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Je découvre ce matin cette composition pour piano, qui date apparemment de quelques années, écrire à partir de la traditionnelle sonnerie Nokia par le pianiste québécois Marc-André Hamelin.

Plus intéressant peut-être que ce morceau, je découvre la conférence The EG—The Entertainment Gathering. Il s'agit d'une conférence à la TED. D'ailleurs, certaines des conférences sont carrément disponibles sur le site TED. Cette conférence est cependant plus orientée divertissement ou loisir, son but étant de redéfinir la manière dont on entretient nos idées (de l'anglais entertain ideas).

C’est dommage que la conférence soit hors de prix ($4000) et en Californie, mais au moins vous pouvez regarder quelques unes des présentations en ligne. Je vous aurais fait un lien direct, mais le site est trop mal fait ; allez donc sur le site de The EG et cliquez sur l’onglet Video, après vous pourrez utiliser un magnifique menu déroulant pour choisir votre vidéo.

D’ailleurs, ça me fait penser à quelque chose : serez-vous présents au TEDx Paris à la fin du mois ?

Pour finir, une autre petite vidéo EG ; David Pogue et Imagine there’s no technology :

It was about three weeks ago that I was at the Eiffel Tower with the rest of the WikiChildProtect team, we were a bit disappointed because after all our hard work, we had “only” achieved third place in the French finals of Imagine Cup’s software design category.

Not everything was lost though. I didn’t write about it because I left for Asia the day after and have been quite busy these three weeks, but we submitted our project for H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt, Special Award.

Today we got the results: we are among the five finalists that are going to Egypt!

So I’ll be in Egypt from July 3 to 7 :)

Unfortunately, this also means that I will have to abandon my mother for a few days and that I will miss the wedding of two of my closest friends… But I know that they all know what this means to me and they wish me plenty of luck.

I’ll try to keep you posted as often as possible about how this goes, but first I have to get back home to France so that we can prepare with the team and bring back a gold medal ;)

Le laboratoire Web & Dev a le plaisir de vous inviter à une présentation du framework PHP Symfony qui aura lieu au siège du Training Center de SUPINFO à Paris :

28-30 bis rue de la Victoire
75009 Paris

Cette présentation aura lieu le mercredi 18 mars de 18h30 à 20h00.

Fabien Potencier est co-fondateur de Sensio et directeur général Sensio Labs. Il présentera son framework Symfony—il est lead dev du projet—qui fait partie des plus reconnus dans le monde professionnel PHP.

La présentation sera suivie d’une session de questions / réponses avec Monsieur Potencier.

Inscrivez-vous ! C’est gratuit ;)

I met Hugh MacLeod at LeWeb ‘08 this week and he was kind enough (yeah, I know he was there for that, but thanks anyway) to draw something on my business card:

As Hugh predicted, I am twittering this, too ;)

I chose to remove my contact info to avoid spam, but it’s not like it’s hard to actually contact me. Follow me on Twitter or hit one of the links on the right.

No, in fact it is quite the opposite!

For a little over a year I had no antivirus on my computer at home because I thought them to be extremely resource-consuming and unnecessary given my configuration and my knowledge. I had tested several solutions previously—free, commercial—but they always seemed bloated and slowed down my computer. That’s why, when I was invited to attend a presentation of the latest version of Norton’s Antivirus—no, sorry, security suite Norton Internet Security 2009 (NIS 2009 for friends) I went there filled with prejudice.

It was Rowan Trollope, Vice President of the Division of Consumer Products at Norton, who had come to Paris to tell us of his baby. He had, after all, more or less staked his career on this version, as he explained to me during a long conversation we had after his presentation.

We were entitled to a heap of numbers: more than 500 000 man hours of development, 300 improvements in performance, 1-minute installation, significant reduction in the number of files to scan and, therefore, the time to do so… In summary, what we were supposed to get is that NIS 2009 is fast and light; fast and light as never witnessed before: able to turn on a machine with 256 KB of RAM, smart enough not to disturb the user of the computer and not to scan files that we know are “trusted” thanks to Insight technology.

After the presentation of the product I was able, as I have already said, to discuss at length with Rowan and by the end of the evening I only wanted to do one thing: test this miracle of computer engineering.

I would like to make a short "disclaimer": I was able to test NIS 2009 because I was offered a copy with a year of protection for 3 PCs. Sure, I could have downloaded the trial version on the site, but I am not dumb either. That said, I am known to be quite unpleasant and to criticize even gifts, so what follows is honestly what I think.

