It’s funny! Recently, 37signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson gave an interesting talk on finding a business-model for your start-up. He said something along the lines of “It’s no rocket-surgery!” Well, what I’m about to speak of is in fact rocket surgery.

As some of you may know, I wrote a thesis a while back on high-tech start-ups, their strategies of finding funding, and how they interrelated with incubators, a key-component in the innovation-system for high-tech start-ups. As it turned out, not all the start-ups I interviewed were high-tech, which showed some interesting differences in ambition, funding-need, and funding-strategy, but also not all the incubators, I looked at, were focussed on high-tech.

For some, it was a conscious choice; ESI, the ESA-incubator, faces the unfamiliarity in the market with space-technology, and their focus is to promote the utilisation of space-technologies, which is very-very different from the development of space-technologies. For instance, you can use materials or mechanisms used in space-tech in creating products like bikes, which obviously carries far less risk and development-times.

With high-technology, it’s all about making life a little easier, because the market is simply not able or willing to carry the technology- and market-risks that companies (to be) carry in this segment. Of course, this is a problem with entrepreneurship in general. For instance, back in the day, the first *official* VC-fund was American Research & Development (ARD), which collected funds, not from a limited set of institutions and for a limited time-frame, as is common practice today, but instead just opened itself up to common shareholders. Since high risk and high reward are correlated, it attracted a lot of attention, and eventually lawsuits followed from people that felt cheated (most often by some investment-adviser collecting his commission) when the risks proved true. And then VC-funds became more conservative, and less and less commercial money went towards highly risky ventures, like e.g. Space.

Today, most VCs prefer there to be no technology-risk, and many would also prefer for there to be no market-risk either (which translates into a company already having customers, which is generally good advice, but doesn’t work for all companies).

Back to incubation. I consider ESI a medium-tech incubator, and it does take measures, both on the technology-side and the investment-side, to make life a little easier for both start-ups and investors. As opposed to the Erasmus Medical Centre (EMC), which I consider a very high-tech institution, and acts accordingly. Why is it high-tech? Medical patents last around 15 years. Yet development can cost billions, the risk of failure is high, approval from regulatory institutions can take a long time, sometimes bringing the whole process to about 10 years of development-time. So not only is the chance of success low and the cost high, but you don’t have much time to collect the reward!

How the EMC works is like any high-tech institution. Scientists develop a process or product, it is part owned by them and part owned by EMC. Actually, it is very much owned by the EMC, though I won’t reveal the exact percentage. But considering the possible reward is huge, even a small percentage will set that inventor up for life. The EMC basically has complete freedom to do with the technology as it pleases. Often, it will license the patent, sometimes it will sell it, and sometimes it will decide to start and incubate a company.

In this case, still, it holds complete control. The inventor can decide to take part in that process, but essentially the EMC chooses who runs it. It also set up a seed-fund with banks and VCs, of which it also collects part of the rewards. Nice, no!?

Compare that to the ESI. The ESI usually licenses its technology, fairly freely from what I can gather. Their objectives are different, they want to educate the market. They don’t own equity in firms, though obviously there is a licensing agreement in place somewhere. When I interviewed them, they were planning to do something to make seed-funding for start-ups easier, but at the time of my working there, it was basically all left up to me and my partners.

From my research, I understand that the way incubators behave, very much depend on the objectives of their stakeholders. The objectives of the EMC and the ESA are very different. The EMC creates technologies that are meant to be commercial, and is also a cornerstone of Dutch innovation. The ESA creates technologies that are used in public programmes, licenses it to partners, but is also fighting an uphill battle as far the public’s and business-world’s perception of space-tech is concerned; it is simply too abstract for many to care, which raises questions about whether programs like the € XX-million space-toilet should really exist. Of course, when you bring space-tech *to earth*, that changes the picture somewhat.

Incidentally, there are very few successful independent incubators, simply because society considers it unethical for an incubator to exist—either because they don’t understand the kind of service that incubators can provide (nor is there a real quality-guarantee), or because they consider their residents as sub-par to regular, independent start-ups—both topics for another day.

There’s definitely much more to say about this, including the role, I think, incubators should play in (funding) high-tech entrepreneurship, but I’ll leave that for another day.

P.S. I hope this sheds some light on why I still don’t see software (and webware) as high-tech (1 & 2) and why VCs like that world so much.

P.S.2 This also sheds some light (in my opinion) on the media-industry, which others and myself frequently write about on Tech IT Easy. Music is just another technology, with its production- and high marketing-costs, as well as high risks of failure, and the way record-companies deal with artists reminds me a lot of the EMC-model. Food for thought…

This piece was written by Vincent van Wylick, co-author extraterrestrial on Tech IT Easy. The image is courtesy of rocket-surgeons.com.

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I just discovered the eBay Speaker Series with allows eBay employees to meet with experts and leaders of the industry. I checked that I am allowed to blog about all these great conferences and since the answer is yes, I am really glad to be able to share them with you. Today, this conference was a paradise for my brain: everything seemed to fall into place, to make perfect sense. We had the chance of receiving Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. For those who don’t know Zappos (and if it is the case, you’re probably European), it is the first online shoe retailer is the US, but before all, it is one of those companies completely shifting the paradigm in their approach of customer service. I pass quickly on Tony H.’s history which is anyway pretty impressive (cofounder of LinkExchange sold to MSFT for $265m, cofounder of an incubator which led him to Zappos) and on Zappos history (founded in 1999, now 1600 employees), but instead focus on Tony’s vision.

