CyanogenMod for Touchpad is revealed!

From the beginning of the madness and the unprecedented buzz around the HP Touchpad, Cyanogen team had applied to give new life to the touchpad. Following the withdrawal of the project TouchDroid, hopes users of the HP tablet turned to the alternative of Cyanogen ROM which is revealed today in Alpha version.

Touchpad for CyanogenMod logo is revealed!

Lower your expectations edition!

After having stirred the curiosity of owners Touchpad with several videos, Cyanogen has to provide a first Alpha version of its alternative CyanogenMod ROM, stamped 7.1.0. If these videos show that many things are already operational (dual-boot, multitouch screen, WiFi, camera, or a GPU acceleration), the team of Cyanogen warns that this version is not to put all hands, as shown by the name given to this alpha "Lower your expectations Edition" (Edit lower your expectations).

Indeed, autonomy is announced to be very low, the developers have not yet taken into account the energy management and many applications may not work correctly. We also recall that this version of CyanogenMod based on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), the source code of the operating system reserved for tablets (Honeycomb) has not been unveiled by Google.

Touchpad Touchpad for CyanogenMod is revealed!

It is still far from a full working version but rather encouraging first draft should delight hackers. The question is whether this will suffice to make the shadow webOS, the HP system that should not be abandoned because the U.S. company announced in late August that it should continue to provide updates. If it has attracted more users by including its interface, webOS is criticized for its limited number of applications which is precisely one of the highlights of Android, with more than 250 000 applications!

Contest: Trophies Orange Mobile Internet

If you work in the development of mobile websites, I have something that will perhaps interest you.

Since 21 September, Orange launched the mobile Internet Awards in partnership with Le Journal du Net, a contest to reward the best mobile Internet services.

Contest trophies: Trophies of Orange Mobile Internet

The competition is open to all, whether you're a developer, user or want to know your heart calls you can participate.

A jury of ten persons will reward the best mobile services. It will evaluate the applications submitted for the competition based on the appropriateness of use, quality of customer experience and strategy of multi-platform deployment. For your information, and this is also why I speak to you, I am honored to be part of this jury, and therefore I will participate in the selection of records.

The winners will be invited to the evening awards ceremony on November 17 in the presence of mobile content publishers and prestigious brands.

To participate is simple:

1. you submit

Until midnight October 21, 2011, submit one or more websites or mobile WebApp by posting on the Facebook page of Trophies (full details in the info tab of the page)

2. you vote

Between October 24 and November 13 midnight, invite your friends to vote, via the application "Survey" for WebApps you have proposed. View details of the transaction on Le Journal du Net and on the Facebook page of Trophies.

On your smartphones friends!

Threatened, Canal + and start investing SVOD CanalPlay Infinity

It did not take long to Canal + in response to the announcement of Netflix to expand its services to the European market. Already on the market since 2005 with VOD CanalPlay, the television group has announced the launch of CanalPlay Infinity, the first French service by subscription for unlimited VOD.

To promote its new offering, Canal + communicates primarily on its rich content, "many thousands" of films and series (original creations or not). Agreements with several U.S. studios as well as major French producers are under negotiation. To ensure consumer ease of use best, the group also put its television Envideo innovation, a search engine supposed to "respond to the desires of the users and based on the recommendation of subscribers", presumably via a system of tags. And all for a mere $ 9.99 per month, with no obligation. You said a price war?

Photo Threatened 01F4000004652328 SVOD channel, Canal + and start investing SVOD CanalPlay Infinity

The service will be available from November 8, first exclusively via Neufbox SFR, before being extended to the Freebox Revolution and the BBox, connected to the Samsung TV and Canal + decoders. In early 2012, will extend the offer last game consoles, first the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. In the near future, contracts should definitely be signed with Orange and with other TV manufacturers are connected. Note that the service will also be available via PC, Mac, and touch pads.

Very pragmatic, group president, Bertrand Meheut said that Canal + is only anticipating a changing market and "new entrants" that will ultimately lead to "a new perspective in the competitive sector." We refer of course to Netflix but also Google TV, whose arrival on the French market is scheduled for 2012. Despite the relevance of such a choice, it should nevertheless be recalled that the French legislation, via the rule of media exploitation chronology, imposes a three-year period between the release of a film in theaters and on its distribution service SVOD. The American series, meanwhile, often take several months to be available overseas.

