2009 16
Lexus hybrids 4×4 are a disappointment
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
When I bought my Lexus RX400 in Spain in 2005, I thought that I would pay a high price for a car but both help the environment and save on maintenance and gas. After all, I was getting a hybrid, a car that is both an electric and gasoline car. But after some years of ownership, I have come to the conclusion that hybrids are neither so environmental nor economical. As for gasoline consumption, my Lexus uses 14 liters every 100 km. That is more liters than my other car, an Audi Q7 3.0 TDI albeit a diesel. And in terms of overall economy, whatever you supposedly save on gas you spend on service. Lexus has a super expensive service program because of some parts that must be replaced related to the way the car recharges the car batteries when braking. My calculation is that each km that you do in a Lexus costs 10c in terms of service costs alone.
disappointment
disappointment
2009 16
Nokia profits down 90% stock up 10%
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
Read this from CNET. Now see how the stock is doing right now.
2009 16
Outlook for ’09 at Fon
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
We are now facing the toughest environment that I have ever seen for start ups. We have gone from financial markets and VCs willing to finance dreams to a “show me the money” reality that will force start ups to close their doors if they can´t delivere. Fearing this new scenario and warned ahead of time by our investors at Allen and Co, I started cutting costs at Fon during early 08. The cutting was severe, we let go around half of our people, we shrank from around 90 employees around the world to 40 now. Moreover we stopped subsidizing our hardware. But surprisingly the combination of employee reductions with subsidy ends was still accompanied with tremendous revenue growth and now it is almost sure that Fon will start making money this year.
Fon earns margin out of two different sources, telecom sales, meaning people who are not WiFi donors but require WiFi and pay per hour, day or 5 days, and buyers of our hardware, the Fon WiFi routers, our social routers known as La Fonera or Foneras in plural.
In terms of telco sales last week was FON’s best week ever. After a tough winter in which both hardware and telco sales were shrinking, telco sales turned around and grew from 30K to 47K euros per week in the last 4 weeks alone: this is 50% revenue growth over the average winter week. Revenues and hotspot growth is mainly coming from BT and Zon in Portugal but it is also coming from many countries around the world. Our best countries are UK, France, Japan, Portugal, and Germany. Why was the winter so bad for us? I think that the global crisis “froze” people for a while and now they are relaxing their spending again. Also WiFi is partly an outdoor product and the winter is bad for us in general. We were also hit by the pound´s collapse against the euro which fortunately is now reversing.
On the hardware side FON’s outlook is bright. We have over 3000 pre ordered Fonera 2.0. We will start selling the Fonera 2.0 in Europe on April 21st. Due to cash conservation we have been very cautious in ordering stocks of the Fonera 2.0, but now it looks like we have been overly cautious. If you google Fonera 2.0 you will see that we are getting a lot of pre release reviews and that not a single one is negative. Tech bloggers and journalists appreciates a router that not only has the basic Fon functionality of free WiFi roaming and allowing its owner to make money from it but the more advance functionality of taking care of your uploading and downloading while your computer is off. They also like the 3G to WiFi conversion capability as many gadgets, especially gaming gadgets come with WiFi but not with 3G.
So now that we have shrank our monthly expenditures from 700K in Jan 08 to 210K euros per month now and are growing revenues so fast, it looks like we will break even this summer. If we do we will be a sustainable, profitable company which is the only guarantee of survival in an environment of cash starvation.
Bottom line is that we are not out of the desert yet, but we are getting close.
It so happened that this Pesach found us at the border with Morocco and Algeria. We were 3 couples traveling, 4 Jews and 2 non Jews, most of us non-believers but lovers of tradition, both of Pesach and Easter. So in such a Muslim environment we became a little concerned about being openly non-Muslim and we decided to come up with the encrypted story of the Haggadah. This video is the result.
2009 10
Nina and I got engaged!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
It all happened in Morocco where I managed to meet the 4 conditions of a great proposal. It was planned in secrecy (to the point that the 20 friends who came to Morocco to join us in the engagement party thought they were coming for Nina´s birthday which was a month ago). It contained a ring. It was a surprise to the fiancee. And most importantly, the outcome was a yes.
The proposal itself was in a desert camp at the border of Algeria and Morocco. We were first traveling with our friends David and Anna Lena and Gabriel and Mariquel and then joined by 16 other friends in Marrakech where last night we had the engagement dinner party.
