I love Paris...

If Paris is the first touristic destination. Its not thanks to the "Parisian courtoisie". Just look at their faces a Monday morning in the metro... If tourists take the metro, queue to get in the RER or go to the Champs Elysees a Saturday afternoon, they might not come back. The Ile de France Region is promoting Paris through a multimedia campaign based on a website c'est so Paris. This website plays with cliches about Parisian. On some postcards, foreign people can learn the French gestures language. With the following one, learn the Bof attitude.

They also created an online game : you send your photos representing the stereotypical Parisian attitude. The best ones can win a week-end in Paris. Billboards and postcards are the offline tools used.

YouTube's personal page

On YouTube, you can create a personal page. On this page, there are many applications, functionalities which makes it quite genius.



Tell the story of your life
Have a personal page on YouTube is like a perso portfolio. A movie of your life with your holidays video, party's and co. The Internet is the place where the world's ego goes.

Interact with a huge community
Comments and ratings permit interaction with the viewers. You can also have discussions through your page. It creates a community of friends, fans with their favorites videos. Then you can subscribe to this personal page. YouTube provides domains for users to create their own channels. Make your own TV program's and share them with your subscribers.

.... and promote yourself
Remember that YouTube has more audience than MTV. Its a very good promotional tool like MySpace. New artists and groups are getting known thanks to those websites. As an example, you can sign up with a musician or comedian account. YouTube gives publicity to the one who want to show their creation.

I am foreseeing the future of the web 2007...

Online video/Second Life/Digital DNA

Online video

Online video has increased in 2006 with the exceptional growth of YouTube. But 2007 will be the year of the rationalization of this market. Google already bought YouTube. But according to some people, 2007 will see the rationalization of the companies sharing this market: Picassa, YouTube, Google Video... Will Goo Tube have a monopoly soon? Moreover, I think ads are gonna be more and more part of those sites.

Virtual world

I also see the hit of Second Life, a three dimensional internet space owned by its citizens. 2 millions of people have already a second life. Second Life already provides employment. People are making money by designing virtual clothes for virtual characters. Isn't it mad? You can buy a fur coat or a Nissan car in this game. The problem is for me that it might dye of its own success : becoming a porn or industrial market.

Read more about this subject in two interesting articles :

• The profits of virtual insanity, The Guardian
• Making a living in second life, Wired News
  

A digital identity

Buying on the Internet, giving advice on products, sharing online DVDs on YouTube, virtual worlds, meeting websites... We leave footprints of our path on the Net thats why its necessary to be cautious. We are not hidden behind our computer, our image of our virtual double needs to be protected. Hobbies, advice and opinion are our digital genes according to Fred Cavazza, a famous blogger.

People don't realize they have a digital DNA which can be very profitable for companies.

Get a job with a Video CV

People are using online video in compelling new ways such as job seekers who post video resumes. Obviously, video resumes offer them a compelling way to make a distinctive impression with potential employers. However, its necessary to follow some rules in order to keep the interest of the viewer and stay in its memory.
Apply the following points :

1. less than 3 minutes
2. do not read a paper
3. adapt the video to the job
4. good quality video

I think that underneath this video, a short presentation of the personn and links to its potential website, blog, wiki and online paper CV. Moreover, give links with the websites of the companies you worked for (Only if they are any good).

Most of the people who use this tool work in media and communication but more and more come from different background. Many companies actually use it too to recruit job seekers. For further information, ckeck out the article Posting your resume on YouTube to stand out from the competition from the online Wall Street Journal.

Lets check the example of Jonathan Caren from Los Angeles, who was looking for a job as a writer's assistant. He posted a two-minute video resume on YouTube and emailed the link, along with an attachment of his paper resume. This video features Mr. Caren, jumping out of bed with a grin on his face and reading over scripts while brushing his teeth. In another scene, he shows off his money-making prowess holding up a bag with a dollar sign. Eventually he received many job offers. He has a YouTube page but his video resume is no longer available. No more need?

Keep it safe

CD’S and DVD’S are a form of backup. They are cheap to buy but to rewrite on them is impossible. It is possible to use rewritable CD’S and DVD’S, but they’re quite expensive for what they are. The second option is a removable hard drive. This is a divice that can be taken anywhere to backup your data.
Third solution : for example a ftp server to back up your files. Its not great though because a lot of space is required sometimes to backup a computer hard-drive. This will probably change in the next few years as technology and avaliability advances.

Removeable media such as DVD’S, CD’S will be obsolete in about five years. This is due to higher bandwidth, i.e. streaming. For example, we are already able to watch a film directly from the Net due to high bandwidth streaming instead of dowloading an entire video file.

Facebook stalking

First let's explane what a face book is. Especially because in France, we don't have this practice developed. It's an online network open to college students in some universities. Students make up their own profiles which include a picture, name, birth date, interests, and classes. They can search for other students at their university or another university. You can add people you know or random people as your "friends." The social networking site Facebook is one of the most popular. But recently, less people have been using it because of critics about the exposition of intimacy. Internet users use Facebook for more than just to meet friends.

Facebook stalking is an investigation method lead by someone who has an obsessional attitude towards someone else. Giving too many information could make students vulnerable to identity theft and stalking. While its supposed to be fun, social networking system for students, it can reveal dangerous. Posting a telephone number or address has to be avoided. Normally its only members of you school who can acces but do you really know them?

Is there not a stalker hidden among your fellows...

Sorry. Paranoïa is getting to me.

Privacy pollution

Privacy pollution refers to every kind of database owned by companies who follow your actions on the net and all the web content you produce. Qualified database represent a huge source of profit for business. But a lack of freedom for you. Because database are being sold by a company to another one... You might ignore how some companies you've never heard about before get hold of their information. So an advice: be careful. You need to avoid to share personal information online if you don't want to be annoyed with spaming, newsletters, tracking...

Take the example of the online lottery, Bananalotto. You think its just an online lottery and the economic model is like a normal lottery. But this website belongs to a marketing company Netarget. Its profits are made by selling the information concerning the players, with a file of 1,2 million persons. According to Christophe Cousin, the CEO, it makes 2/3 of the business turn over.

CMS

Thanks CMS

Web content management system makes the things easy for me. Most of the time anyway.

CMS facilitates document control, auditing, editing, and timeline management.
It helps for collaborative creation of documents. As an example, the wiki we've done is a type of CMS.

For getting published in no time
Whereas before, the time and space between the author and the reader were quite large, nowadays, there is not such a big gap. We're connected in real time. Cms also influences the time between the author and the publishing of his creation.

But give me more freedom, please...
Even if it gives the chance to neophytes like me to create content on the Net, it can also be very annoying. For example, it still takes me ages to get familiar with certains practises like uploading files which are not on the web. Plus, there is not enough choices, it's pretty hard to be creative and different when every user of Blogger has the same templates and patterns proposed.

Anyway, if you spend time and work hard and especially if you get to know the basic of html, its still possible to be a Net creator.

The bigouden's migration

The story takes place by a cliff in Brittany. As night falls, Bigouden women come together to take part in a mysterious ritual. The pancake dance begins.
Discover the migration of the bigouden.
A must see!

Happy new year to everyone!