MUSIC: On heavy rotation

I haven't posted for a while about the last interesting stuff I have listened to in the last time. Some great CD's and DVD's, all in one post.

Gotan Project - Lunatico

Something completely new for me, the second album of the Gotan Project, Lunatico. Refreshing and excellent!

Skillfully mixing the heated passion of tango with the cool insistent beats of dance music, the group kept the best of both genres as it offered up an unheralded fusion. This time around, the production team delves further into the tradition, cutting down on the dub production filigree and overarching electronic programming--now sexy grooves often come on the back of organic beats and an unprocessed sound captured during live studio sessions in Buenos Aires. This new focus is furthered with conventional bandoneon soloing as well as acoustic piano and string section backing.

Placebo - Meds

I have already posted in 2004 about Placebo concerning their CD Sleeping with Ghosts and the corresponding DVD live Soulmates never die, both totally great.



Placebo released thir new CD - Meds - for a while (it was funny because the CD was released 4 days earlier in Switzerland than in France...). There is a Limited Edition CD/DVD, with some interesting bonus on the DVD:

• a good documentary about the band


• 3 demos


• some video live (with The Cure, at Live8, at Wembley, etc)

Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris - All the roadrunning

In a complete other style, Mark Knopfler and Emmylous Harris have published together a marvelous album called All the roadrunning.

For several years, the iconic Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris have been quietly recording a remarkable collection of duets whenever the Grammy winning artists could steal away from their own illustrious careers. The extraordinary result is All the Roadrunning. The songs from their Nashville sessions, all originals, while undeniably modern, have the appeal of classics, whether country, Celtic flavored or gently soulful. All the Roadrunning is Knopfler & Harris making music and, as the lyric for "This is Us" puts it, making history.

Herbie Hancock - Possibilities

That is another great experience from Herbie Hancock, at the same time incredibly complicated, groovy and wonderful. Surely not "pure jazz", but who cares? *Very* exciting!

"Possibilities" is the musical event of the year. The album is a series of inspired encounters between Herbie Hancock and world-renowned musicians – including John Mayer, Sting, Trey Anastasio, Annie Lennox, Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan, Santana and Angelique Kidjo, Paul Simon, Christina Aguilera, Jonny Lang, Joss Stone, and Raul Midon. Herbie Hancock describes "Possibilities" this way: "This is a real collaboration that we’re doing here. It’s all been decided at the session, a record without borders, woven like a tapestry with many colors. The possibilities are endless"

Tags: placebo - mark knopfler - gotan project - emmylou harris - herbie hancock

NEWS: Ed Cone

We have had a great interview with Ed Cone for a while for the CIO Insight magazine, who published a very positive article about the ecenter case ("Insuring the future", great title :-).

Has has started a very interesting blog called Know it all (rss), have a look!

Tags: cio insight - ed cone

MUSIC: Montreux Jazz Festival 2006

After the 2004 and 2005 editions, I have reserved our tickets for the coming Montreux Jazz Festival on July 11. We will have the chance to be at two concerts:

• Fourplay


• Bassist: Nathan East


• Pianist: Bob James


• Drummer: Harvey Mason


• Guitarist: Larry Carlton


• Herbie Hancock

You can find the whole program here and buy the tickets online here.

Tags: fourplay - montreux jazz - herbie hancock

NEWS: New version of GoogleMaps France

[via Google Blog]

Great localized stuff!

We're excited to announce that we have just launched beta versions of Google Maps for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These sites include the full suite of interactive street maps, driving directions, and integrated local business search. This has been a global effort with Google teams in Paris, Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, New York, Mountain View, Kirkland, Sydney, London, Dublin, and Zurich working together for much of the past year to build a truly "local" product.

Tags: googlemaps - paris

OPEN SOURCE: About SAP, Oracle, SUN, IBM, CA

[via Marc]

Food for thoughts in this post from Tom Foremski. It is about software licencing, the new positioning of Oracle, the great and healthly pressure coming from Open Source Software models.

Mr Nolan's view is that Oracle is probably assembling a middleware stack and wants to use open-source components so that it can offer a subscription based pricing structure. This is exactly the direction that Sun Microsystems, Computer Associates and other IT vendors are moving towards.

