- Passionnant, mais un peu trop simple à mon goût. Chris Anderson sort son nouveau livre "Free" après avoir écrit "The Long Tail". Mais la majorité de ses arguments sont finalement liés à la redistribution des gains de productivité et font beaucoup penser aux analyses des français du siècle dernier comme Bastiat ou JB Say. Quand il explique qu'il n'a pas peur de mettre son livre sur un blog et de le dévoiler au fur et à mesure qu'il écrit, le moins que le journaliste pourrait lui répondre, c'est qu'il n'a rien à craindre par ce qu'il est en situation de force, et que ce n'est pas le cas de tout le monde... : Weekend Videos : Anderson And Arrington On Charlie Rose
- Et justement... voici une équipe de fan-production qui a produit 3 épisodes de Star Trek incroyables, seuls, sans soutien de la Paramount... et c'est tellement bon qu'ils sont nominés aux Hugot Awards... ce qui les amène à prendre peur. Ils commencent à dépasser, à atteindre le grand public, à être connus. Ils deviennent une menace pour la Paramount qui détient les droits de Star Trek. Ils préfèrent renoncer... : The Enterprise Warps Into An Imploding Nebula [Star Trek : Phase II]
- Et pendant ce temps, le dernier film de Roland Emmerich se fait défoncer par les critiques qui préfèrent en rire qu'en pleurer : 10,000 BC — This Ain't Evolution [10,000 BC Review]
- Un article très intéressant sur les différents modèles de rémunération du web : Les modèles d'affaires du web 2.0
- Et pour ceux qui aimeraient améliorer leurs sites webs... internactu leur donne plein de bonnes idées en détaillant leur nouvelle version 2 : Vers un InternetActu.net plus participatif
- Ca aussi c'est important. Le responsable de la publicité de CBS annonce qu'il peut désormais faire payer plus cher la publicité sur le web qu'à la tv : CBS charges more for Web video than prime time TV [Online Advertising]
- Et justement, Google annonce qu'ils vont faire des tv ads : Google To Start Selling TV Ads
- Google News czar closes eyes, hopes we'll go away [Confirmed]
- Un nouveau site de jeu vidéo par un ex de GameSpot : Fired GameSpot Editor Reveals New Home : Giant Bomb
- Incroyable photos satellites de l'évacuation du Tchad : Satellite-Eye-View of People Evacuating in Chad [Dystopia]
- Des croquis de Yoda pour le dessin animé de Star Wars Clone Wars (qui est fantastique) : Yoda Strikes A Pose In Clone Wars [Star Wars]
- Obama ! Obama ! C'est la guerre chez Hillary : Dylan Loewe : Civil War in Hillaryland
- Obama ! Obama ! Path to the Nomination : Obama
- Le marché de l'immobilier va continuer à chuter : Hale "Bonddad" Stewart : The Housing Market Is Nowhere Near Bottom
- Un étudiant qui avait utilisé facebook pour faire des groupes de révision est menacé d'expulsion (sic!) : Student faces Facebook consequences (Louise Brown/Toronto Star)
- Le fondateur de Wikipedia continue à se faire accuser de faire n'importe quoi avec l'argent de la fondation, avec les pages du site, etc. Mais la nouvelle CEO sait manier la langue de bois ^_^ : Wikipedia boss plays the Disgruntled Former Employee card [Great Moments In Pr]
- This Week : Pleather, Frustrating, and Booming
- Ultimate Game
- One More Longtime GameSpot Editor Quits
- GameSpot Lead Reviews Editor Gives Notice
- Rumor: GameSpot Editor Fired Over Low Review Score
- Rumor: GameSpot Editor Was Fired for 'Larger Reasons'
- GameSpot Explains Gerstmann Firing in Detail
- un canal vidéo sur Youtube pour recenser des vidéos intéressantes sur nos sujets.
- Une librairie en ligne avec une sélection de livres (nous sommes preneurs de suggestions).
- InternetActu Live (RSS) et son fil Twitter (RSS) pour rendre compte en direct des évènements auxquels participe la rédaction.
- Et pour ceux qui le souhaitent, l'univers Netvibes de la Fing récapitule tout ce qu'il y a à suivre en provenance de la Fing et de ses sites satellites.
Weekend Videos : Anderson And Arrington On Charlie Rose
"
Some interesting weekend video on a slower Friday: Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, and Michael Arrington, editor of Techcrunch were on Charlie Rose show last night, talking about various content and tech issues, including Microsoft-Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), the value of content online, and other tech-policy issues.
Videos embedded below:
Voir en ligne : Weekend Videos: Anderson And Arrington On Charlie Rose
The Enterprise Warps Into An Imploding Nebula [Star Trek : Phase II]
"
I've been struggling to avoid blogging about the Star Trek/Nebula controversy for the past week, because it seemed so silly, and I was sure it was blowing over. But now it seems like the controversy that will not die. In case you missed it, an episode of fan-made Trek show Star Trek: Phase II got nominated for a Nebula Award, but some science fiction boffins are upset that an "amateur" production has gotten a nod. So why does this controversy keep rattling on?
Let's ignore the easy answer: Because there are lots of bloggers (like me) with too much time on our hands. The more complicated answers involve copyright law and the changing nature of TV/movie production.
First of all, copyright law. The latest twist in the kerfuffle comes from the makers of Phase II arguing amongst themselves. Marc Zicree, who had directed the Nebula-nominated episode, had issued a statement saying Phase II is a professional production. The scriptwriters were paid, and so were some of the cast and crew. And he says the show has tacit approval from Paramount, which owns the copyright to Star Trek.
