2010 4
Fon reached 2.5 million hotspots around the world
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Is that a lot? Well huge companies like T Mobile have say, 70,000, France Telecom, Telefonica, ATT, Verizon, less than T Mobile. But we grow over a T Mobile every month. And we are happy because between you and I, 2 years ago, things looked awful at Fon. Laptops were not able to generate enough interest in WiFi roaming. But then the iPhone came along. The iPhone, that beautiful bandwidth hog. We were also helped by netbooks, Androids, iPods, iPads, tablets, game consoles and all kinds of smartphones. WiFi gadgets are everywhere. Demand for WiFi exceeds supply. And at Fon, together with our telco partners such as BT, SFR, Zon, and others we are working hard so there is WiFi everywhere as an accessible signal. As we like to say, with Fon you share a little WiFi at home and roam the world for free.
Are we happy? Contentos si, but not content. We want more WiFi. We are going for 10 million fonspots!!
Here are some pictures of Fon managers in Madrid I took this afternoon at our “cuartel general”. We need to add those of our managers around the world. Our Foneros. Viva Free WiFi.
2010 4
Fon Has Already Reached 20,000 Hotspots in Moscow
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
It is no secret to anyone that the Russian market has enormous potential. Hundreds of thousands of companies are trying to develop projects there, counting on many millions in return on their investments. At Fon, we’ve established a joint project with JSFC Sistema (MTS-Comstar). MTS-Comstar has around 100 million subscribers, making it one of the most important mobile operators in the region. Eugin Koryagin, who worked with Comstar, is now the head of Fon Russia and leads the joint initiative.
The aim of the project, which began in 2008, was to create a major WiFi network in Moscow. Today, I can say with confidence that we have achieved that objective. As of the 30th of September, Comstar–Fon has 20,000 hotspots, making it largest WiFi network in Moscow. That’s double the number of hotspots in just two months and quadruple the number we had at the beginning of 2010.
By the end of 2010, we plan on reaching 50,000 active hotspots in Moscow. We also plan to maintain presence in all the MTS Group of Companies converging products, and to start commercial operation of the Fon network in Moscow and all over Russia. All this will allow Foneros and non-Foneros worldwide to add Russia to the list of countries where they have seamless access to the internet!
2010 4
Poll: Ahmadinejad vs Netanyahu
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the current President of Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is the Prime Minister from Israel. Both leaders are disliked by many of their own citizens and people around the world. But then very much liked by some as well. What follows is a poll focused on their image outside of their countries. The question is which leader do you trust more or dislike least for the region.
Based on what you have seen on the press, blogs, TV… everything you know about these leaders, if you had to choose between them, who would you like more or dislike least?
Polldaddy seems to be working poorly right now but votes are being counted.
This morning I read that most Muslims believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy created by the US government to justify the invasion of Iraq. This worried me. How could the majority of Muslims be so wrong?
But then I thought that the US government and some EU countries did lie to invade Iraq. They lied about the weapons of mass destruction conspiracy and the connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
So if I were debating with any of those Muslims who believe that 9/11 was an excuse to invade Iraq, I would have to say “9/11 was not a US/Israeli conspiracy, there is tremendous irrefutable evidence that it was a terrorist attack perpetrated by Saudi terrorists and led by Osama Bin Laden”. And that part is true.
But then I would have to explain other painful truths. I would have to admit that we invaded Iraq despite knowing that neither the 9/11 terrorists nor the WMD where there. That in our countries we created the false impression that Saddam was behind 9/11 and that many believe this lie now. And this is one weak side of the debate.
If we can create conspiracies about WMD and “muslim terrorism” as if all Muslims act together (Saddam=Osama=Ahmadinejad), attack and destroy the wrong country (Iraq), torture their citizens, post pictures of how we torture them in Abu Ghraib, take some to Guantanamo and approve their torture, share the blame in the killing of 25 times more innocent civilians than those who died in 9/11 and admit to use white phosphorous (chemical weapon) attacking Fallujah; if we can commit such human right atrocities, why is it so far fetched that most Muslims believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by US and Israel in order to invade Iraq and control the second largest oil reserves in the world?
Moreover, in this Wikipedia entry you will be surprised to find out that one third of Americans actually AGREE with the majority of Muslims. They also believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories even though 2% of Americans are Muslims.
