Bab or not to blog?

I love Paris...

2007-01-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-15T14:33:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-01-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

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 :

less than 3 minutes
do not read a paper
adapt the video to the job
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

2007-01-14T04:03:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-11T01:44:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-11T01:18:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-04T08:08:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-01-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to everyone!

One to one : a new concept ?

2006-11-23T03:26:00.000-08:00

Children are taking the power !

2006-11-23T03:12:00.000-08:00

Let's talk Sex in the city

2006-11-23T02:41:00.000-08:00

Discover Little Britain

2006-11-23T02:40:00.000-08:00

For a better english class

2006-11-08T02:01:00.000-08:00

Organize debates, talk-shows about different topics… Compare our points of view in English is a way to let everyone speak. Are Sego e-communication and best e-wishes more efficient than Sarko e-strategy?

Interview each other about our career, will, ambition... We are starting an internship soon, we should interview each other about it from the research to the end.

Invite Net entrepreneurs, actors of emerging and creative digital trends : some people from Second Life, famous bloggers... Maybe film them to put a video podcast of this meeting.

Change the accent... Give me a five !

SHTPP

2006-11-07T03:20:00.000-08:00

SHTTP : Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol was developed by Enterprise Integration Technologies in 1995 to guaranty security for personnal information. It concerns mostly commercial transactions on the Web. This protocol is essential in order to develop business over the Web. Buyers need to trust the media to use it without fear. Ordering a book on Amazon at home still seems dangerous to many people such as my mum.

RSS

2006-11-07T03:04:00.000-08:00

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. RSS is an XML file updated instantly. It easily distributes a list of headlines, updates notices, and gather a wide number of people. RSS feeds are displayed on a web page as a link. It's very useful on the web because we haven't the time to search contents from every source.

Moreover, contents always change. It permits to gather recent information on the same place. Less time to research and more time to read. Easy reading for many communities organized on the Web. My RSS is active which means I can share my updated data with the people who choose to receive my RSS feed on their blog. RSS are now being displayed by search engines such as Yahoo! and Google which propose aggregators of RSS feeds on their home page.

Cyberkill, cyberrob, cybercopy...

2006-10-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

Cybercrime includes every type of criminal activity in which computers or networks are used as a tool, a target, or a place of criminal activity. The most important example concerns intellectual property and copyrights. Peer-to-peer networks permit people to download movies, songs illegally. Spamming, virus are other crimes spread on the Web which are very annoying. It also includes defeating access controls (unauthorized access). Some crimes are facilitated by the use of computers such as child pornography and online gambling.

Victim?
I’m not a victim of cybercrime, I hope not anyway… Ah, yes, actually, I am when I receive a lot of junk mail even if I only should receive mails when I tick “Opt-in”.
To protect myself, I have anti-spyware and I avoid giving any personal data on the Net. And I always use my own computer to consult my bank statements and not another computer even if I have code access.

YouTube

2006-10-26T06:37:00.000-07:00

History

YouTube was founded in february 2005 by three old employees of Pay-Pal, (an e-business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet) : Chad Hurley (chief executive officer, Steve Chen (chief technical officer), and Jawed Karim (Advisor).
The company began in a garage in Menlo Park, California. The initial version launched in 2005 primarily featured videos of Chen’s cat. Online word-of-mouth has first permitted YouTube's growth. The founders had enough creativity to make their project successful. To get their website some buzz, the partners organised a contest that awarded an iPod Nano. This contest generated the traffic YouTube needed and made it one of the fastest-growing sites around.
In October 2006, Google bought YouTube fo 1,65 billions dollars. YouTube kept his name and his 67 employees.

Success recipe?
The key to the success of the platform YouTube is linked with the potential notoriety this site provides to its users. Moreover, this platform is easy to use and quite fast. It also offers a wide choice of video contents. It’s a lot more simple to put a video on the Web with YouTube than with Google Video where you have to download a transfer software, then upload the clip and fill out data about the video, including its title, description and genre. Eventually Google approves or not the clip, which can take a few hours, or a couple of days. On YouTube, users sign in, type in a video's title and description, and upload. The clip goes up instantly. The other difference lays on the community aspect.

Me and YouTube
At the moment, not having Internet at home prevents me from going from sites to sites seeking information and finding funny videos … I’d rather spending hours on Internet instead of watching a crappy movie of TV. YouTube is one of the sites I go to once in a while.

YouTube in the future
We could imagine that YouTube might develop again in the future, making money throw Advertising and then a new small community will emerge criticizing the change of YouTube. For instance, they might add an ad after five minutes of a movie…

Identity theft ? Don't let someone steal your identity, your wife, your kids...

2006-10-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

Identity theft happens when someone uses your personal information without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes.

Minimizing Your Risk

First of all, when you open new accounts, create “uneasy” passwords. Avoid using your mother's name, your birth date, your phone number, or a series of consecutive numbers. If you are a bit paranoid, check the precautions recommended by the US Federal Trade Commissio n such as shred documents and paperwork which contain personal information before you discard them, don't give your personal information unless you know who you are dealing with. That's really helping us. They know about identity theft, don’t they!