But now, Phase II producer James Cawley has retorted that the production is definitely not professional, by any means. Apparently Cawley is worried that if Phase II starts claiming "professional" status (which is a vaguely worded requirement for Nebula inclusion) then Paramount will change its mind about approving of the production. He'd rather face the wrath of a few snippy science fiction writers than Paramount's hordes of blood-thirsty lawyers.
But then there's the issue of the changing nature TV/movie production. It's only going to get easier and cheaper, from here on out, to put "amateur" productions online that look almost as good as "professional" productions. In 20 years, the line between "real" TV shows and "fan-made" ones may be much, much thinner. And a fan-made movie, on the Internet, may be better than the latest Roland Emmerich disaster. So it's in the interest of the Nebulas, long term, to recognize productions which may not meet every requirement for "professional" ones. (I'm not saying we're there yet. But in another decade or two, we may well be.)
The real reason why people are so worked up about this issue? Because of the words "Star Trek" and "fan film." Either one of those phrases by themselves would be enough to get people tweaked. Together, they're like your serious writer person's worst nightmare. But just consider that past Nebula script nominees have included the first X-Men movie, Shrek, an episode of The Dead Zone, The Butterfly Effect and The Devil's Arithmetic. I think they'll survive one Trek fan film. Concept art from the original Star Trek: Phase II from TrekMania.net. [Den Of Geek, via SF Awards Watch]
Voir en ligne : The Enterprise Warps Into An Imploding Nebula [Star Trek: Phase II]
10,000 BC — This Ain't Evolution [10,000 BC Review]
"
So we caught the new Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich vehicle 10,000 BC, opening in a theater near you today. It's a science fiction film in the most literal sense of those words. This flick takes the sciences of evolutionary biology and anthropology and turns them into fiction. Sadly, it wasn't the 300 style of anthropology fiction, where you know everything is wildly inaccurate but find yourself in a forgiving mood because the action is so terrific and the concept design kicks ass. 10,000 BC was actually so historically inaccurate that not even the giant ostrich attack scene made up for it. Spoilers and cranky comments about scientific accuracy ahead.
From the earliest moments in the film, when we get the cheesy "epic voiceover" telling us that this is the "story of blue eyes" and some other mystical garbage, it's obvious that 10,000 BC is a bad ripoff of Apocalypto. Which is to say, it's the tale of a small-town hunter-gatherer boy whose woman is stolen by bad guys from the big city full of pyramids and priests with weird makeup and strange fingernails. And it pains me to say this, but Apocalypto is a freakin masterpiece of scientific accuracy compared to 10,000 BC. At least Apocalypto director Mel Gibson had his timescale right for the Mayan Empire.
In 10,000 BC, you've got Egyptian pyramids being built by guys using woolly mammoths. I mean, it's the goddamn ice age, and then our main character walks over a hill and suddenly he's in the Nile Valley of 2,000 BC? And these anachronistic bad guy Egyptians (from the ice age) have got ships, horseback riding, and freakin STEEL. Steel? C'mon, guys, you couldn't even consult Wikipedia? I mean, why not just call the movie 2,000 BC and make it about ancient Egypt? Or keep it in 10,000 BC and come up with some other kind of bad guys? Jeezus.
So anyway, our hero lives in some undefined ice age region hunting mammoths (pretty decent CGI mammoths by the way), seemingly in Europe but a mere few days' walk from Egypt. A band of guys on horseback come zooming through one day, steal a bunch of his clansmen, and take off in the direction of the aforementioned historically-inaccurate city. Did I mention that 10,000 BC was right around the time agriculture was being invented? And that the first cities -- with no giant monuments -- didn't exist until roughly 4,000 BC?
OK, look, I know it's annoying when people go to science fiction movies and brap loudly about how light speed wouldn't work like that, and monsters that big would be crushed by gravity. However, at least with that shit we have the excuse that we don't really know how FTL could work, and we aren't sure what life would be like on other planets. But what was going on in the world 10,000 years ago? We don't know every damn granular detail, but we do know there were no giant cities where woolly mammoths from the ice age helped build pyramids. I mean, the movie Ice Age is practically more accurate than this crap.
Plus there's a lot of tribal ooga-booga where white people with dreads (who are somehow in charge of the brown people) talk about great spirits and generally act like a cross between the bad parts of Burning Man and the bad parts of the new agey 1970s. On the plus side, there are some cool CGI pyramids and the main character is almost killed by a sabre tooth tiger.
My biggest fear is that a bunch of teachers will take their classes to see this movie to teach them about human history. Because, you know, it's educational. I can't decide if it's worse to propagate 10,000 BC as evolutionary theory, or to propagate intelligent design as a theory of evolution. I think it may be an even match in the end.
Voir en ligne : 10,000 BC -- This Ain't Evolution [10,000 BC Review]
CBS charges more for Web video than prime time TV [Online Advertising]
"
CBS Interactive chief Quincy Smith says he can charge advertisers $20 per thousand views, higher than the rate CBS gets for prime-time television. As SAI points out, this may be more due to CBS's relatively small supply of Web content and viewers, rather than rapacious advertiser demand. Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck yesterday said advertisers would spend $1.35 billion on Web video in the U.S. in 2008 -- about 1.6 percent of what they'll spend on TV.
Voir en ligne : CBS charges more for Web video than prime time TV [Online Advertising]
Fired GameSpot Editor Reveals New Home : Giant Bomb
"
It turns out that Jeff Gerstmann didn't spend the days after his extremely public departure from GameSpot idly watching America's Next Top Model marathons on VH1; instead he was building his new gaming website, Giant Bomb.
At the moment, the content is fairly limited, with a handful of previews and reviews all penned by Gerstmann and the first episode of the behind-the-scenes series "How to Build a Bomb" (don't bother, it's pointless), but it's really only just started.
