To say the truth, I’m not that crazy about Facebook. Let alone Facebook apps. I still can’t really see what the point is.

But still, there was this app I kinda fancied : Blog Friend. It would keep you posted about all the new blog posts in your entourage.

Unfortunately, they have been forced to close down. That probably says a lot about how inadequate my perception of the web 2.0 is.

Anyway, their farewell message is there. So long guys and thank for your work.

J’ai déjà parlé de Alexander Bard. Il fait aujourd’hui (quoi, le mois dernier) la une de Chronicart - les éditions web et papier - dans le cadre de la traduction et de sa publication en France de l’essai qu’il a co-rédigé avec Jan Söderqvist : Les Netocrates.

Les deux suédois avancent ici leur théorie : nous entrons dans une nouvelle ère qui signe la fin de l’ère capitaliste : la nétocratie. Leurs réflexions sur la société, les technologies, le culture occidentale, le marxisme, la bourgeoisie ou encore l’humanisme sont radicales et rafraîchissantes. Et résonnent d’un écho particulier pour ceux qui, comme moi, sont fascinés par l’influence grandissante des technologies de la communication sur notre société, sa fluidification et sa plus grande transparence.

Selon eux l’âge de l’information sera transparente, implacable, ultra-matérialiste, sera l’ère de la méritocratie et mettra un terme à l’hégémonie de la bourgeoisie capitaliste conservatrice et sa croyance en l’humanisme. Extraits de l’entretien paru dans le numéro #42 du magazine et publié aujourd’hui en ligne. Etes vous un nétocrate ? Pour le savoir ..

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Having all the means available to be connected on a permanent basis seems so natural for us today. No one really is interested in the gory details of the infrastructure world (the infraworld indeed) of the machines, network and all these different technical assets that makes our many different electronic lives possible.

Mark Richards Core Memory project is a tribute to this infra world. Some kind of still life to the unsung heroes of the information age : the electronic machines and devices. (Thanks again SignalVsNoise for the link !).

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Yet another Bullshit 2.0 presentation (via Bertrand Duperrin).

I used to be kinda okay with this sort of Armanoesque material. But I just can’t anymore : I just find this type of presentations disgusting.

Here is the pitch : there is this emergence of Enterprise 2.0 tools that transform the way we work in the company. These are natural tools for the digital natives but not so natural for the baby boomers. The generation in between (it doesn’t say but I would think 35 - 45) are the knowledge workers 2.0 (blimey !) who can link the two generations together. Innovation … blah blah … collaborative work … blah blah … bullshit … blah blah

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Radiohead2.0

Radiohead aura donc réalisé le coup musical 2.0 de l’année : leur album In Rainbows en téléchargement (sur un site à la navigabilité plus artistique que commerciale), à un prix à la discrétion des internautes, potentiellement gratuit, donc. Le verdict est sans appel : cette opération leur aura rapporté plus que les royalties de tous les autres albums réunis.

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Une bien longue absence … Il est particulièrement étrange de passer d’une période de blogging intense à une période de détachement à l’égard de la reflexion electronique. Anyway … En raison du cadre de ma nouvelle mission (un poste d’encadrement cette fois-ci) je n’ai pas eu ces dernières semaines beaucoup de temps pour blogger. Pour vous dire la vérité, on ne dirait pas que l’internet mondial en ait pâti.

Toujours est-il qu’il me faut bien m’y remettre et que pour la reprise c’est un gros n’importe quoi cynique : au programme : Supernormal, les inrocks 2.0, les parka Aigle, Facebook et son jumeau du coté obscur.

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It’s that time again : when, running out of ideas and/or time, Heavy Mental multi-twitters.

On the (pretty geeky) menu : high scalability, graduating Vs startuping, Web 2.0 Noise, OS/360 Tar Pit and a rock solid business model there for the taking : God Bless HTTP !

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Great post by Roger Von Oech on Creative Think today : Embrace failure.

Errors serve a useful purpose: they tell us when to change direction. When things go smoothly, we generally don’t think about them. To a great extent, this is because we function according to the principle of negative feedback.

Scott Berkun made a very interesting essay on a pretty tangential issue : admitting mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »

On se croit d’amour, on se croit féroce, enraciné

Avec la coupe du monde de rugby ressurgit cette vague notion de patriotisme. On enfile mécaniquement un maillot bleu pendant 2,3 semaines en braillant “on est les champions” et on sort les accolades avant de sombrer à nouveau dans tous nos travers ultra-individualistes.

(En même temps, les accolades et le champagne sur les Champs, ça semble plutôt mal barré après le match de Vendredi et surtout les incroyables 20 premieres minutes des All Blacks mais là n’est pas le sujet).

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A quick post on enjoyable ideas to browse through. It may be pretty recent content, maybe quite old but it is this week’s and highly hypertextual in any case.

On the menu : Egonomics, Situational Relevance of social networks, preparing keynotes with Steve Jobs and Portfolio Management explained. Read the rest of this entry »

Within the scope of MyFaveBloggers serie, and after Kathy Sierra and Hugh McLeod, I’ve written a blog post on Scott Berkun work for techITeasy, so that you know.

I shall do one at some point on the immense work of my secretly (okay it’s kinda public now) beloved danah boyd, for whom i’ve just fixed the link in my blogroll, making sure I spell her name in lower case.

Technorati: Scott-Berkun Tech-it-easy

I’ll do a more comprehensive review of that book when I am finished with it. I’ve just started it thanks to danah boyd advices.

The objective of this book is in the subtitle : propose some explanations as to why today’s young americans are more confident, assertive, entitled and more miserable than ever before.

I always am extremely excited whenever I bumped into a book sheding some new light on society, offering a new perspective on urban sociology. Especially when this theory is supported by tons of data and when it remains readable even if you’re not a PHD in philosophy. Jean Twenge’s book is one of those :

The boomers practically invented youth rebellion in the 1960s. By the 1970s the rebellion was mainstream and the defiance of authority an accepted social value.

Obviously, it’s fair to say that the scope of this book can be extended to young people in the western world even if the massive data gathered by Twenge only applies to USA.

Individualism : the child of the boomers

I always hear people in France whinging (we’re profesionnal whinger, sadly) about individualism in our societies, pointing the finger on hysterical consumerism. As a principle, I just dont buy blindly into simplistic and politically oriented types of explanations.

This book, for instance, comes with this other assumption whereby individualism is a direct consequence of being raised by baby boomers, the people that mainstreamed rebellion who incidentally grew their children with these values of being truth to themselves, their belief and what they want to be. Interesting.

Watch this space : I’ll get back to it later !

Technorati: Jean-Twenge Generation-Me

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 »