…a very nice sunset :-)
Yesterday evening…
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Category Archives: private
French Provence – Hyères (01)
I will publish a portfolio about our last trip to Hyères, south-east of France in the Provence region, trip we have done mid of April 2010.
Saint-Tropez
Let’s start the visit with Saint-Tropez. We were actually positively surprised by this city. Quite nice, a kind of link with Saint Barth. Important to mention that it was not high-season yet ;-)
Apple selling more iPads than Macs
via vowe and John Paczkowski
Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads per week. Which means, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, that sales of the company’s new device have outpaced those of the Mac in the United States and are closing in on those of the iPhone 3GS. […]
“We believe Apple is now selling >200k iPads/week, greater than US Macs (est. 110k Macs/week) and just below US iPhone 3GS first quart (246k/week).” […]
Earlier this year, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi predicted sales will hit five million units in the first year, while Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Katy Huberty said they’d likelyexceed six million.
By the way, I have ordered an iPad (WiFi, 64GB) in Switzerland, I should get it on June 7.
Whit Monday…
…is absolulety great! Cool temperature, cool weather.
I’m just sitting in front of my laptop in the garden near the swimming-pool (picture below), listening to an "Electronica Genius Mix" generated by iTunes. Working a bit, as my wife is on duty today and is already visiting some patients ;-)
27°C planed for today :-)
Moby – Wait for me / Ambient and Remixes
Just bought (for all in all 11 EUR, and 28 tracks!) and downloaded two new albums released by Moby and based on Wait for me, i.e. the Ambient and Remixes versions.
On May 17th, Moby will release ‘Wait For Me. Remixes!’, an album consisting of reworked versions of tracks from the critically acclaimed ‘Wait For Me’, released through Moby’s label ‘Little Idiot’ last year. Moby has enlisted some of dance music’s biggest names for the project including Tiesto, Laidback Luke, Gui Boratto, and Carl Cox
Really great, very simple buying-process on moby store. And the first time I see (finally!) some high-quality MP3 (320 Kbits)…
Coming concerts!
I will be able to go to two concerts in the coming months.
Phil Collins plays ‘60s Motown and Soul in Montreux, Switzerland
Exceptional concert of Phil Collins, the only one in Europe, at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The Festival will actually open on July 1, 2010 specially for this concert and will last 17 days this year, instead of 16.
Phil Collins will play some covers from The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson!
The band will be also exceptional, with 18 musicians:
- a brass section with 5 musicians
- six backing vocalists
- the Funk Brothers of Motown (bassist: Bob Babbitt, guitarist: Eddie Willis, guitarist: Ray Monette)
Leonard Cohen in Basel, Switzerland
I had the chance to see Leonard Cohen for one of his concert in August 2009. That was really one of the best concert I have ever seen. That’s the reason why I am so happy I could buy some tickets for his coming concert in Basel, Switzerland on September 8, 2010.
Last evening…
…was a great evening! A real summer touch. First dive in the swimming-pool.
And the garden is in flower. Went shortly round with my iPhone.
Launch of Jobping, an new specialized job-posting website
Two of my long-time friends, the –Teach Head Brothers— (one of the most renowned French Microsoft .NET portal) Laurent and Mathieu (both MIcrosoft Most Valuable Professionals), have launched (public beta) on April 22 Jobping, a new specialized and totally focused job-posting website dedicated to job seekers and employers in the Microsoft technology field. Two others MS specialists are also participating to this nice story: Mark Kemper and Ally Colqhoun. Jobping is for now concentrating on the Australian market.
I find the business idea and positioning quite interesting and I am excited to follow the development of Jobping in the coming time.
Jobping is also the result of a nice international and geographical-exploded (France, Australia, etc.) development-team, based on Agile approach and nice technology. So I hope that Laurent and Mathieu will also share with us some of their experience in this field ;-)
Good luck to Jobping, I cross the fingers!
Have a look at the official Press Release.
Sydney, Australia – April 22, 2010 – Last week, Jobping, a new job posting web site aimed specifically at job seekers and employers who work with Microsoft technologies, was released into public beta.
Jobping currently focuses on the Australian market and aims to bring a better quality of candidate to a posted vacancy via a niche, industry targeted approach.
The site is unique, user friendly and streamlined when compared to the larger job post boards. For instance, publishing is done in a couple of clicks and the job is instantly broadcast through Twitter, Facebook and job indexing sites such as Indeed and CareerJet. Recruiters are also able to add their company Twitter feed to a job post in order to cross sell other vacancies all in one place.
