“A virtual grocery store in a subway station in Seoul, South Korea with products labeled with QR Codes has increased online sales by 130% for Tesco Homeplus.” (see the article from 2d-code.co.uk)
Last summer, Tesco offered an impressive innovation to the Seoul subway users. Indeed, the latters were allowed to go shopping … waiting for their train, thanks to their smartphones. The concept was very simple and still SO brilliant : virtual displays of a Tesco grocery store were posted on the walls of the station and people just had to scan the QR code of the products they were willing to buy. Thanks to these scans, the products were placed in the online cart and once their online shopping done, the users were delivered to their door just after they got home.
Hope to have the opportunity to try this one day in Paris, but anyway, well done Tesco !
Last year, a secret computer worm called Stuxnet, was uncovered and sparked off a lot of reactions.
Officially, this computer worm was created in order to destroy potentially threatening Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. But actually, it raised another problem : it showed that now, as Michael Assante, formerly the chief security officer for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, says : “It’s just a matter of time. Stuxnet taught the world what’s possible, and honestly it’s a blueprint”.
Now that such a powerful cyberweapon has been launched, it seems that a new kind of war, based on cyberattacks, is dangerously getting closer and threatening our whole way of living.
Indeed, so much is now connected to different kinds of networks and so many of us now depend on these networks that any large scale cyberattack would be a REAL disaster. If a computer worm like Stuxnet can destroy, via a cyberattack, a whole nuclear infrastructure, then another computer worm of the same kind could attack any electric or telecommunications grid, any water treatment facility of any country and then cause huge damage.
And that’s the whole paradox of the Internet : though it is a great tool that has allowed us to simplify our way of living and our way of interacting with the world, still, the very large scale connection it implies could someday be a real problem…
To understand better how the Stuxnet virus works, watch the video bellow :
Surfing on the Internet is not as easy as one could think and thriving on it is even harder. That’s why since a few years, Internet pages that propose advice and sometimes even commandments to survive on the Internet are more and more numerous.
So considering the difficulties I’ve already had but also the way I am used to surfing on the Internet, I decided to create my own page of advice. Here are my 10 commandments :
1) You will pay a lot of attention to every information you publish about yourself. The Internet forgets NOTHING, so careful not to post things that you could regret later like this for instance :
or this :
2) You will be very careful as far as your computer and Internet accounts security is concerned. This means that your passwords must be impossible to find or that your antivirus software must be up to date.
3) You will do your best to find information about new people you meet on the Internet, for you should never forget that the Web is populated with predators of all kinds, and that fake identities are very easy to create.
4)You will respect people’s intellectual property.
5) You will learn how to work and surf on social networks (or do some e-shopping) at the same time and in a very effective way. Believe me, it can be really useful when are bored at work !
6) You will do your best to make your ideas clear and attractive. To catch people’s attention, each page you create on your blog or website must go straight to the point while having a catchy appearance.
7) You will take advantage from all the possibilities offered by the Internet. The Internet being the biggest library of the world, one has to learn how to use it effectively in order to make the best of it.
8 ) You will be curious and pay attention to every link your contacts share on the Internet. As a consequence, you will also share everything you think interesting. For sharing information is the first and probably most important step of culture spreading.
9) You won’t forward any chain letters to your contacts, even if they have been sent to you by your best friend or mother. CHAIN LETTERS = VIRUS.
10) You won’t enter your credit card number without seeing the small padlock that appears on the status bar when the visited website is secured.
The financial crisis is not only about money : some observers from different newpapers have noticed several trends that they have linked to the crisis :
– According to the Guardian, the financial crisis and the “hectic” way of living it led to has made people go back to the “old-fashioned hightea” time. People would apparently spend more time in Britain’s tearooms that they used before the crisis as if they were trying to escape the reality.
– According to the Daily Mail, the financial crisis has bad consequences on our physical well-being. Indeed, companies are said to suffer from a new plague : absenteeism. The credit crunch would lead people to feel more stressed and would therefore make them prone to catch a cold easily.
And this tendency to feel sick easily seems to be reinforced by the fact that fresh products are more and more expensive because of the crisis and that people chose to eat cheaper and less nutritious food, which makes their body less resilient.
– Finally, according to the Times, the credit crunch has benefited to the … turnips. Indeed, the sales of turnips has increased a lot these times but here, it seems pretty far-fetched to me to link this phenomenon to the crisis. For in this case, a lot could be linked to the crisis, and trying desperately to find reasons that would explain every trend can easily lead to wrong and sometimes dangerous determinist interpretations…
On the occasion of the launch of the M8 sneakers by Jordan Melo, Nike organised a thrilling water projection on the Hudson River that confirmed the brand’s leadership as far as innovation is concerned.
Last summer, Tesco offered an impressive innovation to the Seoul subway users. Indeed, the latters were allowed to go shopping … waiting for their train, thanks to their smartphones. The concept was very simple and still SO brilliant : virtual displays of a Tesco grocery store were posted on the walls of the station and people just had to scan the QR code of the products they were willing to buy. Thanks to these scans, the products were placed in the online cart and once their online shopping done, the users were delivered to their door just after they got home. 
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