How to build easy-living cities.

My friends keep wondering about all those ugly places of the city where nobody wants to go. How did they get so ruined?
City planning is not an easy thing. Most of the actions are spontaneous and uncontrolled expansions of urban landscape. Nowadays we know much more about the way cities became what they are (the origins, first growth, densification, spreading, economic changes outcomes). The thing is that the city is always a consequence of the inhabitants way of living; we say "the city is the physical expression of a society".

By studying the past, we can learn one or two cool things about the cities coming
or improve what we already have

• Cities should be small and dense. Horizontal expansion is extremely expensive and not ecofriendly.
• Transportation should be reduced to the minimum. Working, shopping, and other activities should be practiced in the same area.
• Diversification. If we go to the same place at the same time, what happens? we jam there. Instead of one mega center that makes everybody uncomfortable, small evenly distributed local "subcenters" makes everyone happy.
• Stay away from white / blue collar ghettos. There's no fun in eating pizza every given day. Mix up within your community and get to know all kinds of people who doesn't have the same background as you do. A mixed socioeconomic status neighborhood delivers richer human interactions.
• No Pharaonic projects. Overscaled projects tend to fail, taking money and time away. Urban improvements are usually simple.
• Overlap functions. It's good to have transportations hubs, shopping and dwellings all together. This also improves human interaction, leading to social and economic wealth.
• Aesthetics makes the difference. If you like something, you want it. If the place where you live and work have a nice walking view, people will spend much more time there, enjoying the place, shopping or having a nice dinner out.

After all building a city is making a way of living. Be conscious of the community where you live, help others, embrace commitment to take good care of the facilities you enjoy day after day, dive in the realization of new projects, create job opportunities and wealth sources, respect things previously done, attempt to make the difference and realize that the city is every single time the tangible expression of what you do every day.

Thinking about the Age of Empire

During the last quarter of the XIX century the international system entered in a new stage of globalization. Due to the Industrial Revolution and technological advances world’s economy become one only trade network where the different industrial powers reached new overseas markets for their products. The emergence of Great Britain as the main financial center and the British Pound as a world wide accepted currency gave an additional impulse to this historical process.The industrial and technological development became the most important factor to analyze the power of a nation, demography and geography where not the main variable anymore. The endless needs of raw materials, new markets and strategically located ports forced the main industrial countries to start an extension of their empires. This new markets were not only used to sell industrial products, they become also very important for capital exports. British, German and French capitals made investments around all the globe building railway networks.

Asia and Africa

In 1870 almost all american continent was already independent, that’s why during this period the european powers focused their imperial expansion over regions where they could easily establish colonial governments, Asia and Africa. During the last 25 years of the XIX century, one fifth of world’s surface and 10% of world’s pupulation was under european domination. The european civilization was projecting its shadow over the entire planet. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 the main colonial powers agreed how to divide Africa. After this summit Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Spain started to control massive land extensions in Africa. In the course of a generation, Africa, 4 times bigger than Europe was totally fragmented. Asia was also a scene of this expansion. The British Empire had India, Burma, Malaysia and Hong Kong under its domain. France successfully controlled Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia under the name of French Indochina. The Netherlands had also an active presence in Asia with an important colony called Dutch East Indies what nowadays is Indonesia. Due to its high complexity and big territorial extension China was never colonizated by an only country. Different european powers, Russia and even Japan divided China into exclusive influence areas where they could freely trade.

Central America and the Caribbean

The Caribbean was an strategic area. As a consequence of the emerge of the United States as a world power and the increase of the global trade the construction of an inter-oceanic canal become an important issue. France, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Spain had an strong presence in this area with colonies in different islands, all of them expected to control a future canal that would connect the Atlantic and the Pacific.The United States were a new power interested in this strategic region located in its influence area, the 1898 Spanish American war is a demonstration of the irruption of the US in this region and as a new colonial power.

On the way to the First World War

There is no doubt that this imperial expansion was one of the multiple causes of the First World War, the objective of this article was to analyze the historical period baptized by Eric Hobsbawm as “The Age of Empire” and not the First World War causes. But I think is important to at least mention the existing link between this two periods.

Ten reasons to donate - Pick one!

I heard once that every reason is a good one for donating to charity (or any other kind of donation). For example, if you are a politician, and you want to help people to show off for your campaign, it is a good reason!

