I love music. I can’t live without good music.
A lot of people love music, but I love it to the extend of loosing hearing for enjoying too much of it, sometimes too loudly.

But I’m still ok, thanks.

Except that I am now living in Dubai and I listen radio while driving, or at least I try.

We have one of the worst radios music-wise in Dubai: I know this guys are living from advertising but at primetime, the playlists are so painful that I always end up switching it off and playing my MP3 which unfortunately I always forget to reload with fresh tunes.

And I have a fairly broad taste in music: blues, rock, R’nB, Soul, jazz, pop, funk, classical, electro…

But there’s one bright spot in here: there’s no better place in the world than driving on Sheikh Zayed Road while listening to Schooly Soulful Session with the sunset as a background in your rear-view mirror.

This guy is dope. He is my hope: I love you Schooly. I can say every saturday that “DJ Schooly saved my life”. Make sure to check him at 360 Jumeirah Beach Hotel every Saturday live on radio 1 at 104.1 FM in Dubai or online here.

Which brings me to this idea:

Can someone build a streaming service which can leverage from my public status (privacy is dead, remember?) and geo location (think weather, traffic info, even news!) to stream the right kind of music I would like to hear at this moment?

I’m a heavy user of Last.fm, Youtube, Pandora (at least when it was accessible outside US), Squeezebox (I’ve bought this amazing device in a state of desperation after moving to the UAE) but none of this services can reach me wherever I am and deliver automagically the right playlist.

I did not try yet musicovery.com but I’m looking for a service one step beyond: knowing my taste and based on my guessed mood, serve me the music I want!

Comments?

With a new decade come new challenges: .

On this watch list, you will find what I think will be some key issues to address in this new hyper-information era.

1. CENTRALIZED DIGITAL LIFE MANAGEMENT

email, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, web apps: our digital life is scattered  across dozens of services.

We need a unique platform to “write once, reuse everywhere” our profile metadata.

Watch: oAuth, OpenSocial, FaceBook Connect, LinkedinConnect (wildguess?)

2. MOBILE

Mobile was big in 2009. Mobile will be everything from 2010.

The big winner was obviously Apple. Apple got everything right, thanks to the amazing strategy and architecture behind the ITunes Store.

The Apple ecosystem is a closed one and has its shortcoming, especially the App Store approval process.

Despite the trade-offs, developers are still contributing to enhance the IPhone/IPod Touch experience.

Google can’t afford to lose its relationship with the hardcore developer base and Android and the GPhone are its answer to Steve Job’s unstoppable march in the digital consumer space.

Watch: Apple, Google. Don’t waste your time with: Microsoft.

3. ADVERTISING

Not sure if we will see any change in the online ad industry this year, but the display model is broken.

We need a serious overhaul of the ad serving business. Thanks to the death of privacy, be ready for the hyper-targeting experience.

Watch: Google and any serious innovation they will swallow to keep their business running.

4. E-COMMERCE

Despite or perhaps thanks to the economic crisis, E-Commerce is now part of everyday life. Add mobile access and Inet penetration rate growth into the mix and we should witness an explosion in online transactions.

Watch: Amazon, Apple, Square, Ebay/Paypal

5. OPERATING SYSTEM + THE CLOUD

New fight, same opponents. The OS WWII has just started.

I’ve been using Microsoft Windows for years; I’ve tried hard on linux desktop many times; and one day I gave a shot at Mac OS.

You can’t deny the superiority the UNIX based operating system: once again, the execution is flawless (coming from windows 2000/Vista at least).

With HTML5 around the corner and serious adoption of SaaS, Google once again had to step in with ChromeOS.

But Google is putting itself in a tough position by launching so many initiatives at the same time: you can’t always guarantee that the absolute best resources (read engineers and product managers) will be available for ALL your projects. Look at Google Wave: brilliant idea, bad strategy (maybe worth another post).

Watch: Apple, Google, Microsoft. Don’t waste your time with: Jolicloud and look-alike.