He is right, we are coming to the end of the licensing model for enterprise IT software, and in Sun's case, John Loiacono, Sun's Software chief, told me late last year there would be a time when Sun would even throw in the server hardware for "free" as part of the monthly subscription price per user.

And SAP is riding that trend but so are others. IBM is very strong in middleware but Mr Nolan points out "this whole middleware stack is becoming commoditized very quickly." SAP's strategic strength is in its dominant position in enterprise applications and business process; and with a very broad customer base of more than 32,000 companies.

Oracle's strategy is based on the belief that owning the database is the key to owning the glass house of the IT organization. And its database is used by most of the Global 2000 enterprises, which is a trusted role.

It can try to commoditize the middleware through the use of open source components, and use the open-source platform to integrate its PeopleSoft and Siebel enterprise applications which would create a powerful alternative to SAP.

Oracle could hurt IBM because IBM does not have any enterprise applications. (BTW, Ray Lane, former president of Oracle and now a leading VC, at Kleiner-Perkins has advised IBM that it should acquire SAP. Otherwise its lack of apps will hurt its software business.)

IBM also has a large database business and a strong middleware business but the commoditization of middleware by Oracle and Sun mean that Steve Mills, IBM's Software chief, has to scramble higher up the stack. And for IBM that means automating business processes, and a creating a closer partnership with its top business consultants from its acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

SAP could become squeezed at the top by IBM's business process push–and Oracle pushing from its database customer base–into enterprise applications. Then there is the roll-your-own software brigade, or what I call skinny apps, custom crafted IT applications created by departments using powerful application development platforms. Jotspot and SocialText are examples of this type of technology, which will only improve over time.

Then there are the numerous web services applications companies using AJAX-type technologies that will allow organizations to create mashup suites of IT applications.

Tags: software - open source - oracle - ibm - sun

PICTURES: The sun

[via NASA]

Beautiful picture of the surface of the sun.

It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.

Tags: pictures

eCENTER: New SOA article in Computerworld

A new publication based on an interview we had last week with Heather Havenstein. You can find the article online or here as pdf.

Some extracts:

The Final Payoff

Despite the technical and cultural challenges of SOA, the returns can be substantial, successful users say.

SOA veteran Helvetia Patria Group, an insurance company in St. Gallen, Switzerland, has seen a 201% return on investment since launching its SOA six years ago. Helvetia officials said the SOA project cut IT costs for the company's Internet-based businesses by 59%.

Helvetia overcame the "tough exercise" of bringing developers on board by using a change management program from Hewlett-Packard Co., said Didier Beck, director of Helvetia's eBusiness Center.

Beck said the HP tools and services helped developers integrate 15 systems into a centralized SOA platform. "The way we are working today is really very different because before, there wasn't any contact between the different subsidiaries -- they had all their own development processes and tools," Beck said. "The consequences and impact were really quite high."

The new development processes included centralizing change management and software-release schedules, Beck said. In addition, the company now provides all new developers with six to 12 months of training at its eBusiness Center, where it centrally manages the SOA.

"An SOA implementation is really a journey," Beck said, "and you have to invest a lot before you can reach a new agility level."

Tags: ecenter solutions - HP - helvetia patria - computerworld

eCENTER: Other articles

The two Press Releases from HP (my post from April 11, 2006) were published at 4 other places:


HP unveils SOA architecture for financial services (pdf)


Helvetia Patria Doubles Return on Investment with HP Service-oriented Architecture (pdf)


HP introduces multi-market SOA frameworks (pdf)


Helvetia Patria Doubles Return on Investment with HP Service-oriented Architecture (pdf)

Tags: ecenter solutions - HP - helvetia patria

PRIVATE: First springtime week-end

First beautiful springtime week-end and a lot of stuff to do in the garden because of the bad and cold weather in the last time:

• first mowing (about 4 hours yesterday)


• tree-trunks to be cut after the last spring pruning (about 30 trees)


• preparation of the ground with compost for the future patches (tomatoes, zucchini, lettuces, raspberries, etc)


• re-initiating the water pump


• fertilizer for the plants

Gosh, my "back to the roots", I like that so much :-)

NEWS: Ray Ozzie, Live Drive vs. GDrive

[via TechCrunch]

TechCrunch posted about a really very informative, extensive and dense Fortune's article - Microsoft's new brain - about the role of Ray Ozzie by Microsoft, their new strategy, etc.

