FiberGeneration

Broadband Washroom

The lovely city of Pau is truly The Broadband Country. See this hand dryer in the restrooms at the Pau airport. The Dyson Airblade™. It wipes your hands dry in a matter of seconds, the time for you to realize that it's done. When hygiene and fun meet. That's innovation, Folks !

For more details on the Airblade™, go here.

You may read the whole "Why Airblade" section : it's a pretty nice lesson of product marketing.

Also, the Customer Service part is a model. I never thought hands drying could be so interesting.

Microsoft Does It Again

[UPDATED 1:15PM CET, this time with links and tags]

Microsoft does it again. What ? Copying Apple ! See this demo of the forthcoming new OS from Redmond, so-called "Windows 7". Everything single thing you see there is already available on the iPhone and the Mac platforms, thanks to Mac OSX 10.5 aka "Leopard", should Apple release touch-screen based Macs in the next couple of weeks. 

To get a multi-touch UI on a PC, you'll get to wait until, hum, 2010. Until then, you be sure I'll be playing with my MacTouch since a while ;-)

Like Shopping ? You Will Love The Mall Plus (dot com ;-)

Still not the colorful experience of a real journey at the Wafi City (for instance), but a true step towards full 3-D online shopping.
Let the fiber shine in to our homes, and we'll probably get real-time person-to-person interaction like in the real World.

The time of the twits

Step by step, month after month, the Web 2.0 is changing the way we can use data and information.
See here how you can mash your twits up. Thanks to Dipity.

For many businesses, it's time to think different.

[Web Too] IM-Translate

French startup IM-Translate is born, offering the first online instant translation of instant messages:

Immediate translation of instant messages. You do nothing differently — IM-Translate™ integrates seamlessly into your existing IM application — just type as usual. Forget copy, pasting or jumping back and forth to a web-based translator. Your buddy receives your message plus a translation — instantly. You see the translation of the text you typed. You also receive your buddy’s messages in both languages. Free! — Downloads in seconds with broadband.

First IM app targeted : Windows Live Messenger, aka MSN.
As I told my friend Georges, CTO of IM-T, they should release a Mac version as quickly as possible, since Mac users are more suited for beta testing campaigns : we love giving feedback, for the developers to enhance their products.
Also in the pipe : the app for Google.

Interesting : IM-T is formed by... US citizens and registered in... France, for some legal and market issues.
IM-T is a typical Web 2.0 start-up : of the six co-founders and team members, nobody knows more than two others face-to-face. They never met altogether so far ! Their collaborative tools : Google, Skype, and email.
One of the founders is my old buddy Georges Pantanelli. A french High-Tech industry veteran, who relocated to the US in the 90's. Georges got his american passport two years ago, in San Francisco. The lesson : in California, everything is possible for those who have the entrepreneurial spirit.

IM-Translate site and download here.

The It-Could-Be-An-Apple-Gadget Edition

See here. The Flip is a brand new camcorder made by Pure Digital Technologies "for the rest of us".
Simple, easy to use, and just enough features for 80% of the population. On top, the Flip is pretty much affordable for most of us (at Agilent, I've learned not to say "cheap" ;-).
Definitely a gadget that could have been designed by Apple. Which, I suppose, has served as a model for the definition and creation of The Flip.

It's about Apple : How To Get Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong (To Certain Extent)

Wired Magazine has published an excellent article on Apple : "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong". A must read, including the Evil/Genius and Online Extras side articles.

For an Applemaniac, Jobsian Fanatic like myself, those type of readings just confirm what we already presume on the Product Marketing & Industrial Design way at Apple (at least since Jobs' s return in 1997).
It also raises three questions in my mind :

1. when even a pure self-made man like me can understand quite a bit of the underlying long term strategy and the tactics at Apple, why the heck no other company is applying the same methods ? Can you think of another name, in any other industry, with this level of perfection in Industrial Design and Marketing at large ? Maybe Trek ? Or maybe I'm too much Apple-branded that I'm too blind to see outside the Reality Distorsion Field !

2. why can't we French people enjoy the beauty of an AppleStore, whilst the Mac/iPod/iPhone/iLoveIt maker is to open a superstore in rainy Liverpool ? Is there something we Frenchies don't get about Apple and/or Steve Jobs ? Hey, we've bought into the iPhone hype - even restaurants' s maîtres d'hôtel have iPhone now.

