Lessons from Silicon Valley to Brussels

Most entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley know that having a very good idea is not enough to secure an investment. Not even having a good prototype is enough. Investors look at you and your team more than anything else.

The reason why this happens is because ideas are just the beginning. They will become guidelines, inspiration and vision, but the product that will reach the success might be very different from the original concept.

Investors want a management team able to change with the circumstances, in other words, they want flexible people able to adapt to different environments and situations. They want people able to take strong decisions even if they require a strong change in their original direction and ideas.

What is happening in Washington and in Brussels during the last months is the clear example of what investors don't want. Inflexible people unable to adapt their ideas when the situation requires it. And the obvious result is the market falling strongly due to the lack of trust that people have in the politicians.

I am not making a value judgement of the political ideas. They might be good or not. I am not making a value judgement of the intentions of the politicians either. They are for sure very good. But the ideas that should be a vision and a guideline, have become a prision for their minds, and this can only have bad consequences if they don't change. Sometimes you need to take decisions that go against your convictions in order to achieve a better good.

It doesn't matter where you are or what you do. When the situation requires you to change and adapt, you must do it without hesitation. In politics this fact might not have personal consequences for you, although it will have consequences for the society; in business you will pay your stupidity with your bankruptcy.

Does a new iPad in October make sense?

I have read many blog posts talking about iPhone 5 rumors and some of them talking even about a new iPad 3. Most of the posts are just crazy and almost all of them are disregarding an iPad 3 in October because, they say, Apple doesn't need it.

They say that Apple doesn't need it because iPad 2 is selling very well, but this reason hasn't stopped Apple for renewing products lines before.

Without a new iPad, during this Christmas shopping season we will be only three months away from the new model. Last year it was ok because there were no competitors. But this year there will be a lot, but really a lot of new competitors. Will Apple try to fight them with a seven months old model?

What features would it have?

There are many features that people were expecting for the iPad 2 but they didn't materialize. I believe that some of the features were almost ready but Apple needed a few months more to finish them, for example the Retina Display. I believe that many features could have been there, but Apple decided to include them in a new release, for example a better set of cameras.

If Apple would launch a new iPad in October, I would expect features like this:

1. Retina display
2. Better quality cameras
3. Bluetooth 4 (like the new MacBook Airs)
4. A new 128 Gb model
5. Thunderbolt port
6. All of these keeping the same battery life

It wouldn't be crazy to think that the new iPad 3 will not replace totally the iPad 2. It will probably enter with the same pricing than the current generation, but the iPad 2 16 Gb would stay with a price of $399 instead of $499.

In this way all the iOS product line will be unified for product launches right before the holidays. I believe it really makes sense.

What do you think? Is this crazy?

Squarespace tip: How to create HTML snippets that don't appear in the main page of the blog

Squarespace has a very useful way to customize the blog post headers and footers called HTML snippets.

This blog post includes a snippet in the footer to show a small text talking about an iPhone App I've built, and also the share buttons in the main social networks.

When I've written the snippet I noticed an odd behavior. The snippet is displayed for all the post in the main blog page. The text part is not a problem, but loading the share buttons in each and every post slows down the entire page. So how could I avoid this problem and include the share buttons only when the posts are opened? With this simple JavaScript: 

<script type="text/javascript">

<!--
var docURL = document.URL;
if (docURL == "%PERMALINK%")
{
document.write('Your HTML Code');
}
-->
</script>

Basically the script checks if the current page is the %PERMALINK% of the post. If it is not, then the HTML Code is not displayed.

One small remark here is regarding the share buttons. The share buttons includes code that uses other javascripts. So, how can we write one script within another script? With this small hack:

document.write('<sc'+'ript type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></sc'+'ript>');

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Amazon EC2 vs Rackspace. Are all cloud hosting services the same?

About a year and a half ago we began using Amazon EC2 to host our services. Everything was perfect until the quantity of users started to grow and we started adding new services.

We've realized that the performance of the instances was decreasing fast and we needed to scale. But before starting to create a more complex architecture, we thought that it could be a good idea to take a look at Rackspace. And we were right.

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12 steps to stay private in Facebook

Facebook is a place to share our daily life with old friends. We share pictures, comments, opinions, etc. But because of that, it is also dangerous in many ways. Here you have 12 steps to stay secure in Facebook:

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How to be retweeted more than 600 times

There is a blog post in TechCruch with the title: "This is A Must Read".

This post was retweeted more than 600 times, it has more than 200 comments and more than 100 Facebook likes.

What is the post about? Well, it only says "This is A Must Read". But it proves a very important concept. Once you are popular, you can write whatever you want and you will always find lovers and haters who will retweet it.

Open the TechCrunch post and read the comments. It very funny all the opinions and qualifications people can have about a post that only contains 5 words.

Do you have any opinions about this post? Please leave me your comments!

When is Apple going to announce the iPad 2?

The first iPhone was announced on January 2007 and shipped on June 2007. The first iPad was announced on January 2010 and shipped at the end of March 2010.

Since 2008, the new iPhones are announced a couple of weeks before the shipping date, and so it will be with the iPad.

I don't believe that the iPad 2 will be announced before March 1st, 2011.

Another Apple killer from Nokia has died this week

Nokia has very good hardware. There is absolutely no discussion about that. But they have consistently failed in building strong services around their devices.

According to The Next Web, Nokia has closed its OVI music subscription service since it has gained little traction during the last two years.

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Commodore VIC-20 ad with William Shatner! Very nice!

The first personal computer I've seen was a Commodore 64 and when I've found this lovely ad this morning in Crunchgear I almost start crying. Just take a look, it is 30 years old ad!

Is Google a monopoly?

When I was very young in Argentina, there used to be only one telecommunications company called ENTEL. A law from the congress did not allow competition in the field. So, this company was giving an extremely bad service without consequences.

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iPhone and Android vs Mobile carriers

I was watching the TV ads of some mobile carriers and I've realised about a common factor:

• We are the cheapest
• We have the coolest phones

So I've decided to go to a couple of mobile carriers shops in the area where I live to ask them how good is the signal in my house. The people in the shop were not able to tell me about the signal strength. They have no tool to check how strong the signal is in the area. But they do have cool phones. But how useful are they without signal?

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Mobile carriers: Europe vs USA

I hear quite often people saying that the European mobile telecommunications market is much more competitive than in USA and that's the reason why mobile contracts are cheaper in Europe.

This is far from the truth. It might be more competitive, but it is not cheaper.

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8 ways to spot a Twitter robot

Why am I following you in Twitter?.

• I follow you because you are an interesting person.
• Your BIO tells me that you are an artist, an engineer, a teacher or just a person walking in this planet who likes to share thoughts about life.
• I see your Avatar and it tells me something about yourself.

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Adobe Air for Android, does it make sense?

It sounds good to be open and multi-platform. There are words that always sound good, but will they survive a reality check?

Let's discuss first the most important advantage of Adobe Air:

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Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac editions and pricing (for Europe as well)

The day is coming. Next tuesday Microsoft releases the new Office 2011 for Mac.

I've been waiting for this release since Office 2008 came to the market. Office 2011 is far better than 2008 and much more compatible with Office for Windows.

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