First, I was surprised by their mission: I thought that they would naturally choose “becoming the largest shoe retailer in the world” or “becoming the largest accessories retailer”. No, instead they chose something way more inspiring for customers and actionable by employees: “providing the best online experience possible”. Tony H. chose not to compete on prices, but on products and service instead, to drive repeat customers (very successfully strategy since 75% of purchases are from returning customers which on average have higher order size that first time ones). And how does it translate currently into their business? By a number of policies: free shipping and free return shipping, 365 day return policy, 24/7 1-800 number. Well, it seems interesting, but some e-tailers are doing the same, right? It seems that the differentiating factor is how these policies are implemented. For example, the number to reach the customer service is on every single page of the web site: Zappos wants their customers to call them, whereas other e-tailers try by all means to make you find your product or answer by your own. Tony H. mentioned that he sees the customer service as an immense branding opportunity, a unique way to speak directly to your customers. Customer satisfaction is the only focus: customer reps sometimes refer customers to competitors’ websites if Zappos is out of stock on a particular model. By the way, on this particular example, Zappos is only reproducing what local retailers, especially in small cities, have always done, but is doing it at a larger scale.

But what are the processes to achieve this customer satisfaction? I’ll pass quickly on a number of operational measures (reps don’t have a maximum call time to follow and are not incentivized on sales, warehouse run 24/7, inventory all products…) but instead focus on the culture. I am always skeptical when I hear a company saying that they rely on their culture to make things right: a nice sign with 10 really basic principles at the entrance of a corporate building has never helped me determine the strategy of a company. Even the really consensual Google’s “don’t be evil” is now questioned! But at Zappos, the difference is that the core values are really committable and that decisions, especially the crucial ones like hiring, firing and evaluating performance, are made in accordance with the culture. Notably, all employees spend 5 weeks in training to learn the culture, and customer reps are given $1000 to leave the company during the training if they feel that they don’t fit with the culture of customer satisfaction. And which impact does it make on the business? It seems that once you get the culture right, the decisions are much easier to make. Tony H. gave a lot of really good examples and I just picked one: a widow wanted to return shoes from her deceased husband, and the rep who managed the case took the initiative on her own to send flowers to the widow on behalf of Zappos. The widow was so moved by the gesture that she mentioned it during the funeral. Of course there is no guideline for this kind of situation, but having the right culture gives you confidence that your employees will do the right thing in terms of human behavior but also for the company (the widow and some members of the family are now repeat customers!).

But finally, what about the costs involved? Tony H. sees customer service as an investment and not an expense: Zappos has been profitable since last year but could have been profitable 4 years ago; instead, it invested in free overnight shipping and other aspects of customer satisfaction. But he is also extremely rigorous about ROI: whereas offering free shipping the same day would totally fit into the culture, it doesn’t make any sense from a business standpoint and therefore hasn’t been implemented.

I didn’t have time to ask the question about whether or not they plan to go global, because it would be a totally different challenge to maintain the same level of CS on a global scale. So if I’m lucky and Tony sees this article, I hope he’ll reply here

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I was just commenting on Vince’s last article Copyright or the Right-to-Eat and realized that my comment was getting so long that I should better write an article on the subject. This actually funny because I was about to write a piece on exactly the same subject, and for most of it with the same opinion, because I attended on Friday a conference called “New Media Artists and The Law” organized by California Lawyers for the Arts and I wanted to share the thoughts of this conference on this blog. It gathered Emily A. Berger, Intellectual Property Fellow with Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons, and Joel Slayton, Director of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, and exploring the ways copyright laws are implicated in new media art and the challenges artists face in this evolving area of the law.

In direct connection with Vince’s article, Mike Linksvayer, VP of Creative Commons defended the idea that there are plenty of ways to make a living while giving one’s art for free. But I had the same issue as Vince’s about the status of the artist in our society: what does this reveal if people are not willing to pay for art anymore? I personally believe that the Internet and the culture of gratuity and open access is an opportunity for unknown artists because giving their art away for free allows them to get some market traction and then, be able to sell some “derivatives” of their art, and make money that they wouldn’t have made without this strategy. So for this specific kind of people, I would say that it shouldn’t be an ethical problem to make money on things that are not the product of their art itself, because the product of their art itself wouldn’t have generated any money otherwise. But of course there is the other portion, which can have an opportunity of making money from its art directly, but which will start feeling a certain pressure to give this art for free. I was kind of shocked during this conference to hear artists in the audience speaking about offering their art on the Internet as a fatality, a trend they were obliged to follow, as if the “Myspace success story” was the only hope left. But as Emily A. Berger mentioned during the conference, referring to Chris Anderson’s article “Free”, you will always have free to compete with you: so either you try to make it better than what is offered for free, or you try to tackle the niche of people having more money than time (the iTunes niche, which, with the right pricing, is actually not a niche anymore), or you make it free and find ways to make money otherwise.  An excellent article from Kevin Kelly called “1000 True Fans” argues that an artist only needs 1000 True Fans to make a decent living, since a True Fan, that you can “recruit” via the free offering, will after that be ready to pay for anything related to you. And he also mentions that the Internet allows you to reach this number more easily than traditional channels and therefore find a middle way between the long tail and the superstar.

