E-culture & Communications

Advantages of a student "blogosphere"

2006-05-11T11:23:00.000+02:00

At the end of each class, we have a collection of answers on student blogs. I use it as a collection of thoughts and I sometimes try to find inspiration into them. I read the comments about our answers also.

This is a mine of information and ideas that we can use for our own thoughts.
- we can comment the answers of other students and start a kind of dialog,
- we can pick up an idea and complete it on our own way on our blog,
- we have a history of the class and can distinguish the evolutions of each of us (skills in writing on blogs, thoughts, level of English, etc.),
- it makes people feel that they are a team which an asset for our social behavior in front of a challenge like learning E-Culture and Communications.

This is a way of interacting between us out of the classroom and a way of sharing information. It goes straight in the "Generosity" principle of that class. We are a team at the moment as we are in our professional life and the "blogosphere" is a tool for that.

E-communications in the professional life

2006-05-11T11:02:00.000+02:00

This is true that it should be a revolutionary way of communicating at work.

- As an example, my current roomate is a sales representative in wines. He goes to restaurants to sell wines to restaurants managers. He is compelled to travel a lot around in Paris. We could imagine that such a way of working in the future would be a tremendous way of saving time and money like the mobile phone was one for them five years ago.

- In rural areas, it will be time-saving to make administrative papers through visioconferencing. As France is a country with low density population, these people have to travel on many kilometers in rural areas for these kind of obligations. In a context of expensive energy, we can imagine that this is a nice future for these technologies in that case.

- In multinational or even national companies, these technologies are an asset. You can organize meetings through Internet without moving from your work station. It avoids long travels from people who work far away. As a project manager, it could be my future very soon.

- As teleworking is more and more an issue in the professional world, many users could come like webmasters.

You can surely imagine that webcams will also be available on mobile phones sooner or later. It will change things again.

On-line classes vs regular ones

2006-05-11T10:49:00.000+02:00

The differences between a regular classroom and today's class on-line:
- you can directly interact with the teacher if you need instead of interrupting the class for a question which is no value for the others.
- you can write and talk to communicate with the teacher or with the other classmates.
- you can directly send information to the class (websites, digital documents).
- anybody can react on your writing published on your blog.

Most of them are based on interactivity and time-based opportunities. This is actually hard for me to propose changes as this is very new. Maybe we could think about using a more advanced software like Windows Collaboration in the next Windows Vista as many other features will be available: whiteboarding, desktop sharing. This new type of features could also be very interesting in a regular classroom.

Learning about podcasting

2006-05-11T10:24:00.000+02:00

Podcasting has been a very nice discovery for me in this class. First, I tried to find out how to get and listen to them as we use different tools on Linux. I have found rhythmbox as a very good player.

Then, I tried to quickly go through and to understand how I can make podcasting an asset in my professional and personal life. I used the RSS adresses to subscribe to different radio broadcasts on radio france or grape radio. This enable me to not miss my favorite broadcasts as I was used before. Since two or three weeks, it works! By connecting my software to Internet once a week, I directly can download the broadcasts selected and listen to them on weekends even without Internet connection.

I currently try to make podcasts and try to understand if I can use it on my company website as I am a webmaster there. My point is to handle the technology before going back to my company.

The next steps for me will be to get a iPod to become a mobile podcaster! The idea would to better use my time during daily travels. I do not often read as I find it difficult to focus on a book in public transportation. Podcasting may be a new solution for me.

Principles about M-shopping

2006-05-11T09:54:00.000+02:00

M-shopping stands for Mobile Shopping and may become the next radical change in the way people look and purchase products. People may use mobile phones or personal digital assistant for that purpose or the next generation of electronic tools that may be a combination of at least both systems.

This is a very clever way of consuming as this is an ultimate way of personalization. By having its own tool in hands, the customer will have the impression to have a full power over its way of consumption. The principle of treating each customer as a market segment of one will never be as true in that case.

I also think that it will be a key factor to touch the children and young people in general. This is a great way of hiring children to make adults consume. Children will certainly appropriate these new tools faster than the rest of the population are they keen on technologies and have a complete open mind.

This is also a win-win situation as consumers will have a personalized way of consuming and will less waste their time by going to stores or using the computer at home. They will be able to shop in public transports for instance.

