Gadget Review: The Curious Chumby

...or how "Release Early, Release Often" comes to Consumer Electronics. Over the holidays I bought two Chumbys, one to give as a gift and one for myself. I don't even know how to describe this thing, best just check it out on the chumby site. A few days ago, having just started blogging again, I thought I'd post a review. Frankly, it was going to be negative because the only use I'd really found for it was as a glorified alarm clock. But this is a very curious consumer good, because the actual software gets updated via the Internet automatically whenever there's something new to offer. It's also got an open 'plug-in' type of architecture that allows people to enhance the product, and contribute their enhancements to all the other owners. So just a couple days ago, Chumby do an over the air update to the software and suddenly, the whole interface and even feature-set have changed. It's a whole new gadget! And the changes have been great- now I can stream internet radio from multiple sources, customize my alarms much better, and more. And as they say on the Chumby website, this is a product that will *never* be finished, because they'll always be upgrading it with new stuff. Much like google or salesforce.com are never "finished", but constantly evolve. Fascinating to see this happen in the context of a consumer electronics gadget, instead of the now-common web applications. Exciting! (side comment: Apple is doing the same thing to its iPhone, constantly improving the product people have already bought. Now, how is it that traditional mobile phone operators and handset makers have NEVER been able to do this?)

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Properazzi Investor named top 100 VC Worldwide

Forbes magazine has again named our investor, Mark Tluszcz, to its annual "Midas List" of the world's best venture capitalists. This year, our company (the world's largest real estate website) is mentioned by name, which we here thought was pretty cool. Read the Forbes blurb on Mark here

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My New Real Estate Blog

I've just started a new blog, called Recurring Thoughts, to post about the property market. If you have an interest in international property or the real estate market in general, or just want to stay up to date on what's going on at Properazzi, come check it out or subscribe by RSS. I'll continue posting on this blog more personal and miscellaneous comments, like my previous rant about being charged for laptop electricity in a local bar :)

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A Catalan Starbucks, "Impossible!"

I recently attended a meeting with some leading Spanish Internet gurus that was attended by the press. The next morning, the title of the article that appeared in the newspaper quoted one of the local gurus saying, "A Spanish Google? Impossible!" That was in answer to the question of whether a company of the calibre of Google could ever start and survive in Spain. That phrase came to mind again with two independent events that occured today: 1- Starbucks announced it was going to start providing 2 hours of free wifi per day to its customers. Fabulous! 2- I just had a meeting with a colleague in a local cafe in Barcelona. There's no wifi at all, but that's not the point. We took laptops and sat at a table near a power outlet. I plugged in, we ordered coffees, and had our meeting for an hour. But when we paid the bill, the lady at the cafe charged me 1 euro "for the electricity you were using all that time" (!!!!) To make things worse, I'm a regular customer, someone who's been there at least 30 times in the past year. I know, Starbucks is evil and expensive etc. But it actively encourages people to do whatever they want at their stores. Come in, get comfortable, stay as long as you like. Use our freaking electricity at no charge! It may be cheezy, formulaic customer service, but it's still customer service where the customer's needs come FIRST. There are exceptions, but generally the level of customer service here is so bad that it's not surprising at all to understand why there isn't any equivalent success as a Starbucks among local service companies.

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Kayak is launching in Spain

So there is now a Kayak Espana... It shouldn't come as a surprise, really. They already have the UK, German, and French sites out of beta. Some thoughts:

  1. This will be good news for the folks at Trabber. The entry of a big American player will likely attract more media attention to the product of a travel aggregator, and some of this attention should spill over to Trabber, as they are the 'local version'.
  2. I'm very pleased, because Kayak is the only search engine I know that has a great service for multi-leg flights.
  3. Finally, I find it interesting that after the UK, France, and Germany, the next country site to be rolled out is Spain and not Italy or Netherlands or Sweden. It seems to me that Spain is really becoming a tier-1 market, one that simply can't be ignored by any company with a "Europe strategy". Growing from 40 to 45 million in population in a decade, in a continent with shrinking populations certainly helps.

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Leslie Crawford's sub-prime presenation slides

Over on the properazzi BMP blog we've posted the slides from Leslie Crawford's presentation that has so shaken up the conference audience. If you missed it, the talk was a very sober, even grim forecast of the property market in Spain in the next few years. Very controversial stuff... Click here to see the presentation slides.

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BMP 2007: very interesting start!

Some notes from the conference, where properazzi are blogging all the major talks:

  • Senior Financial Times correspondent Leslie Crawford gave a very bearish talk on real estate in Spain, claiming that Spain is just two years behind the crisis that is happening in the US today. This did not make her very popular with the audience, I understand she left the building in a bullet-proof vest (just kidding).
  • Spain's Minister of Housing, Carme Chacon, turned up for the world's fastest ribbon-cutting, followed by a sprint across the exhibition hall to visit some stands, and get mobbed by journalists and photographers. Maybe they were all wanting to ask her what she thought of Leslie Crawford's contrarian speech.
more updates later!

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Properazzi is blogging BMP2007

It's one of the largest real estate conferences in Europe: this year's Barcelona Meeting Point is starting tomorrow, and we have partnered up with the organizers to blog the entire event. We're really pleased about this because BMP and Properazzi share a lot in common: a global, international outlook, expertise in handling large volumes (them exhibitors, us property listings), and we are both based in Barcelona! You can follow the action at BMP at the Properazzi BMP2007 blog.

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Search property on your Playstation.

A widely discussed article on how the ever-advanced Japanese are starting to abandon PCs made me curious today to check our own stats...and surprise, surprise: people are starting to access properazzi using devices that are most definitely *not* PCs. Property searching on an iphone I can understand, but on a playstation3?

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No Wii or Xbox yet, though... :)

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Between a rock and a hard place

Wolfgang Munchau thinks Eurozone interest rates should be raised to avert inflation. He's probably right, but it will mean *a lot* of pain in Spain.

Inflation in Spain is already too high, but the dependence on construction and housing is also too high. Wherever rates go, either people will lose purchasing power on a major scale (they already are), or the most important sector in the economy will suffer a sharp correction.

The weird thing is that Spaniards will just have to watch this unfold because the decision regarding rates isn't theirs, but the ECB's.

Link: Raise eurozone rates now or risk inflation

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