While print media organizations worldwide are trying to figure out how to make money online, facing declining revenues and a shrinking audience for their print editions, a startup based in Chicago is going the opposite direction, aggregating blog posts and user-generated content from the Internet and publishing it via print.

The Printed Blog, founded by Joshua Karp a few months ago, is something similar to a printed, localized Digg – the selection of content is done by readers who vote the best local news. They plan to publish hundreds of highly-localized editions based on what each community declares is important to them. The papers will be distributed to neighborhood pickup points twice a day, and will include reader comments.

This startup seems to believe there will be always space for printed media. It’s just the model that needs to change to adapt to the Web 2.0 era, bringing personalized and highly relevant news to a comfortable and familiar medium, good old paper.

While I recently cancelled all my newspaper subscriptions, a tough decision I made after I realized I get all my news online, I still think paper is the most comfortable medium to read your news (until ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle will get better and cheaper).

The Printed Blog’s business model is the usual free newspaper model, giving out newspapers for free while making money attracting local advertisers and selling classified ads. The Printed Blog won’t have to pay for editors, thanks to a revenue sharing agreement with blog authors, but will still have to support costs for printing and distribution. We’ll see if enough advertisers will be attracted by the opportunity to address a hyper-local audience and make this innovative model profitable.

This performance was remarkable, amazing, unique. Beardyman the famous beatboxer got together on stage with one of the world´s top violinists, Hillary Hahn. The result is in this video. Enjoy.

With no discredit to all the great tech conferences in Europe, including Le Web, SIME, MMF, Google and Zeitgeist – DLD is simply the best. DLD is fun, a perfect combination of content, networking and entertainment. You have to give credit to the Germans. They are the best organized people in Europe. And, it shows in this event where every single detail seems to be thought out – from the custom made espressi to the Mercedes 450HP that take you around everywhere you want to go. Flawless.

So here are some pictures from my conversation with Rene Oberman CEO of DT and of the Hispanic Internet Panel that I moderated (the links contain the live blogging that went on)

And here´s a simple video that I made with some moments. The end at the speaker´s lounge in which Joichi Ito, David Kirkpatrick, Mark Zuckerberg and my son Tom appear is in Spanish

Here´s a Valleywag article on Skipping Davos that I found interesting. Other years most in the DLD crowd went straight to Davos, this year some went home or headed for TED.

I am at a panel at DLD with the vague name of telling stories. There is Fernando Sulichin the Argentine film maker in a weird panel blend with my friend Loic LeMeur and Valleywag feeder Julia Allison. The first comment on this panel is that people whose life is on the Internet seem to live in a separate world from people whose life is in the movie industry even though they both tell stories. Bloggers like Loic and Julia and myself, we tell stories, and so does Fernando when he makes a movie, and so do people who write books. But the way we tell these stories is fundamentally different. When bloggers speak, people reply. When movie directors film, people watch. Fernando has a depth in talking about subjects that Loic and Julia don´t have because you can tell that Fernando has TIME in his life and Loic and Julia do not. Fernando is not on Twitter, Fernando is not checking his friends updates on Facebook, Fernando is not on Netvibes with a million blogs. Fernando´s next story is the life of Jesus as a revolutionary with Tim Robbins acting in it. I don´t even know Fernando, but I sometimes get the feeling that people who want to tell a good story, in depth, should not be on the Internet more than an hour per day.

Yesterday Nina and I flew to Essaouira. It was great flight to pilot because we flew alongside the snowed Atlas mountains. At Essaouira, a beautiful Moroccan town in the Atlantic coast I was surprised to find out that at some point the city was 40% Jewish. Doing some research, I found these two Wikipedia articles that I link to. One is about Essaouira itself and the other is about the history of Moroccan Jews.

Modern Essaouira has a fusion French Moroccan flavor that works beautifully. There are some negatives, especially how dirty the beach is. It is surprising that with the high level of unemployment in Morocco they don´t clean the beach of plastic debris. The issue of uncollected garbage seems to have something to do with a lack of education of the people of Essaouira who throw garbage around as they walk. Interestingly, compared to my native Argentina (a country that ranks high on cleanliness), where crime is very common, Morocco seem to be mostly crime free at least as far as tourists are concerned. Coming from Latin America, I find that Morocco, and India for that matter, are a proof that poverty, inequality and unemployment do not necessarily lead to crime. In general I think that tolerance to crime or pollution are cultural issues and not clearly related to economic conditions. Morocco seems to be a country where people and places are extremely clean from the door in but that the moment you step outside, the area is seen as nobody´s property and then it is also seen as there for all to abuse. The strongest example I have seen of this is the entrance to one of the best hotels in Marrakesh, The Villa des Orangiers. The hotel exterior looks like a shanty town. The interior is one of the nicest I have ever seen.

But environmental issues aside, Essaouira is a magical place that I want to return to. The people are very nice (except when you try to take a picture of them which I still need to understand why), the food is great and the light and the landscape is unbelievable. We had a day of passing clouds and the different tones of off whites and blues made the whole experience memorable. The combination of Marrakesh, Essaouira by the sea and the Atlas Mountains makes this part of the world a must in the itinerary of the global traveler.

Nina and I arrived this afternoon in Marrakech, less than a two hour flight from Madrid. As you can see from our pictures Morocco maybe close to Spain but culturally it is pretty removed. Marrakech looks much more like Damascus, than say, Malaga which is much closer. While these days of the Gaza war have been tough for those in the conflict and also rocky in my Spanish and English blogs where a lot of disagreement took place I felt that these pictures would be a good counterpoint. And I do recommend to my readers to come to Marrakesh, especially at this time of the year, the weather is perfect, during the day it is around 18 degrees, very sunny, and there are such few tourists!

Here´s a slide show on Marrakesh