I just wanted to thank Mayor Bloomberg who I had a chance to meet a few times and greatly admire for the new bike paths around the city. Here’s a ride I did today. It was phenomenal and mostly done on bike routes and bike paths, a lot of it in Harlem.

I take the opportunity to recommend Endomondo. What a great bike app!! I used it on an HTC Desire.

In 2007, Loic Le Meur and I came up with the concept of La Fatera. It is described here. The idea was a scale that would share your weight over the internet and help you lose weight socially. At that time the plan was that Fon makes the Fonera and the Fatera. But while at Fon we stuck with the Fonera, a successful strategy (this year alone we sold close to 2 million), others picked up on the concept of the Fatera. The most successful implementation is Withings the WiFi scale. And new social sites to lose weight keep appearing. Fatdrop is a good example.

The obvious reason for the success of the scale and the weight losing sites is the obesity epidemics. 20% to one third of the population of developed countries obese or overweight. Interestingly obesity is so global and popular that in the world now there are as many obese people as hungry people, an estimated billion of each. But other than obesity the psychology of overeating lends itself more to sharing the activity socially to stop it than other addictions. Drug addictions, alcoholism are generally treated in secret in places like AA because taking drugs alters your behavior and there is a shame factor associated with it. Few people tweet something like “I have gone 134 days without shooting heroin”. Yet many people are tweeting their weight with Bob Metcalfe the creator of ethernet is a good example. Over eating is an activity that can be done in public, without shame and that other than the occasional barfing it does not produce any obvious social problems (it’s legal to drive after you overeat for example). But in this case, the shamelessness nature of over eating is a big plus for society to get you to stop. And sharing your weight over the internet is the objective measure of your eating. I see tremendous potential in weight sharing as a way to socially lose weight.

I have had Aphrodite for 10 years now.  During those years I have been able to combine my life as an entrepreneur and my life as a sailor getting around 20 to 40 days on board per year.  Aphrodite spends summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean, so she has many Atlantic crossings under her belly.  She is a 92 feet Ketch built by Vitters in the Netherlands and designed by Andre Hoek with one purpose in mind, safe and fast cruising.  With its flashed deck Aphrodite is the perfect explorer sailboat.

And this summer we once more put Aphrodite to the test together with Nina my wife and Isa, Tom and Leo. For close to two weeks we sailed the islands around Sicily and what follows is a review of them that can serve others as a guide of what to do and what to avoid in the Sicilian Islands.

Aeolian Islands

My short take on them is that you should only use Capo Milazzo as the port of embarcation for sailing the Aeolians but waste no time there.  Avoid Lipari and Vulcano in August because they are the most popular of the Aeolian Islands and if you are on a sailboat you can do better than that, and focus on the rest which are absolutely phenomenal.  Sail directly from Milazzo to Stromboli.

Stromboli

Stromboli is one of the jewels of the Med but there are caveats.  The island has two towns, Stromboli itself and Ginastra.  Stromboli is charming but quite touristy and just not as elegant as say Panarea or Ginastra itself in the same island.  So while most people spend time in Stromboli, I recommend making Ginastra the center of your exploration.  For example, while going up to the volcano is organized with guides and many tourists on the Stromboli side, if you are like me and prefer to open your own path and be alone, put on a pair of jeans (as the path that goes up from Ginastra to Stromboli is barely used and has many thorny plants) and go up on your own.  In Stromboli we mostly ate on board so I have no restaurants to recommend.  After seven the Guardia Costiera leaves the area where the volcano spits lava ever 15 minutes or so and you can get as close to the volcano as you want.

Panarea

When you sail from Stromboli to Panarea there are three tiny islands that are worth a stop.  They are all beautiful and the middle island has a sulphur gas that comes up from the bottom of the sea around 10 meters deep and you can go snorkling around there surrounded by shiny bubbles.  Warning:  my wedding band, normally silver, turned brown as a result of that swim but metal cleaning products normally used on sailboats worked and fixed the problem.  So after spending a day or so you can get to Panarea at night.

Panarea is the only Aeolian with true night life in the sense of large choice of elegant restaurants and a couple of chill out bars. We only ate in one, Quartara, and both the food and atmosphere were great.  The town of Panarea deserves a 3 hour walk in both directions.  I also recommend a hike to the heliport from where you have a great view of Stromboli.  If you have 800€ to spare go for a helicopter ride of Stromboli with Air Panarea, the owner of that helicopter airline is a particularly nice guy and my 3 year old had a good time pretending to be a helicopter pilot together with his 4 year old.

