Since about 1 year, I have bought a Sony HDR-HC3 camcorder (HDV 1080i) recording on standard MiniDV.

For some months now, I have finally bought a license of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 (arrgggg). A very expensive tool, but so great…

Since some time now, I was searching for an online website and service for hosting and publishing HD videos. youTube, DailyMotion, vpod.tv are not supporting the HD standards (720 or 1080). It seems that some companies are now starting to launch this service.

vimeo is one of them. Quite a good service (free account with a weekly upload limit of 500MB). So I have created an account, setup quickly a short HD video about my last holidays in St Barth (3’45 in 720p). Have a look at the results, still not a 1080i (sooo huge!), but not bad. Be careful, the embedded version below is not in HD! For an HD version you should have a look there (vimeo format, streaming) or here (the original wmv encodded in H.264, 84 MB).

http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=384416&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=01AAEA
Saint Barth March 2007 from Didier BEck on Vimeo.

via 451 CAOS Theory

As about 50’000 other companies, we are using Nagios quite intensively in innoveo for all our infrastructure monitoring activities. Very nice open source tool, tons of functions, huge community.

Ethan Galstad is the creator and lead developer of Nagios since about 9 years now.

He has decided to found Nagios Enterprises, in order to provide professional products and services to organizations in need of monitoring solutions. Here the official announcement.

We are proud to offer a variety of professional solutions for Nagios users – including support and consulting services for organizations that need assistance before, during, and after a Nagios implementation. Together with our partners, Nagios Enterprises can help you deploy and manage an effective monitoring solution for your business.

Their services include the following proposals:

• support (also 7×24)
• consulting (integration, customization, performance, architecture)
• branding solutions (how to increase the awareness of nagios-based solutions)
• advertising services (advertising nagios-based solutions on nagios.org)

It is also interesting to have a look at Ethan’s explication for the founding and commercialization of Nagios Enterprises services:

By generating revenue through the provision of commercial services and products, I am convinced that Nagios Enterprises can play an important role in helping both the Nagios project and community. Supporting development, accelerating release timelines, helping to promote awareness and advocacy, and ensuring long-term project viability are all things that can be more easily accomplished with funding.

It will be surely quite challenging to keep the right balance between the pure business side (commercialization of services) and the interests of the whole Community. Some governance issues could raise in this field. To help, Nagios Enterprises has set-up a Community Advisors, which could help in case of tensions between both sides.

Good luck to Nagios Enterprises!

We will move in our definitive office on Friday November 30, i.e. in about 2 weeks. As we are staying in the same building, it will be easier as a “full move” to another place. Actually, we are going down from the 6th to the 2nd floor, but with more place and a well-organized place (big open space part).

We will have there about 295m2 for us. So, some room for growth ;-)

Here some pictures of the state of the works for about 2 weeks, quite a mess! But, the preparation plan is ok, still in time. And everything will be ready beginning of next week.

I have participated last year to the launch of a great website called beach-list.com by beta-testing and providing some pictures from saint barth.

This website is really great, tons of information, descriptions, maps, ratings about the best and beautiful beaches around the world. Very nice aggregation work!

everything goes in direction of preservation of the beaches:

Beaches take millions of years to form and even though they constantly renew themselves, if we want to have them for generations to come, we had best ensure they are well preserved. That means saving them from overdevelopment and keeping them in pristine condition so we can all enjoy them. A sign on a Belize beach sums it up best:

“Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints.”

So, if you are searching for information about beaches everywhere in the world, have a look there!

Cambridge Technology Partners, an IT consulting firm on the Swiss market, announced on last Monday its spin off from Novell, after being integrated in 2001.

Here the official press release (pdf).

This decision is the final step in Novell’s process of divestment in business consulting that started early this year. The spin-off will allow Novell to focus on its core business, infrastructure software, and enable Cambridge to further strengthen its position on the market by freely pursuing new business partnerships and launching strategic initiatives around its new solutions in Switzerland and soon in other European countries. Cambridge will continue to be managed by its existing management team.

“The spin-off is great news for our customers as it will reinforce Cambridge’s strategy of agnostic, high-end consulting and technology services.” said Vijay Srinivasan, Cambridge Technology Partners CEO.

It is interesting to note that a part of the Management Team of Cambridge and its employees has already left the company in  to found Optaros. Have a look for example at the CV of Bob Gett, President and CEO of Optaros.

Disclaimer: Bruno von Rotz, VP Strategy and Research of Optaros, is Member of the Board of innoveo.

As in 2005 and 2006, I will have the chance to be in Paris for the fourth conference LeWeb3.

This time, I will attend the conference with Laurent. We were number 24 and 25 to register, not bad ;-)

The program is quite interesting, have a look. Plus a workshop session track. Plus a start-up competition. Plus a Netvibes LeWeb3 Party on Tuesday evening. Plus a GCS dinner 7.0 (I hope, no news for quite along time ;-).

We will travel with the new TGV and will be in Paris on Monday evening (December 10). And interested to join any bloggers’ party ;-) We will leave first on Thursday (December 13). We are staying at the hotel Daunou Opera, in front of the offices of Occam Capital, Altaïde, and … the Harry’s Bar :-)

Already 781 participants registered, wow!

So, hope to meet again some friends: Marc, Jeff, Rodrigo, Robert (new happy father ;-), Sandrine, Thierry, etc.

I would like to meet, because I am following their blogs since months/years (for some of them ;-) and we haven’t met yet, or we haven’t exchanged enough yet:

• Dragos
• François
• Jacques
• Ouriel
• Salah

And all the others I have forgotten (arrgggg…. :-). If *you* would like to meet, just drop me an email: didier DOT beck AT gmail DOT com.

And see you there!

I was not very present the last time on my blog, you know why — innoveo is taking quite a lot of time, but it’s good time ;-)

On the other hand, I don’t find so cool that so many good and exciting bloggers are not taking the time anymore to post! Surely, but just partly, an effect of twitter and/or facebook. But hey, I *really* miss all the posts of Marc (I know, you lost your voice), Jeff, Rodrigo, Dragos, and even Loic… All are present on Twitter/Facebook, are posting videos (salut Loic :-), but I am missing the textual post, full of interesting thoughts, well constructed and structured, and so on. I like videos and podcasts, but they are not bringing the same depth of analysis. Nothing particular to blogging, just as it is in our real life, isn’t it?

So, colleagues and friends, do not forget to *write* and articulate some of your thoughts, at least I am missing them ;-) Perhaps I am the only one, who knows!

Now, it is time to talk about me: I will re-start to post regularly, on different topics, as usual. Quite a lot of stuff to exchange with you, to tell you. And I still like to write, even if it is in “broken English” ;-) So, stay tuned, I will try to post daily again.

By the way, this is really funny, it is my 900th post!