Free falling
Given what has been happening in the last few days, the title might lead you to believe I am writing about Lehman Brothers or AIG. But I am not. Today I will tell you about an idea I had many years ago for Officenet that I always loved and failed miserably.
The future of books (or lack thereof)
The second interesting point of my conversation with Andy was related to the feedback to my post about the history of Officenet and Passion for Entrepreneurship. The majority of the comments said they thought it would be a good idea that I write a book. And we started discussing to what extent the blogs are a “better alternative” to books.
I believe in a few years when we tell our children that the things we wrote were printed on paper in a way they could no longer be modified and were distributed in a way no feedback or interaction between the author and the reader was possible it will sound totally ridiculous.
Policy of truth
Yesterday, in a way too brief pass by Miami, I met Andy Freire. And while we talked, two interesting topics arised, so I will publish one today and another one next Saturday.
In our conversation, Andy mentioned an American organization called Factcheck. Factcheck is a project of the University of Pennsylvania that “aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.
What they do is great.
The Clover
Uruguay, January 1980
She was 17. He was 19.
In the middle of Summer they decided to take a break from their jobs as a secretary and a bank employee and spend a few days camping with friends close to Cerro del Toro in Piriápolis. The weather was good for a few days of rest at the beach.
On January 7th they decided to take his motorcycle (a Gilera 150) and head to El Chuy, a small town in the Brazilian border, to do some shopping, replenish the camp and, at the same time, spend some time alone. It was a very hot day, they were wearing sporting clothes, shorts, running shoes.
After the visit was over, they headed back to camp. Exhausted by the heat, they stopped at a bar along the route to drink some fresh water and had a small argument because she, overheated and with her hair down to her waist, did not want to use the helmet anymore. Very decisive, he simply said: “If you don’t wear it, I leave you here”. And with that determination his decision defined the fate of her life.
A couple of few hours later, around 6PM, the sun was still shining high. When they got to a crossroad called El Trébol de Piriapolis (The Clover of Piriapolis), they suddenly saw a bus coming out of control in their direction. They tried to stop, but the crash seemed inevitable. And then the miracle happened.
The history of Officenet
A few days ago Martina Rua asked me if I had ever considered writing a book. You know… I had children, I planted a tree, but I don’t know who it was who said that to live a complete life you also have to write a book. It must have been the owner of a Book Publishing company, who even made you plant the trees to get him the paper supply (now with the Kindle will it change to “have a child, make a chip, write a pdf”?).
Work of a Genius
From the day about five years ago, when I started using an iPod I always thought someone had to solve the problem of the Shuffle inconsistency: whether you listen to your own predesigned playlists (and end up listening always the same old stuff) or you use Shuffle but have to deal with absurd combinations (like going non stop from Rage Against the Machine to Peter Cetera!).
Well, Apple finally did what I have been waiting all these years! Read more
My first time
The post I wrote last week about the future of Internet companies left me feeling a bit nostalgic. I remember my first time as it was only yesterday.
One of my best friends worked as an IT manager at a local Hospital. One Saturday night we were hanging around doing nothing and then he threw the fatal question: “Have you ever done it?”. And I, totally ashamed, answered with the truth: “No, never”. I was 24 back then.
It was a pleasure…
In exactly 72 hours a group of scientists from many different countries will turn on the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator ever built by men. It is the longest: it has a 27 kilometers long tunnel between 50 and 175 meters underground and crosses the frontier between France and Switzerland. It is also the most powerful: using over 1,600 magnets that weigh around 27 tons each, it keeps two proton beams moving in circles at 99.99% of the speed of light and then make them collide. Before being launched, the protons are “charged” in linear accelerators and in the Proton Synchrotron Booster. To operate it needs to be at a temperature of 1.9°K (-271°C).
When the collisions take place, the local temperature will raise to be 100,000 hotter than the Sun’s core.
Top 20 Songs
Here I am with the second edition of the Bilinkis Top 20 Songs! After the debate generated in the comments to the previous post (in Spanish), this month comes with an improved layout and some thoughts.
On one hand, for those who complained for the lack of music in Spanish, Catupecu enters one more song so that makes two of them!
And that has nothing to do with the fact that my brother Mariano has recorded and mixed this album and the last few from the band. The acoustic cover version of “Seguir viviendo sin tu amor” is fabulous and if you haven’t heard it yet I recommend you do it now.
On another hand, the strongest critic of all was that because of mp3 there were no two songs by the same band. Well, again, Catupecu has two!
Lastly, before we move on to the ranking, despite my own resistence please note that the songs ranked #10 and #14 reveal my 80’s side. In the end I believe that regardless when you were born, we all carry a little 80’s side inside of us… For those who want to comment: why do you think the 80’s were soooo good and there was not a decade like that before or after?
Now, the top 20:
On the internet no battle is ever lost
I remember several years ago, when Yahoo had emerged as the clear cut winner from the many search engines available early on. Left behind were others such as Altavista, Infoseek and many others. I also remember the day when I read about this new start up called Google, which had just launched another search engine . Yahoo was already publicly traded at the Nasdaq, had tons of money, the best engineers and an extremely high share of all the searches in the planet. At that time I thought: “It’s absurd. No one can challenge the Yahoo supremacy among search engines”.
Read more
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Riesgo & Risk & Reward is Santiago Bilinkis' blog. Santiago is a serial entrepreneur, who created this blog to ignite a discussion and share his experiences, thoughts and anecdotes.
The main subject will be Entrepreneurship, but he plans to cover a broad range of topics. The common ground will be Risk. Welcome to this adventure!
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