Ludovic Copéré

Bloggforum: knowledge, fun and mobility in the blogosphere

Well, as you might have noticed from my lack of real-time posting, there was no wireless at the Bloggforum (at least, none that I could actually use). Nevertheless it was extremely interesting to listen to the three panels, which approached blogs (eller kanske skulle jag skriva "bloggar" istället) through different angles. I especially liked the discussion on how to recognize "true" and "false" information in the blogosphere:  as Stephanie  pointed out, an underlying parameter of blogs are their use as social aggregators.

"It's hard to lie, but it's harder not to be spot" in the virtual world: tools like permalinks and trackbacks make (most) blogs networked instead of being single, stand-alone entities. When thinking on whether blogs can (and should) be considered on the same level as "respected" traditional medias, one can draw the parallel to the attention Wikipedia has received: can it replace established encyclopedias? Can it actually achieve the ambitious goal of gathering and offering neutral and objective knowledge? I think such questions take the issue at the wrong end, and instead we should see those emergent tools as a great opportunity to sharpen our critical reading.

I should not forget critical writing: blogging isn't just about displaying and forwarding pre-digested knowledge; it's first and foremost an open door to produce knowledge: the first signs of the convergence of complementary publication tools - think Flickr, podcasting and Chatango, can help achieving greater synchronization and information sharing, both on a private level and in a professional context, as to bring a new fresh perspective to Knowledge Management. What's really missing however is the real-time and "on the move" capability, which is precisely why the mobile sector is such an exciting environment to be in (I already mentioned Smart Mobs before, but I can't stress enough how deep and inspiring both the book and the weblog are in this domain).

More than just "moblog" (i.e. pictures or short texts) , it is the promise of pervasive "mobile-blogging" that can actually better connect people and information, both in the physical and digital worlds. Sounds far-fetched? Well it is still as of today, but it's up to us to make it real...

Thanks again Erik and Stefan for organizing the event, and to all the inspiring and enthusiast people I met and talked to at Tranan!

Going to Bloggforum Stockholm

A quick post before I head to the Bloggforum Stockholm 2004 in a few minutes. With 15 panelists and surely a large blogging audience, it sounds interesting.

Now, as it seems there will be Wi-Fi at the Forum, I may try live blogging there :-)

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?

The TypePad effect

The bigs news of the day in the blogosphere (at least the French part of it): Neuf Telecom, a fast-rising French ISP, is partnering with Six Apart to offer neufblog to its dial-up and broadband customers. Just like previously in Japan with NTT and Nifty, it is an integrated blogging service powered by the TypePad platform.

However, not only Neuf will offer a free blogging service (similar in its scope to what Blogger and U-Blog already offer, and maybe tempting for the few complaining users of the later who want TypePad for free ;-) ), but it will also relay the 3 paying Basic/Plus/Pro subscription plans (look at the feature matrix for details). Another difference with its Asian counterparts is that the blogs and subscription/administration interface seem to be hosted directly on TypePad's servers, just like generic TypePad blogs.

At any rate, big congrats to Loïc and JM (now we all know what you have been busy with after 09:09), and looking forward to seing similar initiatives popping up all-over Europe!

And there was much rejoicing

So, after half-tinkering with MovableType and Blogger, here is my very own variation on the "first post tradition" to celebrate my coming to TypePad (which does look and feel very polished indeed). Expect more glist and (hopefully) interesting content in the not-so-remote future. In the meantime, I am all the way down toying with stylesheets, Technorati, syndication and the likes.