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  • Only Those Who See the Invisible, Can Do The Impossible
  • The Age of your Heart is the Age of what you Love - Marcel Prévost
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  • The world surrenders to a quiet mind
  • It is a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it - Somerset Maugham


December 17, 2009

Behind the Scenes with Pearltrees

The video clips take a deeper look at Pearltrees from behind the scenes with Patrice Lamothe at their Paris office last week. The second video is with Julien Wallen about how and why they got started. Below is a shot taken of some of the engineers and product masters behind the machine.

The Pearltrees team in Paris (11)

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 17, 2009 | Filed in Europe, On France, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

MobileGlobe's Yoann Valensi on Cheap Calls

MobileGlobe's CEO Yoann Valensi hosted Traveling Geeks for a dinner last week in Paris in the Marais. His mission is to make mobile calls cheap and easy from anywhere in the world. Listen to why you should care.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 17, 2009 | Filed in On France, On Mobile & Wireless, On Technology, On VoIP, TravelingGeeks, Videos | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 16, 2009

Stribe's Kamel Zeroual on Embedded Community

This past week in Paris, we spent time with Stribe's Kamel Zeroual who won an award at TechCrunch 50 this past fall. Listen to why he thinks embedding community into your existing environment is so important. On stage at LeWeb last week, they showed a white label version that ToysRUs had implemented.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 16, 2009 | Filed in On France, On Technology, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 14, 2009

Chris Pirillo on Mobile Speech Recognition: It's So Accurate Man #tg09, #leweb

Imagine hearing this Dragon stuff from Nuance works so well ten years after we launched it in 1997, at a VIP speaker dinner in Paris. Well, last week, I did. Take a look.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 14, 2009 | Filed in On Mobile & Wireless, On Technology, TravelingGeeks, Videos | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Social Media #tg09 #leweb

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah gave an amazingly inspirational talk....on social media and how powerful it can be to mobilize social issues and causes, on passion, on having a voice, on Twitter, on taking action because action is so easy for all of us now with the free and easy-to-use online tools we have at our fingertips.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 14, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, Current Affairs, Europe, On Education, On France, On People & Life, On Politics, On Women, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Dancers at Paris Web Event Make an Impact #leweb

Loic and Geraldine brought in some magical, multicultural dancing talent for this year's LeWebhttp://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d83451c79e69e200d8341c665653ef/post/compose#'s speaker dinner. I could have watched all night.

(Parts I and II)

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 14, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, Entertainment/Media, On Dance, On France, TravelingGeeks, Videos | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 13, 2009

Paris City Hall and DotParis #tg09 #leweb

The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe and Jean-Louis Missikia, Deputy Mayor responsible for Innovation, research and universities hosted LeWeb attendees for an evening of champagne and decadent walls, ceilings and floors.

As we entered, the city set up cameras to interview people on their opinion about dotParis. Should there be a dotParis and why? Should there be dotCityX?

Below, a few of us were interviewed and below that, a short video I took inside City Hall, talking to some of LeWeb attendees, speakers, Traveling Geeks and random folks who made it into my zoom. (the best part of the video of course are the gorgeous ceilings)

Tom-Foremski interviewed by City of Paris (3)

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 13, 2009 | Filed in Europe, Events, On France, Social Gigs & Parties, TravelingGeeks, Videos | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Drilling Down with Zoomorama #tg09

At a Paris incubator this past week, I had a lengthy chat with the Anne-Celine Jeanneau from Zoomorama. We received a number of demos from early stage startups, who were all located in one of five incubators run by Paris Developpement. (Martin Guerin hosted)

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 13, 2009 | Filed in On France, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A Chat with Gary Vaynerchuk #leweb #tg09

Below is a chat with Gary Vaynerchuk on LeWeb stage in Paris this past week. As passionate as ever, he takes over the interview, wanting to make sure he doesn't leave the stage without the audience knowing that they 'must do what they love.'

He touts that most people don't although LeWeb audience seemed to respond differently than the typical yank crowd he's more accustomed to addressing. While clearly this isn't scalable, he says - answer every email, answer every direct message tweet. Not only scalable but highly inprobable once success really hits unless you give up ever seeing your child or a tree again. At some point, something has to give.

