Disqus - Latest Comments for Jeremy Fain

Re: Interrupting my blogging-schedule for 12 days !!

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:03:26 -0000

I can't wait to take a look at your thesis man. Enjoy your blogging "holiday" and good luck indeed. But with such an interesting topic, I could as well say "I envy you" or "I'm jealous".

Re: Internal (store-)competition - the games strategists play

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:04:06 -0000

Nice one! Vince, you should consider starting a consultancy focusing on helping retailers with their strategies. You've developed quite a sound expertise and, being a reader of this blog from Day 1, I can tell your skills have soared in very impressive ways.

PS: it's funny you mention Media Markt. There used to be one in Rotterdam, but I guess many visitors don't have a clue of what this kind of shop is :)

Re: Entrepreneurship requires more & more focus + love

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:46:03 -0000

Beautiful piece of blogging Vince. Entrepreneurship indeed requires love for what you do, for your vision, for your product if you already have one. Keep it up! I believe you have the very best Food & Retail blog of the Internet, alongside maybe with Michel de Guilhermier.
Take care man, & keep us posted
Jeremy

Re: Fier de Jobetudiant.net

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:54:57 -0000

Bravo Julien, continue! L'histoire de jobetudiant.net commence à peine et elle est déjà magnifique.

Re: Join us (me!)

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:32:05 -0000

Go Julien! You made your coming out at last. Hope you'll find the right partner very soon. Good luck with your new venture.

Re: Reversing the flow

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:35:17 -0000

Mmmm, there are ways to make information come to you: Feedburner (get RSS you love by email) for instance, or Google Reader or Netvibes as a home page. But still, you're right: most of the time there is a need for positive action in order to get suitable information. And my example mainly dealt with news, not information ('news' is just one bit of all information available). Good luck to you and long live Notifixious!
Cheers man,
Jeremy

Re: Reversing the flow

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:44:05 -0000

Anytime! I'm all yours when you're around.
++

Re: Notifixous is back!

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:09:33 -0000

Hey Ju,

Thanks for sharing your adventure. The exact same thing (having data that we're not able to restore because never tested) happened to us recently (fortunately, much quicker recovery), we should've documented on our blog so that it might not have happened to you. What you just wrote about Amazon actually worries me: I don't think their marketing looks particularly ethical. However, I don't want to draw conclusions before investigating further on EC2 (to my opinion, it is rather expensive so there should be some service level like data restoring at least).

I hope Notifixious didn't lose too much business in this period of time. Good luck guys, keep on the good work!

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 04:30:07 -0000

Steve> I already spent 79 euros to purchase Parallels, I'm NOT to spend a single more penny to get to use VMWare.

Kari> '- / | \ Shift+7, Alt+7, Shift+Alt+7(Shift+7, Altgr+' Are you kidding me? ;-)

Rupert> Of course I watch movies. But not so many you're right, and I store these on an external hard drive. The point is that I run 3 OSs on my Mac (Vista and OS X are disk space consuming and each require hard drive allocation) so 120 Gbytes aren't just enough. (and I don't delete Word files!!! :) but .ppt yes for instance)

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:34:26 -0000

I empty my cache everyday.

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:18:51 -0000

Steve, why don't you take your ignorance for granted? Of course I need Korean, Swahili and Portuguese.

Seriously, that's a good idea. Many thanks.

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:19:34 -0000

Hey Vince,

I obviously already run VLC as it's an open source software created and developed right here at Ecole Centrale Paris!

Thanks for the WhatSize freeware, looks useful.

Re: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray: the fight goes on

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:45:27 -0000

Steve, I wish you had quoted this blog post: http://jeremyfain.wordpress.com/2006/08/30/the-...

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 03:24:46 -0000

Hey Marc,

That's a cool comment! There you go with my reply:

"maybe someone at Apple France will call you" --> I'd stick to Microsoft anyways; I'm sure though that Apple is a great company to work for, especially in Cupertino, CA.

Of course I know I run 3 operating systems (not dual OS, I also have Kubuntu installed), but I wasn't actually reviewing Mac OS X but my laptop instead. And I bought it precisely because it could run Windows so why wouldn't I take advantage of this possibility?

Thanks for Flip4Mac!

I wouldn't even install Open Office on my dog's computer. MS Office is what Microsoft does best - and I'm willing to pay for quality products exactly like I paid for my MacBook Pro.

I already use Keynote, but I feel SO lonely not being able to share files that I regret my purchase.

Plug a PC keyboard on my Mac? No way. It's a laptop, which means I'm using it everywhere. Why would I carry a keyboard???

I don't want to carry any SD adapter. I'm sure I'd lose it in a wink. It was standard integrated in my good old HP nx7000.

My wireless antenna not being powerful isn't connected I guess to my router as I use my laptop on many different locations. I just noticed it was less powerful than the one my HP nx7000 had (purchased in 2003). It's a fact I do verify on an everyday basis. Maybe Apple wants us to buy Apple Airport! (I need a wifi power extender for my router: do you recommend Airport Express?)

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:25:51 -0000

Okay Steve, sorry about that. I had actually checked your link and it's very relevant indeed. Will help me address my issues.

Marc> Why would Apple challenges be so special right here in France rather than elsewhere? France, on the contrary, has always been the second homeland of Apple after the US. Do you know the company from the inside? Why that assertion?

About Keynote: most presentations I do are group presentations. Since I'm one of the only ones with a Mac, I prefer to use Powerpoint so that I can share with my mates (and it's already painful).

General remark: I understand your addiction to Apple, and I too believe the MacBook Pro is an efficient, effective and good-looking tool. However, you're so bullish about everything that says 'Apple' that although your advice is overall excellent, it loses some objectivity - at least as far as I'm concerned.

Hence my question: in your opinion what are the pitfalls of Apple? Do Apple products have flaws? And please don't answer 'No they're just perfect'.

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:08:04 -0000

I love this conversation Marc, many thanks for the fish.

So:

- Marc, Microsoft software has evolved a lot since the 1990s. I acknowledge Win95 was a shame, Win98 was a joke, Win Millenium still was a little crappy. But come on: Win XP rocks and Vista is very promising. The actual value of Windows Vista can only increase with time as, Vista being a platform, more and more independent software vendors will come up with software devised taking into account Vista's 3D and functional potential! Microsoft has made a big shift towards quality, design and security since Windows XP. And if your HP laptops sucked at that time, what can I do? I have a rather old HP laptop (2003) and never had any problem with it.

- why wouldn't my blog be the right place for this discussion? I believe it's actually the best place in the world: I'm still a student so the academic purpose excuse is valid, I am to start working at Microsoft in a couple months and my personal computer is a Mac. So my blog becomes rather legitimate here, doesn't it? :)

- I also had a Mac from 1983 (an Apple IIc). The problem is that I was born in 1983, so I started using it in 1987-8 or so ;-)

- Keynote vs. Powerpoint: what if I have to integrate presentations from different people in my team in one single presentation? That's why I stick to Powerpoint. Although I'm not happy at all with the current PPC-devised Mac version, it's still better than Keynote (and I'm used to it).

- Apple manufactures in China at Hon Hai/Foxconn factories led by Terry Gou. But I still can't believe your laptop survived a 400°C temperature. I hope there was no human casualty or wounds in this painful moment.

- Let's say you relating perfection to Mac, iPod and Airport is your point of view. I don't like iPod's closed environment for instance. And I stated many reasons why I don't find my laptop perfect in this very post.

- I agree with you when you point out the beautiful design of most Apple products. I would've stuck to PCs had there been beautiful PC laptops somewhere (I'm not found of Sony Vaio).

Let's indeed go offline and have a drink some day and keep on the debate. We could also go a little further and discuss the strategies of Microsoft and Apple and all industry players. Since you're quite an experienced IT professional, I'm sure you could bring a lot of new (for me) stuff on the table.

Take care,

Jeremy

PS: what's HTH exactly? hand-to-hand? hope to help?

Re: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray: the fight goes on

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:17:53 -0000

Yes, I precisely and no less seriously do believe that Matteris is to become an industry killer very soon.

Re: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray: the fight goes on

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:27:18 -0000

Okay. I bet that within the next 3 years, Matteris will be bought by a major laser storage industry player (Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, Matsushita, Iomega, etc.).

If I win, you keep the same picture for the rest of your blogging life (I love it, it reminds me of an Albanian friend I met in the US. I haven't seen him in a long long time).

If I lose, I'll take you to the restaurant of your choice.

Deal?

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:32:42 -0000

Steve, would you still have that link to the free beta version of VMWare for Mac?

Re: Looking for a top .Net platform software developer for StratosCube, a start-up company based in Paris

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:26:25 -0000

That's quite a bold pitch Nico. But what's in it for me? We do need smartness, and we don't mind you being bigger than us - we're not to play rugby altogether. Furthermore, it's getting late to join the project. So send me an e-mail ASAP providing more details on your potential contribution so that we can maybe set up a meeting.

Many thanks,

Jeremy

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:06:54 -0000

Congrats Ed, your post is HILARIOUS. Everything's there: http://thepisstakers.com/weekly/webtech3oct06_f...

Re: Tech IT Easy is hiring!

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:06:50 -0000

Hey Laurent,

I've been thinking about it for a couple hours, and I don't think it's a good idea for both of us: your readers wouldn't be targeted so comments will be seldom; and our readers will feel Tech IT Easy lacks consistency.

Thanks for suggesting anyways!

I've been receiving many CVs and e-mails today; many thanks to all of you. Many of you asked whether I'd pay for blogging; if I may clarify, I'm sorry but nobody will get paid for blogging.

Re: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray: the fight goes on

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 08:31:39 -0000

Deal

Re: Visited the ST Microelectronics (ex-SGS Thomson) manufacture in Crolles

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 07:01:10 -0000

Hello Shahram,

I'm afraid I can't help as I'm not very familiar with microelectronics.

Good luck.

Re: Tech IT Easy is hiring!

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:31:53 -0000

Yes it is! Thanks for your comment Lucien, having an expert about the Chinese market onboard can only create value for our readers. I already knew your blog by the way (since you had posted pictures about Microsoft Vista's parallel market).

Re: Tech IT Easy is hiring!

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:47:01 -0000

Of course Lucien!

Re: Tech IT Easy scoop ! The whole digital information exchanged annually could fit in 726 billion human brains

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 18:43:09 -0000

Allright, I just posted a little something to make you feel good.

Sorry about the slow blogging, I'm just overwhelmed. I have slept maybe 10 hours in the last 7 days so I can hardly use my brains.

Re: 2G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, 5G, 6G…cleaning the mobile telco standards mess

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:53:54 -0000

Well Kari, that's an excellent point! I thought about NMT but since John is in Toronto and his son needs help in devising his marketing descriptions, & NMT (Nordic Mobile Telecommunications) was mostly deployed in Scandinavia,

I chose not to elaborate on it (of course I skipped many relevant details, but I wanted this post to be readable by anyone). I apologize to you and all hungry readers for not delving into details, but that was actually more a choice than a mistake.

Re: 2G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, 5G, 6G…cleaning the mobile telco standards mess

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:58:16 -0000

Hey Chris,

Maybe you're right about the analogue precursor to GSM and 1G - I'll check this out. Anybody to help us on this matter?

Excellent remarks on 3G. Many thanks.

Re: Project Management & Software engineering: the 'cost of non-quality'

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:48:47 -0000

Done.

Indeed Quality Software has nothing to do with 'the cost of non-quality'. It just happened that, looking for a picture with written 'quality' on it, I felt blessed to have both keywords 'quality' and 'software' appear when looking for a picture on Google images.

I apologize for any inconvenience caused and wish Quality Software, both the company itself and quality software in general, all the best.

Jeremy

Re: 2G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, 5G, 6G…cleaning the mobile telco standards mess

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:35:10 -0000

Lim> Indeed, you're right; but as I said, I didn't want my blogpost to delve too much into details. In other words I felt I had to keep it simple.

Robert> You're most welcome! Why Finland?? Come on, ask your son. Finland is the homeland of Nokia, the leading telecommunication device manufacturer in the world.

Re: Europe's contribution to the Internet

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:39:09 -0000

Hey Laurent,

Many thanks for DivX, indeed invented by Frenchman, video technology guru and Silicon Valley entrepreneur (DivX Networks) Jérôme Rota.

ADSL was invented by Alcatel, but this is sort of more 'telco'.

Re: Europe's contribution to the Internet

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 12:13:59 -0000

- thanks for the precision about Al Gore. But didn't Cheney claim something about the Internet as well?

- Weren't the Skype guys from Sweden (Zennström), Estonia (Tamkivi), and Denmark (Friis) rather? Interesting explanation about their customer acquisition cost. I had heard once that had Microsoft been founded in, say, Delaware, its market cap would be 30% higher today. So fiscal optimization may not be that bad after all...

- Yep, Chappaz is French indeed and Omidyar French-Iranian. And yes again, Chappaz is a Centrale Paris alumni (although I'm unfortunately not to be a Centrale Paris alumni although I share classes with engineers, I'm just a visiting student here; my home university being graduate business school HEC Paris).

Take care, and many thanks for the compliments about my blog. A pleasure to have you as a reader.

Jeremy

Re: 4 Jazz Landmarks

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:05:40 -0000

Rup, Thomas has been on my blogroll for 3 days already. Have a look!

Re: 4 Jazz Landmarks

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:31:35 -0000

Steve, Manu> Thanks for the fish, good stuff. But how on Earth can you be disappointed by Art Tatum playing the piano???

Re: Blogging and mute visitors

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:37:42 -0000

Hey Annie,

Thanks for your comment.

It's really hard to say (about the word "mute") - I'm not quite sure the word "mute" is used in the same context in the blogging world as I'm not a native English or American speaker.

Sorry, I'm afraid I can't help you too much on this matter.

Enjoy blogging!

Jeremy

Re: Microsoft will not FOLLOW Apple in phones

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 05:54:32 -0000

Kari, I should've mentioned Google, you're totally right. I added a sentence in the post about, and I should blog about it soon (unless you choose to do it, and post a complementary note ;-) )

Thanks, and take care,

Jeremy

Re: I have a theory…

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:41:26 -0000

Well, it looks like the four of us agree on one thing: getting more traffic when you blog crappy posts is SAD.

Re: Microsoft will not FOLLOW Apple in phones

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:43:31 -0000

Marc> I'd rather keep it the conversation centralized here; I couldn't manage answering comments on different places.

Vince> A ZunePhone seems to have been on the Microsoft roadmap for quite a while.

Re: Best friend

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:46:44 -0000

Not yet, still a month to go. Why Xu? Do you work at Microsoft?

Re: Best friend

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:16:52 -0000

Well, I'm afraid the coffee machine at Ecole Centrale Paris wasn't free...