3. the last yet most important : when will I get a job at Apple ? ;-)

It's about the iPhone

Back at home after being on the road (and in the air, and on the Southern Alpes slopes), I took a couple of hours this morning to watch the recent introduction of the iPhone SDK by Steve Jobs and his fellow Apple execs.

You'll get a flavor of the impact of the iPhone Software Roadmap by reading those two articles, from David Pogue for The New York Times here, and Mike Elgan for ComputerWorld here.
Quote Master Pogue : " iPhone 2.0 will turn this phone into an engineering tool, a game console, a free-calls Skype phone, a business tool, a dating service, an e-book reader, a chat room, a database, an Etch-a-Sketch…and that’s on Day One."

To better understand why the iPhone 2.0 is THE Revolution many of us were waiting for, just watch Scott Forestall, VP iPhone Software, demonstrating one of the most exciting new features of the platform, based on the built-in 3D-accelerometer : undo a photo edition by... shaking the iPhone (demo starts at 39:30).

After seeing this, you'll get a better picture of Apple' s Hardware roadmap : the next gen iMac will be multi-touch based. Then, you'll agree with Elgan : the iPhone will change the PC world, forever.

Texas university to give Apple iPhone or iPod Touch to all incoming freshmen

Read on MacDailyNews :

"An Apple iPhone or iPod Touch will become a central part of Abilene Christian University's innovative learning experience this fall when all freshmen are provided one of these converged media devices, said Phil Schubert, ACU executive vice president.

At ACU - the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class - freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts."

More on this initiative here
Full description of the project by the ACU here.

It's About Small Teams Within Large Companies Making Big Impact

[updated 10:06PM]
Reading Robert Scoble' s latest post, on how small teams can make a big difference within large companies, I thought about... the Agilent Mini-OTDR. This little box, which is not as sexy as the iPhone of course, was the GameBoy of his kind at its release back in 1996.

To make it short, this product was a breakthrough-paradigm shifting optical tester, inventing a brand new category - the so-called handhelds - for a brand new type of end-users : the fiber optics installers. Almost 12 years after its release, the Agilent Mini-OTDR is still the reference, as the two main competitors JDSU and EXFO (ever heard of those names ? ;-) even do copy & paste - including the naming system.
What's the link with Scoble' s post ? Small teams. The Mini-OTDR has been defined, designed, and engineered by a 6-people team, within the HP Optical Communications Division group (aka Agilent Photonic Test Division or something like that as of today). Take Scoble' s text, replace "Microsoft" by "HP", "Yahoo" by "EXFO" and you get the same picture.

Who said "Less Is More" ?...

post-scriptum : the hands carrying the Mini belong to my dear buddy Dieter *John* Gustedt, the guy who made the Agilent Modular Network Tester real.

plusmo : Plus For Your Mobile Life

Just discovered a new cool stuff this morning, thanks to an unknown reader of FiberGeneration : plusmo.
Here' s the brief review by Jessica Dolcourt for Webware back in September 2007 :

"Plusmo's mobile widgets application is a cool way to read RSS feeds on your cell phone or PDA, but that's not the only reason it was named a finalist on the Webware 100 list.
In true Webware fashion, Plusmo's site offers hands-on excitement--the chance to publish and share widget mash-ups and create an iPhone widget from templates. Users can also make personal blogs available as a Plusmo widget, and can install a browser bookmarklet or Yahoo plug-in to snag feeds while they surf."

Full article here.
plusmo website here.

Radionomy : The WebRadio Is Born

Belgian startup Radionomy has been officialy launched yesterday night in Paris, from the Eiffel Tower (where the very first TV signal has been broadcasted some decades ago).
According to the Radionomy folks, the concept is pretty simple :

With Radionomy, everyone is finally going to be able to create their own radio station on the Internet!

It’s easy.
By tapping into the contents of vast music libraries.

By integrating their own musical creations.
By adding their own audio content, sequences, reports and podcasts.

It’s free.
Radionomy will broadcast these radio stations around the world and take care of all costs, including royalties. Radionomy even shares its revenue with radio station creators, based on the size of their audience.

