General atmosphere

Very safe, I felt as in some small towns in Switzerland. The children are always welcome, also in the restaurants. The service level and customer orientation (restaurants, hotels, shops, etc.) is quite high. There aren’t a lot of people on the island and on the beaches, although we stayed in St.Barths during the high season. Local people are friendly and cool, also on the streets with their cars. The beaches are very clean. See the funny ashes they are using. Some tourists felt some kind of snobbish atmosphere. I don’t agree at all: all the people are dressed *very* informal and casual, sometimes that was really too much, specially in some very good restaurants :-) I didn’t see one tie during our whole stay. The local people and the tourists are really really very cool.

Getting to St.Barths

The principal gateway to St. Barths (SBH) is through Juliana Airport in nearby Dutch St.Maarten, where flights arrive daily from both the USA and Europe. International carriers arriving at Juliana include American Airlines, Continental Airlines and US Air from the USA, and Air France, Corsair and KLM from Europe.

From St. Maarten, WINAIR, Air Caraïbes, and St-Barth Commuter, make the ten minute shuttle flights to St. Barths(SBH).

Air France and Corsair also fly regularly from France to Guadeloupe.

From Guadeloupe, Air Caraïbes offers a few direct flights to St. Barths (45 minutes) and others via St-Martin departing at times meant to accommodate the arrival of the bigger planes from France.

Air Caraïbes also has sereral flights a week between San Juan and St. Barths via St. Martin. And new this season (03/04) Inter Island Express based in San Juan, offers two direct flight a week from San Juan to St. Barths.(SBH)

Locally based charter flights are also available. The airstrip in St. Barths is small, and pilots are required to have special training to land. For many, the landing, especially on a windy day, is an adventure in itself.

[via St-Barths.com]

Laurent is actively participating to the Microsoft .NET community for a while through his very well-known French information portal “Tech Head Brothers“. Microsoft has recognized his high competence and active participation to the spreading of the .NET technology with a Most Valuable Professional title since April 2002.

The management of this kind of community website is very time intensive, as you know. The content of the site is copyrighted in a simple way, not to generate money, but to keep the control of the content. A simple contact, a link to the original article and it’s already over. Simple, isn’t it?

Now, Laurent tells us in one of his post (English) that Mr. Patrice Harmegnies just copied one of Laurent’s article (in French) on his own website, without taking contact with him, without mentionning the author, without linking to the original article. Sorry, but that really sucks!

Patrice Harmegnies seems to be an IT professional and a teacher in the field of web technology….

Mr. Harmegnies, what for a dishonesty and impoliteness! Please respect first the work of the other people… Be a little more respectful with professionals who *really* participate to this kind of communities, who *really* invest time in sharing their know-how and please avoid to make this kind of shitty copy… Definitely ridiculous.

[via Seth Godin]

Being *just* good is definitely not enough today…

Customers don’t switch for very good. What they’ve got is already very good! Google wasn’t a very good alternative to Yahoo. It was something far bigger than that.

The only way to beat Google or Kodak or Fotomat or McKinsey or JetBlue or you name it is to be over-the-top better, to be remarkable, to change the game.

It’s a great time to be a consumer. And it’s harder than it’s ever been to create stuff worth switching for.

[via Dragos via cph127]

How much are you creative? Try the self-assesment (about 10 minutes) of Creax.

I got a “creativity index” of 84.29 (typical: 61.46). Dragos got a 70.12.

No idea what does that *really* means. Anyway, it sounds good and the analysis of my profile is not bad for a “ten-minutes-test” ;-) What about you?

So….to be able to prolong my last holidays in st.Barths a little bit, I will publish some posts and pictures of our travel. As a bridge, till the spring will come….

Where is St.Barths

History of St.Barths

Saint-Barthélemy is a French island located in the Caribbean at 17°54’N 62°50’W . Administratively it is part of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas department of France. The island is also known as Saint Barts, Saint Barths, or Saint Barth. In 2003 the population voted in favour of seccesion of Guadeloupe in order to form a separate territorial collectivity.

Saint-Barthélemy was first claimed by the French in 1648, and except for a century as a Swedish colony, between 1785 and 1878, it has remained in French hands. Located approximately 150 miles east of Puerto Rico, it lies near the islands of Saint Martin, Saba, and Anguilla.

Most hotels in Saint Barts are small and exclusive, but private villas are also a available. There are no timeshares. Saint Barts has a small airport (IATA identifier SBH) that is served by small regional commercial aircraft and charters. Most visiting aircraft carry less than twenty passengers, such as the Twin Otter, a common sight around Saint Barths and throughout the northern West Indies.

It is rumored that Jimmy Buffett wrote “Cheeseburger in Paradise” at now famous Le Select, a restaurant and bar located in Gustavia. Gustavia, which is the main town of the island, was named after King Gustav III of Sweden, and remains as a reflection of the Swedish period.

[via Wikipedia]

Hey, some information about the coming Montreux Jazz Festival 2005!

