Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

A little chat with Chris Messina

Learn more about him on http://factoryjoe.com/blog/ :)

Crowded Mobile Monday last night

DSC01786, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

There were many known faces last night at the Mobile Monday event in Paris. The event moved for the first time to the top floor of ad agency Betc, and we had a blast. Lots of people and friends showed up. It seems indeed that the internet industry is heating up.

My pix are up on flickr: watch them by clicking on the pix and followign from there.

I want a Nokia N95

Sometimes I totally recognize I'm a geek. Hence when Nokia releases a new phone that has a 5 MP camera (yeah I know Samsung has a 10MP cameraphone), that carries GPS, and supports mobile broadband (HSDPA, EDGE, WLAN, WCDMA...), I get excited.

Martin Varsavsky attended the amazing launch party and published a video here.

Last night here at Picnic'06, we had dinner and drinks with fellow vloggers, and we ALL wanted one: so Gabe McIntyre from xolo.tv, his team, my team, the other folks...

Nokia ? Interested in having geek proAm vloggers test it out on the field ? Our N90s feel so last century by now :) ... We could use a N93 though...

Picnic'06: Cities as Digital Communities

15:30 - 17:30 Cities as Digital Communities Location:
CABIN (meeting room in Ketelhuis)
Open, low-cost access to digital networks could encourage people in cities to develop new local media formats. How can cities promote grass roots media?

Moderator: • Sylvia Paull, Founder, Berkeley Cybersalon (United States)

Speakers:
• Joaquin Alvarado, Director, San Francisco State University's Institute for Next Generation Internet, and co-founder of the Digital Sister Cities Initiative (United States)
• Chris Vein, Acting Executive Director, Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, City of San Francisco (United States)
• Esme Guzman de Vos, Founder, Muniwireless.com (the Netherlands)
• Eckart Wintzen, serial entrepreneur, Founder of Ex'tent Green Venture Capital (the Netherlands)
• Erik Fackeldey, Project Manager - IT Sector, Paris Development Agency (France)

Pascal Lorne & François Colon raise $3m for Miyowa, a mobile IM company

I’ve known Pascal for ever, and the insiders have known about the deal for a while, led by Techfund and Sophia Eurolab. Here’s a quick video taped in Brussels earlier this year at a Microsoft event.

The press release should show up here soon.

mobile penetration in France now over 80%

The regulator ARCEP has released numbers today for Q2 of 2006. France had at the end of June 48,4m mobile subs, totaling over 80,3% penetration rate. French MVNOs share a 1,46% market-share, vs. 0,91% 3 months earlier.

All details here.

Scooter recommendation anyone?

Folks, I need advice on what scooter to get for myself (1,88m, and rather heavy). I’m not putting any link, because if you own one of these, you will know what you’re talking about. After looking around, here’s the shortlist in 125cm3:

– Piaggio X9 (I’m told many people are having electrical problems with it, it’s a bit wide, a bit long, difficult to maneouver in the car flow. However great options, confortable)

– Aprilia Atlantic 125: nice

– Aprilia Scarabeo 125: funky retro look, big wheels. But solid ?

– Honda Pantheon 125: has ABS and CBS (great break technology). Very reliable

– Yamaha Xmax: good choice but no dual breaking system.

 

So, yes / no ? pro / cons ? dos / don’ts ? thanks

And if you can point, me to a shop preferably in the Paris central area (Bastille area even better).

Update: 2 new challengers in the race for a new bike:

- the Peugeot Satellis

- the Suzuki Bergman

All your comments are very much appreciated!

on Nokia phones

Back at 3GSM in Barcelona this year, I lost my Nokia 7710 phone My mobile phone line in France has been serviced for almost 10 years now by Coriolis Telecom on the Orange network. Their website is cryptic (to say the least) on how to call international. It took me several hours to get a friend in France to call their service line from France (while I was in Spain) using the only number I could find. In the meantime someone in Spain spent the day calling, adding great roaming charges. My bill was over 1200 euros for the day!!!! And of course Coriolis charged me. I should probably enter some kind of litigation with them. When I get some time, but then, who’s in a jurry to collect evidence when on business trips ?

On my recent trip to San Francisco, I lost my Nokia N70. Too bad, it’s really a great phone. Fantastic reception quality, great interface, relatively fast, very handy. A great recommendation. But I also lost my data connection SIM card in there. Now I called last week Orange (no one had used my card as I had not activated – I think – international roaming). I got a new SIM a couple of days ago, but my wifi connection doesn’t work anymore. I called the Wifi hotline, I do not exist as a customer there. I called the 3G hotline, and yes there seems to be a problem. Already 2 days… Do all operators make it a purpose in life to make customer life difficult ?

In the meantime, I got a Nokia N91 phone (and I still use on a daily basis my Nokia N90 phone – a biut bulky, and a rather low sound level). I have to say that after a couple of weeks, I do not like it. It’s too big. the Menu button is placed in a weird way. Although it has a big 4 Gb hard drive, my mailbox won’t sync anymore, because of memory full issues (and yes I’m pointing to the hard drive). Maybe I need to get another mail client for the phone. Then the music player tends to play all the time. I haven’t figured out how to get rid of that. It also comes with integrated wifi: really a great feature, but the UI is cumbersome, and at times it enters infinite loops trying to connect to a WLAN. Finally, the keyboard is ugly. The only really good thing aside the harddrive + wifi is the optical zoom of the camera. Really nice.

Now, what I’m really looking forward to now, is the Nokia E61. I tested it briefly with a friend in the US. It’s like a blackberry device but better: huge color screen for surfing the web, great keyboard, EDGE (not yet 3G) and Wifi (not present on blackberries), very light. I think it should become a killer for consumers instead of the pro market for mobile email and IM.

I’ll update you again soon on my mobile phone real life testing. Nokia phones are getting better. Mobile operators not really…

Update: by the way, the N91 doesn't work with Shozu (no client yet), nor with iSync on the Apple (:(, but does work with Opera Mini. So who's getting back to bringing us these essential tools ?

Mobile Internet settings for your mobile phone

Great post here by Anina who found for all of us the GPRS settings for many carriers around the world. Always very very handy to have.

FON is fun :)

Download clip

Fon is planning to announce on Monday, that they will hand out ONE cool million FON wi-fi routers at a cost of $5 / 5 €, to help democratize the wireless generation.

Indeed as I was travelling in the US last week, I felt the need for such a service at last! I have an Orange flat data rate account, that theoretically allows me to connect everywhere in France, and I discovered last week, also has a numebr of romaing agreements in the US when I tried to connect to hotspots (shame on me, I left my password back home...).
Nevertheless, whenever I poped open my laptop, I would at least half a dozen wifi networks available for connection, but all protected by WEP/WPA keys.

Wouldn't it have been great if I could have connected to at least one of them with my FON account ? Benefit from true Wi-Fi roaming ? In NYC the other day, I was trying to download my email on my new Nokia N91 phone (it does Wifi !!!). Most networks were closed, and every now and then in town, I could connect and download the stuff.

Although the economics are somewhat complicated between who gets what (the carriers, the wifi providers, the users), it is a public service to have a service such as FON around. Now anyone of the big operators would launch a similar service; well do it. FON is at the moment the only service out there aiming at making wifi connectivity easy. Let's help him, and grab routers at $5 !

For more information, check Martin's blog.

(disclosure: FON's founder & CEO is an investor in my company).