My photo gallery will be back soon… apologies for the inconvenience.
The Miracle of Mobile Phones
We use mobile phones daily and frequently complain about things such as boring user interface or the difficulty of finding quality content among the millions of apps in the app stores. Smart phones did not even exist a decade ago, and the first bulky mobile phones took their initial baby steps just two decades ago, so I think it’s reasonable to sit back and admire the technology marvel that is our era. Just about every day, I sit in the car with the whole family. Going shopping or to the park, my phone makes it all happen. First of...
read moreSINA Weibo
I recently wrote a blog post to Transfluent’s blog about SINA Weibo. I’m doing a partial repost here as well, as this certainly is a topic of great interest these days. For the full blog post, see Fancy being big in China? Weibo is the key in Transfluent’s blog. For those who don’t yet know, Weibo is a Chinese word that means ‘microblog’. While it has only been around for about three years, Weibo has exploded in popularity to become the only social network to be seen on in China. If you want to be popular in China,...
read moreWhen the world is unplugged
I have a weird feeling. I am currently on a paradise island, sitting by the beach looking at the waves tirelessly massage the white sand. The sun is shining, things couldn’t get much better than this. Except, the internet is broken. I can’t get online. The phone line is dead, and so is the DSL connection. Not only that – my wife took the kids to Four Seasons to have some lunch and do some shopping, and she took my iPhone. I’m in a remote villa, far away from even the nearest village, without any means of...
read moreWho needs services in multiple languages?
Here’s a question I’d like you to think about: what language do you prefer to be served? I mean in general, when shopping, calling the cable company, accessing government services or any other daily duties. Would you like to shop in your native language, or would you be OK with English? And if English is your native language, then how about taking care of your daily duties in Spanish? The view on multilingual services varies greatly depending on where you are. If you ask a random American, they’ll probably say that English...
read moreMauritian time
I’m writing this watching the Indian Ocean waves gently touch the beach in front of our rented beach villa in Mauritius. It’s really amazing how moving from the short, dark and cold days of Switzerland to the tropical sunshine of Mauritius makes miracles to one’s feelings in just a few days. We obviously need sunlight. Something that I have learned of Mauritians so far is that they seem to have no sense of time whatsoever. Perhaps it’s the paradise-like environment where they roam day in and day out, around the year....
read moreRed Herring 100 Europe Conference 2009
I attended the 2009 edition of Red Herring 100 conference in Berlin last week (March 31th to April 2nd). This conference report is a little delayed. Right when I returned from the trip, our family relocated from Zürich to Rapperswil, half an hour away on the coast of Zürichsee, and I’ve been without internet access ever since. For the entire week I’ve managed the business by sitting at Starbucks and using their wlan, but there’s only so much sitting in a cafe one can handle. Fortunately we can now use our neighbor’s...
read moreStartupCamp Switzerland ’09
Being probably the newest entrepreneur in Switzerland I was excited to attend StartupCamp Switzerland ’09 in Basel. I will be running the new XIHA Life office in Switzerland, so this was a great chance to meet to make first contacts with the local startup scene. I’ve attended several startup conferences before, but this was the first BarCamp style “unconference” for me. The idea is that there is no pre-scheduled program, and most of the people will present something. Unfortunately I couldn’t make myself to...
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