A blog by Laurent Maumet

This is my last post on this blog... see you on my new blog laurentmaumet.com !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:43:00 +0000

Hello,

Thank you for visiting.

This is my last post on blogger.

My new blog is now laurentmaumet.com

See you there !

9 reasons to use TuneIn radio

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:31:00 +0000

I like to listen to radio programs.
If you are like me and you are looking for a good application for that, I highly recommend you to try TuneIn radio, and here is why

TuneIn radio is available on iOS (iPad and iPhone), android and blackberry
Tunein radio is even accessible from a simple browser on your laptop
TuneIn radio manage very well low connections via a very good buffering system
From TuneIn radio you have access to live feeds
TuneIn radio also gives you access to podcasts
TuneIn radio offer a very good search feature to find feeds or podcasts
All your applications on your different devices can be synchronised (especially good for bookmarked feeds)
TuneIn radio is free or very cheap (for the "pro" version)
TuneIn radio ia nicely done on all platforms

I hope you're now convinced to give it a try!

Organizational Charts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:45:00 +0000

This comic from Bonkers World about orgcharts is nicely done.
I found it while browsing the web to find ideas to improve the organisation of my team.
Not sure it can help me !

I Believe I can flight : An incredible video

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0000

This video by Sebastien Montaz-Rosset is just incredible, I love it !

One day I'll be a marathoner : today I failed, but I did not give up !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:35:00 +0000

Today I ran the Singapore half marathon. with 20 000 other people.

This was the second time in my life I ran such a distance, the first time it was in Annecy (France) last april.
This half-marathon was supposed to be a check of my progression that will bring me to become a marathoner.

.During this race, everything went wrong. I did not feel good at the start (too hot), I never found a good pace, and started to be feel really bad at km 9...

This has been a terrible experience.
I was supposed to be here to beat my personal record (2h06 min) in order to secure the possibility to run a full marathon next april.

When I understood that it will not be possible, and that I'll have to fight to finish in less thant 2h30, the feeling was really terrible.

Finally, I did not give up, I fight for 2 hours and 26 minutes, which is a very long time, and I arrive safe to the finish line. That was one of the worse sports experience in my life.

My conclusion after that race is that

running is a very difficult sport when things go wrong.
I'm quite sure that 50 % of my failure is due to mental aspects
running in Singapore with hot weather and a lot of humidity has a big impact on my performance
I'll not run the marathon next april, I'll try again the half marathon to progress

Tonight I'm very disappointed, but I'll take 3 to 4 weeks of rest and start again to train !

Good news : the efficiency of your team can increase dramatically !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

I'd like to share with you a tool that I've discovered few months ago and that helped me to improve dramatically my team efficiency.

The name of this tool is "The behaviour" scale. The guy that presented it to me is Nicolas Schifarth
It's a simple A4 document that represent the 9 levels of reaction when someone faces a problem to solve.

4 are unproductive, 1 is neutral and 4 are ... productive.

The nine steps are :

IgnoreThis is clear, the first thing you can do when you face an issue is to ignore it. Maybe because you really don't know anything about it (nobody told you, you did not see the effects yet) or because you don't want to see it.
Deny
The problem is now there, you see it, someone tell you about it but reality is sometimes difficult to admit, so the reaction can be "what are you talking about ? There's no problem"
Blame
Now you know there's an issue, you can see it, you can feel the effects, but then, first reaction can be to try to find an immediate explanation, and more important to explain it's not your fault !
Justify
Ok, there's a problem, you're part of it (because you did something wrong or because you did not prevent it), the next try is to explain why you failed and to justify the failure.
Undertake
This is the first "not unproductive" state : there's an issue, you just admit it exists !
This is the famous "Houston, we've an issue" send by appollo 13 crew. The question is not is there a problem ? who can we blame ? It's just to report the issue.
Paliate
There's an issue. You admit it exists. First positive thing to do is to limit the effects.
Analyse
The problem is under control, you can start to analyse why we are there, what can be done to solve it
Correct
OF course this is the most important : you correct the problem ! It took us 7 steps to come here....
Imagine
This is the nirvana ! you try to think out of the box to correct this issue, to think about the next ones and anticipates !

What do you think about it ?

Next time you face an issue, or interact with soemone, just try to think about where you are from 1 to 9...

In my case it helps me A LOT.

(If you work with French people, here're the version in French-English and in French)

Can we calculate ROI for Social Media ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:44:00 +0000

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Evolution of world population from 10,000 BCE to 2000 CE : This is just amazing !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:48:00 +0000

This is simple data available in Wikipedia, be this graph is just amazing !
I found it in a very good post from Andrew McAfee : "The One Big Story, and the Next One".

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Looking for a tool to manage your action list? Facilethings.com is coming and is for you.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:55:00 +0000

Thanks to Francisco Saez (@franciscojsaez) , I've an access to a new GTD-like action management website : facilethings.com.

I can here your questions coming : "What ? 1 more tool to manage actions ? Why should I try it ?".

Here're the 3 main reasons :

facilethings.com is really GTD compliant, it's even a very good GTD tutorial.
In the different screens you know at which step you're (collect, process,...) and a quick text explain you very clearly what you have to do.
This is for me what makes this tool special and good to use.
facilethings.com is simple and efficient.
The design is very nice : simple, elegant, with an easy access to the different functions.
Facilethings.com implement the most important functions that are needed for a start.
For example, the recurring tasks are already there. In many other tools recurring tasks are not implemented, and it's a big miss as we all have recurring tasks !