Gerstmann has an "expert team of dudes" helping him build the blog,
including former GameSpot editor Ryan Davis, who said of Gerstmann's
departure from GameSpot, "it absolutely breaks my heart."
In his welcome post, Gerstmann thanks everyone for sticking with
him, and closes by saying "I really think the site is going to blow
your mind." We'll see.
See Also:
Welcome to Giant Bomb (dot com) [Giant Bomb]
Voir en ligne : Fired GameSpot Editor Reveals New Home: Giant Bomb
Satellite-Eye-View of People Evacuating in Chad [Dystopia]
"
This is what a mass evacuation from a city looks like from space. Using satellites orbiting over Africa, human rights groups published UNOSAT satellite imagery to show, in very simple terms, the human cost of violence in the Chadian capital city of N'Djamena. Over 10,000 people are crammed on a bridge, trying to escape into the neighboring nation of Cameroon. The black dots are people, and the yellow dashes are vehicles, most likely trucks and buses. It's a chilling portrait of the human future, wracked with violence and recorded via space-based surveillance devices, taken on February 27. See the full map below.
This is a story that requires few words to tell. 
Here's a larger map of the region. 
UN Satellites Photograph Human Exodus [War and Health]
Voir en ligne : Satellite-Eye-View of People Evacuating in Chad [Dystopia]
Yoda Strikes A Pose In Clone Wars [Star Wars]
"
The Yoda in the new Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series will be a mix between the Empire Strikes Back puppet and the CGI creature from the prequels, judging from this concept art. His ears are based on the puppet, but he'll have the CGI version's ability to go from hobbling to bouncing around with a light saber. Ever wondered what Yoda's toes look like in detail? Click through for the full image.
[Voir en ligne : Yoda Strikes A Pose In Clone Wars [Star Wars]
Dylan Loewe : Civil War in Hillaryland
"
Yesterday a front page Washington Post story outlined the extent to which internal squabbling has overtaken the Clinton campaign. Throughout much of the election cycle there has been a lot of attention paid to potential rivalries within the camp; as of late, those internal fights have been playing out in a much more public fashion.
What we know so far about the Clinton campaign is discomforting. We know that Clinton's campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, remained in her position long after having squandered the entire campaign war chest. We know that Mark Penn, chief strategist of the campaign, has alienated nearly everyone he works with, often getting into profanity-laden arguments with fellow advisers. We know he is "openly despised" by many senior Clinton officials. We know that, in the face of heavy criticism, Mark Penn has tried to shift the blame, maintaining that he is just an outside adviser, with no real control of the campaign.
We know that Harold Ickes is eager to argue the point in front of microphones, where he has ungracefully laid the blame squarely on Penn. We know that, at the Arlington headquarters, the tension has built so high that Penn and Mandy Grunwald, Hillary's ad maker, got into a yelling match that prompted the political director to leave the room. And we know that we know that because it was leaked.
We know the media team fights with the field team, each blaming the other for Clinton's February losses. Perhaps worst of all, The Washington Post confirmed what many Democrats had feared the most: in South Carolina, Bill Clinton was out of the campaign's control.
A good measure of the relative functionality of a campaign is to watch how often inside information is leaked to the press. That we know as much as we do about the internal strife in Hillaryland suggests that the press is being wielded as a weapon in the middle of an all out civil war.
Yet with the wind at her back, following strong victories in Ohio and Texas, Hillary may question whether any of this should really matter. It does.
Hillary is often painted as a technocrat, stronger on the details than Obama and more likely to manage the country effectively. We are led to believe that she would be as capable a chief of staff as she would a commander in chief. But while her campaign comes unspooled in the pages of the Washington Post, she has yet to give any indication of the desire or ability to take the wheel and steady the ship.
In many ways, her management style is reminiscent of President Bush. She has surrounded herself with people whose top qualification is their loyalty. Patti Solis Doyle, the incompetent campaign manager, was allowed to stay in her position for far too long, primarily out of loyalty. A similar note can be played with respect to much of her campaign staff, many of whom would have already been fired by nearly any other candidate.
There are also tints of a young Bill Clinton in Hillary's management style. His early White House has been notoriously described as a dorm-room-style setting with no clear chain of authority and a set of aggressive warring factions. It was this poorly conceived structure that contributed to President Clinton's overstretched agenda, often with contradicting messages, rarely with a long-term framework in mind. In 1994, the consequences of flailing leadership meant the Republican control of Congress.
Will Hillary Clinton manage her White House in the way she has managed her presidential campaign? The question seems fair. Will she instead run it like she did her 2006 Senate campaign? Patti Solis Doyle drastically overspent in that race too. Will she manage the White House like she did the health care reforms of 1994? With those, she ignored political realities and helped polarize her own party by refusing the input of key members. Is this what we can expect from a second Clinton presidency?
Perhaps we should be concerned with the more immediate future. Is Hillary going to run a general election campaign the way she ran her primary race? After all, her campaign thus far has demonstrated the inability to make quick and effective recalibrations. They have failed to rein in Bill Clinton, and have been unable to build strong organizational capacity in a number of states. Their decisionmaking apparatus is controlled by spiteful aides who seem more enveloped in their own in-fighting than the needs of the campaign. Can Democrats really afford Mark Penn and Harold Ickes throwing temper tantrums through the fall?
These are not easy questions for the Clinton campaign to answer. But they are important questions for the voters and super delegates to consider. Harold Ickes was recently quoted as saying, "She's better than her campaign." This is undoubtedly true. But if after four to eight years of a Clinton presidency, she maintains her management style, we may all be shrugging with disappointment, knowing, full well, that she was better than her presidency.
