2007 18
Blanquefort: Muni WiFi a la FON
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
In the States there are many Muni WiFi projects in the works, but few are actually implemented. At FON we now have the first Muni WiFi project implemented and it took only 3 weeks to get it done. This happened in the village of Blanquefort in France.
Basically, it only took the major´s office to buy less than 1000 Foneras and give them away for free to strategically located inhabitants of this small town. Now there´s WiFi practically everywhere in town. In this very detailed video, which unfortunately is only in French (if you speak it and are a US presidential candidate Fon promises not to disclose your identity 😉 the leaders of the projects and various foneros (users of Fon) explain how they went about connecting Blanquefort to the internet via Fon WiFi.
I take the opportunity to thank Jean Bernard Magescas, our French Fonero leader, the rest of the FON team and especially the people of Blanquefort who I hope to visit soon with my WiFi gadget collection.
2007 17
The iPhone, The Last Gadget You Will Ever Buy….
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
2007 17
Rui Chenggang and the Starbucks revolt in China
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
You may not know this, but there´s actually a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City. Personally, when I visit this amazing historical monument, I was shocked to see that this was the case. It seems that the Forbidden City is Forbidden to all….but Starbucks, as there are no other commercial establishments inside this architectural wonder.
Personally, other than the fact that Starbucks offers expensive WiFi and its coffee that pales in comparison to Lavazza, my favorite brand, I have nothing against Starbucks. But the Forbidden City is not the place to open one up and when I was there I wondered what kind of corrupt official allowed that to happened.
So I fully support my friend and Chinese blogger Rui Chenggang who started the Starbucks revolt in Beijing and may actually succeed in removing Starbucks from the most sacred place in secular China.
2007 16
FON and Retailers
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Fon´s strategy during our first year of operations was to seed the market until we became the largest WiFi network in the country and then, once the demand is there, have our routers sell at market prices and go through retailers and etailers . FON is now the largest WiFi in Sweden, Italy, Germany, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Japan, Hong Kong and the second largest in Taiwan, France, Finland, Switzerland.
FON is now looking for retailers who are interested in selling Foneras. If you work for a retailer or etailer in Europe pls write to Robert Lang at our Munich office. In Asia where we already have a significant retail presence contacts should be with Yat Siu at our Hong Kong office. In USA and Canada with Faisal Galaria at our San Francisco office and for the rest of the world pls contact Monica Diaz-Ponte in Madrid.
2007 16
Adios Venice Project, Bienvenido Joost
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
This morning I heard that The Venice Project is now called Joost. Thanks to Niklas, my partner and board member at Fon I got to be Beta Tester of Joost. I love it. As opposed to You Tube which is more about user generated content and TV moments Joost is about watching high quality TV on the internet. It´s the whole shebang!
Because American education stimulates creativity and self reliance.
Because Americans have a huge homogenous home market in which to test their product.
Because American culture is the only global culture.
Read More
2007 15
Getgspace Not Gspace
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Gspace is a great Firefox extension that we offer that stores your files on the internet using the storage capabilities of Gmail. The problem is that we can´t get the domain www.gspace.com from the pornographers who own it. Sorry!! We tried. But in any case after the pornographic detour if you go to www.getgspace.com you will find us.
2007 15
Internet Speeds in USA vs Europe/East Asia
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I know this sounds hard to believe, but it´s true. I was in Silicon Valley last week, at the offices of our partners Google and Sequoia Capital and this is a fact: the most successful internet company in the world, Google, and the most successful VC in the world, Sequoia Capital, have their executives surfing the internet slower speeds than the average European or Asian at home.
Read More
I was reading about Marin Soljacic and his research at the MIT Physics department on Wireless Energy. I found it fascinating. The key idea is that energy is transferred through magnetism in the same way electric engines are powered but that this magnetism is created say around a room in a way that only objects designed to “tune in” to this magnetism, say a cell phone, receive it and get charged while everything else in the room is impervious to this energy “floating around”. Or at least this is what I think the idea is…..
2007 12
Sansa has Salsa: FON and Zing team up!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Other Projects with No Comments
They should have called the Sansa, the Salsa… because it has tons of Salsa. Yesterday I was one of the lucky persons to be able to play with a Sansa, because FON and the designers of the Sansa Zing have teamed up.
Zing was founded by Tim Bucher. Tim is the salsero of the Sansa. No wonder since he went all the way from being a DJ in High School to being a top designer at Apple where he was a key developer of the iPhone, another product that is full of salsa and that instead of being called the iPhone, cause Cisco owns the trademark should have been called the iSalsa. After playing with the Sansa I believe that there will be a real fight between the Sansa and the iPod. The only element in which the iPod clearly beats the Sansa is in memory. Other than that, the Sansa experience is Endgaget says “a solid alternative to the iPod” (read all the review as Endgadget is a solid alternative to my blog).
So what are we going to do with Zing? The same thing we are doing with the Skype phone (should I say the Skypefon) and that is to bundle the Skype WiFi phone with the Fonera, so when you have a Sansa you can listen to it not only through your WiFi, but through the WiFi all the other FONeros cause at FON, you scratch my back and I scratch yours….all this while you listen to Salsa, in your Sansa (btw, Sergio Mendes, as reinterpreted by the Black Eyed Peas, also has a lot of Salsa).