That said, what he's talking about is the personal touch, the value of connecting with your audience and a large reason for his success. It's not because he's a master of wine above and beyond everyone else.

His success is because of his resilience, his determination, his ability to connect to the every day man - in their language and in a genuine way. he wears his immigrant status on his sleeve and as second and third generation Americans, we can still relate to that. Rags to riches and of course social media makes that reality more possible than ever. The second gold rush is in play.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 13, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, Europe, On Blogging, On Food & Wine, On France, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 10, 2009

On Taking IT Global (#leweb #tg09)

A very short clip of Jennifer Corriero from Talking IT Global on LeWeb's stage last week.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 10, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, On Technology, On Women, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 09, 2009

Mike Arrington Interviews Google's Marissa Mayer #tg09 #leweb

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 9, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, On France, On Technology, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Traveling Geeks On the Paris Metro (200 Meeting a Day? Okay, Not Quite) #tg09 #leweb

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 9, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, On France, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Loic LeMeur Interviews YouTube's Chad Hurley #leweb #tg09

Loic LeMeur interviews YouTube's Chad Hurley on LeWeb stage in Paris this morning.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 9, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, On France, On Technology, On Video, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Answers.com Announces Availability in French, Italian, German and Spanish at LeWeb #leweb #tg09

LeWeb Logo Answers-logo2At LeWeb today, the Answers.com site announced its availability in French, Italian, German and Spanish. Adding the most widely spoken European languages to Answers.com extends the power of the popular wiki Q&A platform beyond its English language user base.

Given that they have 6 million answers in nearly 6,000 categories already in English, adapting their product for new languages is a logical step forward. Their English-language sites reached an audience of 56 million in the U.S. in October according to comScore, ranking them #15, hitting a total audience of 84 million worldwide.

Answers.com is also a sponsor of LeWeb as well as a sponsor of the Traveling Geeks tour to Paris.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 9, 2009 | Filed in Client Announcements, Conference Highlights, Europe, Israel, On France, On Search, On Technology, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

LeWeb Speaker Dinner Kicks 6th LeWeb into Motion #leweb

Loic and Geraldine LeMeur kick off LeWeb starting with a speaker dinner in the center of Paris last night.

Loic and Geraldine LeMeur kick off LeWeb (8)

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 9, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, Europe, On Technology, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 08, 2009

Microsoft Traveling Geeks Geek Pad

Microsoft bizspark

Microsoft BizSpark is hosting the Traveling Geek Pad at LeWeb'09 this week in Paris.

Those looking to connect with the Traveling Geeks should stop by the Traveling Geek Pad in the Microsoft Lounge and also meet some of the BizSpark One startups- Huddle, Lokad, WAYN, Xobni, Club Cooee, Calinda Software, Artesian Solutions, Dezineforce and more.

Traveling geek pad

Say hi to a geek microsoft

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 8, 2009 | Filed in Conference Highlights, On Technology, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Orange Highlights at LeWeb #leweb

Orange Orange is showing a mobile application shop at LeWeb in Paris today. Additionally, Orange VP of mobile multimedia products and services Christophe François will be on a roundtable at 10:40 am.

Also available to view is the Orange Box Application "ON",  a mobile application for social network convergence, Tabbee, a home multimedia device, 2424 actu, a news portal, audio & video and People Project, a Facebook application to create and share projects. 

Jean Louis Constanza, CEO of Orange Vallée will also be part of the Startup competition Jury.

Other Orange speakers include:

--Eric Barilland - Director of digital media for Orange group

--Stéphanie Hospital - Audience Marketing & Development Vice President

--Pascal Thomas - Director of Orange Community Services

--Laurent Billard - Products tests & events

 Topics: In the living room

1 - the home ecosystem, the TV and entertainment experience - livebox: flybox, fibre 2.0, ecosystem Tabee, catch-up TV, Orange Cinema et Series, and Homelibrary

2 - the enriched experience of community and web with my mobile 

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 8, 2009 | Filed in Entertainment/Media, Europe, On France, On Mobile & Wireless, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 07, 2009

Pearltrees: A Unique Way to Discover & Organize on the Web

Pearltrees logoPearltrees CEO Patrice Lamothe meets us at the door of their offices on rue de charonne in a funky, artsy area of Paris that houses other early stage companies and ad agencies, not unlike San Francisco's SOMA in many ways.

