Didier Beck's Weblog

ST BARTH DAY2: Saint Jean and Do Brazil

2010-02-08T04:14:00.001+01:00

Sitting on the terrace, 22:30, still 25°C, having a good cigar after a super dinner at Do Brazil. Had a Sex on the Beach cocktail (excellent!), a beef Tataki on fresh pink ginger with hand-made French fries :-) And a ginger rhum at the end. By the way, yesterday I had a fantastic Ti-Punch with a very interesting old rhum.

We were at the Saint Jean beach this morning, first swimming in the ocean (26°C). Just marvelous. We have met also two friends that are on the island since 4 months (lucky!!). Was not organized, but as usual, everything happens here in a “cool” way ;-)

Saint Jean beach

Landing at Saint Barth from the ocean

Another view from the villa

Playing with my EOS 5d MarkII with my new EF 35mm f/1.4L lens. ISO 200, f/9.

View from the villa by night

Same configuration, with a tripod. ISO 3200, f/4.5 , exposure time: 20s.

Stars in the sky

With the same configuration, I have taken also some pictures from the sky. No cloud but a crazy number of stars. Almost no light “polluting”. ISO: 6400, f/6.3 , exposure time: 30s.

As you see, life is hard here!

ST BARTH DAY1 - Knockin’ on Heaven’s door

2010-02-07T03:20:00.003+01:00

Wow, posting from the terrace of our rent villa in Saint Barth :-) 26°C, some wind, listening to Placebo. It’s now fully dark, beautiful sky with a lot of stars.

Wifi is perfectly working, with a better bandwidth as the one I have at home (download 335Kb/s, upload 130 Kb/s).

It’s 22:15 local time, i.e. we are up since … 23 hours. Which is good to forget the jetlag as fast as possible.

The travel was the faster ever, really no issue this time, including all our luggage on time. We were at Saint Barth at 15:45 this afternoon. So enough time to get the car (a Mini Cooper Cab), go to the villa, have a first quick dip in the swimming-pool, get some food at the supermarket for the breakfast tomorrow, and go to the first restaurant. As usual, we have started with a visit at the Hideaway. And a first walk at the Saint Jean beach by night after the dinner. Already seen/met a lot of “known faces” and friends on the island.

View from the Airbus before landing at Saint Marteen

View from the terrace

A part of the swimming-pool, overhanging the Saint Jean Bay

Weather forecast is quite good for the coming days here. It seems that a lot of flights from New-York were canceled due to some snowstorms…

The difference of temperature between Saint Barth and Zurich could reach about 40°C in 2-3 days :-)

Everything is just *fantastic*, as usual here…

Time to go to bed now. My son will be up very early tomorrow, to go to the beach.

On my way to Saint Barth!!

2010-02-05T20:21:00.001+01:00

Dear colleagues, friends, partners, competitors, customers, readers,

As you know, I am waiting for this moment for quite a while!

We have the chance again to visit our “second home-sweet-home”. I cannot say how far I am happy to be there with my wife and my son. To have the time for them. To think about something else as the business and Innoveo (although I love that ;-).

No holidays since last August, quite a long time…

So a good chance for a “hardware” reset, a re-load and recharging.

I wish you all a very good time, take care!

PS: yes, I should be able to publish some pictures & stories from *the* island ;-) Stay tuned!

Bugatti Veyron at the Autocar National Museum

2010-01-24T17:30:00.002+01:00

What for a car!

Seen at the Autocar National Museum of Mulhouse, France last week.

Alsace nominated as one of the Top10 regions to visit!

2010-01-22T10:57:00.000+01:00

via Lonely Planet

Crazy! In its “fifth eagerly-awaited annual collection of the best places to go and the best things to do around the world for the year ahead”, Lonely Planet, one of the most worldwide renowned source for travelers, has nominated my region, Alsace, as one of the Top 10 Regions to visit in 2010!!

As one of the Top 10 Regions for 2010, Southwest Western Australia “offers variety in spades,” Lonely Planet’s book says. […] Other regions to make the list are Alsace, Bali, Fernando Noronha, Goa, Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, Lake Baikal, Oaxaca, Southern Africa and The Lake District.

For those who don’t know Lovely Planet:

For over 30 years, Lonely Planet has inspired and guided independent travellers to explore the world around them. Our team of expert travel writers are all about on-the-ground research and no-holds-barred opinion. Lonely Planet is passionate about responsible travel and encourages people to make their impact as positive as possible. Whether it be through our trustworthy guidebooks, innovative downloadable digital guides, award-winning website or cutting-edge television programmes, Lonely Planet aims to inspire life-changing travel, where every minute can hold a new experience.

