web

Your unconnected tatoo will soon be sooo vintage…

 Imagine. Take all the buzz words you hear in the digital planet [social media, cloud, crowd sourcing, e-health, open data] and instead of claiming it is the future and cross-finger, you analyze the new usages and sociological impacts they trigger. This is what Netexplo team is running after, each year. How can that magic happen ? Netexplo is sponsored by (rich) members, and is funding a team which analyses, collects, segments each year 500 innovative digital projects. Worldwide. 100 projects are selected and 10 of them are pitched during the Netexplo Forum in front of hundreds of attendees. I was there last February and let me witness that attending Netexplo Forum was a real experience. Just like learning the best of digital in two days.

What made the digital world shaking in 2012 ? Julien Levy was the spokesman of Netexplo team this year and exposed the identified trends. Obviously the Netexplo Trends report 2013 can not be sum up in few lines, but some of the key concepts were shared during Julien talk [1]. Cloud, appearance, digital immanence. Each of the concept was illustrated by projects developed by start up or research labs. Lets review the main concepts.

Cloud Care. Thanks to the network built by the connected people, machines and devices, some amazing services can be invented.

Taking care of objects. By deploying sensors and processors everywhere, it is possible to monitor a grid of water pumps, or balance the humidity of a natural eco-system.

Taking care of people. By connecting patients, robots, doctors, application can ease the patient journey. This may be particularly valid for the elders, who can be helped in their day to day life. Care Square was one of the projects awarded, which principle resided in a very simplified tablet, offering basic graphic user interface.

Taking care of opinion. By collecting opinion, comments, views, people can fine-tune their own opinion, choosing to endorse or not others advices.

Crowd cops. Taking care all together, replacing cops. By connecting the people and calling on their vigilance, material incidents can be declared in cities, or rescue team can be supported by bringing more local information, family and relatives can monitor each other, consumers can also report bad usages of companies or politics. This can be a way to introduce again solidarity among people. But the dark side of the crowd cop also exists. Employers tracking employees. Shops tracking customers. The right balance may be in the mutual agreement of monitoring and being monitored (but who knows what are the condition for a real free agreement).

Beyond the appearance. The main question for citizen and consumers facing the digital ocean is : Will web 2.0 marketing fool me ? How can I detect the truth behind the messages ? New expertise is required here and the collective experience collected thanks to the crowd may be a great tool to balance the super marketing machines.

Fact checking. By measuring the reality, thanks to sensors, the reality can be augmented, and become an augmented reality for everyone. Reality can be transmitted to disabled, to countermeasure their disability. Additional information about item, food, goods, books, can be found just by taking picture, recording sound, using laser. An interesting example is the China Survival Manual, an anonymous application, which alerts consumers to health risks. Another application which has been intensively adverted those days is the french ‘Citoyens Capteurs‘ (citizen as sensors), selected in the 100 projects, which allows each citizen to measure the air pollution and participate to scientific experiment. A last example awarded in the top 10 was Zéro-Gâchis, a application allowing supermarket to declare their items close to their sell-by date in nearby supermarkets. Less wastage, better consumption, more respect for the earth and production cycle.

Body Checking. The same applies to body. Blood pressure can be detected on faces, leading to potential interpretation of emotions. Parkinson can be diagnosed by voice analysis from 20 minutes of sample conversation (see Parkinson Voice Initiative project). health care can become in that case hell scary.

Reality and digital merging. Where the reality is helping you in your day to day life, with no effort from you. the connection, the context, the integration of the machines or devices are a support for the citizen. example with the Google glasses, but also the shoes guiding your way, lightened on the right when you should turn right. The best illustration for that amazing integration was Windows Of Opportunity WOO. WOO makes the windows of car a new area to play, to learn, to share. While driving in Paris, you may see the window of another car driving in Tokyo. You could also share music from other drivers stuck in the same traffic jam… WOO is a technology providing an interactive and contextual screen, in which you can imagine any funny or educative application. The winner of the Netexplo report was the Electronic Tatoos, a technology allowing to lay some electronic circuit on the skin, flexible and resistant enough to look like a tatoo. While not being already deployed, the technological challenge was amazing enough to make everyone dreaming or being frightened by the large scale of possible applications. Imagine, you wear data and emit messages, anytime…

Digital immanence. The digital and the real do not have borders, they are the world. More then having physical or technological fusion, you have a personal involvement in digital, that may affect your emotion, soul, mental illness. SPARX is a game to help depressive teenagers understanding their illness and highlight progresses. Teenagers do recover easily playing in a virtual society… you just need to design the appropriate situations and dialogs.

