Les CFF haussent les prix…

Les CFF haussent leur prix… ma lecture de leur communiqué de presse:

Par conséquent, les prix de l’assortiment des abonnements généraux (AG) 1re classe sont relevés en moyenne de 4,3 %, tandis que ceux des billets de 1re classe sont majorés en moyenne de 3 %. Les prix des AG de 2e classe connaissent une hausse moyenne de 1,7 %. La majoration plus forte des prix de la 1re classe s’explique par un taux de couverture des coûts plus faible que pour les titres de transports de 2e classe. Les clients de la 1re classe disposent d’un plus grand confort et bénéficient de prestations supplémentaires comme l’exemption de frais lors du change de devises, de réductions pour la mobilité combinée (vélo ou voiture de location, Mobility) et d’un libre accès aux lounges.

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Ras les asperges

Vu à la Coop samedi… en provenance du Mexique et du Pérou, même pas envie de calculer le bilan carbone de ces asperges.

A découvrir, Ras la Fraise, une initiative qui lutte pour un peu plus de bon sense dans les étalages de nos supermarchés!

Ras les asperges

Venture idea: My newspaper portfolio

Apple does it again… they decided that newspaper can no longer offer paid print subscribers a free access to the iPad edition. The reason being that this subscription strategy leaves Apple out of the money flow.

Anyway in the whole “web app” vs “native app” debate the newspaper use case is really symptomatic. There is absolutely no technical justification to provide a newspaper edition in a native application (as oppose to a web application that would handle it much better imho, NIWEA anyone ?). The rational is obviously on the business side as the app store/market provides the much needed go-to-market channel that integrates the money transaction.

If you fancy building a start-up, here is an idea (for what it is worth… a sanity check, the business plan and the execution plan is left to the reader :-): A newspaper subcription portfolio

End-user features:

  • Manage a virtual wallet of newspaper subscription
  • Able to buy individual article, subscribe for a week/month/year to every newspaper/editor participating (see below)
  • My articles: list of articles that I have bought and/or marked as “favorites”
  • My view: list (in River of News format) of daily articles available to me from my subscription (with the possibility of sorting them in different category – sport, economy,…)
  • Social layer with possibility to “like” and comment article (obviously the traditional bridge to existing social network like Twitter and Facebook is a must)
  • Multi-channel (ie. an end-user can access and read an article he bought from any device)

Editors features:

  • Easy integration on the backend/frontend with existing database and existing user base.
  • Ability to access subscribers profiles and informations (some statistics on readers usage and habits might be useful)
  • …

Additional thoughts

  • Looks a lot like a RSS Reader (like Google Reader) with the additional transaction layer
  • Big players in the best position to implement that service in-house: PayPal, Google,…
  • Probably difficult to sell the idea to Editors/publishers who like to own the user profile.
  • The digital book is an use case related to the newspaper one, and here is what look like a nice execution of the Book in the cloud use case: Booki.sh
  • The mobile app market is upposedly worth $58 billion by 2014… would be nice to capture a little part of the pie no ?

LinkedIn Maps

From LinkedIn Labs… neat… and make me thinking that I should really update and complete my LinkedIn profile! Added to my ToDo list (actually it has been there for a while but never found the time).

inmap

Memonic replacing Delicious

logo_memonicI started to use Memonic as a productivity tool to save snipets of web content or personal thoughts on topic I am working on. Originally it was not so much for long-term archiving but more for ongoing work. I never felt very comfortable with the overlapping between Delicious and Memonic though and recent problems around Delicious convinced me to move definitively to Memonic.

Few random thoughts about Memonic:

  • While using services on the web I usually make sure they do not try to retain you by locking down your data (when possible). Leaving Delicious was actually quite easy since they propose some sort of export function. I’d love now Memonic to also propose an advanced export function… :-)
  • Memonic usage range from saving web content of course as well as an online notepad to take annotation or write blog post like this one.
  • Tags would be a nice addition. Was the case when I started to write this post (in Memonic first) but not anymore with their recent addition.
  • Google Reader integration. Google Reader being my RSS reader it would be nice to save item and content directly from there in Memonic.
  • RSS Support for sets. I found out in the meantime there are nice Atom functionalities including for private sets.
  • Memonic allows to organize items in multiple ways, I’d love to be able to sort them within a set.
  • Differents views are available to organize your item… what about a customizable view by the user ? I’d love to have a view where the whole item content is displayed and not just a sentence…
  • I would make use of a customizable export function… say for instance I want to export in blog post a few selected item within a set (with title+link+one line of content), how could I do that ?
  • HTML export: afaik there is no access to HTML code in the editor. Would be nice to have such a feature, would make it easier to use Memonic for blogging
  • Favorite Sets. Marking some sets as favorite for quick access would be useful as – with usage – the lists of sets is growing and quickly become not manageable.

And yet another feature which might be turned into a “business opportunities” somehow…

  • Support for Connected TV! Amongst all the content I save and oranize on the web there are obviously videos that I like to watch on my newly bought Boxee Box. Better support for Connected TV would be nice though admittedly it is a very specific request. See Watch Later feature from Boxee Box.