Category Archives: blog

iPhone theme switcher

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I have installed and activated a WordPress plugin called iPhone theme switcher which allows in a super easy way to detect if my site is being viewed by iPhone or iPod (about 2% of the traffic here) and to switch to a selected iPhone theme. I use the iPhone WordPress Theme 1.0.1

Now, if you have a look at this site with your iPhone, you should see something like that:

Participating to the first TEDx in Alsace

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TEDx = independently organized TED event

It’s the first time that a TEDx event is organized in the region where I’m living. So the first TEDxAlsace will be organized in Mulhouse/Alsace/France on coming October 2 by Salah, a “very nice guy” I know since a while. The general topic will be “visions of the future”.

Quite a good program and interesting speakers planned.

About TEDx

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event.
The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

My interview (yeah, in French :-)

1. Pourriez vous vous présentez ? ( professions, secteur, passions, projets, parcours,…)

Didier, 38 ans, marié, un garçon de 8 ans, entrepreneur.

Je vis dans un petit village non loin de Mulhouse, mais je travaille à Zürich en Suisse, où j’ai cofondé mon entreprise, Innoveo, en 2007, après un très enrichissant processus de “spin-out”. Nous fournissons des solutions logicielles aux groupes d’assurance dans le domaine de la distribution. Notre vision est d’aider le business à implémenter leur stratégie d’innovation et de développement à l’aide de solutions technologiques adaptées, tout en injectant du “sens” dans notre travail. L’approche dite “Agile” nous intéresse énormément et nous nous trouvons dans un processus de transformation profonde depuis quelques mois, basée sur Scrum. Je suis également membre du Conseil d’Administration de Boomerang depuis plus de 12 ans. Je possède une double formation d’ingénieur en informatique (ENSISA) et de Management d’entreprise (MBA à l’EMLYON).

Mes passions se retrouvent dans mon blog (dans le désordre): l’entrepreneuriat, le leadership, les industries du logiciel et de l’assurance, Innoveo, la musique, la photo, la dégustation de vins. Et pour une petite île perdue aux Antilles, exactement à la frontière entre l’océan Atlantique et la mer des Caraïbes … Saint Barth ;-)

2. Est ce que vous connaissiez les événements TED et TEDx avant de s’inscrire au TEDxAlsace?

J’ai la chance de connaître deux personnes qui ont déjà participé au TED, Jeff Clavier et Loïc Le Meur, tous deux très connus dans notre petit monde de “geeks”. J’ai pu rencontrer Jeff et Loïc grâce à Marc Goldberg, mon ami investisseur chez Bryan Garnier et grand connaisseur de la “scène” technologique européenne.

Je connais donc le concept … et Salah, organisateur de TEDxAlsace. Le mélange des deux ne peut qu’être détonnant!

3. Quelles sont vos motivations et attentes par rapport au TEDxAlsace?

Simplement écouter et apprendre, faire de belles rencontres.

4. Si vous avez une question à poser à l’un des speakers de TEDxAlsace, qui serait le speaker? et quelle serait la question ?

Tout d’abord, merci à tous de participer et de nous faire partager votre expérience!

Une simple question à tous: un lien vers un post, un site, un article qui vous a marqué ces derniers mois.

5. Quelle question nous avons oublié de vous posez ? Et quelle serait la réponse ?

Quelle est l’entreprise et l’entrepreneur qui vous inspirent en ce moment?

Entreprise: Netflix, entreprise américaine de plus de 2000 employés mais qui possède une culture d’entreprise très particulière et innovante. Elle cherche par exemple à minimiser ses règles internes au fur et à mesure de son développement. Leur présentation de leur culture d’entreprise est publiée sur SlideShare (en anglais).

Entrepreneur: Jean-Claude Biver, Directeur Général des montres Hublot. Entrepreneur en série puisque qu’il repris avec succès 3 marques de montres de luxe dans sa carrière: Omega, Blancpain et Hublot. Excusez du peu ;-) Quelle énergie, quelle stratégie, et quelle approche marketing.

6. Vos liens internet : (Twitter, Site internet, blog, Facebook…)

Blog:                http://didierbeck.com (depuis mars 2004)

Photos/vidéos:  http://visuals.didierbeck.com

Facebook:        http://www.facebook.com/didier.beck

Twitter:             http://twitter.com/didierbeck (depuis juillet 2007)

Xing:                https://www.xing.com/profile/Didier_Beck

LinkedIn:          http://www.linkedin.com/in/didierbeck

Innoveo:           http://innoveo.com

Boomerang:     http://boomerangpharma.com

Holiday is cool, as my new Canon S90!

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Quick “hello” from Combrit Saint Marine in Brittany.

We are finished with our “stroll week”. Each day about 6-8 hours on foot, a looonnngggg time we haven’t done that ;-) Fantastic landscape, varying a lot each day, as the weather!

That’s a real break, different from St Barth, but still a cool break. Today, first time with a kind of real Internet connection ;-)

As I didn’t want to transport my 3+ kg Canon EOS 5D MarkII with its lens during the 6+ hours walk per day, I have bought a Canon S90, just before going on holiday. As a Canon-fan, I had mainly the choice between a G11 or a S90, both with almost the same technical and optical characteristics, excepted that the G11 is still quite big. Some pictures below (RAW + DxO post-prod, but with a small netbook ;-). More on the Canon S90 later. But generally speaking I’m super happy with it!

