“Avec 3615 Royal, la démocratie devient vraiment participative”, lance Ségolène Royal devant les journalistes réunis pour l’occasion. “Le développement du Minitel a bouleversé notre manière de communiquer”, continue l’ex-candidate à la présidentielle. “Il fallait que le politique s’adapte aux nouvelles donnes de notre société.”

Après le lancement de son site internet desirsdavenir.org, qui avait remué le monde du Web 2.0, “Ségolène Royal fait très fort”, commente Pierre Dommel, réparateur de lunettes, sur sa page twitter, qu’il actualise de n’importe où avec son iPhone. “De chez moi, je peux me connecter sur le 3615 Royal, payer 9,90€ la minute, et tout connaître du programme de Ségolène Royal, le tout en noir et blanc”, poursuit-il, tout en téléchargeant un film sur le baladeur-téléphone-appareil photo-PDA-GPS d’Apple.

“Pour la première fois, la politique est en avance sur la technologie”, fait remarquer Sergey Brin, co-fondateur de Google, une start-up californienne proposant un service de recherche, une carte de tous les points d’intérêts du monde, une bibliothèque “online” visant à offrir tous ce qui a été écrit sur Terre, un système d’exploitation pour terminaux mobiles, et quelques autres services (www.google.com). “J’ai même entendu dire que les minitelnautes pourront laisser des commentaires de 45 caractères. Mieux que twitter!” s’exclame-t-il. “La France coiffe vraiment la Silicon Valley au poteau, avec ce coup-là”, conclue-t-il, avant de retourner aux affaires de sa petite entreprise, qui s’occupe d’organiser l’information du monde.

Ségolène Royal a vu son nombre de fans sur facebook tripler depuis cette annonce. Son “wall” déborde de messages d’encouragement. “Le pays des Lumières nous donne encore des leçons”, écrit Indira Pahadur Shastri depuis son Blackberry à Bombay. “Dommage que nous n’ayons pas le Minitel en Inde”.

D’aucun disent que la présidente du conseil général de Poitou-Charentes ne s’arrêtera pas là. On raconte qu’elle prévoit d’envoyer tous les mois dans chaque quartier, dans chaque village, un orateur qui ameuterait le peuple tambour battant – littéralement – avant de déclamer les propositions de la dirigeante socialiste. Nicolas Sarkozy a du souci à se faire.

A friend that I knew in my Silicon Valley days forwarded me this article from the Wall Street Journal, “The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age”, written by Max Colchester.  She added no comment except  ; – ))  and I can understand why.

The article relates how France’s General Commission of Terminology and Neology — a 17-member group of professors, linguists, scientists and a former ambassador, determine how to translate English technology terms into French equivalents.

Mr. Colchester wryly observes: “Keeping the French language relevant isn’t easy in the Internet age. For years, French bureaucrats have worked hard to keep French up to date by diligently coming up with equivalents for English terms. A “start-up” company is referred to as “jeune pousse,” or “young shoot” (the term pousse is used for vegetable sprouts), while the World Wide Web is translated as “toile d’araignée mondiale” (literally, global spider web).”

The WSJ article continues: “Before a word such as “cloud computing” or “podcasting” (“diffusion pour baladeur”) receives a certified French equivalent, it needs to be approved by three organizations and get a government minister’s seal of approval, according to rules laid out by the state’s General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France. The process can be a linguistic odyssey taking years.

“Rigor cannot be compromised,” said Xavier North, the 57-year-old civil servant who heads the General Delegation.”

Si, France does love technology!

Technology follows us everywhere...this photo taken with a portable phone documents a hike that becomes a leisurely nap near Chamonix.

Technology is everywhere you look in Paris, and people of all ages are using it. In my own French family, people are constantly occupied with taking digital photos with cameras or their portable phones. We had summer picnics with still-life photos of cheese melting in the sun, people jumping in the pool, babies being darling, lots of group shots with smiling or silly faces. The next day, the photos were circulated via email as jpegs or posted on le Facebook.  One of the older people in the family learned how to use a computer at age 75 and is having a great time doing genealogy research. To his credit, he previously used the Minitel, so trying to extract information from invisible sources, using a keyboard and digital ‘box’, was not too big of a cognitive leap for him.

