Wow... last Saturday I was surprised to receive no less than 28 email notifications about the 28 objects I had won the buys!
What? I didn't buy anything. Nor ever loged in eBay for months...
I did not realize at once. I 've opened one mail from ebay france (in french), and read the following:
" Félicitations ! Vous avez accepté d'acheter l'objet suivant :
VERIFONE MANUALS PDF E-BOOK EMAIL FREE SHIP - SHIPPING 0.01EUR"

Then one from ebay.com:
"Dear stephanedeluca,
You are the winning buyer for the item below. Thank you for your business!
Item title: $250,000 - $500,000 first year income from home based
Web address: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160030424301
"

Finally, one in espanol:
"Estimado(a) stephanedeluca,
Esperamos que disfrutes de tu compra. Se ha recibido el pago por el siguiente
artículo:

Muchas gracias. Te agradecemos que realices operaciones en eBay."

I first thought to a phishing act: I read the IP from the email header and made a WHOIS that has shown that this IP actually belongs to ebay.

So it is probably someone who has stolen my account! I immediately send a mail about all this from the ebay security form. Due to a lack of confidence now I have about eBay security system, I asked for my account to be closed immediately.

Today, reading my emails, I have received many emails about the cancellation of the supposed bids I had placed, as follows:
Cher membre d'eBay,
L'enchère que vous avez placée sur l'objet (300026878421) a été annulée. Vous pouvez afficher les motifs de l'annulation en cliquant sur le lien Historique des enchères sur la page de l'objet.

Cordialement,
eBay

But what really irritated me was the mail about my account suspension, as follows:
Dear stephanedeluca (stephane@deluca.biz),

Safeharbor Department
eBay, Inc.

Shocking, isn't it? I immediatelly replied and asked for a letter of excuse. I keep you posted; I will tell you about the followup.

Are you using ebay? Did you experience such a situation? Tell me...

This is a kind of shocking fact: BBC just dropped the greek language and do not longer support it on its Web Site.

If you wanted to go as usual to http://www.bbc.co.uk/greek/ you only get:
"Η Ελληνική Υπηρεσία του BBC έχει κλείσει.
Σε αυτόν τον δικτυακό τόπο μπορείτε να βρείτε μια επιλογή από τα αρχεία μας."

Which roughly tells you: "The Greek Service of BBC has closed.
Here you will find archive greek content.".

Surprinsingly, I get to the language menu of the site and saw something even more shocking: The french is located in the Africa section.

Does it mean that if africans were not using french, my language would have disapeared? Tell me.

World's changing...

The game features about 1 hour and a half of video, plus 13 sound tracks.
The game won the Fiction prize of the World Festival of Underwater Pictures in Antibes, France, in 1996.
As I don't have a numeric version of the movie, the following is an attempt to reconstitute it by taking snap shots from the game:

Intro

Geting to the broken drill head

Arrived at HP5 underwater station:

Discovering Atlantis and Mikonos

Game Over

This video is an cut scene from the first mission video intro.

This is a funny thing: this plant -- a white bean -- is capable of growing more than 3" per day (10 cm).

I started a project up: video record the growth from the seed up to the plant.

So pass by every day to look at progress...

This is a test project: I use my Apple MacBook and its embedded cam to record 3 frames per day, which I compress as a video with Apple IMovie 06 in mpeg4 format.
The video is uploaded into YouTube. The code is then embedded in the page for you to play the video.

With the experience I'll get here, I will remake the video with a professionnal SLR...

Début mai de cette année, j'ai débuté un nouveau projet, consustant au design et au développement d'une technologie de streaming géographique à base de donnée satellitaire, qui dans les grands principes peut ressembler à GoogleEarth™.

Cependant, la ressemblance s'arrète très vite : ici, l'objet se raproche beaucoup plus du moteur de jeu vidéo que d'une « simple » affichage de carte 3D.

Une autre particularité, c'est que le but de ce projet est de pouvoir jouer en temps réel sur un mobile de troisième génération.

Phase I : GIS et rendu temps réel à haute performance

J'ai attaqué le module de rendu côté serveur : Le serveur possède une base de 60 Gb représentant le département des Alpes Maritimes à une échelle de 4 pixels par mètre carré. Les données d'altitude d'une résolution de 50×50m sont intepolés avec des patch bicubiques.

