2011 8
Mia is here :)
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Paternity with No Comments
Mia Varsavsky was born this morning. As you can see we are all well. This picture was taken only 2 hours after birth. Nina was amazing, brave, confident, and very happy. Mia struggled through the whole thing. We promised her that life gets better later on. Birth took place at Ruber Internacional in Madrid. Dr Luis Recasens, an amazing obstetrician did the C Section. I had the easy part of course 🙂
Most people who are concerned about the health effects of food are concerned about the quality of the food they eat. But in the vast majority of cases where food sickens or kills people, it is not the quality of the food they eat but the quantity. Why are all diets about eating something different of what people normally eat? Why isn’t there a simple diet that says, eat whatever you normally eat but less. And not much less, not starving less, but just a little less, so you may get into a new eating habit for the rest of your life and not just during the diet. So you change nothing but eat a slightly smaller amount. That is my diet. My weight is incredibly constant over the years, I just eat the same diet every day. And when I don’t work out, I just eat the same but in smaller amounts.
It’s not what people eat that kills them, the global obesity epidemic and its toll on life is happening because of how much people eat.
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2011 5
Why I carry 3 smartphones
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Ok, I am obsessed with Smartphones and connectivity, but probably so are you.
My announced day without Blackberry produced an undesirable outcome. I did not abandoned Blackberry but ended up trading back from the Torch(ure) to the BB 9700. My BB9700 is a liberated T Mobile USA model so I can use it both in Europe and in USA (few phones work like that cause T Mobile has their own 3G flavor). But I still carry my iPhone 4 and HTC HD.
I could not drop the BB for one main reason, INPUT. I can’t type super fast on the iPhone no matter how hard I try. And I have tried since 2008. I envy people who say they can. I find the symbols in a second screen and the globe to change languages a real impediment. Android is better. I can type faster on the HTC HD with Swiftkey (amazing app) but not as fast as in a BB with a vertical raised keyboard made for thumbs and a trackpad. My daughters agree, they say typing on glass with long nails is too difficult. The Blackberry Bold is my main communication, messaging, email and blogging machine. The Bold BB is my “lean forward” device. The Android and iPhone are my “lean back” alternatives. My spectator smartphones. In the BB I create, in the Android or especially the iPhone, I enjoy what others have created. Many times I end up paying for it as well. The Bold BB is crucial in my life because my wife, my 3 older kids all use Blackberries and I BBM with them. Many think Blackberries are for old people but at Columbia University, NYU and Spanish high schools, Blackberries are still very big. Blackberry is also the only service that gives me global roaming via Movistar for only an extra 20 euros a month. With the Android and iPhone if I don’t find Fon or other WiFi I am roaming toast.
So I continue to walk around with 3 smartphones. I know it’s crazy.
I use the iPhone and Android for different collections of apps because as we know, apps suck on the BB.
I use both because neither phone has enough juice to get me through the day so I use the Android and iPhone at different times. I think that people in California don’t have that problem because they live in their cars, so workers at Apple and Google never notice how much battery their software/cpu and other chips need. They charge their smartphones stuck in traffic jams. In the rest of the world either smartphones will get better batteries or buses and subways will have plugs.
Now I don’t just use smartphones, I abuse them. I make use of all of them intensely. I mountain bike practically every day using sports apps like Endomondo, music apps like Spotify, I use RadioMe in Android, Twitter, Facebook, G+ on Android and iPhone (I want it in BB). I also use Seesmic to multipost. Dropbox to send files to myself and others.
I frequently give the iPhone to my 4 year old who abuses it even more. He plays up to 20 different games, watches videos, pictures. If what people mean that iPhones are for young people is that they are for 4 year olds then I am with them. Little kids find iPhones their device of choice. Before language acquisition they are unbeatable. I also sometimes play games such as Chopper, Angry Birds with him or alone and the iPhone is the king of gaming. Platforms like ufabet เข้าสู่ระบบ make the experience even more exciting, bringing a wide range of interactive games that appeal to both casual and competitive players.
When I am in grown up mode, I use Navionics when I sail (amazing app), I use photo apps like Instagram (iPhone) or Picplz (Android). I also turn my Android and iPhone into hotspots for my MacBook Air or iPad. I use BBM a lot, PINs, Google Maps, Latitude, Whatsapp, Rebtel on BB (amazing integration to save money on international calls), Skype on iPhone and Android, Gmail everywhere of course, WordPress apps to blog in all three platforms but best in BB cause of input same with Tumblr. Sonos controller is available for Android and iPhone not BB. I love AirPlay in my iPhone and through Airport Express I can play Spotify or iTunes on my stereo. I use Fon apps to connect automatically to Fon WiFi on Android. I also enjoy other music apps like Rdio, Grooveshark, for me music apps are like radio stations, none is good for everything. And of course, I use cameras and video and for that the iPhone is the best. And then there is the issue of back ups. Because apps fail, like sports apps, I sometimes go cycling with two different smartphones collecting data, say Endomondo in the Android and Runkeeper in the iPhone, so I have back up. The ultimate back up tool? Dropbox, works everywhere 🙂
Now what I almost never do, with any of these smartphones is to send a txt and I very rarely make a phone call.
