Brazil: Sao Paulo: Photos

Brazil: Sao Paulo: Teatro Municipal: Photos
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Avenida Paulista And Bixiga: Photos

Brazil: Sao Paulo: Carmo Planetarium: Photo
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Mercado Municipal: Photos
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Museum of Art: Photos
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Parque Zoológico: Photos
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Serra da Cantareira: Photos
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Ibirapuera Park: Photos

Brazil: Sao Paulo: Adopted City
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Photos
Brazil

Brazil: Economy: Not South Korea

Brazil has come a long way, but Brazil still has a long way to go. $10,000 per capita income is not $20,000, it is not $30,000.

Brazil: Economy: Paving The Way

Brazil's story shows a poor country lifting itself up is great news for the global economy, it is great news for the rich countries. They don't steal your jobs. They create jobs that never existed before and they get rich and then they buy from you.

Brazil: Economy: Amazon And Biotech

Brazil is a modern, world class economy. Most Brazilians work in the service sector. If Brazil is poised to be a world power, it is to be on the strength of its economy, not the might of its military.

Brazil: The Amazon Rainforest: Videos (3)

Brazil: The Amazon Rainforest: Videos (2)

Brazil: The Amazon Rainforest: Videos

Brazil: The Amazon Forest: Photos

Brazil: The Landscape

The Amazon rainforest is the most well known geographical feature of Brazil's landscape. But the country is geographically diverse like most large countries tend to be. I don't know if it has a desert though. Looks like it maybe does.

Zappos Being Sold

Image via WikipediaI am going to dig up on this and blog about it more later. But I have been circling Zappos, and my hunch is selling Zappos to Amazon was a very, very bad idea. Zappos was IPO material. I am going to learn the details. And comment more later.

A Cross Hudson Subway Would Be Nice

Image via Wikipedia

Bloomberg: Christie Says New York Must Pay First to Add Cross-Hudson Subway Link: a subway link between Secaucus and Manhattan ... a proposed $8.7 billion commuter-rail tunnel linking Newark to New York ..... The conduit was projected to double rush-hour train capacity between the two cities. ..... an alternative, to extend the city’s No. 7 subway line under the Hudson River to northern New Jersey. ..... alternative, projected to cost about $5.3 billion, is better

I never understood why New Jersey needed to be a separate state, or at least northern New Jersey. I think we should let go of upstate and take over northern New Jersey and carve out a state of New York Metro.

A Victory For Larry

Image by yuichi.sakuraba via Flickr

Bloomberg: SAP Must Pay Oracle $1.3 Billion Over Unit's Downloads: the largest jury award of 2010 ..... s the largest ever for copyright infringement and the 23rd-largest of all time for any jury award

Larry asked for two billion. SAP offered 20 million. So Larry upped the ante. He asked for four billion. Looks like he has been awarded close to what he asked for. Asking for two billion and getting 1.3 billion is close.

Recession Over, Unemployment Still High

BBC: US Federal Reserve cuts 2011 growth forecast: The Fed expects growth of 3-3.6% next year, down from its previous 3.5-4.2% estimate. .... the US economy grew faster than first thought in the third quarter of this year, at an annualised rate of 2.5%. ...... US Federal Reserve said it would buy $600bn (£373bn) of US government debts in order to try to lower long-term interest rates and thereby boost the economic recovery. ...... support for the move on the policy committee was almost unanimous, with only one member voting against. ..... among the positive effects of quantitative easing that they noted was a lower value in the dollar. ..... the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6%.

There is not going to be a double dip recession. The Great Recession could easily have become the second Great Depression, but it didn't, thanks to the stimulus package. The banks are back in shape. Spending is going up. But the unemployment is still at European levels, and that is a big problem. It has to be brought down to something like 6%.