Coffee waiting? You betcha and hot chocolate too.

He's not an unknown personality in Silicon Valley so some of us had heard of, tried, tested and demoed Pearltrees before. He knows this so he gets a little creative and we dig a little deeper into their service.

"Building an organization on the web touches on how you organize your stuff in the real world. If you like books, you will likely get a lot of pleasure organizing books into your own library on the web," says Patrice.

Pause....a nearby church bell rings on the half hour. (Okay, so not quite like SOMA)......

Pearltrees allows you to get in touch with others who share mutual interests around the way you 'organize yourself on the web.' "Bookmarking and tagging alone doesn't allow you to accomplish this," says Patrice.

Visually it looks a bit like the brain......not unlike a mind map, but that's not the point of the app, which is all done in flex btw. You can import files from delicious and export as RDF.

Pearltrees screenshot (3)

Coming out this week, any URL that you tweet will automatically turn into a pearl inside Pearltrees. Pearltrees in a sense becomes your 'memory,' allowing you to store useful data by category or by interest -- all organized in your Pearl-Tree. (visually displayed the way you think and want to store and view data).

Who uses it? In France, a lot of art and political bloggers use it as a way to visually tell a story or drive people to the web around a particular topic or interest.

One third of their users are early adopter users who are social media savvy and one third are under thirty and mostly women from France and the U.S. 

You can embed your pearls on Twitter, email Facebook or directly inside your own blog. 

Pearltree screenshot2 (8)

To-date, they have raised roughly $3 million. As for their revenue model? "Either through premium services or advertising," says Patrice. Their cost per user is very very low however.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 7, 2009 | Filed in On France, On Technology, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Zorap Creates Traveling Geeks Virtual Geek Pad for France Blogging Tour

Zorap logoZorap, which creates digital-rich media collaboration and group video communication experience experiences on the web, has created a Virtual Geek Pad for the Traveling Geeks team in France this week for LeWeb.

It is the only technology that lets you view and listen to music, video and photos with groups of up to 50 people anywhere in the world, using real-time audio and video communications.

While other real-time web communications tools like Twitter and Facebook provide value for active web users interested in quick soundbites, Zorap is the only service available that allows engagement using all forms of media in real-time, not just text, links and photos.

Check out the Virtual Geek Pad they designed for the Traveling Geeks.

Zorap pad

Zorap allows individuals and groups of individuals to travel to movie sites and watch trailers together, listen to new music with their friends, sports events with their buddies, see wedding photos where everyone is viewing and sharing in real-time, shop for travel destinations with classmates or family, participate in a lively auction where you can see other bidders in real-time and more.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 7, 2009 | Filed in Client Announcements, Entertainment/Media, On Technology, On Video, Social Media, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 06, 2009

Traveling Geeks Kick Things into Gear in the Marais

A few visuals to get you in the 'traveling geeks' frame of mind. The Traveling Geeks are getting ready to roll.........and move, non-stop for the next four days.

We had a 'geek' session to ensure we'll stay connected and can create content, anytime, anywhere. Thanks Orange, Skype and MAXroam. Below, Amanda, Olivier, Sky and Robin get the scoop.

Traveling Geeks Kick off meeting and dinner at Les Bougresses in the Marais (10)

Amanda, Beth and Eliane -- on the move. Off to explore the city and well, yeah eat. Night one.

Traveling-Geeks head to kick off dinner at Les Bougresses in the Maris in Paris (4)

Olivier Ezratty shows up with the Canon 85 mm 1.2 portrait lense. Ahhhhh, what a magnificent lense.

Olivier-Ezratty (1) 

Beth Blecherman and Eliane Fiolet en route to the kickoff dinner in the Marais.

Eliane and Beth in the train (2)

David Spark and Tom Foremski (yeah, well, we're still in the Metro)

Traveling-Geeks head to kick off dinner at Les Bougresses in the Maris in Paris (7)

Ah yes, ambience. Get used to it, she says with a smile. You're not in Kansas anymore. Silicon Valley either. Renee Blodgett, Jean-Xtophe and Eliane Fiolet in ambience-rich Les Bougresses.

