Nina’s wedding dress was too big to carry on the plane. So we sent it with our sailboat that came from Miami to Spain. Yesterday we found ourselves at our first anniversary (of our civil wedding) with dress in hand and we did this funny pictures/video allegorical of how Nina said she felt about marriage. It was fun to shoot.

Nina during our first Anniversary in Menorca-Display from Martin Varsavsky on Vimeo.

In the midst of a wonderful, mostly non-political 4th of July parade in Aspen, Colorado, I was surprised to see these right-wing participants. The kid that I found particularly sad was the one who said he loves his carbon footprint. It was also interesting that they don’t see the contradiction between demanding both lower taxes and higher military spending. In general, I always find surprising that in the US, the richer states like NY and California are two the left of the poorer, the Bible Belt.

If you see the rest of the pictures, though, you will see that they were the only sour note on an otherwise splendid 4th of July celebration.

Lastly here is a video of the 4th of July parade with commentary in Spanish that talks about the issue of the wealthy in Aspen being especially progressive.

El 4 de julio en Aspen from Martin Varsavsky on Vimeo.

If you ever wondered why the grass is greener at the neighbors’, here’s the answer, and it is not water.

I’ve been looking back at some of my tweets lately and I’ve compiled a list of tweetphorisms, which are a cross between tweets and aphorisms.

– A good thing about Twitter is that if somebody wants to trash you they only have 140 characters to do so.

– In Europe tipping gets you nowhere, in USA not tipping gets you nowhere.

– One thing I love about my American friends is that they are less jugdemental, more willing to take risks.

– Great leadership is the ability to make followers thrive.

– Creative destruction is much hyped, but non destructive creation is better.

– They should not allow world cup teams to have foreign coaches.

– TV still exists because of simplicity, bandwidth and simultaneity.

– Religion is on its wait out in Europe, hence football.

– Marriages take work. Grass is not greener on the other side. It’s greener where it’s watered.

– Monopolies are like children in an airplane, you complain about them until you have one.

–  College must have been traumatic. I graduated in the 80s and still dream I’m not prepared for my Chemistry exam.

– Remember when Twitter was about people saying something? Now it’s all links.

– The value of a secret derives from the relevance of those whom we want to keep uninformed.

– You become 21, turn 30, push 40 and reach 50.

– Contradiction: Americans consume most oil in the world and yet they blame their President for the drilling accident.

– Math is the hardest subject to work hard at.

– Microsoft was easier to hate :).

– Studying photography made me come to terms with cloudy days.

– I am for being tolerant with the intolerant, but it’s hard when the response is death threats.

– Europe needs to eliminate national armies and have just one European Army.

– Some people are afraid of the unknown. I tend to be more afraid of what I know.

– Netflix tells me what I will like, Vuze delivers it.

– Twitter should take pity on those who Tweet in German and give them a few extra characters 🙂

– The French should teach the Italians how to make desserts and in exchange learn how to make coffee.

– The only power left who still disguises economic ambition as ideology is USA. Russia and China gave up.

– The iPad is most useful in situations in which laptops are frowned upon.

– Downturns are great moments to gain market share.

– There’s an inverse relation between how cool you look watching a movie in an iPad and how dorky walking around listening to music.

– It’s not the role of companies to regulate if people date at work or not.

– Parents teach kids to be patient. In the process, they are learning to be patient themselves.

– The paradox of the music industry is that it’s being destroyed out of love for music.

– Most people in power in Europe would rather see Greece sink than the Euro rise again.

– What distinguishes people is not how much shit they have to deal with, but how they deal with it.

– You raise a child until one day you realize…you raised a person.

– 80% of good paternity is showing up.  Quality time is a cop out for absent parents.

– Twitter, all the news that’s fit to tweet.

– The iPad is an ideal toilet companion

– When people really want something they have a hard time comprehending it may not be possible

– Restaurant owners believe that there is an inverse relationship between their elegance and your understanding of the menu.