Breivik killed 92 people. And that is a horrible, terribly sad atrocity. But what is coming could even be worse and that is that Breivik is about to get a global platform to promote hatred: his trial.
What we know about terrorism is that terrorists don’t need to win elections. They don’t need to form a coalition governments or win by a majority. Terrorists win when they recruit an incredibly small amount of like minded people to commit similar atrocities. Think of how few people it took to undertake the mass murders of 9/11, of March 11 in Madrid, of July 7 in London. So while the vast majority of the population of Europe will be horrified by Breivik, Breivik is not targeting them. He is targeting the tiny minority who thinks like him, who thinks that the socialists governments of Europe are destroying the ethnic purity of Europe and whatever other neonazi theories that he has. And if we give him a global media platform he will get those few new terrorist recruits. Breivik’s trial itself is a bigger danger than Breivik. It is the trial Bin Laden did not get.
Breivik deserves a fair trial. But not the publicity he seeks. I hope the whole procedures take place without TV cameras in the court house.
2011 22
Should you scare your kids into good behavior?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Paternity with No Comments
Do you live in a culture in which people believe it is fine to occasionally scare children with things like this so they behave? I know in Germany there are also characters that are meant to scare children into good behavior, like a bad Santa helper that punishes bad kids, Knecht Ruprecht, or long nailed Struwwelpeter. We don’t have those scary characters in Latin cultures, nor in USA.
When my Leo misbehaves I say “only good boys get to play with the iPad” 🙂
You can see other frightening illustrations from Norwegian children’s books here.
Struwwelpeter in a 1917 edition – Via Wikipedia
Today, 21 European early-stage VC firms released a standard term sheet they will use as guideline for their future investments (actually they released 2 term sheets – one for “general use” and another designed to facilitate the EIS tax relief for investments in small private companies). Both docs were drafted for the UK market, but the general idea should be the same in most countries. Especially first-time entrepreneurs in Europe without much experience in dealing with investors can benefit greatly from this document. While the terms will still be adjusted as required for each transaction, these general guidelines give entrepreneurs a good idea of what is considered “common practice” in a term sheet. This will also help to reduce legal costs and speed up the whole investment process.
Of course not all start-ups will end up winning. Some might have been able to negotiate more favorable terms if the SeedSummit term sheet had not been published. But the positive effects will surely far outweigh such drawbacks (TechCrunch readers seem to agree – so far almost entirely positive comments). Even with all the information available on the web about term sheets, there are still many entrepreneurs out there who have no clue of what should and should not be included in a term sheet. Even top MBA candidates have this problem, as I observe frequently among my students at IE.
As with most innovation in the European VC sector, this move comes more than a year later than the US Series Seed documents, which were adopted in March 2010 by a group of prominent US seed investors, such as SV Angel (Ron Conway), First Round Capital, Mike Maples, and others. But better late than never!
When they say there can be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians they are mistaken. There is “peace” already or at least there is no war. During the last 2 years relatively few people died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (268 since January 2009 to be exact – out of which 45 were Palestinians killed/executed by Palestinians), and I say “relatively” because this is in great contrast with Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and many other areas of the world where tens of thousands have died. As a comparison, in USA alone 41,000 people die every year in car accidents. Indeed it is more likely to die in a car accident in USA than at war if you are a Palestinian or an Israeli.
During my visit to Israel I was surprised to see how many Palestinians actually live in Israel, this is something that is not well known outside of Israel. Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel’s total population. At the Tel Aviv beaches for example, the blend is magic. You see Israelis surfing next to Arab women who go into the water fully dressed. And some actually swim fully dressed. I had never seen anything like that. Israelis and Arabs, side by side, sharing their free time at the beach. I hope this is part of what the peaceful future of Israelis and Palestinians will be like.
If you compare other armed conflicts with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you will see that while this is the one with the most media attention globally it is surprisingly the least deadly. I took the time to make a comparative chart based on the estimated number of casualties (including civilians) that can be found on Wikipedia. In most cases the spread between high and low estimates is very large, but the figures give a good general idea of the order of magnitude of each conflict. Of course it would be a mistake to focus only on the number of casualties when comparing different armed conflicts, there are many other factors to be considered, such as the number of indirect deaths, the number of displaced people, the amount of psychological damage caused, the long-term effects on the affected regions, just to name a few. And it is true that the Palestinians suffer many humiliations in their daily life like for example when they try to travel from Gaza to the West Bank or even around the West Bank. But casualties is still a clear measure of war.
