French Parliment says "Oui" to Open Source

The French Parliment just announced it decision to drop Windows in favor of the Linux Open Source system. According to this CNET report, PCs in the French deputes' offices will move over to running the Open Source Productivity Software on the Linux OS as this move will bring about increased savings and customisability.

This trend towards open source is not new and a number of other government organisations (eg: Indian State Schools, the French Gendarmerie) and even countries themselves (like Brazil, South Korea) have jumped onto the Open Source bandwagon.

Read the full story here.

[via: Digg]

Creative Conservation Ads

Splendid creativity in advertising from Électricité de France (EDF), a power company providing electricity to France and UK to drum up awareness about how the little things can help conserve the environment ...

See the full collection of ads here : http://files.webhost.ru/stuff/edf_ad.html

[via : Treehugger ]

Research Paper Claims Piracy Drives Fashion Industry

Whenever piracy is mentioned these days, people often tend to place it in a context of occuring either in the Music, Film or Software industries. This is the uncontrovertible extent of which these industries have championed their cause for a more comprehensive Intellectual Property Protections which they claim helps to substain the incentive for further creativity in their industry.

But strangely, as this paper entitled "The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design" by two law professors from UCLA and University of Virginia, it seems that the lack of IP management in the fashion industry doesn't seem to adversely affect it and even go so far as to posit that " because of this lack [of intellectual property rights] ... the industry remains vibrant and profitable ".

So in essence, they claim that it is piracy or actually copying which happens between fashion houses which creates the idea of trends and drive the industry into being more creative and keeps the trend cycles short. This pushes the creative talent in this industry to be on their toes all the time and keep on releasing interesting clothing designs.

Read the paper at Social Science Research Network

[via : Ars Technica]

Pageflakes Review

This is the first time I've been asked to help do a quick review on a web startup so here goes :

Pageflakes is essentially an Ajax-based startpage that allows you to customize which flakes (what they call widgets) you want to see when you open your browser. Essentially, this here below is what can be created to act as your startpage. I've managed to just drag and drop a couple of interesting ones like flakes for RSS Feeds, Flickr and a ToDo List, which can be useful to have as the first things you want to see when you start up your browser


And the ease of plunking down the pieces you want is smooth and intuitive. Really nice out of the box experience without having to tackle too steep a learning curve on that.

And another great thing is that there are many different flakes which you can add to the startpage or even have 2 startpages if there is a need for different types of content or if you just plain ran out of page real-estate on the first one. Development of these flakes also seem to be crowdsourced so if there's a need for it and the API exists, someone (or even you!) can just develop something and add it to the big flake library seen here.


On the flip side, there is a tradeoff here is that you won't be able to stuff a lot of information on one page and you'll probably be spoilt for choice due to the loads of flakes you could choose from but its a nice thought for them to have added in the ability to have multiple pages.

All in all, its a pretty neat site so go check it out : PageFlakes


[Props to Chi Howe for the introduction]

More Videos on How Things are Made!

Well, just found this site where there are more videos on how cool stuff are made from the National Association of Manufacturers blog.

Amongst the videos they have are:

How Silly Putty is Made
How Trumpets are Made
How the USS George H. W. Bush was Made
How Ice Cream is Made
How the Honda Cog Commercial was Made
How Baseball Bats are Made

Go check out the rest of the videos at: ShopFloor.org: The Manufacturers Blog!

The 6 Strategies of Festive Toy Marketing

So, the Christmas shopping season is upon us again, a time for all good folk out there to go shopping for their loved ones. toy shopping in particular.

So much so that toy companies have been perfecting the art of marketing their wares agressively and here, USA Today lists the 6 strategies marketers use to get kids to want stuff bad :

Wish Lists


Repetitive TV Ads

Big Screen Hype

Books as Toys

Faux toy shortages (Very true and mentioned in Influence)

Bus Radios (Possibly an American thing)

Read more here : USA Today

Web Giants taking on Traditional Advertising?

After the dotcom crash, there have been only few great powerhouses of online ad distributors left. In the ring are the big boys, Google, Yahoo and eBay, all whom have well established themselves in the online media / advertising market and boy are they eyeing the traditional media market now.