The key issue for big companies is to be able to better use the consumer free time. Consumers will be able to be touched at any time and to consume at any time.

Learning about new concepts

2006-05-11T09:42:00.000+02:00

The most common way for me to find information on Internet is Wikipedia of course. This is a wonderful initiative coming from the open community. I also complete the information by reading the French or Italian version.
Another very good source of information about technologies and e-culture is the CommentCaMarche encyclopedia. This is a freely accessible website, but only available in French.

However, these sources are only the first step of a research to understand new concepts. Then, we have to try the different external links from these encyclopedia and try to make our own way of thinking about them. We have also to make links with our own previous culture and knowledge even if this is a new field we discover. This is very important from my point to appropriate the concept. This is for me a key issue in the learning process.

The process of e-learning

2006-05-09T11:58:00.000+02:00

- What is you think about the process of e-learning, learning by internet connection?
Learning by internet is not as easy as you could think at the first thought. We need to concentrate on both the computer tools and on your task. Anyway, this is a nice way of interactivity and may become more and more popular as people will hardly increase their mobility in a world of expensive energy. Communication technologies may become a crucial point to enlarge your views in remote areas and get trained quickly. This is a matter of economical and personal efficiency.

- What would be your best creative ideas for a process like ours? What software would you use?
I do not know if it is a great idea, but we could use collaborative software like Wikis, or telephony softwares like Skype to communicate. Even if this is a proprietary system, Skype is a software specialised in visioconferencing. An open source alternative would be OpenWengo. The video is only available on Windows, but will be soon available on Linux and Mac.

It would be also interesting to do the exam or even parts of the class from home as in a real process of e-learning. We would need to be professional from home which is something new for most of us and may be useful for the future.

A longtail marketing strategy

2006-05-09T11:35:00.000+02:00

- A longtail marketing strategy
The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 article in Wired magazine to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. This term is related to statistics specially in wealth distributions. On Amazon.com, for instance, few books represents a great part of the sales. But even if the rest of the products are less popular, customers buy these few books because they know about a great number of them available on the web site. Wikipedia with its articles is also a nice example.

End user licensing agreement (EULA)

2006-05-09T11:25:00.000+02:00

- EULA, or End User Licensing Agreement
An EULA is a legal contract between the manufacturer and/or the author and the end user of an application. The EULA details how the software can and cannot be used and any restrictions that the manufacturer imposes. EULA is a software license that specifies the different permissions granted by the owner to the user. Microsoft Windows for instance is an EULA.

Key concepts for audio and video on Internet

2006-05-09T10:44:00.000+02:00

- TIVO
TIVO is a very popular brand of digital video recorder. This is a synonymous for personal video recorder. It is a consumer video device which allows users to capture television programming to internal hard disk storage for later viewing.

- Time shifting
Time shifting is a way of consuming video programs. They are recorded in due time and are viewed when the consumer wants. In cable television broadcasting, time shifting is a way of taking into account the different time zones of an area of broadcast the same programs throughout the day.

- Pay-on-demand TV
Pay-on-demand TV is a way of consuming TV where the consumer can choose their programs as they want. The Italian TV, the RAI enables consumer to use this system. It is an interesting system as it introduces a bit of interactivity and personalization that gives the impression to the consumer that it gets more freedom. It treats each consumer as a market segment of one. This is direct marketing.

- Streaming media
Streaming media is a media (audio, video) consumed as the same time as it is delivered. You do not need to download the whole document to start reading it. Real Player is one of the most used software in that field, even on Linux. As the Flash player, this is one of the proprietary plugin that does not exist in the free software world.

- Podcasting
Podcasting is a method using Web syndication to distribute multimedia files (audio and video). Different formats exist. Some are closed formats (MP3) others are open formats (OGG). An interesting podcast I have found is on the New York Times web site where we can find critics about theater in Broadway on podcasts.

Intellectual property and Digital rights management (DRM)

2006-05-09T09:51:00.000+02:00

- Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a way of protecting ideas, information, creations in general. Laws vary about that from a country to another one. Some international agreeements have been implemented through the World Trade Organization. Creative commons is a nice example of non-profit organization that gives the opportunity to establish a contract between the author and the users in order to protect the intellectual property and to give the possibility to use a creation.

