Robert Scoble does it again : an interesting perspective on the real means of the famous yet lovely Twitter.
Ed. note : a picture attached to a RSS feed may be a good thing. The same picture attached to every single feed is kind of, hum, useless.
Glad to see that some readers are using the Fleck function on the left hand side bar.
I hope you guys make the best out of it.
I'm pleased to announce the release of my new weblog : " Fiber On Demand ".
Fiber On Demand displays all videos related to the FTTH Fiber To The Home technology available on the Net.
The first version, aka "beta" as usual, do aggregate content from YouTube and GoogleVideo. The actual query looks for all the files tagged "FTTH", without any further operation but filtering non-unique items, the results being combined into one single RSS feed.
To create Fiber On Demand "Beta", I've used only two tools, beside the TypePad platform of course : Yahoo!Pipes and Feed2JS. Total time spent to put together the actual version : less than 60 minutes, including 10 minutes to build and test the pipe, 20 minutes to test several options to display the RSS feed on a TypePad' weblog, and 20 minutes to create the current design of Fiber On Demand.
To get started, here is a comprehensive list of useful ressources :
- Yahoo!Pipes Blog
- Some Template Tips & Tricks blog
- 5 cool ways to use Yahoo!Pipes
- Yahoo! Pipes: Unlocking the Data Web by Jeremy Zawodny
My "FTTH_videos" pipe is available here. Developed from scratch - means it's not a clone of an existing pipe. Just to prove how easy it is to build your own app, even if you haven't put your hands on C++ since years (myself : was in the mid 90's, when I were a registered NeXT Developer ;-)
The next revision of Fiber On Demand will : a) exclude french-speaking videos, b) sort the videos by location.
Also, I'll do my best to get embedded YouTube clips instead of vignettes.
Last but not least, I'm preparing another video blog, this one aimed at education on fiber optics technology. Stay tuned ;-)
post-scriptum : to go to Fiber On Demand, click on the link under "Blogging On Fibergeneration" in the right hand' sidebar.
UPDATE Aug. 27, 2007 : I will publish the step-by-step process in a future post (read : soon).
Wow ! FiberGeneration got 350+ unique visitors yesterday. The all-time record, for the time being. I wish Skype to be down more often ;-)
Seriously speaking, now that this blog has been exposed to more potential readers than ever, I've got to deliver a better content to keep some of them on board and from there let the snow ball effect do his job...
* The photography of the day is the ranking of this blog on Technorati, after 10+ months of existence. Goal : reach a 5-digits rank within the next 12 months.
Most of you may already know the fantastic (hey, I'm speaking plain old English now ;-) weblog of the brilliant (see ?) Fake Steve Jobs, aka Daniel Lyons, supposedly technology writer for Forbes. Today, I discovered another *must-read* online journal, by Julia O'Brien. Julia is a CIA agent, based in Washington DC.
Hint : she writes her articles in a wonderful french language which most of the french bloggers should learn ;-)
That is the question I'm asking myself since a while. Actually, since I couldn't find the time to write down some in-depth reviews of the numerous Web 2.0 tools and apps I'm currently testing in regards of the Testing 2.0 project, or comment the way French President Nicolas Sarkozy does Sun Tzu per the book (in french), or explain why Fiber-To-The-Home helps going Carbon Neutral.
Today being a Celebration Day for me and lots of other human beings on Earth, it's a perfect day for a new start. Hence my decision to blog each and every day (well, as long as I'll get access to the Web), publishing short posts like many others do with great success. Not that I'm looking for success - at least not for this blog (anyone willing to participate to Testing 2.0 : please don't hesitate to call) - but I realize that " Less is More " also can apply to blogging : short notes posted on the go finally create a coherent way to let your message spread the World - I mean, the Blogosphere.
See you soon, on Twitter then ;-)
Analyzing FiberGeneration' visitors stats is always a delight to me. On top of the normal *readership feedback gathering* stuff, I travel the World On The Seven Seas in the blink of an eye, for free.
Here are the Sitemeter stats as of this afternoon 1:30PM CET, for the last 20 visitors. I have to admit that I do prefer the table version rather than the graphic (i.e. the map) one : discovering new cities, new countries, by reading the names is just a wonderful feeling. How about you ?
