2007 19
Arab Civil Wars
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in International with No Comments
Many of my English readers, especially those from USA and UK, would be surprised to know how anti US, anti UK, anti Israel and pro Arab the continental European press is. Because very few people in the world read press in translation or are both bilingual and interested in knowing what others think, this strong dislike for the policies of the US, the UK and Israel has mostly gone unnoticed in the anglo saxon world.
Living in Madrid and running a foundation like Safe Democracy, I have had a hard time dealing with commentators who have lost perspective as of the causes of the wars in the Muslim world. It is difficult for me to read newspapers like El Pais who frequently attribute all evil in the region to the bad policy choices of the US, the UK and Israel to the point in which the average Spaniard now thinks of Israel as a nation who invaded not just the Palestinian territories (a view which I share) but Israel itself (a view that is simply wrong). While I do believe that these three nations have made tragic policy mistakes in the region, and many times have done more harm than good I am also convinced that the problem of radical Islam has little to do with US, UK and Israel. Radical islamists hate fellow Muslims more than they hate Christians, Jews and anyone else in the planet. Most likely, even without any intervention from USA, UK or Israel the Muslim world would have been a part of the world suffering from horrendous wars similar to those that were found in the Christian world a century before. A proof of this is that during the last 20 years many more Muslims have been killed by Muslims than Muslims by Infidels. This is evident right now in the three Arab Civil Wars: the civil war between Al Fatah and Hamas, between the Lebanese and Palestinians and the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. These conflicts have caught the Continental European progressives by surprise as it is becoming more and more apparent that it is hard to blame USA, UK and Israel for the virulent Muslim vs Muslim character of these three wars.
2007 16
Virtual Philanthropy: The Stardoll Case
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Before the digital era there was only way to be poor and that was not to have access to things. But now there´s a new kind of poverty and that is digital poverty. Not only can you be poor because you have no access to the information society as we like to call it in Europe but even inside the Internet you can be poor. Let me give you a concrete example of digital poverty. It relates to Stardoll. Stardoll is a very simple yet incredibly successful site for little girls to dress up their dolls. I first blogged about Stardoll in April of 2006 both in English and Spanish What happened to me after blogging about Stardoll in Spanish is that because of my Google Ranking when you google Stardoll only in Spanish you come to my blog. But what´s unusual about Stardoll is that even though doll´s are virtually dressed in Stardoll their virtual clothes cost real money. And what I frequently get now is e mails from little girls from Spanish speaking countries who ask me if I can please give them stardollars so they can buy dresses for their little dolls. And I feel so sorry about them that I even contemplated that my foundation could finance some of these but came to the conclusion that that would be absurd. Interestingly, yesterday, I had a chance to see Mattias Miksche from Stardoll again and raise this issue. Since there´s little cost involved in producing these clothes. Couldn´t we start an NGO that actually gave them for free or for practically nothing to poor girls in say Ecuador, Peru, Colombia? And in general, now that wealth is both felt (no food) and perceived (Swedish girls can buy clothes, Peruvian girls can´t), don´t we have an opportunity in the virtual world to do virtual philanthropy and make a lot of little girls, boys, and even grown ups happy? Mattias did not give me a concrete answer but I am sure he is thinking about this. Personally I think that there is a chance of bringing digital justice to this world. Pricing digital property in terms of the average purchasing power of each country would be a good start. Cause as opposed to real property digital property has no cost for an extra copy. Let´s take advantage of this and start the digital fair trade movement!
2007 16
Martin Varsavsky´s Netvibes Universe
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
This is my Netvibes Universe. Basically my Netvibes Universe is a fancy way to say that you can now look at my personal Netvibes page. Or that my Netvibes page is now “blogged”. Why is this feature interesting? Because now you can see my sources, you can see the blogs I read, my news sources, the tools I use. In order to make the Martinvarsavsky Netvibes Universe I did take some things out. I my Netvibes I get my email for example, and you don´t (not that you would care to read it but I am just saying this). But to me the Netvibes Universe is a lot of things, among them a social netvibes, my new blogroll, a way to share sources and tips. Hope you enjoy it.