But while all this talk is perfectly understandable in the case of the music industry which is a market based on volume, it is a totally different story when it comes to visual arts. Which is why I have trouble understanding a copyright law which seems to tackle all the artists as if they were a unified world facing the same challenges. And this is also why I welcome initiatives like Creative Commons which allows people to give away some of their rights when they feel that the copyright law doesn’t answer their needs and that these new licenses can benefit them, as long as (and this is a major risk) it doesn’t put any pressure on other people in the industry to do the same. But how do you adapt these notions of derivatives in the case of visual arts? It is way harder for a painter to get True Fans, and even if he manages to get some, I am not convinced at all that a person falling in love with the image of a painting will be ready to buy a T-shirt with this same image: it is just not the same feeling. The visual art market has somewhat been already confronted to the same kind of problem outside the Internet, like how to monetize a happening or short-lived works of art. When Christo decided to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, he had to find ways of monetizing a work of art that was offered for free to the inhabitants of these cities, and therefore he sold some pictures of the different stages of the experiment. But, to go back to Vince’s point, this is Christo, and a lot of people are interested in those pictures, whereas an unknown visual artist doesn’t have the traction.

Actually, the major paradox is that only artists who would manage to sell their art directly are able to sell derivatives in a significant amount, whereas the starving artists who would be ready to give their art for free and make a living by selling derivatives don’t have the market traction to generate enough interest around their derivatives, especially in visual arts. And after all, even if Emily A. Gerber said “get your art out there by any means, get market traction and after that you’ll see”, a thousand fans is a pretty large number don’t you think?

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This morning, I read an interesting piece written by Steven Poole, and just had to comment on it. In it, he discusses his book, which he released for free (and DRM-free) around the net, and which has received ca. 30,000 downloads so far. But he also discusses the idea of artists, or creators in general, making money, and how that + giving away stuff for free, doesn’t compute.

He also refers to what he calls the “Slashdot argument,” one, I should add, I’ve used myself several times, that (music-)artists should keep giving away their creations for free, because it’s possible, and instead collect revenues from live-performances. As a counter-argument, he uses the programming-profession:

Oh Mr Freetard, you work as a programmer, do you? How interesting. So do you perform all your corporate programming duties for free, and earn your keep by selling personally branded mousemats on the side?

It is actually interesting, because the live-analogy actually applies to programming also; where is software slowly but surely moving too? Towards hybrids, like Software-as-a-Service, Software+Service, and other incarnations, as well as a 100%-on-the-internet model. A hybrid model is, incidentally, also the way gaming-companies like Shanda combat the problem of piracy in China.

But a large part of what he’s saying, I do agree with. Releasing your stuff online, for free or a freemium, is most suitable to artists whose concerts are sure to be sold out: NiN and Radiohead. Plenty of artists, like my mother who paints, just want to create art and sell it; not release it for free and do crazy live stunts to earn a living (even though that’s what’s entrepreneurship is all about).

I guess, when he calls for a renaming of copyright to Right-to-Eat, that perhaps he has a point. There are plenty of people out there, who don’t get copyright, don’t care about it, or justify it through a self-serving argument.

I don’t particularly think that prosecution works that well here—crime is global, while crime-prevention is local—but perhaps we need more education; perhaps we need the equivalent of pictures of blackened lungs on cigarette-packs to be extended to media? The only problem with that are videos like this (couldn’t find the original, so enjoy the parody), which, ironically, mainly target those people who paid for a DVD, while pirates smartly removed that “feature” long before releasing the DVD into the wild. Or perhaps we do need DRM, like the kind that Steven Poole refers too, tying you to your Kindle or iPod?

It’s definitely a tricky situation, and I’m not sure there is an easy answer that works for everyone. I’ve heard of people pasting a big copyright-sign across their pictures; of authors, who read chapters or the whole book for free through a weekly podcast, while selling the book on the side for the impatient. And of course, of Radiohead and NiN, both of whom are huge artists, but who didn’t exactly employ an all-your-eggs-in-one-basket formula either.

But what about my namesake, Vincent van Gogh, an incredibly talented, yet socially awkward individual? If we expected people like him to “perform live” to earn money, perhaps we would have never seen his art today.

This piece is written by Vincent van Wylick, co-author on Tech IT Easy. The picture is courtesy of csauce.wordpress.com.

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Hello, Fidji here. I remember that, for one of my first articles on Tech It Easy, I spoke about it with Jeremy and he told me “that’s interesting, but there is no way you are going to make your point if you don’t draw something to show it”. And I didn’t, because I couldn’t find a way of summarizing it all in a simple picture. I thought it was better with words only, but truly it wasn’t. That’s the point that Dan Roam is trying to make in his book “The back of the napkin”.

Dan was today’s speaker at the eBay Speaker Series conference, so I had the chance to enjoy hearing him explain his theory. He is convinced that any business problem can be solved by a simple picture, that anybody has the ability to draw. But we often believe that we are not able to draw anything because the current educational system doesn’t give us many opportunities to use our visual thinking – even if it is an innate form of thinking as a child.

He shared a funny anecdote with us: he was advising Microsoft on a UI type of problem, and to foster the discussion, he showed them some handmade drawings. The people in the room were enthusiastic about this new support for their discussion, and at the end of the meeting some exec went to see Dan and asked him: “what software did you use to make the UI seem as if it is handmade?”.

