Here goes:

• The New Yorker’s Out Loud series: I find myself listening to a variety of topics through this 10 min. podcast, from Barbar the elephant and how its idea was inspired by French colonialism; to the murder of Russian investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya; to the history of (the horrible) auto-tune, which can make anyone a vocalist.
• Big Ideas, which is a Canadian educational broadcast on iTunes, and basically showcases some excellent lectures on topics ranging from: the sense and senselessness of stretching; to Naomi Klein on her book, The Shock Doctrine; to author Robert J. Sawyer on why Star Wars shouldn’t belong to the science fiction genre and is actually quite a devolution to that genre.
• Scene Unseen, in which two students of film go back and forth on movies that came out this week, as well as picking some pretty damn interesting DVDs to watch. A must-listen for film-lovers!

Of course, there’s also iInnovate, Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, This American Life, and the, now finished, Game Theory podcasts, some of which I’ve written about before on this blog, and which are most definitely worth checking out.

As might be clear from this selection, to me, thought inspiration (or leadership) can come from all kinds of directions, not just technology or business expertise.

Have some podcasts that you find interesting? List them in the comments!

Vincent

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Har har,

Vincent

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Jeff Hawking is also the author of “On Intelligence,” and describes his development-path of creating neuro-scientific solutions towards interfacing with technologies (which is, I think, the right perspective towards interface-design). He’s doing some pretty interesting things in the field, also through his foundation called Numenta, but I expect also through future hardware coming out (I’m not sure if he’s involved in the Palm Pre, but he was in the Foleo). He describes some crisis-moments in Palm’s past, including how to compete with Microsoft (the irony!). Very worth checking out and I love the title: “Inside the mind of a reluctant entrepreneur.”

Steve Balmer, what a character! I found him to be thoughtful and concise, whilst never forgetting to pimp the universe that is Microsoft and how that is important for startups… He shares a bunch of stories, like why he decided to drop out of Stanford and join Microsoft as employee no. 30, the current economy and its opportunities, the future of computing, and even makes a few jokes about (not mentioning) Vista.

I thoroughly enjoyed both lectures and think you will too.
Vincent

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I was wondering what made a university give its, let’s call them “words” away for a free, until I realised that the one thing that a university probably has in abundance is words. The same applies to print media, with an excess of its type of media, or radio stations, with an excess of music… etc., etc.

My theory of “freeness” is thus that you should release those things for free that you have in abundance. I’m sure there is a more formal economic theory about it, and I think it comes down to the idea of marginal value and that those things that have less marginal value can be released for free or cheap, while those with a higher marginal value should not be (please correct my interpretation in the comments, if I’m wrong).

The reason we are (or I am) so confused about this subject, is because things cost money. It costs money to produce a newspaper, which is why we are forced to look at adverts on every second page and pay a cover charge as well. So, it’s no wonder that we expect that by releasing stuff for free that they must be losing money!

I’m not a good economist, so I can’t throw a complicated formula at you, just that I think that you have to focus on other values, next to the commodity-cost of words / text / music, when selling a service. For universities, it’s the facilities and access to very smart people; for print newspapers, it’s the convenience of the paper at a fair price; for radio-stations, it’s the freshness of supply and witty comments. As long as you can differentiate yourself in areas like these, other things can essentially be given away for free.

As mentioned, I’m sure a theory exists about this, but I thought it would be a nice thought for today’s post.

A quiz to finish. What parts of following businesses could probably be released for free?

• A strategic consultancy
• A mail delivery company
• A gas station
• A word-processing software business
• A social network business
• An author of books

With at least one of these, I think it’s ok to say nothing at all. And I think that for none of them, it’s ok to say that everything should be free.

Vincent

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Credit crisis, schmedit smeisis, I decided to just not care about it. Life is hard, it may have become harder, but that doesn’t meant that we shouldn’t just get on with it (a little harder) too. One of the issues today is whether it’s a good time to start a business and/or be in the early stages of a business. Because you’re in the money-begging phase and it seems like that’s in short supply right about now. I also decided to not care about that either. “Begging” for money is a psychological game: you present arguments and based on those you either get money or you don’t. If you don’t, you improve your arguments.

