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Archive for September, 2009

To Whom It May Concern

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that you do not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point – that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative – self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it’s a mistake or luck. Take your eyes off others and turn the scanner within. Find the seeds of your jealousy, clear the old voices and experiences. Put all the energy into building your personal and emotional security. Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them.

Jennifer James

Tags: emotional, envy, frustration, jealousy, self-value
Posted in Friends, Twitter, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Google Voice Missed Robbery Attempt

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Difficult to read online news and not bump into one of those anti-carriers posts regarding the Google Voice vs. AT&T case.

Being involved in Telecom I’m often asked to give my opinion on the matter. After long and boring passionate discussions with friends it became clear no one as a clue of what’s going on. The need for an explanatory post came naturally after a brainstorming session with my friend and partner Pat Phelan.

What is Google Voice?

The service provisions a U.S. phone number, chosen by the user from available numbers in selected area codes, free of charge to each user account. Inbound calls to this number are forwarded to other phone numbers of the subscriber. Outbound calls may be placed to domestic and international destinations from any of a user’s configured telephones, or from a web-based application.Inbound and domestic outbound calls (including calls to Canada) are free of charge, while international calls are billed according to a schedule posted on the Google Voice website. [wikipedia definition].
In simple words, Google Voice is an alternative telecom carrier offering a FREE US number, unlimited free calls within US and Canada and unlimited inbound calls.

Google Voice strong “selling” feature in the Gmail like dashboard offering call logs, SMS history, sync with contact book, visual voicemail.

Ok but how does it work?

Until recently Google Voice was a web application. You needed to go to your web browser in order to place a call. Last summer Google released mobile applications to run on Android, BlackBerry and iPhone.
Simply install the application, pop up the virtual dialer and start making free calls using your mobile carrier a termination point only. Google Voice in an application layer on top of your current service.

iPhone version was removed from App store on july 27, 2009.

If it’s the same as my phone service why would I use Google Voice?

That’s the most interesting question. You still need a host carrier to run Google Voice, minutes you are using on Google Voice are accounted on your plan, so here are benefits:

-       Your Google Voice number is yours for life. No fear to lose your number ever.
-       you can call Canada at no extra cost
-       some carriers plan restrict out-of-state calls. You won’t have this problem with GV.
-       you get advanced voicemail for free (carriers usually charge $5/mo)
-       you get unconditional call forwarding free. You can decide to forward GV calls to your office, country house
-       Advanced call forwarding (simultaneous rings e.g. office, cell and home)
-       Cheap international calls
-       Unlimited free SMS, send and receive
-       Visual Voicemail
-       Call screening, call recording, etc.

Most important is your independence to carrier. You can change operator and never loose a voicemail, or sms or call log. Forget long term commitment to AT&T.

Why did Apple and ATT rejected the iPhone application?

Michael Arrington was prompt to trash Apple thinking they are the bad guys. He even gave his iPhone up and moved to an Android powered device to protest against Cupertino firm [I also dumped iPhone for an HTC Hero but for different motivations].

It was obvious Apple had little to do in the decision to block Google Voice application. It’s a direct order coming from AT&T saying to Google: No, you won’t pimp us!

As much as I hate carrier, their mafia cartels and market domination I disagree with Mike argument that we live in a free world and AT&T should not block Google.

Let’s put it this way – can Mashable post their articles on Techcrunch comments because comments are a backdoor to posting on TechCrunch?

Arrington will be the first one to take those posts out and call for an embargo on Mashable.

Can you publish an ad with a Bing search box on Google sponsored links? I won’t live long enough to see Microsoft trying to do this.

But no you can’t.

You shouldn’t be able to use carriers pipes to steal their traffic, take away their subscribers and build a business just because you can afford to dump prices.

This is the second underlying problem of Google Voice. They are dumping prices. Obviously Google is paying to purchase numbers from CLEC, paying for US and Canada termination, paying for their online management and giving it all for free is unfair trading.

I’m surprised AT&T, Verizon, Sprint didn’t file an antidumping petition under the regulations determined by the United States Department of Commerce, which determines “less than fair value” and the International Trade Commission, which determines “injury”. True dumping is generally used in International Trading. But if Google isn’t international then who is?