A must-read, if you would like to apprehend (partly) what is going on in Seattle.

Ray Ozzie by Microsoft

But the chairman and the CEO already had so much confidence in Ozzie - a renowned programmer who had created Lotus Notes, one of software's biggest triumphs - that he had become Gates' proxy. Since the retreat, Ozzie's responsibilities have expanded even further. The white-haired, soft-voiced 50-year-old is spearheading the companywide transformation agreed upon at Robinswood.

"I cannot overstate the importance of what Ray Ozzie has done here," Gates says. [...]

Put simply, Ozzie's assignment is to Webify everything: To intertwine Microsoft's entire product line - software for consumers, software for businesses, Xboxes, all of it - with the vast and ever-growing power of the Net.

"Everything we do should have a presence on the Web," Ozzie says. [...]

Ozzie can do what Gates no longer can - not only formulate strategy but also help implement it by working with the troops. People tell stories of the approachable Ozzie having long conversations with low-level programmers by the coffee machine about security strategies or other arcana.

"Ray brings people together in a way others don't," says Blake Irving, head of Internet communications products at MSN. "He's sort of a grand unifier across the company." [...]

But many of the company's leaders, including Gates, were impressed with the way Ozzie looked at technological challenges.

"Ray really starts with the customer," says Windows and MSN boss Kevin Johnson. "He looks at things 'outside in,' as he says, not technology-out."

Many executives now concede that Microsoft tended to take the opposite approach - focusing first on the technical possibilities and only later on what customers really wanted.

As a senior executive puts it, "Our customers buy our products in an integrated fashion, but we build them in a siloed fashion." [...]

Ozzie remembers "vigorous disagreement" over business models based on advertising revenue, vs. those based on transaction fees or traditional licensing.

"It's clear that in the consumer realm, online advertising is this new economic engine," says Ozzie. "It's not as obvious how that engine is applied in the enterprise market."

But the companywide excitement about the potential of online advertising is palpable. MSN's Blake Irving calculates that annual worldwide advertising spending amounts to about half-a-trillion dollars, vs. total software industry revenue of about $120 billion.

Live Drive vs. GDrive

Though he won't get very specific, Ozzie says that he is amazed at the amounts Microsoft is spending, and that the cost of building the physical infrastructure for Web services will be a major barrier limiting the number of players in this business.

"The people who could build a viable services infrastructure of scale," he says, "are companies that have both the will and the capacity to invest staggering amounts of money - staggering amounts." Think billions, many billions. [...]

Microsoft has to move before Google or even Yahoo! offers its own large-scale services for businesses over the Web. Up to now those companies have focused on consumers, but it's widely believed in Silicon Valley that Google, at least, will soon launch corporate e-mail services to exploit the infrastructure it's already built for Gmail.

(Google is rumored to have a million servers around the world and, according to a knowledgeable source, is already the top electricity user in at least one large U.S. state. Google would not comment.)

Microsoft is planning to use its server farms to offer anyone huge amounts of online storage of digital data. It even has a name for that future service: Live Drive. With Live Drive, all your information - movies, music, tax information, a high-definition videoconference you had with your grandmother, whatever - could be accessible from anywhere, on any device.

Google apparently has similar plans. An internal memo accidentally posted online in March spoke of company efforts to "store 100 percent of user data" and mentions an unannounced Net-storage system called GDrive.

Tags: microsoft - live drive - ray ozzie

BUSINESS: Volkswagen and Financial Services

You surely know Volkswagen...

• 330'000 employees worldwide


• 12'000 exclusive dealers worldwide


• 50'000 employees at the headquarter in Wolfsburg, Germany


• thereof 25'000 for production


• and 10'000 for R&D

Multi-branding...

Wolfsburg's factory

• 3'600 cars/day


• 1.6km2 (= area of Monaco)


• one production-line = 2.2km long


• 5'500 bicycles


• one car = 13 hours production time and 17 hours process time


• 90% of the production automated


• 95% of cars produced are already sold

...But did you know that

• at Volkswagen


• About 70% of all new Volkswagen cars are sold in combination with Financial Services!


• 2/3 of the profits of the VW Group were generated by the Financial Services in 2005!


• in Western Europe


• After real estate investments, the acquisition of a car is the 2nd biggest investment, done up to 10 times in a customer's lifecycle!


• About 70% of all cars in Western Europe are sold with a financing or leasing product.

