On the way back from Beijing I had a chance to fly with Neil Goldman, a co founder of Capital IQ who is now both a fund manager and a philanthropist.  Neil shared with me that he supports of Hatzalah.   Coming from Fon a global WiFi network built by the people and interested in all efforts that involved citizen participation (see my previous article on Couchsurfing) I thought that the idea of training regular citizens to save lives was quite powerful.  The basic idea of Haftzalah is that without much training all of us can save lives and while it would be ideal of course that only very well trained medical personnel saves lives it so happens that many times by the time qualified medical personnel arrives it is just too late.  So Haftzalah trains anyone in Israel, say a marketing manager at a tech company, to save lives.  And she may be at a meeting explaining how to launch the latest Web 2.0 service but when her phone rings, she drops everything a la Superman and goes to save lives, at least until the MDs arrive.  One of the biggest life savers is in the use of defibrillators.  As the Hatzalah web site describes:

AUTOMATIC EXTERNAL DEFIBRILLATOR
These machines automatically detect heart rhythms and can shock a patients heart back into beating.

My father died of a heart attack when he was only 49 in an intercontinental flight and I certainly wish that there had been a defibrillator on board and regular citizens trained to deal with them.  I was also pleased to see that this concept was extended to the US and it is somewhat similar to that of being a Red Cross Volunteer but even more grassroots.

Nina who works with me pointed out this site called Couchsurfing. Its like a Fon but of couches. With Fon you share a little WiFi out of your window with those who pass by and then they share with you when you go by their home. With Couchsurfing it gets more intimate. You share your couch with those who pass by and they share their couch with you when you travel. Even though I am not sure I am ready to share my couch(es) with those who pass by my home I loved the idea.

I am not a US citizen but I lived in the US for 18 years. I now live in Spain. As CEO of Fon, the largest WiFi network in the world, I frequently travel around Europe, Asia, and America. In my travels I have had a chance to compare countries along a lot of different categories. Indeed during long international flights I started a comparison chart between Europe and USA along around 50 different categories that were meant to define which part of the world had better quality of life. These included issues such as access to education, quality of health care, criminality, unemployment, level of red tape, income per capita, job opportunities, innovation rates, tolerance and other random categories. Interestingly the result was pretty even between Europe and USA: there were around 25 categories that USA scored better and a similar number for the EU. My conclusion was not that the EU was better than USA or viceversa but depending on what is important to you you would choose one over the other. And I chose Europe. Now having said this there was one issue in which Europe had the upper hand and that was the quality of the Police Forces and the justice system in general. For reasons that are not clear to me USA has much higher incarceration rates than Europe. Indeed USA has more people behind bars than Madrid has inhabitants, about 4.4 million vs 5.7 million. But not only USA has abnormally crowded prisons (if incarcerated people were included in unemployment statistics USA would lose its advantage in employment vis a vis Europe), but USA has a Police Force that is particularly rude in the treatment of its citizens. During a visit to Southampton, Long Island I was shouted at by a policeman for a minor traffic violation (driving at 42 miles an hour in a 30 mile zone). When I got off the car to apologize I was almost handcuffed. The “hands on the wheel” diatribe was so bad that it made me wonder how US citizens put up with Police Forces that so frequently abuse individuals. I don´t mind getting a fine but I do mind being treated like a dangerous suspect when any security officer with common sense would not consider me in a bathing suit a real threat. Moreover not only are US Police Forces rude but they are corrupt as well. When I was telling a friend how I was shouted at in Southampton she metioned that there is a well know way to be treated well by US Police Forces and that is to pay them off. But as opposed to giving them cash on the spot the system, and it seems to be a very well accepted system nationwide, consists in making significant payments to the Police Charities and obtaining badges that say that one is a contributor to the Police Forces. Indeed so interested are US citizens in trying to get a better treatment from their police forces that many fall into various scams. My take as a frequent visitor to the States is that this system is shameful and that Police should both stop being rude to average citizens and certainly stop taking what in other countries would clearly be called a bribe in the form of charitable donations.