Re: Open source constraints entrepreneurship

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:50:33 -0000

Vince,

You're right to mention the Internet browser industry here. And you point perfectly illustrates my call. When I meant software, I meant commercial software obviously. And in the case of Internet browsers, I believe Microsoft sadly killed the commercial browser market and hence innovation for a while (IE6) by reducing the price of Internet Explorer to zero, just to wipe Netscape off the map. Fortunately, Firefox and Opera came to wake this segment up, and now a new round of innovation has emerged (FFox, Safari, Opera, IE7, etc. are all excellent Internet browsers whilst IE6 wasn't matching market needs and expectations in my opinion).

In this very case, Microsoft played (by distributing a software for free) the role of open source software today: how the hell can you compete with a player that gives software for free? As the Firefox example you point out shows, the only way to counter a free software initiative is to launch another free software initiative.

I think it all constraints entrepreneurship: I bet nobody today thinks of starting up an Internet browser software start up. And to me, that's sad.

PS: did you know most software IBM sells is actually proprietary? IBM is the second-to-Microsoft software vendor worldwide, and by far dominates the middleware market.

Re: Open source constraints entrepreneurship

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:03:01 -0000

Emmanuel,

Mozilla indeed is a foundation; but RedHat is a commercial company. I invite you to read this article entitled "RedHat, the next Microsoft?": http://blogs.tedneward.com/2007/03/22/RedHat+In...

It's funny because I actually thought of Market for Lemons as a theory to help me make my point, but thought eventually it would add complexity in my arguments :-) Thanks for bringing Market for Lemons on the table!

When you mention Gimp as initiatives that are driven by innovation, I can just applause as I 100% agree with you. But say you want to start a Photoshop rival company today. Doesn't Gimp sort of prevents you from doing so?

About big corporations: I don't think having no new commercial entrant drives them towards spending more resources to improve their current products, and that makes me feel concerned about the outlook of whole computer industry. That argument isn't true though when it comes to 'strategic software' (of which Internet browsers belong to to say the least).

Re: Open source constraints entrepreneurship

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:31:44 -0000

Vince, I must have done something wrong because you've been elaborating on open source software and not entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship being the keyword of this post).

If you vision happen to come true at some point (all software for free), then it means there won't be software start ups anymore.

So, your comment actually backs my point: free software constraints entrepreneurship.

PS: just a question; if all software should be free, then why all cars, books, computers and clothes be not free as well? Can't people sell services instead of sound products?

Re: Open source constraints entrepreneurship

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:41:28 -0000

Vince> Why would software be a service and not a product? What if my car is no product but a service (transportation)? Dematerialization shouldn't be an excuse to avoid considering a value to things.

Emmanuel> I didn't have Photoshop because I found it ways too expensive for me. So I'm happy to have Gimp now. But say I want to start a start up to compete with Photoshop and Gimp, I will probably not succeed because Gimp does such a good job, at such a terrific price (zero), that my entrepreneurial drive is very likely to be constrained.

Re: Open source constraints entrepreneurship

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:56:32 -0000

Vince, Alex> Vince, you mix "innovation" (exploit an invention) and entrepreneurship; you actually hide a major aspect of value creation: making money! I agree with Alex though with the aim of entrepreneurs at offering people services or products that will make their life better, but subsequently, if I decide to start a venture full-time, then I probably need to make money out of it to feed my family...

Emmanuel> it often occurs that a bad commercial product (for instance a web browser) becomes excellent thanks to time and customer feedbacks. Having competitors 'selling' their products for free can only decrease, if not annihilate, the number of companies potentially providing excellent software over time.

So, as you point out, entrepreneurship for sure is dampened: few software start ups will be able to bootstrap (ie forget about raising VC money; + valuations are likely to go down as VCs will measure the risk of confronting with free software) AND build a software that quickly competes in quality against the open source projects developed by armies of developers.

Re: Open source constraints entrepreneurship

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:26:03 -0000

I didn't know the comments were restricted by word count either, but perhaps I never posted such long comments. Thank you for your drive and will to debate guys!

Vince> you're not getting what software is about: software is a capital intensive industry! Look here:

http://jeremyfain.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/why-...

It is also an industry with very high margins (the highest actually).

This put aside, I agree with your different points.

Alex> of course you know I don't want prices to be regulated whatsoever.

Re: MacSaber, a killer app

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:29:21 -0000

Hey Ed, I saw your post. Here's the answer I tried to post in the comment section, but I provisionally use Tor and I was said Tor users can't post comments due to abuse.

"Congrats to Jeff Kee! At last a graphic designer who doesn't care too much about 'looking cool with a beautiful Mac laptop', but for whom productivity matters.

WinXP and now Vista are extremely stable environments, on which you can chose the brand of your laptop/PC and have loads of software available. Frankly, I acknowledge my MacBook Pro is beautiful, but I miss good old PC - as I lose so much time looking for the right software.

Hey Ed, great post as usual. I'm not an iFag (you would've noticed...), but really? You wouldn't buy a PC again even if you get paid?"

Re: Bad Customer Service with TeliaSonera

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:00:48 -0000

Interesting testimony Kari. Getting you phone delivered after 4 days and not 1 day isn't actually bad at all (and as you pointed out, no big deal).

However, I can't understand these companies which seem not to care about their customers. Frankly, couldn't they be a little professional and write (even handwrite) a little letter of apologies or explanations or something?

I have such problems with BT (British Telecom, yeah, I'm currently in the UK) at the moment. Their customer service sucks. I have this set top box on which I can only surf on https websites. So I installed Tor to simulate an https proxy, but it's bloody slow. I called them to ask them (since we pay 30 pounds a month) to open the port 80.

The answer I got was: "call your computer vendor". They're SO incompetent, I couldn't believe my ears.

And when I tell them calling Apple or Toshiba wouldn't change anything, I'm being repeated the exact same sentence read from their customer support book.

Frankly, there's a huge market for companies taking care of their customers as so many established firms spend their time taking shits on people who actually generate them revenues.

Re: Marketing case study: Rosetta Stone rocks

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:53:23 -0000

Alex> Mmmm, interesting thoughts Al, but I'd say factory machines were tools for enhanced manufactured products and software now are tools for enhanced organizations (not necessarily services).

Marc> Many thanks for the quote. Always good to refer to a Master Yoda to back common sense.

Re: Bad Customer Service with TeliaSonera

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:44:34 -0000

Even worse :) the guys don't even know what they're selling

Re: I have a theory…

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:13:29 -0000

I prefer 1 visit with 1 comment than 1 million visits with 0 comment.

Re: Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:29:46 -0000

Hey Ju,

Since you're already in Frisco, I'll get in touch with your to have you check that we chose a cool location for our hotel if you don't mind.

And just keep reading - and I know you will - Tech IT Easy (and especially this very post), to get an updated schedule.

Take care, we'll be glad to have you for with us, even just for a few days.

Jeremy

Re: Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:56:55 -0000

Seb> Done.

Could you provide some details about your friend that is joining us?

Many thanks in advance.

Alex> Too bad you can't make it. Let us know if you get fired though, we would be delighted to have you with us.

Re: Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 07:04:48 -0000

Dana> I printed somewhere in my ROM that you were willing and I really appreciate that. I'll get back to you during the 'filière'.

Kari> Excellent news you're thinking of coming (watch availability though). It seems our crowd will be rather international. I can't wait for you to blog your conversation btw.

Leo> What can I say? Too bad!

Re: Musings of a UK software industry veteran

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 07:09:32 -0000

Hey Marc,

Good idea about the contest, but Mr X means it when he says he doesn't want to be named whatsoever. He is a very inconspicuous person and actually hardly appears on Google.

Thanks for your additions, very insightful as usual.

Re: Why do software venture capitalists also invest in biotechnologies?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:46:44 -0000

Okay, many thanks for the follow up Laurent. I agree with the theory that although there is some money, we lack entrepreneurs (not necessarily with good projects; if the VC are good, they help the entrepreneurs shape their business plan).

Re: Personal Health Tech

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:04:23 -0000

Kari, that is an AMAZING post.

I think you should get paid to advertise for these brands + get a commission on all sales generated through these recommendations.

Re: The case against software piracy

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 02:53:45 -0000

Rupert,

1) I am obviously assuming all users, regardless of whether they had already paid for software or not, pay for their software in my 'perfect world' picture as you called it.

2) Do you call Vista Premium Edition, Office 2007, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamwaver and 3D Studio low price products? Could you please be more accurate about what premium products are in your opinion? Thanks.

Re: Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:13:39 -0000

Guillaume & David> Done.

One or two more attendants (via email or comments or whatever) and registrations will be closed.

Re: Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:44:03 -0000

Nabil, David> Sorry guys, left an hour and got several dozen emails regarding the trip. I've put you in the waiting list.

Re: The case against software piracy

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:06:15 -0000

Alexandre, come on, how can you write such things. How can you compare software with drugs when the latter are used to save lives?

Furthermore, Microsoft is no monopoly but a company that is being going after SAP & Oracle in the enterprise market, after Google & Yahoo! in the Internet market, after Apple & Sony in the consumer electronics market, and is being purchased by a bunch of very competitive free software on its core markets (OS & office apps).

+ Microsoft does a lot for software to be affordable in countries like Africa.

Re: Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:38:39 -0000

With great pleasure! Many thanks Ooto. I'll get back in touch with you.

Re: The case against software piracy

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:14:21 -0000

Vincent> My whole point isn't to look at software piracy from a moral view point, but to bring to light the fact that many people who don't pay for commercial software (crackers, pirates if you like) allow themselves to bash both the software and their publishers.

I believe this is wrongdoing: if this software is so bad, then why do they feel the need to take a risk and crack it?

Re: Microsoft will not FOLLOW Apple in phones

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:02:59 -0000

I bet they will.

Re: Vincent van Wylick joining as a guest blogger

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:49:08 -0000

Steve, you're right to welcome Vincent - he'll be a big asset for us (especially if he manages to keep his excellent writing short and simple ;-) ).

Re: Business as usual

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:51:10 -0000

What's the point in having the info so early? You sit at your gate and wait whilst you can only go shopping if you don't know which gate you'll depart from.

Btw, the airport is Leeds/Bradford, a pretty small one.

Re: Firefox 3.0 is getting real serious

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:29:11 -0000

Your point is very interesting Kari, I had actually never thought of Firefox that way.

You're right about Opera not being open source (corrected), but Safari isn't either. Here's a Wikipedia article taking a snapshot of existing open source browsers:

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

Re: Firefox 3.0 is getting real serious

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:16:38 -0000

I know Kari: I'm actually a user of Camino (but I'll switch back to Firefox soon I think) and I had tried IceWeasel a while ago.

Re: Time of confrontation is over

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:25:09 -0000

Kari, your analysis provides me with food for thought for the whole week-end.

I couldn't agree more on Ajax & Flex potentially working together.

And I like your "Scandinavian design" expression a lot. I think you're right, there is an Ikea-style school of design up there in Northern Europe.

Re: Apple IS copying Microsoft indeed

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:06:31 -0000

"you know, the dark side of the Force": Steve, you're pathetic... ;-)

Re: Peter's Principle applied to software start ups

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:30:29 -0000

Hey Raphaël,

I acknowledge part of your comment: the need to create such a culture promoting technical excellence for technical people & managerial excellence for people people as you point out.

However, I REFUSE to believe that start ups rest on similar corporate cultures in the US. Each organization has a very special DNA of its own - to be found usually in the history of its creation and the personal stories of their founders.

Re: Not a student anymore

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:25:21 -0000

Olivier> very true about the mindset thing! I'm planning on taking one major training every 10 years during my entire career.

Ghislain> Same for me...It's time to start working, no doubt about this. But I know I'm going to miss the liberty of student life.

Re: Comments: I actually don't care

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:28:48 -0000

Olivier> I agree with your statements. But still, I believe your blog (although it's been picking up recently) should get many more comments. Frankly, some bloggers write crappy stuff and receive hundreds of comments, and people like you write top quality analyses and hardly get a handful of value adding remarks.

Steve> Get controversial rather.

Re: From XML to Ajax for dummies

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:31:57 -0000

Because one can't really "learn" XML. It's good to know what it's all about, but you're going to have to play with it anyways.

Conversely, the ability to model specifications and to write nice, readable, maintainable object oriented code, I believe, is the basics. And I can tell you it takes time and is far from easy (I'm still learning and far from being fluent in object modeling), but at the end of the day, you can't do anything in programming if you can't develop using the object oriented philosophy.

Re: Once again, HEC Paris leads the Financial Times 2006 Master in Management ranking

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:36:59 -0000

Hey Sayan,

Congrats on your admission!

Term breaks depend on the program you're joining. In the Bachelor & M.Sc. program, you get 3 months during the summer (July - Aug - Sept), 2 weeks for Christmas, one week in early November, and one more week for Easter vacations.

In the MBA program, you'll get the Christmas & Easter holidays for sure, but I don't know about the rest. One thing that can't be doubted is that if you're joining the MBA program at HEC Paris, you'll get to learn a lot of stuff with great people and study hard as well. You should check that blog and ask the guy: http://hec-paris-mba.blogspot.com/index.html

He is an HEC Paris MBA student.

Enjoy!

Re: The case against software piracy

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:53:12 -0000

Kari> regarding your comment (#12), watch this: http://codor.blogs.com/intro/2007/04/with_great...

Re: Far away West

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:11:52 -0000

Nope Rup, you don't know me well enough. My favourite web company makes use of the simplest business model ever. More soon...

Re: Web-as-a-platform: from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, a conceptualization attempt

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:30:49 -0000

Hey Mathias,

Steve saying "Excellent question" isn't meant to flatter you. Steve and I had discussed the day before the case of eBay, and we had both ended in stating that eBay was the very first Web 2.0 company, although the expression didn't exist yet.

Re: Most wanted IT trainings

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:11:34 -0000

Hey Joseph> thanks man, I knew about that, but I just don't want to let display techiteasy.org in the URL so far as it would mean losing my search engine rankings in a wink. But thanks for the tip anyways.

Mozey> Good for you. You don't know what you're missing. Visual Studio is sincerely the best development environment I've ever come across.

Re: Blogstats went crazy

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:14:00 -0000

Raphaël> I guess Tech IT Easy has been digged...

Steve> there's no point in posting a questionnaire. Cedric Giorgi got the answer, reporting about blogger behaviour (in French, sorry): http://cedricgiorgi.blogspirit.com/archive/2007...

Only a small portion of blog visitors post comments; and an even smaller portion of blog visitors are bloggers themselves.

Re: Raphaël Encaoua now an author on Tech IT Easy!

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:21:37 -0000

Thanks Xu, this is collector stuff!

Re: Back from Argentina

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:16:18 -0000

Salut Xavier,

Ca fait plaisir d'avoir de tes nouvelles. Oui, l'Inde, c'est super - je connais un peu; et j'ai aussi adoré Buenos Aires.