I didn’t include TMobile in list of potential plaintiffs against Google as Google and Tmobile are working together on promoting a line of devices, Android OS and other services.

I know the Google Voice team quite well and have lots of respect for Craig Walker co-founder of GrandCentral and Group Product Manager for the Real Time Communications group at Google.

But Google can’t have it both ways. You want to become a Telco carrier then break your piggy bank and invest in infrastructure, build your network, acquire your HLRs and switches, start offering customer support, sign roaming agreements…and play fair competition.

If your offer is good I will be the first customer to sign up.

Tags: Apple, arrington, att, dumping, google, google voice, grandcentral, iPhone, walker
Posted in Apple, Blackberry, Gmail, TechCrunch, Technology, Telecom, google, iPhone | 13 Comments »

Photo published in Travel+Leisure but wait til you read this

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

We just had 2 days of intense debate over some shared content on my Posterous page when this email hits my inbox:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: XXX XXXX <yyyyyyyy@aexp.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 4:04 PM
Subject: Laduree
To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com

Hi Florian,

Please send me an invoice for $250 for your image of Laduree that ran a quarter page in our September issue. The story name is “Airline Food.”

Thanks,

Jessica

–
XXXX XXXXX
Associate Photo Editor

Travel + Leisure
1120 Avenue of the Americas, 9th floor
New York, NY 10036
www.travelandleisure.com

September 09 issue must have been published and sent for printing late August. I guess my picture of Ladurée macarons in Paris airport was picked up on Flickr. Even though my privacy and permission policy is stated on each picture no one contacted me on behalf of the magazine.

Nonetheless the picture was taken, cropped, published and printed without my permission. Out from the blue and a month after the fact I receive an email asking for a $250 invoice. hmmm talking about journalistic ethics and moral this is legend.

Why $250, why not $20 or $5000? I don’t get it.

Wild guess is someone at Travel Leisure is following my Twitter stream and decided to make a move avoiding any bad publicity. Further down you will see they had nothing to fear.

100’s of my pics end up on the web everyday. Most of the reprints are on blogs, some ad supported some not. Recently I noticed an increase of my photos used on commercial news related site and papers. It’s very difficult if not impossible to track photos published in newspapers or magazines. On websites I can use some tools based on tags, keywords, search and events but usually viewers are prompt to alert me.

Below few examples of reprinted pics/videos on commercial websites posted without permission:

http://www.cafebabel.com/eng/article/29690/bernard-madoff-fraud-europe-victims-banks.html

http://varl.jp/i-see-stock/wordpress-plugin-photo-dropper

http://www.portaldenoticias.com/videos/yt-u4MaQ-LOFnw

http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/diggs-kevin-rose-weve-got-be-more-relevant (no credit given – here is original pic)

Schmap.com (check pic of Ritz Carlton in Key Biscayne on right column)

and countless French, US newspapers and magazines.

I receive requests on regular basis asking for permission to reprint my photos. Honestly I don’t have the time and energy to deal with that. A couple of travel guides asked me for reprint rights offering money which I promptly granted for FREE.

One picture in particular caught public attention causing tens of emails.

Question: how many pics are used without permission in conventional press? Maybe NYT has the answer.

Now here is my position : you can use, copy, reprint, publish, distribute, share any of my original material – pictures, videos or texts with no limitation. I’m just asking you give me proper credit. You do not have to link to the original, you do not have to ask me permission. You do not have to pay anything. I would appreciate being notified of published images, texts or videos as an act of courtesy but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

You can’t steal what is given freely. I call this sharing, not piracy.

PS: my reply to Travel+Leisure was obviously consistent with this post. No money involved, no permission needed.

Tags: flickr, laduree, leisure, magazines, permission, pircay, publication, rights, Travel
Posted in Art, Content, Legal, Photography, Pikchur, Travel | 7 Comments »

The Death Of Arrogance

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

I’d like to start this post with a statement: I’m not a journalist, I’m not a professional blogger, I don’t get paid – directly or indirectly – to write, I don’t have any ads on my Posterous or my blog. I’m just a nobody with a big mouth. Finally English is not my native language.