From a job seeker point of view Jobping searching works just like today’s search engines with specific job filtering options. Job seekers also benefit by being kept up to date in a variety of ways including through Rss, Internet Explorer Web Slice, Twitter or Facebook. Similarly, job seekers are able to apply for a position using their LinkedIn profile, saving time and eliminating the need to keep two separate resumes up to date and they may optionally attach a traditional pdf or word resume.
More features and functions based on user feedback and requirements will be implemented quickly as Jobping takes an organic and user oriented approach to product development.
Jobping will remain free during the beta period which will continue for 3-6 months. Advertisers utilising the site during the beta period will be rewarded through special discounts once the pricing structure is introduced.
Visit us on www.jobping.com !
Disclaimer: Jobping is a private project of Laurent, Mathieu and their two friends, not linked with Innoveo in any manner, excepted our friendship ;-)
Some changes in the sidebar…
So, I had to correct some stuff in my right sidebar:
- get rid of my visitors log and map, as the service (gvisit.com) is down since some days now
- insert a … search (!). Actually I have forgotten to integrate it with all the changes I have done
- change the SmugMug badge which is shown within the sidebar, switch to “Saint Barth 2010” ;-) Looks like the one just below:
Bye bye Blogger, hello WordPress!
As you have read in my last posts, I had to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. I am using Blogger as a blog-engine since I have started to blog in March 2004. Since then, I have my own domain (didierbeck.com) and my blog and its content is hosted at OVH. It was and still is important for me to have a full control on the content and data I am publishing. That’s the reason why I am not interested in a full blog-engine+hosting solution.
The reason why I had to migrate
I have received an email from the Blogger team on February 2, 2010, saying that:
We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz
Actually Blogger will not support FTP anymore from May 1, 2010.
Reasons:
FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.
Wow, I’m in the “.5%” of the Blogger’s users… Something must be wrong, not by Blogger, by me ;-). I don’t want to be in the “.5%”… I am just wondering what was this % in 2004, when I have started to blog. Anyway, for me and as explained above, I need a separate blog-engine that I can host by myself.
Which tools to chose?
Mainly, I had two possibilities, as the blog-engine needs to be “AMP compatible” (Apache, MySql, PHP). I also don’t want to use a CMS (Content Management System) supporting blogging features, but a fully focused solution. And mainstream!
So, I had a look at dotclear and WordPress. I have tested both (quickly) and found WordPress more convenient. On top, OVH is offering an automated installation module for WordPress.
Some of the criteria that were important for me:
- publishing with Windows Live Writer
- widely used, open source, strong community
- technology proven, based on standards
- widgets, themes, plugins
- static pages
- wysiwyg editor
- user and profile admin
- trackback and pingback supported
- comment moderation
WorPress is supporting these criteria and its prerequisites are very reasonable (v2.9.2):
- PHP version 4.3 or greater
- MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater
- The mod_rewrite Apache module
Migration from Blogger to WordPress
… was simpler than I have thought! Still some steps to be done.
Export/import former posts
1’170 posts in my blog… As I have used a special comment-system in Blogger, it was clear from the beginning that I will not be able to transfer them.
I couldn’t use the import function of WordPress, as this function is only working if you have a Google account and an upgraded (New, was Beta) blog hosted on blogspot.com or a custom domain (not FTP). Which is not my case. I could solve this issue with the following procedure:
- Export the content from Blogger in XML: dashboard – chose your blog – settings – basic – blog tools – export blog.
- Then, convert the Blogger XML export-file to WordPress WXR which is suitable for importing into WordPress. Use the following online tool: http://blogger2wordpress.appspot.com/
- In WordPress, use the importing function for native WordPress files (Tools – Import – WordPress – Upload your WXR file – Assign Authors (map old to new ones)
Done!
Preparation before activation
Again, different steps:
- Define the users you need
- Change the settings (SEO, base URLs, formats, comment moderation, permalinks, etc.)
- Check if your posts were correctly migrated
- Define the appearance, chose a theme. For me: Pyrmont V2 2.0.7 by motta. Be careful with the size of your visual elements on your posts, these could not match your new appearance.
- Define the blogroll
- Update the static pages:
- Who I am
- Recommendations
- Publications
- Disclaimer
- Install and configure the plugins you want to use
Activation
So the last two steps for me were to:
- backup and deactivate the former blog files and directories structure
- change the .htaccess and index.php, according to the WordPress installation I have chosen (WordPress not installed in the root, which makes everything clearer but a bit more complicated). In the .htaccess, I have integrated some “redirect 301”, for example for the RSS feed.
Now, I am entering the fine-tuning and debugging phase. If you observe something strange or not working, thanks in advance for contacting me!