Marko Ahtisaari is a remarkable Finnish tech entrepreneur who I have known for many years. As you might have heard in this blog, Nokia just acquired Dopplr where Marko was CEO and I was an investor. Now I have more good news about him, Marko has just been named the new head of design at Nokia.

Let me give you some background about Marko because his bio deserves a post in itself. Marko was raised in Helsinki, Dar es Salaam and New York. He studied economics, philosophy and musical composition at Columbia University and later lectured there in logic, philosophy of economics and the history of thought. Marko serves on the board of F-Secure, Newsmill, Artek and WITNESS and is an advisor to our dear Fon. Marko was also one of the Blyk cofounders as well as a founder and CEO of Dopplr. He received a Grammy Showcase Award. His father is a former UN diplomat, president of Finland and the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Peace prize.

Now as a Nokia shareholder I count on my friend Marko to help Nokia where Nokia needs most help and that is usability. Nokia makes great smartphones but while they have some of the best hardware in the world they fall behind in ease of use. My own current ranking would be this. I rank iPhone and Blackerry tied ahead of the pack, then Android, then Nokia and Windows Mobile goes last.

G.hn is a home networking standard developed by the United Nation’s ITU-T that supports gigabit speed communication over power lines, coaxial cables and phone lines. For example, if you have two notebooks with G.hn compatible chargers they would have access to the local network when plugged into a power outlet. The installation is simple and easy. The broadband modems will need an adapter to connect it to the home power grid. This technology is great for HD content distribution around the home.

What does this mean for Fon? Right now Foneras need an Ethernet connection to the ISP’s broadband router. This means their location at home is restricted. With G.hn the Fonera doesn’t need this and it can be placed anywhere in the house where there is a power, coaxial cable or phone line outlet. This means that you can place your Fonera wherever you want, to help you make more money by selling wifi or to increase wifi coverage at home.

In this video I compare the Mifi from Novatel with the Fonera 2.0n. Bottom line is this. If all you want is to convert 3G to WiFi get a Mifi. But if you want a router that can do both ethernet and 3G as internet sources, that can upload videos to Youtube on its own, download torrents on its own, give you free roaming to 650,000 other routers, and allow you to make money, that is n and works with many mobile operators Get a Fonera 2.0n. Also 3G plays a great role in a Fonera in case your ADSL breaks down.

Dopplr has just been acquired by Nokia. Dopplr is a web service that lets you share your travel plans with your network and exchange travel tips and advice about cities around the world. It helps you make your traveling smarter and more enjoyable. Dopplr calls this aggregate of collective intelligence the “Social Atlas”, a cutting-edge service that has provided the team with new insight on how people and location interact. I invested with Dopplr on the first round for the same reasons that I make all my investments. An entrepreneur I admire, in this case Marko Ahtisaari, and a product I use, Dopplr.

Nokia is an excellent platform for the development of this know-how. While I really don’t know what Nokia plans to do with Dopplr I believe that an integration of the service with Nokia phones would make a lot of sense. A mobile Dopplr is the ultimate pocket travel guide. Anytime, anywhere and in the palm of your hand you have the best restaurants, bars, clubs etc. that people who you trust recommended. This element, “the people you trust” is very important. There are many sites that recommend hotels. Trip Advisor is a great one. But the problem I have with Trip Advisor, or IMDB is that I many times find that my taste is more like that of my friends than that of the world at large. I don´t care where the average person wants to stay, or where the average person wants to eat, or where the average person wants to go. I care where my friends who are my most trusted advisors want to go. And that is Dopplr.

Lastly I would like to say that is interesting that Nokia continues to acquire companies of friends of mine. Plazes in which I also invested, and Plum. Nokia continues to be the number one technology company in Europe and Europe needs a strong Nokia. And where Nokia is weak is in services, in software small acquisitions make sense.

Disclosure I own Nokia shares.

Congratulations to Marko Ahtisaari, Matt Biddulph and the Dopplr team!

Here´s a personal view on the Clinton Global Initiative. I recommend you watch it in HD.

CGI´s uniqueness lies in the fact that all participants have to commit to do something to improve the world. My commitments have included building wind and solar farms. As you know this is a business but it reduces carbon emissions. Building the Fonera 2.0n is also a business but this fonera replaces computers that are normally on to do the same tasks and that can also be a commitment. CGI is not against you making money, it is in favor of you doing it in ways that is sustainable.

I am the CEO and Founder of Fon. Fon has built the largest global WiFi network in the world. We have over 650K WiFi access points distributed in many countries with UK, France and Japan being our best markets. Fon is owned by Ebay, Google, BT, Index Ventures, the management and some other small investors who have invested a total of 36 million euros in the company. The basic idea behind Fon is that “you share a little wifi at home and you roam the world for free connecting to other Fon routers known as Foneras”. Fon´s revenues come from people who do not share wifi at home yet they find Fon WiFi signal and want to use it. Fon operates alone or in partnerships with telcos such as BTFon, or SFRfon and many others. After 3 years of operation Fon is becoming a profitable company in the last quarter of this year.

Now Ubiquisys makes Femto cells. Femto cells are a great idea. Its the same concept as a Fonera meaning a box that is connected to ADSL/Cable/Fiber internet on one side and sends wireless signal on the other. Except that the wireless signal is 3G, not WiFi.

So you can see a match in the making here. And this is what is going on.

Fon and Ubiquisys have entered a strategic partnership to develop the first “Femto Fonera”, which will provide mobile 3G data and voice access from a wireline broadband connection. You can share this 3G signal securely with other Femto Foneros, just like you share your wifi with the other Foneras. Apart from experiencing high quality voice and data connectivity at thousands of community hotspots, Femto Foneros could also enjoy tariff discounts from their mobile operator.

The Femto Fonera is a cost effective way to increase 3G coverage indoors and enable high bandwidth applications which are not possible through the traditional cellular network. It can also be used in public spaces without interfering with the operator’s macro network.

Ubiquisys is currently the number 1 femtocell vendor. Their ZoneGate femtocell offers the best performance of any femtocell, it is the smallest and it consumes very little energy. The Femto Foneras, like the femtocells, will require no setup, they will have no buttons and require no admin software. They will be supplied through a specific mobile operator which would be providing the spectrum. The Femto Foneras will detect the user’s presence, which opens up many possibilities for location based applications and services. This Android app, for example, changes the home screen and the applications available when you enter your home and the phone seamlessly connects to the femtocell. Fon and Ubiquisys are in talks with several mobile operators to evaluate the Femto Fonera concept.

Here is the full press release.

My good friend Hans Peter Brondmo just told me that he sold Plum, his start up to Nokia and he is moving from San Francisco to Berlin to run it. Nokia seems to be on a quiet buying spree. They already bought a company I invested in Plazes of Felix Petersen and are looking at many other players in related areas.

Nokia has also made another move that makes sense and is to concentrate social media activities in Berlin. I don´t know if Europe will ever have its Silicon Valley but if it does Berlin will be a contender. It is a fascinating city with a multilingual population in a country that from what I have seen produces the best programmers in Europe and some of the best in the world. Without offending anybody else who works at our company, whenever something really complicated goes wrongly at Fon it is a German programmer who gets us out of the problem. And Berlin is extremely affordable as a city. Living there costs less than in Madrid or any other major European capital. And while the weather sucks if you come from Spain for Nokia´s employees moving South from Helsinki has to be seen as a promotion, at least weather wise.