One tool to do that is to reduce assumptions to the absolute minimum. An article from my studies that always stayed with me, is entitled “Critical assumption planning – a practical tool for managing business development risk” and the diagram below is taken from it.

What is the point? An assumption is a guess that you make about a topic. I assume that (so many) people will buy my product, or I assume that building this machine for my company will take so many years, or I assume that my medical product will be approved by the relevant regulatory parties. Etc. etc. Each of these guesses, if wrong, can be fatal to your project, you know that and your investors know that. So how do you turn guesses into “truth,” or rather, into a perceived* truth (*: the fact is that nothing can be predicted 100%)?

Somewhat simple: triangulation. Triangulation means that you don’t trust single sources, least of all yourself, but rather place your faith in the power of many. To give you an example, for my current (non-tech) venture, I’ve divided our assumptions into 5 parts:

1. Who our consumer is
2. What the size of our market is
3. Who our competitors are
4. What our value proposition should be
5. And how this should work financially

Each of these are important things to work out and represent different challenges in doing so.

For our customers, I could send out a survey, but how can I be certain that the questions are the right ones and that it reaches the right audience? Instead, I chose for surveys and face-to-face interviews, and, guess what, some of my survey-questions were phrased* wrongly (*: the biggest danger in designing surveys). For our market, I have import-data for our industry from the government, which is itself based on estimates and doesn’t take into account different classes of products. So I have to sanity-check those figures with experts in that industry. And so on…

In the end, you should have the ingredients for a picture of your business-proposition, one you can work out into a number of pages or slides and present to potential investors and partners. And one that can act as the blueprint for what your business should look like. And if someone questions your assumptions, you can tick off, point by point, each of the reasons why you think you are right. That should be a nice feeling!

Does this method of planning apply to all types of ventures? It could be argued that it’s most relevant to projects where the price of failure is expensive, e.g. real-estate. Starting something online may be much cheaper and quicker (perhaps), but I wouldn’t say that the price of failure is cheap. If you want to start something that you want to live off, that your co-founders and employees want to live off, then I’d say that the price of failure is pretty expensive for you and them too, and that having done your homework beforehand is a good thing!

Feedback on my own assumptions in this post are, as always, welcome!

Vincent

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[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=pr7lDlUfw9w]

Video not available anymore, find it here.

What do you guys think?

via LittleGirl

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By the way, who said you can only have real fun working in a startup in Silicon Valley? About a year ago, I went to a lecture on entrepreneurship at Ecole Centrale Paris with, amongst others, the founder of Gymglish, Antoine Brenner. The guy – in a red outfit on the tennis court in the video, was really inspiring, a real engineer – entrepreneur, and I’m not surprised the atmosphere at the Gymglish office in Paris looks like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL9Gib8l5RY]

Do you know other startups where it’s real fun to work at? What makes a workspace pleasant to spend time at in your opinion? 

PS: Thanks to Saïd for the heads up.

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5. Heading back today from Barcelona to Paris

We’re only half way and here’s our program (below). I’ll make sure I blog extensively as soon as I find some time – although I’ll have to blog on TechEd in Barcelona first. I’m late, I know.

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Anyways, I’m interested in your experience if you used to work in a world virgin of emails, search engines and cellphones.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxxJJUXmo2o]

Guys, the video has been removed from YouTube, but you may find it here.

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What I found rather innovative here is SalesForce’s notion of “Platform as a Service”, that is getting close to the concept of “Software + Service” (thorough post to come sooner or later) introduced by Microsoft. It seems market players converge on the idea of interaction of ‘solid’ platforms developed and marketed by software market leaders + a number of customized services run by an ecosystem of independent software vendors & software developer communities. In other words, Platform as a Service = Software + Service.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/EbnCUqAL6UM]

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Rupert.

Right. Can you tell us more about you?

As part of the Ziki team I am working as community manager for the English speaking web. My main task is to make Ziki’s innovative features known by the biggest number of people possible and we think that there are still a lot of potentially interested users who have not heard about our services. Ziki was first launched in English before coming out in French and our high growth rates show us that our members appreciate and recommend Ziki more and more each day .