39th edition of the Festival : some names

After a very icy winter, the whole Festival team is hard at work on the 39th edition, which is to take place from July 1-16, 2005, and is proud to announce the upcoming Auditorium Stravinski performances of Laura Pausini, B.B. King, Robert Cray, Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Daniela Mercury, Brian Wilson, Alice Cooper, George Benson and Chic avec Nile Rodgers. The Miles Davis Hall will be playing host to Queens Of the Stone Age, The Hives, Audioslave, Zap Mama, Seu Jorge, Kraftwerk, Underworld and LCD Soundsystem, while the Casino Barrière will be opening its doors to Peter Cincotti, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Ritenour, Steps Ahead, Manhattan Transfer, Bobby McFerrin, Gipsy Kings, McCoy Tyner and Ray Barretto.

[via Laurent, who explained us for about 3 years, that Microsoft will acquire Groove]

We are using Groove very intensively since about 3 years. Really a *great* tool, nothing to do with Lotus Notes ;-) And, wow, what for a news! MS acquires Groove, Ray Ozzie, the CEO and founder of Groove (who created Lotus Notes), will be the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. VERY interesting!

Microsoft announced early Thursday that it will acquire Groove Networks and integrate Groove’s Virtual Office collaboration software into the Office System lineup. Groove’s founder, Ray Ozzie, will become chief technology officer of Microsoft and report directly to company chairman Bill Gates. […]

Ray Ozzie, who invented Lotus Notes, is perhaps an even more significant catch than Groove’s software, noted Wilcox. “Ozzie is an esteemed innovator — and longtime Microsoft rival when at Lotus and later IBM — whom I expect to bring much value to his new employer. From a technology and personnel perspective, the acquisition is a win, win. No doubt about it.”

“Ray and his team are true innovators. Microsoft and its customers will greatly benefit from their experience,” said Bill Gates. “After working with Ray for years as a close partner, it will be great to have him on our senior leadership team.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Microsoft was previously a major investor in Groove.

[via Seth]

Again, a great post from Seth Godin. This guy is incredible, so much to learn here :-)

Seth refers to a “10 things I have learned” from Milton Glaser, an American graphic designer. Have a look, the entire text is really very interesting and illustrative.

1. You can only work for people that you like.
2. If you have a choice, never have a job.
3. Some people are toxic, avoid them.
4. Professionalism is not enough, or the good is the enemy of the great.
5. Less is not necessarily more.
6. Style is not to be trusted.
7. How you live change your brain.
8. Doubt is better than certainty.
9. Solving the problem is more important than being right.
10. Tell the truth.

[via NASA Planetary Photojournal]

Color composite of solar features.

This composite image combines Extreme Ultravoilet Imaging Telescope (EIT)images from three wavelengths(171, 195 and 284 angstrom) into one that reveals solar features unique to each wavelength. Since the EIT images come to us from the spacecraft in black and white, they are color coded for easy identification. For this image, the nearly simultaneous images from May 1998 were each given a color code (red, yellow and blue) and merged into one.

Do you know Eva Cassidy?

If not, you HAVE to read this post….and to listen to one of her CDs ;-)

Eva died in 1996 when she was 33. I’ve listenned to an Eva’s song (a cover of Fields of gold from Sting which is incredible) for the first time last year. It was a shock, definitely… I recommend two CDs of Eva: Songbird and Live at Blues Alley.

Songbird cherry-picks tracks from the three locally released albums of Eva Cassidy, whose hauntingly beautiful vocals went virtually unheard outside her native Washington, D.C., during her short 33 years with us. Lost to melanoma in 1996, Cassidy sang with an unaffected purity and an astonishing ability to make both classic and contemporary songs sound like they were written just for her. Sting’s “Fields of Gold” finally lives up to its title through the alchemy of Cassidy’s transcendent rendition, while other tracks on this anthology showcase her ease in the realms of pop (Christine McVie’s “Songbird”), soul (“People Get Ready”), gospel (“Wade on the Water”), and traditional standards (“Autumn Leaves” and “Over the Rainbow”). Framed by understated jazz and pop arrangements, Cassidy’s clear, soulful voice and exquisite phrasing make her that rarest of vocalists whose interpretations are a complement to any song. A fine introduction to a true talent. –Billy Grenier

When Eva Cassidy is swinging her way through “Cheek to Cheek” and getting down and bluesy on “Stormy Monday” on this live set from 1996, it’s nigh impossible not to get swept up in her voice’s vast, barreling force. Her full range, though, becomes most obvious–and soul-shaking–on the slower side, as with Paul Simon’s “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Tall Trees in Georgia,” and “What a Wonderful World.” On these latter tunes, Cassidy’s mix of aching clarity and rich warmth has a melting quality, speaking through the body to some evanescent presence that she seems to know all too well. She improbably makes Sting’s “Fields of Gold” an emotional powerhouse just as easily as she makes Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow” an offhand declaration of feeling equal to nearly anything in the jazz vocal canon. In doing so she earns her place among the great singers–artists who could take any song and stamp it indelibly as their own. What Eva Cassidy had in her short life was an unbelievably perfect voice and a musical soul that grasped gospel, folk, blues, jazz, and all points in between as if they were mere stops on a single train ride. Alas, her ride ended in 1996, tragically early. –Andrew Bartlett