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What will we see new in the technology next year. What will make the stand-out from the crowd of the gadgets announced, and what will make it’s way into our life ? Well, here’s my list of what to expect for 2009 in the IT&C business:

1. New Intel Core i7 processor from Intel; although the quadcore and core 2 processors are still ruling the market, Intel has prepared probably for the Q3 09 the new generation of processors Core i7. They will probably have 4 times the processing power from the current top processors, incorporating 8 to 16 processors in the new microprocessor; also, with the new processors, Intel has rethinked the whole internal structure of the microprocessor, and the way it reacts to the impulses inside.

2. OLED technology will become a certitude on the market; and what does it mean to the user? New Star Trek gadgets, from the folding and thinner TV screens to new computer devices (remember the folding piano keyboard from the Star Trek? well, it’s here with the new tech). Cars, TV’s, Ad Media Panels most will switch to the new technology

3. Windows 7 - although Microsoft said will be delivered on 2010, i don’t think they afford to wait untill than for the new operating system launch, and here are the reasons why: Google will probably launch at the Q3-Q4 the new operating system for the PC’s, they already have Android for mobiles, Apple’s Mac is getting a bigger slice of the pie each day, Linux is stabilizing on a 12-14% market share, and Vista is still far more unpopular than XP. So, the new Vista 2 or Windows 7 will be forced our in second semester of 2009. The much promised WinFS will still be a promise for future, but the touchscreen technology and wireless integrations to the new OS will gain some points for the Redmont giant.

4. Apple’s rise - iPhone3G is a revolutionary phone, but still it has 2MP camera, still has no MMS, no way to change it’s battery and much more things to improve. And probably with the new WiMax, will have a new iPhone on the market, probably not in the summer, but the bets are for Q3 09.

5. New broadband connection: WiMax rules in predictions, but maybe only US will get to step to the new nationwide broadband network. In Europe, the 50Mbps internet access will gain more popularity, and in Eastern Europe, the standard will stabilized around 15-20Mbps speed,

What we will still miss in 2009:
- the US government will still keep Tesla’s inventions filled under top secret, so we will probably not have in 2009 wireless electric power everywhere
- the planet still have oil reserves, so there’s no point in letting electric cars rule the world / market
- the new inventions in airplanes will still be under top secret, so we will still make over 7 hours from Paris to NYC and 15 from Europe to Brasil; no point in speeding things up to more MACH speed, while you can have a video call with friends instead of dinner or youtube for the Rio festival, instead of being there
- no jump to hyper-processing era of 50-100 GHz processors, 10TB of storage on a CD, USB 500MBps transfers
- no alternative energy burst (solar batteries, eolian energy) we still have the nuclear, hydrothermal and oil energy to waste, so the owners of the resources will still force the non-disclosure of the new energy saving technology
- no Venus Project application (or adaptation to 2009 realities)

Communication, social, software 2009 gadgets, core i7, iphone, wimax

Although they planned in opening offices in Eastern European countries (including Romania) around September – October, looks like PokerStars is still stuggleing to find out a head office manager for the countries. Maybe it’s hard to find out a man to handle the whole PS concept, have the relations and implement the program for development in those countries, but at least for Romania – it’s enough to take Daniel Negreanu on a trip to Bucharest and let him choose the manager for the branch.

I mean you have such a great poker name on your side, and you let the market that SHOULD be yours to be taken by competition like PartyPoker, UltimateBet and even LuckyAce or some second hand brands …. c’mon PokerStars? What the hell are you doing, you should know to read and react to poker markets all around the world; instead your taking the way to short your chip stack asap, and you probabily will be forced soon to go all-in with BiG Blind.

My opinion: you should need to reevaluate your managers from the London office. Not owning the Romanian online poker and not involving into the Romanian poker / casino events, while having maybe the most famous Romanian poker player on exclusive contract – and much more – skiping Bucharest and making the EPT (European Poker Tour) in Budapesta, while on Bucharest you got access not only to Romanian players but also it’s an intersection of Bulgarian, Israelian, Italian and Russian poker players with some Turks, Greeks and Germans along the casino halls … it means one strong thing to me, as a person who watch and was involved in the casino / poker business for the last year: Major market misreading, wrong development plans.

Poker Stars, after all, is poker stars, but in the Romanian market, there’s Party Poker, without Negreanu. I should feel ashamed for this misfortune.

Communication, Internet General, Poker / Casino, Web sites, software daniel negreanu, poker online, poker stars, wrong poker strategy

Vodafone Romania – how can u have the same brand, but don’t give a shit about your customers?

