I just deleted my account on Xing, and some more services will soon follow. No message to the fine Xing people (I know and appreciate many of them), no hard feelings, not trying to do a big headline or statement. It is just that I am do not really need this as I am not looking for a job, as most of the people I know are mostly using a competing service, and as my (old school) way of developing my business is to ping people, then visit them to share a plate of Octopus Sashimi.

I think 90% of the social networks I am participating in are totally useless in terms of actually adding value to my daily activities, so I probably need to close a few more accounts.

The Zombu has made a bit of noise in the global news last week, the least you could expect from a device marketed as a 99$ computer (in reality it’s more around 250$).

It is an interesting concept, a cheap computer reduced to the minimum (processor, USB ports, a bit of memory), using online resources like Amazon S3 for storage. Unfortunately this last detail probably makes it unusable in developing countries (few cable or ADSL in Africa) and probably a bit slow when working with large documents or pictures. Upload is so painful with our asynchronous connections.

While this computer still looks a bit too complicated and less sexy than a mac mini, there are more and more strong signs that the price of owning a computer will be dramatically reduced in the coming months, between the 100$ latop, india’s 47$ machine and this box.

I caught quite a lot of heat when I organized a women and/in technologies panel at LIFT06 to raise questions about the fact that women seem to be fleeing the decision/building side of technology, while at the same time they now account for more than 50% of the online population. I still think it was a pertinent discussion to start even if the form could be debated.

Tim O’Reilly is also wondering what is wrong with women and computer science, and it looks like things have not moved forward much.

The roots of the problem seem to be somewhere deep in our educational system, so the patches will need a couple of decades to have some effect. Patience?

Steve Rubel points that the world’s most famous video blog is realizing that advertising alone won’t sustain its future growth and I wonder if these guys are 1) simply too early on the market 2) suffering from having totally unreliable metrics to work with. As I wrote earlier, views are inflated and can’t be taken seriously.

Advertisers kind of have a double leap of faith to do with video blogs, first getting out of the comfort zone of working with the good ol’ TV folks, then having no real way of measuring the number of eyeballs they are reaching.

There is an urgent need for statistical standards to measure internet traffic, and finally have numbers that can be trusted and compared. It is time for the W3C step up? Is there already something in that field?

LIFT and the T̩l̩vision Suisse romande Рthe Swiss national TV Рare happy to invite you to their second debate (in French)

LIFT et la TSR organisent un débat sur l’arrivée des robots dans notre quotidien.

La Suisse romande compte plusieurs spécialistes mondiaux en robotique et intelligence artificielle. Les objets intelligents et robotisés sont de plus en plus présents dans notre quotidien. Comment ces chercheurs voient-ils l’avenir d’un monde qui compte désormais avec ces robots?

Quand: Le débat a lieu le mardi 29 mai à 18 heures.

Ou: TSR, salle Michel Soutter (entrée TSR), 20 quai Ernest-Ansermet, 1205 Genève.

Inscriptions: débat gratuit et ouvert à tous mais inscription obligatoire sur le site TSR.

Les invités
• Le débat est animé par Bernard Rappaz, rédacteur en chef de TSR Multimédia. Ses invités:
• Frédéric Kaplan. Chercheur en intelligence artificielle. Après avoir travaillé pour Sony à l‘élaboration du robot Aibo, il dirige une équipe de l’EPFL spécialisée dans le domaine du mobilier interactif.
• Auke Jan Ijspeert. Il dirige le Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (“Groupe d‘étude sur les Robots inspirés par la biologie”) à l’EPFL. Ses domaines de prédilection: l‘étude des robots “intelligents” pour mieux comprendre le comportement animal et l‘étude des animaux pour créer de nouveaux types de robots.
• Daniela Cerqui: anthropologue à l’Université de Lausanne, Daniela s’intéresse aux bouleversements sociaux et culturels dus au rapprochements de plus en plus intimes des technologies dans le corps humain. Une partie de son travail a concerné l’implant de puces, en collaborant aux recherches de Kevin Warwick, qui s’implanta la première puce dans le corps humain.

Pour plus d’informations: www.nouvo.ch/debat

The Internet has penetrated life in Korea perhaps more than it has in many other countries and brought citizens numerous benefits but also problems (note: I already mentionned cyberviolence on this blog).

In response, the Korean government has discussed regulating certain aspects of online life and has even blocked access to some Web sites […]

Google “users will have to enter their name and national resident registration number, which will be checked against a database to verify the user — or at least the person whose data has been entered — is old enough”.

Link

Two comments:

• isn’t this going to generate an amazing amount of identity theft?

• the original title of this report is “Google Korea to censor search results” which is completely abusive (is a government responsible of censorship because it does not allow citizens below 18 to watch porn?) and shows that slowly but surely the “Google is evil” angle is selling more paper.

We are in Seoul with Cris and JD and we are having a blast. Check my pictures on Flickr to follow our adventures!

I finally tried Korean Sashimi, and it’s surprisingly… good!

Here is how it looks when they bring the plate to the table. It doesn’t move at all until the waitress spreads some lemon juice all over the tentacles… Then this!

Link

The Economist reports that the “latest data shows social networking traffic is set to take over the number one spot [away from porn] any day now”.

But that does not necessarily means sex has less and less importance in the online world:

“The Economist claims that such sites [social networking] are often used to find and attract potential mates… Porn sites may have reached a climax, but sex remains as potent online as ever.”

Link