I'm not sure of the roadmap of the application, for me, it should concentrate on :

implementing projects
creating mobile applications for android and iphone/ipad.
of course, it's very important to keep the fresh and nice design !

If you manage to get an invite and give it a try, and please tell me what you think !

Please, no electronic greeting card for me.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:23:00 +0000

During these days it's a must to wish all your friends, colleagues, partners,... an "happy new year".

If you want to send me your wishes, I have to tell you that I don't like to receive electronics card embedded in an email, because :

- it often does not work. On a laptop, the email open with a bad design and the question "do you want to load pictures?", on the blackberry the result is even worth.

- The design is often very bad. Every company try to do nice stuff but the result is seldom nice...

- people using this kind of electronic cards often send them quickly, just adding your email adress to a list, with no customisation. For me it is just spam.
The worst case is when the same email is sent to many people as "cci"...

So, when you wish me "all the best", please try to make it personnal, authentic.

A 2 lines email will be perfect !

Nice ski video : just relax and enjoy !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 11:04:00 +0000

Superior, Speed Fly from Marshall Miller on Vimeo.

A Day in the Life of Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 17:13:00 +0000

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

The history of 200 countries over 200 years in 4 minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:40:00 +0000

I like gapminder a website by google that shows statistics about demographic and economics for 200 countries, other last 200 years and provides the tools for each user to build his own graphs.

In this video, which is a program from the BBC a scientist uses gapminder to do a real show and comment the evolution of 200 couintries over the las 200 years.

If you like numbers, just dive into it !

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Introduction to Social Media : MUST-READ presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:29:00 +0000

Here's a very well-done prezi presentation about social media.

Introduction to Social Media on Prezi

Very good slides about Social Media for Business

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:19:00 +0000

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Social Media for Business

View more presentations from Presentation Advisors.

The State of Cloud Computing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 20:55:00 +0000

This video provided by salesforce.com gives good updated numbers about cloud.

via thestateofcloudcomputing.com

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

5 iconic images... in 3D

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Make your presentation alive with Chinese Shadow Play

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:19:00 +0000

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Make your presentation alive with Chinese Shadow Play

View more presentations from Gary Yang.

What problem are you trying to solve ? (a good video about innovation)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:48:00 +0000

Here's a good video about innovation.
It's a speech by Scott Berkun at Web 2.0 Expo in 2008.
Berkun gives a 10 minutes speech about innovation (post-it, Edison, ...) and finish by this very good idea : the most important question to answer by innovators to be successfull is

" What problem are you trying to solve".

This is especially true for social media !

Mozilla Seabird 2D : next generation phone ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:36:00 +0000

I'm not sure if we sould call it a smartphone or a tablet or a PC or ... but it is very promissing !

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

A very simple way to customize outlook to make it GTD friendly !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:29:00 +0000

Since 1 year now I use GTD principles to manage my emails and achieve the ultimate goal : inbox 0.

I've described this in a previous post .

The idea is quite simple, based on 5 folders :

0 - Inbox : where all email comes when I receive them

1 - Action : email for which an action from me is needed

1 - Read / Review : emails that with stuff I need to read / review

2 - Waiting for : emails for which I'm waiting an action from someone else

3 - Done : emails processed, keeped for archive.

For more detail on how I use these folder, you can refer to the initial post.

The most important thing is to be able to empty the inbox and file emails in the proper folder in a very efficient way, as fast as possible.

To make it really very easy for me I've done some customisations of my outlook client to implement 4 customs buttons.

When I open an email, the 4 buttons are accessible.

Their function is very simple :

"Done" files the mail in the "3- Done" folder
"Action" files the email in the "1-Action folder"
"Read" files the email in the "1- Read / Review folder"
"Waiting for" files the email in the "2- Waiting for email"

Here's a quick guide to implement these buttons in your outlook.

First, you need to create 4 macros : MoveDone(), MoveAction(), MoveRead(), MoveWaitingFor().

Here's the source code template. Just use it 4 times, replacing the name and the macro and the name of the folder.

To finish, you need to add the button, this is very easy :

Just open an existing email
Right click in the toolbar then "Customize"
In the popup, chosse "Macro". You should see the 4 macros you have created.
Then drag and drop macro 1 by 1 from the pop up to the email tool bar.
Here're the 4 buttons !

Before using the buttons, you can configure in tools / option / email option : "after moving or deleting an open item : open next item".

Now, just go to your full inbox, open the first email, and start to clean !

Most Strange Penalty Kick Ever!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0000

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

The problem for Google Docs is still about data privacy and offline mode

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:44:00 +0000

9 months ago I wrote a post to explain that the 2 big challenges for Google to deploy widely google apps in companies was about data privacy and offline mode.

Where are we today ?

For offline mode, the situation is worse than before as google has desactivated it....

For data privacy, the problem is still there and a news today shows that it's real and that google absolutly need to find a solution : a google engineer has been fired for accesig user data.

The reaction of Google was of course to fire the guy, which seems normal, but this obviously raise questions to all users, CIOs that will think twice before giving all their datas to Google.

Image via Wikipedia

What is the real difference between an iPad and a newspaper ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:11:00 +0000

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Kindle vs Ipad ad

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 05:34:00 +0000

Very good ad for kindle with 2 very good arguments :

1 - Kindle is better than iPad under sunny conditions (by the pool...)

2 - Kindle is cheaper than iPad

By the way, I'm still happy with my choice to buy an iPad instead of a kindle.

When I go to the pool I just need to put myself in the shadow of a tree...

Posted via email from lmau's posterous