Yesterday a debate started on Twitter after I shared an article taken from Yahoo! Finance and posted in extenso on my Posterous page.

For those – like Charles Arthur- who do not know the way Posterous works, here is a small tutorial.

You surf the web – find an interesting post and want to SHARE it.

Then once you press the Share on Posterous button you have :

Et voila – content is shared and all credits are given to the original source here:

Basically Posterous sharing ie Digg, Techmeme, Google Reader is identical as a ReTweet of valuable content.

Now back to yesterday’s incident.

I shared the following: http://florianseroussi.posterous.com/ten-big-companies-that-are-veering-toward-ban reproducing EXACTLY what was posted on Yahoo! Finance page. Exactly. Giving credit to Yahoo! and Business Insider as per the original post.

You will note that Yahoo! has a generic link to Business Insider but not to the original BI article.

Charles Arthur then asked why didn’t I link the original Business Insider post. Tried to explain how I used Posterous add-on to share content but Charles didn’t know anything about Posterous.

Mike Butcher – Techcrunch UK editor- jumped on the bandwagon without checking the facts thinking I simply reproduced a paid content without giving any credits. Once Mike understood his mistake he blamed me for not finding the original post and manually adding a link to the Yahoo! re-post. It was simply a ridiculous claim but I searched the internet, found the link and added it to my shared content credit to appease boiling journo blood. As someone mentioned to me via DM – Mike Butcher was much more eloquent to defend the right to publish stolen documents on Techcrunch aka Twittergate. Journalist bullshit duty I guess.

Charles Arthur lost the plot, comparing cars, free content, source code and who knows what all together. Within hours- Charles tone went from arrogant to sarcastic to insulting.

Ilicco Elias tried to minimize the incident but Guardian editor was not ready to give up so easily.

My buddy Paul Walsh came to the rescue with a fair statement:

Charles still on a roll threatens to sue me and foresees a class action against Posterous starting soon (ahem)…

At last in a final act of bravery Arthur decided to block me and called me stupid after I mentioned The Guardian.co.uk had lost over £24M.

Mr Arthur – as the tech editor of The Guardian who do not have a clue what Posterous is – you should have a much more humble attitude.

Journalists – your current business model is SINKING. You are dying slowly with 20^th century principles. Wake up! Look around. You do not have the monopole of information and sharing. We – your readers- have the ability to share, produce and rate content the same way you do. The only value added you can provide is by doing a better job – not by shutting us down.

Note: I didn’t want to go on the legal approach of copyright et al on this post. I’m not an attorney and IP laws (international laws should I say) are too complicated for a blog post. Yahoo! quickly replied to my email and stated they are not involved as no logo or Yahoo! material has been shared.

Hopefully Charles Arthur will use last pence of The Guardian to start a worldwide class action against Google and Posterous to prove his point and whatever the outcome shall be – we will burn in golden letters on The Guardian’s headstone : The Death Of Arrogance.

UPDATE Sept 24 : After an email exchange with Charles Arthur I have modified the Posterous post to an excerpt only – adding another link to Business Insider [there are now 2 links, one on header and one on footer]. It would be interesting to know the conversation rate between hits on my Posterous to links onto BI but my guess is we will never know.

Tags: charles arthur, copyright, ilicco, journalism, mike butcher, paul walsh, posterous, TechCrunch, the guardian, twittergate
Posted in Content, Economy, Legal, London, Newspapers, Social Media, TechCrunch, Technology | 91 Comments »

Media Player War. Can Apple lose?

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

In the 80’s you had to have a Walkman no matter what. For many of us it was our first gadget. Portable music.
30 years later things look different.
Cassettes have disappeared, music went digital not without difficulties. Although MP3 format started in the 90’s first MP3 player came out in 1997.
In 10 years Apple imposed itself as the sole purveyors of digital music. All attempts from consumer electronic giants to take over this market failed.

What is changing today?

Few factors are weakening Apple leadership on this segment.

