Ludovic Copéré

iPod U2, iPod Photo, iPod Europe

Plenty of fresh updates from Apple today:
- A special-edition 20GB iPod featuring U2 colors, signatures and preloaded tracks.
- iPod Photo, a 60GB iPod with color and photo slideshow capabilities.
- Pan-european iTunes Music Store, now in 9 new Euro-member countries.

One step closer indeed for Apple as a digital media company, while renewing its fashionable and designer appeal with the iPod. Let's just hope that with the photo feature, they have managed to keep the user experience simple and streamlined - as I think that it is what distantiate Apple's player from the rest of the crowd: a superb yet straightforward interface and overall integration between the mobile "on-the-go" and the desktop worlds. Once again, the gap between geeky features and real and palpable customer benefits, which Apple seems to understand pretty well so far.

Going to the Search Engine Strategy 2004 Conference

Tomorrow I'll be heading to the Search Engine Strategy 2004 Conference & Expo, organized here in Stockholm by Jupiter Media (thanks Henrik for the tip!). It will be interesting to get acquainted with the latest and hottest in the search field, hopefully streamlined from the hype far too often present in media articles (yes, I did read that Google's capitalization just reached $50 billion, effectively topping up Yahoo!'s mere $48 billion).

For those interested in coming to the conference, free passes to the exhibition are available.

The Desktop: a future stronghold for Google?

Hype has grown quickly in the blogosphere and elsewhere around Google's latest service, freshly out of its R&D labs: Google Desktop Search. Whether a brilliant idea, an attractively packaged marketing ploy or a blatant privacy infringement and security breach, only time will tell. But as the Washington Post reports today, "[Google] has acquired a different role: Microsoft's No. 1 foreign aid donor".

That may seems quite a bit far-fetched, but Google is actually just pushing long-wanted features (or even better, benefits) that are missing from Microsoft's Operating System (OS). Look back in 2000, when the company launched its Google Toolbar, which above everything else provided pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer users, something Microsoft would eventually integrate in its OS nearly 4 years afterwards (in Windows XP SP2).

Here with desktop searching, history repeats: Microsoft's much-anticipated search engine is to be included in Longhorn (Windows XP successor) in ... 2006. No wonder why Microsoft is bound to appreciate Google's tool, which (from what I have been able to test so far) seems to stand up against Apple's own Spotlight search engine, to come out in Tiger, Apple's next version of Mac OS X to be released in H1 2005.

While the jump from web search to desktop search may look like a large one at first sight, Google's continuous expansion of its searching offer - from Web pages to newsgroups, images, news, products and e-mails, has unified the searching "experience" to its users. Cloning this experience and easiness of use to individual machine is therefore a very logical step forward.

Who said search was a solved problem?

World class cluster at KTH

As reported on KTH's website (sorry, only in Swedish), the Center for Parallel Computers (PDC - Parallel Data Center), already known for its already quite powerful previous clusters and its VR-Cube (a cube-shaped virtual reality environment for simulation, visualization... oh and playing Doom after work :-D), is going to equip itself with a cluster which will take the 24th place of the TOP500 - i.e. the top 500 fastest computer on earth (as the list is updated twice yearly, it does not appear on the June 2004 update - but soon!).

The cluster will be built by Dell, and will boast a processing power of 6 Teraflops, thereby becoming the largest computer installation in Sweden - 4th time faster than the HP2CN at Umeå University. Built around 444 computers, it will cost 13MSEK (~1.4M€) and start operation in early 2005.

Oh, and of course the cluster will be connected to KTHNOC, the central Point of Presence of SUNET (Swedish academic network) and NORDUnet (Nordic Academic Network), and a part of GÉANT, the pan-European academic and research network. Which itself means a widely available resource for international advanced research.

Heja KTH!

Ericsson, Entrepreneurship, KTH

Ericsson is running an article in Mobility World about Charon, a great project run by several of my fellow teammates at Excitera, the Entrepreneurship Association at KTH. It is "an application competition [...], in which students develop applications running on Ericsson's Network Resource Gateway (NRG)".

Being entrepreneurial is certainly not the first and foremost thing one is taught at University. However, when one looks at the figures from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the top entrepreneurial countries often tend to be the most dynamic flexible ones: countries like Korea, Thailand, India (and of course the USA) all benefit from having a total entrepreneurial activity 2.5 to 3.5 times higher than that of Sweden (and it is even worse in France). That is why I deeply believe in outreaching initiatives like Excitera to bring together the academia with the Industrial reality and above all inspire thinking outside the box from one's undergraduate days onward.

Välkommen till verkligheten.

Skype eyes Video over IP

As I read on Vnunet, Skype is looking "to expand its range of free and low-cost voice over internet services with the launch of a video calling offering in the new year". Once again, perfect (and not so coincidental?) timing following Microsoft's announcement yesterday.