Salinas

Salinas is the most complete of the Aeolians, by that I mean that if you have a weekend to spend in one Aeolian Island I would recommend Panarea, but for a whole week, it would be Salinas.  Salinas has roads, cars, scooters, towns, and yet it is not as crowded as Lipari.  Friends of ours spent their honeymoon there and I can understand why.  The best town is Malfa, by far.  The 4 other towns can’t compare.  The place to eat is the Signum Hotel.  Rent a scooter, go around, hike, go to la Caldera (sailing and over land different, complementary experiences).  Salinas must have much more to explore than what we saw.  I would go back there.

Filicudi

Filicudi and Alicudi are the lesser Aelioans.  But lesser in the sense that they are smaller, yet in terms of beauty per square meter they hold their own.  Filicudi is all focused on one side, the one protected from Mistrals.  It is interesting how Mistrals the strong NW winds that go through the Western Med 2 or 3 times a month, have shaped development, both humans and naturals around the region.

In the Aeolians, Mistrals have created a situation in which lava flows face the Mistrals and nature and people avoid them.  Stromboli, Alicudi volcanos flow towards the Mistrals.  I don’t know why but I have a sense that erosion help decide the path of least resistance for lava flows.  Filicudi has these amazing phallic  rock formation sticking out 70m off the water that are worth sailing around, quite a few times.

Alicudi
Alicudi is the smallest of the Aeolian and yet incredibly steep.  What is unique about it is that the 100 homes or so that have been built there can only be inhabited by athletes who, as Tom said, are willing to go up and down the equivalent of the Empire State by staircase, every time they need milk.  And they are inhabited by athletes, I have never seen fitter people and animals as in those islands.  The mules work non stop bringing such essentials as drinking water to the homes on the side of the extinguished volcano.  We went up to the last home and it took us over an hour of the steepest hike of our lives to get to it, at 488m over sea level.

The Aegadian Islands

From the Aeolian Islands we sailed to the Aegadian and my general comment is that they are not worth your time for anything other than a passage stop from the Aeolians to Pantelleria.  On that passage what you may want to do is to stop in San Vito lo Capo, a quiet nice town in the North West corner of Sicily and in Trapani.  Trapani is kind of run down but it has a decadent beauty that I liked.  It reminded me of Essaouira in Morocco.  If you go to Trapani get a car or some means of transportation and go to Erice, a beautiful medieval town up the mountain.

Now back to the Aegadians, we were so poorly impressed by Trapani that we did not even try to go to Levanzo.  But Favignana was slightly better.  At this point let me grade the islands so you get an idea of what I mean about the Egadi.  Vulcano B+, Lipari B+, Stromboli A+, Panarea A+, Salinas A+, Filcudi A-, Alicudi A- but Trapani C, Favignana B.  You get my point. Favignana does have a town that has its moments, it is quite busy so if you miss seeing people out and about you may like Favignana more.

But in Favignana the markets are not local fruits and vegetables but Chinese goods sold by sad looking African emigrants desperate to make a living. Still we managed to find a charming restaurant in the Augusta hotel, a garden restaurant where we ate well.  In general I would say that we still have to find one restaurant in which we ate poorly.  All of them are great Southern Italian food for 20 to 40 euros a person.  We only got ripped off once and that was at the restaurant Al Tramonto in Pantelleria where they charged us €96 euros for a mediocre fish or €50 euros per person for a meal that anywhere else would be half of that.  Otherwise eating in the Sicilian Islands is generally a phenomenally predicable experience.

And in Favignana we did have a special moment and that was when we coincided with a local, religious celebration in which a Madonna was brought into the church by men in uniform.  The light was perfect, the church attractively small and while religion is to blame for a lot of unnecessary killings among humans when properly practiced it can be especially picturesque.

Pantelleria

Is Pantelleria worth a day of sailing to get there and another one to get back?  I am not 100% sure but we did enjoy it.  Pantelleria, like the Aeolians, is a volcanic island.  The volcano is not active but there’s “fresh” lava all over the place.  As other volcanic Islands,  Pantelleria is very steep, with poor anchorages as sandy bottoms are rare.  We only found one in Scauri and that’s where we stayed.  Avoid Pantelleria town, it is depressing and after a long sail to get to Pantelleria Island if that is the first thing you see, as it happens to us, you will question the whole trip, and if you haven’t slept well, your whole life after seeing that dump of a place.  But Scauri for example is Aelian level material.  So Pantelleria gets a B+ in my blog because of Scauri, because of the South, because of the hikes and local lava based architecture.

