Connecting the dots ...
Isn’t it funny how two accidentally juxtaposed news items may appear related?
Bloomberg reports on how wealthy Mexicans are buying up foreclosed homes in Texas:
More than a century and a half after Mexico lost Texas to the U.S., Virgilio Garza wants a piece of it back.
In Phoenix they don’t bother paying.. just send in the Army (as in Mexican Army renegades).
Remember Kyle, the Red Paperclip Guy? Almost two years ago I reported how in only 14 trades he turned One Red Paperclip into a house. Not a doll-house, but his current 2-story, 3-bedroom home.
Since then he published a book, and is now ready to trade again. Bidding is open until July 11th. The house is in Kipling, Saskatchewan Canada.
(hat tip: Shel Israel)
Update (6/24): Here’s another guy auctioning his life.
<rant>
What kind of a download day is this, with artificially delayed opening? As if they wanted the site to crash, all part of a PR mania – reminiscent of the iPhone Launch (the first one) on iDay. Will this become fday? As in Firefox Day, or f*day?
</rant>
TechCrunch agrees. Read also: Digital Inspiration, Mashable!, webmonkey, VentureBeat, Startup Meme, jkOnTheRun, Between the Lines,
Yesterday was supposed to be a relaxing day of networking and watching startup pitches at Launch: Silicon Valley 2008, a joint event of SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures. The event started smoothly, with 400 or so participants when I received disturbing news: my next-door neighbor’s house was one fire. These side-view photos were taken from my window:
Here’s a video courtesy of the Pleasanton Weekly:
It was a bit of a nerve-wrecking day. “Luckily” enough the neighbor’s son and daughter both live in town, so they had a place to temporarily move to, until the house becomes habitable again.
Update (6/12): Apparently reconstruction will take several months, just as bad (or worse) than building a new home. The problem with old houses is that you have to bring everything up to current code. My neighbors, a nice elderly couple are now looking for a house to rent until they can move back.
I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in April when I received this short email via my blog contact form:
Hi Zoli,
I think we are related. Your father is my cousin (this picture of you looks just like him). Anyway, I am trying to get in touch with your father for old times sake…I got this blog address from ….Please let me know if you are who I think you are.
Irma …
(my maiden name is ….)
I removed personal details, but the names matched, so we exchanged more details, including old family photos. I have to add that I barely know my Dad’s family. He is of the unfortunate generation that grew up during World War II. His family perished in Nazi concentration camp, he himself barely escaped from a Russian labor camp at age 19. He doesn’t like to talk about those times, and I don’t ask.
And now there was this email from a long-lost relative. Irma remembers me, I don’t remember her. Apparently she was a teenager when she saw me as a baby. She is now semi-retired in Arizona and is coming to meet her long-lost cousin, my Dad in California this weekend.
I thought these things only happen in the movies…
When I lived on the East Coast and flew US Airways (back than just USAir) a lot, we just called it Useless Air. Today I received an email from Useless Air trying to get me buy back the miles I lost:
Our records indicated that 19,560 miles were forfeited on 12-01-2007 because your last activity date 05-19-2006 was more than 24 months ago.
May 2006 to December 2007 is more than 24 months on Useless Air’s calendar. Thank God I am not aging according to their schedule. 
Zimbabwe’s currency plunged to a new record low on Thursday, trading at an average 1 billion to the U.S. dollar on a recently introduced interbank market and triggering massive price increases.
That’s one Billion, with a B. Unimaginable… almost. The world has seen worse.
Until now Hungary held the rather unpleasant world record for the most extreme hyperinflation ever. After World War II, in July 1946 the monthly rate was 41,900,000,000,000,000% (4.19 × 1016%). I can’t even read out such a large number, and it’s monthly, not annual.
The currency in Hungary for decades was the Pengo. The first banknote I’m showing on the right is 1 Billion Millpengo. (Millpengo = 1 Million Pengos). Crazy enough? It was soon followed by 100 Million Bilpengo, where Bilpengo = 1 Billion Pengos. But it’s not over yet: the highest denomination ever printed, but fortunately not issued ( new currency was issued instead) was 1 Billion Bilpengo. Again, I don’t even know what number it translates to, but Wikipedia says it would be one sextillion or 1021 pengo. Another indication of how surreal it was is the fact that all these banknotes were printed on the same day…
Instead of the large numbers, let’s try to imagine what such hyperinflation means in everyday life. Wikipedia says it amounted to prices doubling every fifteen hours. My parents’ recollection is even worse: employees were paid daily in large wads of cash and they had to rush to the stores to spend their earnings before it would become worthless. They would join endless lines, and by the time they got to buy their bread, it cost double the amount it was when they joined the line.
In Zimbabwe, a loaf of bread, which cost about Z$15 million before the polls (in which Mugabe lost but does not give up) now costs about Z$600 million. Will Zimbabwe displace Hungary’s world record?
Update: Hungary also holds the world record of kissing.
Update (6/16/09): Mint has the story of nine hyperinflationary currencies.
The Zac Browser’s market share is close to 1. Not 1%, but one user. It does not have fancy features, certainly can’t compete with Firefox, Safari, Opera or IE7. But that’s why it’s users (in reality likely more than one) can use it. It is largely simplified, a lot of “noise”, be it adult sites or enhanced features are filtered out. The UI is very kid-friendly, here’s just one screen courtesy of the Associated Press and SFGate.
It was built by John LeSieur, whose 6-year-old grandson, Zackary has autism.
I know very little about autism. My only exposure was a few days after I wrote a post about autistic kids – for the next 3-4 days I was totally submerged in intense discussion on a number of blogs and forums, as well as private email correspondence. The reaction was massive and passionate, and a very moving experience for me. In the end all I learned was that I still don’t know anything about autism, and that everybody involved, including the children, their parents, family, teachers…etc are coping with difficulties every day I (we) can’t even fathom.
Which is why it’s great to read that this Grandfather first helped his grandson, and now is working on making the tool available to other children with autism.
Thanks to Jeff Nolan for discovering it. It’s the best news I read today.
SAPPHIRE 08 in Orlando: Bush fires in Florida right after we left. (This miracle house is worth a look: everything around is charred except the house and lawn.)
SAPPHIRE 08 in Berlin: The Berlin Philharmonic is on fire.
Who says old SAP can’t set the World on fire? 
Just as soon as the Microsoft CEO started his speech at the Corvinus University (my Alma Mater), a protesting student wearing a “Microsoft=Corruption” shirt stood up and threw eggs at the Microsoft CEO. Not exactly a sign of the famous “Hungarian hospitality”.
(If your feed does not show embedded videos, please click through to watch it in the blog. Update: Originally I had the index.hu video here, but as it started to slow down, I uloaded it to youtube and am now embedding the youtube version. A day later this vid received over 223K views)
On second thought, perhaps it was fair enough. After all, his boss, Bill Gates received a full cream-pie in the face ten years ago in Belgium – Ballmer only got some of the ingredients. 
Another ironic moment comes at 0:38m in the video: as other students stand up to give way to the departing egg-thrower, the camera closes in on one of them holding up his shiny Apple – and not the pie variety.
Update: The search is on for Ballmer’s replacement.
Another video from a different angle, and it ends with the Gates Pie Scene.
Update#2: OK, enough of the fun part. As the story circulates people start wondering what may be the background, and since the only sources are in Hungarian, here’s a summary of the circumstances:
A Hungarian Government bid, worth $25B Hungarian Forints, roughly $157M was allegedly skewed towards MS. (A ‘competitive’ bid with wording that all but ensures only Microsoft meets the requirements.) A Hungarian Watchdog Body (sort of like the FTC in the US) challenged the bidding process via the Court system, and a trial date was set for today. The trial was suddenly and unexpectedly rescheduled just as Ballmer arrived in Budapest. So there may be a perception of the Bully lobbying there.
That said, they could have protested with banners, without eggs. Or displaying more of those flashy Macbooks.
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