Not to forget France’s early love/hate affair with Minitel…

From http://www.wikipedia.com:

Don't laugh, it worked!

“The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world’s most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT (Poste, Téléphone et Télécommunications; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste). From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, and chat in a similar way to that now made possible by the Internet.”

Like the webcam, not sure about the glasses

I am looking for new eyeglasses and opticians are in the technology race too.  During my recent visit to http://www.optique-debussy.com/ I found a pair of glasses that interested me, yet I wanted a second opinion from my husband. No problem – the helpful clerk simply took my photo using their webcam and emailed the images to me.  I was impressed! Another optician noticed me via SMS that they have two new styles of glasses waiting to show me.

Five years ago, you would have never seen this use of technology in France…or this level of customer service, for that matter. But I’ll save the topic of French customer service for a future posting.  : )

So yes, the Old World is wired!  In their own way, and in their own time.

Colectivul de la Valerie pregateste compilatia verii, Valerie and Friends. Contine melodii si aparitii de la Anoraak, College, The Outrunners, Maethelvin, Futurecop!, Electric Youth, Minitel Rose, Xinobi, Russ Chimes, Jupiter si altii. Oare va exista ceva mai bun pentru vara asta ? Get this!

Minitel Rose new album The French Machine out now!!!!

I was 12 years old in 1984 when my parents brought home a Minitel.  It didn’t cost them anything.  The state-owned phone company (PTT who later became France Télécom) figured it costs 100 francs to print a phone book per year and 500 francs to manufacture a Minitel.  Hoping to recoup their investment in 5 years, they gave away 9 million terminals.  Phone books went the way of the dodo and a country, perhaps not realizing it, entered the electronic age.  France Télécom did a lot more than recoup their investment.  Private services flourished driving network fee revenues.  By the end of 1999, the network had 25 million users in France.  The Minitel is generally considered the world’s most successful pre-internet online service.  The network was secure (private phone company network) allowing online banking and electronic commerce to take off.  Booking train tickets, buying from electronic catalogues and looking up online databases were in widespread use by the late 80’s.  None of that really mattered to me at the time, I had discovered chat rooms and was hooked (did I mention the per minute network fees?).  The Minitel is a technological relic by today’s standards and yet won’t completely go away.  There are internet gateways for it now and it’s still commonly used for secure enterprise applications requiring a private network (which can easily be handled by TCP/IP technologies, virtual private networks, etc…).  Anyways, upon realizing I had been online for 25 years I proudly told my wife.  Now this may surprise you as it surprised me, but from the look on her face, I doubt I am getting a balloon…;)

To close out this impromptu noise rock triptych, which began here and continued here:

If you’re still with us, try Unchained (Thick with MP3 files available for free and immediate download). I’ve been listening to The Cardinal Cage. Or for something a bit more palatable, try Minitel. Among others, the track “Basement” is available for listen-on-demand, and it is simply delicious. Delicate, then noisy, then both. Very nice.

I can’t imagine shouting “Play Freebird!” at an Ellen Fullman show, but to each his own. Change of Direction, indeed.

Tobias will admire the extremely lowercase ensemble Curia. Too artsy-fartsy? Try Barry’s Electric Workshop, namely their refurbishing of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.”

With all this noise, one has to turn to Don DeLillo’s musical offspring The Airborne Toxic Event (the former wrote White Noise, and the latter named a rock group after it). I have never been a fan of this group. Indeed, I’ll have to side with “joe:”

Being a simulacrum themselves, that is, copies of bands like The Killers who were trying to emulate groups like U2, it is no small irony that The Airborne Toxic Event has taken its name from a seminal event in Delillo’s book that deals so extensively with the subject of what is real, what is a copy, and what is a copy of a copy that has lost all essence of the original. On the group’s self-titled debut album, attempts to channel the heart of Bono, the passion of Win Butler, the proletarian compassion of The Boss, and the yearning of Morrissey fall flat. The songs seem like vain attempts to copy originals that can’t be duplicated.

