Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Digital content is fun

Two weeks ago, VideoTotal magazine asked us for a picture of our offices so that they could illustrate an article due shortly. Great surprise this morning in issue 23 (6€ at any book store), to see that not only did they publish the picture I took in a rush from our warehouse the other day, but that it also covers a good 1/3 of the title page of the article ;) Isn't it fun ?

Take a picture with your small digital camera (original pix to the left), send it by email (digitally again), and see it in print a few days later ;)

Anyway, if you are interested in the online DVD rental market, this article covers all our competitors and ourselves, and explains the concept over more than 4 full pages. Enjoy.

Is the Internet Bubble 2.0 round the corner?

After reading a great piece by Om Malik on Yahoo! coming back, I thought I would check some Internet stock charts. Mamita Mia ! Seems like I need to call by broker first thing in the morning: talk to him about apples and yoddling...

Check these Internet 1.0 properties:
AAPL, NFLX, GOOG, YHOO, AMZN, EBAY...

Good advice on what to do with an old PC

Great advice from the Make blog on what to do with an old useless PC (I actually have one at home that qualifies perfectly for just that ;):

Here's a great article about turning that old PC in to an internet-enabled CD player, DVD burner, and MP3 jukebox using Knoppix. I get asked about this a lot "What can I do with an old PC" and this is a pretty good use and Knoppix is a great way to get started.

" I have the perfect test subject sitting in my scrap heap: an HP Pavilion.   It was a decent PC in its day: 350MHz Pentium II processor, 128MB RAM, 3GB   hard disk, and a DVD drive. I'll assume you're in the same boat.

The secret sauce we'll use to revitalize our elderly PC is Linux,   the free operating system based on UNIX. Linux is available in more than 300   varieties ("distributions"), enjoys plenty of online support from   around the world, and comes with a truckload of applications, including free   CD/DVD players and recorders. (Did I mention "free?")"
(via O'Reilly Digital Media)

Ethics in the workplace

A while ago, I wrote a post about why competition is good for your business: it stimulates you to innovate and never relax (Michel summarizes it greatly here). I also did another post on why you need to monitor competition all the time, and mentionned for example this tool, which is not sufficient as such, and you need a number of others that we use all the time (pricing, service offering, product mix, etc.).

I really believe, as an entrepreneur, that your business is good because you provide value for money to your customers, and hold them in respect. No cheating in my workplace. No badmouthing.
2 years ago, one of our employees inserted one of our competitor's name in the meta-tags of our pages. Once we discovered that, we immediately removed that, and that employee, among other reasons, is no longer with us.

I don't mind my competitors copying my service. Really. Loic once wrote that Ideas don't matter, only execution matters, and I agree with him. Now, if you develop something fancy that brings you competitive advantage, you should simply patent it, and do all the legwork to protect your investment.

Now, what I really do not like, is when my competitors start playing foul. Click on the picture to the left. You all know how advertising on Google works: you buy a keyword (sometimes you have to bid really high), and you pray (actually you do some maths) that your ROI on that is good. Now when your competitors start buying your brand as a keyword, that is called not only cheating, but brand infringement. Google France has been taken to court recently, and has lost its case to 'la Bourse des vols' and to 'LVMH' for selling brands as keywords. Our brand, glowria, is regularly registered at INPI.

My competitor is going to be talking a lot to my lawyers as well.

Add LinkedIn search bar to Firefox

Just stumbled on this one: there is a little extension that very conveniently helps you add a LinkedIn search button to your search area on your Firefox browser. Don't know a person, check that person out real quick !

There's even an extension for LinkedIn Jobs search...

The comprehensive of all Firefox search extensions is here.

Netflix reaches 3m customers

Online DVD rental pioneer, Netflix, has just reached 3 million customers. Quite an achievement in just over 6 years. The fool is mentionning their impressive growth:

"It took from 1999 until 2003 for the firm to gather its first million. The next million was under the belt by May 2004, just more than a year later. This third million took only 10 months to gather."