– Link shorteners should use one letter to show whats in them.

– In USA, kids are especially told not to talk to strangers.  But as adults they love to 🙂

– Jet lag is a good way of understanding the difference between being tired and wanting to sleep.

– Exams are so traumatic that people keep having nightmares that they show up unprepared decades later

– There are 2 kinds of people who rarely take vacations: those who can’t afford them and those who have a hard time dealing with themselves.

– Android will be very popular because Google does not make a living out of selling hardware.

– If you had a habit of talking to yourself, Twitter is perfect for you.

– It’s great when the person you love… is your wife 🙂

– Smartphones are amazing. But they are not that smart when all you want to do is make a phone call.

– The problem bailing out Greece is that the euro was too strong before the crisis.A weaker euro combined with cheaper oil helps EU.

– When two people in Twitter want to engage they leave. DMs are not enough. Unlimited DMs or DM chat would be better.

– Hillary Clinton may become for all  Israelis what Sharon was to Gaza settlers.

– Design is not great when it clashes with use.  Example? iPhones that fall out of pockets.

– Something tells me that it was not “the keyboard cat” what Chad had in mind when starting Youtube.

– Electricity consumption’s been down 5% in Europe since the crisis. Recessions are good for the environment.

– One of the weaknesses of Twitter is that it’s such a pain to always click on links.

– If you oppose to animal testing in medicine you favor human testing in medicine, or no progress in medicine.

– As it becomes widely used Twitter needs to raise the character limit to 200.

– USA should not have China finance its wars, it should have China fight them.

– Friendship is about people you know, dating is about people you don’t know, Facebook is evolving from friendship to dating.

– USA has the richest people in the world. Europe has the “richest” poor people in the world.

– English is the most widely spoken language.  That also makes it the language that is most frequently spoken poorly.

– Twitter, or a life worth sharing.

– Europeans want equality, Americans equal opportunity, Asians don’t seem too keen on either.

– Cable, telephone, mobile, Internet, newspapers, magazines, games and music industries did indeed converge in the end.

– Google is about linking to other sites.  Twitter is about linking to other sites.  Facebook instead warns you about the Internet.

– Models are hired to appeal to women.  They are women who women like. Most men like actresses more than models.

– Scientists in USA are admirable because all scientists are, but also because average folks in this country mistrust science.

– The problem with Twitter is that all watch what everyone else is doing and as a result…nobody does anything.

– First we had phone, SMS, email, then Skype, Gtalk, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz. I need new tech to start replacing old tech!!

– You can tell when somebody uses a Kindle because they stop counting pages and say: “I have 7% left to read”.

– The best argument against nuclear energy is that it’s used as an excuse by Iran and others for making nuclear weapons.

– Memories are the leftovers of experience

– We can use randomized controlled trials not just to test medicines but for social problems too.

– San Francisco can be seen as “at the edge of the tech world” or “the edge of the planet” 🙂

– Sometimes it is best to leave a book unfinished and imagine the rest.

– Haiti’s problems did not start with the earthquake, but they came to light with it.

– Religion exists because the truth is unbearable.

– America excels at the extremes. Europe focuses on raising the average.

– Most successful products are self evident.

– Blackberries are for work, iPhones for fun, Androids are somewhere in the middle.

– Anyone who tries to make a tablet without something like the iTunes Store will have a hard time competing against Apple.

– Twitter used to be a community of people who shared info, now it’s more and more a one to many broadcasting platform.

– After Law School you are a lawyer.  After Med School you are a Dr. But after Business School you are not an entrepreneur.

– Facebook is meaningless unless you know the people whose crap you read about.

– Writers block is passé, now it’s Twitter block.

– Emotion can be great motivation for writing, but it can backfire when you are trying to make a point.

– USA and Europe design, China makes.

– Terrorists attack USA partly because it is easily spooked.

