- I had purchased my tickets for quite a while, and what do I see on Ouriel Ohayon’s blog? “Don’t miss Yaron Herman’s concert…”.

Ouriel’s blog was one of the first I started to read, back in end of June 2005 when I arrived in Israel. I was happy to read about someone who with I thought I shared many traits: French guy, newcomer in Israel, both working in the Internet business (Ouriel was at that time working for ICQ; he now is a VC and the TechCrunch France editor), HEC alumni, etc. I was too shy and busy at that time to leave comments..Well no, the reason why I didn’t leave any comment was that I wasn’t blogging myself, and therefore didn’t understand the whole point of it all. Too bad, we could easily have met, back when I lived in Tel Aviv, where I spent 5 thrilling and frantic months. Anyways, it seems that we do share passion for jazz music as well.

The coincidence is: I was excited about Yaron Herman’s concert, and Ouriel started praising Yaron Herman’s jazz music. And indeed, THE CONCERT WAS JUST AMAZING (see my picture right on the right hand of the screen; planning to broadcast a video soon).

- Another, even funnier coincidence. Random surfing on the Internet, I once left a post on Damien Debin’s weblog, someone I didn’t know from anywhere. About 3 days later, Damien came to Ecole Centrale Paris, where I study this year, to make a brief presentation of his company, a software start-up named Serensia, which actually sponsors my program. And you know what? No, you obviously don’t, but I’ll tell you: I was the student in charge of making sure both the sponsor company and the students are happy. So I met with Damien, certain that I had heard his name before. Later in the evening, Eurêka! I had just visited Damien’s blog (in French). By the way, Damien happens to be an amazing photographer and I strongly recommend that you take a look at his pics (access from his blog, see my blogroll).

As far as Serensia is concerned, I will soon (in November) share my humble opinion about a dozen French software or Internet company business models that, according to me, deserve more blogging coverage for one reason or another. If you want to do your homework well, here’s the list I’m planning to go through: Serensia, Neolane, Exalead, Netvibes, CEGID, iGraal, Apodis, ILOG, peuplade.fr, U-Lik, Miyowa, Business Objects, and Brainsonic.

I should also, pretty soon, write a soft of review of my Blogroll because far too many blogs (Hadrien, Xavier, etc.) are just SLEEPING! Lazy people ));

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I had already written about FON, Martin Varsavsky’s newest project consisting in creating a worldwide community of people sharing wireless hotspots.

Martin (I don’t know him personnaly but since I read his excellent blog – see my blogroll, everyday, I believe I have the right to skip his last name) recently published a post showing (entitled “T-Mobile vs. FON”, in Spanish) how FON should take over T-Mobile pretty soon in Germany, as the leading hotspot provider.

Well, for once, the French won’t try to compete, but rather coopete. To my knowledge, the following piece of information hasn’t yet been released anywhere, and I don’t know whether anybody at FON knows about it (I guess they do though), but Orange plans to integrate a FON IP pattern in its soon-to-be-launched (Spring 2007) software named Connexion Kit.

This is good news for all parties:

- For Orange who won’t have to fight against the French FON community (often client of Orange as well), which would anyways have been a pure utopia provided that FON hotspots are..free;

- for FON who gains credit for securing partnership agreements with major telecommunication operators, France Telecom being the leading one in Europe;

- for the French and people visiting France: there are currently 17,000 hotspots available in France. The figure seems impressive, but the total area covered is just ridiculous in this 550,000 km2 big country.

PS: to check the FON blog in English out, over here.

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