Archive for the ‘France’ Category
Written on August 25, 2008 – 3:35 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
YouTube has become one of Holland’s top 3 most visited sites, a study by Dutch research agency Multiscope shows. Two thirds of Dutch Internet users check the video site on at least a monthly basis, partly due to the network effect of the service (You know the deal, bored people sending each other videos during work). Apart from these impressive numbers, one part in the study report particularly struck me: the extraordinarily high average visit time, which is 8 minutes. Is online video becoming a substitute for TV?
Chinese TV threatened by online videos
In China, this already is the case. The country is the home of the world’s most exciting online video market. The government isn’t afraid to pull the censorship card every once in a while, there’s tough competition, as much rumors as videos, and millions, millions of funding and views. When I interviewed Marc van der Chijs, founder of Tudou - largest video site of the world with 35 billion minutes viewing time in January -, he told me the average visitors stays on Tudou for 47 minutes. “For young Chinese people”, he said, “it is a substitute for television”.
Will Europe follow?
So while the first signs of a similar trend are appearing in the Netherlands, the questions arises whether we Europeans will face a similar scenario in the near future. Comscore recently released data from their online video measurement service, indicating that 23.2 million French Internet users viewed 2.1 billion videos online in January 2008. That number of 23.2 million viewers makes up for 79.5 percent of the total French Internet audience. So almost 80 percent of French Internet users watched on average 90 videos in one month.
There’s of course one major difference though — European television tends not to suffer from censorship threats, thus it’s not as biased as in China. No frightened kids who run to the “unbiased” and fun environment of online videos. Though when I think about it, the quality of Dutch TV isn’t particularly high either. Will we abandon the couch en masse to watch four-minute clips?
[Via: Bright (Dutch)]
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Written on July 18, 2008 – 12:43 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Tour de France has been steaming across France for ten days now, keeping cyclists fans in awe. It’s a modern classic so far, with new heroes, surprising sprint winners, and EPO scandals. It also seems to be the definite break through year for new technologies surrounding the cyclists race. Your blogger earlier reported about the Tour de France edition of Google Streetview and across the web, several bicycle-related initiatives have emerged - like the Ubilabs live tracker.
But in the end, it’s all about watching the race. Since most of the Tour de France takes place during working hours, Internet television is the medium to tune in to. And that’s what people do; on a rather massive scale. American sports events channel Versus.com has attracted 20.8 million viewers so far, according to Nielsen Media Research data. More than 4.3 million videos have been downloaded, says Versus, which is more than the total number of last year. The network is averaging 341,000 videos per day, compared to 170,000 per day last year.
Written on July 18, 2008 – 10:25 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Remember those good old days when you built cities? The early and tough beginning with the polluted ground, the first fire, and when you were in a bad mood: the riots, cyclones, and other disasters. Yeah, we used to be god back then, ruling our city with firm hand.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t touched SimCity for a while. I’m not even sure whether Matrix offers a Mac version. But some of you dear readers might have discovered CityLife, an online clone of Sim City - developed by Paris-based Monte Cristo.
This French independent game developer has raised €4.5 million from Arts Alliance, 360 degrees Capital Partners and Innoven Partenaires. The thirteen year-old company will use the newly acquired money for CITIES XL, Monte Cristo’s upcoming next-generation city-building online game. That means they’ll expand CityLife, maybe creating an even better game than SimCity.
I wish I could test the game for you, but I can’t. The risk of an addiction is too high. You don’t want to see your European tech news blog disappearing because of an online game, right?
Written on July 14, 2008 – 4:27 pm
David Petherick, Next Web WebTipr United Kingdom
Image via WikipediaSocietas Privata Europaea (SPE) is a proposed EU-wide company type designed specifically for small to medium sized companies to operate in EU member countries, which could be enacted as soon as 2009. This is a core part of the Small Business Act for Europe, which the European Commission unveiled at the end of June, based on ten guiding principles and proposing policy actions for both the Commission and Member States.
Here are some of the headlines in what is being planned:
- An SPE formation should be effected within 7 days.
- A cap on obtaining business licences and permits of one month.
- Lower VAT for services supplied locally.
- SMEs can set up their company in the same form, no matter if they do business in their own Member State or in another.
- Cut the administrative burden by 25% by 2012.
The press release begins with the wonderful phrase “a step towards a Europe of entrepreneurs, with less red tape and more red carpet for Europe’s 23 million SMEs“. [English Version] [Dutch Version] A set of Frequently Asked Questions also helps to explain the benefits of this initiative.
The lawyers, accountants, international tax experts, company formation outfits and administrative bureaucrats will hate this, as they have long grown fat from the cumbersome and often antiquated legislation and regulations that small businesses are forced to deal with, often irrespective of their size, and the necessity to follow separate, complex, and expensive company formation rules and registrations in each country. I would not be too surprised to see attempts from these types of organisations to slow down and undermine this initiative, as it of course lessens their role, and reduces the number of intermediaries involved when a company expands and works in more than one country.
However, the European entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow will love this - and it is in the long-term interests of every member nation in Europe to support this type of initiative. This is how one creates the jobs of tomorrow. It is a sad fact that long-term enlightened thinking has not always been a strong point for politicians and entrenched vested interests in Europe, so it is up to enterepreneurs across Europe to applaud, support and spread the word about this initiative.
Written on July 9, 2008 – 11:13 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Holiday is on its way, at least, I hope it is for you. Everybody deserves a week or two of absolute relaxation. Next to zipping cocktails and playing ball games, human beings also have the weird tendency to make a picture for every step they take on unknown soil. When home, tradition requires it that you show the pictures to your friends and relatives. A modern Web 2.0 devotee like you has the pictures uploaded to Flickr, yet this service is somewhat too clean to relive the old-fashioned cosy way of showing photographs on the couch. Well, that’s where French service Picsviewr comes to the rescue. Next to the most corny Web 2.0 name so far, they also offer seven templates that enrich the whole viewing experience.
What about some Polaroids for example? First you make a selection - based on tags, sets, most recent etc. Then your friends can just drag ‘n drop the photos, opening their favorites - and ignore the picture postcard-like boring ones.
Although the idea is nice, and Picsviewr would certainly fit the Flickr tools hall of fame, some important features are missing. Where’s the embed option? There’s not even a direct link function. The guys behind this tool still have some work to do.
Anyway, for now, Picsviewr is the way to go when you got your family gathered around the screen - eagerly waiting for those holiday pics.
Written on July 4, 2008 – 11:07 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The subversive-looking Google Streetview cars have hit Paris to shoot a touristic stroll past highlights like the Tour d’Eiffel, Place de la Concorde, and, the Place Charles de Gaulle (depicted below). Not the touristic part, as the ‘normal’ areas of the city aren’t covered. Some Valleywag commenter complains that the Google Cam didn’t shoot anything east of the Louvre. Anyway, when you DO cross a well-known area on the Google Map, this is how it looks like:
Google Streetview shows 360 panoramic photos of cities from ground level. So far, lots of US cities and some parts of Italy and France have been covered. The ultimate goal of Google is to cover the whole world, which is obviously pretty ambitious, really exciting as well as a touchy subject. As you can imagine, ladies in bikinis and men leaving strip clubs aren’t really fond of Google Streetview.
Written on July 1, 2008 – 12:52 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
While the Netvibes blog still triumphs the neat integration with Google Search, TechCrunch reports that a new - and more exciting - feature has launched. It’s called Buzz and it adds Digg, Mixx, Reddit and Yahoo - uhm - Buzz to its impressive list of competitors (featuring iGoogle and MyAOL). In case you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a “star” function in Netvibes, with which you can highlight your favorite articles. Buzz will track which articles are starred most - by your friends or everyone - and by doing this, gives a Digg-like overview of the Web 2.0’s most favorite articles.
My first thought was: yet another sharing tool. But then I realized that Netvibes might become an “starring overlay” for all your content, as the little star is depicted in YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, RSS, and almost every other content widget you can come up with. So instead of turning tweets in a Twitter fav, starring articles on Google Reader and appreciating Digg articles by digging them, you just have one tool to manage all your highlight needs.
Before this scenario becomes reailty, Netvibes Buzz has to come a long way. It’s still in development and the numbers on the frontpage aren’t that impressive.
Written on June 30, 2008 – 3:53 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Everybody who has visited a popular tourist spot recently, knows the market stands with fake handbags, shirts and sun glasses. These poor-quality goods come straight from countries like China and Vietnam and are widely popular by people who adore the celebrity cult. It seems like these markets will be the only place where you can buy the fake stuff, as a court in France has ordered eBay to compensate fashion and new luxury empire LVMH for allowing the sale of these infamous counterfeit goods. The damage for eBay? €38.6 million.
LVMH - known from Louis Vuitton, Moët et Chandon, Tag Heuer, Fendi, and many more - claims that the French division of eBay doesn’t try hard enough to prevent the shabby salesmen from using the auction site as their market stand. This allegedly caused damage of about €50 million for LVMH.
A month ago, another French court ordered eBay to pay Hermes 20,000 euros for allowing the sale of fakes. I wonder whether these two court-rulings have scared eBay enough to stop opening its doors for the posers’ suppliers.
Update July 1st: eBay will appeal the French court ruling in this LVMH dispute
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