Voir en ligne : Dylan Loewe: Civil War in Hillaryland
Student faces Facebook consequences (Louise Brown/Toronto Star)
"
Louise Brown / Toronto Star:
Student faces Facebook consequences — Freshman hit with 147 academic charges for online study network at Ryerson University — Study groups may be a virtual trademark of the Ivory Tower - but a virtual study group has been slammed as cheating by Ryerson University.
Voir en ligne : Student faces Facebook consequences (Louise Brown/Toronto Star)
Wikipedia boss plays the Disgruntled Former Employee card [Great Moments In Pr]
"
You're bored with the whole thing, but watch and learn, people. This is media training at its finest. "What's happening here is we have a disgruntled former employee. This guy has a blog, and he's used that blog as a platform to spread a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip. It's hard for us to even respond to -- I don't know if you've read it, but it's not entirely even clear necessarily always what's being alleged." -- Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner on CNET. She praises ex-chair Jimmy Wales's saintly, parsimonious behavior all the way back to last summer.
That's at least a year after the dates of the claims made by former employee Danny Wool, who was pretty clear on Monday that "This questionable use of Foundation funds stopped in 2006, largely because Jimbeau's credit card was taken away." CNET didn't ask Gardner to confirm or deny the claims made by non-former-employees, including the Slashdot-suing entrepreneur who allegedly got a page erased in exchange for a $5,000 donation.
Voir en ligne : Wikipedia boss plays the Disgruntled Former Employee card [Great Moments In Pr]
Google To Start Selling TV Ads
"
There are a number of ways to be mislead by the title, so make sure you read the first bit of this before you move on to the next bit, because this is a big story. Google is going to allow folks in the AdWords program to not just bid for online ad placement, but for placement of commercials on TV (otherwise known as Old Tee Vee or Old Media or that boob tube in your living room).
This follows news from a year ago, when Google started selling radio ads through the program, and in July, when Google started selling print ads. The programs, at least from the online marketers I've spoken with, have received very mixed reviews. Almost universally, they think that it's a cool and unique opportunity, but especially in the case of the radio ads, the plays they bought usually played at very off-hours and didn't result in a favorable ROI for the price.
In an effort to combat that, Google appears to have put serious effort into making the TV ad buys a robust and stats-rich experience.
Pinny Cohen today wrote about his invitation to the TV Ads Beta program, which allows users to upload 15, 30, 45, or 60 second TV ads. The system is designed to let you see how many impressions were shown, bid on a CPM for those impressions, and schedule your advertisements by locality and time.
There also appears to be some focus-group style ratings of them, as well, that shows how long viewers watched the ad on average, and at what point the advertisement lost most viewers.
Pinny expects to see a lot more spam on TV, as a result, as well as a lot more UGC-style inexperienced advertisements showing up that show rookie mistakes and faux pas. I'm somewhat more skeptical. On the one hand, there seems to be a lot of thought put into this service above and beyond what was put into print and radio. On the other, there hasn't been a great deal of positive response from the folks I've heard have used those services - and that's a decent indicator that this won't be a rousing success either.
Voir en ligne : Google To Start Selling TV Ads
Path to the Nomination : Obama
"
First of two parts; the second part will lay out Clinton's strategy for the nomination
Because Barack Obama failed to dispatch Hillary Clinton Tuesday, some in the traditional media are flipping out with talk about how this throws the nomination up in the air, how things are different, "Democrats in disarray" and plenty of other idiocies. Obama and his camp are surely deeply disappointed they didn't defeat Hillary Clinton in the Texas or Ohio primaries. Had Obama won one or both, there would have been calls for Clinton to step aside and let Obama focus on beating John McCain.
Clinton won't step aside now, and few if any "party elders" will ask her to between now and the PA primary on April 22nd. However, her path to the nomination isn't any easier today than it was on Monday. In fact, if you view it like a boxing match, Clinton had been losing round after round on points all through February. Tuesday, in terms of the entire nomination battle, she didn't win as much as rally for a draw for that round. Pundits and her campaign are touting it as a win, but with a net gain of between 5 and 10 delegates, she made up no real ground. Thus, she lost an opportunity to narrow the gap, and now very little chance of securing the nomination. Furthermore, with the certification of votes in California, there appears to have been a net swing of 8 delegates in favor of Obama, thus wiping out her already modest gains from Tuesday.
There are some scenarios that could lead to a Clinton nomination; I'll deal with those in the next post. For now, here's what Obama needs to do to secure the nomination.
Remember the math. If Obama and Clinton split the remaining pledged delegates, Obama would only need 35% of the unpledged delegates (aka superdelegates) who haven't announced a preference, but Clinton would need 65% of the remaining superdelegates. Since Super Tuesday, Clinton has actually lost a net of one superdelegate according to the AP. During the same time, Obama added 53.
Downplay Pennsylvania (and West Virginia and Kentucky): Before the Potomac primary, I wrote that something to watch was how the candidates did west of I-81 in the mountains of western Virginia and Maryland:
First, the bad news for Obama supporters. He's likely to have a rough time in Appalachia. As I discussed yesterday before the polls closed, his performance in far western Maryland and in the mountains of Virginia west of I-81 would be a good indication of how he may perform in southeastern Ohio (and in the later contests in West Virginia and Kentucky). Obama was slaughtered in these counties. In western Maryland and the Virginia counties west of I-81 Clinton won by margins of 2-1 or better. In Buchanan county, in the far southwest part of the state on the WV border, Obama only pulled in 9% of the vote.
Sure enough, on Tuesday Clinton romped in Southern and Eastern Ohio. Other than the counties of Hamilton (Cincinnati) and Athens (Ohio University), Clinton won huge margins in every county that bordered Kentucky, West Virginia or Pennsylvania; in Scioto County, she pulled in 81%. The results from Virginia, Maryland and Ohio demonstrate that the voters of Appalachia are just not inclined to vote for Obama over Clinton, so Obama's chances of winning Pennsylvania, Kentucky or West Virginia are small.
