2008 16
What Bill Gates did well and Steve Jobs did poorly
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
If there is one thing that Bill Gates got right and Steve Jobs did not is collaboration. And it is because Bill Gates knew how to collaborate and leave enough money on the table for others that he became the richest man in the world and Steve Jobs did not. And it is also because of this that Bill Gates became the largest philanthropist ever in the history of humanity and Steve Jobs, even if he had had the money, would have probably never gotten to that spot. Bill Gates likes to share his toys. Steve Jobs does not.
Now let me explain. I hate Vista. I use Apple, I have an iPhone, and I am now blogging from a MacBook Air. I even own Apple shares since they crashed last month. Having said this, I think it is time that Apple allows Leopard to be used in Dell computers, for example, so we can get quality, competitive products that are better than this new Apple clone. Us Leopard users…we want choice. I hope that guy in Miami does not get shut down. In any case, my advise to him would be to sell the boxes and let people install Leopard in them on their own.
2008 15
Modu, I wonder what we could do with it at Fon
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I’ve recently found out about Modu, a company based in Israel developing a new concept of mobile phone. At first sight, modu is just a very small mobile phone (smaller then an iPod Nano), but what is really cool and most important about this device, is that it comes as a central part of a whole ecosystem. Users will be able to slip their modu into a variety of modu jackets, an evolution of what we are used to call “covers”, or into modu mates, devices like video players, navigation systems or digital cameras.
Modu jackets provide users with a new look for their phone, but also additional functionalities. For example, if you slip your modu in a blackberry-like jacket, your modu becomes a business phone with a QWERTY keyboard, if you slip it into a multimedia phone jacket, you get a camera, music controls and an embedded speaker. Slip it into a “modu kid” jacket, and it becomes the perfect phone for kids, with big buttons and special keys to call mom and dad. Companies can design their custom branded jackets and provide them in partnership with modu.
A modu phone can give connectivity and additional features to modu mates, that can be all kind of gadgets. If modu will get the traction and critical mass needed for device makers to adopt the technology, modu users will be able to slip their modu phone into a digital picture frame, a camera, a gps device, etc. Visiting modu’s website you can get a good idea of “jackets” and “mates” that could soon be available.
This is quite smart: by building a modu mate a consumer electronics manufacturer could get a device with communication capabilities and connectivity while saving a lot of the time and effort required for development and approval from operators or regulation authorities like the FCC. There are lots of devices for which connectivity and communication capabilities would make a lot of sense, but replicating a whole mobile phone is just not worth the hassle. Bluetooth, of course, is a good and already popular alternative.
Unfortunately this phone doesn’t seem to provide WiFi access and not even 3G. For a phone that should give connectivity to other devices, relying on GPRS seems not a good choice, probably forced by space constraints. WiFi would be a perfect fit, giving fast and cheap connectivity when at home (think cameras, digital frames, video devices).
Modu plans to start selling the phone in October with Telecom Italia in Italy, OAA Vimpel Communications in Russia and Cellcom in Israel, for less then 200€ including a jacket.
2008 15
My ideas for La Fonera 2.0
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Now that we have began giving La Fonera 2.0 to coders, I started dreaming of new apps that I like to see done over the standard Fon functionality (give me WiFi, give some WiFi to others, allow me to make money with my WiFi, allow me to roam the world for free).
As you know the Fonera 2.0 is like a minicomputer that, other than being a social WiFi router, can do all sorts of things so long as we program it. And even more if we add an audio in, a mike, a speaker…
Here are the ideas, the good, the bad and the crazy ones.
-Fonera bridge functionality so i can get any encrypted signal or open signal from inside the home and turn it on the window to Fon signal.
-HSDPA to WiFi converter so HSDPA can be useful in many devices. For this the Fonera 2.0 should have a car plug or an external battery pack.
-Mesh functionality for wireless communities that, as opposed to foneros, have people who want WiFi and don’t have DSL or cable.
-A Flickr uploader so i can put the SD reader straight to the USB drive of La Fonera, go to my Fonera web page, instruct the Fonera to send those pictures to Flickr, leave my home and have La Fonera send them over the next hour or so. Same with Photobucket and other popular picture services.
-A youtube uploader so i can get my favorite videos into a pen drive or SD, stick it into the Fonera, upload them to Youtube while my laptop is doing something else or i left home.
