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Just browsing through my old pix tonight, on my new external hard drive, using Picasa 2.
Funny how you forget about things and moments, but luckily pictures are there to remind you of them.
For example, here's a picture of me with Cecilia Bartoli, the great mezzo-soprano, taken in September 2002 in Philadelphia, PA, USA. She was kind enough to sign my program as well ;)
PS: I guess now you are getting to understand my playlists at the end of my posts... ?
I don't know about you, but I have been accumulating a number of DV tapes in the past few years, that I never watch :( I'd like to do some editing and recycle those tapes. As a matter of fact, I am looking for a simple yet powerful video editing software that would allow me to keep the interesting parts, add some music (and not loose that encrypted information of when it was filmed).
Any hints ? Please don't point me ot FinalCut Express HD, as I DON'T have a mac ;) But I do have firewire connectivity (cables & cards...).
In the meantime here are 2 small videos I took in a market in Joburg with my new camera from Sony (it's a direct acquisition onto memory stick, hence low res): the white band and the black band ...
By the way, have you watched Steve Jobs' latest keynote ? A must, as always...
Playlist: Cecilia Bartoli's Salieri album (another Xmas gift...)
Just stumbled on Loic's post about the newly created YGLs, replacing the previous GLT's (Global Leaders of Tomorrow). An impressive crowd in which you will recognize many names from around the world and from all walks of life. In particular you'll find individuals from the tech sector such as Sergei and Larry from Google, Niklas from Skype, Marc from Salesforce.com, and a few other fascinating individuals.
From the WEF's site:
The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a newly formed, unique, multi-stakeholder community of 1111 exceptional young leaders who share a commitment to shaping the global future. The Forum brings together young leaders who are currently internationally prominent and those who are destined for future greatness.
Each year we identify 200-300 exceptional individuals, drawn from every region in the world and many disciplines and sectors. Together, they form a powerful international community which can dramatically impact the global future.
Young Global Leaders:
- are under 40 years old
- have substantial leadership experience
- have already clearly demonstrated a commitment to serving society
- are willing to devote their energy and expertise for five years to tackle the most critical issues facing the world
In shaping the future, the Young Global Leaders will engage in the “2020 Initiative”. This is a comprehensive endeavour, aimed at establishing a framework for understanding the problems and risks we face in the coming decades and beyond.
The Young Global Leaders will focus their abilities on exploring what the world will be like in 2020, if current and projected trends continue. Their goal is to identify the dynamics and complexities of future industrial and social developments, so that a shared vision for a better world in 2020 can emerge. Equipped with a positive roadmap for the future, the Young Global Leaders will design global strategies to make this vision a reality. These strategies in turn will be translated into the concrete action to be taken today, if their vision for 2020 is to be realized.
I'd like to congratulate our friends Loic, Alja, Julianne and Karim for making it into the list this year ! A number of very active GLTs were not selected, but hey... Congrats again.
I never watch TF1, the #1 French TV channel, basically because it's filled with crap shows. It's a commercial channel, appealing to the masses and household female consumers below 50 years old. At one point its CEO declared that the company's mission was to sell available brain time to advertisers...
The other reason is that my ISP, free, does not carry TF1 on its TVoADSL offering. I get it through a terrestrial antenna though... By luck I was rebooting my ISP set top box, and the channel came up with the NRJ Awards 2005. Another tap in the back show I thought, but hey, instead of turning on the radio or palying a CD, why not listen to this show while browsing through my RSS reader... (hey I'm still super behind all those posts since early 2005).
Nothing much to tell about the show, same insignificant stuff except:
1. again the lovely Alicia Keys performing greatly (remember, I'm a huge fan) (video available here)
2. Naomi Campbell in a beautiful dress, reminding me of the days of Christian Dior's New Look
3. French singer Corneille: as elegant and talented as ever
4. a joke by the presenter Anthony Kavanagh on how to create a hit: some nonsense words, some electronic rythms, and a well-connected producer... Actually he was referring to the Rumanian band O-Zone... Don't know what I'm talking about ? Seth refers to it here as well...
Hum... got an email from a friend of mine today asking me whether I had tried the new Hello IM ? I replied no... and didn't bother more.
Then, while downloading the new version 2 of Picasa (see previous note), I noticed that Picasa is launching its new IM platform making it easy to share pictures. And it's called hello... Well done, great name. And they even got the www.hello.com URL... Sounds like Flickr is getting some competition ?
From Hello's web site:
When you use Hello, you get to see your photographs together with your friends online. You don’t have to wait for huge email attachments to download or upload your pictures to a public website. Just point at a picture and you can tell the person who sent it exactly what you think. With just one click, you can get the original high-quality, full-sized file to print.
So how do you compete against the association of IM + Blogs + Pixsharing ?
Google calls it Hello + Picasa + Blogger.
AOL already has its products: AIM + YGP (you've got pictures) + AOL Journals.