Rehearsal re-launch

2010-01-19T00:05:00.001+01:00

As you may know, I am a “very-amateur” drummer. I have first learned and played percussion in a classical band. And then, played drums in a pop/blues band. Almost nobody knew us, excepted our friends and family, but hey, we had a lot of fun just to play together.

After a long break we have started to rehearse again together. And it brings a lot of pleasure and fun!

We have launched our rehearsals with some Sade and Womack & Womack tracks :-)

Cool.

SmugMug 2009, comparison with Flickr

2010-01-17T13:58:00.001+01:00

Introduction

As you may know, I have left the Flickr service, where I had a Pro Account, for more than one year (in December 2008). Actually, I haven’t deactivated my Flickr account, it is “just” a normal account now, as I didn’t want to break different links on my photostreams. Some limitations are now appearing on my Flickr, i.e.:

upload of 100 MB monthly and 10MB per photo
2 videos per month
only smaller resized picture accessible
only the most recent 200 photos are shown.

So, it is clear that I cannot use anymore this service. On the other side, it’s free!

Comparison Flickr vs. SmugMug

So let’s compare a bit more the different services (SmugMug and Flickr).

Disclaimer: this comparison is a mix of facts and my own subjective rating of both services (still as users from both during months).

CORPORATE	FLICKR	SMUGMUG
Overall information	sold to Yahoo! in March 2005, founders left in 2008	independent, profitable and debt-free
Number of employees	around 50	50
Number of photos	4’000 million	766 million
Founding year	2004	2002

STANDARD SERVICE	FLICKR	SMUGMUG
monthly upload limit	100 MB	unlimited
limit per photo	10 MB	12 MB
max. video duration	90s	not supported in “standard”
max. video size	150 MB	not supported in “standard”
shown size (photo)	smaller resized images	no reducing resolution
number of photos shown	last 200	unlimited
gallery personalization	no	yes, very nice
slideshows	yes, but limited	yes, lots of customization possible
costs per year	free, but with ads	$40

PRO SERVICE	FLICKR	SMUGMUG
monthly upload limit	unlimited	unlimited
limit per photo	20 MB	24 MB
max. video duration	90s	10 mn
max. video size	500 MB	600 MB
HD supported	720p	1080p
storage limit	unlimited	unlimited
bandwidth limit	unlimited	unlimited
statistics	yes	yes (far better)
customization	no	fully, including hostname
batch organization	yes, but limited	yes, extremely powerful
costs per year	$25	$150 (an intermediary “Power” level exists for $60/year)

I am wondering, based on this tables, if it would not have been better to compare the “Pro” service from Flickr with the “Standard” level of SmugMug…

Anyway, you feel perhaps how far both services are different. Perhaps also not with the same target groups/segmentation of customers.

Why I have left Flickr

I have left Flickr for mainly three reasons:

The huge functional differences between Flickr and SmugMug
The lack of innovation and service updates at Flickr. In the last months, nothing happened at Flickr. SmugMug is principally launching new functions and testing new ideas each month!
I was impacting by all the controversies and censorship stories (Thomas Hawk is relating some of them here and here) around Yahoo!/Flickr.

It is clear that the price differences is really huge between both services, but you get something from what you are paying!

Impact of having moved to SmugMug

First, it was quite easy to migrate from Flickr to SmugMug, as you can find a Firefox extension to automatically migrate all your pictures from your Flickr account to SmugMug. The tool is called “SmuggLr” and it is free.

Secondly, based on my SmugMug Pro Account, I have created a new subdomain called “visuals.didierbeck.com” of my own blog “www.didierbeck.com”. Both are now similar from each others, although I am definitely not finished with the customization. I will perhaps also merge both (blog and visuals) in the coming time. All my pictures and videos are now published under the “visuals” subdomains.

Thirdly, and perhaps the most interesting: the effect of having done these changes had a *huge* impact on the traffic of my pictures! I had about 18’000 views on my Flickr pictures within 2 years. I was many times above 100’000 views per month in 2009 on SmugMug! More data about this just below.

