Heri

Félicitations à l’équipe de Telomiova pour leur nouveau site. Au menu des changements:

• Une page d’accueil plus claire, plus facile à comprendre
• Un réseau social à telomiova.net pour les membres (enseignants, étudiants, participants, équipe). Le nombre de fonctionnalités est assez impressionnant (voir “site-wide activity”)
• Un portail qui aggrège les contenus, avec des pointeurs sur d’autres pages ou destinations

C’est un travail assez impressionnant (même si la première version était déjà très bonne) bravo à l’équipe, ils peuvent être fiers du résultat. Je pense que le site couvre 100% de leurs besoins et qu’ils peuvent mainteant se concentrer sur l’adoption du portail (et aussi sur le financement, parce que à ce niveau, je ne sais trop comment ça marche pour eux)

Pour ceux qui se demandent ce qu’est Telomiova, voir ici:

Le projet Telomiova consiste en un ensemble d’initiatives visant à favoriser l’accès aux nouvelles technologies et surtout accompagner l’intégration, la maîtrise et le développement des usages des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication pour l’Education (TICE) dans l’enseignement à Madagascar.

I’ve noticed it intuitively at Montreal Tech Watch or the other blogs I’m following on RSS, but here’s a post written by Nick Carr which sheds a new light on the audience shift on the web.

Admittedly, I am very late to the concept of blogging, having only started one about 18 months ago, but I did see the “power” and reach of blogging. You gather a few thoughts, and if there were a tad original and interesting, the “community” found it, commented on it, and re-blogged the post with other original thoughts. And once in a while, there would be conversations, where two or more bloggers discussing a hot topic.

It doesn’t happen nowdays, not anymore. I have the feeling nobody reads the entirety of a post anymore, and if they find something interesting, one of their first reactions is to put it on twitter or facebook or a bookmarking place like hacker news. A twitter/friendfeed discussion will then continue. The original post on the blog would then act only as a tinyurl reference, and not the central focus of discussion.

It’s easy to understand how we came up to this: It’s much easier to setup a twitter or an identi.ca account, than setting up a blog. It’s much easier to throw you current state of mind in 140 characters than writing carefully crafted paragraphs. And people do answer you immediately on microblogging platforms. Plus the fact that a user own their content on a tweet whereas it’s not the case on the blogger’s website.

For me, this means that the old dream of having a personal blog that would have a world reach, a presence on Google, and being able to reach out to the “community” and starting a discussion is dead. Yes, this old dream is a thing of the past. You will now just get heard on your immediate network (read: co-workers, immediate friends, family); unless it’s a professional blog, with a marketing plan and a sales team that would allow it to become the leader in a market. In a few years, we’ll probably just have a few huge web media companies, brand names such as Huffington Post, Revision3, Giga Omni Media which will have mass media influence, equivalent to the current omnipresence and power of Time or NYTimes.

You probably played a role in this, by having a twitter or a facebook account, and spending time adding links and notes here and there. The question left unanswered is: Is there a way to still keep the influence and the discussion? Probably not. Microblogging, social portals like Facebook are going to stay, and they’re the fastest-growing destinations on the Internet. Instead of fighting the change, you’ll have to embrace it. I’m looking forward to tools that would gather discussions, and highlight at the same the tinyurl’d web page. I’m looking forward for tools that would disseminate content on these platforms, but still keeping a trace (with a token for instance in the url) and show where it is going and landing. This is the kind of tool we’re heading towards to at TechEntreprise, but I won’t be surprised if there are new websites already working on this.

Original illustration: Atomization by Didier Bonaventure, a Montréal artist.

Yesterday was the peak, with Barack Hussein Obama elected for president of the USA. I thought it didn’t involve me, but finally it does.

See the video above. It empowers & inspires us to do new things. A little magic in the air. As if we were asleep previously and now is the time to wake up, brace up, and build things. For me, personally, it’s believing that I can also change and change things. And you?

I’m late on the news, but I’m now blogging at iWeb, with articles and posts about web development and web hosting issues. There is also a french version for each article.

It’s a new experience, although not totally different from Montreal Tech Watch. So far, there were articles on usability, CSS frameworks, accessibility, management of traffic peaks, even Halloween costumes etc.

A few comments on this:

• The folks at iWeb are young and awesome to work with
• In many regards, it’s like a technology startup
• They are based in Montreal, with 3 data centers and still expanding thanks to lower costs of electricity in Quebec.
• blogging about web development forces me to organize my thoughts. And of course, it’s an opportunity to do deep research about a topic.

Hopefully, at one point, I’ll do also Research & Development and get the blog off the ground, to make it a reference in web development. I’m not sure about marketing tactics used by other websites such as the infamous Smashing Magazine, but will also give it a try.

I’ve been working on TechEntreprise for the past 4 months, and while it’s not official or launched yet, I still want to share the project on this blog.

