One of the main dishes of the DLD conference was to see Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, presenting her new startup: 23 and me. Summarizing, this project is about giving you accesss to your DNA information in order to prevent you from any sicknesses which you have a higher probability of suffering. Besides, they are capable of telling you how similar you are to your grandparents or to your children.

   (Read more!)

This was the main question of the VC panel. I specially liked Martin Varsavsky's and Morten Lund's remarks. Both think that big projects which are backed by debt will be in trouble, while small ones financed with equity will not suffer. The only but is that valuations will be affected, so it could not be the best moment to sell your startup.

   (Read more!)

The social networking panel during Picnic was just great. I specially liked Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter. He's got such a clear mind! I also enjoyed it very much when Felix Petersen (Plazes) had to explain his picture taking beers in Reboot while he had to be in Amsterdam. At the end the 5 guys started throwing darts to each other, which was so fun!

   (Read more!)

If the captain (in this case, co-captain) leaves the boat, is there something wrong? It could be, but I doubt it. I am writing this because Pierre Chappaz, the founder of Kelkoo, has announced that he is leaving Netvibes, where he used to be co-CEO, together with Tariq Krim.

   (Read more!)

I was afraid nobody would speak about Digg. It was David Weinberger (the author of The Cluetrain Manifiesto) who just did it in one of the best conferences I have seen so far, if not the best. He opposed the directors' committee of a newspaper, as the New York Times, to the peoples' committee of Digg. I am afraid he is right. Things are slowly going towards a scenario in which social media as Digg or the Spanish Meneame become the preferred information sources for people. "We will read what people recommend us to read", he added.

 (Read more!)

Well, I didn't. Marko Ahtisaari, from Blyk, just said it. Another interesting reality: many people check their e-mail before even dressing, after they get up in the morning. He also gave some examples of future functionalities for mobiles: photostream (like Flickr), signaling (as in Jaiku) and real identity (as in Linkedin). They are all social, by the way. Another thing that is coming: new advertising formats, which don't exactly mean that you will be interrupted in your communications.

 (Read more!)

Two discussions in a row about the future of TV. The death of TV, somebody called them. What is clear is that entrepeneurs working on this area, as Rodrigo Sepúlveda, from VPodTV, are far away from the majority of the Internet users. "I watch some TV programs, but only on my computer or on my iPod", he said. I don't believe so many people do so.

 (Read more!)

I spent quite some hours with Tim O'Reilly last Thursday in Bilbao and Vitoria, where he came to give a conference about Web 2.0. He has one of the clearest minds I have ever seen, together with Alvy from Microsiervos.

 (Read more!)

Google’s strength in so different fields such as telephones, news, photography, blogs, E-mail or advertising is out of this world, unless we compare it to Microsoft in the mid 90’s. The latest innovation is Google Base, which attacks directly the Yellow Pages and newspapers’ classified ads. Although, from the sound of it, it was already expected.

 (Read more!)

eBay is a model company, as it holds inside some of those things we talk about day after day: viral marketing, collaboration, P2P, users' networks, contents filtering... that is, social software. And eBay is not just a profitable social software company, but also one of the main employers in the US (it has more people working for it than McDonald's) and the fastest growing brand in the world.

 (Read more!)