#1 factor comes from Cupertino – the iPhone.
The smartphone device has replaced many iPods. Convergence created a competitor inside Apple. Why would you carry an iPhone 32Gb in one hand and an iPod 32Gb in the other?
Apple made it clear in their early iPhone advertising, it’s a phone and an iPod all-in one!
Second factor is the lack of innovation. Ok, now I’m hitting a nerve – let me clarify. Apple is the most innovative consumer electronic manufacturer ever BUT once a product is out they fail to integrate basic features we all want to see ie adding a memory card reader in MacBook (took them 10 years to do so) or to offer Blu-Ray players built-in, to integrate FM player in iPods, move to OLED displays, etc….
New comers are very aggressive on updated technologies and multiple add-ons that are starting to make a difference.
Finally the price of iPods is too high. I guess Apple executives are thinking they should grab the momentum while it lasts.

Who can hurt Apple?

I see 2 big competitors rising: Microsoft and Sony.
Zune was the laughing stock a couple of years ago when Microsoft released the “brick” 1st-gen Zune. A joke went around about Microsoft’s pathetic attempt to enter the “iPod market.” So a year passed, and Zune remained a joke in the consumer electronics world and had to endure the jeers and torment of the Apple crowd. When the 2nd Gen Zunes came out, the Zune brand slowly started to see redemption. The Zune 80gb was deemed the first decent competitor to the iPod, but the brand was still in recovery from its hazing.
It took some time, few billion dollars and lots of consumer reviews for MSFT to come up with new Zune HD.
Amazingly Zune HD is sold out on Amazon, BestBuy and most retailers.
The Zune concentrates on being a Portable Media Player. Not a web browser. Not a game machine. Maybe in the future it will do even better in those areas, but for now it’s a fantastic way to organize and listen to your music and videos, and is without peer in that regard.
Zune Pass subscription service is the favorite feature that will keep buyers to use a Zune until it’s pried from their desperate grasp. For $15 a month you can get 10 DRM-free MP3 songs to keep, and unlimited access to millions of songs. As long as you would have bought at least 10 songs anyways that means you’re paying only $5 for that access. It’s better than Pandora, Slacker, LastFM or other services because you can listen to full CDs, specify playlists and tracks in the exact order you want, and can either stream this music or store it on your Zune to listen to later, even if out of wifi range. Lots of people present subscription services as something you do instead of owning music, but at this cheap a price there’s no reason you can’t use this as a supplement to whatever purchases you make. It’s not either/or, it’s a wonderful “and”, especially if you’re the type who likes to explore and enjoy a broad range of music.
HD radio and HD Video (720p) are killer features. I wonder how long it will take for Apple to move there.

Sony made a bad move when they decided to partner up with Ericsson and use the Walkman brand name on a line of phones. The idea was appealing but the execution was terrible. Perfect example of brand awareness vs. brand association.
Walkman is coming back in the digital music segment with a new line of players. For first time in years Sony outsells iPods in Japan promising a tough fight in the US during the holiday seasons.

Apple has a lot to worry about. Consumers are not married to any brand. They come and go. Personally I moved to an Android powered phone – HTC Hero and ordered a Zune HD.

What will be your next media player?

Tags: Apple, digital, Microsoft, mp3, Music, Sony, walkman, x series, zune
Posted in Apple, Geek, Microsoft, Music, Sony, Technology, itunes | 7 Comments »

Warm Wishes for Rosh Hashanah

Friday, September 18th, 2009

From President Obama:

And Happy Rosh Hashanah to all my friends and family around the world.

Tags: holidays, jewish, obama, president, rosh hashanah, white house, wishes
Posted in Religion, Video, World, jewish, obama | No Comments »

Goodbye Web 2.0, Welcome back ROI

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

TechCrunch50 just ended last night in San Francisco. What is it all about? Mostly a good chance to monitor the industry pulse. To meet new people, to share experience and learn to listen.

First edition of TechCrunch50 (actually it was 40) gathered a lot of attention. Too much for an unprepared team of bloggers/entrepeneurs but certainly not event planner. We were all bitching about the lack of internet, mobile network, seats, drinks, audio, timing. Everything was bad or wrong, but the audience was there, internet rock stars came and talentuous Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis saved the show. Most terrible choice was certainly on the selection of potential candidates to go on stage. Even though looking at it a couple of years later we see they didn’t miss by selecting Mint.com as the winner.