Winning Pennsylvania, where it's a closed primary and Governor Ed Rendell has a good political machine devoted to winning the state for Clinton, will be tough for Obama. And winning it probably won't get rid of Clinton at this point. His chance at the knock out blow was Tuesday. He didn't knock her out. Now he has to wear her down.
Rack up big margins in the states he wins Of the states yet to be contested, only Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky look like natural strongholds for Clinton. Obama will probably win Wyoming, Mississippi, Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. Even if Clinton wins Guam and Puerto Rico, he will have added to his pledged delegate lead and there will be more stories about Obama wins than Clinton wins. But he can extend his lead even more by winning with big margins and gaining extra delegates.
Continue to Raise More Money than Clinton: It should be easy for him to maintain his fundraising advantage. Assuming he does, he will be able to outspend Clinton, and it will be the kind of metric that the remaining superdelegates will look at in assessing who's better to have at the top of the ticket in November.
Tighten up the surrogate operation: Surrogates who talk to dodgy foreign publications like The Scotsman and call Hillary Clinton a monster, or surrogates who go on television unable to cite any of Obama's accomplishments may not do irreparable harm to the campaign. They don't help, however, and the best that can be said is that they miss opportunities to help their candidate.
Show he's tough, can take a shot and deliver one: One of the lasting (and legitimate) questions is whether Obama will be able to weather the attacks of the Republicans. He's never been challenged in a general election. He needs to assuage any concerns superdelegates might have about his toughness and resolve.
He also needs to take the fight to Clinton. She's been on the offensive for a couple weeks. Her ability to exploit the NAFTA controversy certainly cost Obama votes in Ohio. He needs to now take the gloves off and take the fight to Clinton. He's doing that in Mississippi, using Clinton's dismissal of the state against her. He will probably need to do that more, especially by hitting at her main theme, her experience.
Don't fight against Michigan and Florida: Don't get in to a fight against new contests in Michigan or Florida. Clinton probably can't gain enough delegates even if she won both states to make much of a difference in the overall delegate count. Nevertheless, it's probably not in Obama's immediate self-interest to have a new vote. However, he can't be seen as working against seating the two delegations. Therefore, in objecting to seating the delegations under the proportions of their unsanctioned votes in January, he should simply fall back on the DNC rules, but say if both states want to have DNC-approved contests, he'd support them. Make Clinton go through the contortions of justifying the unsanctioned votes as the basis for going against the DNC rules and seating the MI and FL delegations. Take the high road.
Don't Make any big blunders: Clinton's strategy at this point relies on hanging around and hoping she can force Obama in to enough blunders that he explodes or the superdelegates have enough doubts that they turn to her to prevent disaster in November. If Obama doesn't make any big blunders, the odds that her strategy will work are about nil.
That's an approach for Obama to secure the nomination. He would end the primary period short of the 2,025 delegates needed to lock up the nomination, but we've known for some time that nobody would get enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination before the convention. But if Obama holds or adds to his current delegate lead between now and the end of the primaries, Clinton won't have have any way to get the nomination. Any appeal to seat the MI and FL delegates would probably fail (because the Credentials committee will be weighted in Obama's favor, and Chairman Howard Dean will be able to appoint additional people who will presumably back him up in enforcing the rules). She will be behind in pledged delegates, Obama could overtake her narrowing lead in unpledged delegates, and she will be out of time. With no way to overtake him, she will be forced to concede the nomination to Obama.
There are unknowns, and he would have been much better off having dispatched Clinton on Tuesday. But provided he continues what he's been doing, sharpens and tightens up his campaign and his contrasts with Clinton, and doesn't screw up, he should be the nominee.
Hillary Clinton's path to the nomination is much more difficult, and I will deal with that in my next post.
Voir en ligne : Path to the Nomination: Obama
Hale "Bonddad" Stewart : The Housing Market Is Nowhere Near Bottom
"
Housing has been deteriorating for the last two years. News from yesterday indicates the market stands a very good chance of getting worse.
Among the latest trouble signals, the number of American homes entering foreclosure rose to the highest level on record in the fourth quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, homeowners' share of the equity in their homes fell to a post-World War II low.
Let's think about those facts for a minute.
1.) Foreclosures are at a record high. More Americans are defaulting on their loans at the highest rate ever recorded. That is not a good sign. And that number stands a good possibility of getting worse.
Economy.com estimates 8.8 million homeowners, or about 10 percent of homes, will have zero or negative equity by the end of the month. Even more disturbing, about 13.8 million households will be "upside down" if prices fall 20 percent from their peak. The latest Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index showed U.S. home prices plunging 8.9 percent in the final quarter of 2007 compared with a year earlier.
Currently, the situation is already terrible:
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, more than 2% of the nation's about 46 million mortgage loans were in the foreclosure process in the fourth quarter, and 0.83% of loans entered the process. Both figures are the highest since the industry group started keeping track in 1972.
2.) Homeowners equity is at the lowest level in the post-WWII era. That means banks and financing companies now own more of the US housing market than private individuals.
Let's add another piece to the puzzle:
The share of delinquent mortgages rose to 5.82%, the most since 1985. Payments at least 30 days overdue are deemed delinquent.
And this has led to a decline in individual net worth:
The total wealth of American households slipped about $533 billion to $57.7 trillion in the fourth quarter, the first drop since 2002, the Fed said. Central to the decline: The value of housing-related assets -- including those that are mortgaged -- fell by $170 billion to $20.2 trillion while the value of other financial assets, such as stocks, dropped by $254 billion to $45.3 trillion.The Fed uses a home-price index compiled by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight that some critics say understates the drop in home values. Using the popular S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices, total household wealth would have dropped by $1.4 trillion during the quarter, said J.P. Morgan's Mr. Feroli.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, more than 2% of the nation's about 46 million mortgage loans were in the foreclosure process in the fourth quarter, and 0.83% of loans entered the process. Both figures are the highest since the industry group started keeping track in 1972.