And I definitely agree with Dan when he says that some software help and stimulate our thinking whereas others (and a lot of them) just block us: as a strategic analyst, I personally thinks about a problem only in terms of “what is it possible to show about it in a PowerPoint?”. I know it sounds kind of pathetic, but it is clear that my brain is now used to think about solutions in terms of slides.

So Dan’s solution (which can of course be summarized in a picture drawn on a napkin as you can see in this article) is to use the swiss knife of visual thinking:

• Use our built-in tools: eyes, mind, hands.
• Use the “look, see, imagine, show” process when approaching a problem, like we would do in poker game (we look at the cards, we see the patterns, we imagine what we could have, whe show our cards).
• When you arrive at the “show” step, use the SQVID framework: try to understand wether you need, for your audience to understand, to make you picture Simple or elaborate, Qualitative or quantitative, to focus on the Vision or the execution, to adopt an Individual or a comparative view, and finally to show your problem as a Delta (change) or as a status quo.
• Match your picture with one of the way we see the world: to answer a What? question, draw a portrait; to answer a How many? question, draw a chart; to answer a Where? question, draw a map, to answer a When? question, draw a timeline, to answer a How? question, draw a flow chart, and finally to answer the Why? question, draw a multidimensional picture, often a combination of the previous questions.

What I also find interesting is his classification of people into 3 categories regarding visual thinking: the black pen guys, who are the ones that can’t help jumping from their chair during a meeting and drawing things everywhere on the white board; the yellow pen guys, who are the ones good at highlighting the important areas in a picture and improving what’s be drawn; and the red pen guys, who hate drawing but who usually think that what the black pen guys are writing is bullshit and feel so exasperated that they end up amending the whole thing. I took Dan’s test and it happens that I fall into the second bucket; and I’m really curious to know where you think you fit the most to see if it confirms the repartition that we had within the eBay audience!

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Many of you, I’m sure, are aware of the rise of the Hackint0sh—Mac OSX installed on other, more open, hardware. I think (I’m no historian), some attempts have been made before the Intel-move to do so, yet with moderate success, and I understand that the 90s saw a lot of clone-Macs, until Steve Jobs shut it down.

The rise of Intel as a platform for Macs is the main culprit today. While the performance-gains are significant, a dream of every gamer, I’m sure, who (ironically) probably uses Bootcamp to play games in Windows, it also bridged the incompatibility-gap that the Mac-community has both enjoyed (I enjoyed it) and not enjoyed, respectively.

So the Hackint0sh came to be, in the form of the OSx86 project, and later through numerous how-to’s (e.g. Lifehacker’s) on how to easily build a budget-PC and install OSX on it. Dozens of “OSX-laptops” are possible as well, btw.

If it wasn’t for the fear of a lawsuit, I’m sure this would have been turned into a business before long. After all, the hype for the Mac is at an all-time high, while, at the same time, Apple continues to cater to the niche, those few that are actually willing and able to pay for a $1000+ machine, while the price-trend for IT in general continues to inch downwards.

Well, now a company called Psystar has actually done it, and released a so-called “Open Computer,” which is both built to support OSX, and has a controversial installation-option included as well. While plenty of people expected for this to be shut down quickly (and still do), the Psystar-people have made a statement that they are not doing anything illegal and will continued to offer this product.

Why Apple would care is obvious. It is a hardware-company and most of its margins come from that part of its business. OSX, as a profit-driver, is more like the napkin with the coffee than anything else—no matter how the community may feel about it. Now, I suspect that most of its Mac-sales come from the laptop-segment, and some of its offerings, like the Air, are hard to beat. So far, this is not being challenged. If Psystar sets a precedent, however, it could easily translate to “open” laptops being offered with the same installation-option, and that would eat at Apple’s bottom-line.

How to fight this is dubious, however. Is this a trademark-issue? “Open Computer” does not infringe on the Mac- or Apple-name in any obvious way. The only infringing-part seems to come from Apple’s EULA, which states that: “You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”

EULAs, however, are more of an informal contract between company and user, and its legal solidity is not guaranteed. And Psycorp believes it has a good legal argument, that the Mac is actually an illegal monopoly, on an otherwise open (x86) platform.

I think it is a tricky situation and, while there are a lot of passionate fans of the Mac and Apple out there, who want Pyscorp to fail, and equally a lot of PC-fans, who want Apple to fail, I think the solution is more technological then anything.

Apple can fight on the basis of innovation—by continuing to produce machines that stimulate gadget-lust (Even I want an Air after using it). And by focussing more on its “touch” platforms, which are arguably not so easy to emulate, run OSX, and could be the future of computing in more ways than one.

More immediately, Apple will likely fight on two fronts: legally, and by releasing a patch that would make future hacking more difficult, though, I’m sure, not impossible.

It can also simply ignore these machines, refusing any type of support, and hope the problem dies that way. And, with future incompatibility-patches, I’m sure it will.

All in all, I think the can of worms was opened by Apple’s move to Intel, and the question is whether it has or will not come to regret that decision, and whether anything can be done about it.