Can I add that you were born in Austria, and that we became good friends in graduate school, @ HEC Paris? So that I cut off arguments of people who’re going to ask for interviews after this blog post. I don’t interview people in general, however I’m ready to podcast developers – entrepreneurs though. Enough said, can I add that we knew each other pretty well before?

Well, you just did.

Thanks Rup. Let’s now get straight to the point: what the heck is Ziki?

Ziki’s main goal is to make our members more visible on the web. To do this, we offer a sophisticated cocktail of sevices to our members which’s ingredients are social networking, people search and feed aggregation. Ziki’s open network and our own unique tagging algorithm will help you to find and get in contact with other members having the same interests as you.

Ziki is also a free way to search for comprehensive information about a person based on published information available on the Web. Our search results will be represented by relevancy and grouped by personal profiles so that when you follow a link you’ll find a personal summary of the researched person if there’s one available.

Ziki also offers a lot of complementary features that help you manage your own online identity. It allows you to concentrate your whole web identity on only one page and, thus, improve your communication about yourself. You may import nearly all your feeds such as posts, photos, videos, comments or your favorite websites to your personal Ziki in order to create some sort of virtual ID card. Ziki is also an OpenID provider

Allright, I think I’m getting it. Pretty nice Internet Software concept. Where is the Ziki idea coming from?

An estimated 30 percent of Internet research relates to people searches. “To Google someone” has become a part of everyday language for most Americans, and with the explosion of social networks and publication platforms (blogs, photo sharing sites, video sharing sites, etc), Internet users have scattered across the Web a mine of personal information. Since this information is searched on a regular basis, there is a need to organize and present it in a structured way. That is what made Olivier Ruffin and Patrick Chassany launch Ziki in April 2006. Today Ziki counts more than 20.000 active members and is available in both English and French.

Man, what you’re telling me is truly, sincerely pretty cool. But you know, I remember having once subscribed to Ziki. I was just curious and then never went back to it again. From what you’re telling me, I guess Ziki has changed a lot. So what’s your pitch to make of me an addicted user of Ziki. In other words, why should one start to use Ziki?

Leaving aside Ziki’s great design and the nice usability of our site, there are a lot of reasons to use Ziki :

Like many internet users you are likely to have signed up to a number of other sites that you visit regularly. Ziki allows you to consolidate all these sites on one and only place. And instead of subscribing to a new feed each time your contact subscribes to a new web service, you may subscribe directly to your contact’s Ziki in order to keep yourself up to date.

Our new internal search engine is a powerful tool that will make you benefit from your networks collective intelligence. Ziki offers you the unique opportunity to become registered for free within Google, Yahoo! and MSN which will make your name appear on the top of the result list whenever anyone searches for your name on these engines.

Bloggers may better understand their audience and increase its size with Ziki. One week ago we launched a new special feature which even allows them to monetize their posts directly on our site by entering their Google Adsense Code.

Finally, companies may find Ziki’s offer attractive as we give them the opportunity to create a personal website as well as a people search tool able to find potential business partners, customers or employees.

Allright, that is convincing. But isn’t the virtual identity market crowded? Who are your competitors?

As Ziki’s services are extremely diversified in order to achieve our target – which is increasing our users’ online visibility – we have a certain number of competitors depending on the market you place us. On the people search market, you can name Spock or Spokeo, concerning online visibility management and feed aggregation and sharing, Naymz is offering also free search engine placement for “Empowering Reputable Professionals”.

To sum it up, Ziki’s approach is unique as we try to combine the highest value services of all these different markets.

What’s Ziki’s competitive advantage vs. this quality competition?

Ziki has developed its own algorithm to collect and organize information relative to a person – starting with information available on the Internet.

The site allows its users to create an official webpage for free (a ziki), on which all personal and relevant information – from a bio and resume to multimedia files and blog posts – can be stored. These official profiles can be tagged and searched through Ziki and other search engines.

Ziki members are guaranteed to appear in the first position of Google, Yahoo & MSN search results when their name is searched, given that Ziki buys sponsored links. Ziki community members can therefore create, manage and optimize their online presence while controlling their image. Through Ziki, members can tag/favorite community members, allowing them to create their own social, personal or professional networks.

How is Ziki financed?

Ziki is entirely financed by private funds.