This is what happens when you base your economy on record low interest rates leading to speculative excesses. As the asset's increase in price everybody is fat and happy. But when prices fall, you have problems. Big problems.
And the problems are starting to spread into other areas to the economy.
Officials in Vallejo, California hammered out a financial agreement late on Thursday with police and fire-fighters that may allow the cash-strapped former Navy town to avoid becoming the first sizeable city in the state to file for bankruptcy.
Why was this California city on the verge of bankruptcy? Like many municipalities, they rely on property taxes for their financing.
Blue-collar Vallejo's economy long relied on the U.S. Navy's neighboring Mare Island shipyard. When the Navy closed the base in the mid-1990s, Vallejo became a bedroom community.Property taxes were healthy when California's housing market was running hot earlier this decade, but recently those revenues have been on the slide along with demand for housing.
Vallejo, with a population of roughly 130,000, now is in one of the region's hardest hit housing markets. Like other markets where home purchases were financed with risky mortgages in recent years, foreclosures are on the rise.
This Vallejo is alone? Think again.
So -- will this problem end soon? Very doubtful. Here is a chart of home prices according to the Case Shiller home price index.
Notice that in the 1990s -- which was a healthy economic expansion -- home prices increased about 10-20%. This occurred primarily in the last three years of the expansion. During this expansion, prices increased 80% nationally. Also note that aside from record low interest rates, there was nothing different about this expansion that would warrant a price increase of that magnitude. Now, prices are just starting to fall.
This won't end soon.
Voir en ligne : Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: The Housing Market Is Nowhere Near Bottom
Google et Microsoft se disputent Digg
"
Digg travaille depuis quelque temps avec la banque Allen & Co pour une éventuel rachat par de gros médias ou sociétés tech.
Et malgré les nombreuses fausses annonces, il semble que l'on s'approche, cette fois-ci, d'une conclusion. Une source nous confirme que quatre sociétés sont en course; deux gros médias/ infos et deux géants d'Internet, Microsoft et Google. Et ces deux derniers sont sur le point de faire une offre.
Digg est finalement prêt à accepter moins que les $300 millions annoncés par Allen & Co., l'année dernière. Google ferait une offre entre $200 et $225 millions que Digg serait à même d'accepter.
Microsoft songe à un prix plus bas, essentiellement en raison du fait que la plupart des revenus de Digg proviennent de l'accord publicitaire avec microsoft. Un accord qui garantit des revenus et Microsoft est hésitant à évaluer Digg en fonction des revenus qu'ils fournit lui-même.
Une vente offrirait à Micosoft une option pour mettre fin à l'accord publicitaire, ce qui signifie que Google n'évalue pas Digg en fonction des revenus non plus. Mais cela serait un affront à Microsoft si Google parvenait à s'emparer de Digg et beaucoup de revenus potentiels sur les pages lues.
Affaire à suivre dans les prochains jours.
Digg fut fondé fin 2005 et a levé $11.3 million .
Note d'Ouriel: J'ai du mal à digéré l'info car je ne vois pas du tout Digg chez Google ou Microsoft. Google n'est pas à la recherche de traffic et dispose de suffisamment d'inventaire publicitaire. Microsoft dispose déjà d'un partenariat avec Digg qui lui garantit une grande partie de l'inventaire. Digg ne fait pas partie des compétences clefs de Google et Microsoft à savoir l'actualité (même si chacun à une service de news) Je vois plus Digg dans un groupe Media (New York Times ou Wall Street Journal ou Time Warner) où les synergies sont plus évidentes. Culturellement parlant je crois que Digg est à l'opposé de Microsoft qui certes veut une meilleure vitrine grand public mais aura du mal à intégré cette propriété. Quant à Google la culture d'entreprise est elle plus proche mais Digg n'est pas assez grand public pour Google. Il est vrai que l'intégration de YouTube a été faite tout naturellement. Digg ferait d'un autre côté un bon complément à Google News. J'ai du mal à l'expliquer parfaitement et rationnellement mais comme on dit: "je le sens pas"
Promo: CrunchBoard jobs est de retour: offre de lancement 2 pour 1
Voir en ligne : Google et Microsoft se disputent Digg
Les modèles d'affaires du web 2.0
"
Les sites web 2.0 offrent toujours un accès gratuit à leurs services. Leur économie repose donc sur la capacité à valoriser les activités et les échanges qui se développent sur le site de manière à générer des revenus autour de ce service gratuit. Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Christophe Dacheux et Kevin Mellet, chercheurs au laboratoire Sense d'Orange Labs ont cherché à identifier les différentes modalités de monétisation de la présence et de l'activité des utilisateurs. L'occasion, à travers la modularité de ces différentes combinaisons, de mieux identifier et comprendre les modèles d'affaire du web 2.0.
On peut identifier quatre modalités distinctes de monétisation de la présence et de l'activité des utilisateurs. Pour la plus répandue d'entre elles, la publicité, on peut en outre distinguer quatre façons très différentes de faire de la réclame en ligne, dont deux sont spécifiques aux univers du Web 2.0. Les modèles d'affaires du Web 2.0 résultent de cette variété des combinaisons de ces composantes.
1. Les quatre formes de monétisation du Web 2.0
La publicité : le premier modèle, le plus répandu, est fondé sur une monétisation de l'audience par la publicité. Le site monaye le nombre de pages vues et le temps passé par les utilisateurs. Les revenus publicitaires sont le plus souvent captés intégralement par le site, mais parfois partagés avec les contributeurs.
