Unfortunately a conference call can easily turn into a farce. And it happens A LOT.
I just can’t put up with heavy-breathers or “do you hear me better now” crap. So I decided to drop out certain conference calls where a minimum essential politeness is not met.

Based on my experience participants should stick to rules below:

• Be on time.
• State your name when you sign in.
• Don’t call from a mobile phone (if you do- make sure you have great reception, not in motion and no environmental sounds).
• Don’t call in from a noisy place.
• Wait for other party to finish his sentence. Do not interrupt.
• No more than 5 participants.
• Shut off you other phones or computer sound notifications.
• No more than 45min.
• Mute yourself but KEEP listening. No one likes to feel he is left alone on the call.
• Conference call time is not lunch time.

If within first 5 minutes, participants are not ALL on the call, I’d rather re-schedule.

Feel free to share your tip, eager to learn.

Everywhere I go, everywhere I read, eat, train or work, Wikileaks is the center of most conversation.

The world is divided in those who believe Wikileaks is a public service aiming for more transparency and those who believe Wikileaks is a dangerous anarchist movement.

I support the latter and will explain why.

Liberty, democracy, journalism vs privacy, diplomacy, and equilibrium.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Let’s rewind time. Wikileaks stole classified information from US Intelligence by hacking into access-restricted computers or calling for US employees to steal files. This action by itself is definitely a crime. And no one can contest that so far.

I find it amazing some seem surprised US is running a diplomatic ballet. They do LIKE ALL OTHER COUNTRIES ON THIS PLANET.

It would be childish to think other democracies are not using the exact same modus operandi.  Collecting and reporting info is the oldest form of Intelligence countries have put together way back in the days of Romans, Egyptians and Greeks.

Wikileaks targets specifically the United States of America.

Why? I think we should legitimately ask ourselves this question.

In a quest for ‘open transparency’ wouldn’t it be fair to get classified cables from all the parties involved?

But Wikileaks is obviously not interested in stealing German, Russian, Chinese or Iranian classified information. In fact Wikileaks has never unveiled any ‘secrets’ about any other country but US.

Their tweets are clearly showing their motivation:

Actually the whole stream is anti-American. How pleasant for the free world…

Like other terrorists, Wikileaks is relying on US infrastructure to relay their heinous message- Amazon, Paypal, EyeDNS. Here comes Dumb and Dumber screaming for boycott against those companies who stopped providing support to Wikileaks. Pathetic…

“Obama and Clinton must resign”. Maybe they should; but not for any of those ‘embarrassing’ cables. Just because they failed to protect sensitive information from going public.

Martin Varsavsky wrote a short piece on how Wikileaks has taught us a lesson. If it’s private – keep it private. I cannot agree more. Countries will increase their level of security and the whole Wikileaks plan for transparency goes flushed down the drain. Bravo.

What’s Wikileaks next target? Take a wild guess? Bank of America. Yes, another stolen hard-drive (thank God it’s not an iPhone- Jobs would have sent Apple Police) from a high ranked executive-which violates, corporate and personal privacy, bank secrecy and 100’s of common laws. Oh, and yet another American symbol. But that is for the greater good argues the hypocrite humanitarian.

No one was hurt.

Julian Assange claims no one was hurt in the process. Is this his perspective? Your perspective? Or the perspective of thousands of diplomats, ambassadors and consuls around the planet being “invited” to provide explanations and apologies?

If I post a picture of you naked it won’t kill you. It won’t hurt me either but will it hurt you?

All other countries are picking whatever they need from Wikileaks to serve their local political careers.

Segolene Royal likes the way Sarkozy is painted by US diplomats.

Antonio Di Pietro enjoys every word describing Silvio Berlusconi.

Netanyahu likes to read embarrassing cables regarding Ehud Barak for a reason.

Censorship of the uncensored documents.

Only a small portion of documents has been published. Why not all? What is the logic of sorting messages when you claim transparency? Is Wikileaks releasing documents in filtered manners? Is there a negotiation behind the scenes on the release of those documents?

We know absolutely nothing about Wikileaks, their founders and the organization. And yet, every frustrated anti-American is ready to embrace their cause to Satanize a great country.

Here in America, we have this thing called the First Amendment, which allows people to express what they think in political and social speech.

It doesn’t mean you can steal classified information, publish it, and then hide yourself behind a convenient Amendment of a Constitution you are not part of.

You should know US administration is the only one to declassify Diplomatic Cables on regular basis as stated in The Freedom Of Information Act [PDF] . You can also find the archives online here from Georges Washington University.