Seasoned entrepreneur business angels? wealthy private individuals? the founders?

You go and figure out. But it seems you’re getting the picture.

Which technology do you use to make Ziki run?

Ziki is programmed in Ruby on Rails. Olivier, our CTO, has developed all the features you can find on our site today.

How many people in the team?

Beside its founders, Patrick and Olivier, Ziki is composed of a team of about 10 members managed by Jean-Francois Ruiz, who is also blogging on webdeux.info. We are permanently adding new features to Ziki, which we communicate through our blog, and we try to keep in close contact with our members in order to understand perfectly what they are looking for and be as reactive as possible while responding to their needs.

Man, this is great. We need a marketer as a blogger on Tech IT Easy. When are you joining us?

Some day probably. I would really like to. However, I’ve been very busy recently, taking care of the English speaking Ziki community, especially on a Ziki blog here. I prefer to stay focused and avoid blogging everywhere. The development of our web application in the Anglo Saxon world is instrumental to Ziki’s future success and growth globally. My job is strategic and the adventure worth it.

Indeed, staying close to one’s users is one of the keys to success in consumer web and should be your top priority. Thanks for your time Rupert and good luck with the development of the Ziki community in English speaking countries.

People, there’s one crucial question I haven’t asked Rupert. And you have to tell me. In your opinion, how is Ziki going to make money? What’s Ziki’s underlying business model?

Let’s call it the brainstorming of the day.

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So, as you may have guessed, I just watched Ratatouille, the latest film from Pixar Studios. I came out of the cinema inspired, scribbling thoughts in my little book like:

• Any great business is people-driven, and
• I don’t ever want to work for or start a company that does not obey this principle

My passions having somewhat cooled down this morning, I decided to review these thoughts. First, are people important? That’s a no-brainer. People are what create the real value in the company, nothing is as stimulating to work for as a visionary leader, and to work with, talented people that drive the company forward. Similarly, a blog is nothing without the unique voices of both those writing and those reacting.

How did I get to this strange conclusion after watching a film? Well, as you know it’s all about a rat. No, wait, wait, let me start at the beginning. Before the movie came the trailer for WALL-E, a robot that could. But it was not the traditional trailer, instead you hear the voice of the creators, explaining a little (very little) of their thought-processes in creating it. But you get a sense that this film, coming out next year, is created by someone instead of just a machine-like corporation.

A few years ago, I read a cool article in Wired, comparing the creation-process of Dreamworks to that of Pixar. There is a not-so-subtle difference. While the first tries to push out several movies a year, Pixar tries for one a year. It appears as if the company realised an important thing, that it’s about the quality, not the quantity. And quality comes from a very important principle: taking the time to create it. Creativity is all about space; people rarely have bright ideas when immersed in the tornado that is their work; instead you wait for the eye of the storm or the storm itself to pass. But it’s also about process, you need a machine behind the creator, the metaphorical pen which brings those ideas to reality quickly.

So, Ratatouille is all about a rat. Rather it’s about a rat that thought it could cook and it did. Just like any Pixar-movie, it’s about the protagonist—a car, a fish, a middle-aged super-hero—overcoming great obstacles to reach their objectives: happiness, success, family, friendship. I’m not planning on reviewing this movie here, go read the far more talented reviews at IMDB for that. The essential lesson from the film is that no matter where you come from, you can achieve greatness. All it takes is a little belief in yourself and the rest will follow.

But “people first” is not only about the quality. Sometimes, no often, people are destructive in their behaviour. Well, we are after all (mostly) human. I learned this the hard way a few nights ago, when someone close to me, who is incredibly talented, became depressed and engaged in destructive behaviour. You sometimes need to coach people into becoming their fullest self. You, as a leader, as a partner, as a friend, or as a freelancer, need to be engaged with your people, stimulating them (and yourself) to be greater than they think they are.

To finish, Pixar is a strange company, in so far that it appears completely different from Apple. Even though both involve Steve Jobs, and are incredibly successful, Pixar is far more transparent than Apple. It is actually hard to compare the two, as the latter tries so hard to hide its internal processes from the world. With Pixar’s movies, on the other hand, you get a sense of who creates the magic and how. Through documentaries, interviews like this, the strong voice of the creators that shines through their products, and of course the future line-up. A very exciting company and the world eagerly awaits their next creation!