Some statistics of my SmugMug in 2009

Some data about 2009 on visuals.didierbeck.com:

Number of image views: 755’000
Monthly average in the last 6 months: 105’000
Number of image views linked with Saint Barth: 620’000 (!), i.e. 82% of the overall views (!!)
Highest traffic in December with more than 130’000 image views
Highest image views in a day (since mid November): December 6 with 18’910 views in one day…
Bandwidth used during the year: 82 GB
Highest bandwidth usage in July with more than 20 GB
Most viewed photo since mid November (with about 8’500 views just on this one):

Visualization of the traffic during the last 12 months:

Presentation Zeitgeist 2009 @ SlideShare

2010-01-16T21:34:00.002+01:00

SlideShare has published its “ruling trends in the world of presentations for the year gone by”. Funny, interesting, well done!

Some highlights:

The average number of slides in a presentation: 19.3
The maximum number of slides: 1’375 (!)
Presentation typography: Arial 42%, Times New Roman 22% (!), Wingdings 17%
Average number of pages per language: max = French with 38 :-)
Presentation formats: PPT 61%, PPTX 17%, PPS 14%
Average number of pictures: 19, average size of picture: 205 kb
7% of all presentations without a single image!
Average size of presentation: 5.4 MB

SlideShare Zeitgeist 2009

View more documents from Rashmi Sinha.

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

Local and Saint Barth weather forecast…

2010-01-08T11:20:00.001+01:00

What’s the better place to be now, and for the next days?

Still too early for me ;-)

Local

Saint Barth

Countdown started for Saint Barth :-)

2010-01-06T08:09:00.001+01:00

We are extremely lucky to be able to travel to Saint Barth again this year…

Our last visit there was in February 2009. I have the feeling it’s 5 years back!

We were quite lucky last year when we have reserved the villa we will be in in some days (a renovated villa that was just put on the renting market). I think it’s from far the most beautiful villa we have rented. With an absolutely crazy view on the Saint Jean Bay, the Eden Rock hotel, and the airport. Have a look below…

So, in exactly 30 days, we will be on this terrace!

Laurent is a Certified ScrumMaster!

2010-01-05T16:10:00.003+01:00

As you may know, we are more and more using Scrum as a team-based framework for developing our Skye® standard software product (front-end solution for insurances) at Innoveo.

What is Scrum? (ScrumAlliance definition)

Scrum: A team-based framework to develop complex systems and products.

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for developing any product or managing any work. It allows teams to deliver a potentially shippable set of functionality every iteration, providing the agility needed to respond to rapidly changing requirements.

The Scrum framework constantly challenges its users to focus on improvement, and its Sprints provide the stability to address the ever-changing needs that occur in any project.

These characteristics have led to Scrum becoming the most popular method in the world of agile software development.

We are consequently very proud to inform you that Laurent Kempé, who is acting as our Innoveo ScrumMaster besides being our internal “Scrum champion”, has successfully passed his ScrumMaster certification!

Congratulation to Laurent for this nice step and recognition.

Next step is now to apply for the next level: Certified Scrum Practitioner, as shown below (ScrumAlliance certification process):

cross-posted on the Innoveo blog

Seesmic has acquired ping.fm

2010-01-05T08:33:00.001+01:00

Loic LeMeur, the CEO of Seesmic, announced yesterday that his company has acquired ping.gm. As a “happy-user” of both services, I find this acquisition definitely interesting ;-)

I am using Twhirl as a Windows Twitter client, and the ping.fm service to spread my updates to LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo and FriendFeed.

We're happy to share with you very big news if you have not heard. We've acquired Ping.fm. Get ready to update 50 social networks from Seesmic.
[…] Ping.fm has more than half a million active users who post daily from any device just by sending an email, a text message or chat - simple tools that existed since the early stages of the Internet are available on all connected devices. This is why Ping.fm is extremely easy to use and access -just send an update and it can touch on 50 social networks including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, WordPress, TypePad, Yammer, Status.net and many more. Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which is why it has become so successful among thousands of users.
[…]
Thanks to its powerful and simple API, more than a hundred applications already use Ping.fm to update all the main social networks and Seesmic commits to maintaining and improving the Ping.fm platform. Not only has Twhirl supported Ping.fm for about a year, but we are also preparing to open Seesmic apps with our own plug-in architecture so we understand and care about the developer community. Ping.fm co-founders, Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough, are joining the Seesmic team full time and will keep improving Ping.fm as well as integrating it with our Seesmic applications. The number one request from Ping.fm users is to have more powerful clients support postings to their social networks, so they should be pleased to know Seesmic applications will be adding this functionality.
Seesmic is also welcoming ping.fm angel investors as shareholders and advisors Joi Ito (@joi), Reid Hoffman (@quixotic) who was already a Seesmic shareholder and Mohamed Nanabhay (@mohamed). Seesmic applications on Blackberry, Android, Web, Windows and OSX via Air will all have advanced Ping.fm integration very shortly and therefore will instantly support 50 social networks.

