2007 15
The New Nokia Tablet N800 And FON
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Thanks Bernard Tyers for explaining so clearly how to make the new Nokia Tablet (which I have and love) work with FON.
2007 15
Happy New Year to All Chinese FONeros!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Happy Lunar New Year from the FON team! We wish everyone a healthy and successful year of the Pig.
Fernando Espuelas, founder of Starmedia, a Spanish portal, who had to leave the company under difficult circumstances, now makes a comeback as a content provider, first for TV and now again through the internet via Joost.
Here´s a copy of the press release.
Gspace, a company I own, is a good illustration of the main difference between the Web 1.0 and the Web 2.0 is. And no, it’s not user generated content. In the Web 1.0, we used to advertise with old media to let our sites be known, while in the Web 2.0 not only do we NOT advertise but we successfully compete with old media.
I use Gspace as an example because it is the company with the highest reach to employee ratio that I have ever been involved with. Gspace, an application that sends files normally stored in your PC to be stored in the internet in the form of Gmail, is growing at a rate of 5000 new downloads per day. Gspace is also very useful due to two unique features of its application: one it grows without any advertising (blogosphere and word of mouth work very well); and two, it was built by one part time employee and now it is being improved by another part time employee. These two part time employees are the only two Gspace ever had. Think of this, a community that is adding around 100K new users per month into a platform that can be used for advertising that has never had a full time employee. That is the Web 2.0. And there are many stories like these: Flickr, Delicious, are two hugely popular apps and companies built by very few employees.
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2007 13
Moneytrackin, Online Accounting For You And Me
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Investments with No Comments
I am an investor in Moneytrackin. I blogged about this project when it was still just an idea. Now it’s online . The concept of Moneytrackin is simple: keeping track of expenses is best done online.
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2007 13
USA Goes Back To Number one Position At FON
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
When we started FON, USA was our number one country, but it soon fell behind other countries, as far back as to position number 6 in the world, after Germany, Spain, Korea, Japan and France.
For a while we did not seem to find the right management, nor strategy. But recently, thanks to the great job of our new US management team headed by our US CEO Joanna Rees, a proven entrepreneur involved with many companies, probably the most relevant being Danger, and Faisal Galaria, our head of US biz dev, formerly at Skype, USA is back at position numero uno with around 40K registered FONeros and around 20K Foneras ordered.
In March, we expect to be able to report that FON is the largest WiFi network in the States by number of locations. Congratulations Joanna and Faisal, u rule!!!
2007 10
Used Books In Paris…And Copyright
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
This week I spend time hanging out with Joichi Ito who, among other things, Chairs Creative Commons. Joi, who is a good friend and also the lead fonero of FON Japan, alerted me to the fact that copyright owners keep trying to extend the rights of their licenses into areas that historically were out of bounds.
I comment on the subject in this video shot in Paris at a used book stand .
2007 10
Skype On Your Nokia? Use Fring
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
It´s been a long time that I have been wanting to use Skype on my beloved Nokia N80 Symbian phone (disclosure, Skype is my partner at FON and I am on the internet advisory board of Nokia).
Fring has found a way to do this. I just tested it and it worked beautifully. For FON these developments are great, because they give more reasons for people to look for FONspots and make free calls.
While we intended our numero uno birthday free fonera givaway campaign to be for the USA only, we decided to ship to Canada and the UK as well. So Canada and the UK are part of the birthday celebration campaigns!
Bienvenidos Foneros canadienses e ingleses! So now if you are a resident of USA, Canada and UK click here to get your free Fonera while limited supplies last.
2007 7
We Are REALLY Sorry USA!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I just came back from the FON party. It´s 3am in Madrid (our one year birthday party was wild) and I find out that our servers sunk due to ENORMOUS demand for Foneras from the States. This is because many blogs linked to our offer that we were giving them away for free for our birthday.
We know that thousands of people who tried to get the Foneras got rejected by our site. We apologize. We just never had so much demand in our history as a company and we were simply not ready to take so many orders per hour. We were not really able to add capacity tonight in Madrid, but now so many people got rejected and gave up that the ones who come in are getting through and are getting their Foneras.
I feel bad about this cause it´s unfair. Those who came first did not get them and those who come now do. Don´t know how to fix that. But now it´s working fine.