Not all went well. When I proposed a walk in the desert at midnight under a full moon I was greeted with a “let´s wait until tomorrow to go for a walk I am too tired.” But other than that glitch the rest went very well and now we are happily engaged and celebrating with friends in Marrakech.
Here are some pictures of the trip and the engagement. Locations are Skoura, Ait Benhaddou, Zagora, Mhamid and somewhere in the desert.
2009 3
The Fonera 2.0 can help you save money and reduce CO2 emissions
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
According to this PC Energy report, US organizations alone waste $2.8 billion every year powering 108 million unused PCs, responsible for approximately 20 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, roughly equivalent to the emissions of 4 million cars. PCs and monitors are 39% of total ICT emissions worldwide (that account to 2% of the total emissions), equivalent, according to the PC Energy report, to a full year of CO2 emissions from approximately 43.9 million cars. If all the world’s 1 billion PC’s were powered down for just one night, says the PC Energy report, it would save enough energy to light up New York City’s Empire State Building for more than 30 years.
There’s a very simple action anybody can take to reduce emissions and cut energy costs: turn your PC off at night or when it’s not being used. Our Fonera 2.0 can be really helpful for this purpose: if you usually keep your PC on all night to download/upload content from the Net, the Fonera 2.0 can take care of downloading files from BitTorrent, Megaupload and Rapidshare and uploading your pictures and videos to Flickr, Picasa and Youtube, letting you turn off your PC at night, thus significantly reducing your energy consumption and CO2 emissions. If you believe turning your computer off and on every day will somehow damage it, or won’t help you reduce your energy comsumption, read this article from Microsoft.
But how much money can you save? Say you keep a desktop PC, consuming around 100 W, powered up day and night to download content from the Net. If the average price in Europe for a kilowatt hour is €0,18, your PC will cost you around €157 per year. Using a Fonera 2.0 you could keep your PC on for only 10 hours a day, and the Fonera will do the downloading/uploading for you during the night, using only around 3 watts. You’ll save €89 in one year and pay back the €49 investment to buy your Fonera 2.0 in less then 7 months. Furthermore, every year you’ll avoid producing 355 kilograms of CO2. Your PC left on day and night would otherwise emit 629 kg of CO2 in one year, equivalent to driving a BMW X3 SUV for 3600km. Turning your PC off at night and using your Fonera 2.0 for downloading will bring your CO2 emissions down to 273kg per year.
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2009 3
Fon Pineapple
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
2009 3
An Atheist in the Woods
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
My relative Benjamin Varsavsky (or Warshavsky because he changed our last name to what he insists is the original form) lives in the Netherlands. He is an MD, an avid computer, a young 85 and, I thought, a convinced Atheist. I say I thought so because he just sent me this story that confused me.
AN ATHEIST IN THE WOODS.
An atheist was walking through the woods. ’What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!’ he said to himself. As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look and saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charging towards him. He ran as fast as he could up the path, looked over his shoulder and saw the bear was closing in on him, looked again, and the bear was even closer. He tripped and fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him. At that instant the atheist cried out, ’Oh my God!’
Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent. As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky. ’You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don’t exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?’ The atheist looked directly into the light.
“‘It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?” ’Very well,’ said the voice. The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head and spoke:
“Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
2009 3
Fonera 2.0 goes for sale on April 21st in Europe
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Yesterday we had our first in person presentation of the Fonera 2.0. It was in Paris. During this presentation I announced that the Fonera 2.0 will go for sale everywhere in Europe on April 21st. USA and Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan will start in May. The promotional price for the launch will be 49 euros.
Here´s a video in English that explains some of what the Fonera 2.0 does which is basically to upload and download while you take your computer somewhere else and to convert 3G to WiFi.
Here´s a video of the event. It is in my poor French which is only as bad as Emilio Botín´s English as you can see in this video. In case you don´t know who Emilio Botin is he is the CEO of Banco Santander.
The unofficial unveiling was very understated and included pasta dinner, Spanish wines and French Cheeses at my Paris flat in Place des Vosges. Nina and my two sons were there. In an informal atmosphere with discussed the pros and pros of this new product (sorry, I just can´t get to say pros and cons). Reaction of the unveiling in my Spanish blog was very negative probably because we did not do the unveiling in Spain but then the French have adopted Fon in bigger numbers something the Spanish Foneros still can´t stomach.
Here are some pictures of the event.
Here´s one of the articles that were published after the event that includes a comparison chart.