...And did you know that

Dr. Bernd Pischetsrieder, Chairman of Managing Board Volkswagen AG, declared:

"...We have two strategic business fields:

1. The primary automobile service and


2. Life cycle services. Lifecycle services comprises customer-related services such as:


• Financing


• Leasing


• Rental


• Insurance

The relationship between the two strategic business fields is reciprocal."

Financial Services by Volkswagen

Crazy and very disturbing to see how far this very efficient, fully-automatized and huge car producer is now depending on....Financial Services.

A great example of fuzzy frontiers between Industries.

Tags: volkswagen - strategy

BUSINESS: Four agreements

[via Scoble]

I haven't known this code for life from Miguel Ruiz, good stuff.

Agreement 1

Be impeccable with your word - Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Agreement 2

Don’t take anything personally - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

Agreement 3

Don’t make assumptions - Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

Agreement 4

Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Tags: miguel ruiz

eCENTER: Another article, this time in InfoWorld

It's vital to ensure a balance between business and technology needs from the get-go.

Another great article about our ecenter story and our SOA approach published by InfoWorld, based on a great interview from China Martens made last week (link, pdf). The article is also mentionned on java.net.

Some abstracts (strange to quote myself ;-).

"One thing to understand is that the implementation of SOA takes time, it's a journey," Didier Beck, the head of eBusiness Center at Helvetia Patria, said Wednesday.

He cautioned against rushing headlong into an SOA deployment. Instead, he suggests a company spend time at the start of the project to come up with a vision followed by a road map with milestones for what it hopes to achieve both technically and in a business sense with the deployment. It's vital to ensure a balance between business and technology needs from the get-go, Beck added.

Goals for eBusiness Center included speeding up application development and promoting reuse of common components. Helvetia Patria also wanted to be able to develop applications that could then be used by a variety of distribution channels such as the Web and intranets instead of having to write applications separately for every channel.

Helvetia Patria went live with its first application developed based on eBusiness Center in February 2002, according to Beck. Since then, the company has put in place four to six new applications per year, he said. Development times for new applications are now between four and eight months, making development two to three times faster than was previously possible.

Update: the same article from China is also published at ComputerWolrd Australia (link, pdf).

Tags: ecenter solutions - infoworld - soa

OPEN SOURCE: Oracle considering acquiring Novell?

[via BetaNews]

Umh, that is interesting :-) Some remarks from Ellison about the acquisition of JBOss by RedHat. Have a look.

Oracle, most known for its database software, is considering whether to release its own Linux distribution, and has even discussed the possibility of buying Novell in the process. The news, revealed Monday by the Financial Times, follows the purchase of JBoss by Red Hat.

With JBoss providing software that competes in the business market with Oracle, Red Hat has become a potential rival. Red Hat is the largest distributor of the Linux operating system, which Oracle relies upon to sell its own products. "We have to re-look at the relationship; so does IBM," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told the FT.

"I'd like to have a complete stack," Ellison said, referring to both applications and the operating system they run on. "We're missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux."

According to the FT report, Oracle has even considered acquiring Novell, the second largest Linux vendor thanks to its purchase of SUSE. But at this point, such talk is merely explorative, Ellison says.

Tags: oracle - open source - redhat - jboss

BLOG: Off till Tuesday

Dear all
We are flying to the south of France in some hours, near Nice, exactly at Vence. Seems to be great, weather forecast is positive, break is needed!!

Happy Easter and take care.

eCENTER: Two HP Press Releases about our case

Hewlett-Packard published two press releases about our ecenter case. You can find both posts at the HP Newsroom or at Yahoo Finance:

• Helvetia Patria Doubles Return on Investment with HP Service-oriented Architecture (Yahoo, HP)


• HP Introduces Industry-specific Service-oriented Architectures (Yahoo, HP)

Some extracts:

"In the past, we were spending a significant amount of time and investment maintaining multiple IT environments that created more challenges than opportunities for us," said Didier Beck, head of the eBusiness Center, Helvetia Patria Group. "HP is a true partner who worked with us every step of the way to create a solution that could speed our entry into new sales channels and market segments." [...]

Helvetia Patria turned to HP to implement a centralized Internet-based platform for the insurance industry that links information among its employees, partners and customers across Europe. [...]

