[via @rgumente]

Dragos pointed a great presentation (pdf) about customer development in product-oriented start-ups. Worth a reading!

I’ve installed a commenting tool as a complement of Blogger called blogKomm developped by Holger Kreis, since March 28 2004. At this time, Blogger didn’t integrate any commenting functionnality. This incredible lack was first filled in April 2004. I didn’t move to Blogger because the comments are hosted by Blogger and I don’t like that. I want to have my data under control and to be able to have a full access on the raw logs for the statistics. Without a dedicated hosting – as far as I known – it is impossible to know exactly how many visitors and pageviews you have on your blog because of the access on your RSS feed which are only visible in these raw logs. My blog and website are hosted by OVH, my web hosting provider.

I made the step this morning and I installed the version 2.1 (beta) of blogKomm. Holger integrated some very interesting functionalities and the protection possibilities against comment spam is really better than in the version 1.7 I used before. This is perhaps the only positive effect of spam: it forced me to take the time to install the new version ;-) Which was quite easy.

blogKomm features

blogkomm integrates the reader’s comments into your blog without any pop-ups. Besides this you have different features coming along with that, like

* different notification services
* preview feature
* user remember feature
* quick-Editing admin-tool
* recent comment-list
* multilingual interface
* a setup and configuration tool

If you are a bit lazy, or of you do not have enough time (problem to prioritize correctly? ;-), Seth Godin published a kind of “Best of – 2004” of his posts. As usual, a bunch of ideas and interesting inputs. I would like to know how Seth did the choice ;-)

The Best Seth Godin Posts of the Year (2004)

Easier than checking the archives! More efficient than wading through inane banter.

If you’re only going to read 2 of my posts a month (that’s 24 for those of you without a calculator) then this is where I’d have you start

You surely saw that, one of the biggest building in Madrid (106 m) completely burnt on last Sunday. For chance, nobody was injured! It remembers another story in NY with other consequences…

Again, a new version (1.18) of the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack released here. Still free and really great!

Mega Codec Pack includes everything needed to play online and offline computer media. This pack is from the makers of the K-lite codec pack. This version includes the Full K-lite codec pack as well as Quicktime and Realplayer codecs, and BS Player. This Pack includes codecs for the most popular compressions like Divx and Xvid as well as some of the less popular but still necesary codecs. This is your one stop codec resource.

Outch, the landing in the real world is quite difficult :-) After some completely beautiful days at St.Barth, I’m confronted with – well, you know – real stuff again…
– lot of email spams, but correctly and automatically managed (more than 1’400 spams within 14 days on one email account…)
– 138 comment spams on my blog, these guys really *suck*.

– I was here yesterday (about 30°C and 26°c in the sea)

– and I’m here today….something went wrong or what??

And finally, do you know Air France? I can tell you, this company sucks too. I will tell you more in the coming days about our incredibly bad customer experience in *all* the aspects of this company. And they are talking about Quality Insurance and Customer-Focus….

[via LetterJames]

I celebrated my 33rd birthday yesterday evening in Milano – Italy. I had a great dinner in a Toscana restaurant in the center of Milano with my two colleagues Nick and Wolfgang (good choice, Wolfgang ;-).

It was also the first day of Nick by us in the eCenter, after having worked for a quite long period as an external consultant.

We had a great time together, some very interesting discussions, and….some very exciting food, including one of the best "mozzarella di bufala" I ever eat :-) I have also to say that the wines were great!

We went back from Milano by train, as usual a very nice trip, with some beautiful and impressive landscapes, despite of the quite bad weather.

And, by the way, our business meeting was very successful!

Pfuu, “already” 33 years old. I know, I look older;-) This picture left with my son is already 18 months old… We have celebrated for 2 weeks the 3rd birthday of my son, today my 33rd anniversary.

When I look back, I have a very good feeling because I was challenged a lot as a person, I could do a bunch of errors (and some people let me do them ;-) and experience, I could learn so much. A *very* enriching year!

The last 12 months were for me very “dense”, and on different levels:

• professionally with all the “ordinary” and “extra-ordinary” developments of my business unit
• privately with my son (this phase is *so* interesting, what for a development between 2 and 3!), with my wife (she opened very succesfully her own surgery), with the death of my grandfather (I miss him a lot…)
• humanely with all the great people I met the last time, with all my long-time friends, with all my so funny and smart colleagues.

All in all, I am very lucky.

I hope I could also give this “luck” back to other people, by helping them a little bit to develop themselves too, by letting them do their own experience and errors too, by organizing a motivating (and stressful, I admit) environment for all, by pushing as far as I can our values (responsability, commitment, trust, innovation, fun, excellence and professionalism, being open-minded) and by giving some sense to our work. I didn’t manage it all the time but I keep trying :-)

Thank you *all* very kindly for having a look at my weblog :-) That was also an important part of my last 12-months experience!