Now, back to the “big one”!

Two weeks off :-)

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So some days off with the family from now on, that’s good! No cell phone, no emails, but for sure my iPad, Canon cameras and lens, and my netbook for the pictures ;-)

Quite a big program, this time in France, and more precisely in Brittany. All in all 2’400km with the car and some km on foot.

Different stops planed:

  1. Lamotte Beuvron, in the French Centre region, the capital of the Tarte Tatin, at the … Villa Tatin.

  2. Lannion, in the north-western France, Brittany.

  3. From there, we will have a 6-days stroll through the Côte de Granit Rose, till Port-Blanc:

  4. We will stay 4 days at Combrit Saint Marine, further on in Brittany (between Quimper and Concarneau) at the Ferme Saint Vennec.

  5. Then we will be at the Château de Chanteloire during 2 days, which is located in Chouzy-sur-Cisse in the middle of the Châteaux of the Loire Valley region.

So quite a long journey with the car, but hopefully we should see and visit some interesting places!

Some changes in the sidebar…

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So, I had to correct some stuff in my right sidebar:

  • get rid of my visitors log and map, as the service (gvisit.com) is down since some days now
  • insert a … search (!). Actually I have forgotten to integrate it with all the changes I have done
  • change the SmugMug badge which is shown within the sidebar, switch to “Saint Barth 2010” ;-) Looks like the one just below:

Bye bye Blogger, hello WordPress!

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As you have read in my last posts, I had to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. I am using Blogger as a blog-engine since I have started to blog in March 2004. Since then, I have my own domain (didierbeck.com) and my blog and its content is hosted at OVH. It was and still is important for me to have a full control on the content and data I am publishing. That’s the reason why I am not interested in a full blog-engine+hosting solution.

The reason why I had to migrate

I have received an email from the Blogger team on February 2, 2010, saying that:

We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz

Actually Blogger will not support FTP anymore from May 1, 2010.

Reasons:

FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Wow, I’m in the “.5%” of the Blogger’s users… Something must be wrong, not by Blogger, by me ;-). I don’t want to be in the “.5%”… I am just wondering what was this % in 2004, when I have started to blog. Anyway, for me and as explained above, I need a separate blog-engine that I can host by myself.

Which tools to chose?

Mainly, I had two possibilities, as the blog-engine needs to be “AMP compatible” (Apache, MySql, PHP). I also don’t want to use a CMS (Content Management System) supporting blogging features, but a fully focused solution. And mainstream!

So, I had a look at dotclear and WordPress. I have tested both (quickly) and found WordPress more convenient. On top, OVH is offering an automated installation module for WordPress.

Some of the criteria that were important for me:

  • publishing with Windows Live Writer
  • widely used, open source, strong community
  • technology proven, based on standards
  • widgets, themes, plugins
  • static pages
  • wysiwyg editor
  • user and profile admin
  • trackback and pingback supported
  • comment moderation

WorPress is supporting these criteria and its prerequisites are very reasonable (v2.9.2):

  • PHP version 4.3 or greater
  • MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater
  • The mod_rewrite Apache module

Migration from Blogger to WordPress

… was simpler than I have thought! Still some steps to be done.

Export/import former posts

1’170 posts in my blog… As I have used a special comment-system in Blogger, it was clear from the beginning that I will not be able to transfer them.

I couldn’t use the import function of WordPress, as this function is only working if you have a Google account and an upgraded (New, was Beta) blog hosted on blogspot.com or a custom domain (not FTP). Which is not my case. I could solve this issue with the following procedure:

  1. Export the content from Blogger in XML: dashboard – chose your blog – settings – basic – blog tools – export blog.
  2. Then, convert the Blogger XML export-file to WordPress WXR which is suitable for importing into WordPress. Use the following online tool:  http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/
  3. In WordPress, use the importing function for native WordPress files (Tools – Import – WordPress – Upload your WXR file – Assign Authors (map old to new ones)

Done!

Preparation before activation

Again, different steps:

  • Define the users you need
  • Change the settings (SEO, base URLs, formats, comment moderation, permalinks, etc.)
  • Check if your posts were correctly migrated
  • Define the appearance, chose a theme. For me: Pyrmont V2 2.0.7 by motta. Be careful with the size of your visual elements on your posts, these could not match your new appearance.
  • Define the blogroll
  • Update the static pages:
    • Who I am
    • Recommendations
    • Publications
    • Disclaimer
  • Install and configure the plugins you want to use

Activation

So the last two steps for me were to:

  • backup and deactivate the former blog files and directories structure
  • change the .htaccess and index.php, according to the WordPress installation I have chosen (WordPress not installed in the root, which makes everything clearer but a bit more complicated). In the .htaccess, I have integrated some “redirect 301”, for example for the RSS feed.

Now, I am entering the fine-tuning and debugging phase. If you observe something strange or not working, thanks in advance for contacting me!

Migrating…

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Dear readers
I am in the process of migrating from Blogger to WordPress.
The 1’170 posts are migrated, most of the new site is now online.
I still have some redirections issues, sorry for that!
Stay tuned!

UPDATE: redirection issues solved! All former posts again

RE-UPDATE: old atom and rss feeds are also now redirected to the new one (http://didierbeck.com/feed/).