That said, the band has received all kinds of acclaim. Judge for yourself:

That’s “Sometime Around Midnight” from their self-titled debut.

And what does Aqua Teen Hunger Force have to do with any of this? Nothing. But I thought that fact alone would suit a noise rock wrap-up.

Continue Video, Minitel Rose

Anoraak are o serie de remixuri la super trackul Nightdrive with you, semnate SayCet, Minitel Rose, Jupiter, Fear Of Tigers, Grum.

Minitel fue un servicio de video texto nacido en los años ochenta en nuestro país vecino creado por France Telecom y British Telecom. Consistía en unos pequeños terminales parecidos a ordenadores que contaban con un módem, este a su vez marcaba un numero de acceso dándole entrada a la red transpac x.25 que interconectaba los diferentes servicios y empresas entre si. Cuando hablamos de Minitel en realidad nos estamos refiriendo a los terminales ya que este es su nombre, la red que hacia posible todas las comunicaciones se llama Teletel. No solo interconectaba Francia, también teletel estaba conectada con redes de video texto de Gran Bretaña, Alemania,España, etc.

Los servicios que ofrece para el usuarios son variados algunos gratuitos y otros de pago, entre ellos destacamos: directorio de teléfonos (tanto las paginas amarillas como las blancas están disponibles en Minitel), y através de este directorio de paginas amarillas se podía comprar,como hoy en día compramos atrevés de Internet, también se pueden comprar tickets de tren, avión etc y comunicarse con otros usuarios através de foros.

En 1994 se empezó a actualizar Minitel para aumentar la velocidad de acceso a 9,6 kbps, pero ya competía con Internet y el uso de este ultimo se fue extendiendo y popularizando lo que a hecho que desde entonces Minitel pierda usuarios cada año.

Fuentes y mas información en las siguientes webs:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/1994/mayo/el_minitel_de_gran_velocidad.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

Rafi Haladjian, a pioneer of Minitel, the French precursor to the internet, gave a thought-provoking presentation on the Internet of Things, on the second day of Picnic 08, and how his company, Violet, plan to connect everything on the planet – and he means everything – to the internet.

Violet is about to market a device called the Mir:ror, a wireless RFID reader and a corresponding set of RFID stamps that you can stick to household objects. The idea is that you stick a stamp on something like a bottle of pills, and then use the Mir:ror to record every time you take your medicine. Alternatively, you stick a stamp on your weighing scales, and the Mir:ror connects the results to your computer so you can record your weight over time.

Haladjian used the analogy of electricity to describe how ubiquitous the next-generation internet is going to be. He said that when electicity was invented the only thing you could use it for was for lighting. The same company that supplied you with the electricity also supplied the light bulbs. He says that the Mir:ror is like the second phase of electricity, when people bought general-purpose electric motors and connected them to non-powered appliances. He says that the phase beyond that is like electricity today, when a myriad of household items are powered without us really thinking about it.

In the same way, he says, the internet will just be a commodity, like electricity is today. “The internet of things is inescapable,” he said. “It is just going to happen.”

Håller du med om att det är kul att läsa om hur det skitigt sig för ett antal personer? Oftast för att den inspirerande projektledaren målat upp guld och gröna skogar och så visar det sig vara lika attraktivt som en plastcykel? Jag tyckte det kunde vara riktigt kul att läsa en bok om misslyckanden och när jag då såg denna lilla pärla av Lars Strannegård så kunde jag ju inte motstå den. Ett pocketinköp fick det bli!