Probably many of you have been a customer of Vodafone Europe; probably not many have been using the Vodafone Romania’s services and customer support; if not, then let me tell you that IT’S A BIG DIFFERENCE between how the Romanian customer is treated by the Vodafone customer support and how the European (France, UK, Italy you name it) is taken care of.

For starters, my general impression after being almost 10 years a Vodafone subscriber is that Vodafone now doesn’t give a shit about me, my options, the services they offer to me or anything else except for me having the phone bill payed on time. It’s becoming harder and harder to get to Vodafone support people, and when you have an request that might seem normal in European market and services, you get the answer days away, if they will even bother to give it to you.

It doesn’t matter that you have stayed with Vodafone in crisis times, through changes time and against all odds, you kept on haging on that red and white logo like a beacon in the communication market. You don’t even get a bonus for being in their network after all that time and if you pay monthly bills around 150 euros, you get after 3 years a bonus of … hang on … 100 euro. 150 euro x 12 x 10 = 100 euro. That’s the bonus you should expect when you buy a new phone from Vodafone.

But since the post is about Vodafone, lets talk about the services: if you have a roaming and you want to call in Germany for example, you pay over 80 eurocents, this while the EU legislation is reglemmenting the fees for roaming within EU around 45 cents and lower. If you want to call other mobile networks from your country you get call fees around 16 cents / minute; while in Frances, for same situations you get 3-4 cents / minute call fees.

Now the best of the best: Vodafone mobile. You stay online 7 days, and Vodafone charges you for 2 weeks in spend online times. This while the 3G connection speed is a little bit higher than dial-up connection.

Now, if you are a Romanian, there are chances that you are used to be cheated by almost everyone. The state and government steals from you, makes you pay for everything – like from radio fee, raindrops fee, chairs fee – so Vodafone acts like a Romanian company, although it’s a world-wide corporation. Don’t you love this ? ” I do”

Communication, Internet General, Personal, social fees, romania communication, telephony, vodafone, wireless

Some days ago on Wired, appeard a controversial article about the blogging importance for the internet of late 2008, well written by Paul Boutin. Some say blogging is the news of 2004, and the tool to use for the past 3-4 years, but not anymore, since microblogging services like twitter, pownce and others has taking the face of the blogging programs.

To quote Paul’s original  “Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.“(read entire article here).

My question is what about the country differences? what works for US or Western Europe doesn’t go well in Asia or Africa, or even Eastern Europe, including Russia here. What do you think, it’s better to stop blogging and start texting/ sms ?

Update: opposite view, why blogs will rock in 2009 here

Banking, Communication, Entertainment, Internet General, Personal, Poker / Casino, Web sites blog, blogging, twitter, wired news

Although I’m born and raised in Romania, I’m almost sick and tired of watching and witnessing the things populared called “romanisme”. I made a list of 10 reasons that should keep you out of investing in my country, maybe in the near future the reasons beyond this article will change, but here’s the situation now.

1. Although the medium salary is around 1.000 RON (~300 EUR), if you will place an hiring ad on the market for a job that requires a lower salary than the medium one, you will hardly find youth people(18-25 yrs old) that will comply with your requirements and will be able to function within the job’s parameters. You will get CV’s and salary proposals from ppl without any experience asking you for 2-3 times the medium salary, although they don’t even know how to deal with the job requirements. If it’s an international job, you better go an hire Chinese, Africans or even Arabs, they will do the job more properly.

2. Be prepared to pay more than in European countries like Italy, France, Spain, UK for almost everything; even the legendary burger for Hard Rock Cafe costs in Romania 15$ compared with NYC 9-12$ price; be sure than you will pay more for everything, starting for the basic bread till the meat and every vegetable that you want to eat.

3. Remember, you have to stay in a store less than 10 minutes if you don’t want  to buy something. If you stay more, the sale person will regard you with suspicion, going on the idea that you probably are a theft.

4. Don’t apply the American way here! You can’t make it your own way; you will be at the mercy of authorities, state or other persons that have higher ranks than you. Corruption is still a growing business and probably, if you decide to invest in Romania, you will have to pay for things that comes without any problem in democratic countries.

5. Prepare to be treated like dirt by state institutions and employees. Although most are public functionaires, they act and react as gods; they know everything that you can afford with your money and if you’re not willing to pay, than you will have to wait a couple of months for everything that can be solved within 5 minutes or on email. It will stay the same way until you’re exasperated, you address petitions to EU instances or courts; after that it might resolve everything.