The resulting eBusiness Center helped Helvetia Patria by substantially decreasing time to market for new products and helping to expand distribution channels. Additionally, SOA opened new opportunities to expand partnerships (for example, with brokers and agents) and enter different segments of the insurance market.

The HP SOA also has helped the company lower business transaction costs by improving efficiencies through repeatable processes and consistent data on clients, policies, claims, benefits and accounting.

"Four years ago, we found ourselves dealing with a disarray of sales channels built on various software applications all across Europe," said Nick Stefania, deputy head, eBusiness Center, Helvetia Patria. "We used HP's SOA framework to help solve this problem, and after just months, our eBusiness Center has operated so successfully that we've spun it out into a standalone company, called eSolutions Center. The SOA has enabled more seamless communications between sales channels, better access to real-time information and, as a result, better service for customers. In short, the new architecture has definitely played a key role in the eSolutions Center's success."

Tags: ecenter solutions - HP - helvetia patria

NEWS: ReHat acquires JBoss

[via BetaNews]

Linux vendor Red Hat announced Monday it has entered into an agreement to acquire JBoss, maker of middleware, or software that connects disparate systems and applications to facilitate faster and cheaper development. Red Hat will pay $350 million in cash and stock for the company, with another $70 million payout based on performance.

With the acquisition, Red Hat says it will transition to service-oriented architectures (SOA) in order to enable running next-generation Web applications atop a low-cost open source platform. JBoss has a similar business model to Red Hat, offering service and support for its open source middleware applications.

Have a look also at the official press release from RedHat.

Tags: redhat - jboss

PICTURES: Home sweet home under snow

I have told you here that we had exceptionnal snowfalls on March 5, 2006. About 60 cm within 24 hours, which blocked completely the whole streets. Some pictures from this day, after the snowfall.

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Tags: pictures

eCENTER: logo :-)

We have finally managed to fix our logo within our office last week :-)

Tags: ecenter solutions

eCENTER: Laurent again nominated as MVP

Laurent, who is working with us at ecenter solutions since October 2002, announced the great news on last Wednesday:

I was renewed as Microsoft MVP in the category Visual Developer - ASP/ASP.NET.

MVP means Most Valuable Professional, have a look at the MVP profile of Laurent and the definition of this Microsoft's program.

Laurent is also the founder and editor of one of the most valuable and well-known French portal about Microsoft .NET technologies, Tech Head Brothers, where about 11 MVP's are now publishing regularly.


We are all very honoured to have you on board!

Tags: ecenter solutions - techheadbrothers

BUSINESS: The 80/8 rule

[via Seth Godin]

Time after time, I am more and more confronted with smart, experienced but quite arrogant business people who "know exactly and perfectly how to manage successfully their business". And, sure, they are bringing the best products to their customers. And you know what? Their customers are t-o-t-a-l-l-y happy with their products. And, yes, they know e-x-a-c-t-l-y how the business will develop in the coming years.

I am sure I have missed something here...

My perception was, is and will be that the world is changing *very* fast, that you have to be *very* careful each time you think you can rest yourself, these could be the last minutes before you disappear.

My perception was, is and will be that you have to be quite paranoiac and humble in the current business world because it is full of very smart, cheap, experienced and hungry competitors. Success is also so much linked with ... luck :-)

I was very happy to read this post from Seth Godin, which is greatly representing what my thoughts are in this field:

A study by Bain & Company found that 80 percent of companies surveyed believed that they delivered a "superior experience" to their customers. But, when customers were asked to indicate their perceptions of the experiences they have in dealing with companies, they rated only 8 percent of companies as truly delivering a superior experience

Tags: seth godin

NEW: Helvetia Patria - Best results ever

Helvetia Patria Group, the Holding ecenter solutions is integrated in, published yesterday *impressive* record results for 2005 (IFRS standards):

• Best results ever in the long 148 years history of Helvetia Patria


• Premium volume: CHF 5'177 mio (2004: +6.5%)


• After tax profit: CHF 302 mio (2004: +35% )


• Net Combined Ratio: 94.0% (-3.8% pts.)


