Le Danois

Danskere i Toulouse

2006-10-10T21:51:00.000+02:00

Efter en god dansk frokost en uges tid tillbage, blev jeg spurgt om ikke jeg kunne komme med et forslag til et website der kunne bruges til at dele lidt erfaringer med andre danskere der er bosat her i Toulouse, eller som planlalegger at komme hertil. Det er hermed gjort.

For Google og andre interesserede foelger hermed et link der nok kun er sjovt hvis man er dansker og har noget med Toulouse at goere: Danskere i Toulouse

Le Danois 2.0 (new blog)

2006-08-22T21:57:00.000+02:00

I've decided to focus on blogging about things I come across at work instead of writing a personal blog. If you're interested in enterprise architecture, J2EE, Java, Open Source and the tools used by small companies, you might want to head on over to Le Danois 2.0.

Don't expect new posts in this blog, at least not for the time being.

Let's go Web 2.0 for a day

2006-08-17T09:10:00.000+02:00

PS: Create your own Web 2.0 logo here

Technorati tags: web20

US only web solutions

2006-08-15T16:15:00.000+02:00

With the big wave of US only web solutions, the Europeans seem to have been left out of the loop and have basically become second rank web-citizens.

When a new web solution is in the makings, the authors plan a quick alpha version roll out that'll give feedback in regards to whether the product works as expected, before adding more features and get the funding needed for next rollout. If the product is a web based solution created by a US company, chances are that they'll limit their solution to US users in the first couple of roll outs. Localized services will demand US zip codes, money is $ and interface language is English.

The second, third and fourth rollout will contain bug fixes and extra features, but surprisingly internationalization never seems to be one of the prioritized features.What ever happened to the pretty story about the internet breaking down geographical and cultural barriers?

Many web solutions that launch as US-only solutions stay that way for the product lifetime. Although a few tech-hungry Europeans use the US solutions and accept that there are some features they cannot use, the products do not come close to seeing their true global internet potential.

Living in a country like France makes the effect even more obvious. As if it wasn't enough, the US solutions will never have their breakthrough on the French market if they do not add French as a choice of interface language.

How long has the Google Calendar existed? Did you know that users who have chosen French as the interface language do not even know that the product exists, since the link is not visible for them?

Cork'd is a great web solution. Use it to manage a list of wines you've tasted and manage your current collection. Share your experiences with friends and let everyone know where to get a good but cheap bottle of Bordeaux. Let me rephrase that: let your US friends know where to find a good but cheap Bordeaux in $. How can someone create a web solution for managing wine collections and recommendations without ensuring that it's usable for French users? Imagine the market potential!

I completely respect the fact that it is hard work to create a solution that can be localized for everyone, that has the major world languages for the interface and that enables the world's major currencies. I just have difficulties understanding why it seems to be such a low priority?

I know that the fact that the French still in this day and age demand French as the interface language make them somewhat exotic, but one cannot ignore the size of the French market when looking at Europe.

One thing is that the US creators of web solutions do not prioritize other markets, but how come Europeans are so slow at picking up!?

tags: europe, internationalization, globalization, internet

Windows Live Writer review

2006-08-15T13:55:00.000+02:00

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application for authoring weblog posts. Contrary to what one might expect, the Windows Live Writer application also work with non-Microsoft blog platforms, such as Blogger which I'm using.

Look and feel

First impressions is that the interface is nice and simple. During installation it read my stylesheet and created a local copy if my weblog template, so that I can get a true preview of my posts. Since it knows my stylesheet it can also give me an authoring view that lets me write my posts in a format that is exactly like it'll be once posted. It gives me a good idea of line length, etc. That's true WYSIWYG for ya.

Maps

The map feature is (sadly to say) once again a US only feature. Actually that is not one hundred percent true, since I did manage to insert an aerial photo of Toulouse. The closest zoom I could get to was however a general aerial view of Toulouse, which cannot be used for directions, and "road" view are not even available for my neck of the woods.

Images

Since you see the posts exactly as they will appear once posted, you can get a real impression of how your post's text will be aligned with the image. Cool stuff - or at least that's what I thought! It turns out that the image posting feature doesn't work for my blog platform of choice.

Update: I just tried the image upload towards Wordpress and there it works fine.