Vincent is a co-author on Tech IT Easy. You can find out more about him on this blog’s initial announcement or on his site.

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[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=M56QwDjE6PQ]

Bonus on the house for those who like soul music: Feel like making love, by D’Angelo. Nothing to do wih duos.

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[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sr2JneittqQ]

PS: yes, I know, another post tightly linked with technology. You know, I could have elaborated on buzz marketing or video on demand. You’re lucky.

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I have become a de facto source for information (still a modest one, but better a little something than a virtual black hole)

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Hi there,

I’m swamped with things at the moment, and therefore my input here on techiteasy. org has decreased drastically. My apologies, but here’s a little post anyway, and I hope to come back soon with more interesting stories.

You can learn a lot (but not everything) about leadership by talking to some of the greats. A second best is listening to an interview. Following are some podcast-interviews with interesting leaders from technology-based firms. Some of these will not discuss leadership specifically, but just listening to them gives you an insight into what made them get to where they are and where they see some of the future of technology. That’s an area, I hope, many of us will be active in.

Here goes.

• Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, discusses his managerial style but also comments on the strategies of other companies like Google and Microsoft (Also a great (and short) book on strategy I read by him is “Only the Paranoid Survive”.) – via iInnovate / Length: 21 mins.
• Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, discusses the company’s expansion into web-services like S3 and the mechanical Turk – via Talkcrunch / length: 17 mins..
• Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, discusses the challenge of running the chaos that is Google as well as the not-so-chaotic parts – via iInnovate / length: 20 mins.
• Reid Hoffman, former CEO of Linkedin, discusses entrepreneurship and strategy of Linkedin (which also convinced me to set up my profile there) – via Stanford / Length: 63 mins.

I hope you’ll enjoy those! The podcasts-series themselves are also quite amazing and of course available via iTunes. I do realise that I’m possibly giving away clues to future “guess who’s”, but that just means that the techiteasy-authors will have to become more creative in the future.

I’m of course curious whether our readers have stumbled across some interesting interviews as well. Audio, video, or text, even books, it doesn’t matter. Just let us know in the comments!

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‘I don’t know enough about you’:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=tWSum6wWid8]

‘East of the Sun & West of the Moon’ (I adore this title):

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=00JJKSow2zU]

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1. It’s small and hence handy (real size here on the picture).
2. Still, buttons are of reasonable size so that it’s not hard at all to switch track whilst running.
3. The autonomy’s pretty excellent (about 12 hours listening to music).
4. It’s water resistant (let’s put it that way).
5. The clip doesn’t get tired easily, and it fastens to your clothes surprisingly well.

However, it’s not perfect at all. Here’s why:

1. Standard Apple headphones aren’t adapted to running (don’t stick to my ears).
2. It’s rather expensive for what it is (1Gb of hard drive only).
3. No screen so you don’t get to know what song you’re playing, but you knew about that when you bought the device so it’s your fault.

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• Why does agile software development pay? Excellent content although I would have enjoyed some words about the optimal conditions to use an agile method.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=OWvSnYjqOTQ]

• 2 videos on software projects shipping late.

The first one is an inspiring speech excerpt by Steve McCarthy, head of Microsoft Visual Studio team. Too bad it’s too short.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=kGKMTCvq-RM]

The second one is a must-see, by AxoSoft’s founder @ 2006 conference “Shipping Software On Time“.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=o68bLCX5CVo]

• Halftime! Take a break:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=rXKQ0DiTpWM]

• Software project management saga in 2 episodes by Bas de Baar:

1/2:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=vgOVuFpw0Tw]

2/2:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ORzQQn3YTV4]

• Too long a conclusion (65 minutes…) & not exactly on software project management but rather on the impact of software on community. Still an interesting view point on the role of software. Software is as crucial in the 21st Century as steel was in the 20th Century, according to by Eben Moglen, head of the Software Freedom Law Center. I think the statement is a bit far-fetched, but rather stimulating, intellectually speaking. A lot of things he says (“software is crucial towards economic development”) are true but such awkward statements such as “the good news is that nobody owns software” (first, it’s wrong; second, had it been true or should it become true, it wouldn’t be good news at all – but I acknowledge that’s just my opinion). Excellent points on the importance of mathematics.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=NorfgQlEJv8]

Nota Bene: for those of you who read French, a really good blog on software project management is Laurent Deséchalliers‘s, right here.