Bon, je te file des news par mail.

@+

Re: Web-as-a-platform: from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, a conceptualization attempt

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:01:45 -0000

They probably can't write English. Or they're shy.

FYI, 30% of the traffic comes from France (75% of comments from Frenchmen though).

Re: Business Plan Pattern

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 03 May 2007 18:57:00 -0000

I LOVE your comment Nathalie. That's what blogging is about. I see PlanHQ is a business planning SaaS, and that I may give it a try for 1 month for free.

I promise you I'll give it a go as soon as I have time and let you know.

Just for you to know: in order for PlanHQ to help me change my mind about business planning software, it doesn't have to be really good: it has to be..groundbreaking!

Re: How should an IT department be organized ?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:38:14 -0000

Thanks for sharing your findings with us Steve. Your post seems long at first sight, but it's well organized and very clear - on top of being extremely interesting.

Depending on the culture of the company, I would go for 2) or 3) + having a cross-department investment committee to select the most value-creating IT Projects + bringing in functional managers (from operational departments) on top of developers to make sure IT projects fit the actual needs of their stakeholders.

This of course, if a quick answer, and I'm sure there are ways to spend a year in the company to precisely define the one best way to proceed.

Re: How should an IT department be organized ?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:32:20 -0000

Good idea Kari, very complementary with my comment.

Steve, Kari is too modest to remind you about it, but he had written an excellent post about ITIL you may find some inspiration in: http://jeremyfain.wordpress.com/2007/02/14/crea...

Re: Which Pocket PC / Smartphone should I buy?

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:17:32 -0000

Many thanks to all of you guys, very useful advice.

Laurent, feel free to let us know which of your 7 devices (!!!) you like best, and which one you wouldn't recommend.

Re: Book review: Raising Venture Capital in Europe

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:57:50 -0000

Good stuff Vince, a bit too long a post, but very useful and interesting.

Could you please provide us with more details regarding the following, more technical, questions:

- how to detect good VCs?

- how to pick up the right VC?

- what are the different kinds of business angels defined in the book?

- What exactly are the 26 technology centers in Europe mentioned in the book?

- could you give us a hint on how investors make investment decisions according to the authors, and how entrepreneurs should handle relationships with investors?

Many thanks in advance. Sorry to give you that much homework. You know, feel free to write a new post with the answers to these questions if you like (to give these more visibility).

Re: 5 reasons I like my iPod Shuffle 1Gb (& 3 leads to improve it)

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 10 May 2007 04:06:35 -0000

Thank you for your feedback and compliments Fidji. You yet to-be-launched blog seems very promising as well.

Too bad we never met @ HEC, but we know Nathanael, whom you worked for in Miami, in common I guess.

Re: The Four Faces of Business Angels

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:57:24 -0000

Thx Vince, this is thrilling!

There exists a 5th category of angels: the useless ones, the fools.

Typically people who made it and feel like giving back. So far so good. But they don't have the time / skills / will to commit to really create value in the business they choose to invest in - which is a shame.

Re: The Four Faces of Business Angels

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:35:40 -0000

One more thing: I don't get the difference between a guardian business entrepreneur and a professional entrepreneur angel...Could you please help me with this Vince?

Re: Client software vs. SaaS = Car vs. Subway

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:35:48 -0000

You're welcome Patrice.

Re: e-Commerce: eBay accounts for 20% of Deutsche Post's domestic traffic!!!

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:36:22 -0000

Such as?

Re: eBay eventually integrates with Skype for good

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:38:03 -0000

Adeel, what sort of products did you sell on eBay? I guess these were 'committing' goods like works of Art, jewels, etc. Not books or CDs.

Re: Why one should NOT buy a storage solution @ Flash Memory Store (negative customer stories in comments)

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:40:52 -0000

To Larry H.> Maybe you shouldn't buy from again...

Re: The Four Faces of Business Angels

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:43:01 -0000

Now I get the difference between guardian and professional entrepreneur angels.

Thanks Vince.

Re: Marketing survey: what people do on a train

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:05:55 -0000

Ghislain> About Apple, maybe you're right. I think it's not only about movies: the overall multimedia experience on Apple hardware (iPod, Apple TV, etc.) is pretty thrilling.

Vincent> The guy playing the guitar was in a group of teenagers that were making such a mess (not in my wagon, lucky them) that I'm surprised there was no physical casualty before we arrived.

And no, I had no Internet, I was just reading my backlog of unread emails... :(

Re: First post on Tech IT Easy – introducing Vista's funniest functionality

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:03:24 -0000

No chance Steve

Re: Best Newsletters

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 16 May 2007 18:55:30 -0000

SeekingAlpha is excellent quality stuff Vince, thank you. And I mean it.

Re: Did you know?

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:52:11 -0000

The Abacus?

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

Re: Evangelizing blogging

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:15:21 -0000

Scott (Businessgolf)> Could you maybe tell me which blog the other person runs? I would like to be able to read how it all was.

Re: 2 IDEAS start ups in opaque alarm:clock French Top 10

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 18 May 2007 03:07:31 -0000

Hey Valérie, Ouriel,

Thank you very much for your clarifications.

I get it now: you just wanted to display a list of currently promising French start ups on the web with no aspiration to a scientific approach.

And all the start ups are of huge interest indeed. But it seems there's so much buzz that not being so accurate in describing the 'selection '(although it's not a "start academy", got it) will probably foster criticism amongst start up teams that haven't been selected.

alarm:clock and TechCrunch are such well known blogs that having one's name on a 'marvel' list happens to be a great marketing tool. If I were a runner-up myself, there would be room for frustration.

Thanks again for the fish and the openness of your answers.

Hope to see you soon,

Jeremy

Re: Bad Web 2.0 – Helsinki cycling journey planner

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 18 May 2007 05:48:47 -0000

Kari, am I dreaming or are you commenting your own blog posts??? :)

Re: Bad Web 2.0 – Helsinki cycling journey planner

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:49:32 -0000

Kari, just a few questions & remarks:

- what's wrong with designer from 1992? Just kiddding.

- Okay, Google Maps is a good service; but if you're after beauty, check Virtual Earth out. It simply rocks!

- Kari, maybe devising user-friendly web apps fits agile organizations better than state-ran monsters. Doesn't it?

- What do you think of Silverlight, frankly?

- And Apollo?

- I wish you had published a printed screen of the source code and commented it. Could you maybe do this in an addendum?

Thanks in advance and sorry for all these (stupid?) questions and remarks.

Re: Bad Web 2.0 – Helsinki cycling journey planner

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 19 May 2007 10:14:28 -0000

Thx man. About the IT start ups in Helsinki, did you manage to gather some background content to let us know some day about the tech innovation ecosystem in your city?

Re: Software, in short

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 19 May 2007 18:49:11 -0000

Leo, you tell me: any particular example? ;-)

Re: Investigating successful Web services' business models

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 20 May 2007 13:57:09 -0000

Steve, I understand what you mean by 'web service' but pay attention that it term that refers to a very specific technology amongst geeks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service

A mash up, for instance, is a web service (application programming interfaces allow for service platforms to interact through SOAP messages; the communication protocol is XML, parsed in a pattern format named WSDL, which is defined by the W3C). If you can't program and still feel like creating your own mash up, Microsoft has just launched PopFly: http://www.popfly.ms

It's an amazing web app.

Re: Investigating successful Web services' business models

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:09:44 -0000

Julien is right: you're forgetting the freemium access model (free until a certain point and then you need to pay to get extra services) websites like Flickr (premium account), Viadeo or LinkedIn use.

Re: Investigating successful Web services' business models

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:42:22 -0000

Subscriptions: like a magazine, you need to make an upfront payment = software licenses in software.

Freemium: when you start, it's free. Then you have to pay when you're getting serious = shareware in software.

Re: Tell Youssef he must post on Software Architecture

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:38:00 -0000

Great man, I can't wait.

Re: Investigating successful Web services' business models

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:38:57 -0000

Same for Viadeo or Flickr: it's not about billing, it's about paying a premium fee for premium service.

Re: On the Entrepreneur – VC marriage contract

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:27:00 -0000

Hey Laurent,

Thanks for this testimony; I have to admit though that I'm not convinced that such situations occur. Here's why:

1) Serious VCs do due diligence the financial accounts of a company, through auditors (I've been one).

On top of this, financial accounts have to be certified by a CPA (Chartered Public Accountant) so it doesn't boil down to the will of the entrepreneur at all.

Last, a good deal of the success of an entrepreneur lies on the level of trust (s)he can build with a community of partners. Assume one entrepreneur manages to on purpose provide VCs with an unaccountable financial assessment of the situation, then I promise you that the perspective of damaging his/her reputation for ever will make him/her go back to the investors with the right figures in no time. Or (s)he can consider him/her dead, business wise.

When it comes to business, honesty should be a policy.

2) Nope, very unlikely because of legal due diligence + the VCs figure it out on websites like societes.com. Last but not least, in order to structure the deal, the VCs need to know about this kind of stuff. So no closing meeting without such information.

3) True for this one. Squeezing your diluted investors doing an accordeon coup is a rather common practice. But I guess if the diluted investors are called out of the shareholder structure, it means they didn't create much value too...

4) It happens, true. And there are very few ways to prevent such things.

Re: On the Entrepreneur – VC marriage contract

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:41:33 -0000

Great clarifications Laurent. Wish to see you soon. ++

Re: Welcome to Léonard Sellem, a new Tech IT Easy blogger

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:38:59 -0000

I wish I could bring in a woman indeed Fidji. Wanna join in?

Re: Google Ubiquitous

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:25:14 -0000

Hey Kari. I 100% agree with you. Google's web apps portfolio is amazing and no single player is yet to be close to matching it.

But I'm surprised by your lack of balance for once. Have you applied for a job @ Google or what? :)

I'm sure you would get it: Google people are smart asses & they wouldn't take long to recognize you as one of their peers.

Btw, great post my friend.

Re: Stock Market in China is absolutely crazy

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 24 May 2007 04:15:48 -0000

Hello Lucien,

The picture is hardly readable. Could you maybe change it for a chart showing the recent stockmarket rally?

Many thanks for the threshold info. I didn't know about it and find it very interesting.

Re: A review of my MacBook Pro

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:09:25 -0000

Hello Paul,

I recommend that you purchase your Apple laptop in Colorado (cheaper since you needn't convert USD into EUR in this case).

Moreover, laptops in France have different keyboards (AZERTY vs. QWERTY) so if your kid is to write papers in French, than purchasing the laptop in France is probably better (for the accents and everything).

Re: Welcome to Léonard Sellem, a new Tech IT Easy blogger

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:01:34 -0000

I'm telling you, you're more than welcome as our web business models & SMB operations management expert if you like ;-) Contact me by email to sort out the details.

Re: Software, in short

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:05:42 -0000

You're very welcome Cédric, you deserve it: your case study is so interesting that I've read it thrice.

Re: Blogging, evolved?

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:52:30 -0000

Kari, you're totally right. Comments are the one single most important thing on a blog. Blogging platforms today don't respect readers enough. In other words, it's the comments that should be underlined, not the posts.

I think several developers from WordPress, being quite in disagreement with the road map, has gone to create the Habari project - which is supposed to bring comments on stage rather than leave it in the backstage. Time will tell if Habari solves the problem or not.

And thank you for your controversial analysis regarding the cornerstone technology in the Web 2.0 era. As far as I'm concerned, I would say RSS is rather a Web 3.0 or next web as opposed to current web, technology. Google makes money from readers visiting sites containing content viewing ads. Because of RSS, web surfers don't get to see ads anymore.

Hence the potential acquisition of Feedburner by Google for instance: Google has felt RSS is a technology that may potentially harm its adwords & advertising revenue model and is adapting to an upcoming trend.

Re: Google displays Live Search as a 1st result for 'search'

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 26 May 2007 06:58:39 -0000

Nope Kari, I get Google in third position on Live Search after search.com & search.yahoo.com.

Re: Blogging, evolved?

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 26 May 2007 13:40:10 -0000

Hey Matthias,

Thanks for your feedback. I'm sorry I can't change the layout of my blog as Tech IT Easy's hosted on WordPress. I'll remember this for the moment we move to our own repository.

Re: Blogging, evolved?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 27 May 2007 08:51:18 -0000

Hey Matthias,

I wish I can comment your blog, but it's in German and I don't speak the first word of it - quite unfortunately, as one third of business in Europe occurs in German.

About answering comments: yes indeed, I believe staying close to our readers is THE key to succeed in the blogosphere as well as in the real world (with clients or customers). That's why we tend to answer most comments (when there's something to add of course) on Tech IT Easy.

What do you think, Kari?

Re: Blogging, evolved?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:04:23 -0000

With great pleasure Matthias, I'm looking forward to reading your posts.

Re: Blogging, evolved?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:33:45 -0000

So let's stay close to the readers that come to us. They're a blessing in the blogosphere.

Re: A warm welcome to Fidji Simo, a new blogger on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:36:56 -0000

Come on Jeff, what is that?

Re: A warm welcome to Fidji Simo, a new blogger on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:21:03 -0000

Fidji> it's actually an honour for us to have you on board.

Ouriel> Thanks man.

Ilanos> Fidji doesn't know what she's missing ;-) not working @ ClickOVA in amazing New York City. Seriously, I guess eBay is quite an amazing company that's worth taking a look at some point, if interesting in eCommerce and Web strategy like Fidji actually is.

Fidji> What kind of Miami atmosphere do you prefer, funky Taverna Opa or fancy Loewes Hotel?

Re: Blogging, evolved?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:22:45 -0000

Vince, I can't wait to read you. Try to keep it short, nice & simple (not like my posts for instance, too long & complicated - I suck).

Re: Illegal downloading : a good deal for the entertainment industry ?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:27:25 -0000

Hey Max, it seems we're to meet on Monday in Brussels, @ Microsoft's VC Summit. Looking forward to meeting you there.

Re: MyHeritage.com: Do I really look like Rafael Nadal?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:49:48 -0000

Of course we know youarethemodel.com Fidji! Benjamin is from the same HEC intake as Raphaël, Steve, Alex & I are. I even wanted to blog about it but it's still not available in English.

But you're right to mention it indeed: it's an excellent service with many potential applications.

Re: Online shopping: what are the innovations in product search / comparison?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:33:19 -0000

Hey Fidji,

You're perfectly right to bring a "Back to Skinny Jeans" (http://cravingideas.blogs.com/) atmosphere on Tech IT Easy. We needed that badly.

I love PPR's Shopoon too. I believe it's a great website that deserves a faster take off. When you say it's getting ready to launch a visual app based on LTU, do you mean the French start up that does image recognition & search? It's one of the few survivors the first Internet bubble burst, and I heard it's a really good company.