Conclusion

Unless you are one of those sailors, like me who likes to see everything and come to his/her own conclusions, just go to the Aeolian Islands.  You can avoid the Egadi and regarding Pantelleria, if it was say 3 hours of sailing from Stromboli I would say go for it.  But to sail 2 days from the Aeolians to go to Pantelleria is not worth it.

Tonight we saw The Messenger with @ninavarsavsky. We started watching it while sailing back to Sardinia after a failed attempt of crossing to Menorca. With over 20 kts straight against us we decided to fly back and have the crew choose a better day for the return. In the meantime, in rough seas, we turned the Mac on and started what we thought was a better choice to throwing up. And it was.

In spite of its meandering last third, The Messenger is a great movie. While war is at the center stage of this drama, it is not a war movie. The Messenger is a movie about how war impacts everyday life. The title refers to the job that the two main characters (played by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson) are assigned to do. Their job is to communicate to the NOK (next of kin) that their loved one has died at war. The acting, directing, photography are superb. If there’s anything weak is the plot itself, but I watch films more for their special moments than their story as a whole and the dialogues are great.

I am friends with Zaryn, Tuenti’s CEO and have been informally advising him on this transaction so what I am going to say is what Expansion publicly reports. All shareholders of Tuenti but management sold all their shares to Telefonica. Management stayed with most of their shares and will work for the majority Telefonica owned company which will remained independant. Tuenti has a great plan that will make Tuenti users happy but I am not at liberty to disclose it. I think it’s the only coherent strategy that I can think of, to thrive against Facebook. I hope they share it soon.

Nina’s wedding dress was too big to carry on the plane. So we sent it with our sailboat that came from Miami to Spain. Yesterday we found ourselves at our first anniversary (of our civil wedding) with dress in hand and we did this funny pictures/video allegorical of how Nina said she felt about marriage. It was fun to shoot.

Nina during our first Anniversary in Menorca-Display from Martin Varsavsky on Vimeo.

In the midst of a wonderful, mostly non-political 4th of July parade in Aspen, Colorado, I was surprised to see these right-wing participants. The kid that I found particularly sad was the one who said he loves his carbon footprint. It was also interesting that they don’t see the contradiction between demanding both lower taxes and higher military spending. In general, I always find surprising that in the US, the richer states like NY and California are two the left of the poorer, the Bible Belt.

If you see the rest of the pictures, though, you will see that they were the only sour note on an otherwise splendid 4th of July celebration.

Lastly here is a video of the 4th of July parade with commentary in Spanish that talks about the issue of the wealthy in Aspen being especially progressive.

El 4 de julio en Aspen from Martin Varsavsky on Vimeo.

If you ever wondered why the grass is greener at the neighbors’, here’s the answer, and it is not water.

I’ve been looking back at some of my tweets lately and I’ve compiled a list of tweetphorisms, which are a cross between tweets and aphorisms.

- A good thing about Twitter is that if somebody wants to trash you they only have 140 characters to do so.

- In Europe tipping gets you nowhere, in USA not tipping gets you nowhere.

- One thing I love about my American friends is that they are less jugdemental, more willing to take risks.

- Great leadership is the ability to make followers thrive.

- Creative destruction is much hyped, but non destructive creation is better.

- They should not allow world cup teams to have foreign coaches.

- TV still exists because of simplicity, bandwidth and simultaneity.

- Religion is on its wait out in Europe, hence football.

- Marriages take work. Grass is not greener on the other side. It’s greener where it’s watered.

- Monopolies are like children in an airplane, you complain about them until you have one.

-  College must have been traumatic. I graduated in the 80s and still dream I’m not prepared for my Chemistry exam.

- Remember when Twitter was about people saying something? Now it’s all links.

- The value of a secret derives from the relevance of those whom we want to keep uninformed.

- You become 21, turn 30, push 40 and reach 50.

- Contradiction: Americans consume most oil in the world and yet they blame their President for the drilling accident.

- Math is the hardest subject to work hard at.

- Microsoft was easier to hate .

- Studying photography made me come to terms with cloudy days.

- I am for being tolerant with the intolerant, but it’s hard when the response is death threats.

- Europe needs to eliminate national armies and have just one European Army.