I hope this post is not understood as an attempt to minimize the important of the conflict. I sincerely hope that something like the Oslo Accords gets implemented in the near future so the Palestinians can have their own country. While the situation now is not a war, it is not a solution either. But it is important to put things in perspective and realize that Palestinians in Israel and in the Palestinian territories do not live in what we would normally call a war.
Here’s the chart I made:
And here are a couple of pictures I took at the beach during my visit that illustrate what I saw in terms of Palestinians and Israelis enjoying the sea side by side.
To end this post, I leave you with this video I shot during a helicopter ride around Israel. What became very apparent in the helicopter ride is that the paradox of the Palestinians is that they are either in Israel or near Israel and that Israel is so developed compared to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, namely other countries in which Palestinians live, that it is not surprising that the Palestinians would want Israel as it is now. It is hard to say to what point do they want to go to the land of their ancestors and to what point they much prefer the greatly improved land of Israel of today. Indeed it is possible that if the Israelis had done with their country what the Palestinians did with Gaza and instead the Palestinians had reached the level of development in Gaza that Israel has now, that few Palestinians would be wanting to move to Israel or ask that a Gaza looking Israel be returned to them. Before many Israelis wanted the West Bank and Gaza, now few do. So Israelis have mostly given up the hope of a greater Israel. Only the Israeli fanatic settlers still want a Greater Israel. What people never say in this conflict is that this is not a conflict about the Biblical Israel or the Palestine of the 1920s. This is a conflict about what Israel is today and what Palestine is today. And the contrast is drastic. And it is hard to argue what the Palestinians argue that if they got Israel that it would be what today we know as Israel in terms of prosperity and economic development. I have a hard time imagining Israel being the country outside of USA with most Nasdaq traded companies or Nobel Prizes if it was Palestine. This is what happens when people’s past is so different from people’s present.
Lastly I would like to say that while I blame Israelis for not wanting to negotiate with the Palestinians now and I dislike the current position of the government of Israel vis a vis negotiations I think the Palestinians had a great opportunity in Gaza and by electing Hamas after settlers were forced out by force from there they escalated the conflict and made it hard for Israelis to feel comfortable about removing settlers by force from the West bank.
2011 28
Fon partners with Belgacom
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Today I am in Belgium to announce Fon’s partnership with Belgacom, a great company with fixed and mobile operations in a country of 11 million people. Together with the largest telco company in Belgium we will build the largest WiFi community in Belgium and extend Fon’s WiFi footprint, currently with more than 4 million hotspots all over the world. But this is not only an important day for Belgacom’s customers and Foneros. It’s an important day for Fon as it shows the world again that some of the leading telcos in the world realize that Fon can help them to provide a better mobile user experience for their customers if they join our WiFi community.
This partnership is also more proof that, as I explain in this post from 2010, operators are increasingly realizing the power of WiFi in order to provide a better user experience and to offload the enormous amount of data traffic that is
congesting their mobile networks. The growth in demand for mobile bandwidth is far outpacing the growth in capacity, with people now spending more time using mobile apps than surfing the web.
Since our first partnership with BT in the UK in 2007, interest in Fon from fixed and mobile telcos and hardware manufacturers has ballooned. In the past years we have demonstrated what we knew all along – that we can help our partners to provide a service which their subscribers appreciate… and thereby help them to reduce CAPEX, decrease churn, attract new customers, differentiate and freshen up their brand image. And today, six years after starting from scratch, we are talking to big telco incumbents in different countries. We’re thrilled to now be working with Belgacom, and though I can’t say specifically with whom Fon will partner next, I can say that this probably won’t be the last partnership we get to announce this year.
Update: here’s what the media is saying about our new partnership:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15194360,00.html
http://www.zdnet.be/news/129013/belgacom-rolt-4g-uit/ for my Belgian readers 🙂
2011 22
Guns in Jerusalem
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in International with No Comments
Jerusalem has many teenagers, say 18 yr olds, armed with machine guns, both boys and girls. While I understand this may be necessary I find it creepy and wrong. And what is worse is that my 4 year old boy who is here with us is fascinated with guns, something that I am trying to discourage but it’s not easy with boys that age. As he sees these other “kids”with machine guns he goes and talks to them, asks them if he can also have a machine gun to play with. They laugh but I worry.
On a more positive note here are some pictures of Jerusalem which overall is a fascinating place to visit. But the second picture shows my son Leo admiring the young soldiers.