Congratulations! You are one of the first 250 iPhone3G-owners in Belgium!

Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Report

iPhone 3G

D’un naturel plutôt ponctuel, je suis arrivé précisément à 21h, comme requis dans la charmante invitation de Mobistar. Il pleuvait une pluie fine qui vous glace les os, et avec la chaleur résiduelle du jour, une certaine moiteur régnait, ajoutant à l’ambiance tendue d’un petit groupe d’une centaine de personnes qui faisaient déjà la file le long de la Toison d’Or.

Parmis les plus de 5.000 personnes qui s’étaient enregistrées sur le site dédié à ce lancement, une centaine de personnes avaient eu la chance d’être sélectionnées comme V.I.P. Malheureusement je n’en était pas. Je me glissai donc dans la file des client non V.I.P., déjà un peu frustré - mais c’est tout le but de ce genre de lancement organisé.

Ayant compris du petit groupe la mécanique de la soirée (attendre sous la pluie), je reçu un ticket numéroté 085 d’une demoiselle qui pris la précaution de m’indiquer qu’avec ce numéro je ne passerais pas a la caisse avant 3 heures du matin, histoire de m’encourager.

J’étais bien résolu à me démerder pour trouver un raccourci mais je commencai par prendre mon mal en patience. Pourtant après une bonne heure d’attente humide, ponctué de jatte de café tiède, je commencais a en avoir franchement plein les couilles. J’ai alors usé de mes crédits de journaliste pour aller me mettre a l’abris et boire un verre de Coca tiède en attendant minuit.

Malheureusement mon badget Press ne me permis pas d’entrer avec les “VIP” et je repris ma place dans la file comme un bon citoyen. Finalement, c’est vers 1h30 du matin qu’un Emakinien (que je remercie au passage) me fit passer discrètement la barrière nadar, pour me permettre d’acquérir le “precious”. 4h30 d’attente pour pouvoir écrire ce putain de post et frimer pour quelques heures?

Non, en réalité je pars demain matin, rejoindre ce bon vieux Thierry Tinlot, pour 3 jours de délire au North Sea Jazz Festival à Rotterdam. Je vais pouvoir shooter, twitter, surfer, uploader, blogger, emailer, à la vitesse de la 3G. Good night!

Read more | Comments (5) | July 11th, 2008

Starting a tour of Exotic Programming languages

Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Report

Since two dozen years I have a love affair going on with exotic, unknown programming languages. I believe at a certain point every serious programmer tend to develop his own programming language. I myself attempted to develop a kind of language to describe visual interface for my BBS around 1987. Computer interface where mostly text based and I use to create menu interface with ASCII code, producing beautiful low resolution colored pixels. But since I had an early experience with vector display on the PLATO terminal system from Control Data Corporation I designed a kind of visual description language. It was kind of elementary, features vectors, shapes, texts with fill and outline control in a resolution independent matrix. Unfortunately I wasn’t skilled enough to produce an implementation and it never existed in another form as my handwritten notes. However when many years later I discovered QuickDraw, the Macintosh graphic toolbox and Postscript, I was proud of myself at least of being able to spot the structural problem in describing screen by pixels (resolution) and think around a similar solution as the genius of the time.

My first real computer was probably a calculator, a Texas instrument 58c I played with it for a few monthes, learning its logic, primitive algorythms made of sequences of maximum 5000 instructions… but I really started programming in a little known language, Forth. It was the only programming language available on my white Jupiter ACE. I immediately loved the beauty of it’s simplicity. With the included manual I could learn the language in a day. Only a LIFO stack to push and pop data and a few instruction to solve about any problem. I could not do any floating point calculations but it was a great exercise for the mind to try reducing complex problem to the shortest suite of simple instructions. It was 1985 and about the same time I bought myself a book which was a general overview of programming languages. It featured quick review of BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, ADA, LISP, and more. I still own a copy somewhere and this book opened my mind to a form of human creation that since then fascinate me : the art of designing programming languages which in the hand of programmers can theoretically solve any computing problem.

