The group of candidates for the national executive board (MC) of AIESEC Germany in 2011 was announced few hours ago and the first think I said after opening the application folder was: "Holy moly!, waaaaw...".- "Waw" because there was 13 applicants with one international ! (8 in the last year's first round).- "Waw" because the people how applied are absolute high potentials and "la créme de la créme" of the 2500 members we have in AIESEC Germany.- "Waw" because I realise that the next Member Committee President (MCP) will have the difficult task to chose only 6 people in his team!Honestly speaking, I had the fear that there will be less applications than needed for this year because of the special term length (1,5 years instead of 1 year because of internal calendar changes). The facts that there are as much high qualified applicants simply prove that the current MC team did a fabulous work so far by being a role model for others so they applied to do the same job and beginning to leach undiscovered power of the organisation that makes the MC position such an attractive job even during these uncertain and foggy socio-economic times. I'm also convinced that Gesa (MCP) strongly contributed to this situation by spreading such an inspiration and energy what ever she do, where ever she goes but also by well managing her team and their talents. I couldn't cluster her character and extraordinary characteristics in normal adjectives so I called it the "Gesa Effect" wich is basically the fact of being (as she described herself one year ago): purpose-oriented and simple in actions, clear in communication and enthusiast at work + the mysterious "g factor" that is still unknown and subject of my next researches :PIt's too early to say thank you for anybody, but it's time to say good luck and may the force be with all candidates :)
Google is certainly a phenomenon like no other when it comes to the internet. But with ‘Google Wave’ they plan to release a tsunami across the world and take it over in one big wave.
Facebook has just launched a new portal at peace.facebook.com that highlights the site’s desire to promote “peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other”. The site appears to be part of a larger Peace dot movement that’s launching tonight, with the participation of some “impressive organizations” (we’re not sure who else besides Facebook is involved quite yet). Peace.facebook.com is fairly simple at this point, with a handful of graphs and a widget that lets Facebook users share what they think of the site. The most compelling portion offers a series of graphs depicting “Friendships of Facebook”, which shows how many members of historically hostile groups are becoming friends on Facebook. These graphs include stats from Geographic, Religious, and Political pairings. There’s also a graph that shows the results of a daily poll conducted by Facebook on whether or not World Peace is possible in the next 50 years (over 35% of Columbians think so, but only 7% of users in the US are optimistic).
Facebook just made one of the biggest changes to the site's user experience since the introduction of the News Feed three years ago. News Feed was the place in the very center of the site where all the activities of a user's friends were displayed in reverse chronological order. That feature is now called the Live Feed and the News Feed has become a filtered display of activity highlights instead. In September 2006 the News Feed was a radical idea; thousands of Facebook users revolted against the idea that all their friends would be shown every photo they uploaded, when their relationship status changed and other information as soon as it was available. Today we live in a different world. Almost everything is social and the new challenge is tackling information overload. That's what Facebook just did today and it's going to be very important for the future. Everyone's trying to solve this problem. There are inbox filtering services like ReMail, Threadsy and the experimental new Mozilla Raindrop. There are column filters in stream readers like Tweetdeck and Seesmic. Google Reader yesterday introduced a "magic" filter view for the most popular items across the whole network. FriendFeed, a small but innovative social aggregator started by one of the creators of GMail and acquired by Facebook for $50 million this summer, offers a "best of day" view of any stream of updates you're looking at. That FriendFeed view is the closest thing to the new Facebook News Feed, but a Facebook spokesperson told us that the two products are unrelated. Everyone's trying to tackle information overload. Step one, get more people sharing information. Step two, figure out how to create a personalized, high-value view of all that information by surfacing the most important updates for each user. Step three, profit! How It Works The new News Feed view is based on an algorithm that scores every update coming in through what's now called the Live Feed. That scoring is based on the number of "likes" and comments an item has received and how much you personally have interacted with the update's author in the past. A related algorithm was used in the past to create the "highlights" section on the right-hand side of the Facebook home page. That section was getting too little interaction and didn't include things like important status updates, the company says. If your sister posted a status update saying that she's pregnant, a Facebook spokesperson told us today, that wouldn't show up in the old highlights view. It should show up in your News Feed now. So three big changes: 1. The new Live Feed is linked-to at the top of the page and shows a number of new items since your last visit. 