Adrien’s blog
Stuff I like, stuff I do, stuff I make

Adding cameras to our mobile phones made people want to capture every moments, mostly for sharing it with friends (e.g. with MMS and/or Social Networking Sites).

What if we could capture these moments with public cameras that are spread all around our cities?

I could buy a picture of me driving on the highway, thanks to speed cameras, without exceeding speed limits (and pay expensive fines).
I could watch and share the video of myself falling on the pavement, as I did this morning, thanks to CCTV.
I could make a low-cost (and low-burden) music video (like did The Get Out Clause band), thanks to underground and other urban cameras.
…

Your ideas could make cameras more “social” as you could use them for fun (and thus more sympathetic), and it could also generate some revenue.

After the “Beacon” controversy, it seems that Facebook have recently added a new way for applications to leverage your personal data.

Now, when a (facebook-) friend of yours adds an application, some of YOUR personal information can also be accessed to the application. The default privacy settings are displayed on the screenshot above.

I’m not saying that Facebook is evil here, as I think that sharing some of this information can actually empower better social applications, but I think that Facebook should communicate clearly on this.

Keep on connecting, keep on sharing, but be aware of what the implications are

Sixteen Great Twitter Moments are shared on a Mashable blog post. These interesting communication scenarii would not have existed without twitter!

Alice is a free software to create simple programs in a 3D
virtual world, thanks to the assisted drag-and-drop-based programming language. You can drop 3D objects and avatars to the scene, visualize their methods in real-time and add parametered calls to these methods to your script. I think this is a good way to learn computing science.

A good (and concise) read for those who still think twitter is yet another chat protocol:

Twitter is like a blog except is it is only 140 characters
Twitter is a status update except it is viewable in lots of places
Twitter is like a giant chat room except you choose the people you follow
Twitter is like instant messaging except it’s public & archived online

(source: What is Twitter Like? « The Stratius Blog)

I just watched the teaser video of a new website called Paggr, and I must say that it looks exciting to me!

Paggr is a platform that allow users to create pages on which they add widgets, similarly to iGoogle or netvibes. The differences are that:

• the widgets can gather data from semantic web services using the SPARQL language, and these widgets can thus be created directly on the platform
• (semantic) data can be dragged & dropped from a widget to another, allowing a seemless mashup-enabled navigation between them.

I’m looking forward to get an invite for this platform in order to play with it!

Dropbox file sharing/synchronization service has just opened to public.

For those who don’t know it, Dropbox is an online file storage service that comes with multiplaform software to synchronize chosen local files with the remote service. Wondering about what’s so special about Dropbox? Have a look at these cool features:

• a file can be copied from your desktop to the remote storage service without going to their site.
• dropboxed local files are appended a small icon to show their status on the remote storage site: green if the versions are up to date, blue if modifications are to be downloaded/uploaded.
• modifications are tracked on the service, giving the possibility to revert to a previous version of a file, or to restore a deleted file.
• files and folders can be shared, so that they are synchronized at all places
• you can create “photo” folders that will be shown as a nice photo album from the web.

I’m going to give it a try right away! I invite you to have a look at the quick screencast on their homepage: http://www.getdropbox.com

Google is working on their own open source web browser called Chrome. In order to introduce their vision, they published a very well designed comic book that illustrates the architecture and features of Google Chrome. It is a bit long (30 pages), but entertaining and very interresting to developers (some technical terms and concepts are included). I recommend this reading and I’m looking forward to try this browser!

I have just found a conference that seems interesting. Unfortunately, I cannot go there to discuss how to discuss science in the 21st century… (should we call that “meta-science”?!)

Science in the 21st Century

Après idTGV, la SNCF va plus loin dans l’innovation en proposant “idNiGHT“, un concept de soirée dans les trains de nuit avec DJ, scène ouverte, jeux et magazines gratuits, café offert…

Voici une petite séléction perso de photos récupérée sur leur site, et prises par tilllate, un site qui diffuse des photos de soirées parisiennes.

Les 10 commandements:

A bord, magazines et jeux gratuits:

Petite partie de cartes arrosée en début de soirée:

Puis le DJ pose son son:

Certains préfèrent les soirées musicales plus intimistes:

On a du mal à croire que ça a lieu dans un train:

Ben pourtant si:

Tiens, le chaud lapin à choppé:

Beware the wild animals:

Forcément, quand les gens font la fête dans les wagons, seuls les bagages peuvent se reposer!

On vit une époque formidable ! Qui a encore envie de prendre l’avion ?