- DRM, or digital rights management
Digital rights management is a range of technologies used to enforce policies to protect access to softwares or other digital data. This is a key issue at the moment as the European Union prepares a Directive this year about it. The Free Software Foundation is targeting these technologies that are a obstacle to interdependence and inter-operability betweeen computer systems and reduce our freedom.

Key concepts for business on Internet

2006-05-09T09:28:00.000+02:00

- Click and mortar company
A click and mortar company is a company which attempts to integrate both online and physical presences. It is also known as clicks-and-bricks. FNAC is a click and mortar company as we can buy books in a FNAC bookstore or on-line.

- Pure dotcom company
A pure dotcom company is a company which attempts to have only an online model with a business model. Amazon is a pure dotcom company. We can only buy products on-line.

- Monetize an internet model
Monetize an internet model is trying to generate revenue and profits through Internet. A good example of monetizing an internet model is Appartager.com which enable to people to meet each other before sharing an appartment. At first, this web site was just a free database to meet people. We have now to pay not to consult the announcements but to get the contact details of other people.

Redefining the Interior

2006-05-08T19:04:00.000+02:00

Four principles of Killer App Design:

- Treat your assets as liabilities
Encyclopædia Britannica is an example of company that has had to change of paradigm. Wikipedia has become a strong competitor and has even done better as an on-line encyclopedia. As a consequence, they have to reinvent a new way of earning money in their field. Internet as an asset to sell knowlegde to people has finally been a liability. They have invest a lot of money for something anybody can get for free. Currently their website complete the information of the books they sell.

- Destroy your value chain
Arte radio shows how a TV channel has adapted to Internet by proposing a radio program based on a original concept with short reports downloadable as a podcast or that can be listened on-line in streaming. Arte is no longer a TV channel only and enlarge its offer on the web.

- Manage innovation as a portfolio of options
France Culture is a national radio with regular broadcasts. They have used innovations on Internet to give different options to listen to their productions. Podcasts, streaming, reports on a specific topic close to the broadcasts. A radio can enlarge the options for the listener.

- Hire the children
Burger King is a perfect example of companies involving children in their business plan. We can see at the first glance on the front page of the web site with lots of animations, games. The web site is nearly entirely dedicated to children.

Building New Connections

2006-05-08T17:44:00.000+02:00

Four principles of Killer App Design:

- Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces
Wal-Mart is a classical example of a rude interface where you need to take your car, get your goodies, go to queue for shopping. Now, if you use their web site, you need first to learn how to order on-line and you can then order goodies from home.

- Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself
Air France is a flight company that has changed its business model by giving the opportunity to book and print a plane ticket at home. They need to ensure a continuity for the customer by accepting the printed ticket as a regular plane ticket.

- Give away as much information as you can
Bristish gas is a gas company that has invested a lot in their Web site to provide information about the house and give tips about how to fix problems in your house. This is a good example of a company that gives information to the user hoping that he will come back to it.

- Structure every transaction as a joint venture
Mc Donald's web site uses a partnership with Walt Disney for catching the children attention and dragging people to the company restaurants. This is a good example of business strategies involving a joint venture between two companies for the profits of both of them.

Reshaping the Landscape

2006-05-08T11:44:00.000+02:00

Four principles of Killer App Design:

- Outsource to the customer.
This is a very good way of saving money for a company using Internet. A state company as the French Tax Administration is a very good example of outsource to the customer. By writing on-line all information needed each year about their personal income, the public administration saves paper and time.

- Cannibalize your market.
Many companies loose a "real" market and transfer it a "virtual" market. A part of their income is made in shops and a part of it is made on Internet. Barnes & Noble is a good example of American company that have started with a nice concept of bookstore and slightly invests in commercial websites on the Internet.

- Treat each customer as a market segment of one.
A current trend of the Internet as a commercial tool is to directly speak to the customer by using tools of personnalization. Expedia.co.uk is a very good example of travel agency offering websites with the possibility to keep records about your profile, selected trips and so on.

- Create communities of value.
Ubuntu is a free Linux-based operating system managed by a private company Canonical Ltd. that uses a community for testing its open-source software. The community also promotes the operating system as users and helps beginners to handle the new technology by maintaining the on-line documentation.

