Policing The Internet ?

On November 7th, a Finnish student killed 6 schoolmates and the principal at Jokela high school in Tuusula, Southern Finland. These events happened after the murdered declared death threats in a video he posted on YouTube. In these videos, the young man was calling for revolution (he did, too, while shooting people in the school) while testing firing a semiautomatic handgun.

It’s not the first time teen killers post videos anticipating their acts on the Internet. It seems it became a kind of fashionable way of making yourself noticed out of a boring life in a placid city.

In this context, Marie, Fernando, Freddy, Rémi and myself decided to have a little video debate where we discuss the possibility for the police to prevent such crimes which are announced on the Internet.

MONEY MONEY MONEY !

The internet has been the scene of some spectacular success stories where young creators of sites or services have made huge fortunes.

There are two famous examples :

• YouTube : Was created in mid February 2005 by three former PayPal employees. YouTube displays a wide variety of video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos. In October 2006, Google announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion in Google stock. Thanks to this deal, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim are outrageously rich and they are less than 30.

• Facebook : Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard class of 2006. He is only 23 ! As of November 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 50 million active members worldwide and expects to pass 60 million users by the end of the year (also from non-collegiate networks). On October 24, 2007, the Associated Press reported Microsoft had bought a 1.6% share of the company for $240 million which values the site at around $15 billion…

 

Good Google or Bad Google ?

Google has almost 16 000 full-time employees which makes it the largest American company.
Co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, nowadays Google is worth $23 billions !
Besides, through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, among others.
What does it mean ? It just means that Google is everywhere raising an important issue : Is Google good or bad ?

The first instinct is to simply answer that Google is good. If you want to be convinced just look at Google’s corporate philosophy. Indeed, it includes statements such as “Don’t be evil”, “You can make money without doing evil” and “Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun”, illustrating a somewhat relaxed corporate culture.
In 2004, Google formed a non-profit philanthropic wing, Google.org, giving it a starting fund of $1 billion. The express mission of the organization is to help with the issues of climate change, global public health, and global poverty. Among its first projects is to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 mpg.
Relaxed and positive corporate culture that’s all.
Is that really all ?

I’m not saying that Google is clearly evil. Let’s avoid to be manichean. But I think that we cannot either say that Google is good or bad. It’s clearly more complicated.
The main issue of that kind of corporation is the incredible power they have. And in the case of Google this power is not only in one sphere but in all kind of spheres. Google buy companies related to very different areas so that they can be influent everywhere.
But we can wonder if this behavior could not be dangerous in the future. Even if Google’s will is to be fair and good we cannot neglect the fact that power, at the end, corrupts.
Isn’t Google pretentious claiming that they will be good no matter what ?

Let’s not be pessimistic but realistic. Google is not that perfect and good and as it has grown, Google has found itself the focus of several controversies related to its business practices and services. For example, Google Book Search’s effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable has led to copyright disputes with the Authors Guild. Another trademark concern is about Google’s Gmail in the UK and several other countries. Now, in those parts of the world, it is known as Google Mail. Google’s cooperation with the governments of China, and to a lesser extent France and Germany (regarding Holocaust denial) to filter search results in accordance to regional laws and regulations has led to claims of censorship. Google’s persistent cookie and other information collection practices have led to concerns over user privacy.

So. Good Google or bad google ?

Let’s just say that like every single company Google is lead by commercial interests and to remain the best you may have to make concessions…

Email rules !

E-mail is omnipresent in business and personal communications. But there are a number of pitfalls and ways to miscommunicate with e-mail.
Communicate by email is not that easy because we must respect what is called the netiquette that is all the rules relative to the net.
So let’s present what are the rules to respect and the things that must be avoided.

SPAMMING AND COMUTER VIRUSES

The usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by three phenomena: spamming, phishing and e-mail worms.
Spamming is unsolicited commercial e-mail. Because of the very low cost of sending e-mail, spammers can send hundreds of millions of e-mail messages each day over an inexpensive Internet connection.

E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers.

The combination of spam and worm programs results in users receiving a constant drizzle of junk e-mail, which reduces the usefulness of e-mail as a practical tool.

PRIVACY CONCERNS

E-mail privacy, without some security precautions, can be compromised because :

• e-mail messages are generally not encrypted.
• e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages.
• many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of your e-mail messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain up to several months on their server, even if you delete them in your mailbox.
• the Received: headers and other information in the e-mail can often identify the sender, preventing anonymous communication.

So email provides its number of difficulties but generally speaking these problems are spamming and protection of privacy. Not respecting the netiquette often implies a bad and uneffective communication.
Consequently everybody must be respectful and careful.