• Shareholders' equity: CHF 2'481 mio


• Return on Equity: +13.4%

Financial analysts were surprised by the level of profit, they expected an after tax profit of about CHF 200 mio :-) Consequently, the Helvetia Patria share (HEPN) gained yesterday exactly ... 10.7%, in one day :-) This, after an outstanding performance in 2005 (price rise of 64.1% in 2005). I have already told you, you can buy these shares ;-)

The Group also decided to launch a single-brand throughout its subsidiaries. Below the new coming logo:



You can find more details about the results here.

Tags: helvetia patria

BUSINESS: ING Direct

Do you know ING Direct? You are perhaps already a customer of this Internet bank, who knows ;-)

ING Direct is a kind of Easy Jet of the Bank Industry. Their approach is quite fascinating, have a look:

• Their case:


• only a few simple products: mortgages, funds, savings account


• cheap distribution


• usage of internet


• customer contacts with the bank exclusively through internet / phone / mail


• 8.5 million customers


• €100 bn in assets


• assets increasing by $500 millions ...per month


• 1/3 of the operating budget is invested in marketing


• the customer acquisition costs are very low, about $100/customer instead of $400 (market average)


• 38% of new acquisitions coming from ...word of mouth


• 10% of inbound calls resulting in sales


• a contract through call-center is 100 times more expensive than a contract on internet


• if a client is calling too often, ING Direct gets rid of him

Tags: ing direct

OPEN SOURCE: Two new open source projects for JBoss

JBoss announced last week that it is integrating two new open source projects to extent its JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS):

• JBoss Messaging


• JBoss Web Server

Have a look at the press release (pdf).

JBoss, Inc., the Professional Open Source company, today introduced two open source projects designed to further strengthen the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS) as the leading open source platform for service-oriented architecture (SOA): JBoss Messaging and JBoss Web Server (JBoss Web). These new technologies move JBoss further into the high-end market, which has long been presided over by expensive, proprietary application platforms. [...]

JBoss Messaging 1.0 implements a high-performance, robust messaging core designed to support the largest and most heavily utilized SOAs, enterprise service buses (ESB) and other integration needs ranging from the simplest to the highest demand networks. [...]

JBoss Web provides enterprises with a single, high-performance deployment platform for Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java Servlet technologies, Microsoft ASP.NET, PHP and CGI. It uses an innovative, high-performance hybrid design that incorporates the best open source technologies for processing high-volume data with market-leading support for important Java Enterprise Edition (EE) specifications. This hybrid technology model makes JBoss Web one of the fastest and most scalable Web servers on the market. JBoss Web is built on Apache Tomcat - the de facto standard JSP/Servlet container - and incorporates the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and a Tomcat native layer to achieve dramatic scalability improvements, including the ability to handle over 10,000 concurrent connections.

Tags: jboss

NEWS: Complete list of April 1, 2006

Wikipedia is great, really. They also published a funny list of 2006 April hoaxes.

I find that this year was a good year, some great stuff.

Have a look, as an example, at this press release from Blizzard (the company which developped great video games as World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo, etc.) about ... burgercraft :-)

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today unveiled BurgerCraft™, introducing the company’s latest business venture and revealing many details about the plans for its company-owned restaurant chain. The grand opening of the first BurgerCraft restaurant is set to take place on June 1, 2006 in downtown Los Angeles, California. At BurgerCraft, players will have a chance to truly taste the flavor of Blizzard's games and savor traditional dishes from all the company’s popular game universes. BurgerCraft will be open to customers of all ages and will provide a fun environment for the whole family. [...]
The BurgerCraft menu will include:

• Red Dragon Wings (extra spicy buffalo chicken wings – epic!)


• Arbiter (iceberg salad w/ grilled chicken breast served in an arbiter-shaped bowl)


• Marine Wedges (spicy potato wedges w/ sour cream)


• Zealot Fries (french fries with “special” sauce to stimulate your psychic potential)


• Yamato Burger


• Norad II Burger

Tags: blizzard - April 2006

BLOG: Statistics and some news

Only 14 posts in March, sorry, I am feeling quite drained, a lot of operative stuff and, at the same time, the preparation of our new exciting strategy :-)

Anyway, and although the low posting, this blog received more than 75'000 unique visitors in March, visitors who generated more than 106'000 pageviews (first time over 100'000 pv monthly) and 12 GB transferred. Thanks again for your trust and your interest.

By the way, I still have a *lot* of pictures from Anguilla and St.Barth to post. But, this will be also annoying for myself .... to see them again. Pfuuuu.

Take care!

Tags: statistics