About Audacity

2006-04-27T10:12:00.000+02:00

Audacity is an amazing free and open source multitrack audio software that enable people to manage sounds. It is freely downloadable on SourceForge for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and different other operating systems. Among many functions, you can:
- register your voice and make a report about a topic for example,
- import existing records in different formats like .wav, .mp3, .aif, .au and .ircam,
- edit existing records,
- adjust levels on your record,
- add new tracks like background music to your record,
- mix several tracks,
- export your project under an MP3, OGG, WAV or AIFF.

A good first tutorial about how to use Audacity is available at Daniel's page. The graphic interface is very simple and good-looking. A perfect software to start with making podcast or audio CD.

Interdependence

2006-04-26T19:23:00.001+02:00

Interdependence is a key issue on Internet. We could talk about it on different ways, but I will develop today only about a part of the notion linked to inter-operability: the ability of software and hardware on multiple machines from multiple vendors to communicate.

Without standards it would be impossible to communicate on Internet as our computers and softwares would not speak the same language. The World Wide Web Consortium is an organization for building Web standards. Its president, Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web in 1989 in Geneva (CH).

The open source community plays a great role in building standard. As anybody can have an access to the source code of the softwares made by the community, anybody can study the code, improve it. That way, these softwares become more and more reliable and skillful. Most of them are free, can be ran on any main operating systems.

Use of blogs

2006-04-26T19:23:00.000+02:00

I have found many many ways of using a blog on the Internet. The common point between most of them is that they are used to write about opinions. About the most used blogs or the most original uses, we find:

PHOTOBLOGS Mainly use for publishing pictures very a short description like Fotograph by Imran. Photographs enthusiastics, young parents that want to share picture of their newly borned kids with the family, travellers, etc.

SOCIAL BLOGS become more and more popular. We can expect a great development in the years tocome. Currently, they are quite developped among the expatriates. It increases the need for a virtual community. Please take a look at the Expat blog community.

POLITICAL BLOGS have a great success among politicians, citizens who want to give their views. Watch blogs are a subspecies of political blogs. Their goal is to critize main stream opinions. Example of talkingpointsmemo.com.

SKETCH BLOGS are a kind of portfolio for artist's works with more images and less texts. These types of blogs is a way for artists to make them and their work known as for Frogfeet Productions for instance.

COLLABORATIVE BLOGS are blogs open to everyone or to a limited group of people. They are written by more than one people. Metafilter is a good example.

As astonishing as it might seem, MOBBLOGS are blogs written from a mobile phone or personal digital assistant with special softwares.

Graperadio.com, podcast of the week

2006-04-25T21:56:00.000+02:00

I have a strong interest in wines as I have been tasting in an oenology club for three years. I have found a very nice blog called graperadio.com which the website of a radio specialised about wines of the whole world. This radio makes podcasts with interviews of wine makers, report wine regions, etc. I have downloaded a podcast about wines of the Piedmont region in Italy as I hope to go to Turin for my internship. Let's get together work and pleasure!

Impermanence, as principle of e-culture

2006-04-24T21:59:00.000+02:00

Most people use Word as a word processing software. This software as been created in the middle of the 90's. We did not wait for it for typing our text documents on computers. Before, Microsoft Word, we used another software. We can imagine that later on, Ms Word will be replace by another technology. Microsoft could decide it. Another private company could come up. The user could decide to work with an open source program that would become a new standard.

Search engines are a very example of impermanence. Before 1998, Yahoo and Altavista were the two major engines for information searching on the Web. Yahoo was a human-powered directory and Altavista was a search engine previously dedicated to the research: a tool for searching among articles of researchers on the Web. It was a model until Google appeared. Google was a change of paradigm in the search engines world. Its way of highlighting relevant results for a request was a revolution. Today in Europe more than 80% of all requests on the Web use Google.

Floppy disks in use in the 90's have been replaced by memory sticks in the last 2 or 3 years. It has been extremely quick. My labtop does not even have a place to insert a floppy disk! Among Cds, DVDs, hard disk, mobile disk, we use plenty of different supports. It makes things more sophisticated. If your computer does not support the proper technology, we are behind and you may waster time searching for another way to do.