Pretty cool, huh ?

So, we're going to see - er., hear - tons of "Pirate" radio channels, just like in the good old days of Radio Caroline.
Will be interesting to watch the outcomes. How this concept will find users, and how those ones will use it.
What's quite funny to me is the fact that the WebRadio concept emerges AFTER the WebTV stuff, whilst the original technologies were on reverse order : Radio first, then Television.
Also funny to me, the fact that Radionomy launches whilst traditional radios start doing live TV webcasting of their shows and programs.

Conclusion : Convergence is coming fast. Within the next couple of years, we're going to have a brand new "Web" space, where everyone will be able to create, share, and use any kind of content that will be available one way or another on the Net. Exciting.

To subscribe to the Radionomy Beta Testers Waiting List, follow the link here.

Ed. note : thanks Jean-Michel for the heads up.

Zattoo : Say Hello To The TV Of The 21st Century

I'm currently testing the new Zattoo Beta application. Just blazingly simple.
Says the US startup' website homepage : "Zattoo is live TV on your PC - it's the football game as you chat, the news as you email, and your favorite soap as you pay your bills. Zattoo is also TV when you don't have a TV - it's the channels you want, when you want, where you want.".

Thanks to Zattoo, I'm relieved now : I'll be able to watch Roland Garros and The Tour de France whilst "working" at the office next summer. Pretty cool, huh ?

Seriously speaking, Zattoo is the application lots of us were waiting for since a while : an easy way to watch free TV live channels on our computers.
Now, the question is : how will Zattoo make money, provided that the software is supposed to be free of charge ? The answer may be in the Partners page :

Partners

Zattoo's customers are end users: people who appreciate high-quality, quick-start, long-play video from multiple channels available on one browser. Broadcasters and advertisers are our business partners.
Broadcasters

The ability of broadcasters to reach large audiences via the Internet has until now been limited by the unfavorable economics of Unicast, whereby for each additional audience member a broadcaster has had to incur additional cost. Zattoo solves this problem with our peer-to-peer distribution architecture, which allows broadcasters to reach ten times the audience with no additional infrastructure investment. For the cost of serving 10,000 users with Unicast, broadcasters can now serve 100,000 users with Zattoo.
Zattoo provides broadcasters with compelling competitive advantages beyond reducing operating cost. Zattoo gives broadcasters the technology to deliver streaming with vastly increased quality, reliability and unmatched video smoothness. Furthermore, Zattoo enriches the user experience by integrating compelling multimedia elements, thus making the Zattoo experience stickier than traditional TV.

Contact: Niklas Brambring, Content Acquisition Manager (nick@zattoo.com)
Advertisers

Zattoo enables advertisers to leverage the most successful web-based advertising methods in combination with the best attributes of broadcast television "spots" by supporting banner ads, targeted text ads and video clips. Advertisers understand the inherent strengths and value propositions of each method and can make an educated investment to reach specific audiences. Furthermore, advertisements can be sourced from ad specialists and integrated without modification, leveraging de facto industry standards.

So, correct me if I'm wrong : Zattoo gets (or will get) revenues from both the channels broadcasters and the advertisers. I understand the earlier, but don't get the later one yet : does that mean we will experience complementary ads during the live program ? Such as embedded contextual advertising, for instance.
Think about the combination of a live transcription system (used in live captionning) together with customized/localized advertising content : you're watching the latest '24' episode (well, once the writers' s strike will be over ;-), Jack Bauer is driving the brand new Ford SUV, and boom, you see a beautiful ad banner urging you to call your local Ford dealer... That is the power of TV thru Internet : UCC "User Customized Content", as opposed to the UGC User Generated Content.

The question is : could Zattoo be the Next Big Thing ? When it's about watching live TV on a PC, probably yes. Is that what the people want (watching live TV on a PC), I don't know. On the one hand, some want a PC on their TV, on the other hand some want TV on their PC. The right answer is called something like "convergence", isn't ?
So, what do I Average Joe want ? I want Zattoo on the iPhone. I have VOD already (iTunes, YouTube), now I'd like to get live streaming too. Because I'd like to be able to watch Roland Garros live whilst Im' sitting in a High-Speed Train.