– Uruguay is a country with no news to report. No news is good news.

– Safety with little police presence is a sign of civilization.

– Countries around here are either free and poor (St. Lucia) or colonies (Martinique) and rich.  So much for freedom 🙁

– Twitter: gossip never had it so good.

– The crying baby, the snoring man, two dreaded characters on night flights.

– Even though China is the biggest polluter in the world it still has the right to sell carbon credits to much cleaner Japan.

– Airline punctuality figures should include airport immigration expected delays.

– Some of the brightest people I know can’t spell.

– Most large exporters of energy are LDCs (less democratic countries)

– Spending a lot of time on Twitter makes you more informed but less knowledgeable.

– Twitter + links = Facebook – search

– Obama’s Nobel Prize speech should have been about racial reconciliation, not about justifying military action.

– Climate change may be disastrous. But we have a global sanitation, education, malnutrition and disasters now, first things first!

– Speed limits should relate to traffic.  No traffic, higher speed limits.

– Twitter is like Facebook in fast motion.

– Twitter:  speed dating of the intellect.

– Facebook is very expensive to run but has a business model. Twitter is very cheap to run but has not found one yet.

– Zapatero does not speak English, lives in the old media world and out of ignorance managed to turn the blogosphere against him.

– Apple is the only company that managed to go on with desktops.

– The success of Spotify in Spain shows that even in a country in which downloading is legal there’s a business model for music.

– Europe sees immigrants as people to train.  Americans also see them as people to learn from. Guess where they prefer to go?

– In Spain some under 20s are on Facebook, none on Twitter, and all on Tuenti.

– I still can’t understand how the country of the 35 hour work week came up with the word entrepreneur.

– The worst weather is when it’s almost freezing but instead of snowing…it rains. Just shy of profitability.

– If a country has social mobility and recession many can be better off even in bad times.  But Europe is screwed at this level.

– If anything Obama is proving that it is much harder to be a good President than a bad one.

– The crisis does have something positive:  it is a boom for entrepreneurship.

– Whenever I don’t get a reference I think it must be Star Trek, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

– Here we are squeezing our thoughts on Twitter because somebody a decade ago decided to limit SMS to 140 characters.

– Nations who won’t negotiate with terrorists shouldn’t pay pirates off

– People who don’t like photos of themselves: those who like themselves too little and those who like themselves too much.

– Twitter used to be microblogging. Now blogging is an extended tweet.

– Murdoch should not forego Google, if anything he should do the RSS thing and give them the headlines.

– The genius of the iPhone can be perceived during the brief time when you finish a charge and the battery runs out.

– Nobody ever made more money than Chaplin portaying misery.

– Spain has holidays that relate to each city. Next Monday, for example, is a holiday only in Madrid. All holidays should be national.

– Software upgrades offer significant risks in exchange for minor improvements.

– Whoever forces people to write http:// before a web site name should be spanked (Tom says shot).

– Big TV displays are begging for wireless connectivity to your laptop.

– The better I do the less I have to tweet about.

– Successful companies turn out to have many “cofounders”.

– Twitter gives you a unrealistic feeling of being famous.

– At the end of life few are sorry they did not spend more time at the office.

– The only really white people on the planet are the British 🙂

– There is so much to learn when you know very little!

– Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, other wealthy nations should allow free movement of labor as EU does already.

– Europe is about class struggle. USA about generational struggle.

– Overheard on Twitter:  To want to prove that God exists with a Bible is like wanting to prove that Batman exists with a comic.

– Facebook should allow you to gift pictures.

– Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world after Chinese and slightly ahead of English

– Book authors will be like musicians.  Books will be free on the net but authors will make money from public speaking.

– Never underestimate the power of a good story

– I never liked a TV series so much not to wait to watch it when I wanted to.

– Nobel Institute has just awarded itself the Obama Prize

– If you follow people in different continents, Twitter gives you a real sense for time zones. When I wake up California goes silent.

