October 2011
Fon launches in Brazil together with our partner...
Joining the ranks of Belgacom, BT, Softbank of Japan, SFR of France, Comstar of Russia and Zon of Portugal, I would like to welcome Fon’s newest partner: Oi of Brazil.
Today we’re officially launching our partnership with Oi, the largest telco in Brazil and the second largest telco in Latin America. This means that as of today, Fon has entered the Latin American market. With Fon you share a...
Steve Rogers of Aradian Aviation
If you ever have to deal with Steve Rogers or Aradian Aviation I do recommend that you ask me for my views on this brokerage firm. You can do so by writing to martin@fon.com.
The High School Subjects that Make a Difference
High School education is obsolete. As I see it high school programs around the world should be modified in different degrees. On top of the current high school curriculum, there are other relevant subjects that children should be introduced to. The additional subjects that I believe would benefit children most are: -basic household management, how to live on your own. -computer...
Looking at the Advantages and Disadvantages of...
Lately, I have been testing Android tablets. I am writing this with a Samsung Tab 10.1. It is big, very rectangular, SwiftKey doesn’t show well. There are less games than iPad. Some features are cool like screen captures, the way you move from app page to app page. The over WiFi set up. What is your experience?
I would like to know how accurate Android voice recognition is for native US speakers. I speak English with an Argentine accent but obviously a very slight accent because it is remarkable how well Android understands my English. Interestingly my wife has a German accent in English and Android cannot understand her at all. Android gets almost every word she says wrong, as if she was speaking...
Only one university in all of Latin America makes...
Is the Spanish Culture to Blame for the Country´s...
I have been debating with my Spanish followers on Twitter about why Spain has the highest unemployment rates of all developed nations - 21% for the population as a whole and 46% youth unemployment. To put Spain´s unemployment into perspective, the EU´s average rate of unemployment is less than half of Spain´s. In my view, Spain´s high unemployment is as much the product of poor financial/...
Amorexia
Idea for best seller. You will identify with it. Either because you suffer from amorexia or because someone you know does. I call amorexia the inability to fall in love. Amorexics then, are people who flirt, get into short non exclusive relationships, have sex, but are just unable to fall in love. There are many amorexics, they deserve a good study, they deserve a best seller.
Parenting is the best thing I have ever done
I am a father of 5. I also built 5 companies. Building 5 companies of which 4 did very well is a very rare accomplishment. Yet having 5 children is something that many more people could do if they wanted to.. If I have to compare, what gave me more satisfaction in life, as much as I have enjoyed building my companies and I now enjoy being CEO of Fon, being a father is just another level...
Filipinos don’t speak Spanish anymore but they speak English with a Spanish accent. Spaniards are not practicing Catholics but they live life with a Catholic accent. Spaniards are not pious anymore but they have an obsession with being humble. On Twitter, my blog, here, I frequently get accused of not being humilde enough, not humble enough. It’s as if I was a sinner of some...
A small detail that explains why many countries can never be democracies. Here’s Evo Morales taxing all of his citizens and then using their money to give out laptops to teachers for free with his image.
Imagen vía huffingtonpost.com
The kind of intelligence that you need to succeed in business goes mostly undetected at school. Its a sense of leadership and strategy that is not what teachers reward. Entrepreneurs tend to antagonize teachers, they are in class wishing they were in charge and teachers hate that. That’s why so many drop out or do poorly at university only to thrive in real life.
Last Friday was the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion. Why we are there is beyond my comprehension. We have killed so many innocent people, both our own soldiers who we sent to a hopeless war and countless innocent victims of our bombardments. We are at fault, both Europe and USA. Why did we stay in Iraq beyond overthrowing Saddam and in Afghanistan beyond overthrowing the Taliban?...
Nationalism and religion have a lot in common. Yet nationalists and religious people will quickly deny this. But both nationalism and religion are about tribal rituals, members and not members, ours vs theirs, inclusion vs exclusion. A gene pool vs a non gene pool. I know this. I am Jewish but I am not religious, still I am a “member of the tribe”. Religion and God most likely...
Steve Jobs health history from Wikipedia
In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.[117] The prognosis for pancreatic canceris usually very poor; Jobs, however, stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[117] Jobs resisted his doctors’ recommendations for evidence-based medical intervention for nine...
This was surprising, I was speaking at a conference in Zurich and somebody from the audience came up with this video of Mark Zuckerberg and I in 2008. That was superkind of this person, to shoot this video I mean. You can see how Mark Zuckerberg was going around the world promoting Facebook, this was the Spanish launch at it took place at a theater I owned in Madrid called Teatro Lara. The...
