Oct 28

It is now possible to point to a specific time in a youtube video : it’s called deep linking. It’s great news, I’ve been using viddler for that reason because it enable anyone to split a video and let people see only the part they are interested in. 

To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m45s” 

Here is an example with one my my video. I’ve put the deeplink on 0m56 so it end up on one of my favuorite photo. Great news

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Oct 08

Here is a quote from an article written by Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times:

[the crisis] is confirming the worst fears of Gen-Y, namely that our baby boomer parents are leaving us a world convulsed by war, drowning in debt and melting down under global warming”.

Heroes” gives its fans cathartic validation: You inherited a screwed-up world, and it’s not your fault.

This idea was well formulated back in 2006 in a french book called “Nos enfants nous hairons” (Our child will hate us). It has since found a lot of proof of concept.

The main phrase of heroes is : “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”

So one quick question in the middle of the meltdown :

Is capitalism Gen Y cheerleader ??

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Sep 23

I’ve spent three days in london last week for the seedcamp event. It was brilliant. I’ve learned a lot listening to founders and tech guys from the best european startups (last.fm netlog, dopplr, skype…). I would have loved to make a proper and deep feedback of all the meetings I had (but the coming launch of our new product is taking all my time).

So here is the video with the winners:

Seedcamp Day 5 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Here is a few phrases and advices I’ve loved :

  • Make stuff beautifull (better than function that people won’t use) Dopplr
  • Don’t do biz dev build an API
  • The API is a metric
  • Adopt the names people give to your functions
  • Get satisfaction (every one agree on this new service and even more on what they are aiming at)
  • What kind of behaviours do you want to have on your website
  • And…. some very good advice on scaling

All my pictures from the seedcamp are here (feel free to add names in the comment if you know them).

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Sep 05

Lots of talks about why chrome: I see one and only. They’ve build chrome to have a browser that can handle browsing the grid… that’s all.

To get it watch again EPIC 2015 just below :

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Aug 29

I love CC. Their making the content remixable. So here is a great video called Building on the past explaining Creative Commons.

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Aug 01

Michael Wesch is famous for a few very well done video including :

I’ve watched them several time (like I did with EPIC or Shift Happens), they are a source of creativity and of resilience. Working on this ideas for more than 4 years … they always give me a boost of energy when I am down. They are the future and I am very happy with the new release of Wesch : An anthropological introduction to youtube.

Participant Observation is what i have been doing for teh last 4 years. I am not commenting the web from outside, I am a member of the invisible crowd that when populating these websites (mine including). Working mainly on what identity means… with the idea that we are a puzzle, that we are on the verge of a netocratic era, that we are a construct more than ever (less social/peer pressure) free to endorse any subculture we want, test it and adopt it or not. Social Networks when mix with content (what we call Social Objects) are a possible path for expression, true identity … and re-echanting that post-modern world the GenY refuses

I do love travelling with couchsurfing (every month), sharing and improving my photographic skills with flickr, finding book on the street …. connecting in many various ways using various plateform for the sole purpose of solving this inversion culture Wesh is talking about :

Please watch his video it’s pure genius, he talks about context collapse, Identity crisis, Editing our own stories (I would say life : the title of this blog is “I edit therefore I am“) and it’s full of very very good example of what youtube could be (discovered a few new ones).

The only thing missing is probably a list of all the links towards all the video he is quoting.

Excellent work, nitro boost for all month of august… will probably watch it at least 3 times just for the purpose of recognition ;-D

Thanks to nic for pointing it to me even my youtube subscription did it (yet another example of that social broadcasting)

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Jul 10

It’s been on my desktop for quite a few days, It’s a very deep and strong analysis of the new media landscape by Umair Haque, around 100 slides (available here). Lots of supply and demands curves, which enable to decrypt the value chain and how it’s moving. You are strongly invited to read it.

Here are my 4 favorites slides. First two on Aggregators and the second two on the value chain and the era of the snowball (very clever insertion into the long tail). Click on them to have a larger view.

At the end there is an advice that I personnaly really enjoy : “Get involved with at least one form of underground media to understand the snowball effect.” Subculture is the culture

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Jul 02

Universal edit buttonJust discovered a great initiative.

A standard button to indicate that the page is editable !

You can learn more on the wiki page Universaleditbutton.org

It will appear on the top right of the urlbar in firefox.

Love it… great for editable web. Probably on U.[lik] soon.

written by leafar

Jun 20

Cc_lessigThe title of this blog is edit therefore I am. My intent is to observe the editable web but also to think about one larger topic : Virtual Identity and self-(re)presentation. Editing is fictional when it comes to editing representations of me.

To a man with a Twitter account, every action is a pretext.

What are you doing? is the question Twitter asks you to answer. But in the world of Twitter, there can be only one honest answer: I am twittering. Any other answer is a fib, a fabrication - a production.

As with other media of the self, Twitter makes the act subservient to its expression. It turns us into observers of our own lives, and not in the traditional sense of self-consciousness (watching with the inner eye) but in the mass media sense (watching with the eye of the producer). As the Observer Effect tells us, the act of observing the act changes the act.

I like the way Nicholas present this idea of having an act that is subservient to its expression. It’s not always the case (but it’s perfect for twitter). Generally, Editing is post production. And I will also make my own parallel. Editing makes the idea of the act uberservient to its realization. A kind of Hawthorne effect, or if i use images let’s say it’s photoshopping what was.

This is a personal example of this second process. During each of my European Tour Trip I am taking lot’s of pictures since I don’t do editing at all (no cropping, no photoshop) but I am doing an animated video (using animoto) which is post production. I do choose the music setting the atmosphere, I organize the pictures and create effect by assembling them. I know that it will be largely viewed (the one from the lensecamp currently has more than 1500 views), so I Hawthorne the trip and I am guilty of the observer effect. It’s looks probably more intense than reality

I invite you to read

  • this great post from Nicholas Carr (long time since i last quoted him) about aphorism because his other example taken from the netocrate Geert Lovink is great.
  • A blogpost from Danah on status : markers of status: different, and yet the same. In that post she describes exactly what i do believe in. Status will become specialize therefore applying to sub-culture.

    Metrics for status have become diversified. [...] the status that matters is that which is conferred in everyday life. [...] I think that we’ll continue to see fantastic examples of individuals achieving status through their networked participation, but I don’t think that this will ever become mainstream.[...] And we will continue to see new subcultures with new markers of subcultural capital.

Status and markers are the reason why we subservient our uberservient our life or should i say our editing.

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Jun 18

We’ve just created (thanks olivier) new logos for the opencoffee.

And we are proud to announce that the club is growing in France with a few new cities. Starting with Rennes (Once a month and already 20 person), Lille (34 person and adrien in charge) (click on the logo to go to the facebook group … websites on the way).

We are also working on Lyon, Marseille and maybe bordeaux.

I would like to thank the entrepreneur on the field in these different cities who are making it possible and help building a better ecosystem for France.

PLZ: note that we will use OPENCOFFEECITY (ex: OPENCOFFEERENNES) as tag for all the content produced.

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