Back home, even if it was late, I could not help but to turn on the PC and install immediately. First test, is the installation time really under minute?

The answer: No. But almost. I spent some time filling out forms to create my account and activate, etc. The installation itself may have lasted less than a minute, but the experience in itself probably lasted just under 10, and that is what I remember.

That aside, everything else is true! When I say “Two Months without an Antivirus” it is just because it has been 2 months since I installed NIS I have barely noticed it. From time to time I see a small message, telling me that the current scan will stop because I am back.

Once, on my work computer (yes, I have also installed it on my machine at the office) an update didn’t go well. NIS automatically connected to the support servers (there’s free support, by the way, even if I have not needed to the call them for the moment) and offered a step-by-step procedure to solve my problem; and it worked, which is the most important.

A conclusion then? I like NIS 2009. It is undeniable that today it is vital to protect ourselves, or risk becoming a spammer robot or losing data. How can you not appreciate protection against the millions of threats around today when it is imperceptible? Now, will I renew my NIS subscription in 10 months? I’ll have the answer when the time comes, and it will depend only on my budget. Worst case scenario: I will take only the antivirus, instead of the complete security suite.

So you’re still here? How about a video of the Symantec meeting of September 18th:

After the French Final which took place last week, where we learnt that our own Well K’Home team qualified for the finals of the Software Development category, we received today in a more discrete but not less important manner the results for all the other categories. I am therefore glad to announce that a second SUPINFO team has qualified for the worldwide finals!

I’m talking about the ECOThink team composed of Frédéric Pedro, Anthony Chen Kuang Piao and Nicolas Gryman – SUPINFO Ile de France, and Maximilien Paitel – SUPINFO UK, who will be representing the colors of SUPINFO and France in the Game Development category.

Only 6 out of the hundred or so teams that participated worldwide have the privilege to attain this final round that will take place from July 3 to 8 in Paris. I therefore congratulate this team for their exceptional work and this well deserved reward.

It is also thanks to these two teams that SUPINFO will be the French school sending the most students to these “Olympic Games” of Computer Science.

I’d like to thank teams Well K’Home and ECOThink once more, but also all the other participants in all the other categories for their efforts.

I hope that those for whom the adventure stops here were able to take advantage of it and will retry the experience next year. To our two finalist teams, I wish them the best of luck for the next stage and would like to remind them that they have our full support until the end.

Last night took place the French finals of the Software Design category of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. Seven finalists, two of which came from SUPINFO, were competing for the first place that would allow them to represent their school’s and their country’s colors in the worldwide finals that will take place from July 3 to 8 in Paris, France.

It was before notably Eric Boustouller–General Manager of Microsoft France, Jean-Louis Missika–deputy of the Mayor of Paris, in charge of innovation, research and universities, and Chantal Jouanno–President of the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, but also our President, Alick Mouriesse, that this much desired first place was attributed to our own Smart Cooking team, composed of Régis Hanol and Gauthier Chanliau–SUPINFO Montpellier, Sébastien Warin–SUPINFO Lille, and Jean-Noël Gauthier–Gobelins.

Months of hard work have borne fruit, even if the show is far from being over. These four students must still step up to their biggest challenge during the first week of July, when they will have to convince judges from around the world that their project is the most relevant from a technological, economic and environmental (this is the competition’s theme this year) point of view, amongst the fifty other countries participating in the international finals.

I’d like to congratulate personally, but also on behalf of all of SUPINFO, Régis, Gauthier, Sébastien and Jean-Nöel for their victory!

I’d also like to congratulate Team Plastid, made of Sylvain Bruyère, Romain Léveillé and Steven Bailly-Maître–SUPINFO Toulouse, who managed, despite their young age, to qualify for the French finals. I wish them good luck in continuing their project and hope to see them on the podium next year.

Finally, last night only the Software Design category was at stake, however we have great teams still participating, especially in the categories of Embedded Design, Game Development, Project Hoshimi and IT Challenge. Some of these teams were there yesterday evening and were able to showcase their projects and benefit from the opinion and advise of visitors, including Alick and Olivier Comes. These teams have submitted their projects hoping to grab a place in the worldwide finals, however in these categories the competition is already taking place at the international level. We will therefore know the definitive list of SUPINFO finalists by the end of the month.

Once again, on behalf of SUPINFO, I wish luck to all the teams who are still competing and would like to congratulate and thank Régis, Gauthier and Sébastien for all their work.