Two great articles from Marc Goldberg – a “VC focused on building global European technology companies” – about Product Marketing here and here.

A must-read!

What for a weather on October 23!

Skype released a new Windows version (v1.0.0.94) of its great freeware VoIP tool. As you know, versions for MacOS X, Linux and PocketPC platforms are also available.

Google published its first quarterly financial results (3rd quarter ’04) on October 21, 2004 (quarterly values):

For the first 9 months of 2004:

A new MP3 player with an incredible 100GB hard drive, the DMC Xclef 500.

With a massive 100 GB hard drive (the largest on the world market today), the DMC Xclef 500 can store up to 3,500 hours of music, and still come back for more. Its internal battery provides over 20 of hours of play on a single charge

The DMC Xclef 500 also features an FM Tuner with encoding (so you can record as you listen), a voice recorder with built-in mic, and an analog/optical line-in so you can digitally record from any source at up to 320 kb/s.

About 106 million XP Sp2 downloads in two months… 90 million on the different Microsoft web sites and 16 million copies on CD. A list of SP2 incompatibilities updated on October 15.

New version of K-Lite Codec Pack available, have a try of the Mega Codec Pack, incredibly easy to install (v1.33)! I posted about this Codec Pack last month.

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play 99% of all the movies that you download from the internet.

My friend and colleague Laurent is in Barcelona till the end of this week for the Microsoft Connect Event, which is a Microsoft’s event for Key Community Opinion Leaders across Europe . Laurent is responsible for the french community .NET website Tech Head Brothers (with his brother Mathieu).

An interesting operation from the Guardian in UK:

Last week G2 launched Operation Clark County to help readers have a say in the American election by writing to undecided voters in the crucial state of Ohio. In the first three days, more than 11,000 people requested addresses.

Have a look at some responses from the US…

Have you not noticed that Americans don’t give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies … I don’t give a rat’s ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don’t. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah – and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.

Wading River, NY

As a US citizen, I want to advise you that you and anyone that participates in subverting the US presidential election can be criminally charged and perhaps even charged as spies.

California

Please be advised that I have forwarded this to the CIA and FBI.

United States

No comment

Be careful, this post could be dangerous for your spirits, specially if you are reading it on Monday morning, beginning of a new working week, and if the weather is as bad as by us :-)

As we cannot fight against the weather, we decided on last Friday to choose and to book our next “family winter holidays” at the beginning of February 2005. We hesitated between three sunny destinations: the Seychelles, the French west Indies and the Maldives. After some studies (thanx Internet :-), we chose the Maldives. The average precipitation is almost the same at home and in the Maldives in February (4 cm), not exactly the same for the temperature:

– at home (North-East of France): avg. low: – 1.7°C, avg. high: 6.1°C

– the Maldives: avg. low: 26°C (no, it’s not an error), avg. high: 30°C

Some interesting statistics about the Maldives from the Maldivian Ministry of Tourism:

– Situated southwest of Sri Lanka, on the equator

– 90’000 km2, 99% covered by the sea

– 1’190 coral islands, 820 km north-south, 120 km east-west

– Highest point: 8 feet (!)

– More than 200 islands are inhabited

– Capital: Malé, about 75’000 people

– February is the month with the highest occupancy rate: 97.7%!

– Average duration of stay: 8 days

– Tourism growth 2003-02: + 39.6%

– More than 560’000 people visited the Maldives in 2003, thereof 41’000 from France. Interesting to notice that the Italian market is from far the biggest market for the Maldives (about 25%)

Now, the Maldives are confronted with some instability, specially in Malé. People are pushing a process of democratic and institutional reforms. One unique party with the same leader since 1978 is ruling the country (President Gayoom)… News articles here and here.

Here we are, some pictures of the island we will visit ;-)