Last Friday I organized a dinner in La Judería resturant in Sevilla and a lot of people from the Spanish Web and Blog community were present: Wicho from Microsiervos, Enrique Dans, Ismael El-Qudsi from Microsoft, Anil de Mello from Mobuzz, Ricardo Galli from Meneame, Julio Alonso from Weblogs SL, Eduardo Arcos, Arturo Paniagua, Manu Contreras, Carlos Martinez, Alexandra Guerrero, Carlos Mantero, Paloma Abad and Jaime Fernández from Hipertextual, Fernando Serer and Alejandro Carravedo from Blogestudio , and Jonan from Pixel y Dixel.

During the dinner I realized that most of the Spanish Internet was at the same table, that together we had something like 30 million uniques per day if you added all those sites and Fon. It was then I started thinking at how to turn to good use this great communication potential. While having a drink after dinner I talked with groups of bloggers asking them what we could do together. Ricardo Galli had a great idea for which he suggested the name “Si a Internet”, “Yes to the Internet”.

This initiative begins from noticing something which is probably already clear to most of the people who work or live on the Web: traditional media see the Internet as a threat to their business and power and frequently publish articles or TV programs and print talking that portrays the Internet as the wrong lifestyle choice. One day is about pedophiles, another one about terrorists on the internet, or whatever may make the average person feel uncomfortable with a new media that is undermining their cozy livelihood.

“Si a Internet” would be our answer: a button on the websites represented at the table and everyone else who likes this idea that will link to a website explaining how Internet is becoming the real source for critical thinking and not a safe haven for terrorists, drug addicts and pedophiles, as the Spanish press likes to argue ( same happens in many other countries).

I think it´s time that all key web sites adopt a common ethics code and endorse a common platform that would make the average citizen feel comfortable with the internet as its major source of news, communication and entertainment. This would of course require more self policing on the side of those who work on the internet including a fight against spamming and other sources of discomfort on the net.

In any case this is still only at the idea stage.

23andMe, the company founded by Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey and in which I’m an investor, is going to give a Launch Party next monday in Palo Alto, California. 23andMe will help individuals understand their own genetic information using recent advances in DNA analysis technologies and web-based interactive tools.

After providing a saliva sample, 23andMe users will be able to enjoy interactive tools to shed new light on themselves, their close family and their distant ancestors.  Having  created myself and invested in so many internet companies in which interaction is done by your hands, eyes and ears the I find the concept of a company who you first encounter donating saliva, both weird and fascinating. Who would have thought that all there is to know about your genes can be simply found….in your saliva.  Sperm could be a more interesting as a way to enter a community but I guess saliva is more egalitarian.  Now thinking about this maybe the next mashup is between 23andme and Match.com…find out before more about your mate….before you mate.

Seesmic is my friend Loic Le Meur‘s new start up. It’s similar to Twitter, but uses video instead of short text messages. I recently invested in Seesmic.

Loic and his team are working hard in San Francisco to build this new exciting social video platform. When launched, Seesmic will allow users to post videos on the site using their webcams or files and will automatically publish them on other popular sites (Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and others soon).  Many people are already doing this in Beta.

The service is built with openness in mind: it’s not trying to replicate other social networks or video sites, it builds on top of the best ones. The purpose is aggregating, sharing and tracking conversations about the best professional and user-generated video content on the Web.

Soon users will be able to post videos straight from Skype (our partners at FON) and interact with their Seesmic friends with a Joost widget (another company I invested in).

Loic is documenting every day of his new startup with a series of videos published on seesmic.com.

I have invested in Tumblr, the company co-founded by David Karp, who I recently had a chance to meet. Tumblr is a clever mix between Twitter, blogs and social networks like Facebook.

If we think of a blog as a diary, then a tumblr is similar to a collection of notes about interesting things found on the net or whatever else you might want to share with your friends (links, photos, videos, audio, text messages).

Not everybody has the time or interest to create and maintain a blog, yet with Tumblr anyone can create a simple and beautifully designed personal page to aggregate his digital identity and share content with their friends.

Tumblr can automatically import content from most of the Web 2.0 sharing services you use and show it as a continuous stream on your tumblr. When I shoot a photo with my unlocked iPhone, the iFlickr application automatically uploads it to Flickr and Tumblr shows it on my page, alongside my twitter and blog posts.

Tumblr has just released its 3.0 version with lots of new features and a stunning graphic design which also looks great on the iPhone.

Many readers have asked me to comment on the technology that we use in the solar farms that we are building together with my partner Miguel Salis. Here´s a presentation that explains how this technology works.