A pungent mix of programming, philosophy, pedanticism, procrastination, perplexity, peripheral political polemic, and platters of preposterousness.
What do you get in the LeWeb schwag bag? Well, you get dead tree matter from Erepublik, oodrive, Six Apart, steek and goojet. A hat with a logo on it I can’t identify. Orange gave us sweeties. goojet gave us a keyfob. Fred and Farid, whoever they are, gave us a t-shirt with their name on it.
5 Avenue Secrétan, Paris, Île-de-France, France
First up is Steve Gillmor of the Gillmor Gang interviewing Dan’l Lewin from Microsoft, the Corporate Vice President for Strategic and Emeging Business Development. Lewin said that XML was the Damascus moment for him with regard to Microsoft, as a way of showing Microsoft’s committment to standards.
Steve Gillmor: Are you locking people in?
(with BizSpark). Lewin: Yes, but no.
Lewin seems to be suggesting that the cloud will have a set of standards. The question is who will set those standards? OpenID was mentioned, but so was Silverlight.
Lewin stated that Microsoft went through a variety of eras: the last era started with Windows 95 and a new one is starting now. Hint: Vista is not a revolutionary part of Microsoft’s history.
Gillmor: I haven’t used Windows for eight years
. I’m seeing a lot of Mac laptops and Linux netbooks floating around the room.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
At LeWeb this morning, Google’s SVP and Europe and Middle East Operations President Nikesh Arora said that he thinks the credit crunch is a temporary thing: like a big hangover after a long night of drinking. He also thinks that the US will come out of the credit crunch before the EU will.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
Robert Scoble: Wifi at LeWeb is frustrating. Even ethernet in speaker room isn’t working. Oh well. Hope the video streams are working.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
Adam Tinworth: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the traditional #leweb wifi fail.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
Adam Tinworth: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the traditional #leweb wifi fail.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
Arrington is interviewing Amit Kapur, the Chief Operating Officer of MySpace from notes.
Kapur says that MySpace is committeed to open standards: OpenID and OAuth specifically. Good stuff. MySpace is launching a browser-based toolbar for Windows IE and Firefox.
One of the questions came from someone saying that MySpace has ‘sold out’ independent artists to the labels. Crazy Uncle Marc Canter asked a good question.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
Ernst-Jan Plauth has a post up about the excellent presentation by conductor Itay Talgam.
5 Rue Curial, Paris, Île-de-France, France
