Rose Cantine

I attended Le Web 3.0 in Paris the past two days. That’s a photo of me posing a question to Shimon Peres this morning. Altogether I thought it was a terrific conference. The organizer, Loic Le Meur, brought together people from 36 countries, many of whom are entrepreneurs. I also gave a presentation today about how to turn a blog (like Muniwireless) into a vertically integrated media business.

Surprises of the day were the impromptu appearances of Shimon Peres, Francois Bayrou and Nicolas Sarkozy (the latter two are candidates for president in France).

Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel showed up in the morning to talk about how the Internet has liberated us from having to remember a lot of things (just do a search on Google or Wikipedia). Why waste time and effort trying to remember something when you have Google? He believes that the task of people is to create, imagine and discover, not to remember. He also discussed the decline of the nation state which is based upon an agricultural economy that in turn relied upon boundaries and keeping out people from your land (for which one needed armies). When the source of wealth is intangible property (such as patents, copyrights and trademarks), why does one need borders? What is an army supposed to defend? No government today controls the Internet or the money flows between individuals and companies; they can barely control immigration. Individuals are becoming creators of ecosystems where wealth creation relies less upon the accumulation of tangibles like land and gold; rather to create wealth you have to be able to exploit ideas.

Francois Bayrou and Nicolas Sarkozy

At least Bayrou gave some of his presentation in English and fielded questions from the audience. Sarkozy came in the mid-afternoon with bodyguards and staff, and lectured the international audience on his view of the importance of the Internet… in French! Sarkozy speaks English but he refused.

Not only was he unbelievably rude (addressing an international audience in French as if they were subjects of the French monarchy), he also just left the conference right after his speech. The audience did not get to ask him any questions, unlike Peres or Bayrou. Sarkozy marched in like Louis XIV and marched out like the Sun King followed by his retinue. It was clear to all of us that his presentation was purely for the French media and the presidential campaign. He used the conference to further his political ambitions.

To read other blogs covering the Sarkozy fiasco, just to go technorati.com and do a search on leweb3 and sarkozy.

NewTeeVee is the latest addition to the GigaOM universe. Om Malik, who left Business 2.0 and started his own online media company, says:

Today, we took the next step forward and launched NewTeeVee.com, a site devoted to online video, and other technologies that are reinventing the video experience.

Congratulations to Om and his team!

I was in Marseille last week and it looks just as beautiful in the winter as in the summer.

I just finished geotagging my Lisbon photos and am doing the same for my Amsterdam photos. Geotagging on Flickr is easy and very handy. Log in to your Flickr page and go to Organize. You will see four tabs — one of them is called Map. Go from there.

What I like about geotagging is before you go to a city like Lisbon, before you even decide which neighborhood you want to stay in, you can see the photos taken by other people in that location. The geotagging feature is precise because it is integrated with Yahoo Maps so you can geotag your photos (and see others’ photos) down to the precise street.

What I do not like about Flickr’s geotagging feature is that it is integrated with Yahoo Maps and I prefer to use Google maps.

This is an opportunity for someone to write a good plug in for Flickr-Google maps.

The Wall Street Journal has an article today about geotagging.

Everyone seems to be dumping on the new Zune player from Microsoft. This weekend, Andy Ihnatko wrote in the Chicago Sun Times:

Yes, Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

Both Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) and David Pogue (New York Times) gave the Zune poor reviews.

The Netherlands held elections for parliament yesterday and the results are in: the extreme right and left wing parties took votes away from the biggest centrist parties (the Christian Democrats (CDA), the Labour Party (PvdA) and the conservative “business” party, the VVD). The absolute biggest loser was the Labour Party which lost 10 seats — to the Socialists (who went from 9 to 26 seats in parliament).

The Socialists are now the third largest party (check out their website). Their charismatic leader, Jan Marijnissen (photo below), campaigned very well and unlike all the other mainstream candidates, he has personality (see his weblog).

The ultra right wing party of Geert Wilders (called PVV), who used to be with the conservative “pro-business” VVD) went from 1 seat to 9 seats. The VVD lost 6 seats, no doubt to Geert’s anti-foreigner, anti-muslim party. Wilders is a very strange guy: dramatic emotional pronouncements against foreigners combined with bottle-blond wind tunnel hair (photo below).

Who would have guessed his party would get so many votes? By the way, the one seat he had in the parliament was his own seat — he used to be with the VVD and split off last year. Then he created his own party and he now appears to have been the big winner on the Right.

I voted for D66, whose rational, centrist policies did not resonate with most people. They went from a paltry 6 seats to 3.

This is the year that a lot of people went to the polls with their emotions, not with their brains. Fear of terrorism, foreigners, losing jobs to India and China (note: Volkswagen announced the closure of a huge factory in Belgium and the loss of close to 5000 jobs), and uncertainty, account for much of the shift to the extreme right and left.

Because the votes are spread among various parties, the CDA will have to put together a coalition, which will take a long time and probably accomplish nothing whatsoever in the next four years.

It won’t be easy to put together a coalition. The CDA can’t build a majority just with the VVD or the Labour Party, they have to get a third party to join. Neither can the Labour Party build a left-wing majority by getting the Green Party and the Socialists to join. I was hoping for a completely left wing government (Labour-Greens-Socialists) that would finally get the Netherlands out of Iraq, Afghanistan and all the stupid foreign military adventures this little country has taken part in.

I expect the new coalition to collapse again. We will be back in the voting booth in a couple of years. For more on the election results, read this article from the Independent.

The headline on Eurosport.com says it all: “Ferguson left in shock”. Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, who probably assumed his team would sail into the Champions League final, can’t believe his team just lost to Celtic. Manchester United needs to pick up one more point in the final match against Benfica to qualify. The previous game with Celtic was also surprising in that Celtic played very well (although Manchester United ended up winning 3-2). This is the first time that Celtic has gone beyond the group stage.

Other results from last night’s matches:

CSKA Moskva 0 - Porto 2

Real Madrid 2 - Lyon 2

Benfica 3 - FC Kobenhavn 1

Arsenal 3 - Hamburg 1

Lille 2 - Anderlecht 2

AEK (Athens) 1 - Milan 0

Steaua 1 - Dynamo Kiev 1

Here’s a roundup of what to expect tonight, who needs to win and who is already assured of a spot in qualification round:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/6100418.stm