This is likely to give a little bit of old catalog promised yet so provided by Canal +. The limit for works already available for sale physical sites of VOD classics, or via illegal downloading? A bet that seems risky. The group has not choice but to opt for an aggressive strategy to outdo its future competitors, enabling legislation or not.

Google definitely separates Buzz

The Mountain View company announced yesterday the closing of the doors of its old social network, Google Buzz. Behind this decision is long overdue expressed the willingness of Google to focus completely on his last service date: + Google.

No More Google gbuzz definitely separates Buzz

The service, released in February 2010 as too light a draft response to the threat Facebook never managed to meet a great success. This is undoubtedly due to the way it was linked to the online messaging service Google. At the end of Buzz, the most frequently contacted by Gmail users from the social network were in fact directly visible on the web. The case was followed by the Federal Trade Commission, which accused Google of violating its own privacy policy.

The firm was then updated Buzz, allowing users to manage their privacy settings, giving them control over their data safe. This was unfortunately made much too late, critics of fusing Buzz from around the net, preventing the service definitely take off.

According to the note posted by the company on its official blog, Google wants to provide its service users who have a real impact on their habits, and they are ready to use two to three times a day. The firm, very productive today on its new social network, Google +, has announced that Buzz should be closed in the coming weeks.

Similarly, Google has shown off other services, scheduled for January 15, 2012. Are involved so far:

- Code Search, which allows searching for open source codes

- Jaiku, a microblogging platform similar to Twitter, which was acquired by Google in late 2007

- The social features of iGoogle (the portal of course still in place)

- The university research program for Google Search, which provided access to research results for the API researchers

Google Labs site at the same time closed, and it will be the same for sites Boutiques.com and Like.com, substituted by Google Product Search.

Since the arrival of Larry Page as CEO in April, the Mountain View company has stopped the development and maintenance of more than two dozen of its products and services. Page asserts that he prefers to invest more involved on a limited number of services, and the strategy of "focus" for the moment seems to succeed in Google, Google's social network + actually contains more than 40 million users (remember however, that Facebook has 800 million!).

Tribute to Steve Jobs: music with sounds of Mac

Tributes to the founder of Apple, who passed away last week, multiply on the web. Among the latest in: music, performed only with the sounds of Mac.

steve jobs with apple1 Tribute to Steve Jobs: music with sounds of Mac

A video posted two days ago on YouTube entitled "Thank you, Steve" has audio music made ​​entirely with samples of sounds of Apple products, and the voice of Steve Jobs in his famous speech to the ceremony degrees from Stanford University in 2005.

The sounds used are the following products: Mac I, Mac II, PowerMac, Apple II, Mac Quadra, Mac Pro and iPhone. The music was performed by Jordan Mozer, alias AzR, a sound engineer and DJ in New York.

The video is available here, and for those interested, the track can be downloaded from this link for a dollar.

The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft is now official

The acquisition of Skype by the giant Microsoft announced in early May was made official on Friday the acquisition of the VoIP service for $ 8.5 billion has just been finalized.

skype1 Lacquisition of Skype by Microsoft is now official

Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, from Denmark. The company was acquired by eBay in 2005, but then the company had failed to find a way to integrate the technology of Skype on the famous auction site. Skype has been sold in 2009 to investment group Silver Lake Partners for $ 2.5 billion. This year, Microsoft announced that a rumor would be highly interested in the service, and the estimated figure is just 8.5 billion.

The agreement between time spent in the hands of several organizations before being validated. While the Redmond company has received clearance from the Federal Trade Commission in the United States in June, the case has dragged a little on the side of the Commission of the European Union (until last week), the main obstacle for Microsoft, who was accused in 2009 of anti-competitive behavior against different browsers (the complaint was filed by the Norwegian company Opera Software) with respect to the direct integration of Internet Explorer in its system Windows operating system. However, the Commission finally concluded that the purchase of Skype by Microsoft was not a real threat to competition - which is part including Google.

The contract drawn up so Skype is a wholly owned division of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer announced that its CEO, Tony Bates, will serve as president of that division.