Plugins

The tool allows the creation of plugin which is a great move. I installed the Tag4Writer plugin which works great.

Conclusion

The Windows Live Writer is a very well done tool for blogging to blog platforms that are supported by the tool. The lack of image posting to Blogger does however disqualify it as a tool that bloggers such as myself would use. Too bad, since it seems very nice to use.

Tool download

Download the tool from the product weblog

tags: windowslivewriter, bloggertools, blogger

Champagne at the town hall

2006-05-27T13:42:00.000+02:00

The town of Toulouse is so kind as to invite us Danes and Swedes living in the pink city for champagne at the town hall once a year.

Technorati tags: toulouse

No wonder bicycles are stolen in Toulouse

2006-05-26T12:56:00.000+02:00

This morning I learned (to my big surprise) that bicycles aren't tagged in Toulouse. The police wouldn't get anything out of checking bicycles to see if they're stolen, since they have no way of identifying a bike.

In Copehagen, where I'm from, bikes have registration numbers engraved. This way the police can check whether bikes are stolen by simply looking up the registration number in their registry.

I haven't yet bought a bike here in Toulouse since I've been warned about the high risks of having it stolen, but with the completely insane traffic we have nowadays, it is getting more and more attractive to purchase a bike.

PS: The organisation www.fubicycode.org
is trying to get bike tagging introduced in France.

Technorati tags: toulouse

Enjoying the spring

2006-03-26T13:03:00.000+02:00

In Denmark the snow that fell in December is still not gone. In Toulouse I'm sitting on our terasse in t-shirt. Hehe...

Multi-Touch Interaction Research

2006-02-12T09:52:00.000+01:00

Gotta get me one of those:
Multi-Touch Interaction Research (linky linky to Dalager)

France involved in the cartoon story

2006-02-09T09:17:00.000+01:00

Turns out the French have more to do with the cartoon story than I knew:
France: shining beacon of Culture • France : haut lieu de Culture (thedissidentfrogman.com)

I'm from...Denmark

2006-02-06T09:20:00.000+01:00

I wonder whether I should remove the Danish flag sticker I have put on the back of our car...

A blog entry is called a "post" and not a "blog"

2005-12-16T14:15:00.000+01:00

I shall say this only once: A blog entry is not called a blog, but a post.

Toulouse Pillow Fight Club

2005-11-26T15:25:00.000+01:00

We were only a few but we did have two minutes of pillow fighting. The opponents approaching Dan and I:

Then the fight started:

The police was there, but they were busy with other issues.

It was a bit disappointing to see that we were only four pillow fighters (one showed up later), but at least I can be proud of being only one in a few who has had a pillow fight at the central square in Toulouse. I wonder which occasion would be relevant for that sort of bragging?

Update: Joan took pictures as well.

Technorati tags: toulouse - flashmob - pillowfightclub

T-50 minutes

2005-11-26T13:08:00.000+01:00

Pillow fight at Place du Capitol in 50 minutes! I'll be the Dane in the English-Danish tag team! GOGOGO!

Technorati tags: flashmob toulouse

Toulouse un-plugged

2005-11-25T18:07:00.000+01:00

Today I had a lunch meeting at a restaurant just next to our flat in the center of Toulouse. I brought my laptop since I wanted to show some of the collaboration tools we use in our company, but since I would be offline (or at least I thought I would be), I had preloaded some webpages from our collaboration tools in my browser before leaving the flat. As it turned out, I could see about ten wireless networks from the restaurant and two of them were not secured! I ended up doing the demonstrations life, which made everything a lot easier for me and I could even check my mail when the meeting had finished.

Yesterday I was at a customer in a technology park close to Toulouse and there I could also spot an unprotected wireless network. I didn't try to connect since I didn't need the connection, but I guess it would have worked if I had tried.

From our flat I see four to five other wireless networks, but they are all protected. Since we have our own wireless network it doesn't really matter, but it shows that Toulouse is now pretty well covered when it comes to wireless networks. Good stuff (for a nerd at least).

Technorati tags: toulouse - wifi

Pillow fight at Capitol!