This piece was written by Vincent van Wylick, co-author on Tech IT Easy. The image is courtesy of Gizmodo

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No, this is not a list of absolutes or criteria, which you must meet to be a top-blogger. I’m not arrogant enough for that. This is a set of qualities that I consider certain top-bloggers to possess, their competitive advantage if you will, which I define as:

“a differentiated and hard-to-replicate ability that generates rewards above and beyond those of the mass-market.”

Taste: I’m not saying that everything bloggers like Kottke post is good; but he does post stuff that is tasteful. Same as Kanye West.

Fresh: The reason people visit sites like TechCrunch or Engadget is because they have access to fresh info, and people love to read stuff that has remained hidden until now.

“Social object”: I’m not sure if you remember when Digg came to be. It was right when I started blogging. All of a sudden you saw Digg-buttons pop up everywhere, which I see as the key to their success. Similarly, you see Gaping Void scribbles on nearly every business blog. To some extent, Engadget’s gadgets are the ultimate social objects, so is Gary Vaynerchuk’s wine. The point is, if you create something that spreads like wildfire, you’re golden.

Helpfulness: Even though it is a passing fad (at least for me), “life-hacking” is a big deal to geeks for some reason (theory: they all want to be superman?), and sites like 43folders, Lifehacker, and previously, Kathy Sierra, bite right into that trend. Naturally, all bloggers, unless they’re just marketing their services, are to some extent helpful.

Energy: I don’t think any blogger really fits this description; writing is, by nature, a passive and reflective art. But I do want to nominate Gary Vaynerchuk’s video-blog as one of the most energetic I’ve ever seen.

Things to remember:

• The ability to write is a pre-requisite, but not a hard one to learn, and it really helps if you enjoy it.
• Rhythm is another pre-requisite, though I think it should always be the blogger’s own rhythm that should be followed, less (s)he burns out. People will wait.
• Audience is an after-effect; I feel that many people (twitterers especially) feel that the key to success is audience (“followers”, “friends (ha!)”). Along the way they find out that they actually have to be different to get some in the long-run. It’s about loyalty, not mass.
• Authority is an after-effect; what makes a specialist? One who is both bright and experienced, and can communicate those qualities effectively. Authority comes with time.
• Ego & self-promotion is part of the game, but shouldn’t be the only part of it.
• Once again: competitive advantage is a unique quality. It doesn’t help to just emulate other bloggers. If you blog about something you enjoy + people read you because that passion shines through, that is the golden formula… in my humble opinion. Want to gain some competitive advantage? Create your own.

Feel free to share your own thoughts about basic qualities that bloggers should possess.

P.S. We’re always looking for new blood to join our team. Feel like you want to try your hand at blogging? Send us a nice mail with an example of your work.

This post was written by Vincent van Wylick, co-author on Tech IT Easy and main & only honcho @ his food ‘n’ retail blog.

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I have decided a few days ago that I won’t be blogging for much longer. Well, actually, I have ca. 150 blogposts on my blog, and I plan to bring it up to 500 (which will take about a year), and then quit pretty permanently, and maybe start writing again when I’m retired. By that time, I’d love to publish books, though who know what the industry will look like then. Or perhaps, I’ll go the Paul Graham route, and produce a super-long essay once a month or every quarter.

Anyway, a number of reasons why I don’t think blogging is for everyone (and no, none are related to health).

1. You can only say so much: I’ve blogged for roughly three years now. In the beginning, I had a lot to say about my life, philosophy, productivity, the Mac, and the media. Most of those topics are boring to me now. I’m cranky about new technology, feel like I’ve seen it all before, and don’t want to be one of the many bloggers writing about the same thing, over and over and over again. I guess it’s a lot to do with the law of diminishing returns.

2. Competitive advantage: I don’t think blogging and commerce works particularly well together. The most obvious reason is that blogging itself is pretty hard to make profitable. Another reason is that it distracts you from what your core-focus should be as a business-person: making money, be productive. And three, competitive advantage is often incompatible with making things public. It’s like playing chess and writing about the moves you make before making them. I also don’t think its particularly effective as a marketing-tool: A good picture always says more than a 1000 words; it’s still pretty niche (focussed on tech); and it’s much more valuable to be written about by a top-blogger, than it is to write about something yourself.

3. Free stuff sucks: The way most blogs are run is on an open source model. People contribute but are not held to any standard except for the one they set themselves. I try to conduct myself professionally, whatever the circumstances, but even I fail when I have to choose between surviving (paying the rent, etc.) and producing an altruistic piece like this one. There are of course indirect advantages to blogging, like contacts, etc., though is much more to do with how you conduct yourself in real life, then as a blogger.

4. The distraction of community: I think this really depends on the person, but I find it much easier to write when there’s no one looking over my shoulder. I have consciously trained myself to ignore the fear of failing in public, but I still find myself re-checking my text the next morning, for embarrassing spelling, grammar, or logic mistakes. And you have to grow an elephant-skin to write negative stuff about companies and technologies, as there will always be a fanboy nit-picking your words to the extreme. The other side is if you receive no comments. That can be hell also.

5. Blogging is not the same as writing: It’s easier. You can be quick and hide your mistakes by writing a new post the next day. People don’t read blogs the same way, they do books. They skim and a post written yesterday has much less value then one written today. So while it may be a way to improve your grammar and stuff, it’s not the same as constructing a universe, like you would in a book.

Why I like blogging

I don’t want to make this a hate-piece, so here goes.