Microsoft's got MSN Messenger + their blogging platform + a pix solution? (can't remember).
So what about Yahoo!? When are they getting their hands on SixApart + Flickr (+ Y!IM).. ?
Now, I also need a HelloIM plugin for trillian and gaim ... Where's the SkypeIP plugin by the way ? still waiting for it :(
By the way Google's share is at $188... what ? still over their $85 intro price ? crazy...
Julien points to a 22 min (60Mb) movie from 60 minutes on "Inside Google' - get it here! He gets his pointers from another blog: Google Blogoscopped... Update on 27/2/05: an interesting story about Google is here (via Mathieu)
In the meantime, check Flickr's blog: it has some beautiful pictures... They have an XML feed as well.
Just before last Christmas I got myself a new external hard disk: a iomega HDD 160Gb. It installs itself without drivers, got recognised instantly both in my Windows and Linux environments, using a USB 2.0 connection. My original idea was to get an easier backup mechanism than burning CDs over and over again.
Actually, the device comes with 2 great pieces of software:
A. I use Iomega Backup to synchronize my laptop hard disk with the external hard disk: I only take my data directories and my desktop. It's automatic (my settings are every night, but you can go down to the minute) and runs in the background. Hence, if my computer is stolen, I have immediate access to my data. Nevertheless I will have to reinstall the applications on a new computer.
b. I use Norton Ghost every weekend to create an exact image of my hard disk (it's manual, and takes about 1h15 - launch it before going to bed). If my hard disk crashes, I can call Sony's Customer Care center and get the hardware fixed immediately (I use a vaio Z1). Then I can just reinstall my PC by copying the mirror image in less than 2 hours ;)
It's good policy and a treat to yourself to backup your important data!
Remember: NEVER buy a laptop without a 3 year warranty as laptops tend to crash all the time. Even the one I'm typing on had a hardware problem after 3 months. In and out from customer care in 4 days, hardware replacement, no problem since. I had to change 3 times the mother board on my previous laptop...). Get a BACKUP solution as well.
Now...
Jsut before going on holiday, I decided to copy my whole collection of data backup CDs onto this hard disk... It happens that I had a lot of redundant stuff, but even more so, lots of CDs of pictures that I never look at, precisely because they are on CDs that are stored somewhere. What a pleasure to rediscover old digital pictures! They are now all neatly stored on a directory and I have over 20Gb of data. This trend is going to increase as cameras offer more and better resolution (my new Sony 150P takes 3Mb pictures by default...) Watch the products and stock prices of companies offering personal storage to consumers...
I use picasa to browse through my pix (by the way Picasa 2 is out - get it now!).
I should find a screen saver to run through them as well... Any ideas ?
It seems my next purchase will be a 300Gb hard drive purchase: check the ones from Maxtor!
I wish they all came with Ethernet connection so that I can just plug them onto my wifi access point. iomega has such a product already... Expect also the home multimedia set top boxes sector to pick as well. Alienware has cool device as well...
Update: Le Danois posted this morning his experience with a network drive. Is he reading this blog ;) ? Check it out.
In 2004, I talked a lot about mobility. I'm pushing the concept even further this year: I just got myself a new car, a Mercedes Class A. Well it's not brand new, about 4-5 years old (who cares), but I got it for less than the price of a new laptop computer ;)
I just felt that
a. at over 10 years old for my previous car (I only buy german engineering: sober and reliable), the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) ratio was going to increase
b. a smaller car is the only thing that I really wanted for Paris: easier to park, to take over other cars, and more fuel efficient.
The side effects are fun: it has an automatic gear (not that I really wanted one, but hey...), a newer car radio (RDS is fun: it tells you what radio station you are listening to), automatic roof lights when you switch off the car, and parking lights. Nice perks.
I suppose if I finally get a real new car, it's going to be like using a new iMac G5 ;) ? Full of user-friendly features that I don't need, but that I won't be able to live without afterwards ?
Folks, still slowly getting back to business (meetings back-to-back all day): I haven't even had time to listen to my voice mail since December. Bear with me ...
In the meantime, one of my correspondants told me I should upgrade to the latest version on skype: he was right, I am still using version 1.0.0.100 1.1.0.73 and I've been missing all this: Just installed it, it looks nice ;)
Update on 6/02/09: Another version 1.1.0.79 is out. New features include:
Folks, I'll be back in a few hours (currently in a Lounge at Heathrow), both to the business world, and to blogging. I guess a lot has happened in the past 15 days, of which I have no clue.
My idea of holidays is NO internet, NO mobile phone, NO newspapers... Hence, forgive me for catching up lately on some things.
I just connected once to clean up my inboxes (but without reading my emails ;), but managed to see that Apple released the Macmini. Slick idea, at only $500, but if you add some of the stuff you really need (AppleCare, wifi, bluetooth...) the price goes over $1000. I'll have to think about that a bit.
