2007 22
Skype Flat Rate Plan
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Skype just came out with an amazing flat rate plan in Europe. Only 2 euros per month and you can call as much as you want to all fixed lines. This is great for us at Fon as now the value of buying a Skype WiFi phone bundled with our Fonera increases as it makes more sense to look for Fonspots to call for free once you are in this plan.
2007 22
FON Makes Deal With Mobile Operator Debitel
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I am pleased to announce that Debitel and FON will start working together to grow the FON WiFi network, so Debitel customers with Nokia and other WiFi phones can call and surf for free when they find Fon WiFi. This offer will make it easier for mobile customers to choose Debitel over competitors and will help FON grow its network.
FON has also released today its first Symbian client for Nokia handset that makes it easier for Nokia WiFi phones to connect to FON.
2007 22
Have You Had Problems Installing La Fonera?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I am concerned about us at FON providing the best service that we can to FONeros that here it goes. If you have any problem with with your La Fonera installation, please write it here as a comment to this post and I promise to read it and try to do something about it.
Problems can include things like “I have not received my Fonera”, “I tried to install it and could not make it work”, “I got only the myplace network, but not FON”, “I tried to register in the maps, but I could not get my address correctly in the map”, “I disconnected the Fonera, because it only has one Ethernet port and I only had one cable”, “I connected it, but could not put it near a window because my router is too far from any windows”, or you have not found time to start connecting it, or anything else you would like to say.
Now over 100,000 Foneras were so far connected successfully, but that still leaves tens of thousands that were delivered during the last weeks not connected and I would really like to get a sense of what is going on and help out. Think about it, did you ever want to complain all the way straight to the CEO? Now you can and your complaint will be public and in my blog.
2007 21
Live Near a Starbucks?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Get a Free Fonera!
2007 21
Will Youtube Ban Videos With Ads?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Youtube is a phenomenal video platform. Youtube, however, is also a business. So far censorship at Youtube has been along two lines: removing content that people post but do not own, and removing content that is deemed pornographic.
In the case of copyright, the issue has been clear. Content that is owned by the major studios, production companies has to be removed if they so request. Pornography has been more iffy but Youtube has taken the American approach that considers both nudity and sex to be pornography. In Europe where I live nudity is commonplace and appears in most major newspapers and even views towards pornography are more relaxed. In Europe’s competitor to Youtube, Daily Motion pornography is featured as well.
But what about a new type of censorship that may appear in Youtube, a ban on commercials? Say you make content and you get Adidas to sponsor it. Will Youtube allow you to post your content with your own ads and not share with Youtube? And to be more precise, what is an ad? Is a product endorsement an ad? Is an infommercial an ad?
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2007 21
Mobile VolP Services ranked by Alexaholic
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
After having mapped out the available VolP technology services for cell phones, it seemed like a good idea to use Alexaholic to compare the reach and growth of these services. Alexaholic is a refurbished version of Alexa Internet, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that provides information on the quantity of visits that websites receive and their comparative popularity.
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2007 20
Reddit and Spanish (non) Religion
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
In October of last year, I wrote this post What Happens when a Country gives up Religion…. where I comment that Spain gave up religion and actually did very well after doing so. Spain went from being a very poor Catholic country to being a wealthy country (approaching GDP per capita of Germany) that mostly treats Catholicism as a tradition and frequently legislates against its teachings (the latest case has been the approval of Gay Marriage). Then I go on to say that in spite of so many things in Spain being legal that are illegal in most of the States (or say that all of Spain has the legislation of Las Vegas and more), the country is overall quite moral and ethical and much less police, prisons and arms are needed per inhabitant than in USA. My point here is that violence against things some may not like does not always seem to be the best approach. Tolerance is best. This article was plicked up by Reddit two days ago and the most hilarious string of comments followed. Some spilled over into my blog. Needless to say visits to my blog went through the roof and around 20K people read the article. What follows is some of these comments.
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2007 19
Video Calling: Windows Live vs Skype
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Disclosure: Skype is an investor in FON. Microsoft maybe somehow involved with FON one day , but in spite of the different meetings we have had we have not made any deals. Google is an investor in FON. I am the founder of FON.
Now here’s my view on video calling . . .
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2007 17
Why Is It That Immigrants Have So Many Children?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in New Ideas with No Comments
El Pais, Spain’s leading newspaper, reveals today that while 10 years ago 1.81% of all new babies were born out of immigrant families, the figure last year was 17.6% and is rapidly rising. Since immigrants represent only 8.5% of the population, these figures show a huge difference between the number of babies that native-born Spaniards and immigrants have.
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2007 15
Creative Commons Licenses
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Last week I had a very good talk with my friend Joichi Ito, who Chairs Creative Commons, at the FON Party. Creative Commons is addressing a great need that many of us have. Before Creative Commons, copyright belonged to a corporation or copy was not protected and then there was no control to what happened to it and no attribution. Creative Commons filled a niche in between.
Here´s an example of CC use that concerns me. Wicho, a top Spanish blogger and photographer, took this picture of me at a conference. Computer World of Denmark was writing an article about FON and they took the picture from Flickr, because it was under CC license. In this way we all benefit. The magazine did not have to send a photographer to Spain, I am in the cover of Computer World, and Whicho got to do a cover and got the credit (thanks Alvy from Microsiervos for the link).