[via Loic’s information mail]

A wonderful 2010 to everyone!

2009-12-31T14:07:00.001+01:00

Winter time

2009-12-21T22:02:00.001+01:00

This week-end was quite special. We had first -12°C during the day on Saturday. Then -14°C during the night from Saturday to Sunday.

Sunday was much more warm, about -3°C, but with 15 cm snow and a very strange light.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF17-40, ISO 3200, post-prod with DxO Optics Pro v6.1)

Some other pictures on visuals.didierbeck.com.

Lamp from the 70s

2009-12-19T22:26:00.001+01:00

What a strange “object” :-)

Saint Barth Portfolio 2009 (wrap up) – February 2009

2009-12-15T12:28:00.002+01:00

Finally the wrap up/poster of my Saint Barth Portfolio 2009.

I have started to publish this portfolio on June 18, 2009 with this post.

The idea was the following:

I will publish 2 pictures from each region of the island per post. Force to choose ;-)

I hope I haven’t bothered you too much with these 16 posts!

I really had to finish, as the countdown is running for our next stay in Saint Barth (February 2010)! About 50 days to go :-)

More than 5’000 pictures uploaded on SmugMug

2009-12-13T21:01:00.001+01:00

I have passed the 5’000 pictures uploaded on SmugMug / visuals.didierbeck.com in about one year.

I *really* like SmugMug more and more. Still discovering a lot of very useful functionalities there. So happy to have left Flickr!

It seems that you like it too, as the traffic there is increasing more and more :-) I have now almost the same number of “photos viewed” as “pageviews” on this blog, i.e. more than 100’000 per month for each. Gosh!

Thanks for your interest!

Saint Barth Portfolio 2009 (15) – February 2009

2009-12-11T08:10:00.001+01:00

The second to last post about my Saint Barth 2009 portfolio!

Happy Friday ;-)

Villa L’Abri-côtier

Rainbow over Saint Jean

2009-12-08T08:06:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, I had a look at one of my preferred Saint Barth webcam, over Saint Jean Bay.

It was about 08.20 in Saint Barth, and … a rainbow appeared on the left side of the picture. It was then great to observe how the rainbow has evolved. Nice moment :-)

Saint Barth Portfolio 2009 (14) – February 2009

2009-12-06T23:55:00.001+01:00

Continuing the Saint Barth 2009 portfolio…

Toiny

The “wild” side of Saint Barth. Great walks. First time this year!

First snow in Zurich today

2009-11-30T23:11:00.002+01:00

SmugMug statistics from November

2009-11-30T23:06:00.001+01:00

Again, quite an high traffic on my visuals this month :-)

Second time over 100’000 views per month. And more than 600’000 pictures & video viewed since January…

Wow, thanks for your interest, don’t deserve that!

Saint Barth Portfolio 2009 (13) – February 2009

2009-11-27T08:01:00.001+01:00

In a way, this morning, I need to see some Saint Barth pictures ;-)

Have a good Friday!

Shell beach

Montreux Jazz Festival 2010

2009-11-22T22:00:00.001+01:00

Romero Britto creates the poster of the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival.

His art celebrates life and stands for vitality and joy. Born in Brazil, Romero Britto lived an extremely modest lifestyle while growing up amongst eight brothers and sisters in Recife. Nowadays he is one of the most renowned Neo Pop artists worldwide. His paintings and sculptures combine elements of Cubism, Pop Art and Graffiti. Britto created the Festival’s poster already in 1999 for its 33rd edition and the logo of the Festival’s archives Montreux Sounds. Painted in strong and fresh colors, the poster for the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival represents a boy with guitar and his dog. Romero Britto, who currently lives in Miami, is an artistic activist for charitable and cultural organizations, he supports as well the Montreux Jazz Fondation 2.

The official news can found here.

Saint Barth Portfolio 2009 (12) – February 2009

2009-11-22T21:46:00.001+01:00

Still not in St Barth. 70 days left to go.