I think Zlio & Xinek, both founded by very experienced web entrepreneurs (Berrebi & Eskenazi) & marketing experts have lots of potential as well.

Looneo isn't bad either. I predict it will be a huge success actually.

Do you know Yoox? It's one of my favourite eCommerce websites: http://jeremyfain.wordpress.com/2007/01/03/yoox...

And here are the other fashion eCommerce sites I like (since we're back in skinny jeans...) on top of Shopoon & Yoox:

Rush Collection

eLuxury

Blue Fly

NetaPorter

Next

Asos

What do you think of these?

Re: Online shopping: what are the innovations in product search / comparison?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:06:08 -0000

Thx girl, it’s good to have an online shopping expert at last on this blog. Let’s try to get away from the geeky attitude.

Just to answer your question in your post: I’d like to find, choose & compare products online in a 3D environment.

Re: Online shopping: what are the innovations in product search / comparison?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:28:46 -0000

So, join us if you're so jealous. The door is opened.

About FittingBox / YouAreTheModel (it's not 3D!): feel free to contact him on my behalf and tell him you'd like him to present @ eBay. I'm sure there are a thousand applications of the FittingBox technology @ eBay.

Re: 10 Blogging Tips

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:25:16 -0000

You know Matthias: it's okay to write long posts only if it's simple (yet) and most of all brilliant.

Since I don't read German, I give you the benefit of doubt: your blog must be brilliant indeed.

Re: Why one should NOT buy a storage solution @ Flash Memory Store (negative customer stories in comments)

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:25:55 -0000

Thanks for this testimony Warren. You're very right to protest. This company should go to jail (if it's possible).

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:25:51 -0000

Great idea you had to resume this game Vince! And it doesn't look easy at all this time.

Re: 10 Blogging Tips

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:33:55 -0000

Answer to comment #4: You’re right Vince, it’s about staying close to your ‘customers’ but I could perfectly have added your tip.

Re: 10 Blogging Tips

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:38:27 -0000

I don't see the connection between your comment (#5) and full RSS: full RSS prevents you from sparing time & bandwidth visiting a website. And if you're not interested in an article, than don't read it ;-)

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:39:46 -0000

To all Tech IT Easy authors: what about not posting before we've solved this??

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:43:03 -0000

Paul Graham?

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:57:47 -0000

Walter de Brouwer?

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 11:14:55 -0000

Vince isn't too vague, he's just too good.

Re: 10 Blogging Tips

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 11:28:07 -0000

Because the hosted version of Wordpress doesn't support it, just like the U.[Lik] widget.

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:06:23 -0000

Vince, why the heck did you screw the game up??

Re: Business Plan Pattern

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 21:17:30 -0000

I haven't had time yet but it's on my to-do list.

Re: “Guess who I am?” N.7 – Someone who's been in software for 25 years

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:57:46 -0000

What I usually do is that those who win the game are entitled to a free beer (my treat) when we get to meet. It works pretty well.

Re: Google: the dream of a universal advertising network

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:56:34 -0000

You lazy girl (about the chart we spoke over dinner) ;-)

Just 2 small remarks though:

1) that's right, Google does a great job at covering all aspects of on- and off-line advertising and I agree with you on the fact that Google has managed to execute one strategy using many different channels.

2) Google hasn't suffered since it started monetizing its search capabilities any economic downturn (introduction of AdWords = 2001; bubble burst in 2001 as well - so crisis corresponds to testing the new model really). It would be interesting to see how the business model faces tough economic times. I think Google dominates so much its markets that a crisis wouldn't have such a big impact. What do you think?

PS: in terms of pricing, it looks to me as if Cost per Transaction is the new model on the blocks. But I might be wrong on this.

Re: Google: the dream of a universal advertising network

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:23:11 -0000

Btw, did you check:

Silverlight? (Rich Media framework by MS allowing graphic designers to build innovative websites & software developers to move on to the web) I believe Silverlight open s new horizons in the eCommerce industry

Zorgloob (in French)? an excellent blog dedicated to Google

What’s the address of the blog dedicated to eBay’s strategy again?

Re: Google: the dream of a universal advertising network

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:38:49 -0000

A book on eBay: I recommend "The Perfect Store" - a lesson of customer care and low-cost retail humility.

Thanks for the blog & the book (will purchase on eBay).

But..Fidji, don't you ever sleep? :)

Re: Google: the dream of a universal advertising network

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:41:40 -0000

To get back to GOOG, I think your post will remain unclear unless your provide a graphic vision of Google's advertising coverage perimeter.

I love provocative comments.

Re: Creating ITIL compliant Service Catalogue

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:24:50 -0000

Robert, I'm not sure you're promoting your business or leaving a comment, but the one thing I'm sure is that the person who wrote this excellent post isn't me but Kari.

Re: Why I´ll never fly Delta Airlines again

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:27:03 -0000

I'm not even surprised by your story Mehret: Delta is capable of the worse. Delta really is a terrible airline.

Re: SQL Server outperforms Oracle by a factor of 2

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:56:36 -0000

Thanks for your value adding contributions guys.

Xuoan> thanks for the links, interesting stuff from PlentyOfFish. No case study yet at my knowledge, but fortunately PlentyOfFish has many , many readers. I guess everybody knows MySQL isn't scalable (although it's a very nice database).

Remy> I should elaborate soon on the different modules included in SQL Server 2005. And you're right: more and more big companies are migrating to SQL Server 2005.

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:52:44 -0000

That is SOOO funny, we published 2 similar articles on the same day. At what time did you publish yours?

I gotta go, my second-to-last HEC Paris party awaits me. See you there!

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:00:41 -0000

Big (or small?) spirits meet indeed: I had checked your blog right after posting and it wasn't there. It really must have come in the following seconds! I can't help keeping laughing.

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:08:00 -0000

Hey Mike, v. interesting contribution, thx.

So, lemme try to answer this.

On your first point, I don't think my friend enjoys keeping the books and doing the legal work on his own. He has actually already talked to a public certified accountant and has also found a commercial lawyer. He just thought he would avoid value destruction but the hours he spends doing such things could be used in a much better way in his business.

Your second point Mike is extremely relevant and interesting. I respect your opinion on the compatibility of many different jobs. From my own experience, I just noticed that doing one job well already makes your life busy. So doing many jobs well can only be worse. But that's just my opinion and I like your arguments a lot - although I find these not convincing. If you believe in yourself and in your business, and want to push yourself to your limits, then you must know that the only way to achieve your goals is to put all your energy in your endeavors.

Re: SQL Server outperforms Oracle by a factor of 2

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:14:37 -0000

Hey Ghislain,

- you're right, my title was somewhat a bit of a teaser. But MySQL isn't too far from achieving this level of performance actually.

- you're also right about the developers running the database: but I guess the benchmark is thoroughly checked and balanced so the very same independent developers must have stressed the systems.

- Can you tell me more about RDBMS being better for certain applications than others? I didn't know about that. If you feel like having an access on Tech IT Easy to blog about it, you're more than welcome (long term thing man, no constraint whatsoever. Only rule = no rule).

- Wow, what an impressive list MySQL has. But you know, I don't think you can just plug MySQL and see it work. You have to keep people working on it to support the load and the actual TCO of MySQL may be much higher than if proprietary databases like Sybase, Oracle, DB2 or MySQL had been used.

Re: Book review: Raising Venture Capital in Europe

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:18:46 -0000

What about the other questions? :) I'm really interested in it, no joke. If you don't have time to blog, which I would understand, no problem, then feel free to catch with me on Skype or MSN man.

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:31:44 -0000

You're totally right Laurent: there's no way anybody would invest in someone committing part-time.

However, he's already got investors, but since his business is profitable, I guess they don't want to take the risk to play the hardliners.

Re: Microsoft's SME Day in Brussels : Some Takeaways

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:47:01 -0000

Laurent, this is exactly it.

Microsoft provides technological & marketing support to the most promising startups of its European ecosystem. It's not in Microsoft's DNA to take equity stakes in software start ups (it happens very seldom) and we believe those who will create most value investing money vs. equity are the venture capitalists specializing in software.

Consequently, Microsoft enjoys bringing together on the one side the best startups of its ecosystem, and on the other side a bunch of smart venture capitalists.

It's in everybody's interest:

- the startups probably have more VCs in the place than they'll probably ever meet in their lifetime (26 startups for 220 VCs).

- the VCs are somewhat reassured as Microsoft previously proceeded with a thorough selection (and some software architecture as well work most of the time) and can get a snapshot of Microsoft's vision of the software industry.

- Microsoft helps its ecosystem grow hoping that one day, when these gazelles would have become gorillas, they will tell everybody the story of how Microsoft helped them become global software industry players.

Btw, I wish you could have made it there, it was just amazing.

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:48:05 -0000

BA + bank loans if I remember well

Re: Book review: Raising Venture Capital in Europe

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:47:06 -0000

Alright man, you call the shots.

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:48:43 -0000

You're probably correct Vince, Mike Chitty (see above) brought to light similar arguments.

Re: 2 entrepreneurial worst practices

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:39:43 -0000

Don't be sorry Vince, it just means Mike and you agree. I'm sure he would be happy to see his excellent points backed by your remarks.

Re: 2G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, 5G, 6G…cleaning the mobile telco standards mess

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 08:57:45 -0000

Done

Re: “Guess Who I am?” N. 8 – a person who accidentally had a bright idea

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 08:22:25 -0000

The industry: ads

The entrepreneur: Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist

But I'm really not sure

Re: “Guess Who I am?” N. 8 – a person who accidentally had a bright idea

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 08:43:48 -0000

Is the industry music? Vince, I gotta go for the afternoon. I hope that I'll have some ideas in between and win the game tonight.

Re: “Guess Who I am?” N. 8 – a person who accidentally had a bright idea

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:11:25 -0000

Gotcha: Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby.

Re: “Guess Who I am?” N. 8 – a person who accidentally had a bright idea

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:02:56 -0000

Yep, I knew I had already heard this "give your idea a 10 day deadline and see if there is market traction". So I gave it a thought and realized that we both listen to podcasts on Venture Voice: went to have a look and before my connexion could download the page, I remembered the name of the guy.

Re: “Guess Who I am?” N. 8 – a person who accidentally had a bright idea

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:05:43 -0000

Ahah, good one. Small world indeed.

Re: Looking for a Steve Jobs bio

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:21:16 -0000

Thanks guys, but I wish I had the choice: what about "Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company"?

Re: Looking for a Steve Jobs bio

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:37:21 -0000

Thanks Kari. I didn't know about the existence of "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs", any more feedback?

Has anyone read iWoz?

Re: This June: Apple will start selling software for Windows

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:41:37 -0000

Well predicted Vinnie, good job!

Re: This June: Apple will start selling software for Windows

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:36:08 -0000

and then, there's the Google phenomenon too: the Google search bar has been embedded into Safari for Windows. In other words, just as in Firefox, Apple is getting revenu for every search lead generated through Safari. It's not at all about platform strategy or anything else: it's about Apple cashing in a share of the Google ad pie.

Frankly, I would have assumed Steve Jobs was sort of less greedy than this. It happens seldom, but I have to admit that I'm disappointed by Steve Jobs this time.

Re: SQL Server outperforms Oracle by a factor of 2

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:09:24 -0000

Hi Kari, I know my “A RDBMS outperforms X times An another RBMS” is a little bit far-fetched. I wanted to come up with a sexy title. Apparently, I failed in my will to appear sexy, and I look spoiled, if not arrogant.

Oracle sells an excellent database, everybody knows that. So do MySQL, Sybase & IBM. My point is that Microsoft, with SQL Server, has improved a great deal over years. And now, the chance is high that SQL Server has everything it takes to lead the market in a few years from now.

I hope I'm making myself clearer. I apologize to you, Ghislain, & Xu for appearing (maybe) a little arrogant on the database issue.

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:57:34 -0000

Thomas> I agree with all your points but this one: I actually don't believe Mac have such a good ratio: okay they're beautiful, but also expensive, heavy, hot (ie heat), and not so interoperable.

Julien> I don't know anyone that uses any other OS on a Mac laptop than Mac OS. Sometimes, people (like me) have secondary OSs (I use Vista & Ubuntu as secondary OSs but my primary is Mac OS X). I agree with you: the advocates of Free Software who run Mac OS X are totally inconsistent.

Kari> 100% in line with you

Steve> Steve, you know, many of the software developers who develop free software with commercial tools really look ridiculous... Your whole comment misses the point.

Re: Just tested my market traction…on Facebook

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:25:36 -0000

Fidji> You've missed something. And nope, you would be #11 now.

Steve> You got it. But it didn't work.

Re: How Tech IT Easy will go the extra mile

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:13:40 -0000

Fidji> I agree with you about the diversity in articles. But since I don't want to control content, I have no lever on this. I can only help selecting the appropriate bloggers, picking profiles that aren't similar but still share a passion for high tech.

Vincent> I didn't make myself clear about languages. English is the lingua franca on Tech IT Easy. However, I believe we have here what it takes to attract bloggers who run a blog on their own and in their native language. We'll tell them: "look, you keep your native-language blog, but when it comes to building yourself an international reputation, then you use Tech IT Easy as a publishing platform". Our USP: these guys won't have to build another readership, it's all there already.

Re: Why I´ll never fly Delta Airlines again

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:14:46 -0000

Sorry about that Maven. We all know here that Delta Airlines sucks. I wish you were a Tech IT Easy reader before Delta being bad with you happened.

Re: How to manage innovation ?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 06:44:46 -0000

iPod - orchestration

iTunes - integration

AIBO - integration

Dolby - licensing

Intel - orchestration

TiVo - licensing

Re: Just graduated

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:28:12 -0000

Hey everybody, thank you all!

To Ghislain> Will I be at the graduation ceremony in Centrale? I don't know, don't think so as I'm not supposed to graduate from Centrale as well. We'll see...

Furthermore, HEC is no French business University, it's a global institution with local roots in Europe. It doesn't want to look like American Universities whatsoever.

Re: Another resolution: spend 2+ hrs/week learning C# development

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:54:06 -0000

Laurent> thx, but I already know .Net guru, great stuff definitely!

Vincent> C# got largely inspired from Java in a way. What's really innovative is the CLR (.Net compatible with multi language development), Visual Studio (an amazing development tool) + Team System (ways better than svn), and when it comes to SQL Server, BI tools such as analysis services and reporting services (not included in the Express version though).

Good Java developers, unlike PHP developers, find it easy to move to C# in general.

Re: Another resolution: spend 2+ hrs/week learning C# development

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:21:11 -0000

Vince, I really suggest you follow the Beginner Developer Learning Center path. It really looks well-suited to your needs.

Re: Digital Marketing Key Performance Indicators

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:45:29 -0000

You're absolutely right Tarek. When I wrote 'top entry pages', I actually meant 'top landing pages' - so it's already there I guess.

