sega game center in Akihabara, and included well over 30 cabinets showcasing the game in the arcade's basement.


The 5 R update is said to be a major one -- equivalent to Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. New to this latest version of the game is a new karate-practicing character known as Jean Kujo, and the return of sumo wrestler Taka-Arashi (he last appeared in VF3).


The game also includes a few new stages, as well as "Danshi Mode," where players can train with their character and learn new moves during battle.


Sega has yet to announce an official release date for the game. Below, a few more photos taken at the test.


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The poster for the location test features the new characters, and also indicates that IC cards for Virtua Fighter 5 Ver. D -- used to save player data -- are supported with the new game. It also says that the cabinets at the Shinjuku West Exit Club Sega will remain in use even once the location test is over.





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Looking at a photo like this, it may seem like the place was packed, but quite the contrary. Do keep in mind that I was there early in the afternoon on a Tuesday.





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With so many cabinets available, it was easy to just sit down and get a game. Being the awful Virtua Fighter player that I am, I refrained from playing. My almost immediate defeat at SFIV the other day has given me an extreme inferiority complex when it comes to fighters.





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How about some sumo action, courtesy of the return of Taka-Arashi.





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A close-up of the title screen. As you can see, playing the game on cabinets equipped with standard definition monitors doesn't do it justice.





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Now this is the way the way to play Virtua Fighter 5, on wide-screen high-res LCD monitors.





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The Virtua Fighter 5 terminal features a touch-screen, and lets players with IC cards go over their play data. You can also customize your characters by adding items.



Photos: Jean Snow/Wired.com



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Voir en ligne : Virtua Fighter 5 R Location Test in Akihabara

Independent Games Festival 2009 : Coders - go !



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We secretly despise the IGF and have only entered the judging panel so we can destroy it from the inside, and advocate the least imaginative, interesting and fun games to the top prize. Muhahahahahahahahahaha!

And - hark! - there was a great call across the land. And with it, there was a sound like locusts, as a million coders started typing code and similar. The Independent Games Festival have made their call for entrants for the 2009 competition. People who want a crack at the assorted prizes - past winners include everything from World of Goo to Darwinia to Audiosurf to Braid to Aquaria to other splendid pieces of awesomeosity - have from now until November 1st to get their entrants in. People for the Student competition have another couple of weeks, until the 15th, as presumably the IGF people know students are slack. They’ve announced new judges for this year too, including Kyle “World of Goo†Gabler, Rod “Sims†Humble, Soren “Civ4″ Johnson, Chaim “Spore†Gingold, Petri “Crayon Physics†Purho and Jim “Rock Paper Shot…†waitaminute! Jim! You never told me about this.


I’d mock Jim more, but I’m doing it too. Any excuse to play Indie games, us. … [visit site to read more]




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Voir en ligne : Independent Games Festival 2009: Coders - go!

Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads



"jyosim writes "A site called Textbook Torrents is among the many sites popping up offering free downloads of expensive textbooks using BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. With the average cost of textbooks going up every year, and with some books costing more than $100, some experts say that piracy will only increase." Having just completed graduate school, I can attest that quite a few books are in that more-than-$100 range, and that they're heavy besides. But the big-name textbook publishers are much less interested than I am in open textbooks, even if MIT has demonstrated that open courseware is feasible, and Stanford and other schools have put quite a bit of material on iTunes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


"

Voir en ligne : Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads

Ustream Passes 10MM Viewers ; Launches New Overlay Features



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Live broadcasting service UStream has just rolled out a number of new upgrades and shared their latest usage statistics.


The most notable new feature, which we first reported last month, is the introduction of overlays to everyone, so broadcasters can add visual information to their shows – much in the way television shows put guest names and throw graphics up on the screen. Additionally, UStream has added more statistics, so broadcasters can keep track of how their shows are performing.




Meanwhile, UStream has announced that they reached more than 10 million unique viewers in June, with the average video view length totaling 30 minutes. Do the math and you quickly realize that you are looking at a fairly huge amount of advertising inventory for UStream to start selling in the near future. With the introduction of overlays, that may soon be a reality, though advertiser demand for the truly unpredictable world of live produced Internet video remains to be seen.


UStream obviously believes in the potential - earlier this year they reportedly turned down an acquisition offer from Microsoft and instead raised $11 million in venture capital to go it alone.


A few other numbers shared by UStream: they now have 410,000 registers users, 100,000 of which are active broadcasters, with 10,000-15,000 live events being served up daily.


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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

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Tay Zonday Does It Live
uStream.tv Beta 2 Launches Tomorrow (Screenshots)
UStream: Blogworld and the Plain White T’s
Rumor: Microsoft Wants To Buy Ustream.TV
UStream Coverage of World Cyber Games Finals







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Voir en ligne : Ustream Passes 10MM Viewers; Launches New Overlay Features

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