Anyways, folks, I had a great time in South Africa: I will post some more pictures of the wild game (rhinos, lions, giraffes, cheetahs, ostriches, impalas, nyalas, white tigers, etc.), the beautiful landscapes, and the stuff we did.
I spent my last day there yesterday with the great Jay Naidoo (pix to the left), at a world-famous place: Soweto; we stopped by for food at the famous Wandi's restaurant.
Dear readers,
It's been a great and exciting year for me. In 2004 I expanded upon the skills I developped over 10 years of consulting + those from business school.
In January 2004 I finished my first year as board member at glowria.fr, an online digital media retailing company. I also finished a special 7 month assignment with the
company to set up an industrial-grade IT infrastructure (recruitement of an in-house team under Antoine Bonavita: Java development skills, user support skills for data mining, system administration + 99,99% SLA support at our hosting) + redefining the company's financial control (budget mechanisms, reporting, etc.), among other things.
With my partner Ivan from RISC Partners, we also tried in January to buy a distressed company in the software industry that we thought we could merge with one of our other companies. In the end, we got over-bid in the final round in the commercial court of the Paris Tribunal.
From March to October, I had the honour and pleasure of working with a great person at AOL Europe, Carlo d'Asaro Biondo, in defining a pan-European strategy for AOL in the mobility space. Part of the approved strategy was announced in the French press in early November.
I met many many folks in the mobile industry including service providers, entrepreneurs and mobile operators. I would like to mention a few of them who have in the process become real good friends: Patrick Parodi (from PacketVideo Network Services, an Alcatel company ;) and also chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum), Gilles Babinet (chairman and founder of Musiwave, the chaku-uta champion in Europe ;), Rajen Lakhani (founder of SoreThumbs.biz) and Pascal Lorne (founder & CEO of Miyowa, also president of the i-mode service providers club). I apologize for not mentionning everyone, you all deserve it!
RISC Partners, the company I co-founded with Ivan, was also involved with the launch of servidores.com, a multiple-play operator in Spain, offering domain name reservation, on-line gaming, server hosting, fantastic ADSL connectivity, Voice-over-IP (carrier pre-select), and really really soon TV over ADSL with VoD features as well.
Since December, I'm back at glowria.fr, giving a big hand to its founder, Mihai Crasneanu, with stabilizing growth (we are #1 on the French market) and preparing for our other news businesses of which video-on-demand and on-line gaming have been announced in the press recently.
In addition, I had the pleasure of doing a bit of travelling this year: many many trips to London and Hamburg to coordinate AOL's thinking in matters of mobility; a great trip to Beijing with Ivan in early september to discover this emerging superpower; another fantastic trip to Japan with Pascal to meet most mobile players there (Great to meet you there Pierre!). Not to forget a week-end escapade to Athens in the summer for the first week-end at the Olympics 2004 and a couple of expos/trade shows such as Milia in Cannes, and CebiT in Hannover.
It has been a busy year, with lots of fun in the professional world: I managed to merge all my interests well: technology, strategy, growth ventures, venture financing, media and retail.
For some of you, I thought it would be fun to transcribe my thoughts on this blog, which I started in early April after Loic convinced me to do so. You will of course forgive me for not giving you all my business advice that clients pay for, or that I plug back into our own business ;) As Loic says: "the idea has no value, only execution matters". That is very true, although it requires infinite execution capacity, which we don't currently have. So I've kept some information to ourselves.
Other joys came on the night of May 1st, when 10 new countries joined the European Union. I look forward to discovering (I mean travelling this year ;) those 9 countries that I still haven't been to: Ireland, Luxemburg, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland (yep, I've been to the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Malta, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, The Netherlands, Poland).
Finally, I managed to relaunch my genealogy site, sepulveda.org, using typepad's blog platform for easy updates.
Bad news were not many, but included the re-election of W., this time democratically it seems. So be it.
I'd like to thank you all for your support (not really for your comments, since there were not that many :), but for coming back to read this blog regularly. I still don't know how to track those folks that get this feed via RSS, but I'm sure I'll find out with your help this year. To the left are my stats for 2004.
Finally, a note on the future:
- President Jacques Chirac gave an eloquent speech last night: please do not forget to help the relief network over the Asian Tsunami. I'm not convinced that all the money will get there, so choose your NGO well, to make sure they can use that money elsewhere in the future. He also pledged the French people to vote for the new European Constitution before the summer. Whatever your political spectrum affiliation, it's the only way forward for the continent. Vote wisely.
- Although it doesn't really show, I did not take any vacation in 2004: hence I'll be off tomorrow for 2 weeks holidays in South Africa with the family. Expect some photo blogging from there (hey I got myself a 7.2 mega-pixel pocket camera from Sony: the DSC-P150 following this review), but not much more.
- I'm turning 34 next week. Don't forget to toast on January 9th ;)
Folks I'll see you back in mid-January. In the meantime, all the best for 2005!
Rodrigo
ps: Playlist: a Cecilia Bartoli DVD, that I got for Christmas ;)