Interesting insight on selling software online. Indeed, trial + purchase are 2 key features to highlight on a landing page.

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:46:40 -0000

Nicolas> You didn't get my point because I hadn't made myself clear enough. Many of the develops hacking open source code, BECAUSE they are against proprietary software, actually use a Mac - the Apple platform being an epitome of a closed platform.

I believe these people are ridiculous.

Hence the title. That's it as not all open source developers are stupidly against proprietary and commercial. I do believe there are excellent open source and proprietary bricks of software and pragmatic people (some of them hacking open source code on a Mac not because they hate Microsoft but because they love Macs) know what they want and for what reason.

Some people take software and hardware brands religiously. I firmly believe these are stupid. Not the ones who choose the tools best suited to their needs independently of their brand.

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:02:14 -0000

Andy> Totally agree on open source different than free software. I'm making this shortcut for things to be clearer to my non-geek readership.

What so closed and secretive about Apple? Well, can you use Dell hardware with Mac OS? How many Apple employees blogging do you know? I could go on like that forever.

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:03:25 -0000

disinfotainment> So if I get it right, Apple pays open source developers, who love Apple stuff in return - is that the deal?

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:04:57 -0000

Hakan> read my answer to Nicolas, same one for you

Peter> fair enough

Re: 1st anniversary of Tech IT Easy: thank you all

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:58:30 -0000

thx Yann, corrected

Re: Software marketing management dept. – timing matters!

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:46:17 -0000

Thanks Vince. Interesting thoughts on becoming a 'company' and stop being a startup - then it's all a question of definition ;-)

Re: Negotiating a release date is stupid

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:46:35 -0000

jc-QualityStreet> you're right on one thing: short iterations help avoid tunnel effects. But some software projects just don't fit with agile methods - it really depends on the context and the environment.

Pascal> Of course things shouldn't be as black/white as in my post - but I have to write in a certain, sharp and bold, way to express my view points, or I would never get anything written on this blog. Let's say to answer your point that the developers I was mentioning work in a software startup and have invested their own money against equity in the company - so that they badly want to ship whatever the work load and heavy hours.

Re: Another resolution: spend 2+ hrs/week learning C# development

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:38:40 -0000

I don't think so Nicolas. The .Net framework perfectly fits mobility requirements I believe. But I'm not so knowledgeable on such issues Nicolas so ask Olivier Bloch, our embedded expert @ Microsoft France (check my blogroll).

Re: Getting curious about Ruby on Rails

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:34:51 -0000

I am indeed. Microsoft believes a lot in Ruby's potential. And one of the best ways to realize one's Ruby potential is to use Visual Studio.

Re: Is Enterprise Software…dead?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:45:33 -0000

Thx Vince, VERY interesting! Fancy write something about Netsuite if you're familiar with the case (I'm not)?

Re: Apple IS copying Microsoft indeed: Part 2 !

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:10:33 -0000

Yeah, blog about it Vince, it's just an amazing idea.

Re: Community p. 1

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:31:43 -0000

Community, page 1. Does that mean that you'll publish every 379 pages of your book on communities one by one??? ;-)

Re: 10 reasons I love blogging

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:34:22 -0000

Thx Vince & John. By the way John, I just discovered your blog and indeed, you seem to be worried about having as many blogposts as possible mentioning your name)))))

Re: 10 reasons I love blogging

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:18:57 -0000

@Fidji> How much do you make per new subscriber with Ziki? ;-)

Re: I want an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-Phone…..

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:00:15 -0000

Check this out on Leo's blog: http://eremediable.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/be-...

Re: A tribute to Isaac de Rivaz; what innovation really is: marketing

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:16:58 -0000

Hey Corey,

Sorry about that, but I'm no expert in energy and mechanical engineering.

I was more intending to focus on Isaac de Rivaz' genius as an innovator, entrepreneur, and visionary.

Re: Around the web: interviews with leaders

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 17:27:00 -0000

Vince, I think it's Jeff Bezos, not Bezoz ;-)

Re: Margins in software vs. hardware or services

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:25:56 -0000

Ilias,

Could you maybe rewrite your comment in English?

The bulk of the people reading this blog doesn't speak French.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Re: Poll: Are you getting an iPhone… when it comes to Europe?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:08:23 -0000

Hey Ouriel,

I had seen your poll. Actually, Vincent, not I, posted this poll - and I'm not sure Vince, as a Dutchman, reads TechCrunch France;-)

1000 participants?? Come on, that's very impressive! TechCrunch France rocks, you're doing a fantastic job @ democratizing new web apps and the web in general.

Re: Margins in software vs. hardware or services

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:10:54 -0000

Vince, which shift from software to services? I don't understand your point at all. If you're talking of web apps here, then web apps (like Google, Yahoo!, Salesforce, etc.) are PURE SOFTWARE, no service behind it. They're called services for business model reasons: instead of licenses, you just pay as you go.

The chart thinks of services as human services, not software services.

Re: Overwhelmed with emails: SOS

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:26:15 -0000

no free viagra spam unfortunately :(

Re: Daft Punk Dance

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:48:49 -0000

of course it's been sped up. But does Star Wars depicts the reality?? What matters is the result, not the way it's compiled. Don't you think so?

Re: America – the land of process-innovation?

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:17:48 -0000

Thanks for sharing Vince, this is a VERY interesting post. I'm actually surprised Dell isn't mentioned as, like McDonalds, an epitome for process innovation.

Re: Twitter – streams of consciousness

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 06:03:38 -0000

Kari, I've been on Twitter since beginning of March 2007 - and kept on reading feeds through RSS! I acknowledge Jaiku is slightly better than Twitter, but there's so much more people on the latter. Come on Twitter!

Re: I want an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-Phone…..

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 08:31:13 -0000

Mmm, the link doesn't seem to work anymore. Hilarious!

Re: Twitter – streams of consciousness

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:26:54 -0000

Kari, please explain, what is the Tech IT Easy Jaiku channel? Thx.

Re: Twitter – streams of consciousness

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:34:11 -0000

Vince, what the heck is this? http://idreamofpigeons.tumblr.com/

Re: Open source can be very, very expensive

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:39:50 -0000

Hey Marc, hope you're good! A few remarks on your comment that is not really accurate:

- 'see the MS Ecosystem': can you elaborate pls.? I'm very interested in getting the point, thx.

- Nope, my friend hasn't failed. He tried to convince the management to invest in Websphere or Visual Studio. But he failed to do so: the company never purchases commercial software, whatever the vendor (IBM or Microsoft in this case). The guys wanted to develop their own, in-house tool.

And, my friend refused the mission but hired out 2 brillant engineers (for free, no commission, no project management fees because he was no project manager) to undertake the project that was meant anyways to last one year (not 3 months, I don't know where you got that).

Re: Open source can be very, very expensive

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:20:30 -0000

Thanks for your answer Marc.

I'm sorry Marc, but regarding your first point, you read things that were not included in my initial post. I had thought that info would confuse the message and enlarge it unnecessarily.

Regarding the MS ecosystem: of course Windows first for MSFTees - would you like us to sell Mac OSX or Linux? The thing is that Microsoft invests a lot in interoperability: having MS technologies running on open source platforms is very important to Microsoft (see the Mono project @ Novell; or what Microsoft does with MySQL, Zend, IdealX or Mozilla Corporation @ Corp. level).

Where did you get that Windows needs heavier technical support than Linux or Apple? In my opinion, Linux requires massive support. Indeed, it is not accessible to anyone. And everybody just happens to know Windows already.

Could you please back your stance with sound figures?

Here are 4 links pointing to an independent benchmark that sees Vista as a much more secure platform than Apple Max OS and Linux:

http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_6_mont...

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/27/...

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/22/report-vista...

http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.php...

I agree Microsoft took time to come up with perfectly secured platforms, but at last, Vista seems to be a true fortress.

Sorry about that Marc ;-)

Re: The Ghost of the Desktop RSS Reader

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:26:25 -0000

Hey Kari,

I believe it's a shame that GOOGLE Reader doesn't include any SEARCH feature within Google Reader.

Because of this (I sincerely think they're making fun of their users here), I'm switching back one more time to Netvibes. Netvibes is now much faster than it has been in the past, and it's getting better and better whilst I've seen no major improvement (but Gears) in Google Reader in the last 6 months.

So, just like John Wilson, I vote for Netvibes.

If you're into RSS readers only and can actually read French, I highly recommend Olivier Ezratty's work on RSS reader top performers. It's all here:

http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2007/rss-blog...

http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2006/choisir-...

Re: Open source can be very, very expensive

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:54:02 -0000

You started the MacOS vs. Windows (didn't mention Apple before you did) thing Marc, so you are the Fanboy :)

Can you pls. elaborate on your stance regarding Steve B.? I wish I could learn more about it. Can you please bring in facts on the table?

The links you mention point at examples, not independent comparative benchmarks. It's always possible to find examples in one direction or another.

And you didn't back your former stance (heavier technical support) with anything so far.

Re: 'Grinding it out' – the franchisee's manual

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:11:32 -0000

That is VERY interesting! I think I'm going to write the book. Unless you plan to relate it so thoroughly that I wouldn't need it anymore.

Vince, I find very funny that on a techblog, you added McDonalds as a tag :)

2 questions: If you had to open a franchise business, what would it be? And if you had to become a franchisee and open a franchise yourself, what would it be?

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:07:42 -0000

Mannkind, thanks for your input.

My opinion on your different points:

Apple hardware: okay for everything but weight

OSX: I agree

Open source: completely disagree, it really depends on which open source software you're talking about. Plus it's in most cases far from easy and hardly free (consider the total cost of ownership in enterprise environment deployments). I think you're too quick on striking generalizations.

Open source programming languages: great, it depends on the language and what you want to do with it. Again, your stance seems to be a generalization to me.

Apart from our petty disagreements (because I think Apple is everything but an opened company), I just discovered your blog and I love it! Just can't help finding nerdy / geeky attitude blogs to be the best :)

Re: 5 reasons SaaS developers enjoy their job

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:11:49 -0000

Published this post almost 20 hours ago, and still no criticism from traditional software license vendors.

I tried hard to be controversial but it seems that I failed.

Would everything here be true? Traditional software license vendors, are you capitulating vs. SaaS or what??

Re: The 'free software on a Mac' developer paradox

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:52:45 -0000

Mannkind, Kari,

You're both obviously right. The paradox only applies to anti-Microsoft folks.

Re: The E-myth revisited

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:55:43 -0000

We should maybe open a Tech IT Easy Zlio shop so that we at least make some money on these recommendations.

It could be Zlio or it could be U.[Lik] as well, an eCommerce recommendation company as well.

What do you think Fidji?

Re: Why iPhone won't matter in Europe

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:34:38 -0000

I think it's the first time someone says of Kari he's anti-Apple.

I've known Kari for quite some time, and I can tell both of you, Matthias & Etienne, that Kari is a huge fan of Apple.

And even addicts have opinions. There's nothing passionate in this article.

Re: Coolblue.nl – business structure, long tails, and growing in Europe

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:57:44 -0000

Vince, the Coolblue story is VERY interesting. However, you haven't defined the term 'business structure' you're using. What do you mean exactly? Many thanks.

Re: Welcoming Rémy Miralles on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:12:02 -0000

Hey Rémy, welcome to Tech IT Easy! I'm so glad to have you on board. Btw, very nice picture)))

Re: Welcoming Rémy Miralles on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:36:12 -0000

Yes Rémy, could you tell us more, through a series of posts, about your experience as a develop in a number of projects, the technologies you used (open source, MS, Java, etc.), the difficulties you had to overcome, etc. You could entitle this series 'the life of a software developer, episode ?/n'. For instance, Blogentreprise would be episode 2/5 and Linedata Services 5/5.

How does that sound to you?

Re: Welcoming Rémy Miralles on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:13:02 -0000

Sounds cool. Make sure you can, legally and ethically, talk about it.

Re: What place does the web take?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:39:05 -0000

Yeah, no rule on this blog, it's a big fuckin' Far West. Love it! You articles are everytime more amazing: you're now linking your series on Starbucks with Web 2.0: this is smart man. But I'm getting used to reading great stuff from you now ;-)

Anyways, although, like you, I haven't started to look for my next accountant on HotorNot, I don't think the web is "the epitome of a free economy". Nothing's free on the Internet, unless you consider advertising as something that doesn't pollute users. Actually, nothing's free, nowhere. And take a look at the very best online services like Salesforce or Basecamp or Office Live: it's free of use once you have paid a monthly fee. That is to say it's not free.

Re: Editors vs. journalists in blogging – an opinion piece

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:37:43 -0000

Hey Vince,

Great post, as usual. Can I blog on Tech IT Easy?

Seriously, as a blogger, I don't consider myself a journalist at all. Firstly because I don't see blogging as a job - it's actually a hobby, and a leisure / pleasure thing since I write, read and debate around things that I'm passionate about (high tech) and henceforth happen to be the industry I'm working in. Secondly because my goal is not to be dealing with hot news: I don't care about the last event, or the launch of that buzz product, or those prominent people gossips. I prefer to focus on the learning experience and more analytical stuff. Third because I don't take blogging seriously whilst journalists, since they make a living out of their job, need to take it seriously unless they don't care about being unemployed.

This being said, great neurones shaking article.

And to people visiting this blog: if you want to join us, you can join us, you will join us.

Re: 'Guess who I am' N°9 – easy one?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 12:14:40 -0000

Well done Fabrice. Quick & Neat. What made you realize it was all about Steve? My treat for a beer whenever you're available.

Re: Welcoming Cecil Dijoux on Tech IT Easy!

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:12:57 -0000

Hey Cecil, let's see how long it will take me to convert you into a Microsoft developer.

Anyways, welcome to Tech IT Easy - we're gonna have fun.

Re: Welcoming Cecil Dijoux on Tech IT Easy!

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:14:15 -0000

Vince, if I may add to people reading your post and curious about what Cecil did: Cecil is a seasoned software professional, who has worked at great companies like IBM, Amadeus, Sopra, and Infusio.

We're starting to have a nice developer crowd here (Lucien, Rémy, Kari, etc.), with hopefully more technical posts in the future. Stay tuned to Tech IT Easy.

Re: Welcoming Cecil Dijoux on Tech IT Easy!

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:42:03 -0000

Cecil, now you can tell us, how much did you pay Fidji for her to compliment you?

Re: The life of a software developer, episode 1/4

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:22:30 -0000

What was it to work as the only develop in the project? "Great, No asshole" or "too bad you didn't have a peer to give you a hand and share"? Do you think having another develop would've added an unnecessary complexity layer?

Re: The life of a software developer, episode 1/4

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:47:18 -0000

Okay, thx man. Another question then: do you consider your job as a software developer to be an Art or a science?

