Her lovely knitted winterware

Leaving for Switzerland in the middle of the winter is always a good opportunity to think about winterware. So she knitted me a scarf with some beautiful wool she bought in London during our vacations.

It’s so perfectly knitted and it feels so warm. I guess that when you do things you love, things come out lovely. :) And she loves knitting.

scarf

My Powerbook won’t have cold problems either.
See more of her art work here.

January 31, 2006 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

Leaving for LIFT06

Tomorow I’ll be flying to Geneva to attend LIFT06. Two days of talks with lot’s of interesting subjects and interesting people.


During Reboot I met some people that I’ll meeting again. I’m looking foward to talk to Thomas again. I met him in Copenhagen last year during Reboot 7. He’s the entrepeneur behind Reboot and one the founders of 23 (see pictures tagged lift06).

I’m also taking advantage of the trip to visit Switzerland for a few days. We have bought le Guide du routard (in french) to look at some of the options there. She will be joining me on Friday night. For what I can see the min is -2ºC and max is 9ºC so a lot of cold is waiting for us.

January 31, 2006 | Tags: | 4 Comments 

24 Day 5 and Jacktracker

I don’t watch TV (will explain in another post) and I don’t watch much DVDs. But I’m addicted 24. The kind of addiction that makes me like 24-related-stuff. Jacktracker is a Google-maps application that let’s you follow Jack Bauer’s location throughout the world during Day 5. If you click on each location it shows pictures from each episode. It’s impressively done and entertaining (nevermind useless and time-consuming).

We were waiting for 24 Day 5 to start on Fox for over 3 months. Right after we finished seeing Day 4. Finally on the begining of January we had access* (yes I know yada yada yada … but I’ll buy the DVDs anyway when they are available!) to the first Day 5 episodes and haven’t stopped since then.

We are not alone for sure. Andre (who pointed me to Jacktracker) is also addicted and has been following Day 5 with us.

Unfortunately it’s only one per week. But today is Episode 5.

January 24, 2006 | Tags: | 4 Comments 

Better process efficiency = business oportunity

I’ve always been someone who looks at a process and thinks about what would I do to improve it. And this happen in all sorts of daylife situations: fitting travel luggage in the car, storing general home storage, buying supermaket goods, or general I-need-to-do-this-x-number-of-times type of thing.

Reading a recent article from Joel Spolsky’s startup blog on How to Ship anything I remembered how I do this almost automatically everyday. Moreover, as I grew older I became aware of how many of this improved efficiencies could be turned into business oportunities by creating value to people, either inside a company or for starting one up.

January 23, 2006 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

The EasyJet Story

I’ve always been amazed by low-cost airlines business model. I like the way they changed the market following some simple rules even if they didn’t reach Portugal with the same really low prices.

I’ve just finished reading the book about EasyJet’s story. It tells how Stelios (founder) started EasyJet with just one plane with the booking number printed on the side of the plane and took it to being one of the biggest airlines in Europe.

EasyJet Book

The book is a very interesting read covering some of the Marketing ideas that were behind EasyJet startup times and how it dealt with competition from it’s early days. Cost control and brand management where integral part of EasyJet’s culture and the books shows how many of the ideas were implemented. It also talks about how hard it is to run a plc (public listed company) in such a competitive industry.

Throught the book Ryanair is frequently pointed out has having a major role in this new low cost busines model development. Despite being competitors Easyjet and it’s major rival Ryanair are recognized to having changed together the way people fly. For the first time in Europe they made it possible to fly for the price of a bus ticket.

January 13, 2006 | | Leave a Comment 

New MacBook Pro and the MagSafe connector

Keeping up with it’s habit of releasing new products quite frequently Apple released the new MacBooks yesterday. They replace the old Powerbooks being the first Apple to use the new Intel Core Duo processor that is actually two processors built into a single chip.

There are many new details that make this new Mac a really interesting product. But there’s one little design feature that represents why people love Apple products. Apple knows about user centered design and this is clear when you look at the MagSafe connector.

Mag Safe Plug

The new power adapter with MagSafe connector is just that: a magnetic connection instead of a physical one. So, tripping over a power cord won’t send MacBook Pro flying off a table or desk; the cord simply breaks cleanly away, without damage to either the lough or the system. As an added nicety, this means less wear on the connectors.

It’s wonderfully simple. Innovation at it’s best.

Moreover, I should add that the MacBook Pro name still sounds strange to me. But that’s probably because PowerBook has been around for so many time and I’ve got used to say it so many times with such a passion.

I won’t be wishing for a new MacBook thought. My Powerbook G4 is still, after 2 years, a great machine not needing to be replaced but some new fancier model.

Update: here’s a comparison between the last Powerbook G4 and the new MacBook Pro showing plus and minus for each of them. In some cases (like the 800 FireWire and the bigger resolution) the Powerbook is still a better machine than the MacBook Pro.

January 10, 2006 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

A few days in London

I’ve just returned to work after an excelent few days in London to get some (deserved) rest. London was fantastic as always. We run away from the main turistic sightseeings and got some marvelous days in the English capital. Even the New Years Eve was amazing with half-million people loudly counting down alongside Big Ben to announce 2006.

I took some pictures with my mobile phone which resulted in a different perspective from the regular holiday pics.

   

For all the pics see the gallery and for some more see her pics.

Resuming a bit our trip I can say that it snowed lightly a few times, Wagamama and Pizza Express are really delicious eating out options, Le Pain Quotidien is great for breakfasts, Camdem Market and Cyberdog are always a surprising mix of cultures, bookstores (Foyles, Waterstones, Borders and all the little ones) are all dangerous (for the wallet that is), The Conran Shop lived up to my expectactions, very good examples of Signage and advertising are all over London, half-million people screaming the same thing at the same time is impressive and finally Costa and Starbucks have great hot chocolat and muffins.

Museums alike, Tate Modern had a few good exhibitions like Jeff Wall’s Photo Exhibition and Unilever’s ocupation of Tate’s grand hall with hundreds 0f plastics boxes (she wrote about it). The Design Museum is nice if you want to learn more about industrial design. V&A and the British Museum were packed with tourists but are always impressive.

A last comment on TimeOut. It’s mainly a weekly publication with lot’s of useful information if you want to know what’s going on. I highly recomend it. Plus if you’re into shopping or eating more seriously do buy the Eating and Shooping guides for full information on almot every place to eat or shop.

Going back to London always makes me come back with new ideas and thoughts. This time it was no different. One thought is that I’ll probably be getting back again this year.

January 9, 2006 | Tags: | 2 Comments