Google is casting its net to offer print ads to its advertisers, Yahoo announced a major deal with 176 newspapers for content and advertising and eBay develops an online system for buying and selling of media.

And there are concerns that these entrants with they well entrenched online customers and systems could easily edge out the traditional advertising sellers who are already stuck pretty much in the corner, what with ad spending dropping over the years.

This is going to be an interesting one because of what both sides could essentially do to better their positions. Traditional Media firms should be thinking of ways to re-engage their primary crowd with more innovative campaigns and delivery methods. Also, they have an avenue to push for ad sales in the online environment if they have strong enough brand names.

As for the online media giants, they would need to understand that the traditional media is going to be a whole new ballgame, one with overheads which are perhaps not found in the online space and thus, new strategies are needed to enter this already highly competitive space.

I, for one, won’t even put off the idea of bigger M&As which can marry online and traditional media companies together in the pursuit of greater synergy and exposure. Possibly there also may be casualties along the way too, who knows?

It’s going to be a rather interesting path ahead for the ad media and publishing industry.

[related : Battle lines forming in battle for traditional media's Web advertising ]

China’s Web 2.0 and the Future?

Just happened upon a list complied by the China Internet Industry Survey Report listing the “Web 2.0 100 of China Internet Industry”.

Though not closely familiar with all the names on the list at first sight, I had run through some of the sites and seem to feel that there are 3 broad areas of growth which most of these top 100 sites mainly fall into:

Information Source / Search – These are the pack led by Baidu and Sohu which allow for Chinese to search for content in their own language, something that was difficult only a few years back when English was still the de facto language of the internet, forming a barrier to entry of sorts to the China. Auctions and Directory services (e.g : Alibaba and Naalee) have also been setup to bring more consumers to search and spend online.

Forums / Social Media – Relationships has always been an important cornerstone in Chinese culture and it is only nature to see the extension of this in the online world. Forums (or Bulletin Boards) have become a means for the new generation of Internet savvy youths to air views and make new friends (albeit virtual). Even the social media concept of Digg has been picked up and applied in TuDou.

Self Expression – As China liberalizes, the is more scope and willingness in self expression and blogging (BlogCN) are beginning to pick up steam. From the list of 100, easily 5 or 6 are catering for this new group of bloggers who wish for more self expression online.

Its is also notable that some foreign investors have been rather supportive of the growth of this market while others have scorned it development, likening it to be merely cloning successful web models from abroad.

But in any case, the development of the online arena in China (where only 8% of the people are online) is definitely still in the early stages and its likely that this industry will start to develop its own innovative models and concepts to further growth.


[source: China Internet Industry Survey Report]

[related : ReadWriteWeb - Top Web Apps in China ]

Yahoo's SVP Issues Wakeup Call

Has Yahoo gotten a tad too big and bueracratic for its own good? Yahoo SVP Brad Garlinghouse seems to think so and in a recent internal memo sent out to senior staff, spells out the dangers he thinks the company faced as it becomes more fragmented and disparate. All the more so with the slew of accquisitions the company pulled off, including the likes of Flickr, del.icio.us and other social networking sites, have they bitten more than they could chew?

Here's a portion of email he sent out :

We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization. We now operate in an organizational structure — admittedly created with the best of intentions — that has become overly bureaucratic. For far too many employees, there is another person with dramatically similar and overlapping responsibilities. This slows us down and burdens the company with unnecessary costs.

We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.• YME vs. Musicmatch

• Flickr vs. Photos
• YMG video vs. Search video
• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb
• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets
• Social media vs. 360 and Groups
• Front page vs. YMG
• Global strategy from BU’vs. Global strategy from Int’l

Wow ... talk about a wake up call. Now it should be interesting to see if this rallying cry will bond all who "bleed purple and yellow" into driving the Internet Giant to even greater heights.

[Full text over at : TechCrunch ]

[In other news : Ars Technica - Yahoo goes on a Social Networking Spending Spree]

Videos on How Things are Made!

