You really thought I wasn’t going to participate? For those who haven’t caught the vawe, Blogday is the day when bloggers can share with their readers 5 blogs they like, which helps making discover new blogs. I was also proud to be in the BlogDay selection of Tête au carré (thanks!). So here is my selection, among all my center of interests:
eBay strategies: Ok, it’s not at all a new blog, but Scott Wingo is just amazing when it comes to analyse eBay current strategy, and as I’m still passionate about the company I interned in these past 6 months, I couldn’t miss this one.
Inside the USA: the blog of a French expatriate who came bak from the US but who keep on commenting US news. Obviously, I couldn’t miss this one either.
Qu’est ce que l’art aujourd’hui: again it is for French readers (really sorry for others) and it is about everything happening in contemporary art. It also proposes some great analysis about the market.
Future of real estate marketing: a blog exploring Real Estate marketing and the impact of the Internet, Web 2.0 and blogging on the Real Estate industry.
I mentionned at the beginning of my blogging experience that this blog was going to be launched in September 2007, when I will leave France for the US. In fact, my first purpose was to write a blog about both the great moments and the difficulties of expatriation. But my passion for the Internet, entrepreneurship and innovation was too strong and I decided to launch this blog before leaving our wonderful country.
Anyways, lots of visitors of this blog have sent me messages telling me that they would be interested in reading more on this expatriation on this blog. It is quite understandable: as this blog was until now (and will probably continue to be) really Internet centric, my readers are in many cases passionate about this sector. And it is really hard to be passionate about the Internet without having a great interest in what is happening in the US, and how a Frenchie can manage to be integrated there.
So I just want to tell you that I’m leaving to the US on Sep. 18th to study entrepreneurship for one term at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), as an exchange student from the PIM program. This term at UCLA will replace my last year at HEC Paris, and I will graduate in June 2008. But I reassure you, I won’t convert this blog into a story of my life, first of all because it is really not that interesting, and secondly because if you want more basic news about what’s happening to me you can follow me on Twitter here.
I can speak more serenely about this departure now, because almost everything is arranged, but I can tell you that expatriation really IS a big deal.
During these past months, I’ve had to:
go through awful administrative processes to get my student visa
find an apartment online (I love rent.com!) and book it without even being sure that the woman I sent my money to really is the property manager of a great condo (of course I checked everything I could, but how can you be sure when you are miles away?). I must add that I had tough requirements: short term stay, fully furnished, close to UCLA, not too expensive, with the possibility of having an Internet access, and if possible a fitness center (me, demanding? )
try (not done already!) to install an Internet access in my future apartment to have it when I arrive
figure out that there is a sexual offender in the street of my US address thanks to vison20/20, amazing site generating violent reactions (I definitely can’t stop writing about net topics)
find an insurance to cover me in the US
start selling all the furniture of my French apartment
resiliate all the utilities contracts
get used to the fact that UCLA is a HUGE university and try to identify the halls I must go to when I arrive
leave my beloved Mac for another computer, buy Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they are the only ones compatible with UCLA systems
select the courses I want to follow while knowing that exchange students NEVER get the courses they selected
start being stressed (I’m really in advance on this one!)
So if you have any questions about the preparations fro an expatriation, do not hesitate to ask; otherwise, more to come after Sep. 18th ! Wish me good luck!
Apparently flowers and gardens are inspiring when it comes to Net art! Zefrank.com, which is an amazing source of Net art projects (what he calls “interactive toys”), has created some projects around flowers and gardens that are really worth mentioning.
As I told in my previous article about Net art, it is again a “navigation” Net art project as the user just have to choose but “adds” absolutely nothing.
But Zefrank also created a flower related project where users can add a particular thing to the project: their voice. The composition of the flower depends on the sound and intensity of your voice, and it gives amazing things, you should try it!
Again I’m wondering: what is the purpose behind these artistic projects? Just experimenting all the possibilities of web design, entertaining visitors, or revealing something more profound? If you are a Net artist, I would LOVE to interview you for my thesis
Just a short post to share a basic thought: my Twitter feed is progressively replacing my Netvibes. My Netvibes is getting really crowded, and I barely can manage to read half of the new feeds everyday. Finally, the purpose of Netvibes was to reduce time spent on keep track of information, but the problem is that due to this time saving, we tend to follow more sources of info. Hence the need to find again another “filter” for good information, and Twitter can definitely be used that way.
With a good selection of feeds, especially VCs’, entrepreneurs’ and bloggers’ ones, you can keep connected to what’s happening in a most entertaining way. It is particularly true since less and less blogs provide deep analyses, and become more and more a platform to share some great web discoveries and articles. Microblogging is definitely more appropriate than blooging for this prupose. In cas of blogs providing deeper analysis you don’t want to miss, or major newspapers, you just have to subscribe to their feed (almost all of them have one!): authors generally publish on Twitter a link to their last article.
But a missing feature on Twitter still limit this use (correct me if I’ve missed smthg): the possibily of creating different tab to follow friends updates and news separately. I’m sure it will come soon, if it’s not already the case!
I’m getting a little bit depressed when I see that some great innovations (netvibes) can be so rapidly jeopardized by new great innovations (twitter). It is hard enough to find something which hasn’t been done already, without being obliged to create something which cannot be replaced. Again, the added value is in execution and not in the idea itself, but it’s getting harder and harder to create strong entry barriers in the Net sector. Don’t you think?