Can our argument just be “yes, we do horrible things but not precisely the horrible things you believe we do”? My hope is that, during this decade, we will truly gain the high moral ground against terrorism and cooperate with moderate Muslims to erradicate Muslim extremism without violating human rights in the region. In the end, terrorism is an industry that feeds on angry young men. We have to make it much harder for Muslim terrorists to recruit. As we have been behaving over the last 10 years, it is not surprising that terrorism has greatly increased since 9/11.
2010 28
Ace of Base: Marketing Pop on the Internet
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Web 2.0 with No Comments
Like I never tire from saying, the Internet is a great tool that can be used in uncountable ways to promote basically any product, and music is no different from any other product. There are many sites and applications which can help publicize music, and it’s just a matter of knowing them and using them correctly to get what you need. For example, Ace of Base (of which my friend Ulk Ekberg is one of the founders) have a new album, The Golden Ratio, and they are using all these tools to make their music reach every corner of the world.
Twitter is one of the basics, because it permits the band to inform about anything new that’s going on in a short, easy, straight-to-the-point manner, so that any fans that follow then instantly know if there are new photos on the site, where the latest concerts are taking place, or where to listen to the new single. Ace of Base use their Twitter account quite regularly to keep all of their fans updated on the latest news like iTunes reviews on their new album, new photos… The best thing about Twitter is that it’s simple and quick to use, so it’s perfect for spreading the word quickly.
Facebook is another excellent platform for this, mainly because practically everyone has a Facebook account, and it’s got so many ways of sharing all kinds of stuff that it’s perfect to publicize a band. Ace of Base have their Facebook full of photos, thousands of comments on their Wall, a music player with some of their songs, info on the band and it’s members… All the information you need in a platform everyone knows and uses. If you are launching a SaaS company, it is imperative that you also develop a website with the help of SaaS web specialists. Many startups also benefit from affordable web design in plano, which ensures they get professional, high-quality websites without straining their budget.
Ace of Base also have an official webpage that they always keep updated. On it you can find more specialized information on the band, like the biography, discography, news, and even links to buy the album either as a CD or as downloadable tracks to upload onto your mp3 player directly.
Last but not least, Ace of Base have put out a great widget with a piece of each of their latest tracks, which you can embed on a blog, on a website, on Facebook…
and here’s their new videoclip from their Youtube channel, where you can also see older material and the making of their new video.
2010 28
Gourmet is back… as an iPad app
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
What follows is a story of death and rebirth.
Ever since the Internet exploded there has been a fear of printed magazines and newspapers becoming obsolete in favor of the new media. And that has been mostly true. But now the iPad with its magazine format, has given out of print publications a new opportunity. Gourmet Live is one of these.
The first issue of Gourmet came out in 1941, and up until it closed in November of 2009 due to losses, “Gourmet was to food what Vogue is to fashion”, as the New York Times put it. But when we thought Gourmet was lost forever… it reappeared on the 22nd of September as an iPad mag.
So, what is Gourmet Live? In Anil Dash’s (one of the minds behind the launch along with Michael Wolf) words, it’s a “new iPad app that reimagines Gourmet as a sort of massively multiplayer magazine”. While other magazines try to use the same content and the same format for two very different mediums, Gourmet has re-invented itself to make the most of the iPad’s features. They wanted it to look like a native iPad app, not just a cheap imitation of it’s printed version. For example, every time you finish reading an article, you get a “reward”, which is access to more content on the same topic. These rewards are all collected on some “shelves” (similar to iBooks), so you can go back to your old articles whenever you want.
The new Gourmet only 24 hours after it’s launch was already the top Lifestyle applications on iPad. If you want to know more about Gourmet Live, go and read Gizmodo’s review, or better yet, download the application. It’s free!
Conferences like TED or CGI address serious issues, frequently tragic issues. So the question is: is there a role for humor in these events?
At the Citizen’s Award Gala Dinner at CGI 2010 the organizers took a big risk. They added humor to tragedy. It was daring. Would hearing descriptions of the 30 seconds in which 250,000 people died in Haiti right after Ben Stiller and Kevin Spacey mock interview of Clinton work? Would giving a fake award in the mix of giving out some pretty serious awards to people who risk their life for whatever they believe in not seen as rude? Would not the mix be offensive as it was at the last TED I attended with Sarah Silverman picking on the retarded? (here is Sarah Silverman’s view of the event) Or how about adding humor to stories of dilapidated women in Afghanistan? Well as you will see in this video the humor worked. And the key to the success was to keep the humor away from the tragedy. To draw a dividing line between the two. The event was great at alternating, but not mixing humor and tragedy. The same woman you will see in the video at my table, the wife of the Primer Minister of Haiti, who was laughing and raising her hand in approval saying that Haitians are Africans was crying (I did not want to film her then) when the tragedy of the 250K haitians who died in 30 seconds was told. Nina my wife held her hand and it was a very, very sad moment in which I had to hold my own tears.
