2006 30
Francisco de Narvaez and the Curse of Being Rich
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Being rich is great until….you run for political office. Regardless of whether you are in Argentina, as is the case of my friend Francisco de Narvaez , or anywhere else in the democratic world, being rich is generally seen as an obstacle for political candidates.
Why is being rich a handicap even for people like Francisco de Narvaez, who are not running conservative campaigns aimed at favoring the interest of the top earners?
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2006 28
Should I Stay or Should I Go: US in Iraq
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in New Ideas with No Comments
I think that it´s time that United States learns from the way anti American pseudo democrats are dealing with democracy to suit their own political objectives. Democratically elected leader Ahmadinejad is a master at getting Iranian voters to back him in his anti American agenda. So why doesn´t America use the same method to legitimize the Iraqi invasion?
I think USA should run the Should I stay or Should I go referendum in Iraq. Instead of having yet another meeting to discuss in Washington what should happen in Iraq, USA should ask the Iraqi people what they want them to do in Iraq.
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I am going to start writing about restaurants in my English blog (there are some in my Spanish blog and are generally negative), and will start with La Huella of serial restaurant developer Martin Pitaluga.
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2006 26
Do You Wait For Loved Ones At The Airport?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in New Ideas with No Comments
This morning I drove from Jose Ignacio, Uruguay, to Carrasco International Airport to pick up 3 of my four kids. In NYC, where I used to live, I would go to greet dear ones at JFK and I would be normally surrounded by limo drivers. I was really surprised at how few people were actually greeted not by a driver, but by people who loved them. In Madrid things are somewhat better, I would say loved ones significantly outnumber drivers. I seemed to remember that things were different in Argentina and Uruguay but had no proof until this morning.
In this video I show a packed waiting area where families wait standing, in many cases holding babies so they are there first when their loved ones come out. I then come up with a weird idea in which you measure how affectionate people are in a certain country by counting the number of people who come and greet them at the airport in proportion to the arriving passengers. In this case it was a MOB scene for only two international flights.
2006 26
Lucas Morando And The Opinionated Interview
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
A few days ago I was interviewed by Lucas Morando, of Perfil, the second largest Sunday Paper in Argentina. Yesterday the interview came out in print. I can´t link to it cause it´s not on line.Unfortunately, Lucas Morando is one of those poor journalists who uses interviews to justify his opinion. In this case that Educ.ar, a program started by my foundation in 2000, is a failure.
Lucas Morando´s technique is simple. Conduct a one hour interview and then use only a few random phrases from the whole interivew to justify your (incorrect) view. Of course, anything in life can be seen as a success or a failure, but Lucas Morando´s view is just not sustainable.
What was clearly a donation of mine, in which I donated $11.2 million dollars to the Argentine Education Ministry to create the education portal and raised around $100 million more from many sources to connect Argentine schools to the interne,t Lucas calls a loss and compares it to a true business loss I had when I lent $6 million to a defunkt Argentine airline called Southern Winds and lost half of that money.
Well Lucas, donations are not losses. Donations are actually made knowing that you will “lose” the funds, but personally I think that Educ.ar is the best investment I could have ever done for the future of my country, Argentina. This year alone millions of student used Educ.ar, 11,000 teachers were trained, half a million educational CDs were destributed to teachers around the country and 65,000 computers were installed. Hardly a loss….
2006 25
Project with Diego Basch
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Other Projects with No Comments
I am working with Diego Basch of Flaptor on an idea that I have had over a year now. The concept is a plug in that attaches to chat like IM, Skype, etc and that while you chat it searches the uncommon words that appear in the chat and provides you with elements you can use in the chat.
In this way you become a more efficient, smarter chatter. It combines the power of chat and search.
2006 24
Penis Envy and Christmas Envy
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
A Jewish scientist, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, came up with a controversial concept called Penis Envy, whereby women are supposed to envy our penises. Well I don´t know if this is true or not but as a man I know that the opposite can also be true. I envy my wife for having had the ability to deliver our wonderful son Leo a month ago. So if they, women, envy our penises I can say that us men, certainly envy their ability “grow life”, the only miracle that we do get to experience in real life.
Now while we may not know if Penis Envy is a generalized phenomenom, I can tell you for sure that there is another kind of envy that many Jews feel but few confess to it and that is what I would call Christmas envy. No matter what we try to do with Hanukkah it just can´t compare to the global explosiong of love (and yes of commerce too) called Christmas. So even though most fellow Jews will not confess to it I will. I suffer from a serious case of Christmas Envy. And after this heartfelt confession I will go further. I wish each and everyone of you who celebrate Christmas, a wonderful evening full of love and joy!
2006 22
At FON We Are Going Crazy With Redesigns, Now Gspace!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Not only did we redesign the home page of FON, but now we are doing a major overhaul of Gspace. As a reminder the reason we own Gspace is that when we launch the fon liberator now renamed Fonera 2.0 (cause it helps you upload and download stuff to and from the net) we will give gspace users a choice to store stuff on gmail or in their hard drives directly connected to the Fonera 2.0.
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2006 22
Blog Tag becomes la Mancha Bloguera
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I got invited by David Isenberg to play blog tag. As I saw how huge this game had become in the English blogosphere I decided to shift it to the Spanish Blogosphere and called it Mancha Bloguera. I invited top Argentine Blogger, Mariano Amartino, top Mexican/Ecuatorian blogger Eduardo Arcos, top Spanish business blogger Enrique Dans, a very creative Argentine blogger, Fabio, and the last invitation I left open to the first blogger who asks me to invite him/her.
2006 22
Fonero Gets Fonero Program Takes Off!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Wow, just saw the numbers in the Fonero gets Fonero program. In Europe we are giving out only one invite per Fonero although as the person invited connects we will replenish invitation. In USA, where our Fonero density is lower, we are giving out 3.
From what I saw of the first 1100 invitations that went out 492 Foneros who got the invite invited somebody in the first 24 hours. That is great as nobody better than a fonero to want others to be Foneros so they can roam their neighborhood, city, country, world for free with their wifi gadgets and also because they know how to do everything and can explain less techie friends. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!