fplanque: IT world

Matt from WordPress was holding a casual WordPress meetup in Paris today. I thought I should drop by and say hello... Meet the legend, you know!

(Do you realize WordPress and b2evolution actually both spun off the b2 blog software at the same time?)

It was nice chatting with Matt as well as Tony (Sphere), Xavier (NetVibes), StuFF mc (Pomcast) and the others.

(maybe I should go out more often? ... or sleep more, judging by the picture! )

Fom blogworldexpo.com:

• Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
• More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
• Over 57 million Americns read blogs.
• 1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
• 89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
• 9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
• 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
• Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
• over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
• There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
• 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
• 120,000 new blogs are created every day .
• 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
• 51% of blog readers shop online .
• Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

"An educated mistake is better than no action at all."
-Stuart G.

"We're all dealt a different hand in life. All you can do is play the cards you're dealt."
- B. Knoblach

So that new iPod touch that Apple presented today is pretty nifty, isn't it? And Steve's keynote was pretty entertaining too.

Yeah well... there's quite a few missing features (no it's not the Beatles) that itch me... even before I lay down the $399 I will no doubt end up spending on this (nonetheless) beautiful peace of art. And Especially:

Podcasts: yes, so it has WiFi and a browser and an online music store... but what about podcasts? You subscribe to podcast in order to get new episodes when they become available. The least I'd expect from a WiFi enabled portable podcast player is to actually get the episodes of the podcasts I'm subscribed too. Not a single word about that...

...well maybe it is actually there. Maybe Steve just didn't mention it because they haven't found a way to gently rip you off with it, as they're getting ready to do with their iPhone ringtone business! Think about it: you already bought a full length song (at a fairly high price). Now Apple lets you clip out 10 seconds of that song to use as a ring tone. All you have to do is pay another $.99 for those 10 seconds you already have on your iPone! Why exactly did people applause to that?

Email: can you name one single good reason why this thing doesn't include a POP3/IMAP mail client? Does Apple's partnership with Google go so far they're going to encourage us to use Gmail instead?

And by the way, if Google rules, where's the Google maps application?

Edit: The new $20 iPod Touch upgrade finally addresses that!

Games: Steve proudly showed off the games on the new iPod nano. What about the iPod touch? Can I play all the games I purchased for my iPod "classic" on my soon to be iPod touch? Odds look pretty bad...

PDA features: This device now clearly has the capabilities of a top of the line PDA. It just lacks some software to do it right. Todo lists, anyone? Can you at least edit your calendar and contacts on the go? You couldn't do it with the previous iPods and Steve didn't mention it. It would be odd not to be able to do it, but then again, the software on this one is so trimmed down compared to the iPhone that I'm a little scared...

Edit: you can now edit calendar and contents in version 1.1.2.

Now of course, what I should really do is get an iPhone... Especially at the new $399 price! Yeah... if only they were available in Europe... (fingers crossed for Apple Expo Paris this September).

Camera: Actually, now the iPhone is just $100 more than the iPod, does it really make sense not to have a camera built into the high-end iPod? ... well, that would make it a killer blogger tool for sure. And again, the iPhone is *not* available everywhere, not even in certain regions of the US where there is no AT&T coverage...