In 2005, the Safe Democracy Foundation, which I manage and together with the Club de Madrid, organized the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security at the Palacio de Congresos in Madrid, Spain.

The results of this Summit can be found in our blog. For the second anniversary, we have decided to transform the contents of last year’s Summit – the materials are mainly focused on how democracies can efficiently combat terrorism without losing their democratic spirit – into a blog.

During the past few days, very interesting people have collaborated with us and published articles in the blog. I would like to invite all of you to read them. Some of these people include George Soros, Walid Salem, Giandomenico Picco, Javier Rupérez and others. Some of the articles are written in English, while others are written in Spanish.

Safe Democracy’s blog will remain open in 2006, and other important contributors will post articles about the strengthening of democracies and conflict resolution.

If you never heard of Bit Torrent you can stop reading this post. Now if you have or if you use it then go on to read about VidTorrent. As you know Bit Torrent is an incredibly clever way to download huge files. When I started Fon I was partly inspired by Bit Torrent because in Bit Torrent to download you must contribute to others downloading and at Fon to receive wifi signal you must contribute to others receiving your signal as well. Now after Bit Torrent comes VidTorrent, developed by brilliant MIT student Dimitris Vyzovitis. Now here´s a warning. VidTorrent is highly experimental and not yet ready for prime time but if you are a techie and want to try it you will see that what VidTorrent does is to help broadcasting signal which as opposed to movie downloads must all arrive at the same time to your computer. And with VidTorrent that´s what it does: arrive at the same time. I saw it functioning this Friday at MIT Media Lab. I saw the broadcasting and it worked very well. If I was involved with any TV channel whose revenues are advertising based I would immediately collaborate with VidTorrent as it makes it possible for many people to watch TV over the internet at much better quality than in a one source, one recipient model. With VidTorrent, as well as with Bit Torrent I can imagine a lot of amazing and very legal applications for this software. I think that what large companies have to do though is understand these revolutionary technologies early on and make them work in their for profit world rather than falling behind and fighting them when they are huge and not for profit.

I will be in San Francisco, NYC, and Boston next week.

Plazes is a great site. I strongly recommend it for people on the move. When I first learnt about Plazes I thought that it would particularily complementary with FON. When I got in touch with Felix Petersen, Plazes co founder, I realized it really was. And it is because of this that FON and Plazes have signed an agreement to work together. Foneros who want to will appear in Plazes. Plazes users will be able to use Plazes to find FON´s hotspots, at least during the part of our history when they will need to be found. Moreover, I have accepted to be on Plazes´ advisory board and Felix in ours. I am disclosing this so the WSJ does not give me a hard time for blogging that Plazes is great while I am on their board. But hey, I thought Plazes was great before joining their board…that does count?

This year the Safe Democracy Foundation has elected not to organize another conference ,to commemorate 11M’s Second Anniversary.

Instead, we are building a collaborative blog and inviting well respected and prestigious authors from around the world to write articles about the resolution of conflicts and strengthening of democracies.

We have received the first three articles, two of them written in English and one in Spanish.

Reconsidering the war on terror By George Soros (for Safe Democracy)

The Palestinian political earthquake: a suggestion for breakthrough By Walid Salem (for Safe Democracy)

España y Naciones Unidas, cincuenta años después Por Javier Rupérez (para Safe Democracy)

I am staying at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. This hotel design is great except that the walls are very thin and both of my neighbors are watching TV. I can hear them well. I am annoyed. I realize I practically never watch TV. I don’t watch TV in America. I don’t watch TV in Spain. When I read statistics on the amount of hours that other people spend watching TV I see how uncommon my behavior is. Interestingly most of my friends also watch very little TV. And they do very well in life. Is there an inverse correlation between hours spent watching TV and success in life?

As a result of yesterday´s announcement about FON there have been tens of thousands of new readers coming to my blog. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome these new readers and say a few things about myself and my blogs. First of all I am a blogaddict. I keep 6 blogs, three in English and three in Spanish. These blogs are Safe Democracy. Safe Democracy is one of my foundation in Europe. Safe Democracy and Club de Madrid organized a very large conference on Democracy and Terrorism attended by 1300 experts and over 20 heads of States as well as Kofi Annan. The result is that blog. Then I have the blog of the Varsavsky Foundation which as opposed to Safe Democracy is not a collaborative blog. I am the only writer in that blog and it is there where I speak about my (many times controversial political views), I keep those away from this blog as this blog is my blog as an entrepreneur. This blog tells the story of FON and also of many ideas that I have that never make it into companies. Now in my blogs I reserve the right to not accept commentaries. I also reserve the right to delete or change posts should circumstances arise that make me do so, for example if pressed by my lawyers or other people´s lawyers. I also reserve the right to ammend posts for the same reasons. Lastly this blog tells my views on FON, they reflect the spirit of the entrepreneur but FON also has its own blogs and fora and for official FON information you should go to the FON web site.

Carlos Manuel Varsavsky, my father, was a great man. Yes I know, everyone thinks his dad was/is great. But believe me, mine really was. Although I could only enjoy him for 22 years this astrophysicist from Harvard taught me more about life and science than anybody else ever will. My father died in 1983, way before the birth of the web. Lately however, he keeps showing up on the web, more and more. Why would someone bother digging up scientific articles from the 60s and listing them online? I guess what my father did must be somehow relevant today. I don´t know. I can´t understand his articles except of course the one on the Nine Day Week, a simple, brilliant idea. I have only words of appreciation for the people who are doing that recovery job. The web can bring great thinkers back to life.