2005-11-24T10:41:00.000+01:00

Rules
1. Tell everyone about Pillow Fight Club.
2. Tell everyone about Pillow Fight Club.
3. Turn up at the arranged Pillow Fight Club venue with pillow hidden in a bag.
4. At the exact given time pull out pillow and fight.
5. You cannot fight anyone without a pillow (unless they want it).

From the official Pillow Fight Club Wikipedia page

Technorati tags: flashmob

Good service at cafepress.com

2005-11-23T18:52:00.000+01:00

It's nice to get decent service once in a while (did you hear that SNCF?) so I would like to point out that cafepress.com has given me some lovin'. Actually they haven't done anything really extraordinary, but after having told them that I never received the order I had placed with them, they sent me some nice and polite emails and placed a replacement order without any extra charges for me. That's nice.

Technorati tags: cafepress

SMS cross side scripting?

2005-11-23T12:30:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I received about 6 to 7 SMSes from Orange, all of them saying "download ok, please consider deleting this message". I wondered what those messages were about until I received a last SMS saying "We've updated your SIM card, please restart your telephone". What a way to scare their customers! I find it very cool that they can update their services that way, but first of all they should not spam their clients without warning and asking for permission and second of all, they now have me worried about whether anyone can send me an SMS that will mess with my SIM card. If they can update my SIM card with SMSes, I guess everyone can, right?
Also, I actually have no idea what was in that update?!?

Technorati tags: orange

Please think about internationalisation

2005-11-22T16:50:00.000+01:00

It frustrates me when I visit a website like Nokia's and I'm asked to choose my region. When I choose France, it shows me the website for Nokia France, but who says that I want to see the French site and even more importantly, who says I want to see it in French? Why can't the people who plan these websites understand that there's a difference between where you are and which language you would like to read your information in?

Naked garbage men anyone?

2005-11-19T10:34:00.000+01:00

The door phone just rang, it was the garbage men selling calendars, yes you heard me, garbage men selling calendars. Now these ain't calendars like the Aubade calendar, they are ordinary calendars without photos, not even of the garbage men. So why are these guys who are paid for taking out the garbage going from door to door selling calendars? That's just how we do it here in France.

The fireman sell calendars, the mail men, the garbage people, everyone has their calendars. They are paid by the state, meaning by us, but they somehow don't seem to think that their salary do them justice, so they go from door to door asking for a little extra.

For a Dane it seems rather ironic that people who are paid by your taxes go from door to door selling stuff that is obviously not very interesting, just to make a few extra bucks. As I told Karine, if at least the garbage men's calendar had naked garbage men, then it would be original and then I could maybe defend the fact that desperate lonely women would buy it.

Funnily, most people seem to buy these calendars. It would just be too rude to refuse to buy it. I'm of course generalizing here, but most people I've seen do buy it.

As an ironic side note, you could wonder why French people are always late, when they've got a million calendars at home ;-)

Technorati tags: france

Google Video not for Frenchies?

2005-11-18T19:26:00.000+01:00

When trying to view videos on Google Video I get the following error message:

Thanks for your interest in Google Video.

Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn't available in your country.

We hope to make this feature available more widely in the future, and we really appreciate your patience.

What's up with that?

Technorati tags: google googlevideo

Danish youngsters setting cars on fire

2005-11-16T17:28:00.000+01:00

Christ, now some youngsters in Copenhagen has set fire to some cars. It seems kind of pathetic with all that setting cars on fire movement, but even more so in Copenhagen, since they've only managed to actually burn off one or two cars. It's luckily only a few youngsters who are obviously trying to copy the events from France. The events in Copenhagen have taken place in the Noerrebro area, where I lived for many years and which would be considered a posh area by the people living in the Toulouse and Paris ghettos. Someone needs to take a very serious talk with those spoiled Danish brats.

The goodbye to David

2005-11-15T10:26:00.000+01:00

What do you do when one of the most public figures in Danish IT decides to move to the States? You meet him and the rest of the guys for a few beers at a local hangout. That's definitely an example of the Danish attitude that makes me miss Denmark just slightly.

Here's David Heinemeier Hansson talking:

(photo by Jacob Bøtter)

David Heinemeier Hansson is famous for creating Ruby on Rails and lots of cool web applications. I don't know David personally, but I would definitely have been there if I had been in Denmark and some of my good friends were there. Good luck to David from someone who would have loved to tell him: Respect!