Time will tell if Wikileaks intentions are nobles or not. But I strongly believe Wikileaks is conveniently irresponsible and damaging to the World.

Let’s hear your opinion.

Yesterday I was driving to Kennedy Space Center near Orlando. I say “near Orlando” because if you use a GPS forget finding Nasa Visitor Center on your map using Orlando as a city. So I thought checking their address on Google would help me set-up my GPS – unfortunately they give you directions but no address.

GPS wants an address starting with a Zip code or City and Street name.

Digging a bit further – I found out Kennedy Space Center is located in Orsino Florida.

Hurray!! Ooops. Nope, Orsino doesn’t come up on my GPS.

Annoyed but not desperate I followed the driving instructions from their website and…we made it.

But driving back home, I had an eureka moment.

What if our GPS could use an extra simple trivial entry mode?

Hmmm, the idea is appealing but the infrastructure to build something like this is ridiculous. Just think about indexing millions of places around the globe and assigning a unique ID. Impossible.

I’m still thinking, brainstorming while everyone is deeply asleep in the car…I needed to keep my neurons alert to resist diving in a coma myself.

Bang! Why not use Foursquare? Each venue is clearly marked with a unique ID. Each ID fits a description and best of all it offer tips, specials and nearby points of interest.

Man this is too simple. Way too simple. Imagine your email signature now:

Florian Seroussi
@florianseroussi
LABOTEC Inc.
Venue: 250674

Now just plug 250674 on Google maps, car GPS, TomTom, NavTeq, VZ Navigator or any tracking device and there you are, on your way to our office.

The service should shine by its simplicity, be global, accurate (something Foursquare might need to work on a bit) and reliable (no whale fail kinda).

I’m sure some of you will comment that this can be done using phone numbers in some GPS. True – but reality is:

• Not every business publicize their phone number
• Less and less people have a land line
• Phone numbers rarely match the physical address
• Privacy concerns? Unsolicited phone calls?

Anyway, far from the Groupon-coupon-discount-lbs bs, I think Foursquare should definitely explore this opportunity to offer car manufacturers a solid and inexpensive alternative to complex existing entry mode on navigation systems.

If not Foursquare, then maybe a reckless entrepreneur ready to build a layer on top of the existing location based service? Facebook places? What do you think?

A year ago I would have been harsh on a new Windows Phone OS. I was harsh in this post.

In April 2010 I saw a very early stage Windows Phone 7 prototype and I said to myself “the whole idea sounded bad, now it looks terrible”.

Microsoft challenge was to start from a blank page. Forget Windows Mobile, WinCE and even Windows to re-create a different user experience based on what was learned from iPhone and Android.

The very first device Microsoft handed out to me for testing purposes was a huge brick, barely functional. My partner Pierre-Olivier Carles needed a phone for a few days and I decided to let him try ‘the phone of the future”. Let’s keep it nice and just say he wasn’t convinced

In the meantime, Apple and Google were upgrading and updating their OS considerably adding speech to text, turn by turn navigation, better applications, new features…I was even more perplex on Microsoft’s strategy.

I was wrong. Wrong to under-estimate the power of a world leader in Operating Systems, best software company of all times.

Few days ago as part of our Device Agreement we received a pre-production unit which has nothing to do with anything you have seen before. It’s snappy, reactive, user friendly, reliable, well presented and integrates the best of Microsoft.

I’m not sure if Microsoft will grab the smartphone market. But they did a wonderful job in a short period of time under huge competitive pressure.

95% or so of computer owners are using Windows, 99.99% of all users are using Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and 90% of the enterprise world is running Exchange mail server. Well if you are one of those users, this phone is for you.

Native integration of Office Suite makes DataWiz/DocumentsToGo looking almost ridiculous. Outlook native integration with Exchange will ease the life of millions of users.

Admittedly I’m not one of those. But let’s not ignore the vast majority of users because we live in a bubble where Apple rules.

Apple and Google have almost zero experience in gaming unlike Microsoft Xbox solid success. WP7 fully uses Xbox Live so players can stay connected to their favorite games. Gaming + Enterprise might be the winning combination.

I’m not sure how much money Microsoft is investing to conquer the phone segment but last Thursday I was face to face with Steve Ballmer and I felt an incredible energy around Windows Phone 7. It’s not a side project – with all the risks attached. Microsoft will use all of its influence to convince manufacturers, distributors, publishers, and users that Windows Phone 7 is a winner.

I have a feeling that Microsoft is going after Google and too bad if Apple is on the way.

Below a short video of a pre-production unit. What do you think?