To sum-up. Trends covered the connected device, machine, people, brains. And Julien Levy ended with an embarrassing question – while we were all tweeting and surfing. What about usages in case our world would be disconnected. Panic ? Alternatives ? This may be a good topic for 2014 Netexplo Forum.

Which of the 2012 innovations will shape 2013 ? Probably none of them. Those innovations may definitely need to mature before they become actual democratic usages, so we should better wait for them in two or three years. Netexplo Forum offered a really good picture of where the digital world may go and it is up to each of us to think about the kind of word we want to shape for the future….

[1] Netexplo trends by Julien Levy http://www.netexplo.org/replays/2013/trend-report-2013

Note : look at the Bluenod map to track who tweeted what during the event Day1 : http://bluenod.com/event/nexplo_2013_day1 Day2 : http://bluenod.com/event/nexplo_2013_day2 (Twitter account required)

Are you a social media geek ? Try digital fusion with Wisembly and Bluenod

Having attended Netexplo recently, a conference dedicated to report the influence of digital on our society, gathering more then 1000 people, I have experienced an interesting usage of interactive applications. Lets be frank, both are for social media geek, and Netexplo is one place where you meet some of them. 

Wisembly is an application allowing to collect and distribute messages related to a specific topic or event. Messages can be sent through a web interface, Twitter or via sms by anyone. You must obviously first educate the users, but once done, all connected attendees of a conference can react to what they listen or watch in live with their smartphone, tablet and pc. Messages are then anonymously shared on the screens of the conference (wall or main conference display, with moderation or not).

I found this application interesting as it was trying to reduce the gap between the little Twitter community – who is often inclined to create offline streams of reflection or sarcasm, depending on its mood – and the other digitally aware, equipped with smartphones or tablet, but not used to tweet. As demonstration, for Netexplo, 50% of the messages were non-twitter generated messsages, which demonstrate the interest for  such application.The Netexplo staff used Wisembly to raise questions after each presentation or debate. The fact that the message were anonymous had some positive aspects such as avoiding the race to the finest spirit (you know creating the remark everyone will remember, much more than what the conference was about), and the possibility to raise tricky or not politically correct questions without being embarrassed. One of the SNCF representative (the french railway company) admitted that this application was used during their internal management forum, and has slightly changed the tone used by the top management (understand reduce the “langue de bois” or waffle usage).

That one is a pure “designed by the twittos, for the twittos” application. Bluenod is analysing the Twitter users generating noise around a specific hashtag. It offers a visualization of the community thanks to blue bubbles. Each user has its own bubble and in case he or she has some correlations with other, will have a line marking it, and thus you can see who is linked with who, and who has the biggest one. The downside of the application is that if you have a big “influencer” entering your area, the visualization may become difficult as it may introduce visual noise on the graphs. Other functions associated to the application are actual tweets followup, ranking of best contributors (well, best or most influenced and talkative ones). Any question on that application ? ask Nicolas Loubet @NicolasLoubet, the “bluenod activist”.

Both applications are nice (french) tools to create interactions, and stream the digital life happening beside the actual talks of the conference – which is sometimes soooo helpful to complete the talks.

Where do you think IT guys are discussing web security ? (Tip, it might be next door…)

owasp_logo

In your town OWASP chapter. OWASP standing for Open Web Application Security Project. And there might certainly be an OWASP chapter closed to your office, as there are more than 200 chapters in 70 countries. The reason why I am blogging on that foundation is that last week the French OWASP chapter met in my employer’s offices. Gathering about 30 security experts or security-concerned people, the Paris meeting was fruitful and interactive. The French chapter leaders are Ludovic Petit (@Owasper), and Sébastien Gioria (@SPoint), supported by Ely de Travieso (@ElydeTravieso, yes, the one who already committed Secutic Day I reported in earlier posts). The objective of OWASP is to support the developers community with tools, code and documentation related to security. Web application and everything related to it. All this material is obviously available for free.

Great projects. During this meeting, new OWASP foundation projects were unveiled : a Top 10 related to cloud deployment [1], a revised version of Mobile Top 10 [2]. I can only recommend you to have a look at the OWASP website and analyse the different projects handled there. There might definitely have one which answers your most recent security question on web application (https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page).

Liability or how to avoid ending in jail. Another topic was discussed, a topic which is sometimes far from the developers working constraints : the liability. The complex question of ‘who is liable in case of software failure’ was addressed by Ludovic [3], based on its large experience related to fraud and legal aspects. The answer is quite simple : a developer can be liable for a piece of software creating damages (information leak, privacy damage, functional incident, …). The rationale behind is that the web application delivered are most of the time part of the IT systems, which are submitted to strict laws, such as guarantee that no incident could happen. Most off countries are requiring IT systems to be reliable when treating data such as integrity, availability, non-repudiation, and confidentiality. Obviously this does not mean that any developer will end in jail. It means that potentially, in case of problem, he will be challenged on the quality of the product, based on its skills and knowledge (if you are known as good but are coding with a lazy style, you might get into trouble).