Well, if you're one of those curious nuts (like me) who likes to see how stuff are made, you're in for a treat cos here's a whole list of videos on exactly that:

How Bubblegum is Made
How Steel Safes are Made
How Toothpicks are Made
How Mail Processing is Done
How Kayaks are Made
How Jeans are Made
How Holograms are Made
How Helicopters are Made

and many more over at DailyMotion

[props to Greedy123 for the video uploads!]

Amazing Customer Service Stories II (from Singapore!)

This is kind of a follow up from the post of the same subject some time back but the cool part is that all these hail from Singapore. And seeing that good service deserves good mention, here they are:

Case #1
Esprit shop calls customer an hour later to let her know where to find an item which was sold out at the shop.

Case#2
Guy receives handwritten note and guitar picks after an email to company on where to find them

Case #3
Waitress goes the extra mile (overused, I know) for customer's birthday celebrations.



I'm sure these businesses will continue to do well and that others will also follow in their footsteps to provide service that knock the customers' socks off!

Interactive Holographic Display!

EON Technology seems to have prefected a new-fangled holographic display which can users can interact with. With this new techonology, 3D images can be called up in the air which can then be controlled by the user's hands.

It's not a totally new thing (augmented reality has been used in the military for some time now) but once it hits the end market, there are endless possibilities in areas from medical to education to entertainment.

Check out a teaser :


[ via : ocRegister - Article + Video]

Guerrilla Negotiating

Guerrilla Negotiating has to be one of the most interesting books on Negotiation which I've read in quite a while. It kicks off with the premise that in life no matter what you do, negotiations are unavoidable and such negotiation skills are a necessary skillset to have. However, throughout the book, a strong emphasis is placed on using the tricks and techniques outlined ethically because these can all slide into the unethical grey areas if not applied correctly.

And then, the rest of the book jumps into the wide array of strategies which lead you from the opening maneuvers to controlling the negotiation to the followup work of keeping the deal together. Interestingly, there has also been mention of Cialdini's 6 Principles of Influence which I thought melded in nicely with the understanding the art of influencing your counterpart.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book was one exploring the effects of price on a deal. These days, too many people deal with too great an emphasis on pricing without consideration of other factors and if you meet people like this, one way to deal with them may go something like this :

"I don't care about anything but price. Give me your best price or get out." You might be tempted. Instead, call their bluff.
"Okay, here's the deal. Find the best price you can find. I'll beat it by 10 percent, guaranteed! But I get to choose when I deliver."
"I don't think so." they'll retort.
"All right, I'll beat the best price you can find. But i get to select the quality to ship."
"Uh ... no!"
"Hmm. so I guess price isn't more important than on-time delivery or quality after all?" You've made your point

Highly recommended whether you're in the sales profession or just want to improve your general negotiating skills!

Creative Namecard Design that Sprouts Seedlings!

This is a really cool design for postcards -- One that actually sprouts seedling! What better way to say "I'm a landscape architect"? And there's also no way its gonna get thrown in some stack and forgotten once it blooms, but just wonder how long it can last before it has to be dumped though ...

Creative blooming idea from Tur & Partner


[via : TreeHugger ]

FOX Plans to Undercut DVD Pirates in China?

Just read this article on Ars Technica about how FOX plans to sell low-cost DVDs in China to combat piracy. According to the report, this move follows in the footsteps of Time Warner's attempt to undercut pirates by plunging the price of their original DVDs to 10 yuan (about S$2). This is close to the street price of bootleg DVDs out there. The rationale being that it would still be better to sell a couple hundred DVDs at low prices compared to none at all.

Without going into the feasibility of this strategy, a couple of interesting notions came to my mind:

1) Increased Downloads of Movies - Due to the increasing popularity of portable players that can now also play videos, the increasing trend seems to be a shift towards downloading of illegal movies rather buying physical CDs/DVDs. Other factors such as the increasingly fast network speeds, proliferation of downloading software and strong Chinese online communities also aid this trend (Could write a whole post on it, but some other time perhaps).