Le moteur de rendu est implémenté en Java et openGL et utilise des NIO pour un usage maximisé de bande passante. Le rendu intègre un système de LOD dynamique, la tesselation est faite en temps réel, à la volé.

Les images de rendu sont capturées à la volée et stokées sur le serveur.

Phase II : Stream vidéo

Les images générée sont compressée pour être expédiée via une connection TCP au téléphone mobile 3G. Ce projet ayant pour but de démontrer les capacité des tout nouveau réseaux 3,5G (HSDPA) qui offre un débit de downlink de 1Mb/s !

Cependant l'application est scalable, et peut se contenter d'un simple réseau UMTS.

Phase III : Le client j2me

Le téléphone mobile possède un client J2me réalisant la décompresison du flux vidéo, et procède à l'affichage de la vidéo en background.

Le vaisseau spacial est affiché en temps réel au dessus du layer vidéo, ainsi que les ennemis et les cercles bonus qu'il doit traversser.

Le joueur peut se déplacer « librement » à l'interieur du couloir aérien, mais dans cette phase, il n'est pas entièrement libre : il ne peut pas, par exemple, faire demi-tour, ou emprunter une trajectoire quelconque. Sa liberté se limite au couloir aérien.

Phase IV : Liberté, liberté chérie

Il s'agit ici de libérer totalement le vaisseau du joueur. Il peut alors explorer comme il le souhaite l'intégrlité du département.

Les actions du joueur sont expédiées vers le serveur via le uplink TCP. Le moteur de physique interprète les déplacement côté serveur et positionne la caméra correctement pour générer les nouvelles images.

La grande difficulté ici est lza latence induite par le stream vidéo : en effet, pour que la vidéo soit suffisament fluide, un buffers de 4 à 5 secondes de vidéo est réalisé sur le client; de facto, cela imprime une latence de 5 secondes sur la perception des images par le joueur. Ce problème doit être compenssé localement chez le client en corrigeant la posture de la caméra par rapport au monde et au vaiseau...

En attendant d'adresser la phase IV, l'effort est essentiellement mis sur la partie serveur, et les perfomances de rendu.

A suivre avec des images dans quelques jours...

« Bonjour,
04 XX XX XX XX vous a laissé un message le 14/06/2006 à 18:39.
Ce message se trouve en pièce jointe.
Merci de votre confiance.
Bien cordialement,
Le service clients Internet. »

Which means:
"Hi,
04 XX XX XX XX left you a message on 14/06/2006 at 6:39.
This mesage is attached.
Thanks for your confidence.
Regards,
Internet Cusomer Care"

This mail was received today from our brad new Internet/Phone/TV provider -- well, I should say former provider as he just changed is name into Orange...

Let me explain: from now on, when you leave a vocal message on any of my phone lines, the Orange server is kind enough to record and convert it as a MP3 file, which it attaches to the abovementionned notification mail. Additionnaly, the mai feature a nice mini player widget as a convenience for you to ear the message by a simple click!

Of course, one could be blased about that technology, I mean, not-that-so-brand-new technology. But listen: from now on, my mailbox will hold each and every single message anybody will be king to leave in my voicemail. For my all-life. And maybe more ? (huhuhuh) -- so that in 30 years from now, I will be able to listen what you was saying 30 years back in time: some voices were saying something of a certain importantance, though most of them were just saying some everyday stuffs... But in 30 years, it would be coool to ear...

A kind of time machine? Say you're listening a message left on your parent's voicemail back in the '76!

Put it like this, I find that really coooooool.

Dear members,

This to inform you that very recently, the domain name of our site is being usurped by malicious spammer/hackers. They try to infect you via the mail as shown below. It include a compressed file that we do recommend not to open. Simply delete it.

By the way, we did the necessary with the network administrator from which the mail originates.
The GENUINE Webmaster.

The usurpting mail you may receive:
"Dear user of deluca.biz,

Sincerely yours,
The deluca.biz team.

h2. Introducing multi-tasking and improved gaming performance for new Java Platform 7 (JP-7) mobile phones

See last article

Here are the successful ingredients of Java™ Platform 7 (JP-7), SonyEricsson's market-leading and backwards compatible developer platform for creating compelling games and imaging applications for the K610, K790, K800, W710, W850 and Z710 mobile phones.

JP-7 supports a range of JSRs including Advanced Media Supplements (JSR 234), delivers improved performance for 2D and 3D games and SonyEricsson is the first handset manufacturer to introduce support for multiple, simultaneously running Java applications in a single virtual machine on mass-market mobile phones.

Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234)

Sony Ericsson's JP-7 supports a range of JSRs, including Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234) for enhanced camera and image handling. It is now possible to control the camera exposure (i.e. the amount of light on the image sensor), the focus, zoom functionality and the camera's flash from a Java ME-based application as well as rotating the camera image. The ability to record video and very precisely control frame-by-frame location, allowing the end-user to 'move around' in the video, is also offered by JP-7 based phones. All these capabilities can
now be controlled from a Java ME-based application, opening up possibilities for new creative imaging applications.

JSRs supported by JP-7:

-- CLDC 1.1 (JSR 139)
-- MIDP 2.0 (JSR 118)
-- Wireless Messaging 1.0 and 2.0 APIs (JSR 120/205)
-- Mobile Media API (JSR 135)
-- Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JSR 185)
-- Java API for Bluetooth™ (JSR 82) (optional)
-- PDA Optional Packages for the Java ME Platform (JSR 75)
-- Web Services API (JSR 172)
-- Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234) (camera capabilities)
-- Mascot Capsule Micro3D Version 3
-- Mobile 3D Graphics API for Java ME (JSR 184)
-- Nokia UI API 1.1

Improved gaming performance

Through new generation hardware with faster CPU, better optimized software supporting floating-point operations and improved critical graphics primitives for 2D and 3D graphics, Sony Ericsson has taken a huge leap in performance and speed, significantly improving game-playing experience and leaving current competition far behind.

Developer feedback claims the six new Sony Ericsson phones, the K610, K790, K800, W710, W850 and Z710, based on JP-7 have the best gaming performance on the market, a position the company will likely keep throughout 2006 and 2007 with its products.

"With the latest Java Platform 7, Sony Ericsson impressively demonstrates that Java code can be as fast as native; close to 30 frames per second on QVGA even without hardware acceleration. This means we get the best 3D game experience we have ever seen on a mobile phone while simultaneously being able to address a huge Java market and satisfying established sales channels," says Michael Schade, CEO of Fishlabs Entertainment GmbH.

Addressing fragmentation

Industry trends indicate that there is an increasing gap in Java ME performance between entry-level and high-end phones. The main contributors to Java ME fragmentation are the differences in supported APIs, building blocks (software platforms, CPU, Virtual Machine vendor, device hardware) and quality (bugs and performance issues). These issues have been addressed to a large extent through standardization and higher quality implementations.

Sony Ericsson's Java ME performance has significantly improved not only for its high-end phones but also for entry-level phones in the past couple of years with the introduction of MIDP 2.0 and Mobile Java 3D support across the portfolio. In addition, Sony Ericsson's strategy to build backwards compatible Java platforms, aligned with the industry standards, has proven successful and received very positive feedback from the developer community.

"Sony Ericsson's Java Platform approach is one of our contributions to reduce fragmentation in the industry. The fact that we focus on quality and performance, meaning being better rather than different, is a way for us to make sure we have a very attractive offering to developers," says Hanz Hager, Java Product Manager at Sony Ericsson and representative on the Java Micro Edition (ME) Executive Committee.

Java implementation consistency

Sony Ericsson puts great emphasis on Java implementation consistency and has been one of the most aggressive advocates of Mobile Java 3D with support for the two 3D APIs, Mobile 3D Graphics (JSR-184) and Mascot Capsule Micro3D Engine v3 on more than 35 phones to date. An independent developer benchmark survey conducted by UK research firm Recom Research in March this year also showed that the companys global developer support program and web portal, Sony Ericsson Developer World, was considered to be the leading technical resource for Mobile Java 3D development .

Sony Ericsson has increased the quality of the Java performance on its phones by spending more engineering time on development, analyzing the source code of third-party technology like Fishlabs ABYSS game engine, and testing of software implementations. The Java development team has also made bug fixes and performance upgrades in general for JSR-184 and the Mascot Capsule v3 API for JP-7 phones.

"As a leading 3D mobile games developer, we have chosen Sony Ericsson as our target platform. With over 35 Mobile Java 3D-enabled phones, Sony Ericsson by far has the broadest range of 3D enabled handsets on the market. Additionally, hard to believe but true, we only need one single binary of code to support all handsets. That saves a tremendous amount of time and money, not only on the developer side but operators also need to spend much less work on game verification later on," says Michael Schade of Fishlabs.