Vad tar då Lasse upp i sin lilla bok? Jo, på de ca 170 sidorna så tar han upp Itera, Betamax, Firminy-Vert, Teleguide, Edsel, Rubiks kub, Boullée och dessutom har han två kortare diskussionen om vad ett misslyckande egentligen är. I diskussionerna så återkopplar han gärna till sina redan nämnda exempel.
Ska jag vara ärlig så var inte många av de nämnda misslyckandena som jag kände till. Vet inte var det gick fel i min allmänbildning, men jag tycker jag borde hört om i vart fall tre av dem. Om vi börjar från första nämnda misslyckande, nämligen Itera.

Itera var produkten som hela Sverige skulle använda . Det var en plastcykel som skulle släppas i början av 80-talet i Sverige. När jag läste plastcykel, så lät jag otroligt skeptisk, men Lasse förklarade att den här grejen hade man tänkt skulle kosta en fjärdedel av vad en normal cykel, samt väga mindre. Dock, när man satt upp all produktion och pumpat in pengar i projektet så var produkten dyrare än en normal cykel samt ostabil, trots sina 20kg. Inte konstigt att den floppade då. I dag är den retro…

Nästa härliga produkt var Betamax. Den visste jag faktiskt vad det var eftersom det var Sony som hade tillverkat den. Den här saken lanserades i mitten av 70-talet och hade kassettbandet VHS som motståndare. Det finns flera anledningar till att Sony misslyckades, men nyligen så lyckades de vinna med Blu-ray (det nya ”DVD”-formatet).

Firminy-Vert handlar om hur det går när man sätter en superkänd arkitekt till att göra ett helt bostadsområde. Blir naturligtvis knasigt eftersom personen har för stort ego och det tar för lång tid innan det är klart och blir omodernt på en gång. Korta biten om Boullée handlar om idéer som inte kan uppfyllas.

Med Teleguide så har Lasse återigen rotat upp ett galet projekt i Sverige och denna gång ett nittiotalsprojekt. Det var Televerket tillsammans med Esselte som lät IBM få beställningen om att tillverka ”skiten”. De hade fått för sig att det här var framtiden! Man hade snappat upp Teleguide från Frankrike som där hette Minitel. Det är ett slags system som du kan göra olika tjänster med, oftast sådant vi i dag gör via Internet. I nittiotals-Sverige var det ett steg framåt, men faktum är det var nog bra att det sket sig för Frankrike var segare med omställningen till internet p.g.a. att de än i dag har Minitel. Det som blev en succé i ett land behövde inte bli det i ett annat och framsteg blir inte alltid bra, helt enkelt.

Edsel var ett bilprojekt som Ford gjorde som inte gick så bra. Trots att man gav sig fan på att det här skulle bli alla familjers bil så blev det snarare ingen persons bil. I slutet av 50-talet så ville Ford ha den nya T-forden, men som sagt, det sket sig. Bilen var svindyr att tillverka så varje exemplar gick med förlust och nästan ruinerade Ford. När den lanserades var det dessutom lågkonjunktur (och då köper inte ”Svensson” bilar) och kvalitén var usel. Ska bara tilläggas att fronten av bilen såg ut som en kvinnas könsorgan.

Sista lilla misslyckandet var Rubiks kub, som sålde ut av bara fan i början och sedan tvärdog intresset. Det här är en vanlig företeelse i barnlekssaksbranschen. Det är en hög volatilitet i försäljningsvolym och det inträffade Rubiks kub.

Nu har jag gått genom boken för dig och vill du fördjupa dig mer kan du antingen låna boken på biblioteket eller läsa mer på Wikipedia. Diskussionen om misslyckanden är bara en bonus om du lånar den. Klart småmysig bok och Lars Strannegård får gärna skriva fler böcker av det här slaget. Kanske en svensk Freakonomics?

Commercialisé en 1982 dans le but de remplacer l’annuaire papier et de développer la vente à distance, le Minitel a connu  un fort succès atteignant les 9 millions d’unités répartis en France en 1996. Aujourd’hui, selon France Telecom, 1 million de Minitels feraient encore le bonheur  d’utilisateurs plutôt âgés. Avec 98 millions € de Chiffre d’Affaire en 2007 (-35% par rapport à 2006), le Minitel mérite encore qu’on le laisse exister malgré une confrontation à internet qui finira par lui être fatale. Ainsi, le service des pages jaunes (le 3611) s’arrêtera dans un an.