2. Highlights plus hot status updates are now the default, the new News Feed. 3. Birthdays and other important events have taken the place of the old Highlights section; they are of particular interest to users and will now be easier to see. Facebook says that after viewing your new News Feed, you can go check out the raw Live Stream of all the most recent updates from your contacts. That's the opposite of the way FriendFeed did it and neither strategy should be taken for granted. Decisions like this impact a major method of communication for hundreds of millions of people around the world. By showing the News Feed highlights as the default view, Facebook will probably encourage users to pay more attention to, interact with more and grow closer to the people they already have a history of interacting with and the events that are already popular. Weak social connections and your personal long-tail of content are less prioritized in this view. The inclusion of a user's past behavior as a criteria for hotness is key, though. It's not just a popularity contest. Your News Feed is your little universe and popularity is defined in relative terms. That, again, is a particular strategy. The new Google Reader Popular View, for example, appears to evaluate popularity across all users in total. Someday social networking is going to be like the telephone. Today you can't send messages from Facebook to people on MySpace or LinkedIn but that isn't going to last forever. Just as you can call someone who uses T-Mobile from your Sprint phone, someday sharing and messaging between online social networks will be a given. How will social networks retain users then? Why stick with Facebook when some smaller service offers a decentralized social networking service outside of Facebook's control but still tied into your friends on Facebook and elsewhere? How well will Facebook do at filtering the Live Stream of content? We're about to find out and it's going to make a big difference in how we experience the web. That will only be more true as more and more people begin publishing content. There's been a lot of emphasis on the live stream of real-time web content, but Facebook now joins many other services in recognizing that the best value is sometimes built by combining real time and slower assets. Source: Marshall Kirkpatrick on readwriteweb.comThe real-time flow of social activity data is very exciting, but many people have cautioned that it will be a net-negative for users' experience of the web as we're flooded with an overwhelming quantity of low-quality information. Confronting this issue is an obvious next step for social software.
What It Means
What It Could Mean In the Future
These services will someday have to compete on user experience, when they no longer have your social connections locked-in. The service that does the best job filtering up the most important information you have coming your way will likely be the service you stick with. That's going to be a key area of competition between social networks.
I watched District 9 two days ago on the Internet and loved it. I loved it so much that I decided to go to the theater with 3 of my friends to watch it legally and support it. When the movie ended, I was surprised about my friend's reaction; All of them liked the movie but for different reasons than I. Their comments switched between "What a sad lovestory and end", "Great action, I loved the special effects" and "this is the best sci-fi movie since years".
Above all of this, I liked the movie because it was a satire about the human race and an allegorical exploration of apartheid and xenophobia.The South African director Neill Blomkamp reflected back brilliantly our society depicting a fictional world where extraterrestrials have become refugees in Johannesburg, South Africa. Not welcome or accepted, they are forced to live in slums...Watch the trailer at http://d-9.com
Un coup de gueule contre les chaines tunisienne TV7, Hannibal TV et Canal 21 qui n'on pas hésiter a nous montrer à plusieurs reprise et sans scrupule dans plusieurs feuilletons ce ramadan 2009 comment l'homme tunisien bat sa femme soumise et silencieuse comme si c'était représentatif de la société tunisienne. Et si c'est vraiment le cas, je me ferais encore plus de soucis. On ne penserai pas que c'est le même pays a libéré la femme dés 1956 (Le Code du Statut Personnel instauré par le président Bourgiba a aboli la polygamie, institué le divorce judiciaire et fixé l'âge minimum au mariage à 18 ans pour la fille).
