Can you believe that? An English company called sprayonmud is selling … mud in spray, in order to … Ok, have a look at the FAQ:

What do I use it for?

To give your friends, family and neighbours the impression that you’ve just come back from a day’s shooting / fishing / off-roading / visiting friends who live on a farm / looking for a country retreat / anything but driving around town all day or visiting the retail park!

Incredible! It seems that there is *really* a market for this product. BBCnews published an article about sprayonmud in June, 2005.
Ok, so not a joke BUT … the reason why the product has some success is perhaps another one as to soil one’s car. Other part of the FAQ:

What if my number-plates get obscured by the mud?

You may be pulled over by the police and asked if you knew. As we’ve said above, the law says that number plates must be visible. If they are not, you could be fined but won’t, under present laws, receive any penalty points

Now, the things are clear…

Interbrand published its yearly global brands ranking by value for 2005. As usual, the results are quite interesting, have a look also at this BusinessWeek article.

Definition of the Brand Value

Brand Value is the dollar value of a brand calculated as net present value (NPD) or today’s value of the earnings the brand is expected to generate in the future.

Goal of this valuation

The purpose of these valuations is to demonstrate to the business community that brands are very important business assets and in many cases the single most valuable company asset. We also aim to make branding and marketing a key business issues that have direct shareholder value impact. Through 7 years of publishing BGB we have created the world’s most significant and influential brand and marketing survey.

Limitation of this valuation

The limitations (compared to doing a proper formal valuation project for the brand owner) are: that they are based on public data only; that there is no input from management (in order to maintain consistency); that complex multi-national brands (such as IBM or Shell) are better valued as a series of separate pieces rather than in one lump; that certain key brands are not listed; and that only a limited amount of time can be spent on any one brand. The main limitation is that they tell you how much the brand is worth but not what is driving brand value nor what would increase brand value going forwards.

Top 20

The Winners

1. eBay +21%
2. HSBC +20%
3. Samsung +19%
4. Apple +16%
5. UBS +16%

The Losers

1. Sony -16%
2. Morgan Stanley -15%
3. Volkswagen -12%
4. Levi’s -11%
5. Hewlett-Packard -10%

High-tech companies

Car producer companies

[via Loic - in French]

Loic is writing a book about blogging in a business environment and he is publishing parts of his writings on his blog (just in French ;-). Great experience. In his last post, he tells us how he organized one of the biggest European blog event, which ever took place: “Leg Blogs – Blogs and social software“. *Very* interesting to learn how Loic used a wiki and viral information/marketing for the organization.

Loic also told us that the second edition of this event – Les Blogs 2.0 – will take place on Dec 5 -6, 2005 in Paris. I will do my best to come this time ;-)

Update: have a look at this post of Loic (in English). The inputs are confirmed: Blog 2.0, Dec 5-6, 2005, in Paris, keynote speaker will be Robert Scoble, the most famous MS blogger.

As already discussed, I have tried gVisit.com for about 5 days. gVisit gives you the possibillity to visualize the location of your visitors (btw, without gathering any personal data) to your website by adding a small javascript piece of code.

Consequently, for the blogs, it doesn’t take into account your visitors who are linking your RSS/atom feed.

The service is free, which is great, but tracks only the last 20 visitors. After having made a donation, I have upgraded my membership, and now, gVisit is tracking the last 100 visitors of my blog and of my website.

Really great and exciting to see where you are all coming from. Wow!

didier beck’s weblog

didier beck’s website

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Piani and the Calanches

The UNESCO-protected site of the Calanches, 5km southwest of Porto, takes its name from calanca, the Corsican word for creek or inlet, but the outstanding characteristics here are the vivid Orange and pink rock masses and pinnacles which crumble into the dark blue sea. Liable to unusual patterns of erosion, these tormented rock formations and porphyry needles, some of which soar 300m above the waves, have long been associated with different animals and figures, of which the most famous is the Tête de Chien (Dog’s Head) at the north end of the stretch of cliffs. Other figures and creatures conjured up include a Moor’s head, a monocled bishop, a bear and a tortoise.

One way to see the fantastic cliffs of the Calanches is by boat from Porto; excursions leave daily in summer, cost €18 and last about an hour. Alternatively, you could drive along the corniche road which weaves through the granite archways on its way to Piana. Eight kilometres along the road from Porto, the Roches Bleues café is a convenient landmark for walkers.

[source: france-for-visitors]

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[via Jeff]

NYtimes published an article (free subscription) about the shift between MS and Google in a lot of geek’s minds. Good analysis. Things, and specially *reputation*, are moving so fast, and much more when the development is negative…

[...] Many in Silicon Valley are skittish about its size and power. They fret that the very strengths that made Google a search-engine phenomenon are distancing it from the entrepreneurial culture that produced it – and even transforming it into a threat.

Nowadays, when venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and technologists gather in Silicon Valley, they often find themselves grousing about Google, complaining about everything from a hoarding of top engineers to its treatment of partners and potential partners. The word arrogant is frequently used.

Bill Gates certainly sees similarities between Google and his own company. This spring, in an interview with Fortune, Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, said that Google was “more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with.”

“Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did,” said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, a business networking Web site popular among Silicon Valley’s digerati. “It’s largely that they’re hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they’re working on so many different things. It’s harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.”

[via Loic]

Loic points to a great post of Jeff Jarvis. This post is one of the best I have read this year. A must-read, have a look!

In the end, isn’t the only asset worth owning trust?

Content is not king.

Distribution is not king.

Trust is king in the kingdom of conversation.

[via vowe]

Volker refers to a complete pointless, i.e. a must-have, on-line free service called gVisit.com (have a look in the comments).

How it works…

1. Register your website using the form below. It is free and we don’t collect any personal information – not even an email address.
2. Copy and paste a single line of JavaScript to your website. It is easy and doesn’t change the way your website works or looks.
3. You will be given your own URL that lets you track the visitors to your website using Google Maps.

The service is free, but limited to the 20 most recent visitors to your register website/blog, which is still great for a free service.

The “usual” limitation of this kind of service (as the on-line statistics): it doesn’t take into account the atom/rss requests…

You can access to the didierbeck.com’s visitor log here. Also accessible as an RSS feed.

An example below:

Incredible buzz everywhere about Google Talk… So, I couldn’t decently avoid to test it ;-)

Google Talk is a downloadable Windows application that offers:

• Free calls over your computer anytime, from anywhere, and for as long as you want
• A simple and intuitive user interface for sending instant messages or making calls–no clutter, pop-ups or ads
• Superior voice quality through just a microphone and computer speaker
• A shared Gmail contacts list that updates automatically with the people you communicate with most often

[via Jeff Bussgang]

Again, a great post on Seeing the both sides about the difference of the perception of time between a VC and an entrepreneur.

When friends ask me what the biggest change has been in transitioning from sitting in the entrepreneur’s seat to the VC’s seat, I often think of the profound difference in the way entrepreneurs and VCs look at that all important dimension of time.

When you’re an entrepreneur, time is your enemy. You need to solve the problem of “simultaneity” – hire the team, build the product, raise money and close deals – all in parallel.

When you’re a VC, you have a very different relationship with time. VCs seem to love the passage of time. When you’re evaluating a deal, more time means more information.