I am back and on track

I have just come back from Pauillac, where I spent some vacations with my family. It is always good to keep in touch with your family. As I have been in the US last year, it has been a while I haven't seen some of my relatives, and seeing everybody gathered for a great family reunion was just fantastic.

What was great also with these days off, is that I have been off line for a little while. It was actually not as hard as I thought it would be. Being off line allow you to get some fresh here, out of a web that is over crowded with information.

Now I have been able to get some new energies that will be needful in order to accomplish the different project and goals I have set for the next few weeks and months. I'll keep you update with all of that soon, I promise.

Anyways, I am happy to come back on track, and excited about the future.

Why is it interesting to talk about mortgage in this blog

I started to work for Residential Pacific mortgage in June and I did not really talk about the mortgage industry in this blog, except to talk about the referral concept.
I don't want this blog to talk too much about finance because it is not its purpose, however mortgage is a concept everyone has to know, as it can secure your financial life and help you out building wealth.

Every one need to get money, and also to use it the best as possible. Money does not make you happy, but can help you out reaching some of your life goals.

The key thing about mortgage, and especially mortgage planning, it is to help out people achieve both their short term and long term financial goal. Mortgage has a unique combination of tax deduction, high cash flow abilities and low interest rates that turns it into a top of the line financial product.

Therefore, I might from time to time talk about mortgage planning in this blog, just to get your awareness about how mortgage can allow you to get richer, with small tips for you guys.

Loic and Hugh Geek Dinner

I have attended like I said in my twitter the Loic and Hugh Geek Dinner. It was happening in the Foreign Cinema downtown San Francisco. There was a lot of people, about 100 to 150, most of them from the High Tech industry.

I met very interesting persons, from different background, Stanford students, software engineers, lawyers among others. It is my first real get together in the United States and it was pretty nice to see all of this people. I will probably talk about them and their websites for people that have one in the next few days.

It has also been the occasion to meet Loic Lemeur, who is a sort of king of blog in France. Actually, as I was discussing with people there, I realized not a lot of them knew much about him, and there was also a large population of non blogger. But having been able to see and discuss with stars of blogging (even though we could not really talk as they are very sollicitated) such as Loic Lemeur, Michael Arrington, or Hugh McLeod was a nice privilege.

I must say it also encouraged me to blog, spend more time, be more creative. Therefore I committed myself to get more seriously blogging. I can't wait to get to the next event.

Desillution about the Internet in the US

First, I want to appologize to right this article in english because it is turned more specifically toward french people -even though it can be interesting for americans to know that. I just wanted to compare the French and US internet access. I was coming to Moutain View believing I would be able to use the google free wi fi, or have cheap access to the high speed Internet. But even in the heart of the silicon valley, between mozilla, google, symantec and HP, the Internet is not at his top.

In fact, the google wifi barely use (I have been able to connect myself only once even though I am working at less than a mile than the google headquarters. In New York, no free wifi in Macdonalds, you have to use prepaid cards to connect via the wifi. And the Internet plan costs $29.99 by itself, whereas in France for this price you have the Internet, some satelitte channels, and the internet for free in france and some of the biggest country in the world (US, China, Germany...). I paid $79 for the phone access and the Internet, and we never used the phone to call outside the town we live in.

About the speed, in France Free propose the Internet with 26mb/s, in the US at&t, 6 mb/s....

I think we can consider that France is pretty lucky about its network, which is cheap and good quality.

I am on technorati!

Hey I know it can seems weird because I have been blogging now for quite a while, but I have never signed up for technorati! Here I am! I am not really fond of this website, but it is still the main search engine motor for bloggers. Hope you won't forget to add me as a fave!

News from the US

We visited today Sunnyvale, town where we have settled for the next few days. It is very nice, there was a beer and wine fair downtown, which made it very cool. I start to like the town but however, I am not sure so far to stay there. I did not find my apartment yet. The rent is pretty expensive, and I hope to find something decent in the next few days. I will let you know more later.

Arrival to the US

I have arrived in the US on May 24th in NYC, but I did not have the chance to get the Internet. That is why I could not feed this blog with news, even though I experienced mny things since my arrival. Today, June 1st, I arrived in Mountain Vew, where I will have my internship. It is a very nice town, the weather is nice, and I think I will fit well here. I will try to give you more information later while I will be more installed.

Travel

I am leaving on tomorrow France to go to the US. I will spend a week in New York, and then go to California on June 1st. Therefore, I won't be able to post messages (or at least not a lot). However, I will let you know about my experience in the US if I have the opportunity to get some wi fi.

La gestion de la promesse et du risque consommateur : petit exemple

Je voulais revenir à une mésaventure qui m'étais venu aujourd'hui, alors que j'étais allé acheté des cadeaux pour la famille de ma copine. je suis allé dans un magasin spécialisé dans les biscuits qui proposait de belles boites en métals, et des biscuits au beurre intéressant. Cependant, la boite remplie de biscuits coute 20 euros. Fort intéressé, au point d'acheter d'ailleurs, je demande à la vendeuse si je peux goûter l'un des biscuits qui m'intéressait. Cependant, elle me fait gouter un biscuit qui n'avait rien à voir et me dit qu'elle n'a pas de biscuits en dégustation (alors que devant moi, une centaine de ces biscuits sont exposés.
J'ai donc choisi de ne pas acheter cette boite : pour moi, le goût de ces biscuits constituait l'un des facteurs déterminant d'achat. Mon budget prévisionnel étant de 15 euros, j'ai trouvé que le risque était trop grand pour moi d'acheter un produit d'une valeur supérieure à ce que j'avais prévu de mettre. La valeur perçue par le produit, mais surtout par le service, était en dessous de la valeur réel du produit.