Elle est culottée, Loubna Ahmed Al-Hussein ! Beaucoup trop, au goût des juges de Khartoum, devant lesquels la jeune femme, journaliste et employée de la Mission des Nations unies au Soudan (Unmis), devrait de nouveau comparaître, mardi 4 août. Son crime ? S'être montrée en pantalon, lors d'une réception organisée dans un restaurant de la capitale soudanaise, le 3 juillet. Elle est passible de quarante coups de fouet et d'une amende de 250 livres soudanaises (environ 100 dollars). Le fait que, ce soir-là, elle ait aussi porté le voile islamique, comme à son habitude, et une longue chemise à fleurs, en plus d'un jean, ne change rien à l'affaire. Le syncrétisme vestimentaire n'a pas le vent en poupe au pays du président Omar Al-Bachir - du moins, pas pour les femmes.
Loubna Ahmed Al-Hussein n'est d'ailleurs pas la seule à avoir été interpellée. D'après son témoignage, la police, qui a fait irruption dans le restaurant au beau milieu de la soirée, a embarqué une douzaine de ses compatriotes de sexe féminin - dont certaines originaires du Soudan sud, région à dominante animiste ou chrétienne, où le rigorisme musulman n'a théoriquement pas sa place et, moins encore, la charia (loi islamique).
Dix de ces délurées présumées ont été convoquées par la police deux jours plus tard. Après avoir reçu dix coups de fouet, les porteuses de pantalon ont été libérées. Mais trois autres prévenues, parmi lesquelles Loubna Ahmed Al-Hussein, n'ont pas bénéficié de cette clémence insigne. Pour quelles raisons, exactement ? Difficile de le savoir. L'article 152 du code pénal ne le dit pas de façon nette. Seule la sentence est claire : quarante coups de fouet et une amende.
Au Soudan, la chose est banale. Ce qui l'est moins, c'est qu'une accusée se rebiffe. Employée par l'ONU, Loubna Ahmed Al-Hussein pouvait, à ce titre, prétendre à l'immunité. Les juges lui ont d'ailleurs donné le choix, a expliqué son avocat, MeNabil Adib, mercredi 29 juillet, à l'issue de la première audience. Mais elle a refusé. "Je souhaite démissionner de l'ONU, je veux que le procès continue", a-t-elle déclaré. Les autorités soudanaises ont-elles voulu faire un exemple ? La jeune femme tient une chronique régulière dans le journal non gouvernemental Al-Sahafa. Son arrestation n'est"pas une question de mode, mais une tactique politique pour intimider et terroriser les opposants", a écrit la journaliste Amal Habbani, aussitôt poursuivie pour avoir"diffamé " la police.
Le régime soudanais "veut briser une plume libre", a dénoncé, de son côté, Soliman Abeer, militant du Réseau arabe pour l'information sur les droits de l'homme, association basée au Caire, très active dans cette affaire. Lors de la première audience, des représentants des ambassades de France, de Suède, d'Espagne et du Canada, ainsi que plusieurs dizaines de féministes, étaient présents."L'usage du fouet est contraire aux normes internationales", a rappelé, à New York, le secrétaire général des Nations unies, Ban Ki-moon, qui a exprimé sa "profonde préoccupation".
The Google Europe Recruitment Team posted an announcement on the Facebook fan page of AIESEC Germany to encourage german AIESECers to apply as Technical Associate in Google Dublin's office (the european headquarter).
Take a look at the Job Description if you are interested : http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=145495
Today, about 4.000 organizations -from multinational to small and medium scale business, non-profit to government and the UN- are partnering with AIESEC. A prove that AIESEC is the first choice among young people and organizations for activating leadership and develop high talented youth who create the needed impact on society.
Check the website of the AIESEC local committee at your university to know the dates of the upcoming Information Evenings.
