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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

More often in the last years, I’ve put myself this question: do I feel it’s Christmas time ? Does it feel the same way as it felt 4-5 years ago? Do I even have the energy to celebrate it or the whole thing is just a relax and enjoy period? Well, I got some confusing answers, but here is goes:

Do I feel it’s Christmas? Definitely NO. Why? Because, first of all, I don’t feel the energy the Xmas supposed to give it to people; all around me I see tired faces, people that work and forgot about the magical times of the winter holidays. I see people too tired for having a little bit of fun. Christmas has become more of a gift giving and TV watching/look-a-like holiday than it’s initial spirit: be with your close ones, celebrate not as much the news of the Jesus child (although from some latest discoveries seems that he was born in June or July) but the joy of being with the people you love, appreciate and care for. It’s not a contest of drinking as much as you can, but as drinking with the people who represent something for you.

Does it feel like 4-5 years ago? Again, definitely NO. Part of the reason explained above, part of the situation in Romania; shitty crisis makes the holiday spirit go away.

Do I have the energy to celebrate it? Yes. Definitely. I got almost the same energy to hump and party as 10 years ago, but as it goes, I don’t have my friends to back me up as 10 years ago; maybe I get old a little bit less than them, maybe because I still don’t have a child on the way, or maybe … maybe I’m more relaxed then them. Who knows, maybe it’s time to get a new group of friends, 8-10 years younger. Maybe.

Or maybe this will be a magical Christmas, against all signs that it’s gonna be worst than the one last year. Maybe.

Internet General Celebration, Christmas, Work

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

The American Crysis is affecting online activity, much more than offline; according to the lastest news, the Q3 2008 will have an downfall of 3-5% on ecomerce sales in the US, according with the previous one. The big companies will get reorriented strategies, and it seems that we can see some layoffs from most of the Top 500 web companies.

Yahoo looks in an optimistic view at 20% workforce reduction, and AOL one of the biggest market players for US is looking at almost 40% cutbacks. Google, who recently has become a teenager with 10 years of existence is taking a stand back and analyze position, while online financing / credit market is looking also at 30-40% cutbacks. Steve Jobs rumor of heart attack is taking an byte in Apple shares also. Top 3 US banks are getting about 700 billions $, so we’re looking at 40-50% stock raise for Citibank and JP Morgan shares.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street faced last week the biggest downfall in the stock history, with almost 10% down and a stop of short-term transactions until 2nd October. Realestate market is on the way down around the world, and Europe / Asia are looking with fear at the next months and feedbacks from the American financial crysis.

Planet oil reserves are planned for the next 20 years, while US government is rushing the production of the electrocars with 5-7 years, according a 25 billion loan for the biggest 3 car manufacturers, Ford and GM are on the way to top Toyota Primus with a car model early next year.

welcome to the new world! would be this way, all the way now or do we get back to the happiness of 90′s ?

Banking, Internet General Crysis, Election, US cutback, Wall Street

Until now the energy that camed directly from the sun couldn’t be stored because of the high price on the storage equipments and the high proportion between costs / energy; starting yesterday, we have an announcement from the enery dept. of Massachusetts Institute of Technology that if it’s totally correct with Daniel Nocera’s declarations, is the most valuable invention of this century.

According to the MIT researcher, he and his team found a way to split the hidrogen and oxygen from the water at the room temperature, and they are doing this without any expensive matterials or items. Again, if this works 100% then within a few years we can forget the oil, we can forget the oil crisis and we can start using the new solar energy everywhere and anywhere; it’s almost like Tesla wireless power invention, but this time I think the US government will no longer classify the information. Good job guy, and welcome into the top celebs of the 21st century!

Read more about this invention and view the video interview here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

Internet General, Personal, social low cost energy, new discovery, solar energy

I can say that i’m a fan of World of Warcraft, and although sometimes I don’t have much time, I like to play a little bit on the game. Ofcourse it’s a dumb’s game, time and money consuming, but I enjoy the fun; and to the fans of the wow, today the european servers updated to patch 2.4.3 – mounts at level 30 for everyone, and 22 slots bags on sale.

whoohooo!

Internet General, software gaming, online game, world of warcraft, wow

Today John Reese launched the Traffic Secrets 2.0, the update to the best selling affiliate program from 2004, Traffic Secrets. It’s about online marketing, blogs, social networks, gadgets and optimization, and the purpose of the 12 dvd’s attached to the book is to teach you how to get to no.1 in google. Wholesale price: 397$, link is here: http://www.trafficsecrets.com/ . Good luck!

Internet General, SEO, Web sites, software internet marketing, seo, traffic

A month ago I’ve read a Bill Gates speach in which he told the audience that Windows 7, the next OS will be launched sometimes in Q4 2009; ofc, he has soon corrected by Microsoft team, to announce the probable date for Windows 7 in Q1 2010, and as we know Microsoft for missing dates, probably would be more like Q4 2010.

Last week, a beta version of the new operating system leaked on the internet, according to windows7news.com. According to the site, and the recent blog from ZDNet, untill now Windows 7 will try to be more focused on user and gaming interactions. So, here’s what I’ve found to be the new things in new version, according to the rumors of the users that already tested the new Microsoft product:

1. Greater interactivity with PnP objects and items. Network awareness
2. The new file system indexing, announced to be launched with Vista, then cancelled for the next OS
3. Motion detection and multi-touch screen awareness; windows sensor feature
4. Lower memory usage and lower power consumption (we have to keep the Earth green)
5. Greater localization and integration with the current Windows Live platform.

From the video presentation of the Windows 7 capabilities, it seems that Steve Jobs did a hell of a job with the iPhone touch screen. Take a look at the presentation in the youtube video below

Internet General, software integration, localization, microsoft, windows 7, windows live

According to one of the Mozilla Firefox developer, Mike Beltzner, the new alpha release of the internet browser will be officially launched this Tuesday, 17th of June. Firefox, which will get to the 3rd version, will have, according to Mike, a higher download / load spead then the previous version, will consume less of the CPU and will run more smoothly then the previous version.

Firefox version 3 have been developed for the past 34 months, and according to it’s beta testers, it’s a big improvement from the previous versions, including the 3.5 beta: will get the new addons a faster install, will be more media friendly – videos, music, improved bookmark and history, and a more efficient management for the ftp and other internet services like mail, for one. On Tuesday, the browser how has the goal to become the most used internet browser, will have a Download Day, in attempt to break all the downloads records for one day – you can sign-up at Download Day HQ.

You can find out all the mozilla firefox release candidates here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html

Internet General download day, firefox, mozilla, rc3