Articles

Affichage des articles du 2016

Series are like books a century ago.

Series are like books a century ago. You don’t watch series, you get into it. For dozens of hours, hundreds of hours. You don’t just spend a good time with series, you learn, you live things, you build yourself with them. Just like with books before, and still today.

Machines replace humains... or let them do more human things?

When I take the metro, humans are now here to help to regulate the traffic. The voice speaking in the microphone is no longer a recorded voice, it's a real human talking. When I go shopping, I scan products by myself. A human is here, just to help, just to say hello, goodbye. When I go to the post office, automatic machines allow me to do all I need. I can still ask humans some advice, help. When I buy some bread. I pay contactless or through a machine taking my coins to give me back change. The staff member is here to advise me, not much. Airbnb. We book places. No transaction. Just human relationship. Free bike service. Fully automated. I just call people to solve issues with them when some happen. I buy on Amazon marketplace. I don't buy to a huge multinational powered by machines. I buy to a local bookshop in a small city in France. Let's be optimistic. Let's hope we'll do more human stuff in the future and less alienating things.

The day we'll have bigger mailboxes, we'll buy more on Amazon

Amazon is the reflex for most of the products we buy. And what happen is that people deliver products you buy at home. And you're not here. And they can't put them in your small mailbox. So they drop it at the post office. So you have to go there. Or they come back tomorrow, and it's the same story. Mailboxes are too small. The day we'll have bigger mailbox, we'll buy more on Amazon

Uber is making mainstream customer rating. It will change human interactions drastically

Uber staff rate customers. They don't hide it. They want customers to know it. Some drivers event propose to trade a 5 star to you vs. a 5 star for them.  The fear of getting a 1 star make drivers ultra polite. And what about you knowing you're rated? Of course, you don't behave like a "rated version of you a lot nicer" in Uber car.  Of course... It's well known that rating and judgment don't change behavior. It will be a lot of fun when every interaction we'll have will mean a mutual rating and we'll all have scores. Better not be too rude...

Anti-homeless urban spikes, one of the things I hate the most

These things should not be allowed. We ignore them all day long, none of our leaders actually seize the problem. That's already a shame. But... putting spikes or other inventive stuff to just not let them sleep in places not too exposed to the wind and passersby, that's just outrageous. You can sign here if you agree: https://www.change.org/p/anne-hidalgo-et-si-on-interdisait-le-mobilier-urbain-anti-sdf-et-inhumain-%C3%A0-paris

The iPhone collapse and the Apple pivot

People spend 90% of their time on 4 apps. Do you need an iPhone to use 4ish apps? No. People will see it. People will save money on phones. Google just released a very expensive phone. It's too late. The era of 800 dollars phones is over. Apple is making most of its money on iPhone. They failed to make money with something else. Watches and tables are flat to down. Without the iPhone, it’s done. It will have to use its mountains of cash to make acquisitions and pivot. Cars? IoT? Tesla? Uber? General Electric? Our cars and homes are so dumb. There is room for improvement. 

What you mean when you watch a screen while a person talk to you

You mean that what happen behind the screen is more important than what you say. You mean that you prefer talking to the guys pinging you than talking to her. Worst, you say you prefer checking your social feeds and inboxes event if nobody's pinging you. It's not considered as a terrific lack of respect for now because people use smartphones for 10ish years and cultural codes take more time to structure interactions. But in 10 years, we'll consider it as super rude.

I see TripAdvisor dying, except if...

If Google wants to display the menu of restaurants and their top 3 best dishes on SERPs. They'll just issue some guidelines asking restaurants to optimize indexation of their online menu and put on their website with the right tag their 3 best dishes. All website developers will make it because it's Google. Now if TripAdvisor wants to do the same thing. They’ll invite restaurant owners to put in their Tripadvisor page their menu. Retyping everything. Low chance to succeed. They’ll invite restaurant visitors to put some dishes names and their favorite one. A Very uncomprehensive result is to expect. Tripadvisor is stuck in this low quality, very easy to fake rating system. In the end, TripAdvisor has 3 alternatives to avoid dying: - spend money on human resource who will enrich restaurant qualification and just like Michelin guide, have a mix of professional rating and reviewing and user rating.  - give money to restaurant owners to updates their TripAdvis

Connexion overload => autoreply for chat & sms

People will soon get sick of being constantly connected and reachable. As the phone is the device to book a taxi, book a table, pay, gps you, carry your loyalty cards, flight ticket, etc. it’s pretty difficult to just let it at home. As a result, phones will soon have a feature to: Minimum Viable Product: Switch off and hide social apps from phones for a determined time.  Cool additional feature: Autoreply on chat apps and SMS to say to the person reaching you that you won’t answer before a determined hour because you’re off. Just like what people do for pro email!  Apple letting you "VIP" some people on your phone when you're on no-disturb mode is going this way.