Second edition of the most hyped Web 2.0 event was better organized – not hard to do so- selection was obviously more professional and panelists still sharp on their analysis. We were at the early stage of the recession, full of hope but extremely careful on the outcome. I felt this second edition as a global euphoria in a great time of uncertainty. Last year winner was also a good but safe choice : yammer.com. Nothing could go wrong with a company surfing on Twitter vibes.

Last 2 days were definitely better than past editions. Lesson learned for Arrington and Calacanis. Everything was perfect. I must give them huge credit for providing top notch internet service, excellent real-time video streaming and perfect timing during the event. When food was insufficient Calacanis ordered 60 pizzas – I can only imagine the happiness of pizzaiolo receiving a 60 pizzas order…

I was first surprised by the low number of attendees. From a non scientific count my guess is 35% less then last year. But it was quality people. It made untouchable people reachable. I was able to chat with Marissa Mayer, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Don Dodge and Reid Hoffman in a very open way. There was a true community around entrepreneurship with no voyeurs or curious peeps. Upsetting glitch when Paul Carr wrote a stupid post about the American flag being on stage. If you have no talent you must hide it with something. Carr found provocation to be the solution. Anyway too much ink on this low life douchbag journalist. Back to TechCrunch50 and the 2009 list of nominees. There was a shift from 2007 smoke and mirrors start-ups to 2009 small businesses with a valid model. All competitors had a plan to make money not just to bring traction and wait for a strategy. Economy is certainly the real reason behind the change of mentality. RedBeacon – the big winner- aims to help consumers find local service providers such as plumbers, bakers, and contractors. A basic service to fill basic needs. I want to give a thumb-up to Rackup launched by my friend Marc Rochman. Marc did a great job on stage. 5 min to describe 18 months of research and hard work is not an easy task. Kudos to the Rackup team.

Arrington called a surprise panelist to comment presentations – Chamillionaire. Not the everyday geek you see at tech conventions…but I must recognize the guy had a good analysis on most start-ups. For future editions Arrington should have more street-smart experts – it does make a difference.

In conclusion TechCrunch50 minus the hype and plus the maturity was a great show. Looking forward attending 2010 edition.

Tags: anyclip, arrington, calacanis, don dodge, marc andreessen, marissa mayer, rackup, redbeacon, reid hoffman, Ron conway, techcrunch50, web 2.0
Posted in Economy, Entrepreneur, Social Media, TechCrunch, Technology | 5 Comments »

Mobile industry : Evolution vs. Revolution

Friday, September 11th, 2009

We must give Apple credit for the mobile application raison d’être. Mobile apps have been around for at least two decades and never seemed to be anything else but a gimmick. Cupertino firm re-invented mobile phone distribution and created a viable content delivery model. For years – manufacturers and carriers tried to increase subscriber’s data usage but ultimately failed to find innovative concepts. Motorola and Nokia were dominating telecom market copying each other on small technology evolutions for more than 20 years. Apple started from scratch with one motivation: offer the best possible customer experience on a win-win-win basis (Apple, carrier, subscriber).

apple

Palm – the missed opportunity

Palm – founded in 1992- was very close to monetize the industry back in 1996 but they thought selling devices was more lucrative. I remember my first Handspring Visor during Comdex 1999. Jeff Hawkins was praising a revolution in mobile devices…we know the story.

Palm wanted a basic handled – in my experience, basic users tend toward basic devices. Palm executives underestimated our capabilities to adapt and kept Treo/Palm a digital agenda.

Realizing that everyone didn’t want to play movies/music on the go was certainly their biggest failure.

It took 10 years for Palm to copycat Apple innovate and launch App Catalog – a marketplace for WebOS mobile applications. So far figures are kept secret and Palm Pre failed to reached its commercial targets. A new device was announced today Palm Pixi with supposedly better capabilities. Let’s hope the hosting carrier will not be Sprint.

Nokia – Double failure

The Finnish phone manufacturer had 3 out of 4 ingredients to make it happen. Firstly they have the audience. Around 1.24 billion phones worldwide. Then they had the carriers – over 700 of them all around the planet. Third they had one of most innovative mobile OS – Symbian. But they had NO vision, NO strategy to sell content.

