Ludovic Copéré

Google News in Japan(ese)

During a casual checking at Google's newspage, I noticed that they finally opened a Japanese version of their automated newscrawling engine. They also have started a Korean version, but I'm not really versed into the joys of Hangûl writing, so I will just say 凄いだよ！

Slides of the EuroScience Forum

As promised, the slides presented at the session on Innovation and creativity in Europe are available on Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship's webpage.

I really enjoyed the presentations as well as the panel afterwards, as it clearly stressed on the needs for local initiatives (Science Parks, better synergies between leading universities and the regional business ecosystem) that in turn are included in European-level policies and initiatives for gaining a true innovation and creativity leadership. It however remains to be seen how it is possible to carry along the two (conflicting?) paths of creating "centers of excellence" scattered all over Europe and ensuring that all the member-states have reached a threshold level of scientific and technical outreach.

Going to the EuroScience Open Forum

From Wednesday 25th to Saturday 28th Stockholm will host the EuroScience Open Forum 2004, an european-level open conference on the current status, challenges and promises of science, technology and their impact on society. Organized by the EuroScience association, the gathering should be a good occasion to get an up-to-date view on the trends, policies and debates going on in Europe.

The programme is dense, to say the least, and as the page describes it as a smörgåsbord (Swedish self-serving buffet), it indeeds combines plenary lectures, seminars, open debates as well as exhibitions and events all around the city, thus trying to make it closer to a celebration of science than just yet-another dry succession of panels. As for me, I am most interested by the sessions on emerging fields and the ones on the policy issues in Europe (such as Innovation and creativity in Europe, organized by the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship). The most difficult decision will be to choose among all the simultaneously scheduled events...

See you at Norra Latin and Folkets Hus!

Cow Wanted

As seen on Dagens Nyheter, one of the fiberglass cows of the CowParade was stolen yesterday. It is of course an extremely stupid act, albeit one can wonder how it did get unnoticed, considering it was in the inner city-center, and in front of a museum.

In other news, Sweden is going to reach the 9 Million inhabitants today, at 15:03 and 37 seconds, again according to DN. Appreciate the sheer precision of the time, and hope that the missing cow will not alter it...

PSP in motion

The Yomiuri Shimbun has a video of Sony's next gaming machine, the PSP (Playstation Portable). For its first foray in the mobile gaming segment, it looks pretty good (and having Gran Turismo 4 on the palm of you hand sounds rather tempting).

Mobile Style

Just back from the Mobile Style seminar at Tekniska Museet. As the full program suggests, it was about the similarities and differences of the mobile environments, technical and business-wise, in Sweden and Japan. More than yet-another comparison between i-mode/FOMA (Japanese 2.5G and 3G) and GPRS/UMTS (Europe's 2.5G and 3G), it was refreshing to look at the how the services have overcome the inherent limitations of the devices and the network(s) they're on. As noted by Johan Hjelm, being able to design, package, brand and sell services despite the limited bandwidth, the small screen, the awkward input methods and the relatively expensive usage accounts for a lot for the success and failure in the mobile world.

In other words, i-mode succeeded where WAP miserably failed because it didn't try to bring the whole Internet on your phone from the start. It much more humhbly started by providing no-nonsense access to specific and sanctionned information. Being able to download ringtones and get trains timetables may sound a bit simplistic by today's standards, but NTT DoCoMo (a spin-off of the former state-owned telco and the initiator of mobile web services through i-mode) did this brillantly, by carefully juggling with tight control and openness (standard technical protocols, three-tier revenue sharing, as explained in further details in my report on i-mode). Which accustomed mobile subscribers to become active users of mobile services, and in turn naturally paved the way for riskier and more advanced services (Java applications, location-based services, and the brand new contactless IC card FeliCa, to name but a few).

As Giles Richter from Mobile Content Forum pointed out, the uniqueness of the Japanese mobile "ecosystem" is that that it has evolved from inexistance to full acceptance and diffusion in an extremely short period of time. It has thus set the ground for hardware manufacturers, operators and service providers to smoothly make the transition to 3G, as opposed to most parts of Europe, where it remains uncoordinated, expensive, and limited, if not completely hypothetical.

東京 comes to Stockholm

Starting tomorrow, and until the 10th, the Venice of the North (i.e.Stockholm) will actually be pointing at the (far) east as it is holding Tokyo Style. Judging by the program, there is going to be a multitude of interesting events and exhibitions all over the city, ranging from the classical Tea Ceremony (茶の湯), flower arrangements (生花) and Noh (能狂言) theatre to music (both classical - Toru Takemitsu for instance, and pop' with several performances of invited Japanese bands and DJ's), cinema (finally the Swedes will be given the chance to enjoy Zatoichi and Battle Royale 2!) and seminars, while not forgetting the obligatory Anime festival (managed by blogging comrade Kim).

All in all, a very promising program, and an ambitious project. Depicted as a celebration of Japanese contemporary culture and urban lifestyle (taken from TSiS brochure), it sure is an innovative way of showing foreign culture by making it alive, upbeat, interactive and multiform. I look forward to attending as many of the events I can cram in my schedule, and to blogging about them.

Back in Stockholm

Holidays are over, I'm back in beautiful-but-rainy Stockholm. During this month of August, I'll be mainly busy with a Swedish course at KTH, the last one required for me to get my shiny diplomas from KTH and Centrale. That's why I'm heading back to mina svenska läxor!