1. It’s a way for me to formulate my thoughts: The world is getting to be ever-more complex. It really helps to write stuff down, it’s a form of therapy, and a way to formulate my goals. Of course, too much openness disrupts competitive advantage (see point 2 above).

2. It’s a great way to practice writing: This is why I originally became a blogger, to improve my grammar and learn to communicate effectively. I read tons of book about writing in the beginning and tried different styles. And I like to think that it helped, though (see point 5 above) writing a book or a thesis is still considerably more work.

3. It’s a good way to meet people: Even though I may appear negative, I’m always happy to read a comment and to have met my fellow-bloggers. If I wasn’t forced to pay the rent, I could probably spend an eternity communicating with all these interesting people all over the globe.

4. It’s a good way to learn about a topic: My own blog is my way of learning as much as possible about food & retail. By adhering to a regular schedule, reading a lot, and writing it down in my own way, it kind of feels like I’m going to school. And hopefully I’ll graduate at 500 posts.

5. Why don’t you give me your own reasons in the comments?

All in all, while the last 5 reasons show that I do love blogging, I guess it bothers me that it’s only a hobby. And I have no desire to make a job out of it either. But as always, as we wrote in our disclaimer, my/our thoughts on this blog are evolving, so no guarantees that how I feel today is the way I’ll feel tomorrow. Blogging is dead, long live blogging!

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A while ago, Apple refreshed its iPod shuffle line by adding a 2GB option and cutting the prices. At 55€ (49$) for the 1 GB model, Shuffle is quite cheap. Yes, you can still get a 1 GB USB memory stick for one tenth of that price, but it won’t play music and isn’t an iPod. For some people, the latter might actually be more important than the first.

I had been looking at the Shuffle for some time already, so as soon as the news of the 79€ 2GB model arrived, I finally decided to order one – having lived just fine without any player. I thought it would make a nice addition to my running gear. I’ve been using it for couple of weeks now and I’m quite pleased with it. One thing about the iPod shuffle is that it is really small. Surprisingly small.

There are many advantages, not only the price, why one might choose an iPod shuffle. The 5 reasons to like and to dislike it still are valid. The thing is, I don’t agree that the Shuffle can be improved in any way. Adding a screen would make it a nano, the device’s identity is that it’s limited – something many people could argue is true for most Apple’s products.

As Jeremy and others have pointed out, the iconic white Apple headphones do not suit the task many people (like me) by it for – running. For most other tasks they are good enough. Anyway, one of the major advantages of iPod shuffle – and the ultimate reason I chose it – is that you can actually use it as it is and you do not need a cover to shield any screens from scratches or to attach to it your clothing. The other good thing is that you can fully use the shuffle even without seeing the device. Other people might wonder why keep touching my chest when I use it through my jacket. The iPod shuffle is a “eyes-free” device. For me, this is what’s so insanely great about this tiny MP3 player it would otherwise would be.

This is why the other specs of shuffle are, to me, irrelevant. Anyway, in my real-world testing, the 2 GB-model holds 1,9GB of music, which for me seems to be something like 350-400 songs and 24-30 hours. (My music library has MP3s and AACs between 128 and 192 kbps, which I think is quite normal.)

While iTunes has the magical AutoFill-feature, which will fill my shuffle with music, I would love to be able to modify the parameters even further. Now, this could be easily done by using a Smart playlist, if one could do more complex search criteria. Now I’d have to do multiple Smart playlists to get the playlist I’m after. The thing is, choosing what goes into your Shuffle is really the crucial point.

One solution is to use something like Tangerine, which can actually make you a playlist for your workout automagically. Otherwise, most of the time, you’ll find yourself using your iPod with shuffle on. Tangerine calculates and uses the BPM (beats per minute) information of your songs to make up surprisingly good playlists for different kinds of workout. This is really good, because simple random playlist will play songs with wildly different tempos, which can be quite distracting when trying to foucs on a workout or when running.

Of course, iPod shuffle isn’t the only alternative. I also had the option to just buy handsfree headphones for my SonyEricsson K610i (and a real MS micro-memory card to replace the tiny 32MB one that was bundled). Price-wise, this would’ve cost me 30€ for the headphones and 20€ for a 2GB MS micro card. Add the frustration from the bad UI for music playing and the hassle of syncing music over Bluetooth (or by buying a data cable at 20€) and I’ve would’ve ended with a not-an-iPod-nano-but-almost at the price of an iPod shuffle without any of the advantages. (Naturally, for some, there’s of course the iPhone.)

Now, if TeliaSonera, my mobile operator, didn’t suck so much, I actually should have the headphones, lowering that cost. Also, most new high-end phones come with real (1-4 GB) memory cards and headphones included. Anyway, no mobile phone comes with the user experience iPod shuffle or any iPod offers.

Even though it is possible to use the Shuffle as a kind of USB memory stick to store files, this is quite limited, because you need the special headphone-to-USB-adapter. True, the other iPods need an adapter too, but you’re more likely to find one of those around than the Shuffle’s adapter. With USB memory stick prices where they are, I don’t see this as an disadvantage. The iPod Shuffle is stripped to the basics, so adding something superficial like USB port would seem really odd.

