On *very heavy* rotation this last time: the last CD of Moby – Hotel. Btw, have a look at the Moby’s website, really great, and a cool design. He opened a journal (a kind of “semi-blog-form”, i.e. without comments/permalink), which has attracted my attention during the last 30 minutes, at least… Moby is also shooting a lot, and he is publishing lots of pictures he took himself. Captivating, too.

An extract of his Journal, explaining the meaning of the first hit of Hotel – Lift me up:

‘lift me up’…this is a complicated one…’lift me up’ is about the human propensity towards turning off our higher, critical, rational cognitive functions and willfully and enthusiastically degenerating to an atavistic tribal state wherein we don’t judge things from an empirical, rational perspective, but rather from a limbic, feral, tribal perspective.
and it’s also about how religious leaders and political leaders(and, well, entertainers, too…but hopefully in a relatively benign way…)play upon peoples willingness to lose themselves in said atavistic, tribal, collective, irrational behaviour.(most descriptive line: ‘it’s sweeter than doubt’, regarding the certainy that comes with ‘true belief’…).

I have seen Moby for some days at a French TV show called Taratata (in French), a very good exclusively-live-music program, with an excellent sound and mix quality. Moby sang (and played bass guitar on) two tracks: Lift me up from Hotel and Natural blues from the last one. Impressive, wow!

Moby was also interviewed during the show and I must say that he seems to be a very nice person: a lot of (black/British) humor, very smart, humble, and *very* engaged politically (he is fighting against Bush and his administration since years).

Highly recommended artist and CD!!

Some very inspiring thoughts in this article of Wharton from March 2005 – Got a Good Strategy? Now Try to Implement It:

Only recently have people begun to realize that effective execution is a competitive business advantage. Companies are now seeing that if they execute better, they perform better. If they integrate long-term and short-term objectives, if they consider incentives, controls and feedback, they execute better. And if one company has that and the other doesn’t, the competitive advantage is clear.

[…] Execution takes longer than people expect. Political and organizational problems typically surface. So you develop a strategy, but you have to go throughout the organization and through dozens of planners to make sure it is carried out. It takes longer. Once execution starts, it could be one or two years, or even require a three-to-five year time frame.

There is still the perception that smart people plan and grunts execute. The short answer is that those who have power or influence have to embrace, believe in and foster execution. Some people think it is a lower-level responsibility – that’s the older perception of execution – but this simply isn’t true.

When companies separate the planning and doing – that’s wrong. Executive strategy requires ownership at all levels, from corporate level managers on down. Strategic success really demands a simultaneous view of planning and doing. The greater the overlap of doers and planners, the greater probability of success.

Execution takes longer. Execution is a process, and not an action or a step. And execution involves more people than strategy formation.

Advices – Lessons Learnt

• Three things are cheap in St.Barths, and just these ones: alcohol, cigars / cigarettes and gas ;-)
• You need a car. Don’t ask if you can walk or take a bicycle…You need a car and a 4W car! The rest is bullshit.
• French and English are spoken everywhere.
• Euro and $ and accepted everywhere. No problem with credit cards.
• Voltage is 220V, 60Hz. French plug converters are required.
• Cell phone: nothing special if you have an international subscription.
• DO NOT forget to bring something against mosquitos. There are really annoying…and quite strong in St.Barths (although all the hotels are treated two times a week against mosquitos).
• Time zone: as US East Coast, 5 to 6 hours difference with France
• Typical tropical region for the daylight: all the year between 06:30 and 18:30, so that the people are waking up early and going to bed quite early in the evening.
• Weather: also typical tropical weather. Some clouds in the morning, a little very pleasant wind, somtimes some suddend tropical downpours (short and normally duting the night), 28-30°C during the day, 22-24°C during the night, 25-27°C in the sea :-)

[via Joi Ito]

Till today, I haven’t really understood what is actually the issue between China and Japan. I honestly thought that our Chinese colleagues are a bit exaggerating and using the story with the teaching books as an excuse to push some nationalist requests. The reality seems to be, as usual, a little bit more complicated. Thanks to Joi, my “Japanese representative”, to clarify it in this very moderated, historical and clever way!