Data privacy in Europe. The light was also made, during that meeting, on the recent progress of the European Community to deliver a law on the data privacy. This status was made by Thiébaut Devergranne, PhD in law, experienced developer and consultant. His message was quite direct :  European text will be a tool to attack any company missing to take care of data privacy [4]. This new regulation will be the same for all 27 European countries, and takes into account the aspects of internet, mobility, social media which recently reshaped all information systems and services. The other major changes compared to the EU previous directive issued in 1995 relies on the fact that (1) companies will have to demonstrate that they made a risk analysis related to data treatment, and (2) European commission will be able to tax up to 2% of companies turnover if they do not correctly implement the law. The most impressive aspects is that this law will be applicable to any company managing data of European citizen – including large software and service company located in the silicon valley. And last but not least, a new job will soon be hype: data privacy officer – similar to the Correspondant Informatique Liberté in France – required for every private companies larger than 250 people, or any company treating sensitive data.

The passionate discussion following that talk demonstrated how this could impact the life of companies… Stay tune on OWASP projects !

[1] OWASP Top 10 cloud project https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Cloud_%E2%80%90_10_Project

[2] OWASP Mobile Security Project, in collaboration with ENISA https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Mobile_Security_Project, look at the Top 10 mobile controls

[3] French chapter leader presentation about OWASP projects and liability https://www.owasp.org/images/2/2a/Chapter_Meeting_OWASP_France_-_7_Feb_2013.pdf

[4] Thiébaut Devergranne presentation about EU data privacy regulation [fr] http://www.donneespersonnelles.fr/donnees-personnelles-le-nouveau-projet-de-reglement-europeen

ParisWeb 2012 : Tailor the web for the society you want

Yes ! A third contribution related to ParisWeb 2012 ! Because this event covered so much of the web that is deserves to spend pages on it. The web is not just a tool. It has an impact on the society. The way you use the web has an impact, the way you work for the web has an impact. I am gathering here some talks that touch some of the problems I find key for the “web society”.

Hacktivism. Origin : hack and activism. Fréderic Bardeau @fbardeau is working for Agence Limite, a web agency which serves non governmental organization to help them to build their digital strategy. Frédéric announced after few seconds of talk that he was not part of the cyber-enthousiast (like everything from the web is super cool), but rather a person with strong opinion, value, and positions [1]. He reminded us the definition and history of activist and hacking, to lead us to an approximate definition of what the hacktivist is, a.k.a someone who likes to crack things, perform, code and use digital communication, driven by art, politic or transgression. He admitted that this definition was flexible depending on regions, periods, aggressiveness, political commitment… But at least based on that we could start to discuss the new usage of hacktivist in the society today. (more…)

ParisWeb 2012 : Make an accessible web, make an accessible world

The web should be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities thanks to assistive technologies. Once you have claimed that, you should be on the right side of the good-thinking people, but it may happen that this would not change anything to your life. Not being neither deaf, sighted person or blind, I am part of the people who accepted this notion of accessibility as a must have, but kept it purely theoretical … until ParisWeb 2012. This was my first time I actually realized that accessibility was needed and possible. Let me share with you few concrete actions that Paris Web deployed to make everyone on the same page during the event.

Sign language all day long. The conference was held in different rooms and each of it has a team of 2 or 3 people providing all day long live translation with sign language.This support was completed by velotypie (meaning, a screen displayed on stage, where each and any words pronounced by the speaker, including jokes, was typed) and french live translation via headsets when speakers where expressing themselves in English. As you can guess, this is simple to organize : what you need is people with appropriate skills such as sign language, english translation (@porteneuve made the job), good typers… The best challenge here was to make the choice (and associated investment) to make the event accessible. (more…)

ParisWeb 2012 : Make a beautiful web

As announced in a previous post, last week was the week of the francophone web, with Paris Web 2012 conference. 600 people including 70 speakers gathered in IBM conference center in Paris, orchestrated by a team characterized by a great kindness and smartness. The conference covered so much various topics that it was just like having a walk around the best monuments making the web today. We reviewed the state of the art of the web technology, society impact, usage trends, with a shared worry among speakers to have target speech, avoid bullshit, useless introspection and starring traps.

I am proposing here several posts to share some pieces I have been delighted to listen. Lets start with the design aspects : several speakers shared with the public their vision on how to be a good craftsman of the web, in terms of design.

(more…)

Experiencing #ParisWeb this week !

