Above a list of the different publications and articles linked with my work in the last years by Helvetia, ecenter solutions, and now, innoveo.

This list is not the definitive one, I know that some stuff are missing (at least: one book, one award, and one article).

via Seth Godin and VirtualHosting.com

Food for thoughts and, for some parts, “scientific” explanation of our implicit way to present information. Really excellent!

Eye-tracking studies are hot in the web design world, but it can be hard to figure out how to translate the results of these studies into real design implementations. These are a few tips from eye-tracking studies that you can use to improve the design of your webpage.

Above the 23 Lessons Learnt:

1. Text attracts attention before graphics.
2. Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
3. Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
4. Readers ignore banners.
5. Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
6. Show numbers as numerals.
7. Type size influences viewing behavior.
8. Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them.
9. People generally scan lower portions of the page.
10. Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
11. One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
12. Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation.
13. Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often.
14. Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
15. Bigger images get more attention.
16. Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
17. Headings draw the eye.
18. Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
19. Lists hold reader attention longer.
20. Large blocks of text are avoided.
21. Formatting can draw attention.
22. White space is good.
23. Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.

via U2log.com

If you like U2, or simply music, you should have a look at this never-released video of surely one of the best song of the Irish band: Red Hill Mining Town.

This song was released on the “Joshua Tree” album, for about 20 years!!! And U2 didn’t release this video till today, although it is quite cool ;-) specially after 20 years! Have a look at over videos which are 20 years old, will be funny.

The Joshua Tree is already 20 years old, pfffuuuu. To my mind, one of the best album ever released, just exceptional.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytRekLUX3GE]

I have told you for a while that my “preferred” webcam showing the marvelous Bay of Saint Jean at Saint Barth is working again.

Have a look at the picture taken this afternoon (16.00 – Saint Barth time), absolutely fantastic! Great and nice colors. And, you know, I will be there in exactly 71 days ;-)

[click to enlarge]

Loic and Géraldine LeMeur (Loic, you are *always* interrupting your wife ;-) have given a press conference (in French) some days ago. Quite interesting, they have presented the whole event and the program. Some highlights below.

The conference

• fourth edition of the conference
• as usual, in English
• last year: 1’300 participants and 36 nationalities
• this year, about 1’500 participants expected, 2’000 as a maximum. for the three first editions, people were refused
• 907 participants already registered
• budget: about 1 million EUR
• 120’000 EUR just for the wifi setup, bandwidth of 250 to 300 MB/s expected
• also as usual, no ads or mailing campaigns, just word of mouth, specially through the bloggers
• about 32 (!) partners for the conference among others google, microsoft, ibm, nokia, orange, …
• one central “plenary” room for 1’500 people, a second room for networking with a direct retransmission of the central room presentations, a third room for the startup competition
• start-up competition: 120 startups registered, 30 have been pre-selected for the competition, and grouped in 4 domains:
  • b2b
  • video
  • mobile
  • consumers

The program

There are just some highlights and notices for myself for the conference ;-) You can find the official program there and the workshops program here.

• First day

• micro-blogging, Evan Williams, founder of Twitter and Blogger
• social information (controversial), with Kevin Rose, founder of Digg
• why books and school lectures still exist, Hans Rosling
• creation and innovation as a isolated process, Philippe Stark
• impact of technology on corporate culture, Nelson Mattos from Google
• technology and its impact on our society, June Cohen from TED conference
• Karl-Heinz Brandenburg, the creator of the MP3 format (!)
• 3 tracks about the future of the music industry
• digitized world, Joi Ito (!), about virtual worlds and games and specially World of Warcraft
• casual games, Jeff Clavier, Mathieu Nouzareth from Boonty
• disruption and innovation, Hugh MacLeod
• and a last track about branding in virtual worlds

Promised, a last picture of our office! At the very beginning of the renovation works. Thanks to Nick ;-)

Beginning of this week, I have presented you some pictures of the works in progress in our future innoveo’s office.

The situation there this afternoon. Almost finished!

[my future office]

Cool!

After a break of 3.5 months, the nicest webcam of St Barth is back. Marvelous view of the Saint Jean Bay. Small (resolution: 555×420) and big size (resolution: 1280×960) are available.

[click on the picture to see the bigger one]

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!