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I’m very happy to see the company’s transforming so fast to adapt the long term thirst for ‘beautiful things’. I guess there’s more to come from Redmond.

Download Microsoft’s Silverlight (read MSFTie & blogger Don Dodge’s product analysis) Development Kit (SDK well done guys) for PC & MAC right here.

Now I just hope the rich media fight between Microsoft & Adobe, 2 companies I am fond of, will benefit the entire computer industry and most of all Internet rich media developers & end users.

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Many thanks to Chadi for the fish. I apologize to all my visitors, this blog has been related to everything but IT recently. But I’m to strike back with interesting stuff very soon.

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The winners will be announced on March 13th, and will be appear on The Today Show on NBC. I never met Alexandra, but Linda and Jen (the girl who produced the video, working for MTV in New York) are really bright, nice and cool girls – just like Cheryl thanks to whom I met with them. Actually, Cheryl may be sort of less nice since she spammed me a dozen times in 3 days to remind  her endless closet of friends about the contest…But she’s the one actually pulling strings on who’s getting to meet who in this business, so shhh

Cheryl also told me she would arrange a date with Alexandra, Linda and Jen to all men who would’ve cast a vote in favor of Endless Closet, the name of their entrepreneurial idea, in case they win the competition…First to vote, first served!

Endless Closet is a new fashionable clothe rental service. I encourage you to watch the video to get to know more about the actual business. Watch the video and vote here for Alexandra Dumitru’s project.

For those not living in New York, a couple months ago, I came across a new e-Commerce fashion rental start-up based in Paris: Dorian Wear. Congrats to Annabelle and her very cool team for the good work.

What about a cross-border merger between the 2 companies to form the first and leading global fashion rental service?

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Do you know Dragons’ Den? Well if you’re from the UK or the US, the answer’s probably yes. I had heard about the concept, but had actually never see the show. Dragon’s Den is a TV show on entrepreneurship and fundraising where you might come accross live investments.

I was especially impressed by the questions raised by the angels, be they from the UK (on the BBC) or the US. These guys really are professional investors. I wish this show was broadcasting in many more countries – especially where taking the high risk / high return bet to invest one’s personal money on innovative start ups isn’t quite sculpted in the culture of the area (mostly latin countries & Japan).

Here is a show that caught my interest in many respects (one amongst many), from the US version of Dragon’s Den:

JobLoft on dragons den part 1

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9EkablfWVk]

JobLoft on dragons den part 2

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj8MNEgiDTU]

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So, when Jeremy invited me to write something here I jumped at the chance. This all happily coincided with a piece of terribly misunderestimated [sic] piece of news, which centered on Microsoft, the destroyer of worlds and RSS, the nifty little format to distribute lists – the latter which happened to be something I rambled about a bit in my short-lived attempt to try ‘blogging’. I still don’t like it, I’m waiting for the next publishing format as this chronologically ordered stuff just doesn’t seem to do it to me. Even if it might be beneficial tool to journal project progress. (Yes, I’m waiting them to migrate to SPS 2007 at my organization. It’s going to be so cool.)

Anyway, back to the topic. If I had to choose the hottest tech from 2006, I’d go with RSS. What I mean by RSS here is both RSS and Atom, or pretty much any standard format of syndicating and distributing lists. In my opinion this tech is still emerging and gaining momentum, partly thanks to the blogging phenomenon, which created a need to quickly skim what’s new on so many blogs.

Now, many could argue that in 2005-2006 RSS/Atom started to mature or maybe stagnate, but not me. Maybe the specifications have finally matured enough, but there’s a lot of adopting and figuring out what to do with it to be done. Around Christmas the news broke that Microsoft had ‘patented’ RSS , which of course put everyone at arms and accusing Microsoft of stealing an open format. Of course, the patent has nothing to do with RSS the specification or RSS readers, but with the idea of central operating system level APIs to manipulate subscriptions. Which is kinda nice idea. What I find powerful in OS X are the frameworks, which f.e. enable Adium to take advantage of information in Address Book or SubEthaEdit to do it’s thing through Bonjour. And I really have to mention Growl here too.