- Some people are afraid of the unknown. I tend to be more afraid of what I know.

- Netflix tells me what I will like, Vuze delivers it.

- Twitter should take pity on those who Tweet in German and give them a few extra characters

- The French should teach the Italians how to make desserts and in exchange learn how to make coffee.

- The only power left who still disguises economic ambition as ideology is USA. Russia and China gave up.

- The iPad is most useful in situations in which laptops are frowned upon.

- Downturns are great moments to gain market share.

- There’s an inverse relation between how cool you look watching a movie in an iPad and how dorky walking around listening to music.

- It’s not the role of companies to regulate if people date at work or not.

- Parents teach kids to be patient. In the process, they are learning to be patient themselves.

- The paradox of the music industry is that it’s being destroyed out of love for music.

- Most people in power in Europe would rather see Greece sink than the Euro rise again.

- What distinguishes people is not how much shit they have to deal with, but how they deal with it.

- You raise a child until one day you realize…you raised a person.

- 80% of good paternity is showing up.  Quality time is a cop out for absent parents.

- Twitter, all the news that’s fit to tweet.

- The iPad is an ideal toilet companion

- When people really want something they have a hard time comprehending it may not be possible

- Restaurant owners believe that there is an inverse relationship between their elegance and your understanding of the menu.

- Link shorteners should use one letter to show whats in them.

- In USA, kids are especially told not to talk to strangers.  But as adults they love to

- Jet lag is a good way of understanding the difference between being tired and wanting to sleep.

- Exams are so traumatic that people keep having nightmares that they show up unprepared decades later

- There are 2 kinds of people who rarely take vacations: those who can’t afford them and those who have a hard time dealing with themselves.

- Android will be very popular because Google does not make a living out of selling hardware.

- If you had a habit of talking to yourself, Twitter is perfect for you.

- It’s great when the person you love… is your wife

- Smartphones are amazing. But they are not that smart when all you want to do is make a phone call.

- The problem bailing out Greece is that the euro was too strong before the crisis.A weaker euro combined with cheaper oil helps EU.

- When two people in Twitter want to engage they leave. DMs are not enough. Unlimited DMs or DM chat would be better.

- Hillary Clinton may become for all  Israelis what Sharon was to Gaza settlers.

- Design is not great when it clashes with use.  Example? iPhones that fall out of pockets.

- Something tells me that it was not “the keyboard cat” what Chad had in mind when starting Youtube.

- Electricity consumption’s been down 5% in Europe since the crisis. Recessions are good for the environment.

- One of the weaknesses of Twitter is that it’s such a pain to always click on links.

- If you oppose to animal testing in medicine you favor human testing in medicine, or no progress in medicine.

- As it becomes widely used Twitter needs to raise the character limit to 200.

- USA should not have China finance its wars, it should have China fight them.

- Friendship is about people you know, dating is about people you don’t know, Facebook is evolving from friendship to dating.

- USA has the richest people in the world. Europe has the “richest” poor people in the world.

- English is the most widely spoken language.  That also makes it the language that is most frequently spoken poorly.

- Twitter, or a life worth sharing.

- Europeans want equality, Americans equal opportunity, Asians don’t seem too keen on either.

- Cable, telephone, mobile, Internet, newspapers, magazines, games and music industries did indeed converge in the end.

- Google is about linking to other sites.  Twitter is about linking to other sites.  Facebook instead warns you about the Internet.

- Models are hired to appeal to women.  They are women who women like. Most men like actresses more than models.

- Scientists in USA are admirable because all scientists are, but also because average folks in this country mistrust science.

- The problem with Twitter is that all watch what everyone else is doing and as a result…nobody does anything.

- First we had phone, SMS, email, then Skype, Gtalk, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz. I need new tech to start replacing old tech!!

- You can tell when somebody uses a Kindle because they stop counting pages and say: “I have 7% left to read”.

- The best argument against nuclear energy is that it’s used as an excuse by Iran and others for making nuclear weapons.

- Memories are the leftovers of experience

- We can use randomized controlled trials not just to test medicines but for social problems too.

- San Francisco can be seen as “at the edge of the tech world” or “the edge of the planet”

- Sometimes it is best to leave a book unfinished and imagine the rest.

- Haiti’s problems did not start with the earthquake, but they came to light with it.

- Religion exists because the truth is unbearable.

- America excels at the extremes. Europe focuses on raising the average.

- Most successful products are self evident.

- Blackberries are for work, iPhones for fun, Androids are somewhere in the middle.