One of my guilty pleasures is watching movies during long flights. Mostly for its soporific agent. Very rarely can my body stay alert until the very end word.

Invictus is one of those movies. A movie transcending actors into players, script into documentary.

Clint Eastwood directed the movie – maybe I should have started with this. Gran Torino is undoubtedly among best movies of the decade.

Short pitch: Morgan Freeman plays is Nelson Mandela. The story focuses on the end of apartheid in South Africa and how rugby helped in reunifying the country together. Mandela had the perception sport could bring blacks and whites into one homogenized group of supporters. He was right; sport is not about race, religion, skin color but about performance.

Captain of South Africa’s rugby team played by Matt Damon comes from a family of white pro-apartheid activists that slowly understood the need to change. The movie gives a short glimpse of what was the process of re-unification after the apartheid. Clint Eastwood left the violence aside to focus on 1995 victory of South Africa during World Rugby Cup.

France had its Mandela moment after they won 1998 World Football Cup. I remember that night on Champs-Elysées when people were kissing, hugging and cheering all together. La France Black-Blanc-Beur literally Black, White and Arab was born.

My first visit to Johannesburg was in 1982 as a kid, it was a disturbing experience. I was horrified. Years later I came back in 1990 and things seemed even worse. Hopefully my last trip there in 2001 was a much different experience although poverty and discrimination are still dominant.

Movie has been out for a while. A must-see.

“I’m the master of my fate, I’m the captain of my soul” says Mandela. Food for thoughts.

Earlier today Air France made an announcement claiming a 35M Euro loss per day due to the ash cloud. Share lost 5% on french sotck market – enough to call for a bail out by European Commission.

Bunch of crap. Of course there was an eruption, and safety should prevail. Extreme weather conditions is a cause of force majeure and does not oblige airlines to reimburse any of their customers. Their only obligation is to re-schedule flights. So when they say losses- they mean loss of income. Quite different.

But here is the biggest issue. Air France will shortly publish their figures for 2009 and guess what? A 1.3 billion Euro loss roughly $1.8 billions. Yes a mere $5M burned each day…ashes to ashes.

Volcano is to airlines what the mad cow disease was to meat producers. A savior.

Air France is poorly managed and like in the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s they seek for Government monies. How convenient.

Public bail out means us – tax payers. Expect to see a ‘volcano tax’ very soon on EU airfare. After all they have it all figured out – 20 euros per ticket and they break-even.

Bummer!

Is traffic a sign of popularity?

So I went on writing down numbers on a scrapbook. My primary goal was to search brand names and the number of search associated with that brand. To do so I used the Top 100 brand by Millward Brown [PDF].
Surprisingly Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, My Space are not listed by the research institute. Even in a brick and mortar world, Facebook should be in top 5 most known brands.

Below are results found using Google.com [US English page as of December 30, 2009].

Few basic observations: Google and Facebook together are more popular than Web. US takes the lead with over 23 billions search results. USA and War all together are less popular than Yahoo!

Behind those figures I see two conclusions. First, top brands -as described in the study published by Millward Brown- are yet far behind in terms of web image. Their online presence is a failure for 95% of them. This should give hope to all online viral social media jungle marketing agencies out there. The second conclusion is sadder: traffic doesn’t mean revenue. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace and Hotmail generating over 5.3 billion of search results have an estimated global revenue of $1.3 billion for 2009 representing 0,003% of Wal-Mart’s 2009 revenue.

It brings us back to valuation calculation- should we continue to use online popularity or traffic to rate online businesses?

What do you think?

2009 had many ups and many downs. Hoping 2010 will be more peaceful.

“We’re confident that it works because we’ve been testing it now for a couple of years,” he said. “And so we’re really ready to start rolling it out.”

Of the 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide, Beckstrom – a former chief of U.S. cybersecurity – said that more than half use languages that have scripts based on alphabets other than Latin.

“So this change is very much necessary for not only half the world’s Internet users today, but more than half of probably the future users as the use of the Internet continues to spread,” he said.

Read more here:

International Domain Names: Internet Set To Add Non-English Web Addresses

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-       Oh you live in Miami? Spring break all year long isn’t it?

NO – people don’t party all year long in Miami, we WORK in South Florida. In fact there is a vivid economy for startups nicely represented during our tweetups, Mobile Mondays or Bar Camp.

-       So you’re French – how is Carla?

-       Isn’t it too hard in Israel with bombs falling everywhere?

-       You fly so much, are you not afraid one day your plane might crash?

-       Hmm you fly business, you must be rich or stupid!

What clichés don’t you want to hear anymore?