Last thing on Zattoo before a more deeper review some time later : the folks there seem to care about their users. As an example, I've received the invitation to download the beta in french, although the company is based in the US (as far as I understood on the 'About' page). The set-up is quite fast and simple too. Pretty neat stuff, Folks ! Keep going ;-)

To visit Zattoo : here.

That's why I keep thinking the iPhone IS Testing 2.0

See here.
And apply the same concept to testing devices or networks. You'll get the idea. Granted.

The Magic Of The iPhone (and its ecosystem)

Since I bought the iPhone two weeks ago, people don't stop asking me questions about it. To make it short, they all go "wow, unbelievable !" first, then they ask me the question about the pricing : "how much is it ?". I then demonstrate the key features, i.e. the phone, the iPod, the web browser, the email, the camera, playing with the MultiTouch UI. Most of the time, this short demo is enough to convince the guy that 399€ is a fair price for such a jewel.

However, sometimes the guy goes "well, you may need it for business to spend so much money". I totally agree. The iPhone is THE perfect tool for new innovative businesses. Twice over the last week, I've been showing the iPhone to prospects - read : target customers for the consulting & training business I'm setting up. I simply explained which kind of new support and assistance services the iPhone could enable (for instance, how YouTube can be used for online training). Each time, I got the same reaction : "give it to our people, and you'll get the business with us".

Beyond that kind of new services based on existing/simple/standard features of the iPhone, you can create new ways of dealing with a problem, means you can create new/innovative solutions for your customers based on the iPhone. Watch this, and you'll get the picture.

This Is Not The Photonics I Want At Home

I dream of having a couple of lasers * at home, but not this kind.

* Dear Santa Claus : here's what I'd love to get for XMas : the real Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, plus a Fiber-To-The-Home broadband connection. Make those dreams come true, and I'll be yours forever ;-)

That's Why Leopard Rocks

Here's the snapshot of the Dashboard' widgets that I've just created a couple of minutes ago, thanks to Safari 3.

The story : with the Ski season opening this week-end, I like to watch my favorite ski resorts's webcams at least twice a day, so I can better plan my journeys on their slopes. Problem : there are three domains in the Vosges, plus two in the Alpes : the one 'close' to my office in Lyon, plus the one where we're going to spend a week next March. That is : five different websites, with at least one webcam stream each. Let those streams open in your favorite web browser all day long, and you're going to face some memory issues after a while. As I want a quick & easy access to the webcams, launching a tab or a window each time I want to watch them is not an option.

Solution : Apple' s new Dashboard, which comes with MacOS X 10.5 'Leopard'. Open the resorts' s websites in Safari, go to their respective webcams page, and simply grab the stream with the embedded widget maker. Boom : in less than 30 seconds, you've got your favorite streams in the form of simple, easy to access widgets. Now, I just move the cursor to the appropriate hot corner of my display, and boom, I get the images, live. Plus the snow reports.

Couldn't be more easy, right ?

post-scriptum : I'll do the same operation with my PC, you know, this brand new Dell Latitude which comes with no WiFi and no Bluetooth. I think I'm going to enjoy my Mac even more ;-)

PR & Marcom @ The Web 2.0 Age

Creating a new business from (almost) scratch is fun. Defining the marcom plan is even more fun those days, thanks to the Web 2.0. See why and how in this cool video from the Common Craft folks for the PRWeb online news service.

Twittervision and Twittermap : two of the greatest Web 2.0 apps for Testing 2.0

I've been playing a bit with Twitter' mashup apps during lunch break : Twittervision and Twittermap. Just amazingly simple tools for displaying any geotagged data on a map.
For those of you who ignore what Twitter is, read this recent post by Guy Kawasaki and follow its links.

post-scriptum : as I'm going to be busier (if running at 120% is possible ;-) over the next couple of months, I'll post more twitters here, thanks to Twitter's SMS feature. Watch the left side bar for updates...

PAL-V : A Dream Made Real ?

   

A new tricycle of some sort ? Quite not. Check this out.

Thanks Andrew for the heads-up.

Wikis For Dummies (Ooops : For The Rest Of Us ;-)

During a recent business meeting, I had to explain what's a wiki to novices. I did it in 30 seconds. Here is a more detailled explanation, yet even more entertaining and efficient.

