Then jump on the occasion to present it at LIFT08! For the first time we will hold a venture night, and with the whole LIFT community in the room, some of the world’s best media outlets and people like Pierre Chappaz or Robert Scoble in the jury, your projects could really get a kick in the r*** à la cocomment (story here).

It’s easy, it’s simple, it’s free, and it even gets you a pass for LIFT08 if your project is selected. Propose your startup now!

I love the new visual identity. Wait until you see the poster in high def, you are probably in it if you attended the conference in the past.

My favorite designers you guys rock :)

Tokyo has unseated Paris as the world’s culinary capital.That’s according to Michelin Guides, the French bible of gastronomy, which announced a Tokyo edition Monday - its first outside Europe and the United States. Michelin’s Tokyo guide awarded 191 stars to 150 restaurants in the Japanese capital, the most number of stars awarded in any city. Previously, Paris had the most stars, at 65.Link

Somehow my dear readers will have to recognize the great magnanism of the French who create guides to shoot themselves in the foot. Time to kill a few more pre-conceived notions ;)

Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century
Dr.Vinton Cerf, Google, USA

Abstract
In this talk, Vint will address the current status of the Internet, some of the technology changes that are driving its evolution, and some of the global policy issues that have to be dealt with. Among many such issues are included IPv6, mobility, increasing capacity in the core and the edges, broadband alternatives, competition, security and authentication. He will suggest a number of new applications relevant to business and research, before turning to the device-driven Internet that includes sensor networks, control systems, Internet-enabled appliances and so on. Finally, he will report on the status of the interplanetary extension of the Internet now underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.

Short Bio
Vinton G. Cerf is a vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications for Google. Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related data packet switching technologies. He is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.
Cerf and his colleague Robert E. Kahn received the ACM Turing award in 2004 for founding and developing the Internet. Besides this highest distinction for a computer scientist he is holding numerous awards and honors in engineering, science and as an inventor. He started his career with a mathematics degree from Stanford, a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 1972 and received over a dozen honorary degrees since then, including the Dr. sc. techn. h.c. from ETH in 1998.
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More information here. I’ll be there.

I know I know, I already talked about it extensively on the LIFT blog. But pardon me while I restate my pride to see the talks of my conference go live on the website of the world’s biggest and most inspiring event. With hundreds of thousands of viewers, TED talks is another step in the right direction for the whole LIFT community, and a huge boost for the ideas and projects of the lucky speakers who got selected.

This is a special day for me and for the whole team, a day we feel like we are doing our job of promoting discussions about the social impact of technologies a little bit better than usual ;)

I am sitting at the ITU Africa Forum Committee Meeting, about to engage in two days of discussion around the format and program of the event. In his welcoming address, Dr. Normal Lewis, chairman of the committee, talked about the importance of initiatives like Google Android which I hadn’t really checked until now. A Youtube search later I am impressed both by the technology and by the strategy.

What is Google’s objective? Get their search product in our hands.

How to manage the transition to mobile? Invent a Google phone? Very tempting, but then Google has to acquire new competencies, start a customer support service, manage broken phones, etc… And at best they get 10 or 20% of the market, and lose a few friends over at Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, people you prefer to have on your side. The right answer is to go software. Make a phone OS that is both sexy and free. Get all manufacturers to use it. Focus on what you do best, and let others do what they do best. Everybody in their place, and Google gets a shot at a much larger number of users at the end of the day.

Now to be impressed by the technology simply click on the play button below.

Google continues to make perfect sense.

Billboard will finally start taking into account real figures, now counting online sales. Better late than never.

“it was inevitable that Billboard’s charts would ultimately widen the parameters to reflect changes that are unfolding in music distribution,” says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s director of charts.
Link

This means Radiohead or the Eagles get a shot at the rankings even if their record never or barely go into physical stores.

Brian Aladesuyi, 17, received a new Jeep in exchange for a promise: he would never drive it outside his hometown. His father, chief executive of the security firm EarthSearch Communications, used EarthSearch’s Web site to map Kennesaw’s boundaries into the Jeep’s onboard computer, surrounding the entire city with an electronic fence.
But when his father took a business trip to Brazil, Brian decided to try his luck. Brian drove to Marietta, a neighboring town. Seconds after Brian breached the invisible wall, his father received a text message on his mobile phone [and] sent a message commanding the computer to disable the Jeep’s engine.
Link

The wonderful possibilities of parenting 2.0. Maybe the reason why nobody cares about surveillance devices is that we all see way too many potential usages for ourselves…

Nicolas Nova and I sat down with Jacques Magnol of Geneve Active to discuss LIFT08 during a 40 minutes interview. If you speak French and want to learn more about the 2008 programme click on the button bellow.

Download the mp3 file.

Fake blogs can really be brilliant. This from the dear leader:

Dear diary. Bush still doesn’t ‘get it.’ I tried making my feelings clear but he’s too busy ignoring me, he is such a jerk. Everything in his life is just Saddam, Saddam, Saddam and I am sick of it.

On the plus side, I think my hair looked pretty good today. Also I went frolicking at Paektu Mountain and the rainbow came out again. After dinner some of my subjects sang me a song because I invented Outer Space.

Link

A good laugh :) (thx Marco)