Sorry, it's sort of tricky - but I can't answer it myself since it's neither the one nor the other when I start coding, but rather a mess.

Re: 12 non technical tips to design kick ass software architectures

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:26:14 -0000

Allright Cecil. Many topics to tackle here. Where should I begin?

First, I loved your article on AlphaGeeks. Although I believe we still have lots to do to show masses that doing software development as a job is really cool. Especially in Europe.

Second, I could've stated that these different 'tips' reflected my meager experience and that I don't believe I'm right. This is how I feel it: it's an opinion, not an exhaustive one, and there can be different approaches to this problematic.

Third, most of my points make a lot more sense when talking about packaged, client software. It doesn't all apply to SaaS. I should've made that point clearer in my post. My approach to online services and software (OSS ;-) ) would be very similar to yours.

About 37 Signals, your main reference: I'm amazed by they approach, I find their apps thrilling, I loved their book, and I believe they deserve their success. Great Internet Software company.

I'm fond of agile methodologies by the way. Let's talk about that later.

And I love the Ruby on Rails framework. I think you save a lot of time (less lines of code) coding, and it's amazing how interactions with the database included in the programming language boosts productivity. However, Ruby on Rails is great for small web apps but no match for an industrial software approach. It lacks the tools, the support, the documentation. RoR makes the packaging process complex. In short, RoR is great for long-tail soft of web apps but it is not and will never become J2EE or .NET.

About the competition: I think that you don't start a company to loose. You're there to win. And nice, gentle, kind, not competitive people don't build Google, Oracle or Microsoft. They just stagnate. In other words, watching and reacting to your competitors' moves doesn't antagonize focusing on your product: you can still do both. But if you're to make an impact on the high tech industry, you shouldn't play pussy. Ruthlessness should be a state of mind. Again, maybe I'm wrong, that's just my opinion.

Many thanks for your interesting remarks Cecil. A pleasure to answer to you.

PS: btw, Firefox does operate a money-oriented lock-in. Think about Firefox as the browser of Google and you'll get my point...

Re: The mobile web is knocking on our doors

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:51:59 -0000

Wow, this guy Fred you Ceciil point out definitely has a point in his insightful post. Impressive.

Re: How can Tech IT Easy recover its glorious past Web rankings ?

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:23:55 -0000

@Tom> wasn't Jeremy but Steve :)

Re: iPhone, the ultimate test

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 23:22:37 -0000

Steve, to tell you the truth, I didn't find this funny at all.

Re: iPhone, the ultimate test

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 06:43:01 -0000

This video has been going around for a few months already. Steve, you're late!

Re: WebKit – or, Of frameworks and browsers

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:43:19 -0000

Completely agree with you Kari: Firefox 2 is crap. Thanks for this post, an interesting snapshot of the current state of the browser market.

Re: Scrum and XP from the trenches

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:02:02 -0000

I like that daily status meeting thing. Some people don't appreciate being monitored so thoroughly though. I experienced it myself, when a few years ago I kept asking everyday to someone I was working with (in a non hierarchical environment since we were talking of non-for-profit volunteer work) what she was doing. After a few day of work together, she answered shouting: "will you stop thinking I'm not able to achieve anything?" Then I switched to a more passive more, giving her mini-projects and checking every 3 days rather than everyday. We eventually became friends...

When working in a startup in Israel, we used to hold daily status meetings. Very often, one of the 3 developers wouldn't show up: "too busy", "focused", "concentrated on an issue", etc. So we found the solution: hold very quick status meetings 1) when walking to the restaurant for lunch; 2) when we moved to a building that had a restaurant on floor 1 (US floors), we held brief, seamless meetings while waiting for the food. VERY USEFUL.

Although I believe agile methodologies provide some fresh air to rusty V cycles, it isn't a "one method fits all projects" format. XP, or eXtreme Programming, in my opinion only applies to very specific projects. As far as I see it, it's very hard to match the conditions for developing in XP organizations. I should write a post some day on the conditions that should make the project team go for XP. What do you think?

Re: Meet Geni : a bright Web 2.0 concept

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:14:35 -0000

hey Olivier, it seems you aren't a faithful reader of Tech IT Easy ;-) ! We already blogged on MyHeritage.com. Here it is: http://techiteasy.org/2007/05/29/myheritagecom-...

Re: US subprime crunch impact on high tech

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:45:43 -0000

Vince> we disagree on something: I don't think banks are of any help for poor entrepreneurs; 100% copy on the rest of your comment

Marianne> I love community marketing

ManuPD> I agree with everything, but hey, I needed to write a blogpost, right?

Re: US subprime crunch impact on high tech

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:04:33 -0000

Why are we too young to remember? Why "take your money"??? Marc, sorry to say so, but there are times I find it hard to understand your comments. Perhaps I'm growing old and my neural network deteriorates...

Re: Happy Blog-Day – 5 Blogs for you!

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:19:10 -0000

Nobody gives a damn about what I'm about to write, but never mind: my favorite blog here is Startup Review. All the case studies you need to understand the web.

Nisan Gabbay really does an excellent job with Startup Review, and we should probably inspire ourselves here @ Tech IT Easy, from his great work.

Re: 'Guess who I am' #10: what is Frogz? who is Frogz?

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:57:54 -0000

I've been investigating over and over, and although I suspect Frogz to be at the heart of a buzz marketing campaign coming from a big corporation like Yahoo!, Apple, Google or Microsoft, I still have no clue of what it's all about. I'll keep on searching.

Re: 'Guess who I am' #10: what is Frogz? who is Frogz?

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 19:45:33 -0000

Hey Vince,

No you don't get a prize: how would you like a frog named Frogz to be born anywhere else than France? I had noticed frogz.fr but it seems your 'stupid animal' isn't French only. It seems very international (I saw pictures all over the Internet about it, pictures of Frogz taken in different areas).

I'm not sure it's a viral marketing campaign though since it doesn't seem anyone in particular has created the buzz.

Furthermore, I like the teasing - no matter whether it's a product or a service. Frogz is hot, everybody's talking about it although nobody knows what it actually is. Funny, isn't it? What do you think Vince?

Whatever your answer, I still don't know what Frogz is and I'm dying to know more about it.

Re: 'Guess who I am' #10: what is Frogz? who is Frogz?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 09:25:27 -0000

Okay Vince, one beer if it turns out to be a French Twitter / Pounce / Jaiku.

Kari> well, the mascot isn't of bigger interest than the company's business since we're precisely trying to get to know what the company does.

Re: 'Guess who I am' #10: what is Frogz? who is Frogz?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:37:53 -0000

Hey Manu,

Benjamin is sitting next to me as I'm writing this comment. And he wouldn't tell me what Frogz is. So the project seems to be indeed a Microsoft project. But I believe it involves a number of other organizations and I don't know these.

BUT I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT FROGZ IS. And I can assure you I'm not behind it, and I'm dying to know what Frogz is all about.

Re: SAP vs. Oracle: virtuous M&A?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:51:53 -0000

Great. Can't wait to read your Paypal diaspora post (YouTube guys I guess, etc.). Might write myself another post on the...P&G Software diaspora (yeah, I know it's kind of surprising).

Re: So you wanna be a Management Star – Introducing Scott Berkun

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:22:31 -0000

Ceciil: how do you define an All-Star? I get the picture when considering athletes (press coverage, hype, majorettes, cheer leaders, commercials, fan clubs, etc.), but I'm having a hard time understanding the reason Scott Berkun writes this: "All-star teams lose. While it’s an honor to be chosen to an all-star team, it’s miserable to play on one." So, again, my question is: how do you detect you're being hunt by / working with All-Stars or underdogs? Many thanks.

Re: Thinking thorough Twitter thoughts

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 13:40:25 -0000

Vince, I'm having a hard time understanding the underlying thesis of your post: in one sentence, which message exactly are you trying to convey?

Thx in advance, sorry for not getting it. There are just too many links for me to handle all this information flow.

Re: Thinking thorough Twitter thoughts

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:21:07 -0000

Thanks very much Vince, I understand much better what your post was aiming at now.

About Twitter's ambitions: I think they are large. There must be a platform vision somewhere: Twitter has raised funds with a number of top-tier US VCs including Fred Wilson's Union Square Ventures (NYC) and Bay Area Charles River Ventures.

See Scoble's show here: http://scobleizer.com/2007/08/02/youre-watching...

Re: Business Plan Pattern

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:27:58 -0000

a) I just did

b) so that VCs see exactly the same sentences in all business plans they see coming in? Great. Go for it.

c) Allright, we seem to agree: one can perfectly manage with Excel here.

Actually, I had given PlanHQ a go for a few days and I have to say I liked it a lot: simple to use, and yet not simplistic in terms of flexibility / presentation. Good adherence of business plan principles in the software. Good job PlanHQ!

Re: Web3.0, embryonic in China

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:52:07 -0000

Clauer, would you have that link to the podcast?

Re: Serious concerns about privacy on the WWW

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:49:17 -0000

Guys, sorry I didn't make my point.

I obviously knew, as a blogger, twiterred, flickerer, U[Lik]er, etc. that all this information about me was available.

I just never happened to come accross the idea that such information could be gathered, stored in a database, and accessed by people with not necessary the best intentions.

Say I twitt that I'm abroad and these people know my address thanks to WhoIs...Understand the idea?

That's scary.

Re: Serious concerns about privacy on the WWW

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:24:27 -0000

Nope Matthias, can't say anything, sorry.

Maybe I can just say that they don't 'collect' data but are able to build your full profile (with lots of information including address, work, etc.) from what they find on the net by clicking on a button.

Re: The IT Flower and Enterprise 2.0

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 07:44:38 -0000

Love it! Very interesting concept, but I think it mixes a number of things that aren't related, like SOA (a software design architecture) and SaaS (a software business model).

Re: The noise of web 2.0

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:04:34 -0000

Kari, this is a fucking smart opinion post. Thx man, you're putting in words my intuitions.

Re: Looking towards a new naming-convention for the wave of web/software-services

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:44:46 -0000

What about Software + Service?

Re: Looking towards a new naming-convention for the wave of web/software-services

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:16:37 -0000

Sorry Vince, I should've told you more about S+S.

Software + Service is not SaaS. It's not software either. It's a combination of client applications and online services. Here are a few examples:

- iTunes (client software that allows you to play music when not connected to a network; music shop in the cloud)

- Gmail + Google Gears (Gmail is an online email service; Google Gears a downloadable app that allows you to work offline on emails)

- Salesforce (online CRM tool + client version)

- MS Dynamics CRM (hosted access + integration with Outlook)

- Exchange Server

- etc.

So it's not really a technology leap. I would say it tends to look rather like where the web is heading towards rather than a full SaaS or full client software world.

Anticipating what you are going to ask me: yes, I should write a blog post about S+S :)

Re: Introducing Raj Sheelvant, a new blogger on Tech IT Easy!

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:45:50 -0000

Hey Raj, nice to have you here on Tech IT Easy. Enjoy!

Re: Create a secured gateway with Tor + Vidalia

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:18:37 -0000

Of course not Vince. A secured network is (almost) a secured network. Tor + Vidaly is not about cryptography and hacking passcodes. It's really about protecting your privacy; although I found it useful in this "Port:80 blocked by administrator" context.

Re: Four Hour Work Week for IT Workers

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:52:09 -0000

To go the extra mile, I think we should even stop working so that productivity wouldn't be an issue anymore ;-)

I actually disagree with your theory: I see work as blessing.

By the way, good organizations don't account working hours but results. I work at Microsoft and no matter if I work from home or the Carribeans as long as I meet my commitments: some people arrive at 7am and leave early, some arrive at 10:30am and leave early, most people work normal hours + 1 day / week from home. I believe most great organizations don't give a damn about working hours: what matters most is to get the job done.

Last thing, about commuting: the average commuting time worldwide is 40 minutes. 40 minutes x 2= 1 hour 20 minutes per day. Multiply by 5 or 6 (Asia) and you get around 7 hours per worker lost every week. Hence my call: teleworking is a real issue and enhances workers productivity. Imagine that people worked more instead of waisting time in public transportation and traffic! That would urge a 15% increase in productivity at no cost.

Re: Jaiku Is Not Twitter

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:49:47 -0000

What's also interesting is that Twitter, not Jaiku, reached critical mass first. Would early adoption from prominent bloggers or first mover advantage play a role in Twitter outperforming Jaiku by far in terms of traffic?

Re: "Platform as a Service" by SalesForce

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:02:26 -0000

Hey Vince,

I understand your point but S+S is no architecture designed by Microsoft but a mere concept aimed at describing what is currently happening in the software industry. True though that the concept was born @ Microsoft.

Hey Mathieu,

Agree with you completely. Interesting that BO & Adobe cooperate a lot on Flex & Apollo. User experience is key to software adoption, especially in SaaS where exit barriers are low. Why don't you guys meet our people from the Silverlight team? Let me know, I'm sure we could do great things together.

Are you Mathieu Lemaire? Bien sûr que je me souviens de toi. Yes, embauché il y a 2 mois, j'y suis j'y reste. Ton opinion sur mon précédent article sur le rachat de BO par SAP m'intéresserait au plus haut point ;-) @+, on se raconte ce qu'on fait très vite j'espère.

Re: Social Networking at the bottom of the Pyramid

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:18:14 -0000

Networking for the poor, amazing idea. It's like the reverse angle of aSmallWorld, which goes more like 'networking for the rich'.

I pretty much understand why the service has remained local so far: its concept needs to be proven and localization must cost hell a lot of resources.

Thx for spotting this for us Raj.

Re: Enterprise software sales materials briefing

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:28:06 -0000

Guys, you're both making a point. Thx

Re: Enterprise software sales materials briefing

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:28:49 -0000

Kari, can you tell us more on the issues your friends come accross? And the solutions they choose to implement to address those? Thx in advance

Re: Meet Chris Liddell, CFO of Microsoft Corp.

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:59:39 -0000

@vincent> On Microsoft becoming a venture capitalist for startups. I think it would be a huge mistake: partnerships are at the heart of Microsoft's business model, so why would you want to send a signal to the market that Microsoft invests in everything? By the way, a harsh competition is at dawn; the name of the competitors are Apple, Google, Oracle, Salesforce, and two or three more players that are still early stage projects somewhere in a garage in San Francisco or a basement in Beijing. That battle will be cash consuming as hell.

On consumer electronics: what do you think of all old Zunes being automatically upgraded for free when Microsoft launched its last Zune?

On B2B: you're right; but I wanted to emphasize the fact that VCs are probably wrong when they claim enterprise software is dead.

Advertising: think Google compete.

@Kari: why 'still'? ;-)

Re: Meet Chris Liddell, CFO of Microsoft Corp.

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:54:43 -0000

Okay, we fully disagree on the Zune thing Vince.