- Anyone who tries to make a tablet without something like the iTunes Store will have a hard time competing against Apple.

- Twitter used to be a community of people who shared info, now it’s more and more a one to many broadcasting platform.

- After Law School you are a lawyer.  After Med School you are a Dr. But after Business School you are not an entrepreneur.

- Facebook is meaningless unless you know the people whose crap you read about.

- Writers block is passé, now it’s Twitter block.

- Emotion can be great motivation for writing, but it can backfire when you are trying to make a point.

- USA and Europe design, China makes.

- Terrorists attack USA partly because it is easily spooked.

- Uruguay is a country with no news to report. No news is good news.

- Safety with little police presence is a sign of civilization.

- Countries around here are either free and poor (St. Lucia) or colonies (Martinique) and rich.  So much for freedom

- Twitter: gossip never had it so good.

- The crying baby, the snoring man, two dreaded characters on night flights.

- Even though China is the biggest polluter in the world it still has the right to sell carbon credits to much cleaner Japan.

- Airline punctuality figures should include airport immigration expected delays.

- Some of the brightest people I know can’t spell.

- Most large exporters of energy are LDCs (less democratic countries)

- Spending a lot of time on Twitter makes you more informed but less knowledgeable.

- Twitter + links = Facebook – search

- Obama’s Nobel Prize speech should have been about racial reconciliation, not about justifying military action.

- Climate change may be disastrous. But we have a global sanitation, education, malnutrition and disasters now, first things first!

- Speed limits should relate to traffic.  No traffic, higher speed limits.

- Twitter is like Facebook in fast motion.

- Twitter:  speed dating of the intellect.

- Facebook is very expensive to run but has a business model. Twitter is very cheap to run but has not found one yet.

- Zapatero does not speak English, lives in the old media world and out of ignorance managed to turn the blogosphere against him.

- Apple is the only company that managed to go on with desktops.

- The success of Spotify in Spain shows that even in a country in which downloading is legal there’s a business model for music.

- Europe sees immigrants as people to train.  Americans also see them as people to learn from. Guess where they prefer to go?

- In Spain some under 20s are on Facebook, none on Twitter, and all on Tuenti.

- I still can’t understand how the country of the 35 hour work week came up with the word entrepreneur.

- The worst weather is when it’s almost freezing but instead of snowing…it rains. Just shy of profitability.

- If a country has social mobility and recession many can be better off even in bad times.  But Europe is screwed at this level.

- If anything Obama is proving that it is much harder to be a good President than a bad one.

- The crisis does have something positive:  it is a boom for entrepreneurship.

- Whenever I don’t get a reference I think it must be Star Trek, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

- Here we are squeezing our thoughts on Twitter because somebody a decade ago decided to limit SMS to 140 characters.

- Nations who won’t negotiate with terrorists shouldn’t pay pirates off

- People who don’t like photos of themselves: those who like themselves too little and those who like themselves too much.

- Twitter used to be microblogging. Now blogging is an extended tweet.

- Murdoch should not forego Google, if anything he should do the RSS thing and give them the headlines.

- The genius of the iPhone can be perceived during the brief time when you finish a charge and the battery runs out.

- Nobody ever made more money than Chaplin portaying misery.

- Spain has holidays that relate to each city. Next Monday, for example, is a holiday only in Madrid. All holidays should be national.

- Software upgrades offer significant risks in exchange for minor improvements.

- Whoever forces people to write http:// before a web site name should be spanked (Tom says shot).

- Big TV displays are begging for wireless connectivity to your laptop.

- The better I do the less I have to tweet about.

- Successful companies turn out to have many “cofounders”.

- Twitter gives you a unrealistic feeling of being famous.

- At the end of life few are sorry they did not spend more time at the office.

- The only really white people on the planet are the British

- There is so much to learn when you know very little!

- Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, other wealthy nations should allow free movement of labor as EU does already.

- Europe is about class struggle. USA about generational struggle.

- Overheard on Twitter:  To want to prove that God exists with a Bible is like wanting to prove that Batman exists with a comic.

- Facebook should allow you to gift pictures.

- Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world after Chinese and slightly ahead of English

- Book authors will be like musicians.  Books will be free on the net but authors will make money from public speaking.

- Never underestimate the power of a good story

- I never liked a TV series so much not to wait to watch it when I wanted to.

- Nobel Institute has just awarded itself the Obama Prize

- If you follow people in different continents, Twitter gives you a real sense for time zones. When I wake up California goes silent.