Bottled Water: Liquid Gold

BBC: Bottled water has become liquid gold: In the last 40 years the bottled water industry has gone from a business prospect that few took seriously, to a global industry worth billions of pounds. .... bottled water has become one of the biggest success stories in the modern food and beverage industry..... demand for bottle water has grown exponentially ..... "I think bottled water actually represents a kind of caricature of… the global economy.... "It provides people in the developed world with 20 or 30 varieties of something for which there is no actual variety." ... The Eau campaign was a marketing coup and sales went through the roof from 12 million bottles in 1980 to 152 million by the end of the decade. ...... "When you held a Perrier bottle up, it said something about yourself, it said you were sophisticated, you… understood what was happening in the world. ...... In an age of instant gratification, still water in portable bottles provided what people needed, exactly when they needed it. .... Strong, shatterproof and a highly valued form of polyester, PET is a by-product of the oil industry. ..... "Evian was sold as a beautiful person's drink" ..... Between 1990 and the turn of the century, global sales of Evian doubled from 50 billion to more than 100 billion litres a year. ..... a world where nearly a billion people have no access to clean water at all. ..... what bottled water is actually made of, oil and water; the world's two most precious resources, in one neat package.

If you can get a bottle of water for a buck, and a bottle of soda for a buck fifty, and the water is good for you, and the soda is bad for your health, then the water is a bargain, right? A lot of people don't think so.

From 30,000 To 60,000 Hits A Month

Getting to 30,000 hits a month for this blog was hard. Going from there to 60,000 hits a month was pleasantly surprising, but I saw how it happened. And it took only a few weeks to get there. Now getting to 100,000 hits a month feels like totally doable. 3,000 hits a day? Of course I can do it.

Jai Ho

Netflix Streaming Only

Image via WikipediaFinally.

Finally Netflix cut the chord.

New York Times: Netflix Introduces Streaming-Only Pricing: unlimited streaming on-demand video through the Internet without having to rent any DVDs ...... will cost $7.99, and give customers access to unlimited movies and TV shows in Netflix’s library. ..... Earlier in the year Netflix signed a $1 billion deal with Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate and MGM to add their content to its services. .... beyond physical DVDs and onto dozens of new platforms and services.... the streaming version of the platform available on an abundance of devices, including mobile phones, video game systems, laptop computers, third-party set-top boxes and a number of other Internet-capable gadgets.

This was a long time coming. Who needs a DVD? Before long DVD players will be banned.

Paul Orlando In The New York Times

Image via CrunchBaseTalk about the devil and he appears. I talked about Paul Orlando (Chatfe Happy Hour With Paul Orlando) at this blog on Friday, and here he appears in the New York Times on Monday.

Model Job Offer Scam Threat

from Tammy Thomas tmiy12345@gmail.com
to Paramendra Bhagat
date Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 4:57 AM
subject Re: Model Job Offer!
Nov 19 (3 days ago)

You must be very foolish and stupid for you posting the info of the company at http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/11/model-job-offer-scam.html...

Brazil: Historically Speaking

Brazil is not a Spanish speaking country. The leading country in South America is not a Spanish speaking country. The British left, but the English language in India just grew and grew and grew. Brazil used to be a colony of Portugal. Just like India basically took over the English language - there are way many more English speakers in India than in England, way, way more - Brazil has taken over the Portuguese language.

Brazil: The Largeness Of A Country

Some countries are huge geographically but minuscule in population: Canada, Russia, Australia. Brazil is not one of those. Its large presence on the map is matched by the people who populate that map.

Bubble, Boom Or Froth?

Image by placenamehere via FlickrFred Wilson has been calling it a bubble. John Doerr says it's a boom. And that's just two guys, although high flying, legendary types. I think what we are seeing is a froth. Let me explain.

A bubble is something waiting to burst. As soon as people wake up, they hunker down, and then where are you? The whole thing collapses like a ponzi scheme. There are some bubble aspects to what is going on. Do you think all startups that are getting funded will grow the money for their investors? That has never happened. Even a seasoned VC like Fred assumes one third of his investments will go down. But are too many flaky companies getting funded? The question is are more than the usual number of empty shell startups getting funded?

Large Countries: Population Matters: People Matter

(Via Hiten)

If Apothepo Is Innocent, Why Is He Hiding?

I am on Larry Ellison's side. Thanks for the drama, Larry. It's been fun watching.

Larry Ellison Cracks Me Up
Putting My Money On Larry Ellison
Larry Is Not Done Yet
The Leo Apotheker Is Human Drama
HP Keeps Making News

Chatfe Happy Hour With Paul Orlando

Earlier in the evening I was at the Chatfe Happy Hour for two hours: West 3rd Commons at 1 West 3rd Street. There used to be an Indian restaurant/bar at that place.

Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web

Scientific American: Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web: The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. ..... We take it for granted, expecting it to “be there” at any instant, like electricity. ..... Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights. ....... Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource ...... The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. ...... Yet people seem to think the Web is some sort of piece of nature ..... The Web should be usable by people with disabilities ...... from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. .... A related danger is that one social-networking site—or one search engine or one browser—gets
Image via Wikipedia so big that it becomes a monopoly, which tends to limit innovation. ..... many companies spend money to develop extraordinary applications precisely because they are confident the applications will work for anyone, regardless of the computer hardware, operating system or Internet service provider (ISP) they are using—all made possible by the Web’s open standards. ....... The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped .... For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up. .... It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers, and the techniques for doing so are getting better all the time. ..... as we saw in the 1990s with the America Online dial-up information system that gave you a restricted subset of the Web, these closed, “walled gardens,” no matter how pleasing, can never compete in diversity, richness and innovation with the mad, throbbing Web market outside their gates. ...... The Web is an application that runs on the Internet, which is an electronic network that transmits packets of information among millions of computers according to a few open protocols. ....... the Web is like a household appliance that runs on the electricity network ..... In 1990 the Web rolled out over the Internet without any changes to the Internet itself, as have all improvements since. And in that time, Internet connections have sped up from 300 bits per second to 300 million bits per second (Mbps) without the Web having to be redesigned to take advantage of the upgrades. ..... A neutral communications medium is the basis of a fair, competitive market economy, of democracy, and of science. .... Although the Internet and Web generally thrive on lack of regulation, some basic values have to be legally preserved. ..... snooping. In 2008 one company, Phorm, devised a way for an ISP to peek inside the packets of information it was sending. The ISP could determine every URI that any customer was browsing. The ISP could then create a profile of the sites the user went to in order to produce targeted advertising. ...... In France a law created in 2009, named Hadopi, allowed a new agency by the same name to disconnect a household from the Internet for a year if someone in the household was alleged by a media company to have ripped off music or video. ..... In the U.K., the Digital Economy Act, hastily passed in April, allows the government to order an ISP to terminate the Internet connection of anyone who appears on a list of individuals suspected of copyright infringement. In September the U.S. Senate introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would allow the government to create a blacklist of Web sites—hosted on or off U.S. soil—that are accused of infringement and to pressure or require all ISPs to block access to those sites. ..... In these cases, no due process of law protects people before they are disconnected or their sites are blocked. Given the many ways the Web is crucial to our lives and our work, disconnection is a form of deprivation of liberty. Looking back to the Magna Carta, we should perhaps now affirm: “No person or organization shall be deprived of the ability to connect to others without due process of law and the presumption of innocence.” ...... Finland made broadband access, at 1 Mbps, a legal right for all its citizens. ..... the latest version of HTML, called HTML5, is not just a markup language but a computing platform that will make Web apps even more powerful than they are now. The proliferation of smartphones will make the Web even more central to our lives. Wireless access will be a particular boon to developing countries ...... devising pages that work well on all screens, from huge 3-D displays that cover a wall to wristwatch-size windows. ..... linked data. Today’s Web is quite effective at helping people publish and discover documents, but our computer programs cannot read or manipulate the actual data within those documents. As this problem is solved, the Web will become much more useful, because data about nearly every aspect of our lives are being created at an astonishing rate. Locked within all these data is knowledge about how to cure diseases, foster business value and govern our world more effectively. ...... The information necessary to understand the complex interactions between diseases, biological processes in the human body, and the vast array of chemical agents is spread across the world in a myriad of databases, spreadsheets and documents. ...... They posted
Image via Wikipedia a massive amount of patient information and brain scans as linked data, which they have dipped into many times to advance their research. In a demonstration I witnessed, a scientist asked the question, “What proteins are involved in signal transduction and are related to pyramidal neurons?” When put into Google, the question got 233,000 hits—and not one single answer. Put into the linked databases world, however, it returned a small number of specific proteins that have those properties. ........ The investment and finance sectors can benefit from linked data, too. Profit is generated, in large part, from finding patterns in an increasingly diverse set of information sources. ..... We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.