–Bit Torrent or Azureus: download my favorite movies and tv series (that are legal to download) into my hard drive that is plugged to La Fonera 2.0 all this while I am not at home or doing something else.
-Combine La Fonera 2.0 with another piece of WiFi hardware that goes in an amplifier and receives streamed music from my computer over La Fonera, or from a hard drive in La Fonera that I left programmed to do this. This hardware would be like a WiFi music receiver that gets WiFi signal and transforms it to audio out.
-Same idea, but with video and my TV so i can get video delivered to my TV over WiFi.
-An app that once i have the WiFi receiver in my TV shares my screensavers with my TV’s so i see my family and friend pictures in large TV screens.
-A network hard drive for both individual files and a WiFi back up system. This could be combined with www.getgspace.com as well.
-A WiFi network printer with printer plugged via USB to La Fonera.
-A wireless USB functionality so La Fonera can be somewhere and the peripherals somewhere else.
-A home monitoring system for security/babies that not only allows me to see, but to talk back to people near the camera again using already existing cameras. Even just a microphone without a camera would be good so you can listen to what is going on around La Fonera like a baby monitor.
-Buttons that could be on La Fonera and given specific uses, for example, that are pressed when an older person takes medication so this person can be monitored from the outside. If they don´t press the button, they may need a phone call reminding them to take it or they maybe simply……. dead. On a similar vein a panic button for security reasons that is tied to a security service.
-The ability to add a simple keyboard and monitor to La Fonera to use it as a simple Linux computer (i would need video card and probably a more powerful computer). But this simple computer could do tasks that i may not want my expensive laptop to be doing, such as being a media server.
-A WiFi pbx system for telephony.
-An iPhone app that sends music from my iPhone into La Fonera over WiFi so La Fonera sends it to my audio system (that has WiFi receiver). In general, I feel that what the iPhone and iPod Touch should do is allow me to walk into my home and send music to my stereo.
-A Facebook app (for this La Fonera needs to have a speaker) that would work like this: you would go into the Facebook app and program your Fonera to make funny noises when your friends poke you, to read you your timeline, to read you your messages and anything else you would like it to say. Ideally this Fonera would be a special purpose product that looks like your FRIEND in Facebook, like a robot that tells you all these things, that moves when you are poked, etc.
-An interface with Rapidshare and Megaupload, two extremely popular file exchange sites (again, with all the caveats of this being legal).
-A simple app that turns La Fonera into an alarm clock that wakes up up in the morning, or a more complicated app that is connected to the Google Calendar and makes La Fonera remind you of things to do.
-The famous FATERA, a scale with WiFi connected to La Fonera that posts your weight every morning to groups that are trying to lose weight, sort of AA but for losing weight and at home. Similarly you could have breathalyzers for people actually on AA so others can know if you drank. Again social pressure to lose weight or stop drinking.
-Sensors that can be attached to La Fonera so you can be warned of temperature changes in your home or fire or simply make temperature graphs of your home. These sensors would have to be away enough from La Fonera so its temperature does not affect them.
Well around 1300 Iraqis got fired yesterday for being ineffective at battling other Iraqis. USA must pull out of Iraq now.
As I’ve recently disclosed, our main objective at FON is the launch of our next product, the Fonera 2.0. The Fonera 2.0 is a Fonera that will not only make it easy to provide WiFi for yourself and for your neighbors, it will also provide Foneros with great features like the ability to connect a hard drive to it and autonomously upload or download content from the Internet while you’re doing something else on your laptop or your PC is off. In short the Fonera 2.0 will manage your daily relationship with the Web 2.0 doing such thing as sending your pictures to Flickr, your videos to Youtube, downloading your torrents, etc. Many of the things that the new Fonera will do a PC can do of course but why tie up a thousand dollar investment with your vital info doing menial task when you can have a $49 Fonera do them.
The Fonera 2.0 will be an open platform for developers to build their applications on top of, much like a hacked iPhone is now. An open platform is nothing without a community of developers, so we’re announcing today the launch of The Fonosfera, our development community program that will span not only the Fonera 2.0 but all Fon products. We know there are already many communities doing great things with our Foneras, adding new features and fixing bugs. The idea behind the Fonosfera is to bring all the development work the communities have been doing and will do in the future to any Fon user.