Of course it is PR, but the article has a point in underlining that Skype's way of going with an in-house, proprietary protocol (instead of adopting the standardized Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)) was motivated not only because of SIP's technical hurdles (which were actually substantial when Skype started in 2003 - and are still there to some extent) but also a consequence of the low consumer-demand for it. If Skype chooses to become more involved in providing B2B digital telephony, it will certainly have to find a solution to leverage on legacy and other incompatible infrastructure in the corporate world, but this (much-debated) decision of not adopting the de facto technology nevertheless stresses on the importance of consumer-focused and user-driven innovation in the ICT world.

Sushi, USB-flavored

Straight from Japan (honestly, where else could one expect that to come from?), SolidAlliance, a hardware manufacturer already renowned (ahem) for its funky-colored duck USB keys , is proudly presenting its latest product line, the SushiDisk. Too bad they don't have the shrimp (蝦寿司) version, It would have looked even cooler!

Microsoft to integrate e-mail, IM, VoIP and Video

As reported by Yahoo News, Microsoft will be "launching a desktop application that aims to seamlessly integrate e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing, traditional phone service and Internet-based calling", during the first half of 2005. One could say it was merely a matter before Microsoft reacted to the more and more noticed Skype on the Voice over IP (VoIP) side, Jabber open-source protocol in the Instant Messaging (IM) side and even GMail for perhaps starting to commoditize e-mail. Such announcement also arrives quite ironically in the midst of heavy speculation over possible a possible Google e-mail clients (following the internal scrutiny of their recently released Google Desktop Search that supposedly reveals that it includes hooks to a mysterious google_im:// protocol).

Integrating collaborative tools is a great idea, especially as Microsoft already has a userbase through MSN Messenger and Hotmail. Even better is the announced interoperability with other proprietary IM protocols, such as AOL and Yahoo!, as users would be able "to communicate with others regardless of which brand of instant messaging either party is using". Sounds interesting, and Microsoft always manages to surprise us (in bad and good ways). Definitely a thing to follow...

Trying out Rojo

As I am lucky enough to have been invited to Rojo (thanks to Le Danois - let's call it Scandinavian kindredness :-) ). It has been almost a fortnight trying it out, and I must say it's quite nice: as a content aggregator and RSS feed tracker, I think it does a better job in terms of interface than the other aggregators I have tried, such as the ones integrated into Outlook (NewsGator for instance).

I have actually begun realizing that while having the feeds directly coming in Outlook is nice (in that it centralizes mails, news, contacts, calendars in one single place), having a web interface (and why not, a drag 'n' drop feature à la Furl) is of course more flexible in the long run. Now, I would like to find an hybrid client / site that could combine both aspects (an analogy to what Plaxo is doing for synchronizing contacts): a new alternative concept for aggregating content on both heavy and light clients?

Investing in Japan?

On Thursday, I listened to representatives from the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) - more precisely from JETRO Stockholm . It was interesting to hear an insider point of view, as what I had been reading was very pessimistic and harsh on Japan's ability to fully open up the way it should today, in terms of foreign direct investments (FDI), or should I rather say, inward investments, as reaching outward is perhaps what Japan has been most successful with in the past 50 years.

And indeed, present reality can seem quite grim in some aspects: as of 2003, the outward/inward FDI ratio was 3.74:1 in Japan. And most of it comes from larger corporations, like the success story of L'Oréal. The most impressive move still remains Renault's rescue mission to put back Nissan on shape. As noted by BBC News this week, "[as] a result, it is now Japan's most profitable car company, posting a $7.29bn profit in year end of March 2004", in a striking difference to the Mitsubishi - DaimlerChrysler fiasco.

Nevertheless, while heavy industry and manufacturing are still thriving as one of Japan's symbol of technological and industrial prowess, it also stigmatizes the one critical issue that has been preventing the country from a quicker return from the bubble-burst of the 90's: the poorly rewarded and supported smaller businesses and service sectors. Seeing Japan at the bottom of the entrepreneurial ranking in the 2003 study of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is not a surprise at all in this context (I could also add that seeing France as the lame duck in the ranking is not surprising either).

However Japan does not remain idle in front of such situation: Prime Minister Koizumi launched the Invest Japan program in 2001, with the ambitious goal of doubling the 2001 figure of inward investment (6,632 billion Yen) by 2006. To accomplish that, a special focus has been put on complementing Japan's natural business assets (technological powerhouse, large consumer base) with new regional cluster policies, for instance in Sendai, Fukuoka and Kobe, following the Triple Helix concept of combining higher education, research-oriented industries and public agencies to reach for a better dynamics.

In parallel, Japan has begun to understand its skills in soft innovations: anime, video games, mobile services and digital culture are very big in Japan, and the country excels at exporting them. It goes far beyond the anecdotic niche, and Japan is setting itself as the "land of the cool". As Joi Ito notes, "the export of trendy culture like anime is strong and that Japanese biggest asset is it's 'cool'".

Another interesting fact mentioned by JETRO is that Japan sees "business" investments closely related with "tourist" ones: in parallel to the Invest Japan program, the government has launched a Visit Japan campaign, with the goal of doubling annual inbound tourists from 5 million in 2003 to 10 million in 2010.