In a post on the official blog of Microsoft regarding this acquisition, Tony Bates says his desire to transform the world of communication, based on the many facets it offers, such as social networks, mobile communications and videos. Microsoft released the same day a graphic on Skype, where we learn among other things that one minute, the equivalent of six months video is transmitted by the service (YouTube gets about 48 hours of video per minute).

To date, it has 663 million users, which would connect 170 million each month. With this huge community, Skype's goal is with Microsoft, reaching the one billion daily users.

Microsoft will in turn use the technology of Skype for several of its products. It would then be introduced into the question of the Microsoft Lync (better known as the Microsoft Office Communicator), which enables a real-time communication in companies using instant messaging features, VoIP and videoconferencing. Windows Live services should at the same time experience a little touch-up "Skype", and integration is planned for the online gaming service Xbox Live and Windows Phone OS. Finally, the direct implementation of Skype in Windows have also been mentioned, still asking to install the OS if you want to install the software.

Remains to be seen how Microsoft began to exploit the potential of Skype which is still to this day, remember, a non-profit ... As application, Skype has updated its PC software from version 5.5 to of 5.6, in which the installation of the Google toolbar has suddenly disappeared from the installer. That's fair, of course.

What if Google was a ... platform!?

After the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto Yahoo! signed Brad Garlinghouse, a Vice-Presidents of Yahoo! at the time, now is the "peanut butter manifesto" of Google, signed Steve Yegge, an engineer at Mountain View, in which he demolishes Google + (and that his opinion has leaked intentionally or not is beside the point, there are precedents far more famous and more senior than him)!

google more if Google was ... platform!?

Photo credit.

He criticizes the failure of Google to reason over the long term in terms of platform (Platforms are all about long-term thinking) rather than products (The problem we're a Product Is That Company-through and through). A platform that would base its foundations on two pillars: accessibility and security. And more accessible, because basically, platform = accessibility. Thing missing in Google:

    We do not get Platforms, and we do not get Accessibility. The Two are Basically the same thing, Because platforms solve accessibility. IS A platform accessibility.

He said Google does not know or understand realize what a platform, and Google + is the first example of this lack of culture "platform":

    That last one Things That Google Does not do well IS Platforms. We do not understand platforms. We do not "get" platforms.

    ... It's like our Tenth or eleventh priority. Or Fifteenth, I do not know. It's pretty low.

    The Google platform + Is A pathetic afterthought. We Had No API at all at launch ...

    This is a cultural thing ...

At Google, first we try to anticipate what people want, and after we give them. This is not really how it works. This approach is not reliable. Steve Jobs could do that, but we do not have Steve Jobs, Google, sorry (sic):

    The problem we are Is That Trying to predict and Deliver What people want it for 'em.

    You Can not Do That. Not really. Not Reliably. There Have Been precious FEW people in the world, over the Entire History of computing, Who Have Been Able to Do It Reliably. Steve Jobs WAS one of 'em. We Do not Have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, we do not aim.

Larry appreciated :-)

According to his analysis, Google + would be a Pavlovian reaction to short-sighted, based on the false premise that Facebook is successful because they have developed a good product. What is wrong: the success of Facebook is that they have built a platform that allows others to develop a constellation of products, which allows everyone to have a different experience, personal on Facebook. Some spend all their time on Mafia Wars, some of Farmville, etc.. There are hundreds if not thousands of silos of content which waste time, there is something for everyone.

    Google + is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion That Facebook is Successful Because THEY built a great product. Goal that's not Why They Are successful. Facebook is Successful Because THEY Entire year built constellation of products by allowing to Other People Do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some People Spend Their time is all Mafia Wars. Spend Some Time On Their all Farmville. There are Hundreds or maybe Thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so There's Something There for everyone.

It's not just Facebook that has managed to develop a platform, it is the same for others, each for its own reasons, such as Amazon (all part of Jeff Bezos is priceless), Microsoft, Apple or Twitter but not Google.

Or a product that is not associated with platform will always end up being replaced by a product that can run on a platform (A Product is useless Without a platform, or more accurately and PRECISELY, a platform-less product Will Always Be Replaced by year equivalent platform-ized product). The important thing is to give third parties the opportunity to develop their own apps for grafting on the platform automatically, after which everything will happen naturally (He just needed to enable third-party developers to do it, and It Would Happen Automatically ).