Renee-Blodgett Jean-Xtophe and Eliane-Fiolet (3) 

MobileGlobe's founder Yoann Valensi was our host so typical "traveling geek" style, we looked at toys and saw demos over dinner. Thanks Yoann, look forward to trying out your service. Rodrigo, what was your question again?

Traveling-Geeks kickoff dinner in Paris Les Bougresses in the Marais (17) 

Thank god for SMS and some of the phones that did work (we've had issues with 'em - unlocked devices can have its complications)....Ewan Spence from Edinburgh made it with luggage in time to join us. A joyous Frederic Lardinois to his right.

Traveling-Geeks kickoff dinner in Paris Les Bougresses in the Marais (22) 

And as for the food, what can I say? It's Paris after all. We didn't starve nor did we complain. Great job Les Bougresses (located in the Marais.....most definitely worth a try).

Traveling-Geeks kickoff dinner in Paris Les Bougresses in the Marais (15)

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 6, 2009 | Filed in Europe, On Food & Wine, On France, On Mobile & Wireless, On Technology, TravelingGeeks, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Traveling Geeks LIVE Video - Thanks for the Laugh Mashcast (#tg09)

Mashcast, a very cool company that does video mashups and much much more created a very creative and humorous video of Traveling Geeks heading to Paris. (Oh yeah and potentially inheriting the earth).

Below is a teaser and here is the video. Be prepared to laugh. A lot.

Traveling geeks get mashed

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 6, 2009 | Filed in Europe, Events, On Technology, On Video, TravelingGeeks, Videos, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 05, 2009

Paris Tweet-Ups

Tweet-Ups in Paris this week. Traveling Geeks are ready for a busy schedule from early AM to late PM. Thanks for everyone's support and help. Look forward to meeting local bloggers on the ground.

Blogger meetup 

Tweetup paris 

The Parisians most definitely understand ambience -- its even important for geeks.

Blogger 2


Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 5, 2009 | Filed in Europe, Events, On France, Social Media, TravelingGeeks | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 02, 2009

DEMO Innovation / Alumni Tour

Demo

The DEMO Innovation / Alumni Tour had their holiday soiree tonight at San Francisco's Mighty - the DEMO Jam session was part of the deal. In other words, the DEMO tradition continues.

Traveling Geeks friends and supporters Microsoft BizSpark and Invest in France Agency also supported tonight's Demo shindig. We're looking forward to learning more about some of their early stage companies and innovations on the ground in Paris next week.

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 2, 2009 | Filed in On Technology, TravelingGeeks | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Answers Summit This Weekend in Atlanta

Answers Summit 2009, a new Q&A community event is being hosted by Answers.com December 5-6, 2009 in Atlanta, GA.

The Answers Summit will include workshops on growing, improving and celebrating WikiAnswers, the community-generated Q&A platform of Answers.com. A guest speaker from the Cyberbullying Research Center will conduct a workshop titled 'The Fight Against Cyberbullying.'

A second workshop, conducted by a Performance Specialist, will focus on communicating effectively online. The conference will be addressed by keynote speakers Bob Rosenschein, CEO, and Bruce D. Smith. Additional highlights of the event include a trip to the Georgia Aquarium with a catered dinner.

Answers summit

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 2, 2009 | Filed in Client Announcements, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Gratitude, Paris.....and Upward

This was in a friend's celebration invitation earlier today. I couldn't help but think gratitude. It's been a long year and not an easy one for most people I know in AND out of Silicon Valley. Love the image.

Gratitude baby. Am heading to Paris this week and even though it's supposedly slated to be 30-40 degrees and rainy every day, how can you beat walking the streets of Paris anytime of year regardless of the reason?

Pucket

Posted by Renee Blodgett on December 2, 2009 | Filed | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Recent Posts

  • Behind the Scenes with Pearltrees
  • MobileGlobe's Yoann Valensi on Cheap Calls
  • Stribe's Kamel Zeroual on Embedded Community
  • Chris Pirillo on Mobile Speech Recognition: It's So Accurate Man #tg09, #leweb
  • Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Social Media #tg09 #leweb
  • Dancers at Paris Web Event Make an Impact #leweb
  • Paris City Hall and DotParis #tg09 #leweb
  • Drilling Down with Zoomorama #tg09
  • A Chat with Gary Vaynerchuk #leweb #tg09
  • On Taking IT Global (#leweb #tg09)
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