6. Do you have a car? Well, don’t bring it here: we have the crappiest roads in Europe, and on a EU Road you will make about 9-10 hours to get from Timisoara (Western city) to Bucharest (Capital city) for about 550 km, but for the first 300km you will probably make about 7 hours if you want to travel by car; every country in Europe makes the better roads to West, we make them near East; did i mentioned that we have about 300 km of highway, but they are always under construction or on repair? and you will find them near Bucharest. Trains will take you within 8 hours for 550 km so, the medium speed should be around 70km / hour; compared with France’s TGV 350kmh …. sorry, cannot make that comparison.

7. We have beautiful and affordable girls, if you plan to have fun; but watch your pockets, credit cards and everything that has connection with money and your account. A night can cost you a lifetime savings sometimes.

8. Did you know that EU threats the E’s within the aliments, food and drinks carefully; we don’t. You can eat cancerigene food anywhere: hotels, restaurants, fast-foods (more than usual).

9. Justice is for money. Everything is right for you if you have money; if you don’t then you can die with the justice in your right hand, cause almost no court will give you a win in a case you clearly and undoubtely have the winning reason on your side. It’s not enough!

10. Everything works on relations: no public bidding will help your business if you don’t have connections to help you win; you have the chance to find and witness corruption in everything, from sports to media, and from politics to farmers and small state employees. If you’re a non-smoking person, there’s little chance to find a restaurant where you can eat without the cigarette smoke in your nose; If you’re a vegetarian, remember that there are 3-4 restaurants for you at each million ppl, so keep close to big cities: Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, Cluj, Brasov.

You don’t have to be sorry. just walk away; Romania is a beautiful country, but unfortunatly … the management sucks!

Update 10.2009: we have a prime-minister that is also the education ministry. His job, according to his words is NOT to take out the country out of the crysis. We have electronic engineers as agriculture minister, we have lawyers as monetary experts on Romanian National Bank, we have about 5 ministers that are in charge of 2 ministry, each of them. Corruption – we got it. Rotten politicians -we have them. Incompetent governance – say no more, we have it. Why would you put your money on a fixed  lottery called Romania?

Communication, social conditions, corruption, investments, restaurants, roads, Romania

In the past days, during some small talk conversations I’ve been asked by at least 5 people, in a way or another, who are the music artists that made their influence over me, in my life. Of course, I’m not a singer , writer or composer, but the question made me think: do I have a top 10 or just a top 10 now. For now I think the music artists (just can’t call them singers) that made their influence over me, through songs I can never forget are:
- Michael Jackson ( a big childhood fan)
- Elvis Presley
- Julio Iglesias
- Madonna
- Selena (have you heard of the Tejano singer ? Or just seen the movie with J Lo? )
- Willie Nelson
- Whitney Houston
- George Michael
- Abba
- The Beatles
of course, almost each one represented a phase in my life, but I can say now that without them, the whole Earth experience would’ve been at least unpleasant. I don’t see myself growing up without black and white or give into me from MJ and for sure I don’t see me as teenager without Vogue, Freedom; I will always love you is probably the most beautiful lie that I can accept, and sometimes, it’s natural to cry in the chapel. Yesterday, the name of the game may have been different, but the words are still the same.

Communication, Entertainment, Personal, social childhood, music, singers, songs

Today, as Steve Jobs liked to express himself, is the begining of an new era in the mobile industry: the launch of the new iPhone3G, which will change the world. GPS, 3G, more mobily, powered by Mac’s OS X, and about 7 milions items sold from the previous generation made the iPhone the best selling brand in the last year. I wonder when will we benefit from it in Romania, and what astronomical prices will be hidden behind the new iPhone; in the USA the starting price is 199$ in Romania probably will start from 1000$, as we all know the greed behind the mobile operators.

Anyway, welcome to the mobile market, may your stay be long and prosper for both, users and vendors.

Communication Apple, iPhone3G, mobile

Since yesterday, the US iPhone fans don’t have to wait anymore for the new iPhone3G product. According to apple.com the new iPhone3G will be a little bit bigger in dimensions, will (still) have the battery not removable, and will cost less … by less, understand 199$ standard price. In Europe the phone will be available first in Austria, France, Portugal and Switzerland but with a promise for Orange customers for delivery in other EU countries by the end of the year. In Romania, the Orange customers should expect also the new iPhone3G by the end of the year in almost 6500 stores country-wide; we still don’t know the retails prices for the Romanian Market

Communication Apple, iPhone3G, Orange, Romania