In the case of my video I chose to focus on the humor. The whole ceremony lasted 3 hours and I think 7 minutes is the most that the Youtube crowd will put up with. So here it goes.
2010 8
Media and the math of racism
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
In Spain 1 immigrant in 1000 is a convicted criminal. That means that for every 999 immigrants Spain gets one immigrant who ends up as a convicted criminal. That means that 99.9% of immigrants are not convicted criminals. And yet, because there are very few criminals in society overall, it happens that 60% of all the convicted criminals in Spain are foreigners. And Spanish media repeats that number to the point that it is beginning to feed racist sentiments. If you read it lightly it could be understand that 60% of immigrants are criminals, not 1 in 1000. That is the worrying math of racism. Should media say that 99.9% of immigrants are honest and sell few newspapers, or should it say that 60% of the criminals are foreigners and sell many? The math of racism feeds media the wrong way.
The BT FON WiFi network has grown to 1.6 million hotspots in the UK alone. That is a incredible amount of WiFi in one place compared to other networks, like T-Mobile’s WiFi network, that has only 10 thousand in the US. And now, there is another reason to make your friends in the States jealous, the BT FON autoconnection app for iPhone and Android.
The new BT FON app lets BT Total Broadband customers choose to be automatically logged in to WiFi whenever they are near a BT Fon or Openzone hotspot. Sure, there are a lot of third-party apps already available that detect WiFi. But, they often lead to locked or paid hotspots. This new app is much better. It avoids all that, autoconnects, and it’s free. For users who appreciate seamless connectivity, it’s as convenient as the innovations coming out of iphone app development melbourne.
Another great feature is the WiFi map that shows all the hotspots nearby, so you’ll always know where to find one. But of course the real advantage here is being able to connect to WiFi easily away from home, and this is why the BT FON partnership works so well. We all want the same thing. WiFi everywhere. The BT FON app brings us one step closer to that reality.
Download the free mobile app for iPhone. (Must be in the UK to download.)
Download the free mobile app for Android. (Must be in the UK to download.)
Your download of the BT FON mobile app also contributes to BBC Children in Need.
To learn more, please read the BT press release, or visit BT.com
I know. It’s shocking. Especially for me considering that I personally lost around $50 million saying “computers and Microsoft don’t matter anymore” 10 years ago (building Einsteinet a wonderful adventure but my only start up, out of 7, in which I lost all money invested for being way to early with cloud computing).
But finally, now, I can say it: computers and Microsoft really don’t matter anymore. At least they don’t at work and not for me. This is my experience. At Fon I use a second hand computer, an old Compaq nx6310 that they were going to throw away. It’s value now is probably around $100. I use it with Jolicloud because I like the social aspect of this distro, but I could be running Ubuntu, or Debian, or any Linux. Linux flavors also matter little because almost everything I do happens at Chromium, the open source version of Chrome which for all intents and purposes is like Chrome.
Right now in Chromium I have the following tabs opened: I listen to music in Grooveshark (yes I work with music right now Kevin Rudolf “Let it Rock”), I blog in Tumblr, I have Seesmic desktop to see what’s happening in Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, I use Postbox for my email (I love Postbox), Netvibes to find out what is happening in the world (outside of Twitter and Facebook), Gmail is open as well for Gmail back up, calendar. My searches don’t happen at Google.com anymore, they go straight from my browser bar to Google (Firefox must add this feature immediately!). Skype is also running. And of course my old Compaq is connected to a Fonera that gives me WiFi.
What’s important here is that nothing that happens in my computer at work stays at my computer at work. Should it fatally crash another computer would be up doing the same work in minutes. For file saving I use Dropbox. But frankly I almost have nothing on Dropbox since Gmail backs up all my mail and Gmail is my Dropbox. I pay for extra storage in Gmail.
Could I do the same at home? Not really. At home I have all my heavy duty photography in RAW files, the HD videos, games, tons of music, all my digital life which occupies around 1.5TB and no service yet stores it for anything that can compete with my two 2TB drives. So at home I am not ready to give up all to the cloud. I know that soon with services like Spotify and Netflix (when they get all the rights) I will stop downloading (downloading is legal in Spain) and storing movies and music and other than the content I produce, like photography and video, I will also be able to replace my Mac.
But at work, well I have all I need in this old Compaq running Linux and storing everything in the cloud.