Kaizen Bits

Yep, to those of you in Facebook, today it´s my birthday. This year has been very intense and I would defnitely say it has been directly reflected on this blog and the seldom updating it has undergone.

During the summer, despite I will not be having holidays but travelling (surprise!! nothing´s gonna change that much ), I will try to update much more the blog and also recap on many issues I would have liked to blog about, starting from corporate strategies and ending with pure research topics, most of them concerning the (ever-growing) amount of projects we are involved.

Two weeks ago, I was in Bogota and we met with top executives of Estevegomez, a building management firm. They were extremely nice, polite and the conversation encompassed several topics. All of them were extremel interesting to me and that´s the reason why I am reproducing them here.

Firstly, the influence of Spanish companies in Colombia, as a representative of a Latam market. According to them, Spanish companies simply showed up and took the purse out asking: how much is this company? End of story. They were not that interested in joint-ventures or local partners, but they are big enough and have critical mass to simply purchase companies.

Then we talked about Latam markets and how China and Asia were looking at them because of raw materials they need for their huge economies to keep the growing rate. I am not that sure about Chinese interest (concretely in Colombia) I have not seen any Chinese companies or movements, even takeovers. Also, in a recent renewable energies fair, in Madrid, I was asking the main responsible of Yingli, a solar panel Chinese company about expansion in Latam markets and she looked surprised. “We had no plans (and plants) there”.

Finally, we discussed a bit about innovation. Now that Mockus, from the Green Party, will probably win the elections, I think the time has come for Colombia to ask real questions about the productive model and the role they should take to at least follow the flow and try to decrease the distance between US and Europe.

Weren´t Macs indestructible? Last week, precisely the day before heading Bogotá, my Mac Book Pro decided it did not want to wak up never again, so it showed the screen with the Apple ad aeternum.

I took it to Universomac and it turned out the OS had corrupted the system. They formatted the computer (without asking me, big mistake) and yesterday I got back a new pure and quite useless Mac.

Thoughts? Well, after having read so many times that Snow Leopard was the best invention since J&B with coke and taking into account I mostly use the Mac for fun and multimedia, it´s very disappointing. Far from being a fan boy I am starting to feel like a fan hate boy…

Last week, while I was giving a couple of talks in Bogotá, this blog was hacked. The infection probably propagated from another one I have installed in the same Dreamhost server and it also affected my homepage and two other domains.

The hacking was caused by an outdated Wordpress installation and it took me 24 hours here in Bogotá to clean and re-isntall everything. I would like to hereby apologize in case anybody was reading me on the web (most of you do over feeds) and could have any trouble.

Thanks again and apologies for any inconvenience.

Since I came back two weeks ago from New York, loads of comments both on my Facebook account and in private email derived towards why I had not acquired the iPad when on the Apple Store in the 5th Avenue. I guess most think that is like going to Mecca for a muslim and not stopping by the Kaaba, just because I use a Mac and iPhone and two iPods on my personal set.

Well, not really. It is not a very in-deep technical question about the iPad not being multitasking aware which I am not very intested about or having a huge ecosystem of applications but not yet ready fully developped. Yet again I do not care. It was about connectivity and brains.

When I arrived to NY, the iPad version light (16 GBs) was already sold out. The 3G version was not released (it still is not) and it would come in one month to Europe. After using the iPhone for already two years, I strongly believe I need 3G to scape from boredom and make the best out of the experience. So I simply resisted the hype and await for the upcoming version.

Will I buy it? Most likely. And probably, same as with the iPhone: rocket design and pure innovation.

Well, I know that besides not writing very often lately, due to lectures and specially project proposal writing, I might be deemed as lazy (which in my very deep I am, or aspire to be), I am recently devoting my posts to Google, talking about them becoming a phone company or about Chrome for Mac.

But when last week, for some reasons I don´t finally understand, Firefox, my favourite and best of breed web browser, started underperforming (I can´t store bookmarks anymore and can not use the back button when browsing, don´t ask why), I thought of giving a hard try with Chrome for Mac and here is what I have to say: go Chrome go!!

Simply, because the Google folks are probably the best software engineers in the world, changed and revolutionized the Web and seem limitless in terms of innovation (or even disruption). Chrome for Mac is extremely fast, reliable and it has a great look & feel. So what is the moral of the story? In many software related areas and apps, Chrome is the way to go. Yeah.

In the country of Telefonica, the incumbent Spanish telco that has become the third largest operator in the world, after China Mobile and Vodafone, it is difficult to think of how Google may become a disruptive team player. It all started when they released the Nexus One phone, the long time expected mobile phone competing with that marvel called the iPhone and with the wide spectrum of Android-based phones, and also Blackberry. I followed last week when Google announced they were launching a fiber to the home network and also providing a small town in Oregon, The Dalles free wi-fi.

And now what? Well, Google has requested historically to the FCC, the competent authority in the US, freeing the waves for them to supply wi-fi, so it is easy to deduce that they wanna jump on the ISP or telecom business. So when I read the rumors of Google purchasing T-Mobile, the American subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, I can logically and loudly foresee that we will see soon the beginning of the Google Phone Company

If the ebooks war just started between Amazon and the big six publishers, there´s a second war coming whose contenders will be the Amazon Kindle (we were talking about it and the new app ecosystem) and the world-famous but by nodoby touched iPad.

Personally, I am quite a Mac fan. I am typing on a MacBookPro, use an iPhone (world best invention, don´t know how I could live before) and a couple of iPods. I will hence buy the iPad (once it will be released by Amazon UK, probably May) and hopefully use it, but there is also another question on Spanish ebooks?

What will happen? Word in the street is the three biggest publishers in Spain, namely Planeta, Santillana and Random House Mondadori
, will join for a common ebook platform. That´s good news. Let´s remember Peter Drucker mantra: “When the rate of outside change is bigger than the inner, the end is insight”.

I was very much asked about the mess Spain is going through regarding Intellectual Property Rights, SGAE and so on and so forth. I am just talking about this privately because I am still in the process of taking decisions, choosing side and understand the whole thing.

Hence, I was very surprised when I could see and proof first hand the absolutely amazing efficiency of Spotify. Why didn´t we have this app before? A simple app that makes possible you listening to the Passenger (Iggy Pop), Je ne regrette rien (Edith Piaf) or the whole Trainspotting soundtrack. Why was it not before? Technical means? No way, there were there for a while.

Then what? And that question helps you to choose side.

It´s everywhere on the web now, Amazon just announced the release of its Kindle Development Kit, major features include:

– Multi- Platform
– Three kind of apps:

* Free – Active content applications that are smaller than 1MB and use less than 100KB/user/month of wireless data may be offered at no charge to customers. Amazon will pay the wireless costs associated with delivery and maintenance.
* One-time Purchase – Customers will be charged once when purchasing active content. Content must have nominal (less than 100KB/user/month) ongoing wireless usage.
* Monthly Subscription – Customers will be charged once per month for active content.

- User revenue will be split 70% to the developer and 30% to Amazon net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB. Remember that unlike smart phones, the Kindle user does not pay a monthly wireless fee or enter into an annual wireless contract. Kindle active content must be priced to cover the costs of downloads and on-going usage.

Interesting stuff and Apple right about releasing its iSlate or whatever the name is, but it´s a tablet…