Enterprise: Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, VMWare/EMC.

6. VIDEO

Again, maybe not quite ready for 2010, but be prepared for the online streaming revolution.

Telcos/ISP hold the key to a new way of consuming media. Who will be the winner in the VOD for mainstream?

Watch: Netflix, Apple

Some time ago, I decided to give away some of the crazy ideas I was producing on a daily basis but I never acted.

So today, 12th of December 2009, I will start releasing what, IMHO, are a solid ground to start new ventures.

In June 2001 I was flying back to Paris CDG from San Jose, California on American Airlines.
This was the end of a two weeks trip accoss Florida and California where I was looking for a job in the land of opportunities, in addition to some amazing sight-seeing and cross-culture experience.

On board, as I was heading toward my seat, I discovered the true meaning of Geeks On a Plane: almost everybody was pulling his laptop, his PDA (back in the days it was the must-have mobile device), some even had noise-cancelling headsets.

I was clearly surrounded by tech savvy people involved in the IT industry.

And I was still looking for a job. I was gonna spend the next 10 hours next to potential employers and networking opportunities without being able to interract with them (except bugging everybody which, even at this pre 9/11 period wasn’t a smart move).

What I needed was in a sense simple: an in-flight intranet providing basic services like forums, chats and news. Even an IRC channel would have cut it.

The trick was that all of us were stuck in the same place while sharing some common interests or patterns: marketers would call it a captive market.

Then, out of this situation, the idea came out: an in-flight intranet would be an advertisers dream.

On this flight, I know where people were coming from (San Jose), where they were heading (France), what was their spending power, which language they were probably speaking: some valuable information for ad targeting.

You could display ads/offers for:

• car rental, hotel, events related (think exhibitions, conferences, sports)
• banking services (remittance, offshore investments, …)
• telecoms (visitor packages, roaming offers)
• business inquiry (partnerships, jobs)

I’ve designed (in my mind) the in-flight intranet as nothing more that a stack of open-source software delivering chat rooms, forums and promotional offers all packaged on a dedicated appliance plugged into the in-flight entertainment system (IFE).

Before boarding, the system would be backed up for reporting and reloaded with new content specific to the origin-destination.

What would have been the business model?

• Leasing the hardware/service to the airline, per plane.
• Selling ad slots/campaign to advertisers in the in-Fligh Ad Network
• Revenue sharing with the airlines (makes everybody happy, especially if they gonna spend hundred of thousands on your services; I’m sure the ROI will be so high it will be a no-brainer for them to invest)

The main issues to tackle would have been:

• Integration: airplane modification are subject to rigorous testing and certification processes. This is both time and resources consuming that’s why a strong partnership with the first airline is necessary (with a solid IP and market protection strategy)
• Security: integrity, insulation, auditing
• User Interface/Interaction: in 2001, IFE were pretty basic, no touchscreen on American Airlines, no advanced keyboard/remote

I’ve just read that Emirates Airline is scrapping their in-flight magazine (Open Skies) and will start a pilot program to sell in-flight online advertising …

New Talents Consulting JLT is the first and only media-specialist recruitment agency in the Middle East that hires candidates at all levels and in every division of the media sector.
For this newly established company in the DMCC Free Zone, TRADEMEDiA designed and built a highly usable interface listing the lastest job offers from New Talents’ clients.
Clear content, quick submit form and extensible admin interface enable New Talents consultants to target the perfect candidates and reduce the research time for their clients.

It’s now 20:15 Dubai time, I finished my jog, kids are asleep, I had dinner: why stop playing if you’re on a roll?

For industrialsDirectory.com, I’ve long planned a feature providing exhibition and events information to the industrial and B2B users in the middle east. Lets call this feature the event service.

As usual, it’s all started with some diagrams:

My wife told me for years that she though my job was drawing boxes and pipes on piles of paper I will then scatter accross whatever planed surface I will consider “my office”.