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about slideshows and how I had trouble choosing between different applications: it is indeed really hard to find something both “not kitsh” and entertaining.
I hate the moment when my friends announce during a party “oh, let’s start looking at the pictures from our last trip”, because it usually takes hours and is really boring. I never show directly my pictures to my friends as I share them online, but like anybody I prefer when they look at them.
So I had to find something really great to attract their attention: Animoto, the next generation of slideshows, is definitely what I needed. You just have to upload your pictures and select a song, and Animoto generates your video with effects according to the music. It’s just great and without hassle! You can see the result here (see how I force you to look at my pictures, making you believe that the purpose is trying a new app ;-))
I’ve always dreamt of being a teenage drama actress
Update: it seems that Animoto videos are only working with Firefox and not with IE, which is a MAJOR problem! That’s too bad, because their service is great, and I hope they will solve this problem quickly.
I might be in a slow blogging phase as I don’t find a lot of tech news where my insight can be a real added value. But as I am completely diving into the subject of Net art (I am working on my thesis about it), I continue to share with you my great discoveries. TinyGrow is a flash toy created by Shinichiro Sato of box7box.com, which lets you create a virtual garden composed of surreal plants from surreal seeds you have to select and drop. It is amazingly captivating since colours and shapes are beautiful and you always wonder what will come next.
From the academical books I am reading about Net art, all the interest of those projects is the part of interaction with users. In this project the interaction is minimal: it is only some kind of “navigation”, as visitors don’t “add” anything to the project (text or images), unlike Mosaics or Typogenerator. However, it seems that you are really building your own garden and it manages to give the impression that interaction with the project is greater that it is, which is for me the real interest of this “game”.
I planned on stopping blogging for a little while but I stumbled upon this Net art project and wanted to share it with you: the Typogenerator.
How does Typogenerator work? “The user types some text; typogenerator searches images.google for the text and creates a background from the found images, using randomly chosen effects. Then it places the text, using random effects too.”
The image of this article is the result of the typogenerator for the word “LIFE”.
If you have stumbled upon great Net art projects, do not hesitate to share them here, it would be helpful for the thesis I’m working on this year ;-)
I have found another initiative about getting a visual representation of your website, directly inspired by the previous initiative I mentioned “websites as graphs”. This time, WEB2DNA displays the “DNA” of your website. It also has a coding explanation but it is really obscure for me, so I just leave you admire this other art initiative. The picture represents of course A Frest Start (up)’s DNA. And you can find other websites’ DNA here.
What is particularly cool is that you can turn your website’s DNA into a printing on canvas. It was inspired by DNA11 which turns your real DNA into printing. Too bad it is printed and not hand made; I can’t stand buying prints on canvas yet, I just love painting irregularities too much. But my interest for the benefits of the reproduction process in the art market will probably make me change my mind!
Sorry, I will not convert this blog into a travel blog, but I just spent the week-end in Barcelona and I want to share with you my passion for this city:
Gaudi is a genius and my parents really had trouble in stopping me from taking pictures of every mosaic;
Spanish people party all the time, and bars of Puerto Olymico are just amazing;
La Rambla is still a place where you can find the weirdest and funniest people, I love it!
I take this occasion to introduce a new blog I will author, created by Béa, a “passionate about everything” friend who gives me the pleasure of commenting a lot on this blog. This new blog, www.vaou.net, is a French collaborative travel blog which will gather all the great places (hotels, restaurants, and much more) where the team of authors went around the world. I will very soon make a review of a great hotel and a delicious restaurant I went to during this week-end in Barcelona, so I suggest that you take a look to give us your feedback about the idea and, if you want (and if you speak French), join the team to share all your good addresses!
I have always had a problem with using different tools for the same application. Web2.0 has made me changed my mind as this social revolution obliges you to be connected to a lot of different networks to make the most of it.
Same thing in the case of slide shows: I like different things in differents players.
I love Flektor to create fun slide shows, as it offers many effects. Of course it looks totally unprofessional, but that’s the purpose, and that’s what users seem to like. Myspace has been probably right when acquiring it as they target exactly the same people. You can see below what can be done in a few minutes.
Even if Rock you! also proposes fun effects, I like it most for the professional designs it proposes. And I must acknowledge that there is something which has made me fall completely for it: you can add sports teams’ logo on the corner of the slide show and… they offer the UCLA one! So as soon as I will get there and collect enough pictures, you will definitely see slideshows with the UCLA logo on the corner!
I also like Goodwidgets because there is not so much choice but the templates have a really cool design.
But the quicker and most useful tool is FlickrSLIDR: when I don’t want to spend time in adding some effects to my slideshows, it is the most useful tool as it automatically select a specific set on Flickr and displays it in a very professional way. These slideshows are a huge improvement for Flickr; now they must really develop new widgets to put on sidebars, because the layouts do not offer lots of possibilities.
Which one do you use? Any advice?
I’m leaving to Barcelona for the week end so don’t be surprised if I don’t answer the comments
You really thought I wasn’t going to participate? For those who haven’t caught the vawe, Blogday is the day when bloggers can share with their readers 5 blogs they like, which helps making discover new blogs. I was also proud to be in the BlogDay selection of Tête au carré (thanks!). So here is my selection, among all my center of interests:
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Apparently flowers and gardens are inspiring when it comes to Net art! 
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