Mais France Telecom proposera dès la fin 2008 un écran tactile qui, associé à la Livebox (le boîtier ADSL d’Orange), donnera accès à un certain nombre de services de façon simple et ergonomique, 2 caractéristiques qui ont fait le succès du Minitel.

Plus d’infos à la Source (2 min de lecture)

Brighton BarCamp (see my post here) raised a question that’s been insistent in my mind for some time. Social computing sites (including virtual worlds) multiply like rabbits. How do you manage that? As I put it at the time:

The second day of BarCamp was illuminated by several conversations about the future of Social Networks (is there one? will multiplicity kill them off? is Facebook past it or you ain’t seen nothin’ yet? what about identity sharing with XFN and similar frameworks?)

Being a bit long in the tooth, I’ve been here before. A dozen or so years ago, I wrote the initial business case that took the company I worked for onto the Web. It was possible, then, to have a pretty good go at listing all the sites that were relevant to a pharmaceutical company and my IT colleagues. But of course that didn’t last long.

Another lesson from the past is that human beings are a gregarious species: we communicate. Almost any network technology goes person-to-person. The telephone, it was thought, would be used to broadcast church services and concerts. We know what happened. On France’s Minitel, perhaps the only really successful teletext service, the greatest successes were the interpersonal applications – not the databases. The Web’s going the same way: still lots of good information out there to browse, but Web 2.0 is all about the person-to-person Web: blogs, wikis, virtual worlds, social platforms and no doubt other things still to come.

The multiplicity of websites gave rise to the search engine. But when it’s multiple platforms that all carry part of your life, that’s not going to help.

Solutions are beginning to emerge: integration technologies to pull your life streams into one place. It’s not just what you put out there: it’s keeping in touch with your friends on different platforms. Here’s some of what’s going on; maybe the techies can comment with others.

Jabber links multiple instant messaging platforms. Corporate closed IM services are beginning also to open up to the outside world. It’s a great help to doing business.

Any RSS reader, pulling together feeds from any number of places but, in this context, perhaps particularly from blogs you want to keep up with. I like Google Reader.

OpenSocial is intended to link social networking platforms: led by Google (which includes YouTube, remember) with, among others, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart and the database giant Oracle.

XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is Semantic Web technology to assert links between different web sites or services which are “you”, like this blog, my Pocket Website, and my base InformationSpan website. See the blogroll for links!

Now there’s Thwirl, downloadable software that plugs directly into Twitter. Twhirl, lets you post to three services at once: Twitter, plus the similar services Pownce and Jaiku, according to the report in MIT’s Technology Review.

And Technology Review also reports on the MOGBox, which will let you design a high-resolution 3-D character and transport it as an avatar to multiple virtual worlds. It wouldn’t link the worlds themselves, but at least you can look the same everywhere without having to recreate.

Come to that, SMTP was the unifying technology for email. In the early days there were two addressing conventions on the Internet and proprietary closed systems like AOL as well …

So you have to bet on the unifying power of the human spirit to pull together these threads.

Links:
• Consolidating Your Web Banter Technology Review, 9 Apr 2008
• One Avatar, Many Worlds Technology Review, 8 Apr 2008
• OpenSocial (Google)
• XFN
• Jabber.org the Jabber project
• Thwirl “a desktop Twitter client”
• MOGBox announced (Mogware blog, 19 Feb 2008)
• Minitel (Wikipedia)

En quête du gros lot, j’ai chiné un article dans le dernier Réponse à Tout qui présentait le 3615 Bolo, excellent pour gagner de l’argent sans effort. Un vrai bon plan! Selon le magazine gagner gros c’est facile! En quelques minutes, on peut gagner des chèques de 3€ à 3000€ pour les meilleurs. Un pseudo, un mot de passe et c’est parti pour battre tous les records et remporter le magot!