The problem

I want to manage and display a comprehensive list of events for industrialsDirectory.com (iD) users.
iD has been developed with a custom framework built on top of the Joomla CMS. Joomla (at least the original version used here) is not flexible enough to handle this project.

The solution

Wordpress!
Wordpress, IMHO, is the most versatile and extensible framework for Web Content Management should you not require features like user profile, advanced search or heavy OO design patterns.
Wordpress give you the ability to use its simple taxonomy to publish any type of content. Its core features are:

• powerful templating system
• built for maximum SEO benefit
• amazing plugins management
• complete documentation and online resources
• built-in rss support
• …

Goal

Deliver the new feature in 4 hours, as simple as that.
Specs:

• Events management interface (CRUD)
• Events categorization
• Events publishing into Joomla CMS*
• Events RSS feeds
• Adversting integration

* ideally, I would like to use a full fledge web service (SOAP server on Wordpress and SOAP client on Joomla developed with nuSOAP) but I may start with a simple XML feed due to time constraint).

Tools

The infrastructure is ready, wich will obviously save a lot of time.
Webserver, DNS, database server, IDE are up an running (let me know if you want more details, nothing fancy here).
Plugins list to follow.

Other resources:

When Google announced its 10 to the 100 project, I decided to give it a chance and submitted the idea.

The Problem

The problem we’re trying to solve is the functionning model of the NGOs and international aid agencies. These institutions rely mainly on donation to manage their operation and fuel their ambition of bringing food, education, shelter and support to the needed of our world.

I will take a gross shortcut but lets aknowledge that worldwide capitalism has a large role to play here wether by putting unecessary pressure on the local economies or by challenging development projects.

See the irony: money is the problem we’re trying to solve without money or by begging for it.

The Solution

Lets use capitalism tools to fight capitalism effects

The Open Fund is a for-profit investment fund aiming at generating positive return, like any other investment fund.

Draft for The Open Fund organization
The difference lies in the people investing in the fund, the team runing it and what we want to achieve with the profit generated.

• Investing in The Open Fund means you agree on giving up any profit generated to the distribution arm of the fund.
• Working for The Open Fund means beign socially responsible and put your knowledge and skills at work to enhance and save people lives.

To be continued…

From static content to web pages and now web applications, Jacob enlights us on the evolution of how developers deliver content and services to a fast moving environment.

This 4th version is more of an experiment with white spaces and visual simplicity. I consider it as a perpetual work-in-progress project.

Put together by Giorgio Ungania and his team, the event was a huge success: fantastic speakers, perfect organization and an overwhelming crowd made it a big win for Dubai.
All the talks were trully fantastic, inspiring and a relief in the doom and gloom era we’re experiencing in Dubai.

I left the conference with more hope into the city, its people and what makes us staying in here than I had entering the Palladium.

Thomas Lundgren gave a brave speech telling how his struggling childhood led him on a personal quest to change the world.

Dr. Naif Al Mutawa, master of THE 99 project, is a great story teller. From a writer to studying business and finally getting back to its roots by creating an islamic superheros comic book series, Dr. Naif gave a lively story of his fight for his ideas.

As an entrepreneur in the internet space, I really appreciated the insights of the VC model from Joichi Ito. He also spoke a length about the Creative Commons project and its impact in the sharing economy.

Paul Bennett from IDEO was both entertaining and an eye-opener in how design thinking can overcome basic business problematics.

Big win for the arab and muslim  world represented by Mohammad Gawdat, the Al Awadhi brothers, Masarat Daud, Khulood Al Atiyat, Mohmmed Saeed Harib.

In short, every speakers shared a lot of emotion, knowledge and hope.

The production, logistic and whole setup was uber professionnal. Should I want to organize a large event in here, I wouldn’t work with anyone else.
I look forward to seing some positive outcome of this first conference.

Some side observations from the talks: Google is the Internet, Facebook is the Social Network, Twitter is ubiquitious and IPhone is the device.

I’m excited to attend the next TEDxDubai: the bar is high, but so is the ambition of people wanting to move the world.