Do you speak web English ? Yes, I do.

2006-10-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Evolving on the Internet requires some English knowledge because most of the vocabulary is in English. For any type of activity on the Net, this language is necessary. You want to play poker, you need to know what a club is if you don’t want to loose all your savings.
Learn English is quite easy on the Net because it’s a lot more fun than an English class in high school. For instance, you can make progress in English chatting up a nice australian surfer on an online dating website.

The six keys of Internet practises

2006-10-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Generosity : You need to share your links, data, informations, good music and fun videos... with your contacts. Help each other to make each other better informed, entertained...

Discipline : To be sure to keep your blog looked at by your public, it is necessary to blog new messages regularly. You alsoo need to separate your professionnal links to your friends. Sending a dirty joke to you future employer reduces your credibility in work.
Patience : You need to be patient to reach a certain knowledge of the tools. For instance, it took me ages to download pictures on this blog!

Perseverance : If you use Internet as a lobbying tool, you have to be perseverant which includes sending a lot of mail to every one you know. Mail to spread your propaganda takes maybe a few years to reach their target.
Insight : The good Internet contents are not easy to be found. Plus you need to criticize everything you read if you don't want to follow every weak or dumb ideology spread by dozens of charismatics dummys ont the Net. Be open-minded but aware and ironic.
Comprehension : Please read the sentence above.

Social networks

2006-10-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

Social network is a virtual community which became particularly popular in 2002. There are over 200 social networking sites now. In these communities, some people first send invitations to other members of their own personal networks to join the site. Those sites offer different features such as profiles, links, video…

Virtual communities often create real communities. As an example, MySpace which appeared in 1995, combines offline and online relationships. Some people even find a job on this site.

A key trend: Businesses are increasingly opening up stores on MySpace. Why? It's easy to do and a great to target young people.

DRM

2006-10-20T05:05:00.000-07:00

Digital Right Management is one of the technology used to control access to and usage of digital data (software, music, movies). In the musical field, this system which protects author rights includes special size to encode titles and also rules for software and hardware.

To promote innovation, it’s important to protect author rights. However, abuses of this control exist and are getting more and more important. In the worst future, we could imagine that your music record is only readable 15 times on your cell phone of brand X, without any possibility to download on your pc or you mp3. That’s why a lot of people criticize DRM. Those opponents defend the conception of free software and praise a real share of knowledge. Moreover, it affects more legitimate purchasers of media than pirate media who hack the technology.

Fight for Web neutrality...

2006-10-20T04:09:00.000-07:00

The concept of network neutrality means that everyone has the same level of access to the web and also that all data on the web is treated equally. This point of view is defended by companies like Microsoft and Google. However, recently, many attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access were very criticized in the name of Internet ideals such as freedom. Telecoms companies want to implement a system, where data from companies or institutions able to pay, have more priority than others who are not able to pay. According to Tim Berners-Lee, the British scientist who developed the World Wide Web, if United States agrees for a “two-tier system”, Internet will enter in a “dark period”. Web neutrality is also being defended by many associations, organisations which gather bloggers, businesses and internet users in general. “The SavetheInternet.com Coalition” is an example of association which tries to protect Internet freedom. This coalition uses lobbying among the political powers in

United States

.

According to me, some companies have forgotten the ideologies which lead the creation of the web. Furthermore, they are always interested in the creation of an economic model which makes more money. It’s necessary to have internet users who denounce these abuses.

The Web in the last six months

2006-10-12T02:35:00.000-07:00

The web's evolution is first lead by the creativity and ideals of internet users. We can say that the technological progress combined with the maturity of internet users is structuring the web. Web2.0 is caracterized by this implication of internet users who do not want to be spectators anymore but actors.
More concretly, the development of collaborative platform such as Youtube is getting more and more important, creating a major change on the web. Myspace.com is a an example of a successful "socialisation" website linking people to each other whereas You tube is the most used website for video with a monthly audience of 30.5 millions visitors.

Last but not least, Google, the online search behemoth, agreed Monday to pay $1.65 billion for YouTube. Google is expected to try to make money from YouTube by integrating the site with its search technology and search-based advertising program.

Podcast

2006-10-12T01:45:00.000-07:00

A podcast is a term to describe the technology used to push audio content on websites so people can listen to it on their iPod or on other audio player. The author of a podcast is called a podcaster. The term podcast comes from iPod and broadcasting.
This technology can also be used to push any kind of file, including pictures and videos.

Not surprisingly, musicians and bloggers are prevalent among the early adopters, but mainstream media organizations, including ZDNet are beginning into podcasting as well.

Wikinews is an example of podcast which allows people to report news on different subjects. Its goal according to wikipedia is to "create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events". This is linked with the new ideal that non professional can produce their own content and create a community on the web.

Welcome to an experimental e-culture lesson

2006-10-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog.

In my English e-culture class in the Celsa, we are discussing emerging issues about the uses and developement of the Internet. You can read my opinion, learn stuff in a fun and easy way on this blog. Being totally ignorant about those issues, i jumped into a big bath of weird and complicated word. Follow the bigouden's learning step after step...