 

Common Craft website here, blog there. The LeFever family does an outstanding job creating and producing fantastic educational videos of all sorts. Less Is More, once again.

BroadBand Business Models 2.0

UK-based Telco 2.0 is running a market survey on the future business models in the Broadband arena. To participate, click here.
My take : IP, FTTx, and Web 2.0 are going to change the whole Telecoms landscape, with Telcos and ISPs and others to make money on services rather than on infrastructure.

Thanks Benoit for the heads up.

Thinking Out Of The Box

The image I've used in the former post is grabbed from the famous yet extraordinary Web Trend Map of iA.
See the clickable version (warning : it don't work under Opera 9) here - SnapShots at its best.
To understand why thinking out of the box often leads to outstanding outcomes, read this excerpt from the original announcement by Oliver Reichenstein of Information Architects :

Less Japanese Jokes

There are less insider jokes about the different stations and more consistency within the connections and the neighborhood of the different sites. People who know Tokyo will still find lots of little hints and sarcastic comments hidden in there.

1. Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out (Golden Gaya).
2. Youtube has conquered Shibuya.
3. Microsoft has moved to Ikebukuro, if you know what I mean.
4. Yahoo is in Ueno, a nice place but nothing going on there.
5. Wikipedia now is in Shimbashi, the place for the square and hard-headed Salaryman, like the Wikipedia watchdogs.
6. The Chinese line runs parallel to the “share line” which starts with the main pirates…
7. Paper info designer Tufte is right below the Federated Media, right before joining with the interactive information design circle in a 90 degree angle.
8. “You” are in the Emperor’s palace, in the center of the network.

More Revealing Coincidences

1. The main Japanese sites are all on the money line. I never notice before, but most big Japanese sites are financially successful.
2. The northern part of the Yamanote line (”main sites”) is a boring unknown territory (just as in real Tokyo).
3. Ze Frank ended up close to the German carousel.
4. iA ended up close to the pirates.
5. Adobe moved from Ginza (high class) to Tokyo station (anonymous, lots of money there), which is pointing at the fact that they continue to move towards the center of gravity without being too loud about it.
6. Skype has conquered a place that doesn’t exist.

Insider Circle and Your Palace

There is a new insider circle with the tech trend scouts, the tech bloggers and You, occupying the Emperor’s palace.

Data Visualization For Open-Minds

   

Thanks to Master Guy Kawazaki (and the Magic of the Blogosphere), I discovered the recently published article in Smashing Magazine : Data Visualization: Modern Approaches. For all of you manipulating data to be presented to end-users, customers, or managers, this article (and the related comments, full of links too) is a must-read. It's a given that the web sites and tools mentionned are must-bookmark ;-)

Fiber in Europe : Disruption Full Speed Ahead

A new business model is making its debuts in the Fiber-To-The-Home market. In " Europe Fiber futures: 40 Gbps to offices & 100 Mbps to homes ", VON' European Editor  Bob Emmerson explains what a Nordic telco, Lyse Tele, is currently doing with its customers. The real innovation : subscribers can lay the last meters themselves, in order to reduce the costs.
IMHO, this is the very first step towards a " Network 2.0 " approach, where the end-users will build their access networks according to their own needs. The technology is there, the tools are there.
Imagine the fiber network in your neighborhood as a giant  loop, open, always on, delivering enough bandwidth for the common applications and services - say 100Mbps -, onto which you can plug your terminal at will.
We just have to do it (I will come back on that one later).

The parent company of Lyse Tele is a utility that had and still has a core asset: an established billing relationship with millions of electricity users. In April 2002, they formed a subsidiary to enter the IPTV arena, so while the activity was brand new, the name was not. Moreover, this was a company that the market could trust, and that is something technology cannot create.

The company started with a clean sheet of paper. There were no legacy investments or services to protect. But to compete, they needed a visionary strategy and an offer that was not merely different but radically different. All service providers employ the same technologies, so the radically different visionary strategy and offer had to come by way of marketing.

Selling Before Building

Their go-to-market strategy is alarmingly simple: before you go anywhere, make sure there is a market. They make sure by creating it.
They could not realize differentiation over cable or copper. It had to be fiber. To justify the investment, the company set up meetings in the neighborhood. They provided a supervised play area for children, coffee, mineral water, and a presentation.