Just a few hours after I posted the short notice about the issue * with the new SnapShot feature, I received a comment from Erik Wingren of Snap.com. Erik gave me a few hints, which appeared to be the right ones to solve the problem.
Erik' s quick reaction is a perfect example of a customer-focused attitude. Being currently involved with two Web 2.0 startups, I wish we can provide such of attention to our own customers and users right from the very beginning of our operations.
Actually, I am either a regular user or a beta tester at lots of new firms here and there on the Net. Honnestly, I'm quite disappointed by the lack of attention from the majority of the France-based Web 2.0 startups. No wonder why we are always considered as arrogant people...
On the other side of the spectrum, I'm always delighted by the responsivness of the young US firms. Seems that a large bunch of American Web 2.0 entrepreneurs have learned Peter Drucker at high-school. Or maybe they read Guy Kawasaki' s " The Art of Bootstrapping " !
* : most probably, the issue came from wrong settings sent by my browser - Opera 9.20 for Mac, still the best user-experience. As I did the update just before heading for a meeting in Paris, the conclusion is the same as usual : never upgrade your system when you're in a hurry !
The Blogosphere has been whirling quite fast last month : Kathy Sierra, a programming instructor, game developer, co-author of the Head First series of books on computer programming, and respected blogger had to face anonymous death threats, forcing her to cancel her speech at the O'Reilly Media's ETech conference back in late March. Kathy Sierra explained her decision, detailing the threats, on her blog Creating Passionate Users .
I let other bloggers comment about this story. Fact is that CPU is one of my very favorite webblogs, that I read almost every day, for it's full of really great insights for marketing & business development.
Also, note the always crisp & clear illustrations, should it be photos, diagrams or drawings. Kathy Sierra knows what communication means (well, it's the minimum for an instructor and author). See " My Favorite Graphs... and the future " : Sierra' s own favorite pictures from her CPU blog.
Here are my Top-Ten CPU * articles - based on the ' Past favorites ' list displayed on the front page, because there are so many excellent posts that the choice was difficult to me : better build the top-ten list from a already shortened list.
Last week, I met with the founder of a WebTV startup here in France. During our discussion, the beta test issue came out : she was planning a 2-weeks beta phase, during which a dozen of selected target customers would have access to the WebTV website. And that was pretty it.
Of course, I did my best to convince her to change her mind, and go for a longer test period, to be offered to a larger audience. Here are my arguments :
For all those reasons, I suggested to launch as soon as possible, in beta mode, for 6 months, and worldwide. Keep your eyes open : there might be an eye-catching WebTV near you soon ;-)
I have registered FiberGeneration on SiteMeter on January 27th this year, means roughly a month ago.
Here is the traffic report as of today :
Visits :
Total 312
Average per Day 16
Average Visit Length 2:21
This Week 110
Page Views :
Total 436
Average per Day 23
Average per Visit 15
This Week 160
I don't know yet where this goes, however I can tell that the traffic jumps when I publish a post with a trackback to a prominent blog or when I post something with the magic keywords : " Steve Jobs " ;-)
As I a pretend to be a smart/creative/efficient (please add your own adjective ;-) Product Marketing guy, I am gathering data for the SWOT analysis of FiberGeneration and its next major revision - the version 2.0 (hey, everything is " 2.0 " those days ;-) is on the roadmap, scheduled Q2 '07 !
According to the ' fibergeneration.com ' product plan, I have started publicizing this blog a couple of months ago. No innovation here, I am using proven tips & tricks of long time bloggers : do comments on others' s blogs, trackback to relevant posts on others' s blogs, insert the URL email' s signature, tell people about my blog during informal discussions, etc. I tell you : it works. That is the beauty of the Web 2.0 : it let the World know about you in the blink of an eye.
Here is the latest mapping of the visitors, as per ClustrMaps this morning. As you may notice, there are people (and computers ;-) from everywhere but Latin America, Africa, and Far East.
Several folks told me that fibergeneration.com is not accessible from China (maybe TypePad is blocked - I haven't checked the status of blogging in China so far).
