People say that life becomes really enjoyable when we reach our 40s. According to what I read in Forbes, success is enjoyed from this age and onwards. In a youth obsessed world, I was amazed to discover that the most successful and famous people in USA are much older than I had thought.

Read More

Dell has acquired Zing maker of the Sansa Connect (reviewed by Endgadget). I think this is great news for all of us who while loving Apple products believe that time has come to have some real competition in the music playing arena. To me (and I know that I am still one of the few people out there who believe this) it is much better to walk around with a Sansa Connect than with an iPod. Why doesn´t the iPod have wifi connectivity is something that I can´t understand. And what´s worse, the iPhone has great WiFi connectivity but it cannot be used to stream or add new music. This is exactly where the Sansa Connect fits in. It is a tiny, elegant device that allows you to discover, share and play music wherever there is WiFi and it even stores new songs for you so when you are outside WiFi coverage you can still have fun. And the Yahoo Music version of the Sansa Connect is a start. I can see the Sansas being able to play videos from any platforms, work with Last.fm (my favorite online music community), Pandora, and any other online, video music service. As far as Dell is concerned I think acquiring Zing is smart because now that Michael Dell is back at the helm what Dell needs are novel products with great user interfaces. Zing is not just the Sansa. Zing is a team led by Tim Bucher, formerly at Next and Apple who is to great gadgets what Janus Friis (designer of Kazaa, Skype and Joost) is to great user interfaces. I would recommend that Tim´s talent is used not only to improve the Sansa but to help out accross the board in Dell´s design strategy.

There´s a new phenomenon in Spain. It´s called the Botellon. It´s huge. There´s a Botellón in most Spanish cities every night and probably there are no Spaniards under 25 who have never been to one.   Most go to a botellon over once a week.  What is a “Botellón”. A Botellon is a user generated bar. A bar that is improvised in a predefined place, say a park to which tons of people, many times over 1000 people, take drinks with them and give them to friends, friends of friends and sometimes to strangers. I am now in Palma de Mallorca and there is one very near the marina where my sailboat is at. It is a truly remarkable gathering, something that would probably not be allowed to take place in most countries other than highly permissive Spain (where we have Gay Marriage, legal P2P, gambling, prostitution, overall a highly tolerant society paradise to some, hell to others). For some in Spain Botellones are a horrible fad. Personally I am intrigued by them. In my Spanish blog there´s an article about them  and why they take place and readers wrote many explanations. The most common reason as to why people would prepare all sorts of alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks, cut lemon and lime, bring glasses, and be so kind to others is because for the price of a gin tonic at a disco they can get a whole bottle at the Botellon. Still that does not explain why drink donors would give them away as there never any money charged for drinks.  In my view the economic element is only part of the story. I think people are fascinated by the anarchic, social nature of botellones, they like to move around without the constraints and rules of a bar or disco. They like to meet their friends and run into old friends or even people they don´t know.  Botellones are like the social sites on the internet…live.   Bar and disco impresarios are extremely upset about the Botellones and try to lobby to make them illegal.  The three big negatives are noise from the street to people who live nearby, the abuse of alcohol and the fact that the very 2.0 attitude of creating a user generated bar ends when it gets time to clean up.  All these issues need to be addressed so Botellones can coexist well with the rest of Spanish society not involved in them.