As a Microsoft employee, I have always acknowledged some products were mediocre (some are great, but some are mediocre).

That's why, with Microsoft announcing all first generation Zune would be updated for free, I couldn't feel prouder to realize how much the company had increased its proximity with consumers. A typical Microsoft update 5 years ago would have cost something like a hundred dollars. Today, it's free for consumers to trust the product, the brand, and purchase the current Zune without having to worry about the next version - that will be made downloadable for free to all Zune fans.

My 2 cents: Zune will have outmarketed iPod in a decade. http://techiteasy.org/2007/02/24/mahatma-gandi-...

Re: Meet Chris Liddell, CFO of Microsoft Corp.

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:00:17 -0000

Right Vince, this isn't the original purpose of this post. But we should definitely build a case study out of this Zune thing when we see each other. Keep in mind you're most welcome at my place in Paris anytime.

Re: Intelligent imaging

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:41:39 -0000

What a great presentation in the video. It shows we're still at dawn of intelligent digital signal processing for images despite the fact that we've been talking about photo editing for ages.

If one 'fixed' image can be turned upside down, and customized and improved in such a way, then can you imagine what can be done with videos?? Emmanuel, what's your opinion on this matter?

Re: End Game for Microsoft?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:12:09 -0000

Raj,

Although I believe you're comments are overall interesting, I believe Microsoft top execs have already tackled a number of issues you're mentioning.

In a way, my call Microsoft cannot turn, whatsoever, into an IBM for a number of reasons:

- The .NET framework and Microsoft in general lead the crowd (alongside with Google probably) when it comes to distributed computing. Taking advantage of multicore processurs and sending threads to a set of identified servers in a cluster is one of Craig Mundie's top priorities for the near future.

- it has fully embraced SaaS (wait for the release of CRM Live in early 2008, the SalesForce killer);

- IBM turned into a service company while Microsoft has capped the revenues of its service division MCS at 5% of its global revenues;

- Microsoft is second-to-EMC's VMWare when it comes to virtualization, and virtualization is integrated in standard versions of its flagship server product Windows Server 2008.

I respect your opinion and I enjoy seeing Microsoft criticized, because Microsoftees are in general never more performance-driven than when they are a little late in a specific area (like SaaS or online advertising).

In today's software landscape, the competition is tough (Google, Apple, Salesforce, Oracle, etc.), but I bet Microsoft has what it takes to not only survive but find and generate the right partners to at the end of the day win, on the web, on servers, and on the client.

Time will tell who's right and who's wrong. I chose my side and bought a some more MSFT stocks today.

Re: End Game for Microsoft?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:44:13 -0000

The one I'm most in line with is Matthias: it's all about the platform.

Re: The life of a software developer 4/4: developing a Facebook application

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:12:05 -0000

I tried Remy's app and it's REALLY fun. Go Remy!

Re: We need 3 minutes from you for a feedback on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:40:22 -0000

Nope guys, I prefer to let people write what they want rather than collect a bunch of "Very Good - Average - Unsatisfying'. What we need is suggestions, not appraisal or a grade.

Re: We need 3 minutes from you for a feedback on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:40:23 -0000

You're right Vince: but we don't want people to answer all questions but go through it to find inspiration in case they don't know what to tell us at first sight.

It would be nice to have our first feedbacks after all, it's been 15 hours the post is live... Come on readers, don't be shy.

Re: The life of a software developer 4/4: developing a Facebook application

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:23:08 -0000

Rémy, what's your standpoint on Google's OpenSocial initiative? Do you think Facebook should join OpenSocial or not? And Netvibes?

Re: We need 3 minutes from you for a feedback on Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:12:28 -0000

Marc, there's something you didn't get: a poll couldn't be relevant because feedbacks aren't YES or NO claims.

The lack of reaction here obviously doesn't reflect the length of my post, but the laziness of the readers or the perfection of Tech IT Easy ;-)

Seriously, we've already, thanks to an internal brainstorm giving birth to ideas from Fidji & Rémy + implementation by Vincent, started to add new features such as the ability to browser Tech IT Easy articles by blogger. Just see the upper right rectangle and click on an author.

Re: Some observations after a week on Mac OS X Leopard

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:28:35 -0000

Marc, just a quick question if I may: is there something you don't like in one of all Apple products or are Apple products all perfect?

Re: High Availability Architectures (4/4) – Technology Trends

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:39:37 -0000

You see Taylor, this is exactly the sort of comment that makes me love blogging. The web conveys such a proximity between people! It's just amazing for you two guys to interact and share opinion and expertise. My take is that Cecil felt like giving just an overview rather than detailed specs on Terracotta, so I guess, since you work for your company, that you're right.

Anyways, I've printed out, read and underlined all 4 articles of Cecil on high availability architectures: a really good job at making complex technology accesible to all!

Re: High Availability Architectures (3/4) – Performances

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:43:01 -0000

Cecil, can you elaborate on why performance issues happen i) in the integration tier; ii) in the database tier - rather than on upper layouts? Thx for your clarifications man.

Re: Lessons from eBay's "The Perfect Store"

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:01:06 -0000

The Perfect Store was indeed one of my best readings last year. Really a top-notch business book on entrepreneurship, attention to details, and customer care.

Re: High Availability Architectures (3/4) – Performances

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:31:36 -0000

Thank you for your time Cecil. As usual, you explanations just made everything crystal clear to me.

Re: Why I´ll never fly Delta Airlines again

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:17:14 -0000

Well done Amy. Delta Airlines service & personnel is a shame and nobody should want to fly with them. I systematically refuse to fly with them anymore, even though sometimes the times are best for me.

Re: GO HEC GOOOOO!!! HEC Paris leads the FT European business schools ranking 2006

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:41:50 -0000

Of course Paresh, feel free to leave me an email with your questions and I'll be glad to answer them.

All I can say is that by choosing HEC Paris you made the right decision. I hope you pass the exams to get in!

Btw, since we're a few HEC alumni blogging on Tech IT Easy, don't hesitate to leave a comment (unless the information you're asking for are private) to get multiple feedbacks and for those to benefit the entire web.

Re: Samsung asked us to post this vid

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:58:27 -0000

Well Vince I hope you get rich! I didn't post any comment on your Amazon post because I found it perfect. I felt like saving you some clicks not writing Guy Kawasaki's blog comment type eg "Great article Vince, thanks!". Btw, as Ouriel Ohayon told me one day when I got angry in a post (I softened the post since; here it is: http://techiteasy.org/2007/02/24/blogging-and-m... "You should always respect your reader. It's the basics of the web". I think Ouriel's right. If there are few comments, it doesn't necessarily mean that the post isn't good or appealing. On the contrary, it may mean that it's so good that nobody has anything to add. And there's the other side of it: we might not get enough comments because our posts don't call for them. In the case of your precedent post on Jeff Bezos' leadership, I would say the post was definitely too long to reach critical mass and get enough people to read it from A to Z to have a nice debate starting.

Well I should stop too otherwise my comment will get too long and nobody's gonna read it.

Re: Samsung asked us to post this vid

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:28:01 -0000

Steve, if you want to post a funny video every week, please do so: who or what refrains you from publishing it?

Be my guest, come on!

Re: Amazon's Jeff Bezos on strategy & innovation (not Kindle-related!)

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:10:53 -0000

Nice one Vince! :)

Re: Samsung asked us to post this vid

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:27:49 -0000

Vince, I'm willing to pay you 10 euros if you write a post on why Microsoft is a better company than Google.

You've invented a new business model man: give me some money and I can post whatever you want. What about including auctions for people to bid for your blogs??

;)

Re: Samsung asked us to post this vid

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:46:57 -0000

Steve, how is the weather in Albania?

Re: Could the Internet just…crash?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:50:32 -0000

Steve, you can remove the crossing: Zune sales outbeat iPod on Amazon. Surprise, surprise! http://valleywag.com/tech/apple/zune-outselling...

Re: A few cool web services you maybe never heard of

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:55:45 -0000

Although I think Alexa sucks, I found your post very nice because I didn't know the three web apps or Internet software your mentioned (a web service is something different Steve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service

Re: A few cool web services you maybe never heard of

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:26:33 -0000

Tech-savvy people don't.

Re: Microsoft's iPhone is upcoming…

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:45:03 -0000

Steve, you're so lame. This video's been around for 6 months. This is stupid anti-MS bashing. Some of these satirical videos are fun but it's really like you don't know what to write as a post today.

Re: In Silicon Valley, enjoying

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:36:42 -0000

@Herve I know but no time, sorry

Re: The magic of technology !

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:40:44 -0000

That's 3 comments now.

Re: Graduate Seminar in System Analysis

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:34:42 -0000

Any good business idea emerging? Which startup-friendly opportunities do you think these technologies create?

Re: SQL Server outperforms Oracle by a factor of 2

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:23:51 -0000

I think you're mistaking Susheel.

First, you can compare SQL Server & Oracle. As a proof, the Transaction Processing Performance Council did it, and it is an independent organization.

Second, SQL Server can run on any platform as well. You're wrong about this.

Third, in terms of features available and ability to store large data (from 20To to 100To with SQL Server 2008), SQL Server competes with Oracle frontally.

Fourth, LINQ to SQL will be of huge value to integrate queries in C#, for the Visual Studio developer community.

Last, I haven't said Oracle is a bad database. It's on the contrary an excellent product. SQL Server just happens to gain momentum, and nobody can neglect that the product has improved a lot until reaching and maybe outperforming Oracle with its 2005 & 2008 versions.

Re: Some thoughts on the investment-climate for innovative start-ups

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:14:38 -0000

Vince, this topic is of great interest to me. Regarding the exit market, do you consider strategic exits with European partners to be viable? Or are acquisitions by American corporations still the only credible exit alternatives to an IPO?

Re: Bubble or not bubble?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:24:17 -0000

To the first person who is about to comment this post: the fact that we ask ourselves the question of a bubble or not reveals some kind of maturity that leads me to think that there's isn't such a bubble after all. Just a bullish market, valuation-wise. To me, the value of a company = the sum of its future cash flows discounted by the cost of their capital (roughly their cost of equity, between 20% and 200%, since web startups have no debts).

Re: Some thoughts on the investment-climate for innovative start-ups

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:33:57 -0000

What??? Software isn't high tech? IP has no value in Software??? Development costs are low? You don't need a degree to build it? Come on dude, you're kidding, right?

Re: Is software high-tech?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:34:35 -0000

@Vince I wasn't kidding

@Marc You're a techie, aren't you? So how can you say that Software is a commodity??? Behind OSX, Oracle DB or Vista, there are thousand years of development - and trust me developers at Apple, Oracle or Microsoft have 4-figure IQs.

Re: Is software high-tech?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:37:43 -0000

Vince,

Sorry I couldn't elaborate further, time issue. It was either I read your posts or I posted a long answer and I went for reading & learning.

Take care,

Jeremy

Re: 2007: Tops and Flops

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:15:31 -0000

Steve, it seems we aren't the only ones enjoying the Zune: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/12/microsofts...

Re: 5 free pieces of advice to Amazon, from a very unhappy customer

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:55:57 -0000

Hey Thomas!

- Amazon Prime as you say only runs on Amazon.com, which is a shame because I happen to be a global customer of, supposedly, a global company.

- As far as video is concerned, I don't see cost as an entry barrier: authors would just be delighted to present their products themselves, so would be readers when reviewing books.

Margins are low so enrich the user experience, make it a truly compelling experience and increase the ARPU rather than facing the risk of losing customers like me.

Amazon's ONLY competitive advantage is price: Amazon makes sure it offers the lowest prices on the market, which ensures customer lock-in. Until when?

Re: 5 free pieces of advice to Amazon, from a very unhappy customer

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:00:31 -0000

Hey Georgia,

Nice to see you here. I tend to agree with you, Amazon's operational (logistics, PO management, procurement, shipping, etc.) capabilities are just stunning.

On the 'community effect' lock-in though, I don't think Amazon's community is quite as close to matching the power of the eBay community, for instance.

Re: I Love how Apple's logistics work

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:33:02 -0000

I don't think it's logistics here but product design & manufacturing rather. I would say a correct term too could be cross-platform component mutualization.

Re: The coolest place to work, ever?

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:04:22 -0000

Friends, thx to all for your warm support.

Leo, just pop up at the office whenever you want. Call me before to check that I'm in.

Emmanuel: can't disclose what we're really doing because the products aren't ready. We might bootstrap doing consulting at first. Just regularly check www.emeraldvision.eu to get a hint of the vertical we're moving in.

UTP: True Microsoft is hard to leave. Great atmosphere & very smart people there. I learnt a lot. I'll explain very soon why I left. In any case, I know I made the right decision since what I want is to make a difference (something hard to achieve in an 85K-strong corporation). "All for the best" as you said.

Re: The coolest place to work, ever?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:55:42 -0000

Right before visiting the valley, one or two days.

Thx Yann.

Re: Sun-MySQL / Oracle-BEA: scramble in low layer software

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:05:25 -0000

I guess it's one more occurrence of the eternal outsource - insource debate.

Re: Saul Klein on entrepreneurship in Europe, & myself on career starts everywhere

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:05:14 -0000

@Fidji I actually disagree. I think it's wrong to fail as long as you start again. And when it comes to me, I really don't mind the perception of others: what I want is prove myself that I can build a great company and change the world.

@Codordog You indeed warned me very early about it! But I think this syndrom applies not only to MS but to all multinational companies. That's another problem with Microsoft: when you work for Microsoft, which is definitely interesting and a lot of fun since colleagues are so good and crazy at the same time, the very business model of the company puts you in the center of a large ecosystem so you tend to think that the only company in the world is Microsoft - and forget that there's a lot of other great things out there too.

You give me a terrific occasion to raise a second point to support my case for startups. You kept on telling me not to consider myself a trainee anymore when, after 3 months in the job, I was hired to start in the MACH program in January - and eventually offered one or the other of 2 full time positions that I turned down - eventually to start a startup.

As you know, I didn't resign from my employment contract to start a startup initially (I wasn't sure yet), but part for lack of interest for the jobs (although what I did with you as a trainee was very interesting all along) the other part being the lack of competitiveness of the MS offer vs. others from large corps too, but that's another story, and most of all startups.

Hence my call to all candidates here: startups can pay (I mean the plain vanilla package, and you should add stock options to it) a hell lot better than large corporations (and I mean +100% for jobs that can only be more interesting since you get to have a deeper impact and take part of the adventure). How do you find them? Hang around in high tech circles a lot, watch out Series A financings (remember, you want a startup that's still rather unknown to learn to fight) and knock at the doors of the startups whose product make you die for and who just got financed. Startups that just got financed for the first time tend to pay what it takes to attract people that will strengthen their team and please their VCs.

This is probably more true here in Europe than in the US where it's the stock options, not the salaries, that matter most.