Increased memory is now available in the phones (> 5MB heap possible), allowing more graphics heavy and higher quality games to be developed. Sony Ericsson also supports a new, optional control in the JSR-135 Mobile Media API with JP-7. With the so-called 'TempoControl', developers can control the tempo and rate of a MIDI file, typically used as in-game music and sound effects. With this fine grained control developers can create a richer game-playing experience for the user, e.g. by increasing the tempo of the music when danger approaches in a game level or similar.

Introducing multi-tasking Virtual Machine (MultiVM)

With JP-7, Sony Ericsson is the first handset manufacturer to introduce support for multiple simultaneously running Java applications in a single virtual machine on mass-market mobile phones.

"In line with Sony Ericsson's strategic intent to make Java ME a viable alternative to an open operating system, we have introduced a MultiVM (multi-tasking virtual machine), making it possible to have several Java MIDlets running on the phone at the same time and switch between them, says Hanz Hager. This enables Java-based push e-mail solutions and many other high-value, mobile applications running at the same time as you are playing games, for example. Sony Ericssons new Java Platform 7 really takes the Java ME technology in mobile phones to new dimensions."

My daughter Mélody, 5, just had an acciend tonight, fortnately, she's fine, thanks.

She cut her finger while trying to close her room shutters. As the cut was somewhat deep, we immediately get to the hospital urgencies.

The doctor examined Méoldy's finger and said that everything was okay, no nerves was cut. We expected that he would put two or three sutures to close the skin edges. But, surprisingly, he took a glue tube and deposited a rather deep layer of glue over the two skin edges!!!!

Results are even better than sutures, less traumatic, nicer scars.

This new technic is intended to replace sutures for topical application only to hold closed easily approximated skin edges of wounds from surgical incisions, including punctures from minimally invasive surgery, and simple, thoroughly cleansed, trauma-induced lacerations.

I was really impressed, and thus I wanted to share this with you.

The product is named Dermabond and its distributed by Johnsson & Johnsson.

But I am pretty much suprised to see than only a few knows what flickr has to offert, and most of you--photogrphers--miss what I shuld qualify as a must have..

Flickr is held by Yahoo.

Its bjoective is to enable people sharing their photographs, whatever they are pors or simple mateurs.

Should you need omething to blog you photos, or should you require a system to archive all your photgraphs as a professionnel, Flickr is for you.

Useless to say that getting an acount is free.

In addition to photosharing, their business model cosists of offering additional services for an affordable price such as photo printing, calender making or book printing, etc.

As you will see, the free account offers a lot: big storage capacity, nothing comparable to others sites.

From each photo you uploaded is automatically computed a range of format from the thumbnail to the large one. Computation provides excellent quality. Each of the format is given a static URL that you canfreely use to insert images to your blog or site or any forum you may want to post it to.

None of you photo will be ever removed from the site, except if you do so.

But Flickr offers more.

Youcan add photo description and index them with customizable tags, and people can freely comment them. You get a set of comunity functionalities--from creating fans group or handling a contact listn, and many more...

The user interface is really nice and very responsive thank t the generalized usage of ajax (you can add a description or a set of tags without requiring the page to be reloaded).

One funny thing, still really interesting: you can defines graphics zone on your photo andd attach any relevant comment to them. "This is Gran'Ma" and "Here I am!". Then, when someone hover the cursur on the photo the zones ppers and you can make the comments appearing!

Photographs can be either public or private, which defines who can actually watch them. And with you account comes a customzible URL to point to your portfolio: mine is http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdeluca.

There is a lot to say still... Please try it!

Finally, here is what is probably what kill any competition around : for 24 $, you can uprade your account to a pro account. And then, it's getting nutz:You can archive ALL your phtographs without any storage size limitaion, whatever the resolution of you photos. If like me, you have thousands of photographs to archive, go for a flickr pro account!

Ah, by the way. Should you have to update the photo you posted last month with a new brighter version ? Don't worry, you can do so with a por account. You simply re–upload the photograph and you'll lose nothing: ou keep allciomments, descriptions tags and the URL to the it remains the same.

Enough said. Try it!

• Regulate the luminosity of the screen directly with the keys of the iBook.
• Regulate the size of the window of the browser.
• Simply to regulate the color in an adapted way, for instance, AA0 for less luminous yellow.