20 jeux sont disponibles : déduction et réflexion. 3615 Bolo ou comment s’enrichir sans se fatiguer? Mais pour 35 ctm la minute… 3615 Bolo ou comment se fatiguer à croire qu’on peut s’enrichir! L’existence du service doit bien trouver une origine rentable. D’ou provient l’argent distribué? L’article ne le dit pas… D’ailleurs peut-on parler d’un article pour une texte faussement déguisé en opération sauvons le minitel…

L’internet renferme une mine de sites pour gagner de l’argent. Il suffit juste de surfer un peu pour voir l’opinion de ceux qui ont tester les combines. Surtout, il faut savoir lire entre les lignes afin d’éviter les pièges et ne pas se laisser abattre par de fausses espérances.

E’ di questi giorni la notizia secondo cui il formato di disco ottico Blu-Ray della Sony si sarebbe assicurato la vittoria finale nella guerra contro il suo diretto concorrente, Hd-Dvd di Toshiba. Trovo interessante l’accostamento (inpensabile!) tra questo successo e il mercato della pornografia (QUI nella discussione sulla pornografia di ROTOCALCO e QUI sul blog Tecnoetica).

Mi spiego meglio…
L’industria del porno si fonda ovviamente sulla capacità di diffusione delle immagini. Per questo motivo il settore della pornografia è stato da sempre molto attento all’evoluzione dei sistemi di comunicazione. Addirittura io parlerei di un rapporto stretto tra evoluzione dell’industria del porno ed evoluzione dei mass-media.

Credo che la pornografia, infatti, sia nata da subito, da quando l’uomo ha cominciato a lasciare tracce di sé nel mondo. Certe pitture rupestri, alcuni affreschi e mosaici antichi ne sono un esempio. Seguendo l’evoluzione dei media, si è sposata poi sulla carta. Io direi che già alcuni racconti medioevali potrebbero essere tacciati di “pornografia” (ovviamente sempre in relazione al contesto socio-culturale del tempo), ha continuato con i disegni e i fumetti e si è affermata raggiungendo il grande pubblico grazie all’invenzione delle macchine fotografiche. Si è poi espansa con il cinema e poi via via con tutti gli altri media assumendo forme sempre più consone ai nuovi media.

Leggenda vuole addirittura che nella lotta tra la Sony betamax e il VHS di JVC ebbe la meglio il VHS proprio perché JVC diffuse per prima contenuti porno nel suo standard video. E’ certo, invece, che il successo del sistema telematico francese Minitel finì quando si impedì di utilizzare questo strumento (nato per la consultazione di elenchi telefonici) come un apparecchio di “messaggistica rosa” attraverso una sorta di BBS.

Adesso è inutile dire che ci sono grandi rapporti tra Internet e l’industria del porno. Media digitali e porno probabilmente sono più legati di quanto si pensi e, se il loro legame è davvero così stretto, non possiamo escludere che oggi l’industria del porno influenzi lo sviluppo dei media (non soltanto il contrario).

Per tornare alla disputa tra due standard digitali HD DVD di Toshiba e Blu Ray di Sony, infatti, pare proprio che il mondo del porno si è avvicinato allo standard video della Sony che, avendo imparando la lezione derivatagli dalla sconfitta del Betamax, ha fatto in modo di giocarsi anche l’arma del porno…

Come per la vicenda Betamax/VHS, quindi, pare che alla fine abbia avuto la meglio il Blu Ray (in quel caso si tratta forse di una leggenda, ma adesso possiamo verificare). I motivi di questo successo ovviamente sono diversi, ma credo che anche l’industria del porno, prescindendo dalle questioni morali ed etiche, abbia potuto rivestire un ruolo importante.

Pornografia ed evoluzione dei media sono correlate? Probabilmente gli studiosi di comunicazione dovrebbe osservare più attentamente questo fenomeno cui non si presta (giustamente) molta attenzione. Magari si scoprirebbero cose interessanti e forse alcuni ricercatori si divertirebbero pure di più!!!