Six Feet Away is a mobile application, impelled by the NFC (Near Field Communication), which spotted nearby people with shared interests.

The NFC
The innovation brought by Sex Feet Away, compared with major players like Facebook, Foursquare or BonjourBonjour, stands in the integration of the NFC.
The Near Field Communication is a short-range wireless communication technology (up to 10 cm) which enable informations exchanges between devices. It is use, among others, by the Pass Navigo in Ile-de-France transport networks. When you get your smartphone close to the target NFC, the smartphone received the order to open the application with some settings (user ID, place ID,…). The user experience is simpler and more instantaneous than with geolocalisation and QR codes technologies.
The issue for the Six Feet Away work-group, was to comprehend a booming technology, destined to be integrated in all of the mobile devices, using its quickness and ease of use.

Over the last few years, China has popularized the use of the Internet. The number of Chinese Internet users is the highest in the world. According to a CNNIC study (China Internet Network Information Center), in 2011, China has 500 million internet users.
235 millions are social media users and 148 millions are bloggers. In China, Internet is a segmented market. There are numerous Facebook and Twitter clones. On average, a Chinese internet user is registered to three social networks. On the international/global market, Facebook is the world most popular social network.
In china there is Qzone, Kaixin, and RenRen. These are large social networks.
There are different groups of users.
Besides, to compare with occidental internet users, the chinese ones like to create and share contents.

China is known for its imitated products and social networks are not exception.
“Twitter, Facebook and similar kinds are confined in a cocoon before being able to become popular… News imitations are continuously created in order to provide alternative solutions to Chinese people: Renren for Facebook , SinaWeibo for Twitter, Youku for Youtube, etc . It’s a phenomenon which appeals the government”. (Synthesio Study about Chinese social media)

Chinese social networks are very similar to those from other countries with some singularities. The HP Labs realized a documentary comparing Twitter and Sina Weibo.
The three authors, Louis Yu, Sitaram Asur, Bernardo Huberman, have then analysed the most popular topics on these two networks. Significant differences of contents are visible.
In China, the internet users share jokes, pictures, videos, retweets, in other words distractive content.
On twitter, internet users like to share articles who takes about actuality. There are very few distractive contents. On Sina Weibo, contents are released through text form, pictures, videos or links. However, on Twitter the user can only publish links or images.

Nowadays, Sina Weibo is not the network which counts the largest number of users (250 million users – source : Sina Weibo, October 2011) but it is the most popular network in big Chinese cities.

These days, traditional mass media like television, cinema, newspapers and radio have lost their selling power, due to unilateral communication. But with the arrival of Web 2.0, communication has evolved and no longer is driven on a one-to-many model, but many-to-many model. Social media has therefore become a recent and inescapable means of communication. Certain businesses have already made the big leap into this new world, while others are still hesitating. Yet the benefits are numerous: a good public profile, interactive dialogue with clients and costs that are relatively lower compared to the traditional mass media. New platforms have been borne – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are some of the more blazingly obvious. In this jungle of new interfaces, a “Social Media Marketing” plan must be thought out in order to guarantee a good control of these communication methods because the risk of the “Internet’s memory” is still a real threat.

Amongst the new possibilities that the Internet has to offer, what is at stake in going viral? Are there real advantages in it for companies, opposite traditional media? First of all, we will see that the consumption and control of information has changed. Secondly, we will look at why social networks have succeeded in imposing themselves on the web and why they are new advertising models. We will finish the presentation by discussing advice that an agency specialised in Social Media Marketing could offer.

Certain examples of study cases, are communication plans in niche sectors (analysis in these sectors is much more interesting than the bigger brands) or in the PME/PMI (personal participation in the elaboration of the “Social Media” plan and the analysis of feedback – certain paragraphs are based on personal experiences in the professional sector.)

Obtaining and interacting with information has always been at the centre of humanity. We have always sought to innovate and improve these interactions by creating linking devices such as switches or remote controls. In seeking a more natural interaction with machines, we have expanded to the creation of devices, such as the mouse which allowed us to reproduce the movements that the user makes, on a screen. Then, followed a new way of expressing ourselves on a machine through tactile terminals,which is ubiquitous these days on smartphones or digital tablets. Extensive research has also been undertaken on various projects that capture other senses than the “touch”. Hence, technologies such as the Kinectallow users to interact with digital information using just movement. But the most original invention will surely be the total control of holographic projections – perhaps the future of interactions between man and machine.

The Cube (a cultural room dedicated to digital creation) has invited Bernard Werber, the author of successful science fiction books, to the conference “Meet the Future” this Wednesday, November 17. This event, broadcasted live over the Internet, invited users to participate by asking questions as if they were in the game. The topics discussed were the future and of course the digital world. There was talk of merging man-machine, which finally is a current question because, as the author argues, we are already cyborgs by tapping on our computer, without a barrier between our thoughts and what is displayed on the screen. During this debate, the author expressed very passionately his “spiritual” vision about our world, its future and our habits. For what’s more, he does not hesitate to use different types of media to communicate his work. The tree of possibilities, for example, is a Wikipedia-style observatory of the future and could not exist only with the Internet. This media has provided us the tools and encourages users to communicate and thus generate feedback. But, he said, information from Internet users must be channeled so that it does not become a mass of chaotic data. These elements and these reflections make Bernard Werber an author of cross-media.

Since its creation, European cultural TV channel ARTE is an image of quality, innovation and culture. It was created in order to allow the cultural collaboration between the French and Germans. It stands as a unique phenomenon in the global media landscape.

ARTE has successfully adapted its high value content distributed on the air to the content for the web (hypervideo). The implementation of various online media supports (radio, blogs…) form a community around that content. Social networks sits perfectly within the “web communication ” of ARTE.

In the past years, mobile telephones have evolved at a dazzling speed. The union of different technologies has enabled mobile phones to perform more complex tasks: we have advanced from oral communication and SMS to Conventional Multimedia messages (MMS), email messages, web browsing, GPS, photography and video, among others.

This means that the market and market players have changed: companies, specialized in traditional telephony, such as Nokia opposite companies like Apple. This change was also reflected in their strategy; now in addition to the telephone itself, you need a service platform that accompanies it.

FuturTV

From TF1 to Arte, traditional French media in both the private and public sector, have come to understand the astonishing impact of the Internet and broadband on the viewer. Against this backdrop, they suggest new uses which rely on a more non-linear diffusion and multi-supports.

Which offers and which perspectives are present today in the French market? Which economic models? To help answer these questions we will also see exactly what is happening in the US, where if the market appears to be structurally different, it is still highly innovative and leading in its own way to rethink the uses, production means and dissemination strategies of broadcasting the traditional programs.

While the digital adaptation of print media such as books or newspapers has been the subject of numerous studies and is part of our daily lives, the digitization of comic books has struggled to find its place. However, the fact that by its form which combines text and image and the fact that there is no formal standard to respect, the different media supports raises many issues, both creative and legal.

This article describes the course of comics on the web and the digital platforms, emphasizing the key stages of its evolution. From the comic book-blog without formal innovation to the latest software for readings comics on the iPhone, the process is long, but ultimately little varied. Processes are already acting as standards whereas the economic and legal aspects are not yet clear. All the fields are far from being explored, but the transformation is underway.