Before lying on the beautiful beaches of Anguilla and St.Barths, you have to….get there!! I have forgotten this part of our holidays, and Loic has just posted a funny picture of an Airbus landing in Saint Martin at the Princess Juliana airport (SXM).

© airliners.net

We were there last year, and I can tell you that this picture is not a fake :-) The landing happened exactly in this way. Generally speaking, the runway is *very* short for these kind of big airplanes, as the Boeing 747/400 and Airbus A340/300. Last year, there was some little wind from behind, and the pilot had to realize a beautiful touch-and-go. Then, we had to go to the Dominican Republic, where we slept, and then re-took the plane, and flew back to Saint Martin. Great…

Another picture of a Boeing 757 landing, also in Saint Martin, taken from the other side of the beach.

© airliners.net

So, after the first “challenge”, you are in Saint Martin. It is not finished! Then, we will flight to Anguilla’s airport, Wall Blake. No idea how is the airport there. BUT, I know how is the one of St.Barths. Wow, that was (and will be) a beautiful flight with…crazy landings, have a look:

© airliners.net

© airliners.net

© airliners.net

Again, no fake pictures here, the pilot has to “jump” the pass, and then, to stick to the mountain slope, in order to touch right at the beginning of the runway. If it doesn’t work, touch-and-go :-) Some planes also finished their flight in….the beautiful sea :-)

[via amazon.com]

Best selling products on Amazon.com in 2005 by total units sold:

1. Books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
2. Music: X&Y; by Coldplay
3. DVD: Star Wars Episode III- Revenge of the Sith (Widescreen Edition)
4. Electronics: 2GB iPod Nano (black)
5. Home & Garden: Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized 8-1/2-Quart Saucier with Lid
6. Health & Personal Care: Airborne Effervescent Health Formula Dietary Supplement
7. Computer & Video Games: Madden NFL 2006
8. Tools & Hardware: Jorgensen 50XXX 3/4″ Pony Pipe Clamp Fixture
9. Apparel & Accessories: Columbia Bugaboo Jacket
10. Shoes: Tommy Hilfiger Women’s Erin Slipper

Products most frequently purchased as gifts by Amazon.com customers in 2005:

1. Books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
2. Music: X&Y; by Coldplay
3. DVD: Lost – The Complete First Season (2004)
4. Electronics: Apple 512 MB iPod Shuffle
5. Home & Garden: Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized 8-1/2-Quart Saucier with Lid
6. Health & Personal Care: Pampers Swaddlers diapers
7. Computer & Video Games: Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) Value Pack
8. Tools & Hardware: Black & Decker SS925 Storm Station All-in-One
9. Apparel & Accessories: Prada Women’s Small Rectangle Nylon Handbag, Nero
10. Sports & Outdoors: Diamond Gen IV – Rechargeable No Battery Forever LED Shake Flashlight

I wish you and your family a happy, successful, and healthy New Year 2006.

I would like to thank you very much for taking some time here on my blog. It was really a pleasure to post (exactly 351 posts in the last 12 months) during the last year … and it is crazy to see how many *you* are, month after month!

365’000 unique visitors during the last year (48’000 in December), who generated more than 565’000 pageviews (70’000 in December). An increase of more than 300% from January to December 2005. Wow.

The list of the first 30 countries of my visitors:

And my first tagCloud (via PointBlog):

I received from one of our provider quite an original X’mas gift last year: a marvelous GEO calendar. These beautiful pictures have accompanied me during the 12 months of 2005.

I have decided to order some of the new versions 2006 for the ecenter. I find that they are even more impressive as in 2005. Have a look!

GEO calendar “die Erde von oben (the Earth from above)”

GEO calendar “Genesis”

[via Nick-are-you-really-on-holidays and BusinessWeek]

Very good summary of the status of the Open Source trend and business! Some excerpts:

• In fact, open-source programs have become so popular, they now pose a legitimate threat to the established software giants.
• According to a new study by consulting firm Optaros, 87% of organizations are now using open-source software, somewhere.
• Red Hat finally proves to everyone it can make money from free software. […] Red Hat is one of the best-positioned stocks in software and should be able to further capitalize on the growing demand for open source.
• Sun Microsystems open sources everything — except Java. […] The move transformed Sun into one of the largest open-source software players overnight. Yet critics have complained that what open-source developers really want is Java. Several experts expect that Sun might finally capitulate in 2006.
• Even more exciting for penguin lovers, Motorola, the second-biggest handset maker in the world, announced that Linux would be its standard operating system for the bulk of its future phones.
• Firefox goes mainstream.
• Venture capitalists wake up to open source. Industry estimates show some $400 million was invested in open-source startups in 2005. Two types of companies dominated the landscape: First, so-called application companies, such as SugarCRM which makes customer relationship management software for companies and aims to compete with Siebel and Salesforce.com.

  The other category is services companies, which play the middleman between open-source projects and the info-tech departments at large corporations. Companies such as SpikeSource and SourceLabs test and maintain applications like SugarCRM for companies […]

  Half the companies that raised venture money in 2005 won’t be able to raise money in 2006.

• All in all, it has been a pretty great year for open source. And 2006 may be even bigger and better.

[via Nick]

Nick has pointed out a Swiss website called FOSS-directory, which contains a directory of available Free and Open Source Softwares and companies, sorted by different criteria (industry, region, type of service, etc.).

Seems to be quite extensive!

Hey, in about 4 weeks now (yyeeessss), we will be in Anguilla and St.Barths in the French West Indies. I gave you some details beginning of November, remember?

Let’s compare the weather:

Ok, it seems to be clear!

More than clear :-) 4 weeks!

[via nielsen//netratings, as pdf]

Interesting study from Goldman Sachs, nielsen//netratings, and Harris Interactive about the eSpending (Online shopping) in the US for the 2005 holiday season (Christmas’ period):

• total holiday spending hits $25 bn (oct. 29 till dec.16), excluding travel
• +25% compared to the same period in 2004
• categories ranked by revenue

• apparel/cloting: 17% (!)
• computer hardware/peripherals: 14%
• consumer electronics: 14%
• books: 10%
• video games (HW/SW): 7%

Crazy, how the shopping structure is changing from year to year and how the remaining issues are evolving. Paiement security seems not to be a problem anymore for example.

[via CICLOPS]

Cool and icy Dione floats in front of giant Saturn bedecked in a dazzling array of colors.

The surface of Dione (1,118 kilometers, 695 miles across), which exhibits contrasting bright and dark areas when viewed up close, appears pale in this image. It is Saturn’s multi-hued cloud bands that boldly steal the show. Discrete clouds and eddies in Saturn’s northern hemisphere can be seen within the faint shadows of the rings on the planet.

Cassini is in a phase of its mission in which its orbit will be nearly equatorial for some time. This view was obtained from about one-third of a degree out of the ringplane.

Images taken with red, green and blue filters were used to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the wide angle camera on September 22, 2005 from a distance of approximately 803,000 kilometers (499,000 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of about 43 degrees. The image scale is about 48 kilometers (30 miles) per pixel.

[via Martin Varsavsky]

Martin Varsavsky, CEO of FON, had the chance to meet Google and Technorati founders on the same day. Two different approaches. Quite provocative but interesting.

First I was shocked to find out that there´s practically no contact between Technorati and Google. I guess it´s hard for 5000 people strong Google to meet 30 people strong Technorati and clearly Google is in a complete different league altogether but with both companies being so close to each other I found it remarkable that each should follow a complete separate path to similar objectives, facilitating search.

Secondly after having studying the way Google works vs the way Technorati works my conclusion is that Google has a model that is not as scaleable as Technorati. I know this may sound shocking but here´s why. Google basically copies the internet every two weeks just to find out what changed. This process is slow and incredibly wasteful as “what changed”, may be, and I am guessing, one percent of what´s on the Net. In a way Google is based on the principle that people don´t want to be searched but Google goes ahead and searches them anyway. Technorati instead is based on the principle that anyone who publishes something wants others to know. Thus Technorati needs very few computers as it is only collecting notifications, the famous pings. In other words, while Google combs the haystack to get the needle Technorati simply uses a magnet that attracts the needle, and that magnet is people´s ego.