2) Retail Margins - Typically, consumer goods need to go through several levels from distribution from the manufacturer to distributor to retailer before it hits the consumer. Accordingly, each level does take a cut from the end price, which explains how consumer products are normally priced a tad higher with these considerations in mind. Now, I'm assuming that the street peddler of illegal movies in China either produces his own copies or is a mere 1 level away from the manufacturer, making the $2 street price feasible. But in FOX's case, it’s going to be hard to convince the stakeholders in their distribution chain they can still make good on margins from a $2 product. Perhaps FOX intends to sell direct?

2) Illegal Export - Now, I'm pretty sure that if discs do eventually get sold for $2 in China, there are going to be a lot of illegal exporting of these discs to countries in the region like Singapore where it could easily fetch higher prices. I believe that we are already seeing this happen with parallel imported music CDs in Singapore and naturally if the market here demands it, I don't think DVDs will be much of a difference. Indirectly, FOX would be cannibalizing sales in their other regional markets.

In any case, if they do go ahead with this, I'll be hopping on a plane there to grab some... Its cheaper than bootlegs back here!

[via : Ars Technica]

Northeastern University releases paper on Corporate Blogging

Wow ... even universities are seeing the importance of corporate blogging by studying the effects and sucess factors involved in corporate blogging. In this study by Northeastern University and Backbone Media, 20 corporate bloggers were interviewed to find out what exact makes corporate blogging tick. (Go read, its great stuff!)

Blogging is fast becoming an accepted means of communications and now the big firms want in on it. Given the speed of the online medium, corporate blogging may give companies a channel to release information quickly as well as to gather customer feedback. That is if, of course, they get their act right and are able to engage the community and not make it look like a whole big act.

Guess everyone still remembers the Dell Blogging Fiasco.

[via : MicroPersuasion ]

[Related post: Corporate Blogging for Fun and Profit]

Boy Genius - Waaaay Faster Than Your Regular Media

To say the news travels fast these day is fast becoming an understatment. Given the advent of online technologies and such, it seems that almost everyone with an Internet connection is able to post up content of their own, double-quick, these days. So much so that its threatening the regular mainstream media?

Enter Boy Genius, one of the more famous characters from the Engadget reporting team, well known and well loved by the online technology community for his breaking reports on the latest tech gadgets and gizmos. Having sources within the industry, he has proven to be way quicker in releasing such latest information as compared to his regular media counterparts, much to their chagrin.

I wonder if the regular media is beginning to feel threatened yet?

Offical Website at www.BoyGeniusReport.com

[via : MicroPersuasion ]

President Bush's Speech at NUS

At the NUS University Cultural Evening this evening, President Bush delievered his speech about the Asia Pacific region, and began by lauding Singapore for its hardworking people and enterprising spirit, about how we transformed the nation into "from a small trading outpost to a confident and prosperous leader"

Then he spoke about challenges facing Asia like trade liberalization, economic development and later on to how disease and diasters can affect our region. Along the way, President Bush constantly stressed the vested interest which America has in Asia and how greater co-operation is necessary for our continued growth.

Lastly, the talk turned to the ever-present topic of terrorism and democracy, two ideals deeply imbued in the Bush Administration and how partners in the region need to be committed to support democracy as a means to fight terrorism.

Read the full transcript here

Art of the Start Conference Video - "Funding your Dream"

Just watched the "Funding your Dream" Video recorded at the Art of the Start Conference hosted by Garage Ventures.

It's a very interesting panel discussion filled with US venture capitalists and investors speaking about how they work out their deal flows and their approach on entrepreneurs approaching them for funding. For a lot of entrepreneurs out there who have not had the chance to meet and talk with VCs or people in this field, this video is a great introduction to what to expect when your startup reaches the point of time when you need to seek funding.

The Panelists are :

• Daniel Ahn, Managing Director - Woodside Fund
  
• Susan Mason, General Partner - Onset Ventures
  
• Chris Moran, General Manager - Applied Ventures
  
• Warren Packard, Managing Director - Draper Fisher Jurvetson
  
• Ian Sobieski, Founder and Managing Director - Band of Angels Fund

Cheers to Guy for sharing this one!

Watch the video here

[via : Guy Kawasaki's Blog]

Microsoft releases MS Firefox 2007 Professional Edition!