SMS another future ?

 

To me SMS could be used in a more intelligent way in the future. Indeed, it could be used to suscribe to specific topics and to receive information about it. For example we could imagine to be affiliated to the Louvre Museum and to receive an SMS each time a new exhibition is launched.

Moreover with the bank, we could have a specific arrangement to receive an SMS each time we are debtor or in credit.

Or if we are fond of stock exchange, we could imagine a suscribtion to any kind of information related to our stock option.

To sum up, there are incredible and differentways to use SMS. Nowadays the way SMS is used is very limited so let’s hope this will change in the future.

We are smarter than me ?

We Are Smarter Than Me is a collaborative-writing project using wiki software, whose initial goal is producing a document about decision making processes that use large numbers of people, to be published as a printed book, late in 2007, by the publishing conglomerate Pearson Education. Along with Pearson, the project’s four core sponsors include research institutes of MIT and the Wharton School.

In a true collaborative environment, each contributor has an almost equal ability to add, edit, and remove text. The writing process becomes a recursive task, where each change prompts others to make more changes. It is easier to do if the group has a specific end goal in mind, and harder if a goal is absent or vague.

A very good method of discussion and communication is essential, especially if disagreements arise.

Successful collaboration occurs when each participate [or stakeholder] is able to make a unique contribution toward achieving a common vision or goal statement. Supporting this common goal are objectives that have been generated by each of the participants. It is important for each participant to “feel” as though he or she has a significant contribution to make to the achievement of goals. It is also important that each participant be held accountable for contributing to the writing project.

At the end the main idea is to work as a team instead of working alone.

Facebook and Microsoft : a new love story ?

No need to describe facebook because everybody more or less knows how it works.
What we are going to talk about is the fact that Microsoft recently bought a tiny share of facebook for $240 millions dollars.
The question that may be raised is why this kind of website is so valuable ?

Well, the fact is that like on MySpace or in YouTube what is valuable is the community that kind of websites represent. Millions and millions of people of any age use facebook, THE social community network.
Each day there is 250 000 new inscriptions on facebook so that’s not that difficult to understand why microsoft want to be a part of it…

Trust issue through Prosper.com

Prosper is an online auction website where people can buy loans and request to borrow money. Borrowers set the maximum rate they wish to pay, and loan buyers set the minimum rate they wish to receive. Prosper matches borrowers with loan buyers, verifies borrowers’ identity and personal data before funding loans, and manages loan repayment. These unsecured loans are fully amortized over three years, with no pre-payment penalty. Prosper generates revenue by collecting a one-time fee on funded loans from borrowers, and assessing an annual loan servicing fee to loan buyers. The idea for the service is derived from group banking concepts, such as rotating savings and credit associations. Other motivating ideas derive from the concept of microlending.

This kind of website is really based on trust but not only as the identity of each user of the website is very well checked to avoid any problem.
Like on the famous online auction website ebay the success is based on the fact that the users are honnest. I am not sure that this kind of website will continue in the future but I think it is very likely to happen.

Google Docs and Rsizr

Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Google Docs combines the features of two services, Writely and Spreadsheets, which were merged into a single product on October 10, 2006. A third product for presentations, including technology designed by Tonic Systems, was released on September 17, 2007.

Look at the video to see the google docs tutorial.

That makes think about all that new amazing applications such as rsizr

To me, this is the kind of application that could be a revolution. This web app uses a retargeting algorithm to remove the least interesting information from images first, so you can resize them without making objects seem out of proportion.
But no need to make any more description, just look at this short video.

How to make a Killer App’ ?

You wanna know the recipy of a killer app ? Just read this article and you may become the next killer app designer…

First of all, let’s define what is a killer app :
A killer app (app for application) is basically, and generally speaking, referring to any computer program that is so useful and successful that it increases the core value and the sales value of some larger technology. Most of the time we are talking about a gaming console, software, operating system, or a piece of computer hardware.
There are several well known examples such as the FPS Halo with the Xbox or the iPod.

Now, what are the principles of a killer app design ?

Reshaping The Landscape :

• Outsource to the customer.
• Cannibalize your markets.
• Treat each customer as a market segment of one.
• Create communities of values.

Building New Connections :

• Replace rude interfaces with learning ones.
• Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself.
• Give away as much information as you can.
• Structure every transaction as a joint venture.

Redefining The Interior :

• Treat your assets as liabilities.
• Destroy your value chain.
• Manage innovation as a portofolio of options.
• Hire the children.

Follow all these rules and you may will achieve the next new killer app!

Talking about the next killer app, some believe that the iPhone is the next major killer app. Others think that the iPhone will be a failure.

What do you think ?