Archive for 'France'
Nicolas Steeghann from Stupeflix Gives GREAT Demo #tg09
I’m looking forward to doing a custom project with the guys at Stupeflix. The Traveling Geeks met with them in London over the summer; I learn about new features and functionality from him in Paris earlier this month at one of the five incubators housing start-ups in the city.
[youtube qgZYeNrBkiU]
Urbi on Robotics
Another innovation we saw during the Traveling Geeks tour to Paris was Urbi, robotics software platform and operating system from Gostai, that makes all robots compatible.
Urbi is already compatible with numerous robots on the market, including Nao, Aibo, Spykee or Bioloid, and advanced consumer applications based on Urbi have been demonstrated on the Spykee robot in partnership with mobile phone operators: home surveillance, entertainment for kids, or remote presence.
Gostai’s project is to provide a standard environment for robotic applications development and to contribute to the growth of a new industry: service and consumer robotics.
Urbi plans to go open source in May 2010 because there is a clear need and strong trends that calls for an open source OS for robots today.
Parrot’s Henri Seydoux Paints a Picture of His Vision #tg09
At their offices in Paris earlier this month. We started with what is current but also had a peak of what’s coming in Q1 under embargo. No phones. No cameras. No video. And yes, there was a back channel joke about the deep dark secret unveiling and the NDA.
[youtube t_zzeqGggNE]
Think Orange is all Phones? Think Again #tg09
The Traveling Geeks learn about Orange’s latest developments – Lionel Fumado and Stephanie Hospital tell us more.
[youtube VkmkOCbdpTg]
French Startups Give us a Sample #tg09
We received an overview of of MXP4 in Paris earlier this month, a start-up who develops, publishes and markets innovative tools and applications for musicians and record labels.
The goal? To provide a richer interactive digital experience for users. Imagine being able to trade music with fellow musicians or create a new composition from an existing mix.
Vincent Castaiget of Musicovery gave us a demo and talked to us about where they felt the music industry was headed and where they fit in.
Musicovery has a plug-in for iTunes, which allows you to listen to your own music library according to the mood you’re in or are after.
The plug-in displays right to the Itunes application window Musicovery’s mood/dance matrix. Songs from your music library are played directly and a simple click generates a playlist. It’s fairly simple to set up.
We also heard the latest from Feedbooks‘ Hadrien Gardeur, a service that allows you to discover thousands of public domain books and original books from new authors that you can read on any mobile device.
They also offer a publishing service to create e-books or you can contribute to their collection of public domain titles.
Int13 is a French developer of next-generation games for Smartphones.
The team recently added their own AR library and are including augmented reality techologies to mobile phones. They’re currently working on a handful of new releases, including:
– Crazy Kart 2 (online racing game)
– Gems (multiplayer puzzle-game for Smartphones and PCs)
– Kweekies (Mobile augmented reality artificial life game)
– Invisiballs (Kind of augmented reality billiard)
Rue89 is an independent and collaborative French news website that combines the creativity of
reporters, experts, bloggers and Internet users.
Rue89’s purpose is to unite professional journalism with Internet’s participative DNA. Any collected information is double-checked by a permanent team of journalists.
Music on the Streets of Montmartre
Even though its only 33 degrees, music warms the heart and soul on a cold December day on the streets of Montmartre.
[youtube hb5C7KJMDG0]
Thoughts on Le Web 2009
Here’s the summary – Le Web 2009 was like a diamond, a few flaws but on the whole brilliant and sparkling and deserving of its place in the Conference Crown Jewels of tech land.
And now for a little more detail… (more…)
Silicon Valley Geeks Can Learn From European Geeks…
Silicon Valley Geeks and Parisian Geeks have a lot in common: lots of passion, great ideas and they speak the lingua franca of “geek.”
But there is an important difference, as Beth Blecherman at Techmamas recently found on a visit to LeWeb:
While Silicon Valley geeks put on a clean tee shirt for tech conferences, European geekstake it up a notch. Here is a random geek waiting in line for LeWeb. I told him I was chronicling European Geek Chic. He looked confused but smiled for the camera. To top it off, he and many other Euro-geeks paired the geek uniform of jeans with a nice pair of (non-sneaker) shoes.
Just to keep up with the style, I put on every black and stylish piece of clothing I had. If I had time, I would of shopped from the assortment of beautiful french scarves to take my outfit up a notch.
Please see the full post, where Beth also looks for European girl geeks, which are even rarer than here:
Techmamas: Geek is a Global Language – But Twitter is Not (yet)
My second batch of Companies at Travelling Geeks
Following on from part one, this is the nest look back at the Travelling Geeks tour of Paris pre-Le Web. Here are some more companies that caught my eye and a few thoughts on how things should be in the real world. (more…)
Geek is a Global Language – But Twitter is Not (yet)
During the blogger embark on the USS Nimitz this past May, I enjoyed learning how social media is being used aboard an aircraft carrier at sea. Similarly, when I was invited to join the Traveling Geeks trip to Paris, I looked forward to experiencing social media in France first hand. Especially with – as fellow Geek Matthew Buckland referred to – a “top secret, Illuminati-type organization“. Except we were not secret about anything as we all share openly our thoughts online.
True to expectations, only moments into the first Traveling Geeks French start-ups meetings and LeWeb discussions, the similarities and differences of social media around the globe quickly came to light. Similarities were easy to see in the programming and features of application development, which quickly proved to a be a global language. As for differences, they fell primarily into three buckets (with comedy insight provided by a Current TV video on the bottom of this post): (more…)