One of the biggest problems is that most Japanese don’t understand the issues. Another point is that most Japanese are not great supporters of the military. When I think about the military in Japan, I don’t think dirty nationalist thoughts. Rather, I think about May 15, 1932 when Prime Minister Inukai was assassinated by the military which ended party-based politics in Japan until after WWII. I think about the Japanese military taking over the government and sending Japan into one of the worst periods in its history. I think about the small children being sent off to war as Kamikaze or human torpedos and I think about the letters homes from them that are enshrined in Yasukuni Shrine. There are letters from terrified little boys writing about how scared they are about going to war. Most Japanese do not trust the military and most Japanese believe that the military run government of the 30’s was an illegitimate government as a result of a coup. Many Japanese believe that the Japanese people were victims of the military.

Having said that, I do think that the text books and teaching in Japan underplays the actions of the military in China and I believe the Japanese text books are a real problem that should be addressed. I really think that the Japanese don’t understand how victimized the Chinese and Koreans were and I believe this education needs to occur. I would point out that it is not just this aspect of Japanese textbooks that is broken. Japanese text don’t use the word “revolution” or “civil war”. It was the “Meiji Restoration”, “The American fight for independence”, the US Civil War is the “North South War” etc. There was a move to simplify Pi to just 3. In other words, the Japanese ministry of education needs an overhaul. Maybe they should use Wikipedia instead.

The weather was sooo nice today that we decided to go to the cinema with our little son. It was the first movie at the cinema for him. We saw Pooh’s Heffalump, great moment :-) Also because he really likes Winnie the Pooh!

New version 1.0.3 of Firefox available.

What’s new in this release?

• Fix to improve update process
• security fixes

• Javascript “lambda” replace exposes memory contents
• javascript: PLUGINSPAGE code execution
• Showing blocked javascript: popup uses wrong privilege context
• Cross-site scripting through global scope pollution
• Code execution through javascript: favicons
• Search plugin cross-site scripting
• Arbitrary code execution from Firefox sidebar panel II
• Missing Install object instance checks
• Privilege escalation via DOM property overrides

Seth Godin, again, again and again. Two interesting inputs for the week-end ;-)

About ethics

Pfizer, Sudafed and ethics.

But shame on [Pfizer] for believing that doing the right thing all along is the same as doing the right short-term thing for the shareholders. It’s not the same. It’s not the same ethically, and it’s not the same in terms of long term profit or branding either.

About being on top

The race to the top.

So, I think I understand what happens when you win the race to the top. You end up with a healthy, motivated workforce that’s focused on adding art and joy to your products. You end up with profits and market share and a community that’s glad you’re there.

What happens, though, when you win the race to the bottom?

FireTune (freeware, Windows version) works really very well. Have a try!

FireTune for Mozilla Firefox v1.x was developed for an easy and fast optimization of your browsing experience with Firefox. Usually you have to optimize Firefox manually, which can be time consuming and difficult for the novice user. FireTune helps you here – it includes all the performance optimizations. The only thing you must do is: make your selection. It does the work for you.

Dear Mac readers, I know you because you are still using Safari as a browser (~ 1.5% of the traffic). I apologize for this post but…I couldn’t lie ;-)

Lot of buzz and emails concerning the coming new Mac OS X on 29th April. Also concerning the Dashboard. To my point of view, nothing new under the sun (sure, there are other interesting innovations!). Konfabulator does the same (excepted the cool waves effect) since months (Mac and PC). I’m using, as a registered user (yeay), Konfabulator on my laptop/workstation under WinXP since November 2004. Great tool for geek :-)

Dashboard of Mac OS X

My current desktop under XP, with Konfabulator

I must say I am *NOT* a fan of Mac at all, and this, since years. In the 80s, I was already using a Commodore 64, instead of an Apple II. Sorry for that:-)
Russell summarized my feelings very well (read his post completely to know what he is thinking about Mac!):

The Mac bothers me for all the same reasons it bothers others out there. It’s a closed system, running on proprietary hardware which always seems to be doomed to be both more expensive, and half the speed of the PC world. That and having to learn another OS and it’s foibles bugs me a bit. I’ve been using Windows for over a decade, so figuring out problems is second nature.

Restaurants

Wow, wow, wow. Very exciting and good French, Creole, Italian and Chinese cuisine to be tested in St.Barths. The concentration of good restaurants is terrible for your weight.

One of the best things about St. Barts is the quality and variety of the food.

This is true not only in numerous local restaurants, but in many local homes and villas as well, due to the unusually wide range of foodstuffs available at local grocery stores, and due to the quality of local catering services.

Shopping for food in St. Barts can be a delightful social pastime in itself.

[via St-Barths.com]

We tested the following restaurants, see our appreciation: