Nice article about Properazzi in today’s Guardian!

Jemima Kiss’s Elevator Pitch column is a good place to catch profiles of interesting startups, it’s part of the Guardian’s Digital Content Blog.

Barcelona house prices in theory are only falling by small amounts like 0.1% monthly. But these are based on asking prices, or what owners want their properties to sell for.

I’ve just posted on recurring thoughts (my other blog) about how a friend is simply going around bidding 25% below asking prices, and getting plenty of sellers agreeing to sell around 20% off.

20% off asking price! Wow. It wasn’t that long ago people would bid above asking price to buy a property.

Of course, this is just anecdotal. But when what people on the street actually transacting are telling you something that is radically different than what you read in the papers, it makes you think: what is the truth?

Via Matt Drudge, I see that the number of marriages in the UK last year was the lowest since records began in 1862.

What does that say about UK society? Probably not much at all. English people are still having relationships, still choosing to live together, and still having children (fewer than before, that’s true, but I’d argue this driven by economics rather than marriage rates).

I expect it means that the English today just feel more free to live their lives as they please, rather than according to rules defined by religious organizations or cultural traditions.

Mind you, I’m not saying this is better or worse for people than the way things were before. It just is what it is…

I read, via Carlos Blanco, that Barcelona is very close to losing its status as host to the Mobile World Congress (for old-timers, the old 3GSM conference).

Apparently, the organizers are wanting to leave Barcelona because of:

• Price gouging on the part of hotels during the conference. For example, I know a 3-star hotel up the road that normally costs 150 euros/night, which during the conference was trying to get away with charging 2000 euros/night (yes, three zeros!).
• Lack of transportation, particularly taxis. This I simply can’t understand. Taxi drivers complain they’re underpaid, then when an amazing opportunity like MWC comes along they don’t show up to get the additional work.
• High volume of theft against participants. This is where Barcelona’s ongoing, ever-present problem with street crime come back to haunt it.

I think it would be tragic for the city to lose such a major, prestigious event. Everyone would lose: hotels, taxis, restaurants, the city government, local startups, barcelona’s reach and influence…

It’s almost like there’s a common complacency about Barcelona’s status/brand that everyone is just milking and abusing…until that inevitable day when the brand becomes so damaged that people simply leave for alternatives.

Looks like Properazzi has for the second year made it to the final 200 companies in Red Herring’s annual list of top 100 private technology companies in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa).

This is as far as we got last year, but since then the company has been growing like crazy. Maybe this year we’ll go all the way. The winners are going to be announced at their conference in a couple of weeks in Malta.

Obviously curious to know our own result, but also curious to know how many sister companies in our investor’s portfolio, and how many Spanish companies, have made it.

Exciting! Will post this also on Recurring Thoughts.

A true WTF moment:

A English soldier, Private Jamie Cooper, loses a leg and a hand in battle in Iraq. Total compensation: 57 thousand pounds.

An English civil servant strains his back whilst lifting a printer in the office. Total compensation: 202 thousand pounds.

What a disgrace.

(footnote: I’m sure the differences in America are even more extreme. I don’t have the facts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if American soldiers were getting squat for losing limbs in battle, while some asshole spilling coffee on his lap win millions for exposure to such grave and stressful danger).

Link: from the Times

One of the most inspiring authors of my childhood has passed away. Besides being an amazing writer, Arthur C. Clarke was phenomenally brilliant and insanely productive (he wrote 100 books!! *One Hundred*).

Thank you for your legacy: good thought-provoking, entertaining books, sharing your passion for science, the invention of radar, the invention of satellites, the source of inspiration of thousands of young science students in the possibility of a better world.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner claims that the “magic is over” for America’s image overseas.

Is he right?

Certainly the politics of George W. Bush has caused great damage to America’s standing in the world. And other events have also chipped away at it in recent years: lots of anti-Americans delighted in the images of Hurricane Katrina making the US look like a 3rd world country unable to organize its own relief; and who hasn’t been awed by the incredible devaluation of the Dollar in recent months?

Nothing is certain in either way, but there are some very strong arguments for why the US will continue to be a global leader for many years to come.

To me one of the most powerful is that America’s commercial strength is deep, far deeper than what statistics or exchange rates show. I see this list today in Forbes on the top 10 cities in which to do business. Not one of those cities is New York or Chicago or LA or San Fransisco or Dallas or Miami….and yet all are business-friendly, growing quickly, and competing fiercely to attract skilled labor and capital.

The sheer wealth of human and capital assets embedded deep within America is a source of tremendous staying power in any crisis. America’s got problems, but I think it’s completely misguided to write it off.

Update: just caught this news from SAI- turns out Apple laptops are skyrocketing in growth in the US, hitting 14% market share on 50-60% growth rates. Makes me wonder why the US and World markets are so disconnected…

Yes, laptops.

I figured that market would be just a short step behind desktops in market maturity, but I was surprised when a friend sent me this article showing global laptop sales trends (it’s in French).

Some salient points:

• The global market grew by a sizzling 41% per year. That’s a google-esque growth rate, truly stunning.
• Among the top 9 brands, Asus is the fastest-growing (50%). Asus is a monster company from Taiwan that started as a motherboard supplier.
• Apple gets tons of credit for it’s fast-growing laptop business, but its growth rate (38%) is actually *below* the market average. So in spite of great growth, Apple is losing market share in laptops.
• The fastest growing laptop seller is called “All Others” (sizzling 64% growth!). That is, the laptop market is becoming more, not less, fragmented over time.

Interesting stuff.

So true