Archive for the 'Enterprise' category

In the center of Brussels (near Rogier metro station), Dexia, a French bank opened its new building. 38 levels, 100,000+ LEDs and you get one of the most colourful urban vista in the world. At night.

Source: CreativeReview.

As a complement of my previous post about the Stock markets Krach and Société Générale (”Société Générale nearly crashed the world Stock Exchange“), I wanted to provide the exact figures about the very heavy operations forced by the French bank onto the markets (closing the outstanding contracts) during the first 3 days days of last week. These activities furiously pushed the European markets down. When you look at the figures, you understand the impact they had.

Of course, when a single operator must sell -with no price limit- more than 5% of the total market volume, you can easily imagine that panic spread quite quickly.

Source: International Herald Tribune.

Last week was not a quiet river for the world’s Stock Exchange markets. Even if you are not usually in tune with these issues, you could not miss the flow of troubled news: World’s stock markets violently fell in the beginning of last week, leaving most economic and financial observers in very unsure waters. As a matter of fact, while the fog is lifting we start having a clearer view of the quite extraordinary panorama of events, and it links nearly all the significant elements in a global, logical and surprising composite image.

One could be surprised to see all the European stock markets diving suddenly, apparently without any external influence: no bad economic news from the US (the markets were closed for Martin Luther King’s Day and recession was only a lancinating but dull pain).

First, it all starts during the preceding weekend when the head of Société Générale (one of the largest French banks) discovers a financial embezzlement that leads to a loss of 5 billion euros (7MM$). Up to now, it is only an internal affair that could lead to a company failure; enormous, troubling for the French public, but very limited anyway. However, this is not the whole reality: this loss is created by the use of financial instruments based on the sale of a lot of real stocks. Société Générale must sell around 50 billion euros (70MM$). And it must happen quickly!

Starting Monday, Société Générale opens major warehouse sales. But nobody has been told about it in advance, of course. This comes as a shock wave. To give you a rough idea of the size of it, the preceding record of daily exchanges on the market was 13 billion euros in the middle of the 1987 crash. But Société Générale has only a few days to close the gaps, so it drowns the market (it is not even clear if they have finished this enormous operation now). Immediately, everybody sees goodsstocks on sales. It seems there is not a single buyer and it is true that there is not enough buyers to help, by far.

But in a global financial market like we have today, such a situation cannot be isolated. One of the largest Stock Exchanges in the world going down is a very strong signal for all the others. You may not know exactly why, but you prefer to sell in Shanghai and New York. everybody follows the hint, even if it means that there will be a later correction. Now, things start tumbling down.

In reality the economic situation in the US has been more and more troubling in the recent months. The real estate bubble built mainly on the granting of credits that are essentially doomed from the beginning (sub-primes are just an elegant way to re-finance and present the personal credits for people who are not able to pay them; When it happens locally, it is elegant, when everybody does it, it’s a recipe for nightmares and catastrophe) is blowing out while the American economy is a little soft and slow. In this context, the American consumer is understandably worried and limits its spending. The trouble is forwarded into the real economy: companies sell less, have less income. What was localized in the purely financial world is dripping down into the real world.

In such a context, Stock Markets see several important signal going red: losses on the financial markets, companies having more and more difficulties to sell their goods (the Stock Exchange always tries to forecast what the economic world will be in a few months). If some of the signals are not fully red yet, it’s enough anyway: Everybody goes selling, the markets run down.

An amplification also went from the technical analysis or graphical analysis. Many a trader (and as many trading software programs) concentrate on observing tendencies shown by a graphical representation of Stock Exchange prices. This technique is powerful enough to make relatively good forecasts, and it has been announcing a slow down then a drop of several percents in the following weeks.

