Thursday 3 May 2007

Digg in the illegality ?

The last guest in class spoke briefly about Digg, a website (a 2.0website becoming incontrovertible) enabling to share your favorites pages with everybody.
At the beginning of the story, there is an article digged containing a decoding key to copy any HD movie (this key had been changed since last week :)). In few hours, the article became famous, referenced by more than 16,000 internet users. What made this article n° 1 on Digg, appearing in first on the website.

Immediatly, the AACS LA (the compagny owner of the technology and of the key) required (through a letter do digg) the deleting of the link to the article. And Digg obey, saying through there blog "However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

But the community didn't agre. Few minutes after the deleting, the article reappeared, and is deleted again. A hide-and-seek game starts, the names of articles changes, subjects too, but the key is still in them.
Seeing that the party is lost (after hours, the 10 "best" articles containing the key), Kevin Rose founder of Digg lined up with the community and took a very courageous position: "You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."
The title of the message being
"Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0" (guess what? it's the famous key, but too late to use it :()

Digg is now running a risk being illegal. The US law about copyright saying that the diffusion of any code or key allowing the bypass of technologic mesures is forbidden.
Hollywood has not respond yet to it.
But how many websites are illegal? mininova.org offering torrents for few years now (after the closing of meganova.org). If Digg closes, another website will emerge, with the same values (sharing not pirating). On Internet, communities can be dissolved and 2 days after they will appear again, stronger (in number and more populare).
I love it :D

Tuesday 1 May 2007

Why choose the correct domain name?

Utube vs Youtube.
Both are specialist of tubes, but no the same ones. And the first companie sues the other one. This complaint is justified by the explosion of the costs generated by the mistakes of the Internet users.
The traffic of the specialist of the tube (real tube :) actually increased from 1,500 guests per month to more than 2millions. The host of the website couldn't cope with this important increase. Such as Utube.com had to pay a lot of money to get proper structure.
2 millions of guest per month!! What a chance for a website. But Utube.com cannot sell tube to persons who want to see the trailler of the next spyderman :(

I'am a French cybertizen!!!

The second round of the french presidential election will take place next sunday but there is already one winner: Me, You,US :The cybermilitant and other bloggers .
In few month, Internet has changed the face of the traditional militant. For a long time, we were passive, spectators of the campaign where the general staff used us as onlookers. But due to the Internet, we became more than an actor, we became real activists.

Even if the blogs didn't have a strong impact on the votes, they gave a participative role to thousands of citizens wanting to speak without the bundaries of the official guidelines and the traditionnal stonewalling of the television studio and radio talk-show.

Mobilized on the blogs or forums, the new militant completes the arguments of the campaign, starts debates, takes part in the buzz. Then, the information goes up to the head of the party where the multimedia responsibles have strategic positions.
We can find these militants on all the formats, even on Second life!

The hardest thing is to evaluate the real value of this army of mouse and screen who made what we call in France "the other campaign". Since few years, citizens gives up the politic what could be seen through very low participation rates in the elections. But investing in the virtual politic is maybe the same than giving up the real one. Maybe it is the limit to the political involvement via the Enter touch?

Sunday 29 April 2007

The success of contributory information (Wikipedia :))

Only two hours after the burst in Virginia Tech, Avril 16th, a wikipedia page was created and became the source of information for thousands of Internet Users and other medias.
The mobilisation of the students on the premises to describe their feelings, what they saw and lived created a impressive stream of information on the Web. This clearly shows that the professional medias of information can't deal without amateur anymore.
The videos, chats and pictures of the students were diffused on CNN.com, Washingtonpost.com and on all the International TVs.

However, the best organized information was on Wikipedia, written by amateurs. Since Avril 16th, more than 2,000 persons contributed to 9,000 modifications of the page. This video I found on Youtube shows the evolution of the "Virginia Tech Massacre" page during the twelve first hours.

Today, the article is full and explains the acts, attacks, perpetrator, follow-up (from the football ligue to the gouvernment reaction) and fits the tragedy with the debate on the Gun Control. The article ends with 130 notes justifying the reliability of the text.

On the French wikipedia page about VT, a debate deals with the question "Is the word massacre too stunning?". The result is that wikipedians prefere the term "burst".

Tuesday 3 April 2007

Edit about The political e-marketing

Few weeks ago, I spoke about the new role of Internet in the french presidential campaign.
Yesterday, Francois Bayrou, credited with about 20% of votes proposed to the three other main candidates a debate. To overstep the strict rules of the CSA (the council responsible of the fair of the campaign), he offered a e-debate.
"I suggest that all the bloggers, all the internet users (...) to get together to organize a debate between us (the four main candidates)" said F. Bayrou during a news conference.
2 of the other candidates accepted, but the 3rd one declined, arguing that "the debate will be with all the candidates or won't be".
The first step of the election is in 17 days, what reduce the possibility of this debate. However, Agoravox try to gather the three candidate who accepted the initial invitation.
A survey asking us if we want this debate before the "first round" shows that 92% of the people are pro (49% want to see it on Internet, 44% at the TV and the others on the radio).

I'm personnaly pro this event (a way for me to follow the campaign even here) but I think this debate won't happen. In France, Internet is not a real media to convice someone to vote for a party. However, few candidates have already accepted to be interviewed by some blogs such as http://www.politicshow.net/

Wednesday 7 March 2007

What does digitalization enable you ?

If you go study in France one day, you would be surprised by the number of laptops in classroom: Maybe one or two for 200 students. French are not reticent to innovation (if a laptop can still be considered as an innovation :) but in our society, manuscript is still very important (you will never see a cover letter typed on a keyboard!)

For me, digitalization primary refers to text. The first thing I used with a computer was Word, much more before any games and Internet.

This video found through Youtube show us what happened since the old manuscript paper we did few years ago !!!

Sunday 25 February 2007

The power of communities

The communities do exist and their development has become more important with the internet tool.
But what are the determinant of a community?
With the emergence of the blogs, the internet users became more and more important at the expense of the classical actors (journalists, politicians, ...)

The behavior of the internet users:
An analysis of their behavior on internet explain how is built a community: it s a grouping of people looking for the same interest and seeing regularly the same websites. Their common interest can be video games, books, movies, etc ....

The interactivity:
These people gather some information or can sometime improve a content which already exists.
The best example is Myspace where the internet users are actors and creators of the content. By using the new tools of the web2.0, the virtuous circle of writing/reading/writing can be set up. This will attract new readers and keep the "old ones" attracted.

These two components are the basis of a community. The will of the users to improve the community (by posting regularly, commenting, designing the website) makes the difference between an ordinary community and a famous one.


Some business have already find how to use a community to create profits.
Pickspal is a "new" (since november) US website on sport betting based on a very interessant concept.
Its main interest is the convergence of ideas and the comments of subscribers.
The principe is very simple:
  1. Some experts make a bet
  2. The subscribers comment it
  3. The total of comments gives a general tendency
  4. This tendency is used to bet
At the end, the compilation of the fans can be better than experts' one!
This example show us that communities have a real power and can be a profitable market. Knowing how they operate can provide a huge business for companies.