ParisWeb is one of the great web developer event held in Paris. Based on an amazing team of volunteer, this conference is gathering motivated attendees, 70 speakers (including me) in a collaborative framework. Everyone getting there seems to be ready to participate, share and learn.

The conference is happening this week, from the 18 to 20 of October, with 2 days of conference and one day of workshops. This year the program will cover various themes such as (frenglish list extracted from Paris Web official website) ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; .

Event is sold out – actually few hours after tickets were made available – but all attendees will definitely return their experience via social media, blogs, press. Live streaming is set up and in addition all material is usually now available on-line after the event, so in a way or in another you’ll get something from ParisWeb [1].

Anyway, if you wanna feel the ParisWeb energy this week, follow #ParisWeb hashtag on Twitter…

 

[1] Program and conference material under http://www.paris-web.fr/2012/conferences/

When french politic, hacktivist and sociologist discuss Internet democracy …

Listened recently to a radio show, broadcasting discussions held during ‘Les Rencontres de Pétrarques’ in Montpellier, France [1].

Great topic : Internet, ultimate step of democracy ? The program was driven by a wish to make a status on the Internet. Everyone admits that from Internet development in the 90’s, allowing the simple exchange of basic ping messages to the recent boom of social media where anyone can talk, share and participate, things have drastically changed. To discuss such large topic, the audience listened to Fleur Pelerin @fleurpellerin [2], minister of SMB, Innovation and digital economy, Fabrice Epelboin @epelboin [3], qualifying himself as infowarrior and hacktivist, and finally Dominique Cardon [4], sociologist analyzing the impact of new technologies on our society. The round table was chaired by Emmanuel Lorentin, a smart presenter of the daily morning program ‘La fabrique de l’histoire’ on France Culture radio.

Before the actual debate with the  public, each of the guest exposed his or her view about the topic, and this is where I believe the contrast was really interesting.

Fleur Pellerin, representing the recent left established government spoke first. After the expected list of buzz words such as cloud, opendata, twitter, she mentionned that for her the main changes brought by the internet in politic was the new politic time. Just like internet sped up the exchanges of information between people or companies, internet is making  citizens able to question politics and increase the pressure related to success expectation. She reminded that the direct link created by social media was often irrelevant or incompatible in a space where politics need to keep mid-term vision and cannot always comment or demonstrate result immediately. Fleur Pellerin re-assessed also that not everyone had the possibility to use internet and some further efforts should be made to make all citizen equals in front of this technology.

Then came the voice of Fabrice Epelboin, the voice of the infowarrior, the guy supporting an internet free – in the sense of without control – for everyone and fighting government willingness to monitor this media. Fabrice reminded that the massive communication capability of internet was inducing highly complex and conflictual situations which were not solved at the moment. The notion of goods being dematerialized and multiplied by thousands (aka your old good MP3 that you used to download on megaupload), which was creating an overreaction of governments, trying to  control peer exchanges, inducing spying internet. He reminded that serious and independent studies demonstrated that impact of ‘illegal’ download was almost null for the music business. Fabrice also pointed that behind the control of internet, a huge business opportunity was relying for the french industry. He gave examples of IBM and Amesys exporting technologies allowing to monitor citizen communication over internet.

Finally, the mic was given to Dominique Cardon, who commented the new ways for citizen to engage in the society. He reminded the new forms for people to interact : from collaborative work such as W3C, wikipedia or activism such as alter-mondialist Occupy or Indigné, to political party such as Pirate Parti. He reminded what were the three fundamental basis of such democratic activism, using internet as a media. One. Top to Bottom organization is banned. No way to get a leader in those movements. No one could say ‘we’, on behalf of the group, except if he or she has a mandate – which always last a short period of time. Two. The program of the group is designed by the group at the same time the group evolves. As such, the group can only make a decision after a series of consensus, progressing slowly and taking into account the voice of all individual raising their hand. Three. The actual investment of citizen is at the heart of the political engagement. And, just like the movement is designing its objective while it grows up, rules for making decision are built by the same people who actually make decision. Tthis is what he called the libertarian internet.

Those three very different filters on the actual democracy state of internet lead to an interesting debate with the public – without Fleur Pellerin who had to leave (well, politics never have time !). On my side I would keep in mind a major question that 21rst century will naturally have to address : how internet will allow a vast majority of citizen to self organize with enough freedom to learn, grow up and light up.

[1] France Culture ‘Les Rencontres de Pétrarque’ podcast ; [2] Fleur Pellerin wikipedia page ; [3] Fabrice Epelboin info website [fr] ; [4] Dominique Cardon book ‘Démocratie Internet‘ and conferences on public space and social media, open data.