A Jazz podcast

As I love Jazz, I was very happy to find this podcast on an interview with Marcus Miller, George Duke and Lee Ritenour. In this podcast, they give their definitions of contemporary jazz and explain how it was influenced by other types of music. They wanted to make a different music: acid jazz, fusion jazz,... but they had all strong basis of Jazz before starting contemporary Jazz.

Archive.org

It's an interesting website library that gives you access to more than 55 billion archived web pages . So I went through the following web site pages to see their evolutions: notretemps, celsa, google, lemonde, ...
Most of the sites have changed even though you see a continuity between the different versions.

Interdependence on Internet

Interdependence underlines the increase of dependence between the websites. It means that the websites need each other to be known. It is a kind of network in which mutual aid is required if you want to keep on existing on the web. The web is like the universe, there is no boundaries. This absence of boundaries increases the need of the others. (You give something to receive in return). It increases globalization and global aid between different kinds of people, firms,...
One of the best examples is wikipedia which includes many external links on its website and is based on users' collaboration, but also myspace : its numerous members propose external links on their space and are linked to each other for example to promote their activities. You find many artists on myspace and they ensure their promotion by increasing their network. The more, they've got members linked to their space, the better they are promoted.

Podcasting Liverpool

As involved in tourism, I found this podcast quite interesting. The city of Liverpool uses the podcast concept to promote its city as a European capital of culture in 2008. 4 different characters : a guide, the curator of an arts centre, the manager of the famous Cavernclub and a local business manager passionate with sports present different aspects of the city. They are the main points of interest of the city or at least the points that form part of Liverpool's identity and image : the river and the ferry, culture, music and the Beatles, sports events.

Time based on precious opportunities

Internet gives you opportunities to save time. For example, thanks to Boursorama people having shares can get in real time precious information on what's going on the stock exchange, so save or gain money according to the opportunities.

Reward

Reward on Internet for me means that for changing your habits, some websites reward you by giving you something more or special. For example, "La sncf" through its website "voyagessncf" proposes cheaper train tickets that you can buy only on internet : "Idtgv", "prem's". On PAP which is the online version of the newspaper PAP dedicated to property offers, you get updated information everyday and you can be alerted on you mobile or by mail each time there is an offer corresponding to your demand. On UGC website, you can book a movie show before going to the cinema so it prevents you from having to queue up for it.

Transparency

Transparency is a concept that has taken a different place in corporate communication thanks to Internet. Consumer associations exert more and more pression on firms regarding the respect of some codes of ethics, especially on those which make money on it.
So the latter are quite obliged to show that they respect those codes in any process of the production and management. So do bodyshop, Procter and gamble and Total. This is reinforced by internet, because some people use this media to inform consumers on things that some firms try to hide them.

Impermanence on Internet

Impermanence means that the home pages of the websites are always changing. It gives the internet user the impression of movement and updating on the sites. For example on Virginmega site, the home page is changed quite often according to the cultural news and to their marketing strategy.
On Nike site, a different visual is downloaded each time you click on it. Each time, a distinct universe is displayed around a sports activity with the Nike shoe fit for it.
On Neuf telecom site, you've got different information : news, services,... thus the home page changes daily and according to the products they want to promote.

Podcast "Le Masque et la plume"

This is a podcast of a famous radio programme broadcast on the French radio "France Inter". The "Masque et la plume" is 40 years old. It is a kind of cultural institution on the French radio.
Each week, several guests give their opinion on the cultural news of the week. It turns around a specific topic : cinema, theatre, books,...
They are all cultural critics and often don't have the same points of view, so it's interesting to make your own opinion. I usually buy magazines but it gives me only one point of view. So this kind of program is very useful and democratic as it does not give you one point of view.

Examples of successful firms like Google

Wikipedia stands out as the main encyclopedia on Internet in which the information are supplied and written directly by any user thanks to the "Wiki tool". I think its success is essentially due to the "collaboration" aspect. Moreover people may consider the information given as accurate and not "partial" since they can be corrected by anybody.

The newspaper "Le monde" is one of the first newspaper that has proposed a version of its newspaper on internet free of charge. So did all the other newspapers. For a few months, it proposes charged subscriptions including extra offers on its website such as an access to old newspapers' records,...

Ebay is a free website dedicated to auction in which people buy and sell goods all over the world. It stands as one of the most famous websites in the world.

PAP is a French website that edits property ads of individuals. So it just puts in touch property owners and people who are looking for accommodation. To see the offers, you don't have to pay anything.

Ratp (running parisian metro and bus network) has a website, on which people can work out its route to get somewhere in Paris or in the suburbs and check the way to get there.

The Google question : How can we explain google's success ?

The economic model of Google relies on the selling of its technology as a search engine and advertisements on its site.

Its success can be attributed to different things. But in my opinion Google owes its success essentially to its simple design. At the very beginning, there were no visuals and no advertisements unlike other search engines such as yahoo or altavista. So this contributed to attracting users and crediting Google with a certain moral code.
Now we can say that people get so used to Google for searching a piece of information that it has changed the way people look for information. Thus including a search engine in applications such as an intranet is now nearly compulsory for a firm if it wants that the employees use it.

It works because Google is the only one that proposes the technology which is based on. It has such a control of this technology that so far nobody has been able to compete with it. So it has succeeded in becoming the reference that provides information on Internet. It is a monopolistic company that in some way has the control on information and tries to keep it. Google plans to reference in its search engine over 15 millions of books scanned from libraries all over the World in a few of years. So Are there boundaries to Google's expansion ?