I am on the board of One Voice a not for profit organization that promotes understanding between Palestinians and Israelis. Right now there´s a live session going on at Davos that is called Enough is Enough: Israel and the Palestinian Territories. What follows is an email from the founder of One Voice, my friend Daniel Lubetzky. You can watch the session here.
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John Markoff represents what is best about American journalism. He is fair, balanced and can explain technology to non geeks. So when John Markoff says “Move Over Silicon Valley Here Come European Start ups”, people listen. And by people I mean very important people like…my mother who is 67 and who normally does not believe in things until they appear….in the New York Times. After the article appeared on line (yes, I have an online Mom) she wrote to me all excited that she had read about my investing activities in the New York Times. For her this is the only source of truth in the news world (my blog of course is at the other end of the spectrum 😉 ).

Thanks John for giving this type of “kosher” certification to my investing activities in European start ups!



Arianna founded the Huffington Post, an amazing on line newspaper/blog that has taken America by storm. I met Arianna on Sunday at DLD. Boy is she smart. I don´t know how old she is but she is good looking, self confident and funny (this goes for this stupid rumour started by Vanity Fair that says that women are not funny, if you don´t believe me watch her video). Now Arianna is also quick and after a great conversation she invited me to blog on her site. I had to say yes. Arianna herself is a great writer. Here´s her description of DLD, the Davos of New Media.



Here´s Craig from Craigslist. I loved his presentation at DLD. One thing that surprised me is how Craig used the example of Bush´s reasons for invading Iraq when explaining the tools that Craigslist was implementing to avoid scams.

Pierre Chappaz just sent me the press release that appears below with the good news that Wikio raised 4 million euros. As an investor in the first round, when Wikio was nothing more than a concept, I am happy to see that Wikio has grown to be the most popular European blog and media search engine in only a year.

This round follows the Series A round that came less than a year after my investment in Netvibes, the very successful internet start up page now used by around 10 million people founded by my good friend Tariq Krim, but now also co managed by Pierre Chappaz. Interestingly Pierre Chappaz is also the founder of Kelkoo, sold to Yahoo a few years ago. Pierre is one of the few people in Europe with a keen eye for what´s up and coming on the internet. First in e commerce with Kelkoo and now in content and information management with Netvibes and Wikio. Congratulations Pierre Chappaz and the whole Wikio team!
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David de Rotschild is an adventurer and also an ecologist. He is the head of Adventure Ecology, an expedition group raising awareness about climate change. In this video, David speaks about his next adventure, Plastiki. I read Kontiki when I was 14 and fell in love with the book. I think Plastiki is a great idea to bring awareness of the problem of plastics in the ocean in a way that is constructive, fun but yet repetitive enough to make a difference. Unfortunately a lot of what happens in high seas is unregulated as anyone can basically do whatever they want in high seas. But as it happens with pirates when nations got serious about them most piracy ended as pirates need to come ashore and so do ocean polluters.



Just me being interviewed about Fon.



Technorati is about to launch a fantastic new feature. I saw it but swore to David that I would not disclose it. So in this video David speaks about Technorati in general but if you want to know what this feature is wait a few days and don´t bother viewing it.

It´s here, pls go to Sunday, 17:40.

Normally I go to conferences as a speaker. But thanks to my interests as a blogger, I have been asking for different roles so not only I can tell others about Fon but I learn about what others are doing. At SIME things work out well and I was both moderator of a very interesting pannel with Hjalmar Windbladh, Marko Ahtissari, Carlos Bhola and others and then I was also suprisingly given the role of rapper!, at DLD I managed to do slightly better. I am moderating an interesting panel with Nicholas Negroponte among others.

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