Little surprise this afternoon in our garden: there was a … peacock just walking here and there. Quite big and impressive. No idea where this one came from!

[via Dragos]

Dragos pointed an CNEt’s article about technology and France….

The blunt truth is that France, a country with a $1.7 trillion economy, is still better known for its fromage than its technology.

I don’t mean to pick on the French. Truth be told, I’m an unabashed Francophile. I love their food, adore their language and admire their culture. But when it comes to high-tech innovation, there’s no escaping the fact that France does not punch its weight.

There’s no shortage of technical ability in France–but a brain drain is hurting the company’s economy. About 200,000 French men and women, graduates of their country’s best technical schools, are living in the Bay Area, part of the reason there’s a technology gap.

“Lots of new technologies are getting developed in France,” [Gauthier, dean of HEC MBA] said, “such as the ones that went into the Airbus. That’s not being widely communicated.”

Gauthier may have a point. But no amount of spin and marketing is enough if you don’t have the goods. And so far France still has not risen to the challenge.

I know, I know, I am a bit late :-)

Skype has a blog (RSS, Atom). Cool.

On May 29 2005, Petra, who is Director Insurance Sector by Hewlett-Packard EMEA, participated to the Russian Insurance Summit in Saint-Petersburg and presented one slide about the eCenter…translated in Russian. Cool :-)

[via Mihai – in French]

Have a look at this “company” called huh?.

Their motto: we do stuff.

We have *all* already met these kind of consultants, haven’t we? I have some examples in mind ;-) Just hilarious.

Our main consulting strategy is to convince clients that we do stuff they can’t do themselves, and that we deserve lots of money for it. The best way to do this is to always look good, and always sound like we know something you don’t. Because we do.

Are you confused yet? Of course you are. And that’s just how we like it. Our marketing professionals are constantly coming up with new ways to make you feel inferior and stupid. Because you are. And we’re not. We’re new-age, eMoving, marketing consultants.

If you call our office, the phone will be answered by a very disinterested intern, giving you the impression that we’re too important to talk to you. Because we are.

We have really smart people who are always thinking up totally cool shit. We have a meeting room with a big, round, expensive table. When you hire us for marketing and consulting projects, we spend lots of time sitting around the table having meetings.

Our CEO is rarely in his office, and all female team members are expected to sleep with him, or at least pretend like they want to. Our designers ride Razor scooters around the office, while wearing mail-bag style backpacks to hold their iPods.

Mother’s Day + High temperature + Swimming-pool = cool week-end :-)

As I said last Wednesday, I was in Frankfurt for some days and took some pictures. Here we are!

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[via Dragos]

A great map services for Switzerland. Incredibly detailed, really a good stuff.

As an example, two searches, one in Basel (St.Alban-Anlage, 26) and another one in Zürich (Hohlstrasse, 560), where I have an office.

I am sorry but I haven’t got so much time during the last days to blog. I am quite busy because:

1. my exciting professional project started successfully on November 18 2004, with another central milestone on Mai 3 2005, will be finished next week on June 1 2005. I hope positively. Let’s see.
2. I had a hard-disk crash last Friday on my Hewlett-Packard nx7010 laptop. For chance, I had full backups and I just lost 1 day of work. On the other side, it is still quite long to re-construct the whole stuff…
3. Hey, I have the chance to test a new Hewlett-Packard ultraportable tablet-PC, the TC4200, which is a *incredible* machine. Stay tuned, I come back on that with more information.
4. On top of that, I’ve seen the Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith for 3 days (numerical copy, great quality). Surely the best part of the new trilogy, from far!
5. Finally, I was in Frankfurt – Germany the last two days for our annually so-called CIOs-meeting. Great discussions and exchanges, good food and wines (really, not joking) and some beautiful views. I will publish some pictures ;-)

[via Knowledge@Wharton]

Also by Microsoft, it is about talent at the end….

[…] “Longhorn is financially important to Microsoft and the growth of the industry, but it’s also important to maintain Microsoft’s position as an innovative company. The consensus is that Apple has lapped Microsoft many times on innovation.”

Why be innovative? Werbach says that, in the short run, being innovative doesn’t matter much. Over several years, however, a failure to innovate translates into a brain drain. The best and brightest programmers and developers want to work for the most innovative companies like Google. If Microsoft isn’t viewed as innovative it loses out on talent, which may focus on rival products such as Linux.

“Psychologically, Longhorn is very important,” says Werbach. “If it succeeds, Microsoft continues to grow and attract the best talent. If Longhorn only maintains Microsoft’s past glory, it may affect the company over the next five years.”