I am not worried. I never thought the web was about to die. Apple does not scare me. The iPhone app warlordism does not scare me. The web is part of an ecosystem. It is the biggest fish, but it does not have to be the only fish.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: Fred Wilson, John Doerr

TechCrunch: Wilson Vs. Doerr. Bubble Vs. Boom. East Vs. West. Android Vs. iPhone. Facebook Vs. The Web (VIDEO): With Web 2.0 Summit now over, looking back, in my mind, easily the best panel was the one entitled Point of Control: Finance. It featured venture capitalists John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins) and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) talking with New York Magazine’s John Heilemann about the state of both investing and the state of the web ecosystem at large. What made it so interesting is that Wilson and Doerr clearly don’t agree on many of the big issues.

Creating, Propagating

Sexism is concrete. Sexism is total. Sexism oppresses like gravity.

Sexism is geography. Sexism is universal.

Sexism exists. Sexism affects.

Sexism impacts.

Sexism holds down.

Sexism is for real.

Sexism is here and now.

Sexism is today.

Sexism is an ideology, sexism is a worldview. And it has to be talked about. It has to be challenged. It is not a men versus women thing. It is a sickness versus health issue. Sexism is sickness.

There is a connection between the mass rapes in Liberia and the glass ceilings in Manhattan. Can you see the connection?

Google Apps: Open The Flood Gates

Google Enterprise Blog: Ten times more applications for Google Apps customers: Official Google Blog: Google Small Business Blog: Starting today, customers worldwide can access a full spectrum of services from Google—including more than 60 productivity-boosting applications that extend far beyond any traditional software suite.

No More Beer, No More Soda

Don't get me wrong. I have never been much of a drinker. I have n-e-v-e-r enjoyed the taste of beer. But I have done some social drinking over the years. A few days back I decided I wanted to resolve to drink no more beer, and no more soda.

Dell Duo: Tablet + Netbook

Dell has not done something this exciting in a long time. Maybe it is the Third World guy in me, but I have been a long time fan of Dell's legendary push to keep the price point at the lowest possible.

Dell is back.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: Robin Li

Robin Li has been caricatured, and he continues to be caricatured. But his is a true success story. Not all of the difficulties associated with doing business in China can be attributed to China being a one party state. The Chinese are like the Jewish people. They both have 5,000 years of non stop history. The Hindus have 10,000 years of non stop history, but that is another story.

John Battelle's Search Hangover

I think this interview of Mark Zuckerberg by primarily John Battelle is on the lame side. It is out and out hostile. And there is a reason for that.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: Mark Zuckerberg

TechCrunch: LinkedIn CEO On Why We Need More Than Facebook: Keg Stands
Now Over 200 Million Users A Month, Disqus Gets A New Look, Premium Add-Ons, New API
Twitter Raising New Venture Round at $3 Billion Valuation
Twitter’s Williams On Facebook Relationship: We’re Talking To Them Often — So Far, Nada
Will China’s 1999 Moment Bail-Out Some Valley VCs? You think China is still a “communist” country? Get. On. A. Plane. .... those bumper stickers spotted in the early 2000s that read “Please, Lord, Give Me One More Bubble” .... several firms have told me their China funds might out-perform their US funds
FCC Head: The Google/Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal Slowed Us Down

Dogpatch Labs: Demystifying PR For Startups

So I was at this event earlier. Dogpatch Labs is an incubator. It is not that far from Union Square. Good thing because L is my line.

I have to do some out of the box thinking here. Why would you go to a cramped office when you can work from home? My hero Larry Ellison has a huge company - Oracle - and he is not a regular at the office. That is more along the lines of what I think.

Brazil: Economic Turnaround

I grew up in Nepal being told Nepal was second only to Brazil when it came to hydropower potential. But what made news year after year was not yet another hydel power plant that was put up, but monsoon floods and landslides. Potential is one thing. Deed is another. Brazil has had the potential. And this past decade it seems to have put its house in basic order. But there is so much that remains to be done. A 6% growth rate is not 10%. Lifting tens of millions out of abject poverty still leaves tens of millions more to be lifted. Brazil could be but still is not a world power.

The China Debate: The Other Angle

I think China should teach Africa how to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, fast. I think China should teach America the art of total campaign finance reform. I think China should teach America fast trains and clean tech. Those are not new thoughts on my part. And China is right in wanting a new global currency. The American dollar is specific to a country. A lot of the American fiscal recklessness this past decade was due to the fact that the dollar is the de facto global currency.