The basic pitch is also simple. The company will lay fiber to your home, and you get 100 Mbps IP access (minimum), IPTV and triple play services, and because the bandwidth is symmetric, you can also participate in a community of interest groups. But all of this can happen only after enough households sign up. Participants can sign up at the meeting or later, and they are encouraged to spread the message if they want the service.

It works. To keep costs down, subscribers can lay the last part of the network themselves. There’s a do-it-yourself kit, and they save €500 (US$630). Around 80% do the physical, self-provisioning part themselves.
Apart from saving money, subscribers who lay the fiber themselves feel that they own that part of the infrastructure. VoIP calls made within the broadband network are free. This part of the strategy minimizes churn, as does the decision to deploy symmetric access to facilitate the development of community services. It works. Upstream traffic exceeds downstream.

Okay, that was a fake. Unfortunately.

All right, I have to admit it : this post "Paris Finally Gets Free fiber -- But Not The Kind You're Thinking"  is a fake.
Nicos Sarkolazy doesn't exist, neither this Fiber 2.0 startup (at least, as far as I know ;-) and his founder Mark Billaud.

This post was a proof of concept : to show that shifting the paradigm can help communities to deploy their own broadband/fiber networks.
I simply took the recent article written by Terrence Russell for Wired, and changed the names and locations.

Now, we might do our best to make it real ;-)

post-scriptum, about the names : it's a reference to a recent post from Jean-Michel Billaut (link in french), who wrote an open letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, urging him to push on the deployment of FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home access, for every French Citizen to get universal broadband access.

Paris Finally Gets Free fiber -- But Not The Kind You're Thinking

Exclusive report from fellow journalist & columnist Nicos Sarkolasy. [with typo corrected]

Between the nationwide decline explosion of municipal fiber projects and the stall huge perspective in Paris's FT fiber plans, it's not shocking to hear that other companies are coming up with their own homegrown solutions for the tech savvy city. The one that's been creating the most buzz in France over the last couple of days has been Fiber 2.0, with its audacious pledge to "free the broadband". With funding from Google and Sequoia Capital, the Biarritz, Euskadi-based company has recently announced its plans to expand its free coverage from the two Paris neighborhoods it currently blankets to an additional six communities within the city.

But here's the rub--even though Fiber 2.0 has been generous enough to donate the equipment, the deployment of the network relies heavily on volunteers. Although the company has seen success in providing free fiber in roughly 25 countries around the world, I wasn't sure how the service could become a viable way to connect with its sub-municipal scale and reliance on the generous and willing. To get the story straight, I had a brief chat with Fiber 2.0 CEO and Co-founder, Mark F. Billaud.

"We don't think of ourselves as being in competition with the FT deal," Billaud clarified during our phone conversation. "In many ways we serve a different market. We're not trying to be the backbone coverage for emergency services like police and fire departments, and that's a big part of what France Telecom and Orange are trying to do in Paris."

Ironically, I think Billaud touched on an important point while describing the role of Fiber 2.0's free service in a city setting. The availability of using the Web 2.0 and the ability to watch HD-TV on the go is what most of us associate with municipal fiber, but the truth is there's a much more complex element involved when the service is meant to become part of a city's infrastructure. Building out a speedy and adequately blanketed fiber network is not only expensive, but also a logistical nightmare when it comes to guaranteeing near flawless service for the public safety sector. Rather than trying to provide a de facto solution for all situations, Fiber 2.0's founders made the wise decision of focusing on enabling a community to buildout its own network for casual use.

There was still one thing that was bothering me--what's with the whole volunteer element? "Most of the people who contact us about volunteering are interested in doing their part by putting a booster on their windowsill," Billaud explained. "But we still encounter a fair share of people that are actually interested in sharing some of their unused bandwidth to provide connectivity for the community."

If the citizens of Paris can methodically build their own patchwork network, I'm left to wonder who really merits from the FT deal. But does Fiber 2.0 really have what it takes to even knockout a lot of the floundering muni-fiber projects out there? With all the bureaucratic red tape surrounding most muni projects it's possible, but the company would need a lot of visibility and a continuous supply of altruistic community to pull it off. Until progress is made with FT, or we see the rollout of WiMax/Xohm, I'm willing to give it a shot. It's not like it's going to cost me anything...

