Alicia Keys at the Montreux Jazz Festival

I had the chance to be at the Montreux Jazz Festival on Thursday, July 17, with my friend Manu, the CEO of Boomerang. This year, Manu has chosen the concert and wanted to see Alicia Keys. I haven’t really known Alicia, excepted the 3 hits everybody knows ;-)

And what for a great surprise! The concert was just fantastic! First, Alicia was introduced very nicely by … Mister Quincy Jones himself. Wow, what for an honor! Absolutely great band and musicians, extremely soul and “motown” oriented, less “over-produced” than in her albums. Alicia Keys is really a marvelous singer, with a lot of good energy. And a special mention for her groove. Come on!!!

 

© Lionel Flusin © Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation

© Lionel Flusin © Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation

© Lionel Flusin © Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation

So, if you have the opportunity to see and listen to Alicia Keys at a concert, do not hesitate!

Google vs. Cuil

via Seth Godin

Seth is comparing both search engines, not on a functional or on a “index-size” level, but on an “icon” level.

Interesting, and, in my opinion, true!

Markets love icons. We seek them out. […]

Once there's an icon in place, it's there because it's working. It serves a purpose, it carries useful information and performs a valuable function. There will never (or not for a generation, anyway) be the next Marilyn Monroe because this Marilyn Monroe isn't broken.

Google, of course, is the Marilyn Monroe of search.  […]

The challenge for organizations is this: the easiest projects to start and fund are those that go after existing icons. The search for the "next" is easy to explain and exciting to join because we can visualize the benefits. But success keeps going to people who build new icons, not to those that seek to replace the most successful existing ones.

The current claimed differentiations (privacy, size of index) are perhaps not so evident, so that cuil can win enough market-shares against google.

IBM announces plans to acquire ILOG

Wow, again, a big consolidation in the Software industry!

IBM and ILOG today announced they have signed an agreement regarding a proposed acquisition by IBM of ILOG to be implemented by way of concurrent cash public tender offers in both France and the United States. Through this proposed transaction, IBM will combine its business process management (BPM), business optimization, and service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies with ILOG’s Business Rules Management Systems software. This will enable IBM to help clients deliver critical business information in real-time, allowing them to make better business decisions faster.

The cash tender offer will be at a price of €10 per ordinary share and the U.S. dollar equivalent per American Depositary Share (“ADS”) based on the Euro/U.S. dollar exchange rate as of the settlement of the tender offers, amounting to an aggregate purchase price of approximately €215 million or approximately $US340 million on a fully diluted basis. This price represents a premium of approximately 56 percent compared to ILOG's one month average of closing share prices prior to July 28, 2008, and a 37 percent premium to the closing price of Friday, July 25.

ILOG’s board of directors has approved the transaction between the two companies and, subject to the receipt of a satisfactory fairness opinion regarding the financial terms of the offer, is expected to give a final recommendation prior to September 15, following which the offer should be filed with the French stock exchange authority (AMF).

You can find the press release here.

My Digital Identity certified by MyID.is

Charles Nouÿrit (I have met him at the last leweb3 – cgs dinner last year) kindly asked me to join the private pre-alpha-test of MyID.is.

 

What is MyID.is?

MyID.is trying to answer a simple question, how can we provide our users with a digital ID that have been certified with the same level of trust as if we met in real life with a valid ID delivered by a government administration but without the need to actually meet in real life?

By certifying your ID you’ll be able to certify all of your online presence, such as your blogs, your Facebook, LinkedIn… profiles, your comments,… and any kind of online presence that is part of your Identity 2.0.

After months of developing our solution, we are now ready to open our platform to the public.

Status of my certification and first feedback

 

Since Friday, July 25, I am a certified user and I have a certified Digital Identity :-)

The whole certification costs some EUR and is very simple to follow. So, till now, everything is fine.

Congrats to the MyID team for the preparation work.

I have already started to play around with the badges and I could already certified my blog ;-)

You can follow the project on their blog here and on twitter here.

PS: and yes, MyID is clearly supporting interoperable data portability (dataportability.org)

Happy sysadmin appreciation day, Olivier!!

Today, July 25 2008, is … the System Administrator Appreciation Day!!

As a reminder, what is a sysadmin

 

A sysadmin unpacked the server [...] from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. [...]

A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. [...]

A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers [...]

[...] A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work -- to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So, now, as you see again what we are talking about, what is this sysadmin appreciation day?

 

What is this sysadmin day?

 

Consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends too.) Let's be honest, sometimes we don't know our System Administrators as well as they know us. Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence. Thank them for all the things they do for you and your business.

By us at Innoveo, we have Olivier, our sysadmin!

 

So for us at Innoveo, we have Olivier, our sysadmin :-)

Olivier: this is your day. Umh, already finished, but anyway!

 

Illustrations!

 

Olivier, as usual, kissing his servers ;-)

Network cable sorting exercise

Sometimes, you have to be alone to solve some prod issues…And, at the same time, others are just eating a great dinner. Pfffuuuu….

But, after the effort, some comfort…and cigars. Guess with whom ;-)

It seems that we still have some “room for improvement”. Gosh!

OLIVIER HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD SYSADMIN DAY ;-)

What Marc Fleury is now doing

via CAOS Theory

Marc Fleury, the founder and former CEO of jBoss, has left RedHat after some months of incorporation. He seems now again to be quite busy with his next project called OpenRemote.

The OpenRemote team also includes the creator of Asterisk Mark Spencer, JBoss veterans Juha Lindfors, Christian Bauer, Java X10 project creator Wade Wassenberg, and Linux Home Automation founder Neil Cherry.

Together they, and others, plan to create a complete open source home automation including the OpenRemote Controller hardware, OpenRemote Console Applications to make use of the iPhone and iTouch as a universal remote (although any device with browser will work), the OpenRemote Manager, and the Beehive Database.

“Figuring out the business model, this is one thing I can help with. But for right now, let’s focus on a community. Without a community, there is no OSS model. The community is what you do with it.”

Exciting idea and project!

Yesterday evening…

Wheat field

 

And corn field

Innoveo Launches New Corporate Identity

Dear customers, partners and friends

After 9 exciting and successful months on the market, we are proud to introduce our new corporate identity. It now represents our personality, culture, spirit and soul in a more appropriate way, as it has been built on our company’s…

VALUES /

• INNOVATION
• QUALITY, PROFESSIONALISM AND TRANSPARENCY
• TRUST AND RESPECT
• DYNAMISM AND FUN

MISSION /

• ENABLING BUSINESS INNOVATION

VISION /

• BE RESPECTED LEADERS IN CONNECTING THE INSURANCE BUSINESS WITH TECHNOLOGY

 

Find below our new Logo and get additional information about our CONSULTING SERVICES and our insurance framework INNOVEO SKYE by visiting our new company WEBSITE.

 

We are looking forward to a continuous successful co-operation and collaboration with you all under our new brand!

For the Innoveo Team,

Didier

PS1: a BIG THANK to Laurent for the great and efficient .Net implementation.

PS2: another BIG THANK to Andreas Koch, our absolutely great designer, for his support, commitment, and creativity.

PS3: another THANK to evaluant for their great Open Source product, EUSS (Evaluant Universal Storage Services).

PS4: and the last THANK to wygwam for their great help in the field of CSS.