I am always looking for those new languages and it’s my main subject of conversation whenever I meet one of those contemporary geniuses that do real programming. So I decided it was about time I share my discoveries in this modest geek blog.

Read more | Comments (0) | January 2nd, 2008

Why and how Joost will change the World!

Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas, Report, Thoughts

Joost™

I will not explain what is Joost, just google the web, visit the Joost website and blog.

But I’ll explain why, after only two weeks of Joost experience, I’m convinced that Joost will change the world.

Why ?

Because Joost will revolution television first, then slowly the audience habbits (personalized individual tv consumption), then the whole mass media segmentation system, then shift the power from the media moghuls that rules using their monopoly on frequencies, on satellite, cable, DSL channels to content creators.

Because Joost will change the business model of television, then destroy the advertising media agencies monopoly and their exclusive relation with advertisers, then turn whole advertising business sector (from ATL to Interactive) upside down - literally.

Because Joost will destroy the ambitions of most web video sharing websites (YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, and the numerous others) by cutting the bandwidth from the whole equation (thanks to peercasting) and adding advertising revenues (from day one) maybe subscriptions revenues and maybe pay-per-view revenues while respecting the whole rights system since day 1 (including territories distinction).

How is it possible ?

Joost can be viewed from any screen as long as you have broadband internet access and a Windows PC or a Mac. Watch it on a laptop over Wifi. Watch it on your desktop PC monitor or on a television (CRT, LCD, Plasma). No need for setop boxes, smart cards, satelite dishes. Watch it in your hotel room. Start watching a movie in the office, finish it in the living room. This is freedom of space! And freedom is a good reason to change your habbits.

Joost replicate the old plain TV experience (full screen) with a program (a playlist of shows). Don’t search snippets of video on the web, just trust a brand (channel), sit down, relax and watch. You just have access to a potentially infinite number of channels. You’ll never need to record a program again. Don’t invest in storage, recorders, tapes and EPG subscriptions. With Joost, you can navigate the channel playlist forward and skip a boring show or backward, to view an old show. This is freedom of time! And freedom is a good reason to change your habbits.

Joost has advertisement since day one. Both as sponsor of a channel (you watch an ad at the beginning of you program) or in the middle of your program (and to the contrary of television, you can’t zap). And you’ll watch those ads, as Joost will personalized them just for you. Joost know your name, your email, your email domain name, your location, your computer model and OS, your IP adress, your channel selection, your RSS feeds selection, so Joost know your profile. Joost will provide advertisers the GRAAAAL they have been searching forever : the emotional impact of television with the one-to-one personalisation possible with interactive media… And I bet Joost will provide advertiser a platform to buy ad space like you buy ad words in Google Ad sense program. Good bye media agencies…

Just like with Skype-out, soon Joost will ask your credit card number to allow you to subscribe to channels (great for porn), and buy pay-per-view movies. Even better a mobile payment system for teenagers like Tunz.com ;-) Then thanks to Joost integration of mozilla’ html rendering engine wich allow each channel to display an overlay with a mini website, you’ll be able to buy products from Joost in one click! Watch an TV ad, click. Done. Ho boy. That will be BIG.

In the near future bandwidth cost will drop and volume limits disappear. Even today in some market (eg: voo.be in belgium) broadband subscriptions have no volume limits, there Joost could also move from SD to HD in a codec snap and kill blue ray and HD DVD before birth.

Joost has the potential to change the media business, the advertising business, the e-commerce business, the interactive business. Soon the whole world.

Next episode : what are Joost’ threats.

Note : Like many others I thought I invented the peercasting in 1999 (see annex below). I remember an Apple Expo in Paris during which I had diner with my friend Martin and draw a QuickTime distributed streaming system on the napkin. By chance Frank Casanova, from Apple QuickTime team was in the restaurant, so I took my chance and gave him my little napkin drawing with an explanation. He gave me his email adress and asked me to send him my idea in writing. I never did. Ten years later Apple has AppleTV, FrontRow, iTunes, iPod, iPhone with Wifi, QuickTime Streaming Server and still no peercasting. So next time an idiot give you a napkin drawing, take him seriously.

Annex I : Other PeerCasting technologies :