Le principe du Freemium (contraction des mots Free et Premium) est fréquent : l'utilisation des services de base est gratuite, l'accès aux services premium étant, lui, payant. Ces services premium peuvent être liés à la vente d'un abonnement (c'est le cas de Flickr) , ou bien de services ponctuels associés permettant d'enrichir l'expérience de l'utilisateur (vente de biens virtuels sur Facebook ou Habbo Hotel, visibilité sur Hot or Not, accès à de l'information supplémentaire sur Linkedin, par exemple).
Le troisième modèle est celui de la place de marché : il repose sur le prélèvement d'une commission sur les transactions organisées par le site. La plateforme organise la rencontre d'un grand nombre d'offreurs et/ou de demandeurs de biens et de services divers et ses revenus sont proportionnels aux transactions effectuées. Outre les plateformes de marché comme ebay et les services de microboutique comme Zlio, il faut inclure dans cette catégorie la vente de services associés à l'activité (par exemple, le change dans Second life, les systèmes d'affiliation dans les blogs, etc.).
Le dernier modèle de collecte de ressources est fondé sur le don et le bénévolat, souvent associé au refus de la publicité et de la vente des contenus. L'exemple emblématique en est Wikipedia, l'encyclopédie libre ; on peut aussi mentionner la plateforme de blogs Wordpress.
Ces quatre formes de monétisation assurent aux sites web 2.0 des revenus directs. On observe cependant que la pression financière est moins forte pour les sites intégrés à des grands groupes de l'Internet et des médias comme Youtube avec Google, Delicious avec Yahoo, Lastfm avec CBS, du fait des externalités positives en termes d'image de marque.
2. Les 4 modèles d'intermédiation publicitaire
Au sein du modèle de rentabilisation publicitaire, qui tend à occuper une place de plus en plus importante, on peut observer quatre formes distinctes de publicité sur le Web 2.0. Aux deux modèles classiques de la publicité en ligne (display et search) viennent s'ajouter des formes émergentes mieux adaptées aux spécificités du web 2.0.
Le modèle classique de l'affichage (M1)
Fondé sur l'affichage (display), ce modèle est une transposition du modèle classique de la publicité. Il s'appuie sur des régies publicitaires qui répartissent des bandeaux publicitaires sur des sites. Le ciblage offert aux annonceurs est thématique (espaces ciblés pour les femmes, les amateurs de sport…) avec une volonté d'aller vers des formes plus élaborées de profiling. La tarification est fondée sur le CPM, Coût par mille affichages. Certains sites web 2 s'efforcent de valoriser leur très grand nombre de pages vues par ce modèle (MySpace), mais les tarifs sont très faibles (CPM < 0,5 $).
Le modèle du matching, intermédiation automatisée (M2)
Inventé par les moteurs de recherche (Google), le matching organise la rencontre automatisée des annonceurs et des espaces publicitaires sur la base de mots-clés (AdWords) et de l'analyse sémantique des pages (AdSense). Il ouvre théoriquement la publicité aux petites audiences et aux petits annonceurs. La tarification repose sur le coût au clic. Ce modèle dominant est fragilisé par la fraude au clic (estimée entre 10 à 30 %) et par le fait que le modèle n'est finalement pas très favorable ni aux petits annonceurs (souvent marginalisés dans les enchères par les grandes marques), ni aux petits éditeurs (les revenus des blogs issus d'AdSense sont très faibles).
Le modèle de "l'intermédiation chaude" (M3)
Il répond à la carence des modèles précédents qui négligent les petites audiences, oubliées ou insatisfaites par des revenus trop faibles. Des régies publicitaires d'un nouveau genre prennent en charge les contenus autoproduits de qualité et les valorisent en concluant des partenariats personnalisés entre des marques et des blogeurs, multipliant par 5 ou 10 leurs revenus. On peut citer plusieurs exemples de ce nouveau type de régie : aux USA, Federated Media Publishing, en France : Influence, W2Media, Adrider.
Le Social Media Marketing (M4)
Le dernier modèle repose sur l'insertion des marques dans un écosystème "naturel", comme les réseaux sociaux (Myspace, Facebook) ou les mondes virtuels persistants 3D (Second Life). Il est davantage adapté à la communication de marque. Son utilisation est délicate dans la mesure où l'action de communication de la marque doit s'inscrire dans l'écosystème construit par les utilisateurs, mais sans le dévoyer. Il faut donc accepter une perte du contrôle de son message. Très récent, ce modèle est encore mal outillé et recherche des mesures d'impact (telle que la notion de "momentum effect", c'est-à-dire l'efficacité de la recommandation entre pairs sur la notoriété de la marque, créée par Myspace).
Les sites Web 2.0 combinent bien sûr différentes formes de monétisation et d'intermédiation publicitaire. Les revenus de MySpace combinent des revenus publicitaires M1, M2 (sous-traités à Google) et M4 ; le site envisage par ailleurs de vendre de la musique (place de marché). Facebook s'efforce d'améliorer les performances publicitaires de l'affichage publicitaire ciblé (M1) et offre aux marques de sponsoriser des groupes (M4). Il tire également des revenus annexes de la vente de biens virtuels. Flickr tire l'essentiel de ses revenus de la vente d'abonnement premium, mais noue des partenariats publicitaires avec Nikon (espace Flickr dédié, M4) et avec des imprimeurs de photos (commission sur les transactions). Second life vit pour l'essentiel de la vente de terrains et d'abonnements (freemium), mais profite également des commissions prélevées sur le change US$/Linden$.
Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Christophe Dacheux et Kevin Mellet
web 2.0
Voir en ligne : Les modèles d'affaires du web 2.0
This Week : Pleather, Frustrating, and Booming
"
-If this week has taught me anything, it's that cosplay can be both a beautiful thing (two blonds dressed as Four Swords Links: not only is it sexy in all the weirdest, most wonderful ways, but I told you that boy had effeminate features) and the creepiest thing in the world (a giant, pink, pleather Birdo, complete with "naughty" maid's costume). Grin, shudder, grin, shudder. My body is so confused.
-In more gaming news that makes me want to bang my head against a wall, a British MP went to parliament this week to warn England about "virtual rape" in online worlds. Jesus, haven't we been here before? From the brilliant Brit himself:
People who are watching a film at the cinema cannot participate in what is happening on the screen… However, someone sitting at a computer playing a video game, or someone with one of those small devices that young people have these days, the name of which I forget… PlayStations or PSPs, something of that kind… Well, whatever they are called, when people play these things, they can interact. They can shoot people; they can kill people. They can rape women.
As a woman, I really want to know: how exactly do you rape someone with a PSP?
-On a happier note, there's the cool (if a bit confusing) fact that Johnny Lee's Wii-mote head-tracking is getting included in a level of Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox. Wow, it's like the blocks are really moving, man. At least somebody's using it…
Happy weekend!
"Voir en ligne : This Week: Pleather, Frustrating, and Booming
Google News czar closes eyes, hopes we'll go away [Confirmed]
"
The human middle manager behind Google News, which happily crawls gossipmongers TMZ.com and Defamer Australia, still refuses to include Drudge Report, Boing Boing, or for that matter us in the index. (I'm pretty sure I have his name, but not sure enough to run it.) The issue isn't original content. "Definitely some of the blogs they include scrape our stuff, repost our stuff," Boing Boing editor Xeni Jardin emailed me. And Google News does include Slashdot, which is almost entirely reposts from other sites. To be clear: Leave us out. It's good for our brand. But for God's sake if you're going to shove WebProNews at everyone, make up for it with some Daring Fireball.
Voir en ligne : Google News czar closes eyes, hopes we'll go away [Confirmed]
Vers un InternetActu.net plus participatif
"
La mue a été longue, mais nous sommes heureux de vous présenter un nouvel InternetActu.net, qui outre un graphisme revisité (merci à Laurent Rollin) et un serveur boosté (merci à Amaury Balmer) vous propose de nombreuses nouvelles fonctionnalités : comme la possibilité, en bas de chaque article, de le noter ou de le partager sur la plate-forme de votre choix ; d'avoir un meilleur regard sur les articles les plus lus, les mieux notés ou vers lesquels d'autres sites ont établi un lien. A nos rubricages habituels, nous avons ajouté des "tags" pour renforcer et renouveler l'impulsion de nos thématiques imaginées maintenant il y a plus de 5 ans.
Espérons que ces petites commodités vous rendront les mêmes services qu'à nous et permettront d'amplifier nos interactions.
Car c'est celles-ci que nous souhaitons continuer à développer.
Cette mise à jour est l'occasion de rappeler qu'InternetActu n'est pas seulement un blog (depuis septembre 2003), lu quotidiennement par quelques 10 000 abonnés via RSS et autant via sa lettre d'information hebdomadaire, rédigé par une petite équipe de journalistes, dont les contenus sont disponibles sous licence Creative Commons, mais de plus en plus un ensemble d'outils que nous utilisons au quotidien et que nous vous invitons à partager avec nous :
- L'agenda des TIC (RSS, iCal, html) : un agenda sous Google Agenda pour référencer les évènements TIC en France et à l'étranger. Nous avons voulu un agenda radicalement nouveau, qui se prête certes encore mal à l'affichage en ligne (mesdames et messieurs de Google, si vous nous entendez), mais qui permette d'alimenter directement et facilement vos propres agenda. Nous sommes à la recherche de bonnes volontés pour nous aider à le maintenir afin qu'il soit le plus complet possible, selon quelques règles éditoriales simples à mettre en oeuvre et à partager. Si vous souhaitez nous y aider, n'hésitez pas à nous contacter !
- La veille partagée. Depuis plus d'un an nous alimentons un fil de veille sur Delicious (RSS) de billets puisés dans l'actualité provenant d'autres sites d'actualité que le notre. Un autre moyen pour nous de vous signaler (via le tag "internetactu") des tribunes, des signaux faibles, des informations très bien traitées par d'autres médias ou blogs. Là encore, vous êtes invités à participer, à nous signaler des articles, des informations qui paraissent devoir intéresser la rédaction ou nos lecteurs (des innovations, des réflexions, des débats, des traductions…). Signalons d'ailleurs que tous les programmes d'action de la Fing proposent à ceux que leurs sujets intéressent d'alimenter un fil de veille commun avec leur étiquette spécifique : "villes2.0" (RSS), "identitesactives" (RSS), "pluslonguelavie" (RSS)…
Sachez encore que nous avons ouvert :
Rappelez-vous enfin que nous souhaitons continuer à accueillir des tribunes extérieures, des réflexions argumentées sur l'avenir des technologies et de leurs usages, des points de vues, des traductions d'articles importants pour alimenter nos réflexions…
Au travers de ces changements InternetActu entend conforter sa ligne éditoriale, qui vise à vous aider à faire sens de l'innovation numérique et à anticiper l'avenir. Afin de pérenniser son indépendance, InternetActu.net est toujours à la recherche de partenariats qui trouveront intérêt à se nourrir de cette réflexion et participeront à sa diffusion.
Vous êtes les bienvenus !
Hubert Guillaud, rédacteur en chef, hg[at]fing.org
Voir en ligne : Vers un InternetActu.net plus participatif
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire