Do you know this new skyscraper?

Taipei 101

Taipei 101 (臺北 101) is a 101-floor skyscraper in Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its original name was Taipei Financial Center, based on its official Chinese name: the Taipei International Financial Building (臺北國際金融大樓). It is the tallest building in the world by three of the four standards designated by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

[…] Taipei 101 has 101 stories above ground (hence the name) and five under ground.

The building holds the records for:

• Ground to structural top: 508 m (1667 ft), a record formerly held by the Petronas Twin Towers at 452 m (1483ft).
• Ground to roof: 448 m (1470 ft). Formerly held by the Sears Tower (442 m = 1454ft)
• Ground to highest occupied floor: 438 m (1437 ft). Formerly held by the Sears Tower.

It does not hold the record for

• Ground to pinnacle, which is held by the Sears Tower 529 m (1703ft).

[…] The entire tower was opened on December 31, 2004, amidst an extravagant New Year’s celebration, complete with live performances and fireworks. President Chen Shui-bian, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng cut the ribbon. Several floors are already in retail and office use.

Total buildable area will be 450,000 m² with:

• 214,000 m² of office space
• 77,500 m² of retail space
• 73,000 m² of parking space

The tower includes a six-floor retail mall with shops, restaurants, and other attractions. The architecture of the retail mall includes both retro gothic-style pinnacles and modern industrial structures.

[source: Wikipedia]

Tuned mass damper

A tuned mass damper is a device mounted in structures to prevent discomfort, damage or outright structural failure by vibration. Typically, the dampers are huge concrete blocks mounted in skyscrapers or other structures, and moved in opposition to the resonant frequency of the structure by means of springs, fluid or pendulums.

[…] Tuned mass dampers stabilize against violent motion caused by harmonic vibration. The presence of a tuned damper forces a comparatively lightweight structure to overcome the inertia of a great mass, such as a giant concrete block, placed in such a way that the mass only begins to move in one direction just as the structure begins to move in the other, thus damping the structure’s oscillation. The counterweight may be mounted using massive spring coils and hydraulic dampers, and if the axis of the vibration is fundamentally horizontal or torsional, leaf springs and pendulum-mounted weights are employed. Tuned mass dampers are engineered, or “tuned” to specifically counter harmful frequencies of oscillation or vibration.

[…] A 660-ton tuned mass damper is held at the 88th floor, stabilizing the tower against earthquakes, typhoons, and wind. The damper can reduce up to 40% of the tower’s movements.

[source: Wikipedia]

[via BusinessWeek]

Wow, great move Switzerland! That’s cool :-)

Switzerland took a step closer to the rest of the continent Sunday when a majority of voters approved a government-sponsored initiative to allow citizens of 10 new European Union member states to work here.

About 56 percent of voters supported the government-sponsored proposal in a referendum, extending cooperation between this traditionally neutral country and the European Union, according to final results.

Allowing citizens of eight Eastern European countries and two Mediterranean island countries — Cyprus and Malta — to travel and work freely in Switzerland has proved to be a touchy issue. But the result is a second boost within four months for advocates of closer relations with the EU, after Swiss voters approved joining the bloc’s “Schengen” passport-free area in June.

[via Russell]

Russell explains why he doesn’t want to stay on Mac after 7 months. Interesting. He is illustrating his thoughts with 33 (!) arguments.

Now that I’ve been using Macs for a while, I’m wondering if they’re all that special. The hardware is nice, but OS X can be as slow, buggy, non-standard, frustrating and annoying as any other operating system. Also, I don’t really use most of the included apps, so most of what makes OSX so special doesn’t really apply to me.

I don’t think I would give a Mac to my Mom and expect any magic, for example. I think Apple has sacrificed their vaunted simplicity, usability and consistency in the face of sloppy Windows competition. They’ve settled for “good enough” I think, and if that’s the case, then I might as well stick with the more popular OS, which ends up being the easier OS to deal with becuase of its popularity. Much of the ability to even function at a basic level is by the Grace of Microsoft for supporting the Mac with Office and Windows Media, otherwise I’d be blind to tons of online media and and all of the enterprise.

His first arguments are quite….embarrassing for the MAC:

1. Anyone who says that Macs are more stable than Windows are smoking dope. I have two brand new Macs and they regularly go wacky and need reboots.
2. My mini and PowerBook are 1.42Ghz and 1.5Ghz, with 1GB and 512MB respectively. They are both sloooooow. Though the PowerBook is a bit better, neither is as snappy as my two year old Celeron, and not anywhere near the cutting edge x86 laptops.
3. Also, the graphics power suck. ATI Radeon 9200 is anemic in 2005. Playing Halo on either computer is a drastically reduced experience than on my Celeron 2Ghz Toshiba.

Hey you, bloody spammers!

You *cannot* post your fuckin’ damned stupid pseudo comments with your ri-di-cu-lous ads. No chance to benefit from my little Google Juice.

All the comments are *moderated*, ok? Soooo, just go away, you are just losing time and….wasting my own time.

Pfffuuuu…….

I recently bought a new digital camera, to be able to complete the usage of my great SLR digicam – the Canon EOS 20D. In some case, I do not want to transport the “whole stuff” and I would like to have a very small camera to put in my pockets. After some searches and readings, I decided to stay by Canon and to buy a Canon IXUS 700, also called PowerShot SD500 in the US (what a mess to use different names worldwide…).

Specifications

• 7.1M pixels
• focal length: 7.7 – 23.1mm, equivalent 35mm: 37-111mm
• f/2.8 – f/4.9
• zoom: x3 optical
• focusing: TTL, 9-point AiAF, 1-point AF
• ISO speed: auto, 50, 100, 200, 400
• shutter speed: 15 – 1/2’000 sec
• viewfinder: real-image zoom, optical viewfinder
• LCD: 118’000 pixels
• Image size: 3072 x 2304, 2592 x 1944, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 640 x 480
• Compression mode: Superfine, Fine, Normal
• Movies:

• 640 x 480, 30/15fps
• 320 x 240, 60/30/15fps
• 160 x 120, 15fps

Some pictures

Other reviews

• dpreview.com
• Pocket-Lint
• Digital Camera
• Megapixel.net

Still Image Devices

I haven’t known this new standard on WinXP – StillImage. Interesting. Have a look at the Windows XP Resource Kit.

Windows XP Professional supports still-image devices through Windows Image Acquisition (WIA), which uses the WDM architecture. WIA provides robust communication between applications and image-capture devices, allowing you to capture images efficiently and transfer them to your computer for editing and use.

WIA supports SCSI, IEEE 1394, USB, and serial digital still image devices. Support for infrared, parallel, and serial still image devices, which are connected to standard COM ports, is provided by standard infrared, parallel, and serial interfaces. Image scanners and digital cameras are examples of WIA devices. WIA also supports Microsoft DirectShow®-based webcams and digital video (DV) camcorders to capture frames from video.

Conclusions

After about 2 months of usage, I can recommend this camera. Really great, right size, fast, possibility to catch movies, amazing results :-)

Three limitations:

1. Red-eyes effect present with the flash
2. You *have* to buy a small case to put the camera! It is not possible to lock the buttons and if you are just putting it in a bag and/or your pocket (its size definitely allows it), you could damage the optic engine (off/on and
3. It is a 7M pixels, so you need some good and big SD cards ;-)

Done! I am now registered to the coming two-days conference in Paris on December 5 and 6, 2005. Have a look at the confirmed speakers (wow :-)

• Robert Scoble, Microsoft
• Shel Israel
• Mark Rogers, CEO, Market Sentinel
• Fegus Burns, CEO, Nooked
• Scott Rafer, CEO, Feedster
• Jan Ni, Nokia Lifeblog
• Steve Olechowsky, CTO & co-founder, Feedburner
• Philipe Borremans, External Communications, IBM Belgium & Luxembourg
• Roy Lindeman, Country manager, Readspeaker
• Bob Wyman, CTO & co-founder, PubSub
• Jeff Clavier, Soft Tech VC
• Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void
• David Sifry, Technorati
• Rebecca MacKinnon, GlobalVoices

I have seen that Rodrigo, Marc and Jeff will join (among others).

If you are also attending this event and want to get together (hey, that could be great!), feel free to send me an email at:

didier [dot] beck [at] gmail [dot] com

[via Jeff Bussgang]

Again, a *great* post of Jeff Bussgang (have a look at his blog). It is crazy, I think that I am blogging each post of Jeff ;-)

Worth a read, it is about emotion in a start-up and what is the soul of a company. These inputs are remembering me some things…..

Emotion in a start-up

Entrepreneurs tend to approach start-ups with extreme emotional attachment beyond any rational borders, seeking the answer to the question: “Will anyone love and appreciate my [professional] baby (which, by the way, I hope makes me money so I can retire and get back to spending time with my family)?” Anyone who’s been involved in starting a company knows what an incredibly emotional adventure it can be. The ups and downs are incredibly exhilirating yet terrifying. One moment you’re king of the world, the next you’re afraid you’re going to run out of money, and then it flips again.

Soul of a company

You don’t have to be a religious person to appreciate that every start-up has a soul. Webster defines the word as “the immaterial part of a person”. The soul of a start-up is thus the immaterial part of the company that personifies its unique character and culture. The soul of a company typically comes from the founding team, although I have also seen it come from mid-level hires, often young, who so completely embrace the company’s mission that they begin to deeply eminate it in all of their activities.

I like very much the Jeff’s definition of the soul of a company: The soul of a start-up is thus the immaterial part of the company that personifies its unique character and culture.

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We stayed in a beautiful hotel in Calvi, called La Villa. Superb design, good service, very quite, 4 different swimming-pools. The restaurant of the hotel, l’Alivu, is really great (one star Michelin).

Perched on the hills of Calvi, La Villa hotel offers a peaceful setting only 5 minutes drive from the town center. La Villa is aptly named for its beautiful design is that of a Roman villa overlaid with element of a Corsican Monastery with arcades to frame the splendid view of the bay with Calvi, and its citadel, quiet cloisters, luminous mosaics and hand-make terracotta tiles.

To create a more personal and intimate ambience, the hotel has been made in to 4 residences composed of 52 rooms and suite with view on the sea and on the mountain.

Nice view on the Calvi’s citadelle

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Breakfast and restaurant near the central swimming-pool

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Beautiful garden

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…And beautiful design

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[via Skype News]

[via Jeff Clavier]

Blake points to an issue of some open source projects: generally made up of brilliant technologists who consider that code is what makes the value of a project, as opposed to a means to an end. The Firefox team was built on a different approach that led them to really focus on users and deliver a product solving their needs. They also innovated by deploying a true marketing compaign to push the deployment of Firefox, through the site SpreadFirefox.com and the now famous $200K NY Times ad that was paid by 10,000 members of the community.