Hey, looks like I was a bit early on this blog day thing.

So for those who initially missed it (i’ve counted a few) here is Heavy Mental’s blog day post, then.

Technorati: BlogDay2007

On m’a plusieurs fois demandé pourquoi je bloggais en anglais.

Ce post s’attache à essayer de répondre à cette question. Je ne suis toujours pas certain que ce soit très intéressant à lire. Ca l’a été à écrire en tout cas, believe me. Read the rest of this entry »

Code will tear us apart

There is this Alternative rock scene that blossomed back in the late 70s/early 80s on the ashes of the punk music. This encompassed bands like XTC, Wire, The Cure or Joy Division in the UK and Husker Dü or R.E.M in the US.

They basically had the energy and the DIY approach of the punk bands but as opposed to the latter they have a much more realistic view of the business, were not so self destructive (except maybe Joy Division Ian Curtis).

They had a proper plan : offering an alternative to mainstream (hence the name) pop music, driven by their vision of what it should be : quality pop song with an attitude, with an independent (hence Indie in the UK) artistic approach, ignoring business driven advices from major record companies marketing executives.

Viewing this Jason Fried (co-founder of web2.0 start-up extraordinaire 37Signals) video, I thought of the many similarities of their business approach in the software industry with that very musical vogue. Thinking about it, this analogy also gives some hints on 37Signals success … Read the rest of this entry »

I mentionned it earlier : I have joined the techiteasy.org mob. This is a bunch of passionated and motivated young professionnals blogging collaboratively on the IT world, the internet culture and entrepreneurship.

Scrum and XP from the trenches

I have just posted my first contribution : this is about the Henrik Kniberg e-book : Scrum and XP from the Trenches. I was kinda procrastinating about this book for a while but then Fred strongly recommended me the read.

I had the opportunity of managing a team of server side developers in the mobile industry and this post is about applying these agile methodologies during that time.

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Mack Collier from the viralgarden did something similar a while back : kick-off a meme to promote unsung bloggers.

So here is the deal : list and describe about 10 out of your blogroll, do a quick description and pingback the one that referenced your blog. Please no Seth Godin, Loic Le Meur or Stairway to Heaven here. I dont think they need any reference.

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‘right : writing a blog is cool. But there are some rumours around that writing a blog that some people end up reading is kinda cooler.

So tired with having an average of 8 views per blog post I’ve decided to roll up my sleeves and dig into the subject. Believe it or not a few people decided to study the issue before me. Honest.

So here I come, SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

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Judith Bernard et le hérisson

J’en ai déjà parlé ici : comment l’élégance du hérisson et son succès inattendu (350.000 ventes à ce jour) exaspère prodigieusement notre intelligentsia officielle. Aujourd’hui Judith Bernard.

Que Marc Levy ou Guillaume Musso vendent leur soupe inoffensive à la tonne passe encore ; qu’une prof de philo de Province fasse de même dans un ouvrage où on retrouve de longues tirades sur Husserl, Tolstoï ou le cinéma d’Ozu, là, non ce n’est juste plus possible.

Que, de plus, on se moque ouvertement dans cet ouvrage de la bourgeoisie de gauche (la mère de Paloma, hilarante avec son psy bidon, sa culpabilité de gauche, ses escarpins Manolo Blahnik, et ses nappes à 240€) ou des élèves de normale sup’ (sa soeur detestable et ses copains arrogants qui se la jouent cool, parfaitement croqués) : la guerre ouverte est déclarée.

Dans sa descente en flamme du livre, Judith parle de la haine qu’elle lit dans le livre de Barbery :

Et très vite c’est devenu odieux. Mais vraiment odieux. Je n’ai jamais dit ça d’un livre avant celui-là. Dans celui-là il y a tant de haine que je me suis mise à le haïr. C’est un livre qui transpire la haine sociale : la haine des riches, invariablement cons, prétentieux, et vulgaires.

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Mind the gap

Okay I know you guys gonna think I am a bit of a late adopter.

You web2.0ers may have known Hugh for ages, have your own dedicated GV business card, or even the gaping void widget on your blog. Well, that’s not my case.

I’ve landed on Gaping Voids a few times before but I didn’t really notice until today while I was reading this How To be creative post. This is one of the most inspirational posts (okay it’s a pretty big one) I have ever read.

So if, just like me, you’ve one of the last human beings on this planet ignoring what Gaping Void is and who this Hugh McLeod can be, just do yourself a favor and check it out.

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(Click to play the soundtrack of my summer and, incidentally, of this post. The band is Asobi Seksu a NYC Shoegaze quartet and the song is Thursday. I dont have any suitable and meaningful visual resources for this post so I’ve decided to put some promotion material of this band that I really like instead.)

Classes and networks

I’ve blogged about this Danah Boyd essay already.

It looks like this has caused a lot of misinterpretation and angry posts to which Danah has decided to respond.

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The cold cold heart of the Web 2.0

Brilliant column by William Davies in The Register.

Illustration : Keith Haring
Source : http://www.orgsites.com/

A very interesting article on the Social Network applications trend to rationalise everything in our social life. It tends to show that while we expand the use of the internet from our profesionnal life to the social parts of it, we also expand professional habits such as efficiency concerns.

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J’ai eu la “chance” d’être licencié économique en début d’année. Cela m’a donné l’opportunité de rencontrer un certain nombre des acteurs majeurs de mon industrie (informatique) dans ma région (Bordeaux).

J’ai été frappé par le peu de connaissance de mes interlocuteurs de SSII (directeurs d’agence, ingénieurs commerciaux) sur le Web 2.0 et de ses technologies sous-jacentes. Read the rest of this entry »

Bon je vais pas en faire une thèse non plus mais lire sur la terrasse en bord de lagon est une sensation intellectuo-sensorielle qui confine à la béatitude.

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