- If you know what you want to listen to go for Spotify, if you want to discover music use Last.fm.

- I have a dear friend who is not on Facebook. He is the last one standing.

- We should read what the Taliban says before more die in Afghanistan on both sides.

- Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is a waste of our military resources and goes against what we tell the world we stand for.

- If you can’t tell a story extremely well,  you can’t raise money for  a start up.

- It takes a while for US Presidents to realize that the only real power they have is abroad.

- One country one vote is not a way to run the world.  If you are a citizen of a large country you are underepresented.

- Managing online communities around a product is tough

- Apple’s software is amazing because it competes with Windows and Linux. Apple’s hardware is poor because it does not compete with anybody.

- The problem with tech after tax salaries in Italy is that social charges are so high that even if entrepreneurs spend more, coders get less.

- Choosing ice cream flavors you realize how different people are.

- Smartphones are like friends, one night I hang out with the Nokia, another with the iPhone, tonight is Android, but my real buddy is still the Blakcberry.

- Everyone I know believes in Twitter as a multibillion dollar business.  I only believe in Twitter as a centimillion dollar business.

- Unemployment is sad but paradoxically good for the environment and for start ups.

- Obama’s mistake with health care is that he chose an issue that his young voters don’t care so much about and his opponents do.

- The best moments in life often can’t be shared on Twitter

- Being an entrepreneur in Spain is like being a snowboarder in Jamaica.

- The Clinton Global Initiative is not about making it. It’s about what to do once you have made it… or about giving it away intelligently.

- So many people have left Hotmail for Gmail that when I see a Hotmail email I know its obsolete.

- Overpromising may make sense if those who overpromise end up producing more than they would have if they hadn’t overpromised.

- Indeed, why is English a must for so many simple jobs but not for President?

- Computers changed photography from the portrayal of who we are to the portrayal of who we want to be.

- Once you lie your way to the Presidency, other lies come easy.

- Location services should realize in which direction you are moving and give you recommendations ahead of you!

- In Spain people think that calling a person negro or black is derogatory but calling him negrito or little black is not.

- For Ubuntu to be popular it must find an easier to install unlisted programs than terminal.

- USA is so good at promoting cross ethnic/cultural understanding at home, and so bad at doing it overseas.

- Death is the test of evolution. We are programmed to die. Even if we conquered all disease we would only increase life expectancy by 12 years.

- The origin of antisemitism may be lack of reciprocity: what Jews believe in Christians/Muslims also believe in, but not the other way around.

- Conservatives in Spain want to ban access to social networks without parents consent. Good economic policies come from social retards.

- USA has more road deaths than no speed limit Germany

- Kids have this unusual ability to teach us what they don’t have: patience.

- Europe is just the best continent to live in.

- The French are among the most productive people in the world. Tariq says it’s because they can’t wait to leave asap for the aperitive

The French are among the most productive people in the world.Tariq says it’s cuz they can’t wait to leave asap for the aperitive

The only really white people on the planet are the British

Countries around here r either free and poor (St Lucia) or colonies (Martinique) and rich.  So much for freedom

We are in San Francisco, a city that can be seen as “at the edge of the tech world” or “the edge of the planet”

Its great when the person you love… is your wife

In USA kids are especially told not to talk to strangers.  But as adults they love to

Twitter should take pity on those who Tweet in German and give them a few extra characters

Microsoft was easier to hate

At the Menorca TechTalk this year we had some remarkable guests such as Hiroshi Mikitani, from the remarkably successful Rakuten of Japan, who explained to us why he is on a shopping spree in USA and Europe (recently acquired Buy.com and PriceMinister), and  Arthur Sulzberger CEO of the New York Times – my favorite newspaper and news source in the world – who was particularly fun and insightful to be with. As a music fan (I named one of the companies I started Jazztel), my favorite guest was Ulf Ekberg from Ace of Base. In this video, you get to hear some excerpts of Ace of Base’s new album. It is only a few seconds for obvious reasons (copyright). But you can get a sense of how great the new songs are. Very Ace of Base, and yet, very new.

Here’s a video in which the participants at the Menorca TechTalk debate how to name the new Ace of Base hit:

And here are some pictures of the Menorca TechTalk that Nina Varsavsky, my wife, and I took:

And here are some pictures that some great friends who love photography took: Rodrigo Sepulveda, Demian Bellumio and others. Thank you for the great pictures!