Lists are a fun concept, and with RSS and especially Atom, it’s really versatile to go beyond ‘Rich Site Summaries’. And I believe the guys at Microsoft have figured this out. Remember Simple List Extensions or Simple Sharing Extensions ? These extensions enable RSS-feeds to be more than just chronologically sorted lists of new posts from your favourite blogs. Don’t worry if you don’t, I don’t know if anyone besides Microsoft has actually adopted these extensions or anything, even though they were published sometime in 2005. I’m also yet to find a news story connecting these dots to the recent RSS-patent ‘scandal’.

I’ve yet to have hands-on experience with Vista (wink, wink), but at least a while back when it was still called Longhorn, I remember reading that it would support RSS in new, cool ways. And to keep the guys at Cupertino at bay, Microsoft naturally needs to patent their idea of RSS framework. What I can’t understand is why hasn’t Apple already done this? Or did they rephrase their RSS patents differently?

Unlike certain open source efforts, it seems that Microsoft has understood the power of universal standard for lists. Posts in a blog? A list. Your address book? A list. Your calendar? A list (okay, there’s iCalendar already, but in iCal bi-directionality is non-existent at least pre-Leopard). Your contact list in Skype/MSN Live Messenger/whatever? A list. Your photos at Flickr ? A list. Your playlist? A list. Your favourite links ? A list. Your e-mail ? A list. Your to-do list ? Well, a list.

These lists act as database views and it definitely makes sense to centralize these through OS-level APIs. RSS has depreciated and made redundant many niche formats, like M3U and maybe even iCalendar. The simplicity and versatility of RSS has accelerated its adoption. And Microsoft got it.

Kari is an IT project manager at an utility company and when not managing the ensuing chaos finally understood what he studied while reading ‘Freakonomics’ which helped him accept fantasizing about (statistical) models, but still has a secret passion with Veronica Mars .

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One the one hand, people tend to more and more use their blog to sell their stuff (see Ouriel – again, thanks to whom I got this business idea), or even look for something through their personal blog.

On the other hand, e-Commerce sales have been booming recently: consumers have acknowledged that transaction security is no longer an issue, plus more and more interesting concept e-stores or e-companies helping supply meet demand have emerged. 2 concrete examples:

• Zlio, which empowers people willing to open their own online store with the appropriate web service tools (zero-inventory or -shipping hassle);
• aStore, a subsidiary of Amazon providing a platform for people to build up their own Amazon e-boutique and integrate it to their own website.

I believe, and I’m not the only one, that we’re just at eCommerce growth is an underlying trend of the world we live in.

If I were Ouriel, or say I would’ve liked to purchase his iTrip (very unlikely: I don’t like closed environments like the one iPod provides, here’s why), it would’ve been cool to have some sort of plug-in, feature, gadget or widget (call it as you like) ready to be integrated onto your blog for people to pay directly – it goes without saying, if the item’s still available – & why not using services like Paypal or Google Checkout.

57 million bloggers (huge market) worldwide spend their time building trust and common ground with their readers, key caracteristics of good bloggers who look for repeat readers (and even better, commentors) rather than one shot visitors. So, instead of advertising and polluting their readers’ environment (for those willing to monetize their time writing), why wouldn’t anyone put on her/his own weblog some items for selling to their readership? Allright, a blog for sure doesn’t have as much traffic as eBay. But I believe trust compensates for traffic, and many supposedly ‘famous’ bloggers could make a hell lot of money through this canal.

Such an initiative, this online payment feature for bloggers (of which business model would be based on commissions as you had already guessed), would also urge the development of a better sense of customer care and retail flair that too few people can claim to be gifted with in Latin and German cultures. This stance is less true in Anglo-Saxon and Arab countries where retailers of all sizes are better perceived socially, and quality of service is printed in most people’s DNA.

As for all business ideas, there’s a lot of room for improvement. This is where you’re coming in leaving challenging comments…The floor is yours!

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