2007 15
The Web 2.0 Exchange
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
With Stardoll issuing Stardollars, with Second Life having Linden Dollars and many other sites selling virtual gifts and virtual property, will we soon see an Exchange in which all these virtual currencies and properties are traded?
2007 15
Yes, you are in the right place!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I know, you are all confused. Martin Varsavsky has been hacked. But I haven´t it´s me with a migration to WordPress and a lot of new functionalities. I really hope you like the new look of this blog. I would like to thank the people at Blogestudio who helped me out here.
2007 13
Chueca WiFi Initiative
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
FON announced today a wonderful initiative to WiFi enable Chueca, Madrid’s gay neighborhood. This is especially relevant because Madrid is about to host Europride and over a million people are expected to come. Researching gay issues, I found out that Internet penetration rates are twice as high among homosexuals in Spain than heterosexuals.
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2007 12
Sorry the Fiesta is packed at the moment!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Now that USA is waking up, Europe is in full swing and Asia is still not asleep our shop has collapsed due to Fontenna purchases. Please be patient! We are sure that things will be back to normal in 3 hours!
And also I am getting tons of enquiries on the issue of why should anyone be a Linus anymore. My answer is that some people just don´t care about money. You know, think of blogs, many don´t have Ads. So if you are a blogger without ads for example, stay a Linus. But if you want to make money through showing WiFiAds and selling passes to the community and roam the world for free then become a Bill!
2007 11
Fiesta Fonera!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Today, Tuesday, June 12th the Fiesta Fonera starts. Here are three reasons to party.
First, the La Fontennas are available at our shop. They only cost 2 dollars/euros for good Foneros and 19.95 dollars/euros for everyone else and they boost the range of your La Fonera by 5 times. They are so good that some are already calling them Fonagras….
Second, FON is launching WiFiAds, our ad supported WiFi platform with a 5 cent revenue share per ad shown available to all Foneros. Yes, I know trolls, we copied this one from Google but then so what? They are our investors!
Third, all Foneros will be able to both roam and make money with their La Foneras. Yes, sorry Linuses in order to get this privilege you have to call yourself a Bill, but don´t worry, we won´t tell anybody.
Check out the details of this new offering in our new web site cause I know all this sounds too good to be true.
2007 11
Ghost Fonspots
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I just found out that there are many Fonspots that are lost. Namely that we know they exist but we don´t know where they are. And by many I mean around 70K of those. And that´s a lot of Fonspots. How can this be? Well, people get the Foneras, plug them, use them as wifi routers but they don´t tell the Fonero community where they are. Or they try to tell the fonero community where they are but our software fails to geolocalize them. This is unfortunately quite common. Now those Foneras work very well and other Foneros, if they find them, can connect to them. But neither can the owners of those Foneras roam the world for free nor can Foneros find the signal. In order to fix the problem of the ghost Fonspots we will start communicating with the non geolocalized Foneros soon. We will also start a program by which if Foneros find these “ghost” Fonspots that they place them in our maps. Probably we will also ask foneros to report open wifi hotspots in our maps as well. We are looking at the pros and cons of doing this. On the positive side there is more coverage, Fon or open. On the negative side somebody may have their wifi open but may not want others to use it so if we do end up including open wifi as reported by foneros in our maps we will include warnings on this regard. But one way or another we have to find a way to bring many more fonspots into our maps.
2007 11
Should I start a fund?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Investments with Comments Off on Should I start a fund?
This is not an offering. It´s an enquiry. The companies that I invest in is public information. I am an entrepreneur and the full time CEO of Fon, but I am also the head of Jazzya, my VC company, out of which I both start my own companies (Jazzya comes from Jazztel and Ya.com) and invest in other companies, like Technorati, Netvibes, Joost and others that you can see listed on the right side of this blog. People have asked me to open up Jazzya for other people to invest with me, and so far I have taken only one investor.
If you would be interested in investing with me please send me an e mail. I don´t have time to go on a road show to see if there´s interest, so this blog can maybe achieve a similar objective. If I actually do a fund I would only take high net worth individuals or institutions, not because I want to discriminate in any way, but because what I do is very risky and I would need investors who understand this risk.
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