2008 27
Fonera + 3G modem = WiFi everywhere
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
In this video John Crispin from Fon shows how a Fonera can obtain WiFi from a 3G modem. If you are a developer and would like to write apps for the new Fonera 2.0 pls write to iurgi@fon.com.
2008 27
Most Investment Banks are gone, Jefferies survives
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
In this video I tell how investment banks used to work with entrepreneurs and I wonder what we are going to do now that most except Jefferies are gone.
Image via Wikipedia
I am following the Asia/Europe meeting with great interest. This is what the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband had to say:
‘I don’t think it’s just the fact that we are meeting in The Great Hall of the People and we listened to the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party talking about the need to prop up global capital markets that brings home to one that there is this big shift in economic power.”
Brutal paradoxes these days. While the Bush administration nationalizes banks, the “communists” lead the way to save global financial markets.
I end this commentary with one of the most depressing posts about the state of the union I read in a long time.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=12f581e2-f8c1-43f8-877c-6d80bb2929f7)
2008 24
Alan Greenspan is shocked and so is everyone
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I was reading about how shocked Greenspan is at the global financial cancer that developed during his leadership of the world economy. Now the worse part of this is that I believe him. The problem with conspiracy theories against the Bush administration is that they fail to explain why would anyone in the Bush administration would want America to collapse the way it did and drag the world along with it.
This was not a conspiracy. This was just incompetence. A blind belief in markets. A conviction that if government just got out of the picture everything would self adjust in the end. The result? Bush established socialist America, in which the US government is the largest home owner and bank owner in the world.
The only good news is that if this had to be done, I am very pleased that Obama will come to power after this disaster. If Obama had had to start his presidency nationalizing everything he would have been accused of being a communist.
Now one current development that is very unfair is that even though the current crisis is the result of USA mismanagement and at the beginning US markets were affected more than others, currently the dollar is king and foreign markets are down more than USA. And this is when the rest of the world saved and USA squandered.
I met Joschka Fischer on Monday to talk about an idea that I had a few years ago: the creation of a new European Party. Joschka Fischer did not think this is a good idea. I still think that there are two forces in Europe that could need support, one is the Pro European forces and the other ones are the Pro Diversity forces (or anti nationalist forces). There are a lot of people in Europe who think Europe is a great idea. Especially during this crisis. And there are a a lot of people in Europe who are negatively rubbed off by nationalists, like myself, and who think humanity is a concept that is as or more important than nationality.
2008 22
ZON@FON em Campo de Ourique launched
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
We’re growing really fast in Portugal, mostly thanks to the agreement FON reached with Zon, the biggest cable internet and TV provider in Portugal. October 18th became another landmark for FON, when we officially launched a WiFi density project in Campo de Ourique, a district in Lisbon with its own unique atmosphere. Without being too touristy, Campo de Ourique is bustling with cultural and commercial activity, and has succeeded in becoming something like a dynamic mini city within Lisbon itself.
Unlike Chueca WiFi, which is a density project created with great effort by FON, in “ZON@FON em Campo de Ourique” we have been able to experience the efficiency and speed of collaborating with a partner like ZON; in less than a month, the project has grown to include 225 hotspots, to date. We can now say that practically 100% of Campo de Ourique is covered with WiFi through ZON@FON (here you can see the evolution of the coverage).
2008 21
George Soros on how to get out of the crisis
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Image via Wikipedia
Soros: There are five major elements.
— First, the government needs to recapitalize the banking system by buying equity stakes in banks.
— Second, interbank lending needs to be restarted with guarantees and bringing LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) in line with Fed funds. This is in the works. It is going to happen.
— Third, we must reform the mortgage system in the U.S., minimizing foreclosures and renegotiating loans so that mortgages are not worth more than houses. Stemming foreclosures will cushion the fall of housing prices.
— Fourth, Europe has to fix a weakness of the Euro by creating a safety net for its banks. While initially resisting this, they have now found religion and done it at their meeting in Paris on Sunday.
— Fifth, the IMF must deal with the vulnerability of countries at the periphery of the global financial system by providing a financial safety net. This is also in the works. The Japanese have already offered $200 billion for this purpose.
These five steps will start the healing process. If we implement these measures effectively, we will have passed through the worst of the financial crisis. via Huffington Post
George Soros was my first investor at Viatel. I disclose this because you may think that my agreement with his plan may have something to do with that. But that was in 1995 and if I post his comment, which is something I rarely do in this blog. It’s because I agree with them.
Now to add something that Soros left out, I believe that another needed element to get out of this crisis is to sort out who will run USA. The combination of such a horrendous crisis with a US President with the lowest ratings in history and two extremely different candidates competing for what is now going to be the toughest job in the world adds tremendous uncertainty to the purchase of any assets. I wish they could move the US elections forward.
2008 21
Berlin Tempelhof will not operate as an airport anymore…
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Here´s a video on one of the last landings at Tempelhof.
2008 20
Fonero brunch in Berlin: introducing the Fonera 2.0
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I keep getting asked where the Fonero event is on Tuesday morning. It is at Cookie’s Cream Restaurant, Unter den Linden / Friedrichsstrasse (next to KPM) at 1030. At this event we will introduce the Fonera 2.0 which is a new Fon social WLAN or WiFi router that does many more things than allowing you to share a little signal at home and roam the world for free.
The new Fonera 2.0 is the open source router that allows you to manage your relationship with the Web 2.0. Examples? You can stick a USB pen drive full of pictures and have the fonera directly send the pictures to Flickr while you take your laptop along with you somewhere else. Same with videos, torrents, etc. More tomorrow.
2008 19
Fon.gs and other Fon´s “toolvertorials”
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Some time ago at Fon we decided to improve on TinyURL and came up with Fon.gs or Fon Get Simple as we call it. The idea was that as opposed to TinyURL at Fon.gs you could both shorten and choose the name of your domain. Plus Fon.gs is already consideraby shorter than tinyurl.com. But of course what we wanted to do is to find an inexpensive way of having our company name, Fon circulate on the internet. I am glad to see that our “Toovertorial” worked and already over 2 million fon.gs have been served. Other Toolvertorials from Fon include Gspace the free cloud storage tool which is used by half a million people around the world. And Twitxr, the twitter with geolocation and picture upload to Facebook and Flickr that is used by around 70K people per month. Less successful ones such as Unfolding News (the search engine for news as they unfold real time) which allows you follow a certain topic minute by minutes as news are written about it and Gmail uploader, a tool that allows you to load old Outlook emails into Gmail (Gmail is great for search but when you open an account you wish it had your emails). Now of all these tools the most successful one has been the Fonspots software that allows your Linux or Mac connected to 3G to turn into a Fonspot. This tool is the most relevant to our business at Fon. My advise to other start ups is that in difficult times when advertising and even PR is outside of your budget try having your coders spend a few hours developing “toolvertorials” people will remember you and like you more when they use them.