Great time at China Day

Yesterday evening I was out for the China Day, the final event of the year-long Project China 2004, an cooperation between fellow students from the Royal Institute of Technology (go KTH!) and the Stockholm School of Economics. Its objective is to raise the mutual awareness between Sweden and China, so as to contribute to drive up the economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries. In cooperation with many large Swedish companies (AstraZeneca, Electrolux, SKF...), the project hold a "Sweden Day" in April at Fudan University in Shanghai (one of the top Chinese University, along with Tsinghua and Jiao Tong) to promote Swedish companies among top Chinese students and encourage them to get into an international professional track.

Moreover, the three weeks spent in eastern China were an opportunity to conduct field studies through interviews of the general climate and trends in China, concerning the business opportunities, challenges and overall opening of the Asian giant to western exchanges. The resulting analysis has been compiled in a printed book and outlined yesterday: a major aspect is that, in many aspects, China is quickly growing beyond being merely the "cheap factory of the world" or an emerging but still distant "threat". Quite the opposite, and as already underlined by Loic at the World Economic Forum Weblog, "we do not realize the impact of China's growth and we are totally unprepared because of the speed at which the change happens", both in terms of end-consumer demands, needs and purchasing power (Shanghai is nicknamed the New-York of China not only for its striking skyline, but also for its new young generation that is a real driver for the local and national economy) as well as B2B exchanges.

One of the cornerstone of this new development phase is the deep changes in the educational systems and values promoted in front of what will eventually be the country's leaders of tomorrow: one cannot see Chinese studying abroad as a mere "brain-drain" from the Occident, but as a manifestation of the increased dialogue and cooperation in science, technology and business: and as noted by Ambassador Lu Feng Ding, such knowledge transfer contributes to more balanced and extensive bilateral relations.

While this does not smooth down all the challenges, it nevertheless opens up our eyes to look at a New China, with highly-educated and entrepreneurial graduates willing to take on driving the transforming Dragon. That is why, as much as China is striving to change and progress, we, as comfy Europeans, have to get prepared for China's growth, "a tougher event than anything we faced since World War Two" (Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management)!

QR code generator

A quick follow-up to my previous post: I've stumbled onto a nifty webpage that generates QR codes. Who will be the first to decode the picture on top of this post? ;-)

Parking, 3G style

As reported by Akihabara News, Japan is once again on top of the technological curve and ICT diffusion in everyday's life. Honestly, what could be more commonplace and anecdotic than the immutable ritual of parking you car? That is, opening the window, taking a piece of printed cardboard you're likely to lose in your pockets; and then, after queuing for paying (if the machine is not down), rushing again to your car before the "exit" timer has expired....

Well this painstaking reality could soon become a thing of the past, thanks to FeliCa, a technology originally developed by Sony. Basically, it is a contactless chip, that holds more information than on the credit cards' chips, with the added advantage of being contactless, as the names implies: just swipe it in front of a wireless reader and that's it (similar to RFID tags).

Now, the neat thing that those chips are integrated into NTT DoCoMo's latest third generation (FOMA) phones - such as the brand new F900iC. It didn't take long for Park24, a large parking company in Japan, to take benefit of that and launch a FeliCa-powered parking area next to the NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Tower (how appropriate!) in Shibuya, starting October 1st.

In a nutshell, when entering the parking lot, you swipe your 3G phone at the entrance beacon (cf. picture at the top), that way you can pay for the exact time you have been parked. But wait, that's not all! You also get a printed 2D barcode on you receipt.. Those little pixelated squares are (of course) understood by your camera-phone, and upon taking a picture of it, you are redirected to a surveillance camera pointing at the direction of your parked car.
Well, considering the average crime rate in Japan, I don't know if it's really worth the technological paraphernalia, but it's at least a very convincing showcasing of Japan's mastery in mobile, user-pushed and market-driven services.

I now remember how I did find Mint's parking payment in Sweden through SMS already way ahead of its time (compared to lagging France, that is). Different cultures, different adoption curves...

No more DRM in Tokyo

... well almost: Avex, one of the biggest record labels in Japan (producing among other things Ayumi Hamasaki - the local Britney Spears, and hundreds of Eurobeat CDs - isn't it, Eiji ;-)) will drop producing DRM-protected CDs starting September 22th. It may not sound important, but Avex had been one of the first adopter of this practice back in 2002; while I don't have nothing at all against DRM per se (Apple's Playfair and Real's Helix systems works well), I remember buying such CDs while in Japan and their protection scheme was really annoying, with a very crappy embeded software player, on top of not being that effective at all.

And as a follow-up, Avex has joined with Sony Music Japan and other Japanese labels in the digital music store Mora, a somewhat good piece of news tainted by the fact that the store uses an ATRAC3 codec (which is not that surprising, given the popularity of MiniDiscs in Japan). Still a couple of interoperability lessons for them to learn...

Via Slashdot Japan