Here is a list I built with reasons for donating, just pick one and go for it:

1. Girls love charity
2. Score some points in Karma-board
3. Show off (politicians apply here)
4. Make your parents proud, so they can show off in front of their friends
5. Get tax benefits
6. Go to heaven (at least not going to hell)
7. Balance your evil inside
8. Meet people making a difference
9. Make a difference yourself
10. Feel awesome!

Whatever your reason is, you are making another person happy. That surely pays the price. If you have another reason, please let me know.

The best thing that can happen to a billboard

Just being online, like this:

(by the way... I love this billboa... sorry ... power plant)

My crusade at Confronte.com

September 25th was my last day at Confronte.com.

Confronte.com is a price comparison site for the Latin American market. Or, at least, that was our first idea :).

I finished college in 2004. I met Matías Garcia because he was teaching Operating Systems and Programming at the university. He was known as one of the smartest guys there. He was part of a group that came from Balseiro University in Bariloche, to teach in UADE.

At that time, I was working on my thesis with Ignacio López (Co-Founder of Wormhole IT), and we needed a tutor. Matías was our guy :). We talked to him, and he was happy to help us.

We finished it by March of the following year (2005), and we got our degree.

The following year, Matías started working on the idea of a comparison site. He traveled to the United States for work, and he thought that building an Argentinian site of that nature, would be a good idea. He started working alone.

Meanwhile, I was working at Hewlett Packard as Telecom Consultant, specializing on the latest technologies on the telecommunications market. The thing was, that none of the actual Latin American companies were buying cutting-edge technologies. We were talking about technologies like SIP and value added services, and the companies were stabilizing their SMS platforms. So, we were doing a lot of pre-sales work, but no action. I was getting bored.

We met with Matias and Ignacio for a "catch-up" dinner. Ignacio was working at Microsoft, and he was quite happy about that (JJ). Matiu told us what he was doing, and the bug got me. I sent him an email the day after, offering my help, and he replied with a TO-DO list. We didn't talk about money, shares or anything. We just worked.

I worked in both places for a couple of months, but my brain was overheating. Matiu needed more commitment to the project, and I saw an opportunity window. I grabbed my savings and jump to the pool. We worked 24x7 ... and we truly thought that we could go for the world.

At first, we were really focus on the Argentinian market. We thought that if we could reach that market, we could replicate our experiences. The thing is, that our mistake, helped to generate value for a local group. Clarín's media group was looking for a comparison site, and we were their option. They bought our company September 22th, 2008. But Clarin focuses only on Argentina, so we couldn't develop further to other countries.

I learned a lot. From legal issues, to the importance of having a partner. I'll always be thankful to that opportunity that Matiu gave me. I hope to enjoy my next startup as much as this one.

Social Networks side effects

I think we always start with curiosity about them.

We register on the web site. We first add the minimum info to be IN. We don't even put a picture in our profile.

As we begin to discover some cool features, I think we start to give up on the idea of privacy. We add some friend's picture, we complete our telephone number and address, and continue with the rest. So far, we are having so much fun.

Once we are full profiled, we don't know what to do. So if you are bored, you start seeing what's happening around you. Again and again. You click everywhere just to let the pain go.

It's the new television. You can see what's happening right here right now. You can watch all your friends' videos and be in touch with distant family at the same time. But like Seth says ... if your network is not based on real relationships, social networks lose some sense.

I think all social networks promote anxiety and frustration, because you become a follower. Since you see everybody's life events, or achievements, and you start to get bitter about getting your own. It would be different seeing status like "I studied for ten hours straight and still can't get my exercises right", or "I sent two thousand emails, and nobody is interested in my project".

I think everybody needs to spend some time offline. Stop being a follower. Think about your future without comparing yourself with others. Just do it, and you'll start to see a difference.

(ps: thank you ine ... you're so lovely with me!!)

Search Engines that don't work!

It's been a while since I wrote about Search Engines that do not work. You can see the original entry here (Spanish).

The thing is we all depend so much on Google. We really care about the SEO regarding our site. Every single day.

But the thing is, once you have a person in your site, you fail to help him find other stuff. He got there, he looked at the site, he didn't find what he was looking for, he tried the “search“ box but .... 0 results. Strike 3. You're out.

Do yourself a favor. Fix your search engine. There are very few people that use the “browseable“ option.

After all ... who is not in a hurry? :)