– If you know what you want to listen to go for Spotify, if you want to discover music use Last.fm.

– I have a dear friend who is not on Facebook. He is the last one standing.

– We should read what the Taliban says before more die in Afghanistan on both sides.

– Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is a waste of our military resources and goes against what we tell the world we stand for.

– If you can’t tell a story extremely well,  you can’t raise money for  a start up.

– It takes a while for US Presidents to realize that the only real power they have is abroad.

– One country one vote is not a way to run the world.  If you are a citizen of a large country you are underepresented.

– Managing online communities around a product is tough

– Apple’s software is amazing because it competes with Windows and Linux. Apple’s hardware is poor because it does not compete with anybody.

– The problem with tech after tax salaries in Italy is that social charges are so high that even if entrepreneurs spend more, coders get less.

– Choosing ice cream flavors you realize how different people are.

– Smartphones are like friends, one night I hang out with the Nokia, another with the iPhone, tonight is Android, but my real buddy is still the Blakcberry.

– Everyone I know believes in Twitter as a multibillion dollar business.  I only believe in Twitter as a centimillion dollar business.

– Unemployment is sad but paradoxically good for the environment and for start ups.

– Obama’s mistake with health care is that he chose an issue that his young voters don’t care so much about and his opponents do.

– The best moments in life often can’t be shared on Twitter

– Being an entrepreneur in Spain is like being a snowboarder in Jamaica.

– The Clinton Global Initiative is not about making it. It’s about what to do once you have made it… or about giving it away intelligently.

– So many people have left Hotmail for Gmail that when I see a Hotmail email I know its obsolete.

– Overpromising may make sense if those who overpromise end up producing more than they would have if they hadn’t overpromised.

– Indeed, why is English a must for so many simple jobs but not for President?

– Computers changed photography from the portrayal of who we are to the portrayal of who we want to be.

– Once you lie your way to the Presidency, other lies come easy.

– Location services should realize in which direction you are moving and give you recommendations ahead of you!

– In Spain people think that calling a person negro or black is derogatory but calling him negrito or little black is not.

– For Ubuntu to be popular it must find an easier to install unlisted programs than terminal.

– USA is so good at promoting cross ethnic/cultural understanding at home, and so bad at doing it overseas.

– Death is the test of evolution. We are programmed to die. Even if we conquered all disease we would only increase life expectancy by 12 years.

– The origin of antisemitism may be lack of reciprocity: what Jews believe in Christians/Muslims also believe in, but not the other way around.

– Conservatives in Spain want to ban access to social networks without parents consent. Good economic policies come from social retards.

– USA has more road deaths than no speed limit Germany

– Kids have this unusual ability to teach us what they don’t have: patience.

– Europe is just the best continent to live in.

– The French are among the most productive people in the world. Tariq says it’s because they can’t wait to leave asap for the aperitive 🙂

At the Menorca TechTalk this year we had some remarkable guests such as Hiroshi Mikitani, from the remarkably successful Rakuten of Japan, who explained to us why he is on a shopping spree in USA and Europe (recently acquired Buy.com and PriceMinister), and  Arthur Sulzberger CEO of the New York Times – my favorite newspaper and news source in the world – who was particularly fun and insightful to be with. As a music fan (I named one of the companies I started Jazztel), my favorite guest was Ulf Ekberg from Ace of Base. In this video, you get to hear some excerpts of Ace of Base’s new album. It is only a few seconds for obvious reasons (copyright). But you can get a sense of how great the new songs are. Very Ace of Base, and yet, very new.

Here’s a video in which the participants at the Menorca TechTalk debate how to name the new Ace of Base hit:

And here are some pictures of the Menorca TechTalk that Nina Varsavsky, my wife, and I took:

And here are some pictures that some great friends who love photography took: Rodrigo Sepulveda, Demian Bellumio and others. Thank you for the great pictures!