So, the trigger comes from Société Générale, but the rest of the environment was also needed. Société Générale did not have any choice in the day to make its decisions, of course. If not this, Stock Markets would probably have been using any other trigger. But the whole sequence is impressive

Last words: If we remove completely the trigger, there is still a heavy trend linked to all the other factors. But there is still a troubling factor: You can notice that, now that every world’s Stock Exchange market has been hit, New York appears still unblemished (it was closed on the critical day). The Federal Reserve clearly helped protect it, but many experts believe that markets still need a real purge in the form of a still upcoming violent drop…

Canon has been a major manufacturer of photo cameras for many years. Is this worth a museum? I don’t know but they decided that they could not wait for somebody else to build it. Canon opened an online virtual museum of its cameras: the Canon camera museum.

The Camera Hall is a database of historical facts about Canon film cameras, digital cameras, digital camcorders, still video cameras and lenses.

In the Design Hall, rediscover the visual appeal of Canon many products through the years.

The Technology Hall explains the many advanced technologies incorporated into Canon cameras and takes you on a tour through a virtual lens plant.

And the History Hall introduces historical facts about Canon cameras and the technologies that have gone into them.

As the US dollar drops in Stock Markets, there are some unexpected victims. As many other companies whose customers pay in US dollars, many bloggers using advertising services are being paid in US dollars (or in Euros converted from US dollars). While the green bill currency was dropping through the floor, bloggers earnings dropped too because unit prices of ads did not climb as fast.

Some are said to have lost 20% compared to last year.

Specially for graphics designers, for those who cannot stop seeing the word in Pantone colors, W2 Products designed coffee mugs branded by Pantone.

Out of stock already.

Would you know what colour cerulean is? Or peach? Or spruce? Or watermelon? Or plum? Or rust?

The HP online color thesaurus is a great way to identify these and to get the precise formal definition of such colours. You type in a name, and it will give you the color, similar ones and anonyms.

Here comes a weird news even when the worlds of finance and technology collide at high speed. However, this si the core of a rumour running around these days, more precisely since a Microsoft press conference held by Kevin Johnson, their president for Platforms and Services Division, where he told that Microsoft could reach a 30% market share for online search services.

In some countries like France, Google covers more than 90% and this helps forget about the small results of Microsoft MSN Search. At a global level, Microsoft has definitely less than 10% of market share. How to triple this? A gigantic quantum technology leap that would shake the market and change the hierarchy over night? Nobody would bet on this. So, Microsoft must be ready to buy a significant competitor. The most probable one would then be Yahoo!

But is Yahoo really on sale, even if some rumours had been heard a little earlier this year?

A little less than 20% of market share to catch? At what price? When?

You’re dead and you want to know what is happenning. Thanatorama will give you a fairly detailled explanation.

The famous photographer of “Earth seen from the Sky” now has a page on Flickr. What is happening here? While he is still very attentive to the management of his photographer’s rights and of his fame, Yann Arthus Bertrand would have fallen into a liberated open publishing media?

Of course, not. This is just an April’s fool idea that stayed a little longer.

Champs de blé dans la papouasie sud.

I am fascinated that the page was kept on Flickr, but the experience is quite funny. I just hope it won’t become a Flickr trend. But feel free to point at other similar pages…

For those who do not know it, the calendar 2008 for Aubade is now available. It maintains the already-long tradition of tasteful advertisement used by this totally-French feminine underwear company.

Thanks to WebStorming.fr.

“Project management is an important part of the senior design process. For the most part, teams manage projects in an informal way: They have a deadline to meet, and they monitor progress of the project as it moves along. However, computer resources are available for managing team projects more formally. This tutorial [Microsoft Word] will introduce you to Microsoft Project, a software package that helps to plan and track projects. You will walk through instructions for project planning, and then for project tracking and finally communicating progress.

In managing projects, there are essentially two steps: project planning, and project tracking. Projects consist of several tasks, each of a certain duration, that are to be carried out in a certain sequence. Project planning happens at the start of a project; at this stage the team identifies the tasks involved, estimates task duration, and guesses at task sequence. As the project progresses, some of this may change: task sequences may have to be altered, and tasks may take longer or shorter than originally planned. Project tracking involves recording these various changes, and making appropriate changes to the proposed schedule; tracking must take places throughout the life of the project.”

Highly recommended reading from the University of Idaho for all senior project managers.