Maybe I am the eternal optimist, but I am one of those convinced that the US real estate market is not as bad as the markets that price mortgages think. And now that the US government is seeking buyers for a trillion of those assets going for private equity funds and hedge funds, I wonder this: Why do I have to pay somebody a 20% commission to buy those assets? Why can´t I buy those assets directly? Why doesn´t the US government create securities with, say, face value of $10K each, made of a diversified, countrywide pool of those assets and sell them retail?

I recently wrote a post called the Shortened Life Index in which I argued that both suicide and homicide are highly cultural. In some cultures homicide is common, as in the Caribbean for example, and in others suicide is common, as in Japan. If you consider suicide violence or ultimately murder against yourself it is more dangerous to live in Switzerland than in my native Argentina. Or in Japan than in Spain as in both countries the suicide rates are extremely high. And personally I considered both suicide and homicide a similar phenomenom and created an index that showed country per country what happens when you add the suicide and homicide rates. I called it the Shortened Life Index but I am opened to any other sugestions as far as the right name for it. The point though is that you can be more dangerous than any other person when it gets to calculating the risk of a shortened life. You probably heard that you are much more likely to get murdered by somebody you know than by a stranger, well this is the same point taken to an extreme.

Now it so happens that I just saw a film that argued exactly the same point. It´s called In Bruges. It´s pretty good. And without spoiling it, as I recommend seeing it, this movie makes the point that there is an intersection between suicide and homicide. All its main characters alternate between suicidal and homicidal moments.

Interestingly though, most people don´t see suicide as self murder.

You don’t usually expect innovation to come from big established players like incumbent telecom operators. They usually have invested so much in legacy technologies and traditional business models that hardly anything new or disruptive can come out of their labs. But sometimes there are exceptions. I’ve recently learned about ClubADSL, a new service the Spanish incumbent Telefónica is developing to increase the capacity of residential ADSL users by sharing broadband with their neighbors.

The technology Telefónica is testing could soon allow users to connect simultaneously to multiple wireless access points to get more bandwidth for services like HD video or other bandwidth hungry applications. The bandwidth available to an user will be the sum of the bandwidth available to him and his nearest neighbors. This is based on the fact that WiFi connections offer far larger capacity then that provided by a DSL line and that users rarely use their DSL connection to its full potential. ClubADSL will equally share the bandwidth available between customers in the same Club and guarantee the quality of service for each subscriber by giving him prioritized access to his own DSL line.

How does this compare to FON? Both FON and ClubADSL users use WiFi to share their bandwidth with others, but Foneros do it to roam for free on other Fonspots, while members of ClubADSL do it to get more bandwidth at home. This proposition is clearly very different. Nonetheless Telefonica could possibly use the same technology to allow users to connect to ClubADSL connections when you are not at home. There are many privacy and security concerns involved when creating a similar network. We at FON have solved these thanks to our Fonera, the router that gives you two WiFi signals, a public and a private signal, and lets you choose how much of your bandwidth you want to share with Foneros and Aliens. Our partnerships with operators like BT, Neuf and ZON demonstrate FON is the best option for a telecom operator that wants to expand its WiFi footprint and give more value to their users, that can then use their Internet connection at home and roam the world for free.

Dopplr, a company I have invested in, recently added a new set of features that let you mark places you’ve been in cities around the world, like quality restaurants and hotels, as well as other places to explore. It’s something like a Last.fm for travel, a streamlined city guide that aggregates the collective intelligence and experience of travelers like you. Dopplr calls it the social atlas. You can find pages for all the main destinations in the world, see for example Madrid, Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Sydney.

As you visit cities around the world, Dopplr will alert you to the places your network has been and enjoyed. Dopplr has made marking places as easy as possible: wherever you see a place you can click on the green “+” next to it to say you’ve “been here”. Click a second time to say “you’ve been there and liked it”. If you want to undo all of this, just click a third time.

In other news, Dopplr now lets you easily add trips using Twitter, simply sending a direct message to dopplr, something like “d dopplr a trip to London on May 19th until May 23rd”. You can add trips via email as well.

My friend Marko Ahtisaari has joined Dopplr’s team as CEO at the beginning of the year and will focus on improving the user experience, strengthening the team and building out the business model.

