Damien Van Achter

Je n’ai ni MBA en économie ni master en ingénierie fiscale, mais cela fait un petit bout de temps maintenant que j’observe et apprends à comprendre les dynamiques et les mécaniques financières liées au lancement d’un produit, d’un service … essentiellement dans le domaine des nouvelles technologies, boulot oblige. (more…)

Billet rédigé pour le prochain bulletin mensuel de l’AJP (Association des Journalistes Professionnels de Belgique)

Quel point commun y-a-t-il entre un journaliste qui, après avoir fait son boulot d’investigation, rend public les dysfonctionnements d’un système (démocratique, juridique, religieux, etc.) et un hacker qui, après avoir lui aussi investigué, met en ligne la description d’une faille d’un système informatique ?

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Voici quelques articles dont la pertinence/l’intérêt m’ont marqué au cours des derniers jours. Faites-en bon usage ! :-) (more…)

Voici quelques articles dont la pertinence/l’intérêt m’ont marqué au cours des derniers jours. Faites-en bon usage ! :-)

• Personal brands vs. corporate brands: Who are the real superstars? (via @owyang ) – It’s always interesting to see when superstars emerge out of existing brands. And it is fascinating to watch when they choose to leave for something new.
• TableSurfing: You’ll never eat alone again … (via @TheAfter) – Tablesurfing is a bit like Couchsurfing, but then with tables…
• Kazaa founder Kevin Bermeister turns music piracy fighter – A few short years ago, Kevin Bermeister was the music industry’s public enemy number one, pursued by lawyers and private investigators over his file sharing business Kazaa. Now Mr Bermeister, who paid out a reported $150 million in a 2005 legal settlement with the majors, has created a new weapon against music piracy that could make him the industry’s new best friend.Called Copyrouter, it is technology that detects when a user is trying to download a copyright-infringing version of a song from a peer-to-peer file sharing network, and replaces it with a legitimate – paid – version. The user is asked before the download if they agree to pay for the copyright-protected version through their next monthly ISP bill.
• 10 Really Tangible Ways To Measure Social Media Success | Microgeist (via @jeanlucr ) – This isn’t a number some may say not even tangible, but you won’t get anywhere unless you’ve actually defined some processes that can be measured. A lot of people are just going on these sites, putting up a profile and waiting for something to happen. Having an outline and plan of action is a sign of success, it shows that you have at least a basic understanding of social media and some of its components. This is your first benchmark. It is also important to realize that these plans are not static and require constant appraisal for effectiveness.
• Twitter Launches a Geolocation API (via @jeffjarvis) – We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.
• PayPal enters agreement with mobile credit card transaction company – Transaction Wireless, a mobile commerce payment and marketing company, has announced an agreement with PayPal™ to power the company’s wCharge Credit Card Terminal by Transaction Wireless™, allowing small merchants to accept credit card payments virtually anywhere, securely and conveniently using only a mobile phone and a PayPal account.
• At its peak, the conversation about Michael Jackson’s death proceeded at a rate of 78 tweets/second (via @Digidave) – Detecting Sadness in 140 Characters: Sentiment Analysis and Mourning Michael Jackson on TwitterUsers tweeting about Jackson’s death tend to use far more words associated with negative emotions than are found in ‘everyday’ tweets.
  Roughly 3/4 of tweets about Jackson’s death that use the word “sad” actually express sadness, suggesting that sentiment analysis based on word usage is fairly accurate.
  That said, there is extensive disagreement between human coders about the emotional content of tweets, even for emotions that we might expect would be clear (like sadness).
  Tweets expressing personal, emotional sadness about the Jackson’s death showed strong agreement among coders while commentary on the auxiliary social effects of Jackson’s death showed strong disagreement.
  We argue that this pattern in the “understandability” of certain types of communication across Twitter is due to the way the platform structures the expression of its users.
• Digital music sales will nearly equal CD sales by the end of 2010. (PC Magazine) – CD purchases made up 65 percent of all music sold in the first half of 2009, while paid digital downloads came in at 35 percent. In 2007, downloads accounted for 20 percent of music purchases. That jumped to 30 percent in 2008. iTunes, The Apple-owned music store, now accounts for 25 percent of music units sold, according to Tuesday data from the NPD Group.
• Comment des demandeuses d’emploi deviennent expertes en veille économique internationale ( via @EGlobale) -
• Demand Media prend une participation dans CoverItLive, monétisation en vue ! – Les outils sociaux développés par Demand Media dans sa suite “Pluck” vont progressivement être intégrés à CoverItLive et des solutions “Entreprises” vont également être développées.

Surprise ce matin en découvrant que mon compte Twitter a franchi durant la nuit le cap (que dis-je, la péninsule !) des 1.000 “suiveurs”. Une bonne occasion pour vous remercier de la confiance que vous m’accordez ainsi que du plaisir que vous me procurer à ainsi échanger et partager nos impressions en 140 signes.

Much appreciated !

Comble de la hypitude et symbole parfait de ce web en train de changer le monde, @otmelik, (alias Melik Yuksel) , celui qui a fait passer mon compteur au rang des “4 digits tweepole”, est un gamin de 14 ans de Pennsylvanie qui se définit lui-même comme un “web designer, graphic designer, and entrepreneur“. Il est suivi par plus de 17.500 personnes sur Twitter et collabore avec 8 autres gaillards âgés de 13 à 16 ans “from around the world” au développement d’une boîte de design baptisée 9milesmedia

Sigh …. :-P

Le manque de tunes n’a jamais été une excuse valable pour arrêter d’innover.

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