This impermanence should be source of concerns for companies or administrations that depend upon on these technologies for their memory. The source code for Ms Word is not available as the format is owned by Microsoft. As the documents created ten years ago are not readable any more with the technologies in use on our computers, it raises new issues about the archives management in none open formats. The State of Massachussets has already decided to use an open format [fr] for all documents made by its administration. They will use the OpenDocument formats (.odt for texts for instance). The OpenOffice suite is the first suite to support this format.

Benefits of an open mind

2006-04-24T21:58:00.001+02:00

Three examples of benefits of an open-mind:

-Film Society of Lincoln Center
This cinema gives the opportunity to buy tickets on-line. By opening our mind and changing our behavior, we can save a lot of time instead of standing in the queue in large cities like New York. Everything can be prepared and booked on-line. All you need to thing is how and with who you will get there.

-The University of Texas at Austin
This university enables students to manage their all program of studies on-line. If you are a foreigner and lives overseas, you do not need to wait to be there to forecast your subscription and to plan your classes. The only point is to be curious and have a close look at the website.

- Learning about new technologies: Podcast
Using new technology like podcasts is a tremendous reward of the Internet. As an example, a couple of times a week, I download by RSS, the podcasts of my favorite broadcasts on France Inter. I was used to miss some of them as the national radio leave them on-line only for a week. By downloading podcasts, I can listen to them when I have the time for. This is very handy.

Transparency

2006-04-24T21:58:00.000+02:00

We are the twentieth anniversary for the Tchernobyl disaster. Let's go back to the 26^th of April 1986. The French government has deliberately lied about the consequences of the explosion of the nuclear power plant. Pr Pellerin said the radioactive dusts would not reach the French territory. Then, he also said than they were no risk for people health. At the same time, most of the European countries took measures about food supply to protect their populations. Such a situation could not be possible in the current world. The news are too fast through the Internet, the mobile phones, the radios and TV channels. Populations of the different countries of the world are much more in contact with each other.

Another example of bad act, sorry for that, is about distributed computing. I am sure you have heard about this way the research uses to increase the calculating power of their program. You can freely help labs working on diseases, like the well-known Pande Group at the University of Standford for instance, that seems very transparent about its policy with the Folding@Home project, by downloading a software that will use the power of your computer during your work time to make calculations for them without slowing down your machine. This is a clever way of using the people generosity. However, some European laboratories have abuse of it and privatize the results instead of providing them to the research community. Even in a small and heterogeneous community, news are known and some laboratories blacklisted.

A last example about transparency is your own class, Bob. All our assignments are on-line on blog. It seems very fancy and handful. But, on the other hand, this is also a very good way of watching the students, knowing precisely at what time they have worked for your class. You just have to look at the date of publication to have an idea about it. This is an example to show that e-culture is a new way to collect precious tracks about people. It will more and more the case in the coming years. However, as always, there is a system given by an authority (the blog) and the way the actors behave with it (the student could make an empty entry at the time the assignment is given, work on it off-line and fulfill the blog at the last time). As the system provides the date of publication and not the date of last update, it becomes more transparent for the student ;-).

Time-based precious opportunities

2006-04-24T21:56:00.000+02:00

Three examples of time-based precious opportunities:

- Archives.org
As many on-line libraries, this is a great opportunity to find information at home. You can have access to information stored in digital format without moving from home. On-line libraries are precious opportunities to save time for students and researchers.

- The Gardian
Another great opportunity is provided by on-line newspapers that enable us to quickly select the information we want to hear about. We are not compelled to watch the whole journal on TV or to listen to the whole report on radio. Everything is available at a glance.

- Interactive Brokers
People interested in stock auctions can directly manage their savings at home. They can manage their acount on-line at the bank and trade on-line on specialised web sites. They do not need to use a phone and waste time for ordering. Things are quicker nowadays. A order is a matter of seconds on the market.

Quick tip about MSN

2006-04-22T11:23:00.000+02:00

As we discuss last time in class, alternative software exist for replacing MSN Messenger of Microsoft. If you are sick and tired with advertising on MSN, we can try aMSN that stands for Alvaro's MSN. This is a free open source MSN Messenger clone with some advantages:

aMSN works on Windows, Mac and Linux. The Mac community even says that the application works better than MSN Messenger on Mac as the Microsoft version is a bit behind on this operating system,
there is no advertising,
you can plug a webcam as on MSN Messenger,
it is available in English and French among more than 40 other languages,
you can customize it with skins and plug-ins.