Zer01 Mobile is a new virtual mobile operator (MVNO) in the US that will use AT&T’s wireless network to offer voice and data services to their users. What is interesting about Zer01 Mobile is that all voice calls will be VoIP and the company will deliver them over AT&T’s data network using its own IP backbone. The service will include unlimited voice and data access and cost $69.95 per month without a contract. Zer01 Mobile will also offer unlimited international calling to 40 countries for an additional $10 per month. What they are doing is essentially undercutting AT&T‘s, Verizon‘s and T-Mobile‘s all you can eat $99 plans using AT&T’s own network. Quite impressive.

All voice calls on Zer01 Mobile will be delivered using a VoIP application that runs on Windows Mobile 6 phones and will soon be available on Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Java and eventually jailbroken iPhones. This application lets users dial numbers from their phone’s keypad without launching a separate app, meaning users won’t have to change their habits to call using Zer01 Mobile. The application and network equipment the service runs on is optimized to enable VoIP on EDGE and GPRS data connections, something almost unprecedented. Zer01 Mobile plans to launch with a closed beta in April and will soon announce a commercial launch date.

While most mobile carriers are still focused on voice traffic, Zer01 Mobile looks more like a mobile data service provider that gives you real unlimited data and cheap voice as well, in form of an easy to use VoIP app. Traditional wireless carriers have worked out data traffic on mobile devices will be huge, but are still trying to figure out how to make it as profitable as their overpriced voice and SMS traffic.

An MVNO like Zer01 Mobile could hardly exist in Europe, because of the expensive termination charges that mobile operators impose to other companies wishing to terminate calls on their networks. A similar VoIP based MVNO in Europe could probably offer cheap calls to fixed lines and international destinations, but wouldn’t be able to compete with local mobile operators in mobile to mobile traffic.

UK based Truphone has adopted a similar approach and is increasingly looking like a VoIP powered mobile operator for the international traveller. They now offer SIM cards that you can use in any of the supported countries (with no roaming fees and multiple local numbers) and cheap international calls via WiFi or local gateways.

Thank you Pietro for your help in this post.

After months of hard work, our development team at FON has just released the latest, production release of the firmware for our upcoming Fonera 2.0, a release codenamed Platero. I’d like to congratulate with all the people at FON involved in this project for the terrific work they’ve done. The Fonera 2.0 will be available from early April, more details to come soon.

The Fonera 2.0 is the WiFi router that helps users easily manage their relationship with the Web 2.0. Foneros not only will make money and roam the world for free but will also be able to manage their storage, backup, uploading and downloading activities, thanks to a USB port and a selection of plugins developed by the community. The Fonera 2.0 will also be totally open to developers, that will have the chance to program their own applications for other Foneros, making use of the USB port and the open programming environment.

Here is a list of all the new features introduced with this release, including a Torrent downloader and a Youtube uploader.

• Installation wizard. Some questions will be asked the first time you connect to the fonera 2.0 and type “fonera” on your browser.
• Youtube Uploader. Take a pen drive, put all your videos in a folder named “youtube” and plug it to the fonera. Your videos will be automatically uploaded to your YouTube account! This is a real 2.0 router.
• Torrent downloader. Get some torrent files, upload them to the fonera and this will download them for you. You can turn your computer off and go to bed. Platero will do the work 
• MegaUpload and RapidShare downloads. Yes, we never announced this. How does it sound? Configure your RS or MU account, copy a big lot of MU or RS links from the Internet and paste them on the fonera interface. The fonera will download the. But wait… you don’t want to download stuff while you surf? no worries, tell Platero to download things at a certain time frame, while you sleep for instance!
• 3G provider list. Have a 3G USB dongle and don’t know your configuration settings? No worries, tell the fonera your country and your 3G provider… Platero knows the rest (except for your PIN, of course  )
• Need help? check our videos. Every page in the fonera GUI now has a help button. It will take you to a video where our lovely colleague Martina will tell you how to use that page. Ain’t it sweet? More videos and improvements are coming!
• More to come… we’re already developing new features (improved interface), new applications (VPN, advanced networking, Picasa uploader, iStremer for iTunes…), fixing bugs, etc.