Tonight, Lars Hinrichs, from Xing, and I went out for a walk. We wanted to go from the Grand Hyatt hotel to Tianmen Square. The walk was dissapointing. Not only were we approached by many women who were offering their services to us, but as the video that I include here shows, we also saw many homeless people sleeping on the street right outside the fanciest shops in Beijing. I should say though that during the 18 years I lived in NYC I also saw tremendous poverty coupled with extreme wealth, something less common in Europe. I guess by now the most socialist region left in the world is Europe, and curiously Japan. The rest of the world has a worse distribution of income. China which has no socialism left really, it is going for the extreme capitalist model. I wish it moderated it. China should adopt a European or Japanese model of development that balances capitalism with the welfare state. I do not believe that extreme poverty is necessary to generate growth. Korea is also another country that proves that enormous income differentials are not needed for a country to grow out of poverty.

In this video I show the home of Zhang Rui, one of China´s top art collectors. The video was filmed yesterday at the inauguration party of Zang Rui´s Guggenheimesque home. The collection is amazing. It does contain some art that may offend Christians. My apologies in advance for this.

You can also watch this video in Youtube or in Sevenload

When people say that learning Chinese is hard they mean it. Even my Japanese friend Oki Matsumoto says that learning Chinese is harder for him than learning English. There seems to be something impenetrable about Chinese that goes beyond the writing itself which is already incredibly complicated from people coming from English, Spanish, Arabic, French, German, and other major languages of the planet. This is one of the reasons that when the Chinese get to be the number one economic power in the world, something that they will probably achieve in purchasing power terms within 10 years and in nominal terms within 20 years they will have a very hard time being the number one cultural power in the world. As opposed to what happened when England “ruled the world” or now that USA “rules the world”, when the Chinese “rule the world” we will all be ruled by people whose language most cannot understand. Cultural moments as the Chinese version of Happy Birthday will have a very difficult time to spread around the world as nobody will be able to say the words.

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In this video I give some of my impressions on Dalian and China.

You can also watch this video in Youtube or Sevenload

I live in Spain. In Spain it´s legal to use P2P. But while people can use P2P programs in their Macs it seems that they will not be able to use them in the iPod Touch taking advantage of the new WiFi functionality. This functionality seems to work only to buy songs (videos not allowed) from iTunes and not to get nor send songs to your friends over WiFi. Even in the States where P2P is illegal, most people download their music using software like Limewire, Bittorrent, and my guess is that at least 90% of the music in all iPods in America has been downloaded from P2P and music streaming sites. Apple knows this well and they know that if they checked if people had paid for all the music they have in their iPods, something they could easily do, their iPod sales would plummet. My guess is that Apple launched the iTunes shop in order to avoid the wrath of the record labels. But iTunes is not for me as it does not even have a decent all you can eat offer like Yahoo Music or Rhapsody. A music unlimited deal would be cool especially when combined with WiFi. This is what what Zing´s gadget offer. I have been using the Sansa/Yahoo all you can eat music offer for a while. I also like Sonos for my home but was dissapointed with Music Gremlin. But at least what Apple could do so I can walk around with the most beautifully designed music gadget that I can connect to Fon is to have Last.fm in the iPod Touch. I want my, I want my, I want my Last.fm!

This is the first time in my life that I visit a huge city whose name I did not know. I am in Dalian now. 7 million people. Until WEF invited me to their meeting here (yes I made up with them and accepted their invitation) I did not know Dalian existed. Now if you like me, have had trouble learning all the new countries that arose after the atomization of the Soviet Union and you like me, care about geography, then you´d better start learning your Chinese cities. Dalian is a good start (don´t ask me I still don´t know the others…). In any case getting here was a haul only made more endurable by the company of Tariq Krim founder of Netvibes who flew with me. We flew via Hong Kong so I could have a meeting with YK Lin who runs Fon in Taiwan and it was there that YK and I took a break to compare WiFi gadgets. Here´s the result.

You can also watch this video in Youtube or Sevenload