Only one drawback: there is no sound with the video.

For Windows, you can find it on Sourceforge, the Website I talked about during our last class. We can get it as any other software on Sourceforge. All you have to do is:

typing "amsn" in the search engine,
click on "aMSN",
click on "download aMSN",
download the "amsn-0.95-windows-installer-2.exe" package.

We can also simply download aMSN for Windows.

If you still not convinced, please take a look at this very up-to-date description[fr].

Podcasting discovery

2006-04-20T09:11:00.000+02:00

My podcasting discovery has been delayed for a while as I have run out of time. I use Linux, the Ubuntu distribution and Itunes does work on this operating system. By checking the different open source softwares available for this Linux distribution, I have found Rhythmbox, a music management software for Gnome environment on Sourceforge. Since the version 0.9.0.2, this software gives the opportunity to manage podcasts on the Itunes manner.

CNN Radio Podcast

My first podcast was the podcast of the last news from CNN Radio with different about the visit of the Chinese president at the White House, auto crashes in Texas and last news from the New York stock exchange... Not very original to use but very interesting for improving our English as the rhythm is fast and the vocabulary accurate.

English as a Second Language Podcast

Maybe more useful for our English level is the one of ESL ( for intermediate and advanced English speakers). We can listen real native speakers at a slower rate than on CNN radio. Vocabulary, expressions are explained after the first part of listening.

Six other examples of the same process as Google.

2006-04-18T14:54:00.000+02:00

Six examples similar to Google on the Internet:

ebay Goods exchanges on ebay come from the users. They provide a very well known market place and the users provide the content and update it. It costs time for the visitor but no money directly. Even if we can find adverts, this is a web site with interesting information available.
blogger Provides free open space for publishing a blog. This is a truely good example as this is an open space without any adverts and accessible to anybody. This is exactly the same process as Google.
amazonAmazon is not a perfect example but gives the user the opportunity to share his views about a book sold on-line on Amazon. This is a service for another user that add a value to the web site without costing anything to the company. We can find precious information on this private company web site.
commentcamarcheprovides a free easy-to-use encyclopedia about computer sciences in French. They use this quality Website brand to sell books in bookstores. But there is very few adverts on the website and only a couple of books to sell in bookstores.
MSN Provides a new way of communicating between a network of friends or professionals. Even if you do not use MSN Messenger as a software, but an open source one, you can use the network to contact your friends.
yellowpages Provides an on-line directory of companies for free. In that sense, with very few adverts, we can say that this is close to the Google business model.

The Google question

2006-04-18T14:27:00.000+02:00

Google is a very interesting business model. It has been implemented in 1998 by two students of the University of Stanford. These students were working our their PhD.

How it works.

Their spider [fr] is trying to determine the ranking for a Website: the number of Websites point at one Website. This popularity gives a more or less good rank to a Website. With this revolutionary way of indexing the Web, Google has quickly become a more relevant search engine than his competitors.

Google has imitate other companies about many new functions provided. One of the last example is the new functionality that will able the spider to search the invisible Web pages. According to commentcamarche.net [fr], the Google engineers have developed a possibility to access information in the enterprises databases for the companies themselves as the Exalead French company has done it before.

First, I think they were no business model the first years. This is something that makes Google very popular in the Internet community. They refused the common way of advertising and use open source softwares to make the architecture of the search engine. This way of behaving at the beginning may have attract a lot of people because of the image they spread around.

Why it works.

They started to sell a Web service to organizations interested in a accurate search engine for their Websites. It was a great part of their income. Since two years, there was such a pressure to open Google to advertisement that they found a new way of advertising. They used sponsored links related to the keywords requested by the visitor. Actually, it that not completely new. Others companies used it already. But, it suits perfectly to their company culture.

The generosity model of Google has been dramatically promoted. Google has worked a lot about its image. Google is very interesting on a information and communication point of view. The programme is very good, the communication is excellent. They imitated other companies for many features, but always on a clever manner.