August 2011
Netflix to launch in Spain
Probably the fact that Spain is the country with more downloads per internet user in Europe made Spain the first EU country to get Netflix. When I recently met with Presidential hopeful Alfredo Rubalcaba he spoke about how much pressure the Spanish government received to stop the downloading of US content without pay in Spain and was very aware of how Spotify was making it in Spain as a...
Hell is coming to The Hamptons http://passageweather.com/ I am sailing in the Med these days and use Passage Weather as a sailing web site. Go into this site and track the hurricane, it’s scary! We have a farm in the Hamptons, Luna Farm in Sagaponack. It is a historical farm. I hope it survives. And I hope some miracle makes the hurricane go away from the coast in the next 48...
Why did we go to war?
I am debating with too many people on Twitter. I give up. Most people seem to believe that EU and USA went to war in the Arab countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya because somehow we are making money doing so. They don’t get it that Europe and USA lost trillions in these wars. That their people, their economies… lost trillions and a horrible sacrifice of human lives on all...
The average American owes $50K, the average Libyan...
Libyans look like they are in horrible shape, and as they finish their civil war they are. And we are all happy Gaddafi, while still at large, is not in power. But unlike anything you can imagine, Libyan finances are not that bad. Libya is no Egypt. They have over $200bn in assets of which $165bn are abroad. They are only 6 million people and have no national debt. As a result each...
We were told Europe was becoming Eurabia but so far Africa is becoming Eurafrica. Dictators keep falling and that is great. Yes it’s true that North African countries are still many years away from democracy. But as it is the case with Russia and China better now than 2 decades ago.
A better USA just a few "if's" away
USA is an amazing country. But it would be way more awesome if:
-it did not spend half of what the whole world together spends in the military.
-it did not have lawyers who leech on business with a “tort tax” adding unnecessary costs to the economy in medicine, patents and tons of other fields.
-it did not spend twice as much as Europe in health care per person leaving many...
My meeting with Spanish presidential candidate...
Yesterday, I spent three and a half hours brainstorming on how to turn Spain around with presidential candidate Alfredo Rubalcaba. He understands that the answer to unemployment is entrepreneurship. I appreciated that he listened carefully to my ideas for increasing employment. Spain has the highest unemployment rates of all OECD nations (20%) and this problem was the focus of our meeting....
Google buys Moto
A few weeks ago I wrote that Google had to buy a smartphone maker https://plus.google.com/110874778461943365830/posts/cqPgWBGp8Gz I am very glad they bought Motorola. Google has very little to lose buying Moto and a lot to gain. Motorola is affordable, has good IP, is in USA, and even though they clearly don’t make the best Android phones now Andy Rubin will make sure they do. And $9.5bn...
Why most extremely intelligent people never come...
I was trying to understand why most people who are incredibly intelligent never amount to much and I came to this conclusion. Intelligence is like a sense. It’s the ability to reason, to organize ideas according to principles. But just as being able to see, does not guarantee that you will actually discover something new, or vision does not necessarily lead to significant observations,...
Mutant thoughts
I was trying to understand why most people who are incredibly intelligent never amount to much and I came up with this conclusion. Intelligence is like a sense. It’s the ability to reason, to organize ideas according to principles. But just as being able to see, does not guarantee that you will actually discover something new, or vision does not necessarily lead to significant observations,...
Fon in Wired Magazine UK
Wired wrote this article about Fon and myself. The article is scanned in that file but pls buy the magazine or the iPad app :) I don’t want to hurt their business!
If Jobs got my 4 year old to master the iPad I hope the iPotty is out before Mia is 2!
Nokia married Microsoft but Microsoft can sleep...
Nokia is either dead, or saved by the strategy explained in this article. I give 80% that it’s dead, but 20% is still a chance. And if Windows Phone does take off it will be the miracle that Nokia needs. Problem is that WP should it be a success, it is also available for HTC and Samsung. Indeed it is HTC not Nokia who is the number one biggest seller of Windows Phone now. But...
Inflate or deflate?
Today, the world’s most powerful figures in charge of managing the economies of the industrialized nations are divided. Some strongly believe that spending has to be cut and taxes raised to balance budgets and eventually run surpluses. They think that if we have to go through a recession so be it but eventually we can grow with fiscal surpluses as China does. Others probably think that...
What determines the crime rate in a city?
The cost of getting caught.
The probability of getting caught.
The level of anonimity or city size.
The availability of legal alternatives to earn a living.
The social stigma or lack of it attached to crime or education level of the society.
The level of potential gains from crime or how gainful crime can be.
Anything else?
All you can eat news services
As the New York Times, FT, WSJ and others begin to charge for news, a good business idea would be to start a service that you pay them per month and access all the news of all the paid sites. The challenge is that each site should not feel cannibalized and be part of the syndicate. But I would like to pay $9 per month for all the news, not to each source. And if they get very few ...
Mia Varsavsky was born this morning. As you can see we are all well. This picture was taken only 2 hours after birth. Nina was amazing, brave, confident, and very happy. Mia struggled through the whole thing. We promised her that life gets better later on. Birth took place at Ruber Internacional in Madrid. Dr Luis Recasens, an amazing obstetrician did the C Section. I had the easy...
Why I carry 3 smartphones and what I don't do with...
Ok, I am obsessed with Smartphones and connectivity, but probably so are you. My announced day without Blackberry produced and undesirable outcome. I just went back from the Torch(ure) to the BB 9700 which is liberated from T Mobile USA so I can use both here and in USA with them (few phones work like that cause T Mobile has their own 3G flavor). I could not type fast on the iPhone no matter what....
AirBnB realizes that trust is all they have and...
Hi Martin, Last month, the home of a San Francisco host named EJ was tragically vandalized by a guest. The damage was so bad that her life was turned upside down. When we learned of this our hearts sank. We felt paralyzed, and over the last four weeks, we have really screwed things up. Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post trying to explain the situation, but it didn’t reflect my true feelings....
How Bin Laden was killed, worth reading. →