I was wondering how Google and others search engines were indexing photographs and images.

If I was writing a software for indexing IMG tags, I would take several sources of informations as follows:
* The text surrounding the IMG tag,
* The SRC attribute: Where you tell what file to link (the URL actually),
* The ALT attribute: The alternate text used by non graphic browsers, or as a place holder during the download of the image,
* The TITLE attribute: The title displayed when the mouse hovers the image.

I wanted to know for Google so I ran some tests. Here are the results.

Note that the process itself is rather time consuming due to the fact that you have to wait for Google Bot to reindex your site.

I put some photographs on my site, each one using a different way to describe the image, and wait for Google Bot to come.

Once done, I got to Google image looking for "Stéphane de Luca"; the only image I was showed was the one that used the title attribute of the IMG tag.

Here we go! Knowing that, I now have to update every single IMG tag in my site to take advantage of this.

By one night fresh of December,
I traversed right bank,
Since the stone bridge
To the old train station...

Ubisoft nous fait part des ses résultats pour le premier semestre de l'année fiscale 2005/2006:
* Progression du résultat opérationnel courant : +4,2M€ à -42,4M€, avant comptabilisation des éléments de rémunération payés en actions.
* Résultat net en forte amélioration de +21,6M€.
* Endettement net divisé par 2 en un an.
* Confirmation des prévisions pour l’exercice 2005-2006.

Compte tenu de la forte croissance constatée au cours des six premiers mois de l’exercice et des excellentes perspectives du second semestre, le Groupe est en très bonne voie pour atteindre l’ensemble de ses objectifs pour l’exercice 2005-2006 :
* Chiffre d’affaires : 600 millions d’euros (+12% à taux de change constants).
* Résultat opérationnel courant : supérieur à 52,5 millions d’euros, avant comptabilisation des éléments de rémunération payés en actions.
* Résultat net : supérieur à 38 millions d’euros, avant comptabilisation des éléments de rémunération payées en actions, et prise en compte des éléments suivants :
* Impact positif lié à l’equity swap.
* Charge de 2 millions d’euros, sans incidence sur les flux de trésorerie, correspondant au traitement comptable des OC, OCEANE, et OBSAR.
* Flux net de trésorerie disponible : supérieur à 40 millions d’euros.
* Endettement net : ramené à zéro d’ici la fin de l’exercice fiscal 2005-2006.

EA and JAMDAT today announced they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which EA will acquire JAMDAT. EA will pay $27 per share in cash in exchange for each share of JAMDAT common stock and assume outstanding stock options for a total of approximately $680 million.

EA and JAMDAT together plan to publish over 50 games for mobile phones in the first twelve months following the completion of the acquisition, including popular titles like Tetris, Bejeweled, JAMDAT Bowling, Need For Speed™, EA SPORTS Madden NFL™ Football and EA SPORTS FIFA Soccer.

"This is an important strategic acquisition for Electronic Arts," said EA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Probst. "Together we intend to build a leading global position in the rapidly growing business of providing games on mobile phones. We look forward to the JAMDAT team joining EA."

Headquartered in Los Angeles, JAMDAT has roughly 350 employees in locations around the world, including Honolulu, Montreal, Tokyo, London, Bucharest and Hyderabad.

"We think the combination of EA and JAMDAT will benefit our shareholders," said JAMDAT Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mitch Lasky. "The combination of EA and EA SPORTS, along with JAMDAT's casual blockbusters like Tetris, Bejeweled and JAMDAT Bowling, will create a powerful product line-up."

Upon closing, JAMDAT CEO Mitch Lasky will lead EA's mobile games business worldwide. The mobile businesses will be combined into one team.

Transaction and Financial Information

The proposed acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by JAMDAT's stockholders and regulatory approvals.
The acquisition is expected to close in EA's fiscal fourth quarter.
In EA's fiscal fourth quarter, non-recurring acquisition-related GAAP charges are expected to be between $0.10 to $0.15 per diluted share.
Conference Call
Electronic Arts and JAMDAT will host a conference call today, December 8, 2005, at 2:30 pm Pacific Time / 5:30 pm Eastern Time to discuss the transaction.

In addition, EA will discuss recent trends in holiday sales.

Listeners may access the conference call live through a dial-in number at (800) 819-9193, access code 4601662, or via webcast at http://investor.ea.com. A dial-in replay of the conference call will be provided until December 16, 2005 at (719) 457-0820, access code 4601662. The webcast archive of the conference call will be available for one year at http://investor.ea.com.

About Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for videogame systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names: EA SPORTS™, EA™, EA SPORTS BIG™ and POGO™. In fiscal 2005, EA posted revenues of $3.1 billion and had 31 titles that sold more than one million copies. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

Electronic Arts, EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS BIG and POGO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

About JAMDAT Mobile

JAMDAT Mobile Inc. is a global publisher of wireless entertainment applications, including games, ring tones, images and other content. JAMDAT's application portfolio is based on original and licensed intellectual properties and includes JAMDAT Bowling, Tetris®, Downtown Texas Hold 'Em, Lemonade Tycoon®, Bejeweled®, The Lord of the Rings®, Tony Hawk's® Underground and Scrabble®. JAMDAT distributes its applications through wireless carriers around the world. For more information, please visit www.jamdat.com.

Some statements set forth in this release, including those regarding EA's proposed acquisition of JAMDAT and the expected impact of the acquisition on EA's strategic and operational plans and financial results, contain forward-looking statements that are subject to change. Statements including words such as "anticipate", "believe", "estimate" or "expect" and statements in the future tense are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or actual future results to differ materially from the expectations set forth in the forward-looking statements. Some of the factors which could cause results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements include the following: the requirement that JAMDAT's stockholders must approve the transaction; the required receipt of necessary regulatory approvals, including under applicable antitrust laws; the possibility that the transaction will not close or that the closing may be delayed; the effect of the announcement of the acquisition on EA's and JAMDAT's strategic relationships, operating results and business generally, including the ability to retain key employees; EA's ability to successfully integrate JAMDAT's operations and employees; general economic conditions; and other factors described in EA's and JAMDAT's SEC filings (including EA's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2005 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2005, and JAMDAT's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2005). If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes, the acquisition may not be consummated, the potential benefits of the acquisition may not be realized, EA's and/or JAMDAT's operating results and financial performance could suffer, and actual results could differ materially from the expectations described in these forward-looking statements. Neither EA nor JAMDAT assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

JAMDAT has agreed to file a proxy statement in connection with the proposed acquisition. The proxy statement will be mailed to the stockholders of JAMDAT. JAMDAT's stockholders are urged to read the proxy statement and other relevant materials when they become available because they will contain important information about the acquisition and JAMDAT. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of these documents (when they are available) and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov. In addition, investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the documents filed with the SEC by JAMDAT by going to JAMDAT's Investor Relations page on its corporate website at http://investor.jamdat.com.

JAMDAT and its officers and directors may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from JAMDAT's stockholders with respect to the acquisition. Information about JAMDAT executive officers and directors and their ownership of JAMDAT common stock is set forth in the proxy statement for JAMDAT's 2005 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on April 15, 2005. Investors and security holders may obtain more detailed information regarding the direct and indirect interests of JAMDAT and its respective executive officers and directors in the acquisition by reading the preliminary and definitive proxy statements regarding the merger, which will be filed with the SEC.

In addition, EA and its officers and directors may be deemed to have participated in the solicitation of proxies from JAMDAT's stockholders in favor of the approval of the acquisition. Information concerning EA's directors and executive officers is set forth in EA's proxy statement for its 2005 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on June 24, 2005, and Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on June 7, 2005. These documents are available free of charge at the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov or by going to EA's Investor Relations Website at http://investor.ea.com.

AJAX -- DHTML associated to HTTP requests -- makes it possible for sites to have genuine dynamic pages. I don't say dynamic for the server side, this is already the purpose of PHP, Ruby or whatever. No. I do speak about the client side, your browser.

On this site, you've been provided with a "recommend" feature; you can rate any stars you think an article is worth.

When you click on a select box, by using Javascript, the page sends an HTTP request to the server, which in turn, stores your recommendation. Once taken into account, the server send the new rating back to the client. The browser displays it.

What's interesting here, is that the page itself is not reloaded from the server as most of the sites would do. The page is siply locally updated from within your browser (give it a try!). This way, you really end up with a more interactive experience, somthing closer to a classic desktop application.

One can find a lot of features that could take advantage of Ajax. One can even think of a site based exclusively on this technology -- see Google suggest for instance.

I recently implemented an instant messaging system with Ajax. This kind of application is perfect for it. The client side is polling the server with HTTP request to fetch any incoming messages, and then, displays them on screen.