Netflix: How to build a killer community

It's Crossing The Chasm at the Web 2.0 Age. Read Webware' Harrison Hoffman report here.

The Jump Into The CyberSpace Made Real

Star Wars fans, you (and me) have dreamed of it since 30 years now. Today, thanks to Australia-based startup Scouta, your dreams come true. Watch here.

Testing Fibers The Web 2.0 Way

Got to tell you : Testing 2.0 becomes real. Some much fun with all the Web 2.0 apps out there. Web-apps, not Client-apps, that's the key. Stay tuned, more to come next week.

Top-Ten Designs By Raymond Loewy

The post "Top-Ten Quotes by Raymond Loewy" becoming more and more popular (thanks to Google and PresentationZen :-), here is a new tribute to Loewy's extraordinary vision. Just a brief overview of the Father of Industrial Design' taste for Beauty.

For more information, visit the Official Web Site of Raymond Loewy here, Loewy Design here, Loewy Group here, and the Raymond Loewy Foundation here.

The Big Biz 3.0 Picture

Because everything * Web 2.0 For The Customer * is in there, here is Patricia Seybold' s Biz 3.0 again.
There is no priority list, as every single 'principle' is as critical as the others. Keep in mind : customer relationships is a constant, open loop.

   

The Next Big One More Thing

According to Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer at yesterday's financial earnings report, " there will be a product transition [he] can't get into."
So, the Mac-iPod-iPhone maker is up to something. My take is that the actual iPhone is the first item of a brand new product line, aimed at mobile communications. Obviously, I'm not the only one on that ;-)

About Web 2.0 and Telecoms

Web 2.0 in 2007, a (quite old) funny note from Ray Redactophobia Scott Raynovich, Editor 2.0 (sic), Light Reading. So true.

Telcos Face a Web 2.0 Identity Crisis : Identity management technology will give telcos a valuable mechanism for customer retention – unless next-gen competitors beat them to it.

Why Telcos Need Web 2.0, the presentation of LightReading' report " Telco Web 2.0 Mashups: A New Blueprint for Service Creation ".

Working On The Next Big Thing ? Watch Your Kids

Some years ago at a Customers Seminar organized by Agilent Technologies, right in the middle of the Bubble tornado, the keynote speech was held by one of the key executives at UK telco BT (sorry, don't remember his name nor his actual job). We were in the early 2000, and the guy was telling us that the next big thing in mobile communications was going to be SMS, MMS, and IM messaging. Heck, the iPhone was still a dream, my Ericsson was featuring a 2-colors 2-lines liquid crystal display (well, you know what I mean), and MySpace was just the name of one of my directories on my PC...
BT found out that teenagers were to be the largest group of cell phones users, spending their time to chat with their friends all day (and night) long.
Almost all of us in the audience were kind of dubitative : no way the kids were to become so IM-addict that they would spend hours typing on their cell phones. Well, six years after, BT was right, and we were wrong.
That's why this article is a must-read for all of us working on changing the World. Its title : "Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead.". Got it, folks ?

About Innovation In Fiber Optics Technology

Japan Telco & R&D leader NTT was the first to come on the market with a new type of fiber aimed at Fiber-To-The-Home easy deployments. That is due to the fact that FTTH roll out started earlier in Japan than in the US. The question is : how about Europe, and France especially ? Local Telcos and ISPs seem not to be concerned by technics, and the local fiber optics industry has been almost wiped out after the crash, back in the early 2000's. So, no industry, no innovation, no innovation, no more industry. Time to do something, Mr President !

Why FTTH helps vendors to innovate

Worldwide leader Corning announced a breakthrough optical fiber technology, performing over 100 times better than standard fibers. The N.Y.-based fiber maker worked closely with Verizon to resolve FTTH installation challenges.

"This is a game-changing technology for telecommunications applications," said Peter F. Volanakis, president and chief operating officer at Corning. "We have developed an optical fiber cable that is as rugged as copper cable but with all of the bandwidth benefits of fiber. By making fundamental changes in the way light travels in the fiber, we were able to create a new optical fiber that is over 100 times more bendable than standard fibers." Corning's newest fiber technology achieves this while maintaining compatibility with industry performance standards, existing manufacturing processes and in