La revue de presse hebdomadaire pour vous faire découvrir ce qui se passe ailleurs, dans d’autres blogs. Il s’agit d’articles en français ou en anglais que j’ai trouvé au cours de ma veille quotidienne et que j’aimerais partager avec vous. Comme on dit en anglais, enjoy!

• Too good to be true (the overnight millionaire scam)
  Il existe un nombre incroyable de programmes et de livres pour devenir riche. Mais alors pourquoi leurs auteurs sont-ils obligés de continuer à les vendre pour vivre au lieu d’appliquer les recettes qu’ils essaient de promouvoir ?
• Calacanis on the future of startups
  L’auteur revient sur la présentation de Jason Calacanis, un serial entrepreneur, à une conférence web et présente son point de vue sur la crise actuelle. J’ai beaucoup aimé le let the real entrepreneurs take over your market share.
• 7 awesome admin themes to skin your next client app
  L’interface d’administration d’un site Internet n’est généralement pas considérée comme étant stratégique et est donc très souvent bâclée au niveau graphique. Heureusement, voici une liste de designs plutôt réussis pour corriger cela.
• Image optimization, part 3: four steps to file size reduction
  Cet article présente des outils gratuits qui permettent de réduire la taille des images sans perte de qualité. Vous seriez étonné de voir le genre d’information que l’on peut stocker dans un fichier jpeg (comme du son par exemple) !
• How to profit from testimonials… even with no testimonials!
  Les témoignages de clients constituent évidemment un outil marketing très puissant pour vendre un produit ou un service. Mais comment faire si l’on n’en possède pas ? Voici quelques conseils très pertinents…
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Paul Carton / ChangeWave HotWire Blog:
A Historic Collapse in U.S. Corporate IT Spending  —  ChangeWave's latest corporate IT purchasing survey shows an accelerating collapse in U.S. business spending that has reached historic proportions - with record pullbacks occurring both in the current 4th Quarter and going forward.

When I think of Blackberry users, I think of accountants, lawyers and anyone else who wears a tie and carries a briefcase. MySpace users, sorta the opposite.

But there must be some significant overlap, because 400,000 people downloaded the MySpace Blackberry application in the last week, says MySpace - it was launched on November 12.

Both RIM and MySpace say this is a record - no other application has been downloaded so quickly onto Blackberry devices, and MySpace has never had an application on any platform be downloaded as often.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Filed under: Desktops

ASUS summons Core i7 power in ROG CG6190 gaming desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A little Friday fun here from Jacob Seidelin. He has added FlickrBrot to his other fun fractal examples of the past.

FlickrBrot commemorates the birthday of Mandelbrot himself:

Today is the birthday of Benoit Mandelbrot. About 30 years ago he pulled a bit of mathematical beauty out of his head that would make him father of what is called fractal geometry. Today, at 84, he’s a retired Sterling Professor from Yale but is still getting awards thrown his way and even planets named after him. I thought I’d make something to mark his birthday since I’ve been playing a bit with fractals and JavaScript lately and because he’s just damn cool.

What I’ve spent my morning doing is hacking together my fractal renderer with some of the Flickr stuff I’ve also been doing. Instead of drawing colored pixels, it now pulls in a (limited) number of Flickr images and uses those to paint a visualization of the Mandelbrot set.

With the recession in full swing, industries across the charts have been laying off hundreds of employees — making the job market increasingly competitive. So what’s a freshly unemployed tech professional to do? Hit the streets and start networking. As the hordes of job-seekers descend upon trade shows, conferences and meetups around the country, a few mobile startups could be poised to profit from their misery: digital business card services.

The last few months have seen the launch of a number of services, delivered via mobile technologies from iPhone apps to text messages, that aim to do away with the business card. Previously, companies may have pitched their product as a “green” alternative to dead-tree info swapping, but in today’s market, the dynamic nature of the digital business card could prove to be a more powerful selling point — at least for a startup that can dispatch updated, social media-connected personal data securely across the range of mobile devices.

The iPhone has been a key driver of the market for digital business cards, at least in terms of visibility. Gabe Zichermann, CEO of rmbrME, says his company, which had previously offered an SMS solution with about 1,000 users, had 10,000 users (and even more downloads) of its beamME application in the first 10 days it was available on the App Store. Other apps include Nameo, Handshake, FriendBook and iCard. Most of the services work roughly the same way: Bring two iPhone users together, pull up the app, and a simple touch command sends information between their devices.

However, Nameo, Handshake and iCard are limited to contacts with an iPhone. But what about those of us without iPhones? Dub, which was launched in beta in June of this year, is another option for the BlackBerry set, and as of this week, its service is also available for Android phones (currently that’s just the T-Mobile G1). (The company says service for the iPhone and Windows Mobile are due out in December.) Perhaps Dub’s biggest claim to fame is that it offers integration with common business services. Data can be beamed to a Salesforce.com contact management system, as well as to mobile devices, and Dub users will soon be able to sign into the service using their LinkedIn login and password.

But even Dub, which allows for limited cross-platform sharing, requires that both users have a smartphone and install the app. For on-the-go information sharing, the “Do you use this app?” conversation can add an extra layer of awkwardness and time. For universal sharing, users might be better off with an SMS service from players such as Dropcard, TextID and rmbrME. Even iPhone app-addicts have an option: While most iPhone apps rely on Wi-Fi networks and geolocation, rmbrME’s iPhone app, beamME, allows users to send personal data from their iPhone to any phone, whether it has a data connection or just a simple voice connection.

I’m still slogging along with a Nokia 2610, so I’m partial to technology that doesn’t leave me (with my pesky  insistence on multiday battery life) out in the cold. I’ve found services like rmbrME and Dropcard to be simple to use, and I could easily send my data to smartphone-carrying folks via shortcode. Better yet, people could send info to me, without even knowing that I still carry a Stone Age-era device.

While there hasn’t been much venture investment in the space just yet, Zichermann says rmbrME has raised just shy of $1 million in angel investment, and DubMeNow has reportedly raised $1.1 million in angel funding. DreamIt Ventures provided seed funding for Dropcard. But the startup founders are optimistic: Zichermann says VCs are exactly the kind of social, tech-savvy users that “get” services like rmbrME, which should make it easier to raise funding when the time is right.

Also promising in this market: None of the services is dependent on advertising revenue. Most of the services use a “freemium” model, and several are working to add enterprise-level functionality. DubMeNow’s BlackBerry-focused, Salesforce.com-integrating app seems aimed squarely at the business-to-business marketplace. Zichermann says rmbrME also has its eye on premium services aimed at the enterprise market, such as offering a branded, customized look and feel for user cards.

You probably can’t throw away your business cards just yet. But if you’re in the market for a new job, sign up for an SMS service and head out to the trade shows.

Image courtesy of rmbrME

Wall Street Journal:
Mukasey Collapses During Speech  —  Attorney General Mukasey collapsed while giving a speech on national security to a prominent conservative lawyers' organization.  The state of his health is unknown.