Otherwise the Shuffle’s buttons are intuitive and do what you expect, but I was at loss when first trying to re-randomize the playlist, trying frantically to do it my pressing Previous Track-button multiple times. All I remembered that some button was to be pressed three times in quick succession. In fact, it is the Play/Pause-button (which, if in playlist-mode, starts the playlist from beginning).

The reason why you might see yourself re-randomizing the playlist quite often is that with 2GB capacity, you might not rotate the files as often as you recharge. The surprise is that when the iPod shuffle syncs with iTunes, it resets your playlist position to the beginning so when you start to listen again, you find yourself listening to the same songs all-over again unless you press the Play-button thrice.

I have for a while wondered how iPod’s sales can continue to grow, even though everyone seems to own one. Then I did a reality-check that I myself haven’t had a music player since a crappy MiniDisc-player. Another point is that in my opinion, iPod shuffle isn’t a “gateway” product, I actually have no need for the more full-featured players. I don’t believe I’m alone with my simple need to have a simple music player that just does just that.

The only thing I can’t understand is why the Shuffle doesn’t have Nike+ integrated.

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This post is aimed at helping friends bootstrap projects (although they certainly don’t need me to turn everything into gold, especially these ones). I apologize for the inconvenience caused to readers coming for content, not announcements, but these are 2 AMAZING projects that definitely deserve exposure. Unfortunately, a number of readers won’t be able to be part of the game since #1 is for French companies only, and #2 is for French speakers only. There we go:

1. Sheirin Iravantchi, Aymeril Hoang & Paul Degueuse, three people who have been instrumental in the success of the study trip to Silicon Valley (full quality debriefing in French by Olivier Ezratty here)I organized back in November 2007, are organizing what they call a (French)TechTour between May 19th & May 23rd 2008. The concept is pretty clear and very appealing: a sample of 10 startups will be selected to go to Silicon Valley & meet with corporate development departments of major large corps. Here’s a list of planned meetings (note the diversity of industries considered):
   1. Google David Lawee, VP corporate development
   2. Ebay Erik Stuart, Director, Corporate Strategy
   3. Cisco Didier Moretti, VP Business Incubation, Emerging Technologies Group
   4. Microsoft Beti Cung, Director, Emerging Business Team - I met Beti before, and an hour with her is worth the return trip: super smart girl, if all meetings are planned to be of such quality then becoming a TechTour participant is what you should be desperate working on
   5. HP Damien Henault, Director, Strategy & Corporate Development
   6. AT&T Rupert C. Young, Director, Strategic Business Development
   7. Intel Capital Eghosa Omoigui, Director, Strategic Investments
   8. Symantec Hans van Rietschote, Senior Director, Office of the Chief Technology Officer

Assuming that the agenda speaks for itself, impressive uh?, my bet is that you should take a look at the following links and apply:

(French)TechTour, the blog here; details on the tour here; application file here; the launch post here. Enjoy!

2. Thomas Faivre-Duboz, a former classmate of mine & Raphaël Fétique are 2 very active entrepreneurs in Paris. They run a consultancy aimed at helping website owners with a conversion rate enhancement methodology. The name of their company? Converteo. The good news is that Converto recently launched an Error404 competition: design the most appealing Error 404 page and you’ll win a one week conversion rate optimization audit worth 4000 euros HT (1 million US dollars – just kiddin’, around 6000 USD). I believe this is a great initiative: some Error 404 pages can be such a shame that they might never make you feel like coming back on a site; on the other hand, some display a message like ‘our teams are now aware of the malfunction, thank you for helping us improve our service and sorry for the inconvenience’, a sort of message that may improve user stickiness at the end of the day. Here’s the link to the Error 404 Converteo competition.

Wanna jump on one or the other, or both competitions? Please be their guest. Feel free to keep me posted on the outcome of your applications.

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We are proud to announce you that you can be proud of your favorite high tech blog.

The rumour was spreading fast and it is now official: Tech IT Easy’s just been acquired by California-based web startup news media TechCrunch for an undisclosed amount (7 figures is all I can say)!

The trigger was double-legged: First, Om Malik announced last week that the next TV show would occur only in Summer 2008, which leaves TechCrunch enough time to bite into GigaOm’s readership by upgrading its content; second, ValleyWag is (undeservely?) taking over TechCrunch, in a rather scary way…It was time for TechCrunch to look for a prey and counter-attack. This is where Tech IT Easy joins the game. A few minutes after the deal was signed, Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, said (will be quoted tomorrow in San Diego Mercury News): “From a quality stand point, TechCrunch has always been severely outperformed by Tech IT Easy. We needed to either kill them or eat them. Lucky them, we eventually went for a French kiss rather than a French trafalgar. TechCrunch + Tech IT Easy is a very unique combination in the tech media industry, a winning combination“.

Want the full story? This is how it all happened.

