Torre Agbar at 25 Euros/m2

At first, I wasn't a big fan of the Torre Agbar, now Barcelona's 3rd tallest building; I felt it looked like a cheap knock-off of London's glamorous Swiss Re tower (aka "the gherkin"). But I've started to appreciate the Agbar more, since at night it's now used to project a dazzling array of lights that make it look like a beacon in the city skyline.

Anyway...it was just announced that rent in the Agbar has broken records for Barcelona, at 25 Euros/m2, and that tenants are being sought for up to 9 vacant floors. I particularly loved this quote:

Agbar está interesada sobre todo en empresas de nuevas tecnologías o innovadoras.

Way to jump on the bandwagon of trendy buzzwords! "looking for high-tech, innovative companies"?? For the most expensive office space in the city? Give me a break...

The Agbar management don't seem to realize that your typical "new technology, innovative" company is a startup or fast-growing SME that would generally never be caught dead spending their precious capital on premium office space.

It would be more realistic to seek out law firms or management consultancies, for whom having a 'presigious' address actually means something.

The Torre Agbar by day:

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The torre Agbar by night:

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The Swiss Re tower in London:

Link: El Periodico.

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Defining cartoons

From the New Yorker, a sign of the times, enough said:

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The original from the kick-off the web1.0 boom:

hat tip to Seth

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Spanish housing statistics…on fire!

A few new data points on Spanish housing:

  • This year is going to be yet another record for new housing starts- 785,000! This is probably more than the whole of the rest of the EU combined! The US has about 1.7-1.8 million housing starts, so only about 2x as many as Spain even though it has about 8x the population.
  • Mortgage debt is skyrocketing and breaking all records: up 24.3% last quarter, to a total of 421 billion Euros. Consumer credit is up a more moderate 11.5% to 164 billion Euros. So total consumer debt is now 587 billion Euros.
  • 60% of mortgages are on variable rates, therefore vulnerable to any interest rate rises.

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Tongue-Bug in Fish

Whether this is the result of evolution, God, or FSM, you have to admit it's pretty weird: Tongue-eating bug found in fish
(via BoingBoing)

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Julio’s new short video

My friend Julio Perillan just got together with two Catalan filmmakers in Barcelona to make a pretty nicely done, if disturbing, short film.

Link (QuickTime video, 2 minutes long): lacarta.mov.

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Spanish Internet update

The figures for August broadband net adds have been published, with some interesting results.

Out of total growth of about 65k lines, roughly 27k for Telefonica ADSL, 19k for unbundled ADSL, and 19k for cable broadband.

I was surprised by the figure of 19k unbundled lines, for this is part of a zero-sum game: the other way to look at this is that Telefonica lost 19k lines, in a single month, in what is the slowest month of the year.

That gives an annual run-rate of almost 250k lines that Telefonica will lose in the next year. But if we consider that August net adds are typically about 1/3 of the average throughout the year, then we should start to consider that in the next year Telefonica is likely to lose 750k lines.

This projection, admittedly riddled with assumptions, could get even worse because unbundling continues to grow faster as a percentage of total net adds (it was almost negligible at the start of the year, and now represents almost 30% of net adds).

Factoring in further growth in unbundled lines as a share of total growth, and we just might see Telefonica losing 1 million lines in the coming year- a staggering loss.

Link (in Spanish): Asociacion de Internautas.

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French startup success - with blogs

LaFraise.com is a French website that sells T-Shirts. Started less than 2 years ago, this one-man business is now grossing 48,000 Euros/month. One unique aspect to the business is the central role of blogging in attracting and communicating with customers; LaFraise.com is often cited as a case study in "Blogvertising".

Below the founder has written (in French) two long posts detailing how he got started. Makes for good reading.

Link1: Lafraise T-shirts :: Manuel pour cybercommercant autodidacte.
Link2 (one year later update): Lafraise T-shirts :: Manuel pour cybercommercant autodidacte.

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Old Europe meets the iPod

This is *so* Old Europe it makes me want to cry.

The new iPod Nano costs 249 USD in America; 249 Euros in Spain; 249 Euros in Germany; 249 Euros in Belgium;.....and 319 Euros in France!

The reason why is surreal.

It's because of a tax imposed to compensate rights holders for private copying of their work. Since it's impossible to know who is copying what and when and in what volumes, Sorecop, which manages the tax, imposes arbitrary assumptions.

(digression: anybody else find it weird, and kind of funny, that Sorecop in English sounds like "sore cop"?)

So the iPod Nano is taxed in the category "dedicated memory device based on flash memory, non-removable, of 4 gigabytes", and therefore taxed at 0,34 Euros per 32 megabyte.

Shame the Nano doesn't have a hard drive instead of flash memory. In that case it would have been classified as a "device with hard drive of less than 5 gigabytes", and therefore taxed for 8 Euros per unit instead of 50 Euros.

Sorecop, when asked about this, replied that the method of calculating the tax dates from 2001, when flash memory devices were rarely larger than 64 megabytes.

Oh, poor you. As always, technology has galloped ahead to expose the absurd, and frankly, shameful scam that you set-up to extort money from people in the name of "artist's rights".

Link: (in French) From TF1

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Telco recognition of scorched earth

David Bitton, director of a VoIP subsidiary of Neuf Cegetel, comments on Skype in an interview in French paper Le Figaro:

Skype, qui permet de téléphoner gratuitement sur Internet à partir d'un micro-ordinateur, est un aiguillon. Il joue un rôle de catalyseur en faisant prendre conscience que la minute de communication à partir d'un téléphone fixe va devenir gratuite. Il oblige donc les opérateurs à inventer de nouvelles formules commerciales mettant l'accent, par exemple, sur les communications illimitées.

So this is an admission that Skype is basically a harbinger of the zero-price future of voice, which is encouraging telcos to adopt their scorched earth strategies.

What's interesting is that as telcos let go of seeking revenues from voice minutes, and focus on securing broadband access subscriptions, Skype is no longer seen as a threat.

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MG on Skype/eBay

That Martin Geddes is too smart for his own good. His take on Skype/eBay sums it up very, very well, concluding:

I suspect that eBay’s ambition is to become the mediator of 800-number style interactions between consumers and merchants. The www.ebay.com web site is their text distribution channel, and Skype is the audio one. Each will have different sets of merchants, buyers and transaction structures. So don’t look for “eBay” functionality to appear in Skype, because they’re addressing strategically similar but functionally different needs.

Hmm...."the mediator of 800-number style interactions between consumers and merchants" = Pay-Per-Call. Right on, Martin.

But he might have missed something here:

One last thought. If you’re a telco, now is a great time to cross your chest and start saying your Hail Marys. Someone with deep pockets is about to give away telephony to support their adjacent transaction business.

The telcos already have a defence for this: they are about to give away telephony to support their adjacent access business.

I like to call it the telco "Scorched Earth" strategy (see here and here). It won't be pretty, but at least some telcos will walk away from this fight alive and reinvented as pure access providers (the dreaded Dumb Pipe Destiny!).

The internet players are deflating voice to support their applications-layer businesses in commerce, content, and advertising; the telcos are deflating voice to support their growing broadband access business.

The losers in this will be folks who only make money selling voice. Top of mind in this category is Vonage, SunRocket, Packet8, VoiceGlo, GossipTel, and the other pure VoIP guys. Skype, I felt, was dangerously headed in this category until today's rescue by eBay.

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