Filters suck. Please, TripAdvisor and Yelp...

Hey, TripAdvisor. I want a restaurant in Copenhagen 3000 restaurants. (Wrong number) 30 euro per person is maximum. Near the port. Opened on Sunday. With an excellent rating. Local cuisine, please. So far we're good. Filters work. Still, 800 restaurants listed, though. And then. The last mile. Serving seafood AND Serving veggie food Serving octopus With a terrasse With some live music tonight A table with a view on the street If these filters exist, we'd have a handful of restaurants to choose. And that's what people want. The choice between handfuls after strict filtering.

Visiting places is over, we'll do immersions into places

Do you know Paris? Yes, I went there. Flights are cheap now and some of us travel a lot. We all "went" to tons of places. I see a future where we not just "go" places but do something special there. I see something giving some sense to the travel. I see an immersion in a temporary new life.

Skin prostitution - no sex, just skin touching

Today prostitution equal sex. What if a new kind of service were proposed, without any sex. A prostitution where with our without light, you can just touch human skin, on non-erogenous places. No talking, no need to see the face, no need reaction of the service provider, no need to have a long session. Human skin is one of the most beautiful things on earth. It’s a very sweet sensation to touch someone’s skin. The peak of happiness touching skin gives in comparison with the simplicity of the action makes it super interesting.

Music industry: forget bands and singers, just focus on the composer + reinterpretations

Music is a performance. A song sung ten times, even by the same person will lead to 10 different flavors. Rhythm can also change, instrumental can change, the singer can change. In the end, one song can be a huge variety of songs. Album versions of songs are often pretty neutral. The real interest is when songs are played live or reinterpreted differently. Music majors could make much more money, creating value with live songs and different albums. Classical music is a case in point: interprets are dead 200 years ago minimum, but I'm still hunting next great reinterpretations. Note that in classical music; we care about the composer, not the singer or the band. It makes the song atemporal

Consumer will be super loyal to brands... again

After glorifying disloyalty - yep, the customer is king... People like less and less choosing, negotiating, taking risks. If they like a brand, they'll stick to it. Ask your grandpa. People were loyal before.

Being omniscient is so 2016

You can be at a diner with friends, replying to super important email, solving mom’s issues with her computer on FB Messenger and saying I love you to your GF on LINE. You can be at work leading a confcall with the entire world while having fun on your Whatsapp groups, playing with Snapchat filters and posting serious stuff on Linkedin. After glorifying this omniscient new power smartphone brought to us the last 10 years, I fell we'll progressively rediscover the joy of doing one thing after another.

Chat bots vs apps vs web - the chronometer test and other key indicators

I read articles saying that bots will replace apps, the web.  First bots are not a new thing.  Google search is a bot.  You type a word or ask. It answers.  Google Maps is a bot.  You put a destination and it answers a variety of ways to go there.  TripAdvisor is a bot.  You put a city and a category like restaurants.  It gives you back a list.  Asking to get an answer is not new.  Bots just do this in a different format, chat style.  Second, what problem do they solve?  Let's list "is it" questions.  If you order a pizza via the Pizza Hut bot, is it...  ... faster than through the app? No.  ... quicker than the web? Mmmm no if you have your password remembered by Chrome. Chronometer test is important. People seek going fast.  That's why we love Google, Mac products, Amazon, etc.  If a new way to do something is slower than the previous, won't work.  Except if it leads to better experiences - that's why we still go to restaurants which c