Though interesting, this make web sites sillently ressembling to classic desktop app, losing their book-like very nature; you do not longer turn pages, and get more interactivity.

Additionally, it's worth to note that Ajax is something rather bandwith-consumming. More interactions, more bandwith.

For me, my IM required a 100 fold bandwidth increase!

In conclusion, we have to find out how to balance the bandwidth cost increase. Then, is it the right way to go?

As the children are growing up, their interest for computers are increasing. I was looking at the best introduction to computers: programming is still tough for children, but I thought web design could be the perfect first step.

Oddly enough, writing content for the web still requires some scripting skills, even if you just wanted to cope with HTML.

I first tought to design something simpler, a human understandable "scripting" feature in my Web CMS.

Firstly, I implemented a wiki-derived convention. But thought it was a shame to create yet another wiki scripting language.

Talking about that with Fred -- one of my friend at work --, I asked him what could be considered as the "standard" of wiki-scripting language; and the answer is Textile.

Writing content with Textile is easy, but yet powerfull, as you can integrate CSS style when necessary. You get the simplicity but you don't lose the power.

I now support Textile language in my CMS, and this article is the first composed with it.

I am going to experiment this with my children and I will give you feedback in a while.

• Volume I, issue 1 : January 1995
• Volume I, issue 2 : February 27th 1995
• Volume II, issue 1 : March 8th 1995
• Volume III, issue 1 : May 29th 1995

With some encablures of Montpellier, in Languedoc - Roussillon, to 100km in the south of Millau, Palavas-les-Flots extends on a few kilometers of Mediterranean beach always gilded by a soft sun.

The small port is propped up between the rings of mooring and the small channel where the sinners moor their trawls.

While strolling along the channel, you will be able to join left bank, where you will taste an ice, coveted as it should be, by a troop of very strong gulls.

Enter a little more the old city where you will discover some beautiful sunny lanes where the walls of the houses of villages raise each one a color of summer.

You will cross this splendid church, next to this restaurant perched high which will offer turning panoramic to you... It is indeed an old water tower completely restructured... a modern beauty which slices with elegance with the past of the city.

Good appetite.

• Eiffage web site, about the construction itself: follow the link
• The splendid web site of the Midi librededicated to the viaduct: follow the link

$linkcommon = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpassword);
if ( ! $linkcommon )

die ( "Unable to connect to the shared db server: ".mysql_error() );

mysql_select_db ( $dbcommonname, $linkcommon )

or die ( "Unable to select shared db '$dbcommonname': ".mysql_error() );

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

As soon as we received the XBox kit, during june 2001, we did port our PC engine in less than 3 months; we produced an interactive demo of the game for the London ECTS 2001 where it received a extremely positive welcome.
Many publishers were interested in publishing the game, and finally UBIsoft did sign the contract.

Unfortunately, with the bankrupcy of Kalisto in april 2002, the development was stopped and the promising title will never hit the market.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr" dir="ltr">

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr" dir="ltr">

• UMTS is - of course - not covering a lot of people in UK or france
• Orange is still dealing with the architecture, doing a lot of tweaking.
• UMTS provides LESS performance than GRPS for small amount of data interchange (break even around 15 to 20 Kb
• 3G user is allocated bandwith according the current usage is doing of the net - 4 classes are given, from the more demanding to the less. Depending on this class, it may have from 64Kbit/s tup to 384kbit/s. IT IS THE NETWORK that determines the class, not the user - a user profile exist, but won't be used by the user himself.
• You can expect a 250 to 300 ms roundtrip (Mobile <-> Server) as nominal value (which are good, when compared to GPRS)
• 3G users may be switched back to 2G network depending on network traffic condition. It takes 5 sec minimum to return to 3G - this 5 sec is due to radio transmission behavior.
• 2Mbit/s dream: it is pure hype, simply a legend; and correspond to the total bandwith avail to the network that is divided into user usage, signal and control packets. IN NO CASE the bandwith can exceed 384Kbit/s
• *** Don't forget that all these figures are depending on network condition ***

Infogrames Entertainment annonce vendredi une diminution de sa dette financière de USD115 millions gràce au placement de 27 millions d'actions Atari, sa filiale américaine, au prix de USD4,25 par action. Le chef de file de l'opération est UBS Securities. Infogrames garde un niveau de participation et de contrôle d'Atari à  70,7%.