Symbian was the best thing Nokia did to make their handsets ‘smart’. I must mention Symbian was an independent company backed up by the phone giant. Nokia had the ambition to promote Symbian OS to competitors and make money thru licensing the platform. They believed other device manufacturers would not integrate Symbian if Nokia was the sole owner.

Double mistake – everyone knew Nokia was behind Symbian although Ericsson (15.6%), Sony Ericsson (13.1%), Panasonic (10.5%), and Samsung (4.5%).were partners.

Biggest Nokia’s failure was to understand money was not to be made on the container but on the content.

Unfortunately it took Nokia 10 years to understand their mistakes and decided only last December to acquire Symbian.

Google – The Challenger

I remember when we first heard of a Google Phone most experts were skeptical Google – the service company- could risk it all entering in a hardware world.

Basically Google never manufactured any phone. They made a deal with HTC and Tmobile.

The only reason they worked this way around was to overcome mobile carrier’s cartel. Google executives understood Telco operators would not open their doors easily. This is maybe the major difference between Google and Apple. Apple is first of all a top hardware manufacturer. Google is only a search engine a service technology provider specialized in content delivery.

Android – Google’s OS- is promising not only for mobile but also for tablets and PCs. I was lucky to try the new Archos Internet Media Tablet running Android – true convergence between Mobile and PC. Future laptops, tablets are going to be ‘always connected’.

Admittedly Apple has a serious lead over Google but there is no short time strategy here. I strongly believe Google is the strongest contender in the game today.

BlackBerry – Productivity at best

Research In Motion has been a market leader in many ways. Firstly as a money maker with the best free idea of all times: EMAILS.

Trying to sell a free concept for a fee is definitely a challenge. Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie started in 1984 with Pagers. In 1998 they launched their first Qwerty device launched and only early 2000 did we see the first BlackBerry. [note: BlackBerry website still displays older devices and press releases from their early days.]

RIM business model is simple. Pay to get your emails on the go. They spent 100’s of millions litigating patenting their technology. Today they totally own the market of corporate emails.

3 sources of revenue for BlackBerry:

- The Device

- Email access BlackBerry Internet Service [BIS] or BlackBerry Entreprise Server [BES]

- Revenue sharing with carriers

With over 55 Millions devices sold BlackBerry is now grabbing the Application momentum.

RIM had a closed platform for 15 years and refused to open to mobile applications. This is a big change for the Canadian giant. Creating a friendly development platform on the worse possible OS.

Despite all critics BlackBerry has now an App World store selling highly priced mobile applications. RIM has not yet disclosed figures but I believe

BlackBerry has recently launched a touch-screen device – Storm- and faced huge criticism due to lack of basic features iPhone is offering. We can’t blame users for comparing.

BlackBerry Messenger is the most popular feature among young adults. Another tour-de-force for RIM. Cashing in on a free concept: instant messaging.

I believe BlackBerry is in a hit or miss situation. A lot will depend on their new OS and new devices to be launched. Their current strategy of multiplying similar handsets is certainly not the way to go.

Deliberately I left Motorola out the scope of this post. Despite various rumors of a soon to be announced comeback I think Motorola gave up on R&D and innovation and will exclusively produce Android based handsets. At least for now…

No mention of the already obsolete Windows Mobile OS. The raise and death of WM deserves a post for itself J.

It took Apple one shot to conquer the world with a real smartphone. Best of all – their range of phone is ONE device. They transported the iPod/Music model to the phone, created an industry for mobile applications recycling thousand of jobless developers into entrepreneurs. Telco giants spending billions of dollars in R&D could not achieve it. They can’t even copycat it. We are going to see a vertical renewal of the entire mobile industry. From carriers to phone manufacturers.

But Apple taught us a lesson. No matter how much you spend, how long you have been around and how tricky you are in those carriers contracts– there is no market retention. Customers will go to the best device no matter what.

Tags: android, Apple, Blackberry, google, iPhone, mobile, motorola, nokia, palm, phones, telco, webos, windows
Posted in Apple, Blackberry, Geek, Technology, Telecom, iPhone | No Comments »