Media war makes the world stressful and fearful. We must resist

Media are in the worst ever situation. End of paper (except for local news) Insane digital competition. On the web, paper, news channels. Free content overload. Ad only business models. GenY doesn't watch TV. Each smartphone user is a media now. Social media is where people get information now. What is the result? Open fire strategies! Media need to increase audience size by all means. War mode is on. Media are addicted to buzz, intense info, breaking news, huge things, impressive stuff. They need to trigger emotions: fear is one of the most effective. They are super experts of making each and every event something emotional through marketing artifacts. The only limit: deontology. What is the result? Audiences stress and fear Audiences, us, are bombarded with stressful information. All day long, rifles of shocking stuff are shot and hit readers and watchers. Impossible to resist. In the end, everybody become stressed, afraid. The world has

We all love a lot of people's traits at the same time

We're supposed to love persons, one person to be precise in our modern societies. I think we love  different people's traits. LOVE You’ll love the charisma of one, they kindness of another, the beauty of another, they eyes of another, they craziness of another, the smell of another, the voice of another, the skin of another, the imagination of another, the facial expression of another, the intelligence of another, the deep generosity of another, the wisdom of another, the smile of another, the style of another, the accent of another, the sense of humor of another, etc. We all love a lot of people's traits at the same time, and not traits from one person only - our significant one. We don't call it love because it's a cultural taboo to use this word outside of the classic schema where you love one person at a time. I don't see other words, though. Like is too weak to qualify a sentiment that can be very intense. Note that love is one way, loving someone

What should we do to protect our health from the air pollution killing spree?

When people are cold, they wear a scarf and gloves. A bit more than 1 000 people die from hypothermia in the US per year. When they are hot, they wear a cap. Heatwave can kill a lot sometimes, 70 000  during a recent one in Europe. To protect their feets, they wear shoes. (Did not found stats saying that not wearing shoes kills, sorry). To do bicycle, they wear a helmet. To do motorbike, they have a motorcycle vest and a helmet. Half of 1,25 million people dying on roads each year are driving motorbikes, bikes or walking persons . Terrorism is a huge society issue. 32 000 people were killed from it in 2014. Malaria killed 438 000 persons in 2015. We fight hard against this. Same thing for AIDS. 1,2 million people died from it in 2014. Same thing for bad water, 2 million die from it every year. What do we do to protect our health from pollution?   6,5 million people could die every year due to air pollution  ( or 5.5, another source ) As individuals, almost nothing. We

Boring real life vs amazing virtual realities

With our phones we're connected to thousand of people, we can order stuff, get super interesting content, see what's happening everywhere, create companies, fight for causes, help people, share love and get love. Tomorrow, virtual reality will let us enter in fantastic parallel dimensions. In comparison, our real life will be so boring. That's why people check their phone constantly, even with friends or significant ones. They're just bored. They're just attracted by more exciting content, more impressive dimensions. The world waits for you - Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Whatsapp groups, Tinder dates, Snapchat friends, Pokemon Go pokemons and hunters- why losing time chatting about ordinary stuff with a handful of friends in an average café. Why doing one thing in real life when you can at the same time do tons of things at the same time online, chatting with 10 persons at a time, playing and maybe working a bit too. Why going out to do somewhat

Random photo printing specs

Consumer’s problem We have tons of photos and never print them, never see them. We never think of printing them. Selecting pictures across different places (iPhone, Instagram, Facebook), uploading them, paying is pain => we never do it. We love touching photos. It just releases endorphins. Solution Automatically print photos shared on Facebook, Instagram, in the Photo directory of smartphones. Step by step 1- Connect places you post photos on (Instagram, etc.) + your phone. 2 - Select frequency and number ex: 10 photos a month. 3 - Select a couple of options: only faces, no faces, never show my face (need face recognition), ski my ex’s face, skip my family’s face (to keep family photo private), exclude photo with too much skin, exclude explicit content, exclude a geo zone or focus on a geo zone (need geolocation), deduplication deletion, near duplication deletion (photos looking nearly the same are dedupted too as we doo rifles with our photos) 4 -

Brands who keep things simple, tell a clear story, limit the choice, will be big.

Before the internet, the biggest the mall was, the better is was, the better the shop was, the better it was. When the internet arrived, the same logic was applied. Plethora is beautiful. And with the internet, there were no logistical limits.  But now that people face the biggest plethora of choice ever, what do they do? They all get iPhones, all use Facebook, all shop on Amazon (letting algorithm and ratings defining what they should by, all check Google to search (the first page), all buy Starbucks coffees, all go to "at least 4 Tripadvisor star restaurants", all use Uber. People don't like choosing. They don't like the risk and uncertainty of choosing. People like picking among a short range of choice. Brands were wrong when the duplicated the old world model in the web. People don't like choosing.  I bet that in the future this trend will be bigger. We'll all buy from only a couple of brands suggesting us a couple things we like, sm

When was the last time you read 2 times the same book?

