This is a very interesting video of a TV news show filmed in 1981 that predicted that some day we would get our newspapers and magazines online. We are still not there yet and it´s 28 years later. I find it interesting that the commentator says that the newspapers are doing this without any idea of how they could make money with it and this became the biggest problem for newspapers. In Spain, last week alone, 2 newspapers closed down: Metro and ADN, and two others, ABC and El Mundo, laid off around 500 journalists.

I found out about this video thanks to my friend Jack Hidary via his Facebook post.

I recently had a chance to test Modu, a small mobile phone that acts like the intelligent core of several modular mobile devices. Please take time to see the Modu link before you go on reading this because otherwise it is hard to imagine based on a text description alone. Users will be able to slip their modu into a variety of modu jackets, stylishly designed phone enclosures, or into modu mates, devices like video players, navigation systems or digital cameras.

Modu is a new approach trying to solve the eternal dilemma: should I use an all-in-one device like the iPhone or a standalone device for each feature I need? While the first is more efficient, economical and practical, best results always come from using a dedicated device. If you look for the best iPod experience, with gigs of storage, use an iPod; if you want to take great pictures, get a proper digital camera; if you need to do some serious mobile email work, get a Blackberry; and if you need navigation with turn-by-turn directions, the best solution is a proper GPS you can fit in your car. Still you can use an iPhone to do all this and more with decent results and the comfort of fitting it in your pocket.

Modu takes a different approach. The modu phone can be plugged into jackets that make it into an MP3 player, a GPS system, or a digital camera. You keep a single smart part of the system and add the physical and software interface that best fits the function it needs to accomplish. This is a very smart approach, one that convinced many investors and potential customers. Modu raised $58M in 2008 from VC funds and investors from the mobile industry and several mobile network operators have already committed to selling modu phones, including Telecom Italia, Beeline (Russia) and Cellcom (Israel).

Founder and CEO Dov Moran, inventor of the USB Flash drive, started modu in 2007 in Israel, after selling his previous company, msystems, to SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

Thanks Pietro for your help with this article.

While print media organizations worldwide are trying to figure out how to make money online, facing declining revenues and a shrinking audience for their print editions, a startup based in Chicago is going the opposite direction, aggregating blog posts and user-generated content from the Internet and publishing it via print.

The Printed Blog, founded by Joshua Karp a few months ago, is something similar to a printed, localized Digg – the selection of content is done by readers who vote the best local news. They plan to publish hundreds of highly-localized editions based on what each community declares is important to them. The papers will be distributed to neighborhood pickup points twice a day, and will include reader comments.

This startup seems to believe there will be always space for printed media. It’s just the model that needs to change to adapt to the Web 2.0 era, bringing personalized and highly relevant news to a comfortable and familiar medium, good old paper.

While I recently cancelled all my newspaper subscriptions, a tough decision I made after I realized I get all my news online, I still think paper is the most comfortable medium to read your news (until ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle will get better and cheaper).

The Printed Blog’s business model is the usual free newspaper model, giving out newspapers for free while making money attracting local advertisers and selling classified ads. The Printed Blog won’t have to pay for editors, thanks to a revenue sharing agreement with blog authors, but will still have to support costs for printing and distribution. We’ll see if enough advertisers will be attracted by the opportunity to address a hyper-local audience and make this innovative model profitable.

This performance was remarkable, amazing, unique. Beardyman the famous beatboxer got together on stage with one of the world´s top violinists, Hillary Hahn. The result is in this video. Enjoy.

With no discredit to all the great tech conferences in Europe, including Le Web, SIME, MMF, Google and Zeitgeist – DLD is simply the best. DLD is fun, a perfect combination of content, networking and entertainment. You have to give credit to the Germans. They are the best organized people in Europe. And, it shows in this event where every single detail seems to be thought out – from the custom made espressi to the Mercedes 450HP that take you around everywhere you want to go. Flawless.

So here are some pictures from my conversation with Rene Oberman CEO of DT and of the Hispanic Internet Panel that I moderated (the links contain the live blogging that went on)

And here´s a simple video that I made with some moments. The end at the speaker´s lounge in which Joichi Ito, David Kirkpatrick, Mark Zuckerberg and my son Tom appear is in Spanish

Here´s a Valleywag article on Skipping Davos that I found interesting. Other years most in the DLD crowd went straight to Davos, this year some went home or headed for TED.

I am at a panel at DLD with the vague name of telling stories. There is Fernando Sulichin the Argentine film maker in a weird panel blend with my friend Loic LeMeur and Valleywag feeder Julia Allison. The first comment on this panel is that people whose life is on the Internet seem to live in a separate world from people whose life is in the movie industry even though they both tell stories. Bloggers like Loic and Julia and myself, we tell stories, and so does Fernando when he makes a movie, and so do people who write books. But the way we tell these stories is fundamentally different. When bloggers speak, people reply. When movie directors film, people watch. Fernando has a depth in talking about subjects that Loic and Julia don´t have because you can tell that Fernando has TIME in his life and Loic and Julia do not. Fernando is not on Twitter, Fernando is not checking his friends updates on Facebook, Fernando is not on Netvibes with a million blogs. Fernando´s next story is the life of Jesus as a revolutionary with Tim Robbins acting in it. I don´t even know Fernando, but I sometimes get the feeling that people who want to tell a good story, in depth, should not be on the Internet more than an hour per day.