The Weblog of Vincent Oberle - Thoughts and opinions about technology and business

Archive for December, 2004

The Skype API, Jyve and some new discussion solutions

Tuesday, December 21st, 2004

Did you notice the little picture on the right bar under “Contact me”? It indicates my status in Skype, like if I’m online, offline, away, etc. If you click on it, it gives you the possibility to call me (on Skype or on my mobile phone with SkypeOut) or leave me a message.
It’s done through […]

Microsoft competing with the iPod: Use the phone advantage

Monday, December 20th, 2004

An interesting discussion got started by Robert Scoble on how Microsoft could seriously compete with the iPod (good answer by Brandon Paddoc too).
There are the same differences between Microsoft and Apple as in the computer business. In both the music player and the computer world, Apple has the advantage of doing the platform and selling […]

Doing it right instead of being early

Wednesday, December 15th, 2004

Your customers may tell you they want your product now, but don’t listen to them. They want the product to be ready, that means solid, stable, secure enough for them to use it and if your customers are corporate, to provide themselves a competitive advantage, not put them into trouble.
If you release early, but your […]

Et Cetera: Blogging in France, Podcasting, TV-B-Gone…

Sunday, December 12th, 2004

First, let me point out that blogging made the first page of a big French national newspaper this weekend (plus 3 full pages inside). France is really getting aware of blogging, or at least the French press (it’s a bit slower by my colleagues…).
I wrote about podcasting earlier. One of my favorite podcast is the […]

Explaining blogging

Friday, December 10th, 2004

I’ve had a lot of discussion around blogging today with people at work. First I did a little presentation on what is blogging (slides available here) to some of my colleagues.
It’s not something that easy to explain actually, but I think I managed to create a little interest. There is still a lot of […]

PalmSource acquiring Linux software maker China MobileSoft

Wednesday, December 8th, 2004

Interesting news came in today in the world of the smartphone operating systems: PalmSource, the maker of Palm OS, is acquiring China MobileSoft, a Chinese company that has a complete Linux solution for smartphones (from experience at kernel and driver level to the applications).
Previously there had been some rumors of PalmOne, the maker of the […]

Decentralized social networking (or about FOAF)

Monday, December 6th, 2004

In my precedent post, I wrote about mobile presence and having a mobile address. Note that it would be better called “universal address”, as it unifies all the contact addresses one has.
Julien Boyreau (where’s your blog?) pointed out in the comments that FOAF would be a pretty good solution for representing this contact information.
From the […]

Mobile Presence or the “mobile address” as the universal contact info

Saturday, December 4th, 2004

On Russell Beattie blog I read about dotMP offering and the .mp (as in mobile phone) domain.

It’s not just a domain, it’s an entire online mobile presence centered around the mobile phone and a short domain name.

Since it’s very new, oberle.mp and even vincent.mp are still available.
So instead of giving out my phone number […]