Earnings call is due shortly on April 21st. Always entertaining to listen to.

Stuff I'd like on Typepad

Following my series on what I'd like on different Internet services (LinkedIn, Gmail), here are some random thoughts on little features I would really like on Typepad; I had an opportunity to express some of them over dinner a while ago to Barak, SixApart's CEO, but here goes an updated list:

1. I would really like <PREVIOUS & NEXT> buttons on the general view of a blog. When you are reading a blog for the first time, or getting an update on a page, there's no way ot continue reading once you get to the bottom of the page. I use 2 tricks today: either click on the differents months in the archives (you then get a view for the whole month, and when you're done, choose another month), or click on a single post, and navigate through posts which do have the <prev & next> buttons.


2. Same comment for book lists for example: once you reach the max number of books displayed (as configured in the backoffice), they do not appear any more on the blog (normal), but there is no way for readers to see others (<prev and next> would make sense right ?)


3. I really still cannot figure out on how to easily follow a conversation going on in the comments section of a post. Ideally it would be great to subscribe to a post, and get updates on the comments as an RSS feed. Even more ideally, would be to have a 2 layer RSS feed: one for the main flow, and one that develops underneath each post. Maybe some RSS readers know how to do this, I don't, and it would be great it SixApart could innovate in this space (hey... Trackbacks is one of their innovations, right?)


4. I'd like Typepad to include updated modules in the Typelist section:
• It's complicated to add HTML to a page at the moment (create a List typelist, but the code in the comment, check 'treat this as text' in the configure section) and REQUIRES that you zput a title to the list (you can always put a space, but managing each HTML block becomes clumsy, and creates unnecessary space on your page).
• we already have links to Amazon.com for books: it would be great to create 2 other types: Music (for CDs) and Film (for DVDs). It would really simplify our life, and make it easier for people to make money on their blog).
• standard modules that we all use in Typepad (Google Search, Statcounter or SiteMeter, Creative Commons license, etc.) should become standard blocks (exactly like the aboutme, syndicate this blog, etc.) in the backoffice, and be customizable by clients. I guess SixApart just needs to tweak some APIs to the other services, and update its templates. Loic tells us it's possible here.


5. Real management of different blogs with a pro account: today, if you manage more than say 4-5 blogs, you get really confused in the back office with all the typelists that get included or not in each blog. Moreover, it is not possible to use 2 pictures/logos, 2 about me, 2 photo album lists, etc. unless you really tweak your HTML code in the templates. It would be great though.


6. I'd like a way to configure the RPC mechanisms in the back office. It is not possible today (to my understanding) to add more pinging sites for each post, unless you do it manually each time in the trackback box. I therefore use pingomatic to update my ranking on search engines.


7. Finally, I would like Typepad to make it easier for bloggers to make money with their site: negotiate deals with other online merchants such as Fnac.com in France, ebay, etc. It can't be that difficult. Cashback start-up cashtore.Fr has signed for instance more than 70 partners in less than a year with a handful of people. Throw some quick API integration, and you get many deals (think about TradeDoubler, DoubleClick, FirstCoffee, etc.) that can help promote blogs. Also, make it easier to post contextual GoogleAdsense blocks in each post, or at the top of the page, ot every other post, etc. instead of just a piece of code somewhere.

Don't get me wrong: Typepad is a great tool and has improved greatly: the new WYSIWYG interface is very helpful, trackback, pings, etc. are great. But once you get to the limits of a system, enthusiastic clients always want more.

Update on 6/4/05: I've found another blogger wishing more stuff on Typepad :)

Human Area Network

RISC Partners' correspondent in Japan, Pierre Mustière, has been talking to us about it for a while. Japanese mega-corp NTT has developped a technology, RedTacton,  to enable communications between devices at speeds up to 2 Mbps, using the human skin as a network for devices within 20cm from the skin... I hear NTT DoCoMo is looking to finance projects using this technology.