In the technology world of Montreal, I am mostly known for having started MontrealTechWatch, a blog whose tagline is “Technology and Innovation”. The blog covered extensively technology events, new projects and ventures, entrepreneurship. It was especially exciting since it followed the birth of the technology community in Montreal. I was there for BarCamps, for Blitzweekend, or for any other *camp or technology event.

This has been a wonderful learning opportunity, since it was my 2nd blog, and was also started 2 months after I decided to try out the “blogging” thing.

The blog grew then from a little place on blogspot to a full-blown wordpress blog, with its own customized template and domain name. I especially have to thank every person in the Montreal Technology community for giving their time and offering the gift of reading and interacting with MTW.

After a while though, it stalled … or should I say, I saw more opportunities about the concept. With its mix of tech news, jobs, events, articles, and also user comments, I foresaw the possibility of having a public place where everyone could contribute.

Here is a screenshot of TechEntreprise, on the Montreal network:

Visitors can signup, have a profile, contribute to news and public forum section. There’s also dedicated sections for jobs, events, groups, and articles. I especially like the events page, where you can see who is going to an event, and then have a look at their profile in case you want to meet them at the event.

I’m planning to open up networks in Seattle, Cape Town, HK, and other places like Boulder and Boston. And yeah other cool places too.

Now, where does it lead us? Here’s a mission statement from the website:

… bet that any city can become a technology centre, and believe that TechEntreprise can be a key resource and platform for this to happen…

The sentence is for now a bit incomplete since the final mission goes much more beyond that, but it should be more than enough for now.

Now, before TechEntreprise officially launches, I want to use my blog to gather my thoughts and share the different aspects of the project to you, such as technology, product design, marketing and also monetization (drum rolling on this last one) That’s about 4 to 6 posts for the upcoming 2 weeks. Hope you’ll enjoy the ride!

Grand Corps Malade – Du Côté Chance

Je me rappelle avoir lu que les artistes nous rapprochaient de Dieu (ou des dieux). L’auteur de l’expression n’y mettait aucune signification religieuse; mais voulait dire ainsi que les meilleures oeuvres artistiques faisaient entrevoir un idéal perdu, ou une Vérité qui nous échappe que trop facilement dans la vie de tous les jours. Quelque part au fond de nous, quand on voit un chef d’oeuvre d’un artiste, on aperçoît ainsi dieu, à travers la quasi-perfection d’un trait, à travers des paroles dont on connaît d’avance la vérité, à travers l’élégance d’une expression.

Même si cette explication est complètement arbritraire, et d’une certaine façon futile, elle me vient en tête en écoutant Grand Corps Malade. Dans le clip vidéo par exemple, il y a une sincerité vraie, que l’on ne trouve nulle part ailleurs, ainsi que d’une voix qui touche. Des détracteurs diront que ce n’est pas de la musique, que ce n’est pas engagé, que c’est simpliste, que je suis bien impressionnable, que des fois il se répète, que c’est juste l’expression d’un temps et que ca va donc sûrement se démoder dans quelques années; ils ont peut-être raison, mais qu’empêche … vous comprendrez maintenant pourquoi j’écoute maintenant en boucle son album “Enfant de la Ville“.

A journalist from the New York Times asks the question: “Inside Nairobi, the next Palo Alto?”

This is a provocative title — maybe as sensationalist as the alarmist news reports that were published at the beginning of the year. While I’d do anything to see a technology boom in Nairobi (or in Madagascar), Nairobi has still a long way to go before comparing it to Palo Alto, such as solid infrastructure and mass adoption of technology.

There is something true though to the article; as it tells how the technology landscape and usage is radically different in Africa, compared to North America. As the reporter writes, people don’t use computers but cell phones as their main technology tool, with the example of mobile web payements. This is true in East but also in West Africa, confirmed by friends in Senegal and in Ivory Coast. A friend told me the example of fishermen getting real-time information about fish prices, allowing them to ask for better prices. Other novelty examples is news and alerts crowdsourcing, by the Ushahidi team.

With those 2 simple examples, it doesn’t take long to envision mobile services made for Africans. I’m brainstorming for instance with a friend on a new mobile social networking app for Mali. The service is to be monetized by sms, by usage, (via routesms if you are curious). It won’t also be sticky, meaning that usage should be ocassional and not pushed to users.

Since working on montrealtechwatch, I’ve kept an eye on how media websites present their content, and how they deal with the dilemma of quantity of information vs usability & readibility.

I especially like the Guardian‘s layout. It’s a generous design, with lots of white space, nice typography, with a good balance between iconography and text. But the thing that pleases me most is that it’s really a web-native interface, one built from the ground up to take advantage of the strenghts of the Internet – and try to minimize its weaknesses.

I could list what they have done, but for the sake of simplicity, here is just one detail.