So, publicizing my blog in the Far East is a dead end. Therefore, I will focus on Latin America and Africa from now on. Of course, I'll continue to concentrate my efforts on United States - well, you know, I'd love to get a Green Card someday ;-)
ps : I couldn't find any blog' post where I could send a trackback with this entry !
Thanks to Garr Reynolds and his latest post in his highly recommended blog 'Presentation Zen', I found this video on YouTube. It is absolute fun. And a perfect example of efficient viral marketing. More of the marvelous Christine here here. Enjoy the ride ;-)
Monday is going to be my ' blogging day '. Why the Monday ? Because on the mondays, you can't pick up the phone and call your prospects or clients. Monday is the back-from-the-week-end day, where people still have part of their brain connected to those wonderful/restful/delightful days when they were * off *. Monday is also the back-to-business-as-usual day, where people spend most of the day checking emails and voicemails, reading the latest company's news, preparing the weekly briefing (shall you be an R&D engineer or a Sales man working at a 20+ people firm, you know what I mean), etc. In summary, I never call clients and prospects on the Monday because nobody will listen. By chance, they don't call on me neither (I mean, on Mondays ;-)
Better make the best use of the day, to do things that can't afford interruptions. Blogging is one. So, let's blog !
Speaking of interruptions, this recent post by Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users is worth reading. It's all about the impact of the Web 2.0 on people' s daily life. Which turns out to become purely an StayAlwaysOnline life. The last avatar of this scarring trend : TwiterCurve. You've got to see it to believe it : members tell the World what they are doing at the very moment they are posting, anwsering the simple question : " what are you doing now ? "... It reminds me the days of the (first ?) Bubble, when the whole Telecoms industry was a planet by itself, where vendors were selling to their customers who were also their own vendors, without any link to the Outside World (the rest of us). At Telecom Geneva in 1999, I was exhibitor with HP/Agilent Technologies. During a morning when I was not on booth duty, I took the opportunity to visit the show. It was a real shock for me : 80% of the whole exhibition was made of vendors selling to the other exhibitors - in brief : vendors selling to their vendors. A pure vicious circle. No one was addressing the Real World : us, as consumers.
Today, I wonder if the Web 2.0 thing as a whole is not turning out to be a new Bubble : who cares about what I am doing right now, but myself or my wife ?...
Among the handfull Web 2.0 startups that I am currently watching, for what they can bring as new applications or ways of doing business in the Telecoms world, there is Plazes. The Plazes website automatically detects your location and connects you to people and places nearby. It can also be told to remember the locations you visit so you can review your travels. Plazes lets you share your current location with your IM client such as Skype, your blog, or any other application thru third-parties APIs. A nice tool for frequent travellers, and perhaps a lot more.
This afternoon, I have spent almost one hour trying to upload the eight locations corresponding to my actual clients and partners across the planet. No chance ! Everytime I want to add a new location, Plazes considers it as my actual one, deleting the previous. Either there is something I didn't catch about the way to do that simple job, either the terminology " beta " is pretty accurate here ;-) As my former boss and still friend was used to say : I will do better tomorrow !
Among the Bubble-like number of Web 2.0 start-up companies burgeoning every week, Slideshare is worth the try. The YouTube for PowerPoint, Slideshare allows users to share their presentations. At the moment, no privacy : every single uploaded file is public, so beware when considering using Slideshare for your business. On the other hand, it could be a nice way to make the World know about your job...
Of course, as on the other file sharing websites - Flickr, YouTube, etc - there is a lot of crap stuff done by supposed-to-be-the-next-new-economy-icon. However, many established companies and startups are using Slideshare to publish their business-oriented ppt.
A pretty nice example here...
Oh, by the way : Slideshare is also a wonderful tool to spot people creating their prezos with MS PowerPoint and those playing with Keynote...
The readers of this beta version of my blog may have noticed a change in its overall design. The first version was using the pre-defined "Becket" theme 
, just because I love dark/black themes - maybe my Zen side.
After reading the comments on a post about readability of dark themes last week on the famous Signal vs. Noise blog, I decided to switch to a more common yet popular light theme. Black on white is less eye-tiring than white on black for you readers.
That is a given, but I totally forgot it when I started this blog at first place. Hence the crucial importance of * customers feedback * when designing a new product ;-)
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