2007 24
Google is relevant, Fon is useful
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Lately there has been some criticism about FON having created the FON Labs. Some Foneros say that FON should focus on making FON better and not waste its time creating such tools as Fon.gs, Gspace, or Gmailuploader because these don’t really address the FON’s core competence. In this post I would like to explain why is it that FON has chosen to do both: assign 40 coders to improve FON while also assigning 2 , who report directly to me, to develop FON Tools at the FON Labs.
Read More
2007 23
Google Earth, the new weapon for tax collectors?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Argentina with No Comments
Santiago Montoya, the controversial Undersecretary of Tax Collection of the Province of Buenos Aires best known for his Tax raids on Sex Hotels has now effectively started using Google Earth to collect taxes in Argentina. With Google Earth he can see the size of buildings and collect fines if they exceed the floor to area ratios (200 buildings did), he can identified undeclared properties, in short he can do better from his office collecting taxes that he can do in the field. While many accuse Santiago Montoya of being a self promoter American style DA a la Giuliani, the thing is that sometimes these ruthless and creative characters are needed to catch criminals and tax evaders.
2007 23
Get WiFi, build an Army
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
In this video my son Tom explains Metal Gear Solid on his PSP. What I found interesting is that finding WiFi signals gets you soldiers.
2007 23
My life in 3 minutes as told at Google Zeitgeist
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in MV with No Comments
In this video, Danny Rimer, from Index Ventures who moderated the panel I shared with Loic Le Meur and Marc Samwer at Google Zeitgeist, asks me to introduce myself. And I do….
Loic´s wife Geraldine was kind enough to film the rest of the super interesting session.
2007 23
FON is a Webware 100 Finalist
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
The Webware 100 Awards is a prize given by CNET, and FON has been selected as a finalist in the communications category by CNET’s editors, with another 250 companies among a total of 2000. Now, users around the world will decide which services are the 100 best (there will be 10 winners in each of the 10 categories), by voting on Webware.com. User voting for the Webware 100 will be open from Wednesday May 23 at Noon Pacific Time until 9:00 AM June 11.
All Foneros around the world can vote for FON here!!!
2007 23
Twitterholic posses
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Web 2.0 with No Comments
Have you ever wondered who the most successful Twitters are? Well I did so I asked my developers at Fon Labs to help me find the answer and they sent me to Twitterholic. Twitterholic basically measures your posse. It was there that I found out that some of my friends were in the leading group including Eduardo Arcos, Loic Le Meur and Enrique Dans. I was also interested to see how many parodies are in Twitter, namely people who say they are Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, and how successful those are.
I normally don´t blog about weird things but since I have a six month baby who is frequently breastfeeding nearby I just could not resist to blog this story.
Ezzat Attiya had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, saying adult men could breast-feed from female work colleagues as a way to avoid breaking Islamic rules that forbid men and women from being alone together.
When the definite book on the American Dream finally comes out, Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin deserve at least a chapter in it. I am not saying this because they just got married, nor because Sergey was the richest 30 something ellegible bachelor in the world but because theirs is a story of love that started well before the fame, went on in spite of it (not easy) and on top of this. Not only is this a story of his megasuccess anymore but Anne is now bringing her own potentially revolutionary start up to the relationship. 23andme Anne’s genetic mapping venture just got funded, and if she is successful not only will Sergey and Larry have delivered a world in which we can actually find things but Anne and Linda will deliver a world in which we can really know who we are.
Read More
2007 22
The usual suspects – Google Zeitgeist
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
We meet at conferences. Socially. Last night at the Google party we were all having fun. We invest with each other. Sometimes we negotiate against each other.
Tariq Krim, Marc Samwer, Loic Le Meur, Niklas Zennstrom, me and Brent Hoberman.
For many years I was a slave of both Microsoft and my own PC. Without Microsoft I could not compute, nor could I without my own PC. In the last 3 months I have decided to cut my bond with both, Microsoft and my own PC and so far things are working. But until today at Google Zeitgeist Europe I had not had a chance to test how well they were working. The opportunity arose because The Grove where the conference takes place is big hotel and my room is kind of far so when I left the conference center and I wanted to do some work I had a choice, go to my room and back, around 5 minutes, or stay at the conference where they have PCs and listen to Chad Hurley present Youtube. In short the choice was working on a PC that was not mine or go to my room and miss Chad. So since I am a fan of Chad (in spite of Youtube not being yet in Spanish), I decided to stay, listen to Chad and while I was doing that program one of the Lenovos that Google has for participants. So here’s the good news, that Lenovo was mine in less than 5 minutes. How? Foxmarks with all my bookmarks and username and passwords, cookies, was installed in 3 minutes. With this I could write this post for example. And then Gspace that has all my spreadsheets, docs, spreadsheets, family pictures, favorite songs, videos, was installed in 2 minutes so I had access to all my stuff. And Gmail of course was up there in an instant giving me my Fon email and the Gmail archives of my mail and google talk which is now integrated in Gmail. And that’s all I needed, in 5 minutes I had made the Lenovo mine. If I hadn’t been multitasking I could probably had done it in 3 minutes. And I remember the time when a new Windows PC would take 5 hours to configure. Chad was great btw, he showed a video of an octogenarian who is (yes) a star on Youtube.