Find more pictures from the event on 23hq and on Flickr.

Technorati tags: danish

Stop making my toes curl

2005-11-15T09:12:00.000+01:00

You know that feeling you have when someone in a movie does something embarrassing that makes your toes curl? I had that same feeling last night when I read a post by a guy called Jeff Jarvis in which he makes fun of the French. It's not what this guy wrote that made my toes curl, but rather the reaction of the French readers.

If you make fun of or in any way question French practices, then you're bound to receive attacks on your own country. Jeff Jarvis says: "Your country is a third world country", Loic Le Meur says: "No it's not, but yours is!". Please Loic, stop and take a break, tomorrow you'll have a better response. This guy Jeff Jarvis is of course either very bad at irony or mildly related to his president, but let's not fall for his stuff. It's about the guy, not the countries. It's obvious that what he's saying is bull, so don't fall for it. If you need to join the discussion, then show your superiority by having some fun.

When people read the responses to Jeff Jarvis' post from the French bloggers, they'll be thinking: "christ, these people sure are sensitive". I have the same impression, only I know that it's a common reaction from many French and it's so sad that they have to give this impression of being insecure. France is obviously not a third world country and lord knows that an American is not in a situation where they can criticize other countries, so why the heck do you take him so seriously?

Technorati tags: french

Paper tickets getting more expensive

2005-11-14T19:05:00.000+01:00

From tomorrow it'll cost 100 Danish kroner (13 Euro) extra if you take a paper ticket instead of an electronic ticket when you fly with SAS. I bet we'll see this strategy in many other areas.

On a related note, Sterling has taken over Maersk Air a while back and one of the sad results is that the direct route between Toulouse and Copenhagen is closed. The direct route was around two hours and fifteen minutes, but we're now back to roughly five and a half hours do to the extra leg and waiting time. One thing that I really don't like is waiting in airports, I've done way too much of that in my life.

Technorati tags: sas toulouse sterling

KmWiki - Knowledge Management Wiki [del.icio.us]

2004-12-21T05:11:02-08:00

Good resource for information related to knowledge management

Great laugh [del.icio.us]

2004-11-04T00:32:17-08:00

A Tale of Two Osamas :: MarkTAW.com [del.icio.us]

2004-11-03T02:51:44-08:00

Major differences in CNN and Aljazeera's translations of Osama's last speech

Google Acquires Keyhole Corp [del.icio.us]

2004-10-27T08:28:19-07:00

Another company in the Google family

DEAD LETTER OFFICE: GeorgeWBush.org: Bush/Cheney in 2004! [del.icio.us]

2004-10-27T08:23:42-07:00

I'm sure there is a bunch of red faced guys out there :)

Diary of a Flight Attendant ;-) [del.icio.us]

2004-10-27T05:45:41-07:00

This blogger got fired for posting a photo where she's wearing her uniform

Bittorrent sites - the place where you can find all the torrents [del.icio.us]

2004-10-25T01:21:13-07:00

Long list of links to bittorrent sites

BBC NEWS | Europe | Some Turkish women 'back beating' [del.icio.us]

2004-10-22T10:23:44-07:00

What kind of manipulating survey is that?

Samsung develops world's first five-megapixel camera phone [del.icio.us]

2004-10-21T07:10:55-07:00

Is it a phone with a camera or a camera with a phone?

Milly and Rupe Gallery [del.icio.us]

2004-10-21T02:03:12-07:00

Ultra tourists

Slashdot | Firefox Seeks Full Page Ad in New York Times [del.icio.us]

2004-10-19T08:43:23-07:00

The community is the development base, the community is the marketing people and the community is the investors.

YouSendIt | Email large files quickly, securely, and easily! [del.icio.us]

2004-10-19T02:47:53-07:00

A service for sending very large files (up to 1GB). Useful when your mail server does not allow big files.

Toughest athlete is female and unknown || kuro5hin.org [del.icio.us]

2004-10-17T23:53:15-07:00

That womans sounds crazy

cunningstunt [del.icio.us]

2004-10-16T07:39:01-07:00

Scary!

Life With Alacrity: Tracing the Evolution of Social Software [del.icio.us]

2004-10-15T05:34:22-07:00

It looks like a must read so better bookmark it