The official RedTacton site is here. The Register is running a story here.

The .eu domain name might be available in April 2006

The Register has a good coverage on why it has taken so long. I really don't know whether this is a good idea or not.

I understand the Internet has developped from its early days as a military project in the US, DARPAnet, into a tool used all around the world by hundreds of millions of people (how many Internet users out there?).

Regulation for the Internet should be handed over now to international institutions. I posted earlier this month, a guide to the major Internet Institutions. Nevertheless, some of the major bodies such as ICANN (that gets to decides in this case on domain names) are still part of the US administraiton (US department of Commerce). Joi, an ICANN board member, says the goal is to become independent by 2006.

Putting bureaucratic and democratic concerns to a side, my concern is that domain name TLDs (top level domain names) really don't make sense to me:

a. Browsers can ignore TLDs: Have you ever tried the CTRL-ENTER sequence in most modern browsers ? It will automatically change 'glowria' for instance into 'http://www.glowria.com'. The TLDs are just squeezed here. There are even addons that will automatically browse through all combinations such as .com, .net, .org, etc. to find a domain name for you. Why do you need a TLD ?

b. TLDs are confusing: originally there were a small number of TLD to make managing DNS (domain name system) servers easier: .com (for commercial companies), .gov (for government agencies), .mil (for military institutions), etc. and .xx for countries. The USA has never really used .us, whereas many other countries/people have started using TLDs such .net and .org such as myself with sepulveda.net and sepulveda.org. Where it is clear that a .fr is based in France (the french authority asks for a proof of company registration), you usually have no clue where a .tv service (Tuvalu) is located. (You can access the list of all country codes here.)

c. it is completely un-economical for companies to use this system. In order to prevent domain name squatting, most companies have to buy dozens of domain names (most countries in their region, or the world) just to protect themselves. That's like a dozen dollars multiplied by the number of TLDs, multiplied by the number of brands, multiplied by variations of the brand (for instance, I have had to register RISCpartners.com and RISC-Partners.com with a dash in the middle).
No wonder this is a real business for many registrar companies. But completely stupid to protect yourself (look at the time spent doing this, and managing renewals). Yes, WIPO in Geneva will help you regain your domain name, but it will take time, money, and effort: in the meantime, the more domain names out there, the more work you need to plan.

d. Search engines are doing all the work already: how many times have you tried to enter a keyword into Google to find a web site ? It's amazing that many people actually go into google first, type a keyword, click on the first result, instead of just typing the whole domain name.

e. Lazy people even use bookmarks to track domain names. Think of this like mobile phone usage: many of us don't even remember the phone numbers of our friends: it's stored on the address book, and we just press dial. Same for bookmarks: who really cares about domain names ?

Although an .eu domain name will make me feel good as a passionate European, it will not help my business: I'll have to register all my domain names with .eu again. What a waste of time and money.

Hence, I believe a proper way to manage access to information on the Internet will be through a simplified keyword system (such as AOL's Keyword), entered in the address bar, powered by google or someone else (I remember there was a company doing this although I don't remember its name).

Now the last blow? Mobile computing is developping. Who the hell wants to keep typing with either the keyboard or a stylus ? Indeed, with a mobile phone keyboard it is very tedious:

h - t - t - p - : - / - / - w - . - w - . w . - s - e - p - u - l - v -e - d - a - . - n - e - t <enter>

ICANN ? Please make my life easier, will ya ?

thoughts ?

Update on 3/4/05: the JdN did a survey on 31/3/05. It seems about 41% of respondents consider the .eu to be useless.

Saying Hello to all Mac fans out there

This FlickrBlog is amazing (check the slideshow for this FlickrGroup). You should really add it to your RSS feed!

Disclaimer: Most of the pictures I look at have really nothing to do with technology!