Benazir Bhutto

The morning's news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto really saddened me. Since my wife (and to some parts myself) has been working with projects for rural markets in developing countries this fall, we’ve been traveling in India, China and the Philippines. There are so many who could benefit from reforms in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but yesterday’s events really risks a radical increase in the distance between Pakistan and the rest of the world.

Let’s all hope that this tragedy can lead to something good in the end. And Benazir Bhutto will be remembered.

Man of the year

I was choking on my afternoon coffee the other day, when I read that Putin was named "Man of the Year" by Time Magazine. Apparently I was not entirely alone. Johan Norberg writes brilliantly:

"Well, we have seen that before. The man of the year in 1938 was another authoritarian who gave his country national pride."

Hubbub

In about 10 minutes I'll be speaking at Hubbub - a great conference so far. Exciting!

How can we get Sweden in there?

From The Economist.

Great conference so far

It's been a long and fun day at the Web 2.0 summit, but it is by no means over yet. The session and interview with Mark Zuckerberg was (not surprisingly) the most interesting yet.

During lunch I also had time to pick up an iPhone for my friend Johan. As with all Apple products, we are taking well care of it ;)

Off to the Web 2.0 Summit

I am off to the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, filled with excitement about the coming few days. I and my colleague Yavor will meet some old friends, find some new, see a lot of new faces, and also quite a few well-known ones. It is always a blast coming to a place where such a great bunch of talent are crammed together for a few days, creating and discussing ideas and business.

I've also been really lousy at writing anything here for a long time. Last week I went to India (Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore) with my wife Maja and helped her out a bit in her work towards the BoP market. It has been a long time since I learnt so much in such a short period of time. Even though I cannot make comments right now about any of the fantastic and remarkable start-ups we met (which I hope to be able to do soon), I'll stay at saying that Hand in Hand is doing a really wonderful and important job. We had the opportunity to visit both their Chennai headquarters as well as a solid waste management mini-plant in the rural areas around Kancheepuram and one out of soon-to-be 1000(!) citizen centers in Tamil Nadu.

Pixbox in Swedish media

Ekonominyheterna [Swedish] has written about Pixbox and our new investors.

This is from one out of a thousand reviews praising the iPhone, in Time Magazine:

The user interface is crammed with smart little touches — every moment of user interaction has been quietly stage-managed and orchestrated, with such overwhelming attention to detail that when the history of digital interface design is written, whoever managed this project at Apple will be hailed as a Michelangelo, and the iPhone his or her Sistine Chapel (Steve Jobs can be Pope in this scenario)

I sincerely don't know what to do. I'm going to San Francisco on Monday. I don't know how I'm possibly going to keep myself from NOT buying the iPhone, even though I won't be able to use it as "my Phone", and then only paying ridiculously expensive roaming charges if I'm taking incoming calls since I'm in Europe 90% of the time.

But: love is blind ;)

Racing in Beford

Yesterday I might very well have been to the most fun "corporate event" ever - a racing day in Bedford at the PalmerSport track. The day was a team event to celebrate a project I helped OC&C with last year. Many thanks to David and all his colleagues for making this day possible!

PS. It actually IS me on the picture. Pretty nice, huh :) A boy's dream coming true...

Mobile album on Pixbox

My mobile image album on Pixbox:

Mobilalbum

Second life tombstone

I pass the tombstone of Second Life-character Landard Swot (Swedish) every morning on my way to work. Kind of cool :)

On our way home

Now we're on our way home from Florida, and it's going to be wheels down in Stockholm in about two hours from now. Sadly enough I won't be able to post this from the plane since Boeing now definitely has shut down its Connexion service for an indefinite future. It worked just fine on our way over on the 29th (except a little slow since it was for free), so I guess they really shut it down by New Year's as they said they would. It's kind of spooky being all cut off from the world again ;)

We've had a great time, and managed to go to Manhattan, stay with friends and celebrate New Year's in Philadelphia, briefly visit Washington, spend almost a week down in Fort Lauderdale (with nice temperature records), and round it off with trips to Disneyworld and Kennedy Space Center.

Traveling with kids is a form of art. It is not easy, especially not if you want everyone to have a great time. A few lessons learned from the experience traveling with a three-year-old and a baby:

* Focus 100% on your kids' experience. If they have a good time, you will have a good time too. The contrary is more obvious: If they do not have a good time, you will MOST CERTAINLY not have a good time at all. This might seem like a no-brainer, but sometimes it has been easy for me to forget it.

* Leave the unread books and yet-to-be-seen DVDs at home. You'll be giggling with joy if you get the opportunity to lie down in the bath tub one or twice reading your favorite magazine for a few minutes.

* Double all time estimates made from past experiences. If a short visit to Kennedy Space Center used to take four hours, then you probably won't get away with less than eight hrs with kids. Suddenly you'll spend hours playing and running around for an hour or so in a shuttle model, or run forth and back several times under the Saturn V rocket.

* MINIMIZE your hand luggage. That means a maximum of one laptop, two phones, two portable computer consoles, one camera, one mp3 player and not more than one travel case of DVDs. Just kidding ;) But seriously, that, TOGETHER with a bunch of books and magazines, has always been my minimum hand luggage. I skipped everything printed now on my way home (carrying only the gadgets), and my bag feels much better now considering that I've played hide and seek and chased Max around on three different airports today.

It's going to be really nice to get back home, catching up with work, politics and all the friends I haven't been able to get back to lately. I also haven't watch Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote yet, but I'm really looking forward to watching it. The iPhone seems SOOOO perfect! Yet another example of a gadget that will make Apple laugh all the way to the bank, and make me happy all the way until the next upgrade.

Friends and Steve, Take care!

PS. The focus on kids and sleep has made me unable to upload my previous post in real time... I'll post-post it anyway.

PPS. Steve: If you read this, please excuse "Friends and Steve". Of course I consider you to be one of my very best friends, too!