Following a post by my humble self on TechCrunch France on Thursday last week (the original here in French; Google English translation here), where I was invited by Ouriel Ohayon from TechCrunch France, I got a call from Michael Arrington this last Friday saying he would be in Paris the next day to “discuss synergies”, which, in Silicon Valley-maverick code, means “gonna acquire you, bitch”. Upon this call, the Tech IT Easy scrambled (you bet!): Kari, our lead negotiator, came right away from Helsinki, Vincent drove down from Rotterdam to Paris, & Matthias from Munich. Alex, back in his London bank, couldn’t make it because of FT acquisition of CreditCrunch.com. Same for Raphael in Singapore, who insisted on taking part of meetings through our conference call system. Raj, Fidji & Remi held a first meeting on Friday afternoon with Michael: Michael asked tough questions regarding our editorial policy & guidelines, the underlying technology and whether is you it was interoperable or not (thank you Wordpress, it is), went through the résumés of us all, checked references and sources on a number of articles, etc. Price became an issue when Fidji revealed none but Leonard & Emmanuel were full time on the job. It was almost a deal breaker, and Michael said “2 people to run a blog that posts 2 posts per week is like having 1 post office in the entire New York State: a rather dumb thing to do“. Fortunately, when Michael realized our monetization potential (no job board, no Google ads, etc.) could find itself in the hands of ValleyWag, he decided on going further in the negotiation.

The next day in Paris, things went very smoothly. Ouriel had arrived early in the morning from Tel Aviv to check our red tape in the data room – severely guarded by Lucien & Cecil – and save time. Georgia, Steve and Kari handled the negotiations with Michael, who came right away with the right price & the right approach. We wish there were more people like him (to those who call him a diva: he is NOT! a tough-minded but yet human and tech-passionnate entrepreneur who respects entrepreneurs).

We are delighted to have seen this happen. Starting from tomorrow, the team will integrate TechCrunch directly and this site redirected to TechCrunch.

Thanks to all the parties that allowed for the deal to happen; especially to our lawyers who arranged all the contracts, the Deli’s downstairs for being Mike’s official provider with ham & pickle sandwiches all along, and to our readership. Without you, no such thing could’ve happened. It’s been a delight and an honour to have you as readers. Please now follow us on TechCrunch.com. We are all committed to one post per day. Stay tuned!

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Unlike other Mondays’ reputation, March 17th was a bright one in London.

…Post-reporting from the “Creative Business in the Digital Era” seminar, in 01zero-one centre in Soho.

The idea in the CBDE was to bring together people from different walks of the creative industry (music, cinema, publishing, photography…) whose common point is the zeros and the ones: digital works and concepts.

…so as to exchange on intellectual property, open rights, business models, digital marketing, creativity, its stimulation, its canalisation…

If it wasn’t for Suw Charman-Anderson and Michael Holloway from the Open Rights Group (a growing NGO community focusing on Digital Rights Issues) I would have probably stayed home and the other guys may have crossed each other on the pub. So thank you guys for setting up and animating the whole day!

The project has a wiki, at our disposal beforehand – a great thing, given the variety of the people attending.

On Monday we warmed up with a notion-shower by Suw, then got in the shoes of Radiohead and their In RainBows experiment and finally had some real entrepreneurs of the digital era sharing their vision:

A great Tom speaker and Reynolds author of “Blood, Sweat and Tea” distributed under a Creative Commons Licence.

John Buckman, multi-entrepreneur, mostly known as Magnatune CEO and as Bookmooch owner.

And finally, David Bausola and Rob Myers, the principal conceptual stormers behind the project “Where are the Joneses?”.

What are the Joneses? Based on a series-like format, it is mostly a transmedia chameleon; the product is shaped by its environment and its audience, the significance changes depending the angle you choose to look at it.

Nobody knew in advance where the joneses were, the public decided the how-what-where, sending them around Europe to find their siblings, participating themselves in the scenario, in the acting etc.

Mr and Ms Jones, if you came to France you might have recognised Laurent Godard as your sibling : he’s the father of Flateurville, a “discussional” building of a village to finally come up with a film. How? Through regular interactions with the audience, in a “salle de jeux” every Thursday evening. More to discover “sur place” if you happen to be in Paris.

The whole experience made me more aware of the fact that prediction is a quite autistic procedure in digital business, you’d better keep it away if you want things going on smoothly. Well I suppose that it had always been like this, long before I woke up, but in digital business where cycles are faster and faster, prediction seems really outdated.

So, just for the pleasure of philosophizing a bit, prediction may have been only a temporary solution for the industrial first era of business, serving to bridge the gap of the missing dialogue with the “consumer”.

John Buckman made this quite clear to me when discussing on his Magnatune and Bookmooch activities where he applies a trial-error-adaptation schema.

“listen” and “reply” in a way that makes sense, seem to form the principia of digital business for those who do it. The commercial transaction being replaced by a commercial natural language dialogue? trial and error this question as well…

Shall this be confirmed, does it mean we’re finally moving on from Industry to Internet? spring feels good…

(to be internetically correct, if someone who reads this is on the south hemisphere, enterring fall, please replace the season by the metallic mecanism as far as spring is concerned, it also feels good)

To get back to last Monday,

My personal favourite gadget presented that day is CCMixter, a pool-tool of music creativity on a “molecular” level : you can post and find samples, remixes,  a capellas and build on them since they are licensed under creative commons. Quite solid concept, as it connects the two extremities of the 2.0 value chain: the artist with the user. Plus it teased some of my memory parts referring to other music tools, like C-sound. I wonder what applies in the case of music-code copyrights…

Cheese.

Accuse me of writting cheese, “come on Georgia, stop name dropping and all”

Nope nope, cheesy or not, the sensation of this seminar was like a cute baby incarnating the taste for openness, the playfulness of creativity and the cosiness of legally-correct digital business.

loved it.

Cheers.

Georgia

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