Hi folks, I will not be very active till Friday evening as I will participate for the coming three days to our so-called Helvetia Patria Management Forum, which takes place once a year in October, at the holding headquarter in St.Gallen – Switzerland. This yearly meeting gather together all the Executive Board members of the subsidiaries, the Group Executive Board members and some special Group functions (as myself).

It is the third year that I could participate. Great experience, strategic discussions/exchanges and human contacts with all my internal clients! So, a good perspective of three amazing and very intensive days ;-)

[via vowe]

If you are a geek (who’s not a geek here?), you need to try this tool called Kapsules ;-) It is a scripting engine that lets you run small desktop widgets. It works on Windows 2000, XP and 2003, It needs the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and Microsoft Scripting 5.6 in order to run. The current version is the 0.9.4.5. A lot of widgets are available here (date and time, weather, post-it, news, system info, launchers, Email, music and audio, etc.). Kapsules is now a freeware (not Open Source), not completely mature, but stable enough!

Kapsules is desktop widget engine for Microsoft Windows.

What’s a widget you say? A widget is like a miniature application which rests on your desktop. Widgets can do all sorts of things. A widget could show you the current weather conditions, display news from your favorite website, or even check your email for you.

Kapsules makes use of the Microsoft Active Scripting Engine, which is a part of Windows. Using this built-in scripting engine, Kapsules can allow widgets to be written in a multitude of scripting languages, provided that a user has a language’s add-on engine installed. That being said, widgets can make use of a certain languages strengths, weaknesses, and special features. Kapsules does not limit a developer to what language they can use!

It is worth noting that Kapsules was very much inspired by Konfabulator, a similar – yet very different application for the Apple Macintosh OSX platform. Kapsules ceases its similarities with Konfabulator beyond its general purpose and ideology.

I have installed it and I am using now two widgets: KapWeather and MrStickies:

Marvelous autumn’s days, great opportunity to work in the garten.

Mowing

Picking up the dead leaves

And, closing the day with a beautiful sunset

The Mozilla Foundation has called on its supporters to chip in on a full-page advertisement in The New York Times for the launch of its Firefox 1.0 browser in November, exactly on November 9, 2004.

You have 6 days left to donate! I know from my blog statistics that quite a lot of you are using Firefox, so, have a look at this great idea on Spread Firefox.

Here is how it works:

• The full-page ad will include the names of everyone who supports the campaign along with a message about the benefits/features of Firefox.
• The ad will only include verifiable, personal names: no URLs, emails, etc.
• An individual contribution of $30 will get your name included in the ad ($10 student rate).
• The campaign will act as a fundraiser to support all Firefox 1.0 launch activities, not just the ad itself (find out more about your contribution).
• Special recognition — Community Champion — will be given to people who sign up 10 names at a time.
• There are also two packages available for businesses to participate.
• You will be notified via email when the ad runs.
• More questions? Check the FAQ.

I am personaly using Firefox almost exclusively since some months and I donated my $30 to this great project and tool (have a look at my review). What about you?

[via vowe]

Don’t try this at home :-) Really funny (video WMV, 20.1 MB)

Two great articles from Marc Goldberg – a “VC focused on building global European technology companies” – about Product Marketing here and here.

A must-read!

What for a weather on October 23!

Skype released a new Windows version (v1.0.0.94) of its great freeware VoIP tool. As you know, versions for MacOS X, Linux and PocketPC platforms are also available.

Google published its first quarterly financial results (3rd quarter ’04) on October 21, 2004 (quarterly values):

For the first 9 months of 2004:

A new MP3 player with an incredible 100GB hard drive, the DMC Xclef 500.

With a massive 100 GB hard drive (the largest on the world market today), the DMC Xclef 500 can store up to 3,500 hours of music, and still come back for more. Its internal battery provides over 20 of hours of play on a single charge

The DMC Xclef 500 also features an FM Tuner with encoding (so you can record as you listen), a voice recorder with built-in mic, and an analog/optical line-in so you can digitally record from any source at up to 320 kb/s.