Every hour, the internet produce more content we can consume in dozens of lives. Our purchase power allows most of the people to buy every month, more films they can see and more books they can read in their entire life. Plethora is the new black. With that said, when was the last time you read two times or more the same book? I remember when I was a kid. I knew by heart my books because I did not have a lot, so I was re-reading them a lot of time. Same for VHS videos.  I knew by heart Tintin, Disneys because I had only a few ones. I still remember them pretty well. Now we read dozens of books, thousand of web pages a day. We see thousands of videos and hundreds of films. Re-reading or re-seeing stuff seems anachronic. Or maybe it's a way to stand up against content deluge and consumption spree...

The notion of country is over, cities rule the world

Cities are mankind’s most enduring and stable mode of social organization, outlasting all empires and nations over which they have presided. Today cities have become the world’s dominant demographic and economic clusters.  It is, of course, very difficult if not impossible to neatly disentangle the interdependencies between city and state, whether territorially, demographically, economically, ecologically, or socially. That is not the point. Across the world, city leaders and their key businesses set up Special Economic Zones and directly recruit investors into their orbit to ensure that their workers are hired and benefits accrue locally rather than nationally. This is all the sovereignty they want. To that end, entire new districts (sometimes called aerotropolises) have sprung up around airports to evade urban congestion and more efficiently connect to global markets and supply chains. From Chicago’s O’Hare and Washington’s Dulles to Seoul’s Incheon Airport, such sites

Pas de lutte des classes en matière de pollution

L’argent peut acheter de quoi s’alimenter, vivre confortablement, être en bonne santé, en sécurité, protégé de toute précarité, un certain sentiment de tranquillité et de quiétude. Elle ne peut permettre d’échapper à la pollution. Les riches Chinois vivant en ville en souffrent, leurs enfants aussi. Mark Zuckerberg qui s’est fait prendre en photo faisant son footing sur Tiananmen en plein FOG aussi. Quand Paris subit un pic de pollution, les familles du VIIIe et XVIe sont touchés de la même façon que les classes plus populaires du XIXe. Un nuage radioactif traite tout le monde avec une une parfaite équité. La pollution est universelle. Elle rend malade et tue de la même manière tout le monde. Elle ramène chaque individu au statut d’être humain qui respire pour vivre. Cette universalité est relativement implacable, à moins de créer des bulles de vie pour personnes aisées sous atmosphère purifiée, de créer des masques à oxygènes high tech au tarif inabordable

Japan is involuntarily solving global warming and makes the notion of GDP useless

Japan has a way to limit drastically global warming: cutting the number of Japanese by 25% till 2050 without any genocide. Source Japan is just disrupting (involuntarily) the way we think global warming. Indeed, we try to lower carbon footprint, consumption but we rarely think of lowering the number of inhabitants on the planet. I wrote a lot about it! I think Japan is an example to follow. - - - Japan seems to have a very bad economy. Taking into account that  Japan population decreases, it's not right. Their economy is as bad as other developed countries ones. Taking into account the revenues of the country, e.g. the difference between imports value and export value, t's not right, Japan is getting richer. Source  (French) Japan is just disrupting the way we measure our country economies. The aggregated GDP is out of date in our open economies with very different demographics and people population distributions.

People are discovering that life can be simple (as simple as Google)

You find everything on Google, learn everything on Wikipedia, buy everything on Amazon, have the best taxi service on Uber, Apple make the best phones, Dyson the best hoovers, Telsa the best electronic cars. Some will say it’s not true. Google is not perfect and Duckduckgo is cool too! Wikipedia is not as great as real sources of info we have to pay. Amazon is not always cheap and don’t sell everything. Uber is expensive when price surges. Apple is playing with programmed obsolescence, running the planet. Dyson is a thing of the past, now Rumba is the thing. Tesla is a trap for rich techies. Moreover, some will say that these companies are overvalued, that they loose tons of money, that they kill jobs, that’s they don’t pay country taxes. They are right. Totally right. But what is frictionless, riskless and thus simple nearly always win.