In an unexpected twist in the broswer wars, Microsoft has adopted the adage of "If you can't beat them, take their source code and release your own version! Behold - Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional Edition - NOT!

Pretty cool fake website with good design, fooled me the first time I hit it :P

Goes to show you can't believe everything you see online anymore these days ...

"Official" Website : http://www.msfirefox.com/
[via : Digg ]

Bank of America loses $50 Million due to Wrongful Arrest!

I believe the importance of treating your customers right for a business's survival can't be stressed enough. Simply put, bad business decisions even at the seemingly low level of any firm can be financial suicide.

This very thing happened to Bank of America when they apparently mistreated one of their account holders, putting him into a lot of needless trouble with the police. Obviously, this guy didn't turn out very happy to have been treated like a criminal, spent thousands of dollars getting out of the mess and not getting at least a pipsqueak of an apology from the Bank.

Result? -- He spreads the word, causes a wave of anger in Bank of America customers who then promptly marched up to the bank and closed a cool US$50m million worth of accounts!

Shinnick was hauled to jail, stripped of his clothing and put into an orange jumpsuit. His father posted $4,500 bond to spring him. Shinnick ended up spending $14,000 to get out of the mess Bank of America caused.

Bank of America refused to reimburse Shinnick, and so Shinnick took his story to a consumer advocate radio show host, Clark Howard. Lots of Bank of America customers were disgusted by BofA's callousness and have closed their accounts with the bank. Howard says they've pulled $50 million from B of A.

More on this story over at : BoingBoing

Leo Burnett's Streaking Billboard Ad

Cool advertising from Leo Burnett in the form of a billboard ad for comestics that streak when it rains. Probably the stuff of horrors for all ladies so I'm guessing it should strike a chord well.

Just wondering what the technology behing this one is?

Water reactive paint that turns black when wet or did they just use poor quality paint and send clean up crews after each drizzle. The mind boogles.

In any case, a pat on the back for Leo Burnett for its a superbly creative idea which just sent this ad all over the blogosphere, just right to reach all you netizens out there who forgot about the concept of 'outdoors.

[via : Engadget]

President Bush is coming to NUS!

Just heard from a realiable source that good ol' President of the United States, George Bush is dropping by NUS during this time over in Singapore and will be having an important function at NUS University Cultural Centre.

Think this latest email from NUS OED just confirmed it:

An important event will be held at University Cultural Centre on
Thursday, 16 November 2006. In view of this event, the Singapore Police
Force will carry out the following:

1. Traffic
a. Kent Ridge Crescent, from Car Park 5 to the traffic junction at> Kent Ridge Crescent/Clementi Road at Entrance A, will be closed to traffic from 2. 30 pm to 7.30 pm (see enclosed map: http://www.nus.edu.sg/oed/forms/PDFS/security/RoadDiversion.pdf).
Motorists will be allowed to access and park in Car Park 4 (Raffles> Hall)
and 5 (Sports and Recreation Centre).

b. Only approved vehicles will be allowed to proceed beyond Car Park 5 from 2.30 pm towards Car Park 3 (YSTCM, OED)

....

According to the media, President Bush is stopping over in Singapore enroute to APEC Leaders Meeting in Vietnam.

Official Singapore Government News Release : here

State of the Internet Report

Just a quick pointer to the "State of the Internet" presentation by Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley Research at the Web 2.0 Conference today. (Nice of this to come by so quickly after Dave Sifry's State of the Blogosphere post.)

Titled "The World's Information is Getting Organized + Monetized", it touches on the trends like Internet Growth, Online Video Pickup and Online Ad Revenue. Not in depth (can't be anyway) but paints a good big picture of where the online world is moving towards.

Link : Morgan Stanley's website / pdf of presentation

[ via : Redeye VC ]

Speed of the Social Media

A great post from The Mu Life on why and how socially generated media is able to beat even .. Google? --- Why Socially Driven News is Better. Reminds me of the last post I did on how the youTube aquistion news spread.

According to the post, the story of Rumsfield's resignation hit various sociall driven content sites like Digg and Reddit in about 3-5 minutes.

I don't think it's going to get any faster than this!

[via : The Mu Life]