This is not to launch the first products to hope to make an open platform, magic and stretch a second time, what Google already tried without success (We can not keep Launching products and pretending we'll turn 'em Into magical beautiful extensible platforms Later. We've Tried That and it's not working), but rather to start with the platform, and then use it for all products and services. While not perfect from the start, there will be time after the polish, the important thing to do now. Because even if it is not too late, more and more Google expects it will be difficult and expensive to properly implement this strategy:

    The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own dogfood" Can Be rephrased as "Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything." You can not just bolt it on Later. Certainly Not Easily At Any rate - ask anyone WORKED Who is platformizing MS Office. Or is anyone Who WORKED platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it'll Be Ten Times As Much work're just doing it Correctly up front. You can not cheat. You Can not Have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY Reason. You Need to solve the hard Problems up front.

    I'm Not Saying it's too late for us, along the goal we wait, the closer we get to Being Too Late.

I stop here a summary of his analysis, he pondered for 6 years (This post has-been six years in the making), to complete the question that came to my reading of this post:

What would Google if it was a platform?

It is already hard to understand what Google, if a company is about to build $ 200 billion (I still remember when Eric Schmidt said he wanted to make Google a media company weighing ... ... $ 100 billion) (it looks old, it was two years ago !!!), which began as a search engine (Search), then an advertising (Ads), prior to its many products and services many apps (Search, Ads & Apps), then add the social to Google + would be expected now centralize all of this on its platform.

Generally, the approach "beta" Google is important, since the use or not users of the products that launched the company can determine their abandonment or replacement, but the launch of Google + there just three months suggests Google is betting that this time much bigger than what came before, playing directly in the field of Facebook.

Do they succeed without opening the platform Google + third-party developers, as Facebook has to do is one of the key questions posed by the long analysis of Steve Yegge, an engineer at Google. Anyway thank you to him. I also encourage you to read reviews.

What do you think of this analysis vs. platform. product / service, and do you think Google + eventually succeed where his previous attempts to break into the office have failed?

Technology

Can we live without technology?

I hear sometimes that science has replaced religion (well, not everywhere) and some are afraid of the omnipotence of technology.

Neither science nor religion would be difficult to comment on this assertion, but I note with some surprise random encounters there are still people around us who do not use technology. But not at all.

Thus I have two people in my relationships (2) which do not have mobile phone. I'm not talking about smartphones, but the good old basic mobile phone that serves just a purely practical thing, you know. One of them also have no car, and I even suspected of not having a driver's license (yes it is suspect :-)). Strange for a father forty urban bobo anyway, right?

I also note that the persons in question are divided into two categories.

In the first category, those that are hostile to the new technologies a matter of principle that borders on political and ideological commitment, in which we find indiscriminately anti-globalization, rejection of consumer society and environmental activism (which often goes all the way). These people have nothing against technology as such, but to refuse all collateral damage they are supposed to lead, even when failing to balance the progress they are for humans, and even for humanity, let's crazy.

In the second category are people who, despite socio-cultural and professional rather high, ignore the new technologies, because they do not see the point, preferring to focus on a lifestyle in which the contact in real life is fundamental. I speak of contact in real life for lack of better terminology because I do the difference with the human touch: the most common mistake committed by those who are refractory to the Internet for example, is to think of it as a tool of alienation and isolation. We all know that, properly used, is exactly the opposite: see the popularity of social networks, forums, and instant messaging. For an example of alleged alienation I can give 10 examples of socialization.

The yes-life (as opposed to no-life, hahaha) are also those who do not use the ATM but will withdraw their money from the bank to pay for everything in cash (as some traders, but for other reasons ... ). We could certainly find many other examples of denial of technology.

Of course, we can live and be happy without technology, it is sometimes a deliberate and perfectly respectable incidentally brings us to reflect on the vanity of the race for the latest gadget (I know what I mean ...), but is certain: those who make that choice for fear of losing the "real" human relationships are wrong.

It's an illusion to think that technology is alienating to humans. The whole history of evolution, and phenomenal acceleration the 20th and 21st centuries tend to prove the opposite: the printing of the railway, aviation on the radio, print media to television, major innovations introduced in mass are those that have enabled man to communicate, and men to come together.