Je décide donc d'aller dans un autre magasin, où j'avais acheté un produit pour le frère de ma copine, et où on m'avait offert des petits échantillons. Ainsi, au contraire du premier cas, l'enseigne à excédé mon attente. J'ai donc décidé de retourner dans ce magasin, car le service me paraissait d'autant meilleur que j'avais été déçu par la première enseigne.

Je trouve que cet exemple simple montre bien dans quel mesure le contact avec le vendeur, peut être primordial pour le consommateur. Ainsi, d'un côté, une enseigne a perdu une vente pour un mauvais service, et de l'autre, elle en a gagner une grâce à sa relation client.

Aide à un confrère bloggeur

J'ai un ami à moi qui vient de lancer son blog, et je me permets de faire un peu de promotion pour lui. Ce blog parle de sa passion du cinéma. Vous pourrez y voir ses commentaires, des extraits de films et de belles images. Bienvenue dans la confrérie Andry!

Very good email campaign for the royal navy

I wanted to introduce you an amazing email campaign done by the royal navy. This is very interresting because it uses personnalized video to stimulate the viewer.
The purpose is to sent through different kind of videos (for example a helicopter assault or a cruse) a message to a friend of yours.
I have already seen some customized video email campaign, but what is also amazing, is that they already recorded some names to even customize the sound track. You can go and have fun over here!

A new example of the digital identity need

My cousin is in Ireland right now and studying english there. Unfortunately, she has been stolen, and then she does not have her passport anymore. The problem is that she has to go to France for couple of days to have some exames to get in a business school in Paris. But to come back to Ireland, she needs her passport and some identification. She then asked the ambassy, but they can't really help out. Then she decided to go to the hospital she has been born, to get an evidence she is French. But unfortunately, she needs to be in France to get it.

My point is that if she would have a digital identity, which can be consulted in any ambassy, she would have been able to get a new passport right away. The concept of the digital identity is to have a digital identity in the servors of the nation, where will be kept a digital copy of all the papers a person would own (passport, driving licence, national identity). This digital identity would also be able to be used for on line payments for example.

To me, this kind of identity would be easy to use, and would help people in the administrative paperwork they have to get done, and that would also allowed to simplify the life of their owners, since they won't even have to have papers on them.

There are a lot of issues that can come up with this kind of paper (about privacy mainly), but to me, the topic has to be handled by governments of countries...

Google Analytics

Since couple of days, I use Google Analytics to follow the traffic of my different websites. It has been a wile I have been seeking for a high quality service to check traffics for free. Even though it has been couple of days I am experiencing this service, it really seems to work perfectly. The tools and different scheme are easy to understand. I will show you later on how it can look like.

Congratulations Oswego

Congratulations to the Ice Hockey team of SUNY Oswego. They have just won the national championship. It represents the first national trophy for a team of Oswego.
Oswego has always had a good hockey team, thanks to its canadian players. As a former Oswego student, I have enjoyed watching the hockey team.
One more time congratulations, and I hope they'll have a great season next year.

Finding a job in the US

Since I am going in the US, and my girlfriend will look for a job there soon, I wanted to give you couple of websites to find a job there.

• http://www.jobster.com/
• http://sfbay.craigslist.org/
• careerbuilder.com
• http://www.monster.com/
  

Hope it will hope people. I will add some while I'll find new ones.

Nouveau blog

Je suis en train d'expérimenter un nouveau blog que je viens de lancer. Celui-ci à pour but de donner des informations sur l'actualité de la NBA. Ainsi, on y trouvera des news sur les transferts, sur les principaux scores, ainsi que mon avis sur les faits marquant de la ligue américaine. N'hésitez pas à y aller, et à me donner votre avis.

I have it!

That's it, I have my visa to the US. Hence, I will leave France soon to live a new experience in America. I will let you know about my activities through this blog.

Gala Dauphine 2

Et oui, le gala c'est fini! Cela m'a fait plaisir de voir mes potes du master 206, on s'est pas mal amusé. Au niveau de la salle, c'était vraiment très classe, avec des bodyguards partout... Sinon au niveau de la musique c'était très bien avec justice. Par contre, niveau bar, ben disons que ca pas été très top... Déjà la soirée est à 26 euros, un peu cher et cela a surement du refroidir plus d'un consommateur. De plus, les bars des masters se trouver à 50 mètre de la piste de danse... Alors que ce de la Japad était à moins de 10 mètres. Autre point noir, la conso offerte n'était dispobible uniquement au bar de la Japad... Sympa pour les masters voulant faire leurs bars...
En tout cas, la soirée était quand même pas mal.

Gala Dauphine

Demain 12 mai, je tiendrais le bar du master distribution et relation client pour le gala de Dauphine. J'espère qu'il y aura du monde, parce qu'il faut rent! Voici l'adresse pour ceux qui veulent venir :

Hôtel Concorde Lafayette. 3, place du Général Koenig - Paris 17e. M° Porte Maillot.

Finally on Netvibes

I decided finally to adopt Netvibes. I used to go on the personalized webpage of Google, because it allowed me to get my emails, the weather and some information on my main page. But I decided to change because netvibes gives me more possibilities. I can for example have an up to date rate of the exchange rate between the dollar and the euro, which I have never been able to get through google. I am pretty happy about it so far.