The Fonosfera will be a chance for all these communities to keep working independently, while contributing to the development of Fon products including the Fonera 2.0 and the applications that will run on it. The Fonosfera will provide a space for gathering and sharing between developers and to make their projects available to end users all around the world. It will include a framework with development and community tools such as svn, trac, forums, mailing list, wiki etc. We already picked a few communities that have proved they can do great things with the Fonera and sent them a test version of our Fonera 2.0.
The Fonera 2.0 will provide a USB connection and users will be able to plug any sort of USB device to it (as long as there’s software support in the firmware, and we invite developers to add support for any device they might think of). The Fonera 2.0 will provide out of the box the ability to connect a hard drive or pendrive to it, so you can access it on your local network and use it to store the contents your Fonera 2.0 will download from the Internet for you. Another interesting feature we are working on is the ability to connect an HSDPA modem to the USB port of the Fonera 2.0, to share an HSDPA connection on the move or where DSL is not available.
We are working hard to make the Fonera 2.0 as open as possible, and we are willing to take all the help the development community can bring to Fon and Foneros. Our users will still have to wait a few months to get their Foneras 2.0, but we’re sure it will be worth the wait.
2008 11
Fon raises $9.5 million in tough markets
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
We are happy to report that at Fon we have raised $9.5 million in a C round. Our current valuation which unfortunately I can´t disclosed has been the best valuation so far. This does not mean that we were not hurt by current market conditions which are pretty bad for start ups (Fon was founded in February 2006). Our leading investor in the round was a US Venture Capital arm of Sistema, Russia´s leading telco but our usual suspects, Google, British Telecom, Digital Garage and of course your blog writer participated in the round.
What are we going to do with the money? Launch Fon in Russia, launch the Fonera 2.0 (the fonera that uploads and downloads stuff to and from the internet while you are doing something else with your laptop) and develop the fonera 802.11n for an end of the year launch.
Unfortunately we will also have to do all this spending less money because this market forces us to do so. We already cut losses at Fon from $1.3 million per month to $800K per month in the last half year and we achieved this through cost reductions, a great reduction in router subsidies and increased revenues with high margins. We plan to do more of the same in the future and my target is to be losing half a million per month by June and to break even by the end of 09. And yes I do know that I should not be telling any of these things because we are a private company but if this blog is of any value to entrepreneurs I believe I must share them with you.
Bottom line: tough market forces you to think harder about everything you do but we are very happy to have closed this C round.
2008 10
Is the digital world sustainable?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
For historical reasons the digital world that includes movies, music, videogames, tv channels, internet access, voice minutes over fixed and mobile lines, internet content, is grossly unfair. In the digital world most people download and get music for free and have come to expect music to be free. The same people however pay a fortune for voice calls to their mobile operators and seem to think that that is normal. More and more people pay less for movies and are downloading them for free. In Europe now the video game industry makes more money than the music and the movie industry combined. But as much as they are unwilling to pay for movies themselves they pay tons of money to Cable Operators to have access to an enormous selection of TV Channels that they hardly watch. Instead they still mostly watch broadcasting television which is free. They pay significant amounts to fixed telecom carriers and yet are unwilling to pay any money for the content that makes internet access worthwhile. And pay nothing for writing long emails over the telephone or their computers but pay absurd amounts to send 140 characters or less in an SMS. Is the digital world sustainable?
2008 9
Peter Crouch teaches us how to make a perfect Mexican wave
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Liverpool’s striker, Peter Crouch, also joined BT FON campaign. And in this video he teaches us how to make the perfect Mexican wave.
2008 8
2008 Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
BT FON has been selected by the judges as a finalist in the Most Innovative Wireless Broadband Company category of the Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards. Vote for BT FON!
2008 8
BT Fon and how to reach the general public with Fon
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
The Sun‘s coverage of BT FON‘s latest campaign. The girl in the photo is Jennifer Metcalfe, star actress in the UK.
Peter Crouch and Jennifer Metcalfe have grabbed their sombreros to spice up the launch of the world’s biggest ever Mexican Wave.
Liverpool striker Crouch and Hollyoaks stunner Metcalfe are promoting BT FON’s fun new campaign which aims to find out which football team in the UK has the most passionate fans.
Bradford babe Metcalfe visited Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium for Saturday’s clash with Liverpool to meet who filmed their own, unique Mexican Waves.
To me it is fontastic to see all this going on as BT is showing Fon that if you really want to reach the general public you have to go for themes that are less geeky than ours. Who would not dream of being able to connect to Jennifer Metcalfe´s Fonera?