Re: Saul Klein on entrepreneurship in Europe, & myself on career starts everywhere

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:58:23 -0000

@Guillx because at the beginning I was an intern - and I said so here http://techiteasy.org/2006/12/20/229/ (too bad man), but not after I was hired (end of August 2007) to the MS Graduate Program due to start in Jan08. Want me to send you my employment contract?

About humility: since you obviously know me very well, you should've already noticed that I'm a very arrogant and nasty person.

Re: Revisiting ITIL service catalogue

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:12:00 -0000

I should add to Kari's intro, that from a Tech IT Easy-centric standpoint, Kari's initial ITIL service catalogues has been the number one most visited post on Tech IT Easy in 2007. Second is Cecil Dijoux's series on High Availability Architectures.

I have 2 questions for you Kari:

1) is ITIL really useful to achieve better project implementation?

2) say you're a vendor talking to a CIO, is ITIL compliance a serious selling point for your projects?

Re: 5 free pieces of advice to Amazon, from a very unhappy customer

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:22:47 -0000

Hello Chris,

Thanks very much for your very clear explanation: I didn't know about Lang's law - actually, I heard about it recently when I signed Bezos's petition leafar is pointing to above in the comments. But that's it.

Thanks again for the fish.

Re: Welcoming Ms. Georgia Psyllidou on Tech IT Easy !!!

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:22:54 -0000

Georgia on Tech IT Easy's mind...Welcome girl.

Re: Welcoming Ms. Georgia Psyllidou on Tech IT Easy !!!

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:10:19 -0000

Or Greek Geekette, maybe?

Re: XtraNormal at Demo08

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:59:43 -0000

WTF! Very impressive. Congrats to Fred Brunel for driving the technical team that came up with such a beautiful, Xtra web app? Btw, I have a question for Fred: how is the startup ecosystem in Montreal? And the Canadian software industry in general?

Re: What does our logo & tagline say to you?

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:42:32 -0000

Hey Vince! I was sure you would be within the first persons to answer this one.

I actually wasn't directly asking for actual feedback our logo, although your initiative is most appreciated. I'm glad you say our logo reminds you of something perpetual, because we're indeed not there for the ride, but to build a long-lasting, long-thinking global company.

What I would like to know is precisely what you need my 'go' for: given this logo and this tag line, what do you think we do in our company?

So, GO! :)

Re: What does our logo & tagline say to you?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 06:57:31 -0000

Mmm, well done Fidji & Vince, getting closer...

Georgia, it's nice to elaborate on what the logo inspires you, but what do you think we actually do from your analysis and the tagline?

Re: What does our logo & tagline say to you?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:31:08 -0000

Guys, I have one thing to say: you are a bunch of smart asses.

Re: The mystery of "ambition" and how it correlates with success

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:33:11 -0000

Not surprising indeed: high tech means more capital intensive, hence a need for more upfront investments and a necessary business plan ambition to raise such funds.

A quick question about startup industrial expertise in the Netherlands: what are the 5 topics you think the Netherlands are Top-of-the-World in?

Re: What does our logo & tagline say to you?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:44:40 -0000

Hey Xavi,

Thanks for your congrats regarding our logo. Coming from you, it's quite a compliment.

What we exactly do? Take a look at Kari's #7: we manufacture recycling bins.

Seriously, we're doing exactly what's been guessed here in these comments.

Re: The mystery of "ambition" and how it correlates with success

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:14:55 -0000

If the 180 pages you mention are all as interesting as this post, then, man, you shouldn't wait to publish a book on entrepreneurship in the Netherlands.

Have you thought about it?

Re: Getting hired by Amazon, Apple, …, Yahoo, ZDnet: tips and future hacks.

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:30:50 -0000

Mmm, I don't get it, in a few words, what's the key message you want to convey in this post?

Btw, love your tags!

Re: Where I want mobile phones to (d)evolve towards

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:41:23 -0000

That's a top post Vince: people tend to forget the real purpose of a phone indeed. That is to say make & receive phone calls.

Re: Developer to all-technical-staff ratio: 1:4 as a rule of thumb?

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:50:25 -0000

Many thanks Louis, this is high quality commenting. I sent it to my team of engineers.

Re: 5 reasons why business is going green

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:18:45 -0000

Hey Vince,

Beautiful post.

I would add a sixth pressure case if you don't mind: competitive pressure.

A sound green strategy coupled with a perfect execution (that as of today includes too often communication only) is a way for companies to differentiate from their competitors and hence attract & retain the best talents as well as position themselves as foremovers in the minds of their stakeholders (clients, suppliers, investors, business partners, etc.).

How do you feel about this addendum?

Re: 5 things you should know about SaaS

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:17:32 -0000

I'm glad others are writing on the subject as well Mike.

When I wrote that SaaS had nothing to do with IT Infra, I mean 'from a customer standpoint'. Otherwise, SaaS obviously generate a number of IT challenges (multitenancy, data integrity, etc.).

Re: Ghosts, the new benchmark for music distribution

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:22:21 -0000

Indeed, very interesting post. I'm not surprised NiN didn't get that much press coverage & find it rather normal that the first mover (Radiohead) in that kind of business model innovation takes all the press coverage or life would be too easy for followers.

Another pretty cool trend is that real fans are willing to pay to support their favorite artists. On the one hand, there's the long tail (a lot of people listening without paying), and on the other hand, there's the big hearts (a few people willing to pay to support both work & talent).

Re: A word to Jason on Mahalo's extravagant office

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:59:52 -0000

Interesting link Vince, thanks. However, you write that "I'm a consultant". I'm what? :) I've never been a consultant and I'm definitely not a consultant. There's no way I'm a consultant. I'm an entrepreneur. I do things, I don't consult on things.

Re: A word to Jason on Mahalo's extravagant office

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:46:46 -0000

Vince, I understand now. I called you a smart ass because you overall picked up the idea pretty well just elaborating from my logo.

The company builds corporate social responsibility software solutions: we deliver it all for enterprises willing to be in charge of their environmental & social performances & share their corporate sustainable responsibility strategy with their employees.

The website will be translated in the forecoming 6 weeks or so.

Re: Why Android will suck

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:30:28 -0000

I have to say I don't believe Android will be a flop.

When in Silicon Valley, we were demoed Android by Marissa Meyer of Google. It was both fast and rather good-looking. Google is positionning on the juicy market of mobile advertising and I think it has everything it takes to win in this space; last, Google's bargaining power vs. telco carriers is high so they can cut pretty cheap deals.

Re: Why Android will suck

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:57:37 -0000

@Kari What special asset Google has that Nokia doesn't? The #1 by far advertising platform on the Internet.

Their bargaining power with telco carriers is by & large the same as with Apple and its iPhone: everyone will want exclusivity so Google can read its conditions.

If the product is a product (and not FUD or slideware), then Android cannot loose.

Re: Auction 73 : Multi Play Multi Win

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:49:12 -0000

I was actually surprised that Google let go the prey without barking too much (but saying that "consumers won", a communication trick). Your analysis makes sense: a perfectly managed auction, given out to the best bidder: AT&T.

Re: What does our logo & tagline say to you?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:23:30 -0000

Fredotcho,

Thanks for this great input. We've actually removed the baseline from our logo.

We'll take your comments into account and improve things.

Thanks again!

Jeremy

Re: Creative Business In the Digital Era

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:58:51 -0000

you smart crazy girl...

Re: Creative Business In the Digital Era

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:23:01 -0000

btw, why wasn't the cheesy seminar also winy & tapenady?

Re: Creative Business In the Digital Era

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:50:29 -0000

Better than that. We're being acquired. Sorry, I have to ignore the 10 hours rule, congratulations on closing the deal!

Re: Why blogging isn't for everyone

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:36:34 -0000

Vince, I love the cartoon you chose to illustrate this blogpost. The exact story happened a while ago with me! :) except that she didn't leave.

Re: Top-bloggers' competitive advantage

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:46:13 -0000

You're absolutely right Vince; before self-promotion, bloggers should be willing to share something interesting. I've been very disappointed by very uninteresting blogs administered by bloggers writing nothing valuable. Still, these bloggers get a pretty high traffic. Why? Because of the inertia generated by their status: the founder of X, the CEO of Y, the...whatever. Have you also noticed this or am I alone in the dark here?

Re: Visual Thinking : a conference with Dan Roam

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:10:00 -0000

Dan Roam is amazing. I didn't know about him until I read your post, and I find his cosmo-vision thrilling.

I'm definitely a black-pen guy, exactly like Vincent.

Thanks for the fish Fidji, extremely valuable.

Re: That hackint0sh-thing

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:21:47 -0000

This trend is very interesting: people willing to look "open" and "cool" and "trendy" and "young", etc. This new 'race' of web developers / designers / geeks never existed before. I'm curious about the way it is going to evolve over time.

Re: That hackint0sh-thing

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:26:30 -0000

Openness is perfectly compatible with business, I think.

Re: A lesson on Customer Service and Corporate Culture by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos .com

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:21:47 -0000

That's understandable Tony: the US is by far the biggest market worldwide, and investing any other market but the UK or Australia would imply investments in localization on top the usual suspects in your industry: logistics, partnerships, etc.

Thank you for answering Fidji's post so quickly: I love blogging. Blog carry a value of proximity that you could find nowhere else.

Re: What are the ingredients to launching a company?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:42:15 -0000

I like the diagram too.

Building a company is indeed like assembling blocks.

However, the idea of jumping from one block to another is largely theoretical: as an entrepreneur, I have to cope at the same time with an unbelievable number of topics.

Re: What are the ingredients to launching a company?

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:37:33 -0000

I'm in line with Marc here: customers first.

Re: Entrepreneurs, how much "process-coding" do you do?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:51:40 -0000

Interesting stuff: True there's not much out-of-the-box thinking out there.

If I may, my alternative is "systematization": if people understand the meaning of what they do (context, vision, ...), then the chance that they execute well is higher than if you 'process-code' only (of course, if you do both...).

Re: Need a simple (!) book on Project Management! Will this one do?

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:07:43 -0000

http://techiteasy.org/2007/09/05/so-you-wanna-b...

by Cecil ;-)

Re: Beating the market-leader, PowerPoint?

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:50:25 -0000

In this kind of fat-client business, it's not Powerpoint who's the leader but the format behind Powerpoint: .ppt (or .pptx as Microsoft wishes). Consequently, to outperform Powerpoint, you need to overtake the format (.ppt or .pptx).

Even though your heavy-client was top-of-class, you can't write a presentation software that's not .ppt compatible (ex. Apple).

Fortunately, there's the other option: the Google Docs & Zoho one for instance - who allow users to forget about formats by leaving their documents on the cloud.

Conclusion: Powerpoint-killers are already there. The real question is: who's goin' to win the race?

Re: Why do startups fail?

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:06:28 -0000

At the end of the day, startups fail for one reason: when they've ran out of cash. Interestingly, your post describes in a very clear manner the reasons a startup either won't get funded or become profitable.

Re: Positioning Tech IT Easy, continued

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:56:21 -0000

But Vince, you needn't ask: you de facto are the lead editor of Tech IT Easy. So, as far as I'm concerned, that's a YAY!!

PS: nobody asked you to introduce yourself before :) this is long, long gone

Re: Why you shouldn't blog to just write

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:53:08 -0000

Yeah, I agree: one should blog to convey a message.

Re: Why I´ll never fly Delta Airlines again

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:45:29 -0000

Great story Kris: don't use Delta Airlines. They're full of shit.

Re: Why I´ll never fly Delta Airlines again

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 06:30:45 -0000

Bright,

Actually, the Press often comes to me asking for more details about these stories. Just say what Delta did to you on the Accra - NY route here in these comments. The Delta Airlines mess deserves that we pour in some energy into revealing their evil practices to the world.

Re: Proposing a new blogging area for Tech IT Easy

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:42:15 -0000

Count me in your superware venues Vince!

Re: Beware! Dummy learning Java!

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:46:25 -0000

I'd say it's not the language that matters, but the rationale, the logics of programming. Java is just one language syntax after all (J2EE is a platform, more complex).

Focus on the basics. Code a lot (learn by doing). Move quickly to object oriented stuff.

From what I remember, Sun's tutorial on JAVA is of high quality. Going over it perfectly (meaning being able to do all the examples by myself and building simple software) took me about 6 to 8 months 2 years ago.

Good luck.

Re: The "how to furnish your startup" conundrum, revisited

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:50:57 -0000

Since buying furniture wasn't our core business, we didn't spend much time & effort on it. However, we made sure the necessary comfort was there (including a sofa for when someone in the team needs to take a nap). Dual screens are necessary to web developers.

Re: LeWeb '08 Conference sucked big time

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:39:42 -0000

Ouriel, there's no being right or being wrong here.

It's very personal. As far as I am concerned, I don't think Le Web pass was worth one entry at all (far from it). It doesn't matter whether some people online said it was: it's just my opinion. I was ashamed towards my colleagues for having spent 2 days and EUR 850 for such a crappy event.

About the TC Party line: I don't criticize the line in itself. Fine with me. I criticize the fact that some people bypassed it. This is not a behavior you are supposed to see at an event about the Web.

As far as networking was concerned, it was okay but for that price, I could've afforded a return ticket to SF and attended for 2 days the Starbucks Coffee in Palo Alto. Would've been more effective.

Re: Why we're starting Easyittech.org

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:58:55 -0000

Beautiful this 'Dorian Gray style' project. There's too much content online. Let's erase the crap: it will save server hard drive space, bandwidth and electricity, and contribute to saving the Planet.

Re: Okay, resuming Tech IT Easy blogging ;) and focusing on Green IT

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:02:29 -0000

Indeed, took me some time to realize...But now that our clients come to us praising our applications, I can only feel blessed to have been so lucky.

Re: My biggest nightmare if I ran a startup, and what I would probably do about it

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:36:19 -0000

Indeed Vince, product positionning (and hence pricing) is one of the toughest aspects of the job.

Re: An (informal) Entrepreneurial Brainstorming Session No. 1: Book summaries that are stories

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:52:19 -0000

I think it can make some money but the best case study is definitely experience. Every case study in the world, be it Harvard or whatever business school textbook, will never match getting your hands dirty building success.. or failure. In other words, rather than reading books or taking an MBA, if you're really about changing the World, start changing it!

Re: Sell Paris to me in 2 days

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:00:58 -0000

Not quite sure :)

Re: Our own world tour of The Valley?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:54:21 -0000

Hey guys,

Well I'm glad our initiative inspired you as well. We should definitely, after Silicon Valley of course, think of building a bridge between Ireland and France as well (cross visits?): a load of things has been happening in our respective mother lands recently. Knowing each other better can only help high tech start ups develop their business in the European Union more and better.

Good luck in organizing the trip and take care!

Jeremy