See it? Headlines starts exactly at the same line, even though they are on two different columns. It’s the same for the features below, they “magically” match withouth discordance. Of course, the Guardian hasn’t invented it; grids & baselines are avalaible to everyone thanks to frameworks like CSS blueprint.

Of course, the design is not perfect. You could argue for instance that the design lacks personality and dynamism. Here’s then rue89 another media website that convey personality while still keeping a great user interface. Rue89 uses a distinctive red color for highlighting, black lettering, high contrast, and headlines that “scream”.

The bold typography and distinctive graphic design is suited for their writing style, which is caustic, unapologetic, un-politically correct, although still with lots of original information and thourough investigation.

Like in the Guardian’s case, Rue89 manages to pack and present lots of information to the user, while still maintaining hierarchy (what’s the most important news of the day?), readibility, usability, and also shortcuts to special sections and features for power users.

As a sidenote, it’s interesting to know that the original rue89 team were ex-reporters from lemonde interfactif, making them a web-native media website, where readers can comment, vote, and send over news and pictures.

Early June, I went to yulblog, a monthly event gathering Montrealers who blog. I usually don’t come to this kind of event, but since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d drop by.

yulblog takes place at La Quincaillerie, which is a great spot for this kind of event. They’ve got big tables — think tables for 15+ people, plus beer, and a young festive crowd.

I didn’t met many people. For those who know me, I’m not the kind of guy who will speak to everyone every minute; I’d rather have a long conversation with someone, be it a friend or someone new. One of those was with Alexandre Enkerli. He teaches at Concordia University, and is studying social software.

We had a long exchange; he argued that not that many people will use services like Twitter or other social services common tried by early adopters. In Twitter’s case, I argued that it has novelty uses, and I see very well most people use it as a communication medium in the years to come. Alexandre pointed out that Twitter has too many flaws to be massively adopted. I guess though we had the same thoughts; I foresaw that a new distributed, interoperable social software would come up; something that could be used by any so that they could own their own data but still participate and exchange with their contacts/friends. In more practical words, that means a software that could be installed like WordPress on a user’s server, where he/she would put their activity stream, photos, videos, blog posts, and profile info, and would automatically pull data from their friends, be it from their own servers or a big provider like Facebook.

I have no idea who will come up with this software, but I think that’s the way it should be; and I bet it would be achieved by dec. 2009.

Now, for the technical part, I’m still thinking things over. OAuth seems to be a laudable initiative, although I find the authentication dance between the 2 websites (the server provider and the consumer) completely ridiculous, on an user experience point of view. It’s confusing, way too technical, and screams nerd overload.

Ideally, a website should be able to automatically detect if a user is using a website that has interesting information, open up an overlay form asking if the user wants to use his profile from that website, go to this website, and finally clicks the confirmation box. And that should be all. 1 screen, 2 clicks and no more to authenticate and make the 2 websites “talk”.

I am also currently building a webapp that would even bring down the total of actions required to just 1. This is a special case, because even though the services are on different servers and locales, the ring of websites share the same codebase.

I get my news nowdays mostly from blogs RSS subscriptions. These blogs are around my centers of interests, and prove in the past to provide valuable insights. I also visit some time to time news from Hacker News or general websites like lemonde.fr.
I found out that those were valuable websites that filter the digital noise on the Internet, and allows me to keep-up-to-date with what’s important and meaningful for me.

The thing though is that it does not take into account serendipity, and of course I find myself overlooking some piece of news that were not reported in these selected news feed. And I find myself looking for a tool that would get all important news, but would also feature from some time to time a page or a post which might not be a high-profile blogger, but who would bring up a new idea or something meaningful.

Techmeme is known to sort technology blog posts, especially the startups/web2.0 “stuff”, and does a good job in doing so. From what I know, it features on its homepage new items that gets lots of trackbacks or mentions in other blogs, a sort of social validation much alike Google’s Pagerank algorithm. I also noticed it also takes into account keywords used in the headline.

Techmeme is an interesting project, although in my opinion, it encourages “memes”, and I’ve seen many posts that were just paraphrasing a featured blog post. It’s also a firehose of information, and you will see yourself loose a lot of time if you decide to take your technology news from that website. And as I said, there is no serendipity or “small blogs” in techmeme.

I’ve been thinking about this, and there are some tools avalaible out there (AideRSS or Technorati‘s API come to my mind), I’ve done a quick architecture of the whole thing, and it seems trivial to create a blog aggregator that would do what I describe. And I thought it would be great to do a Québec-theme blog aggregator, or one around Madagascar.

Of course, this is just an idea stage. I know it’s technically feasible, I only need to find the time. And yes, get a web server. But yes, finish those other ruby on rails projects. But in a time where everyone and their pet has a blog and is media, I think this would be a tool that many would use.