Rose Cantine

Congratulations to Ted Rheingold and the folks at Dogster for putting on a great event last night. Their “300,000 Dogs and Cats” party was so much fun although there were more humans than dogs (no cats though). It was an opportunity for me to see my Bay Area friends again: Molly Ditmore, Scott Rafer, Mary Hodder, Sean Savage, Paul Bragiel, Carol Singh and many others.

I met Ted Rheingold at South by Southwest Interactive in March 2004 just after he had started Dogster. Back then, Muniwireless.com was only 10 months old, and like Ted, I did not know whether it was going to be a viable business. It was just something I felt I had to do.

I remember having lunch with Ted at a North Beach cafe in mid-2004 where we both laughed at one VC’s interest in Dogster. Ted thought at that time, that Dogster was not really a business that a VC should even consider. We laughed over coffee about how the VC keep pestering him for a business plan (”what BUSINESS plan? ha ha”).

But times have changed and both of us have real running companies. Dogster will have 14 employees by November 2006 and the company has taken in angel funding. Muniwireless has partnered with Microcast Communications to bring conferences, webinars, seminars, research reports and a magazine to a worldwide audience interesting in municipal wireless broadband. Ted’s great work at Dogster has always inspired me to do better at Muniwireless, especially through the tough times when I did not think my hard work would amount to anything. You simply cannot do what he has done unless you love your work and care about your customers.

A group of Dogster’s customers created a photo album (each page had photos of their dogs) and sent it to Dogster as a gift. I saw the album yesterday at the party. How many companies generate this level of passion and kindness among their customers?

Check out the photos taken at the Dogster party.

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http://www.neodia.fr/incubateur/

I was in Boston for WiMax World last week and given my last experience flying in and out of Boston, I dreaded every moment. I was right; it’s no better this time.

Do NOT take the Silver Line

Getting to the airport from my hotel near the World Trade Center via the Silver Line, a rather optimistic sounding bus service, should have been a breeze, but it took 50 minutes and I almost missed my flight. You see the hotel personnel told me that the airport is only two stops away. Indeed when you look at the map, it’s just around the corner. Judging from the very professional look of the new bus terminal next to the hotel, which is underground and looks like a subway stop, I thought there would be buses every 10 or 15 minutes and I would be at Terminal C in 20 minutes at most.

I waited forever for the bus and it just crawled to the airport. The traffic was awful, there were no dedicated bus lanes and the bus was packed. If I had taken a cab from the hotel, it would have taken me 10 minutes. I am never again playing Russian Roulette with Boston airport transportation and least of all with the Silver Line.

Rude, crude TSA personnel

Logan Airport also provides the appropriate TSA personnel to enhance your Boston travel experience. In addition to yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs like their colleagues in other airports, Logan TSA people try to project the image that they are really doing something to ensure you security. And this is how they do it:

I checked in a little plastic bag with liquids. The bag went through the scanner and immediately, an alert TSA employee, no doubt keeping us safe from those nasty people told me that the little plastic bag was too big. Never mind that the same plastic bag went through San Francisco Airport’s security without any problems. So to make us feel that they are doing a spectacular job, they decided to confiscate a nearly empty bottle of contact lens solution. But they let the plastic bag through anyway.

When I said, “But this bag and all of its contents went through San Francisco with no problem,” the TSA guy retorted, “Yeah, but San Francisco is San Francisco.”

Yes, folks, don’t you feel so much safer now that airport security people in a single country can’t agree on standard procedures and even criticize their own colleagues in another city? By the way, the same little plastic bag filled with eye drops, lip gloss, hand creme and hair gel just sailed right through Houston’s airport, right in Bush country.

I love the Tyler Brule column in the Financial Times this weekend in which he rips TSA apart for the degrading manner in which they treat passengers:

“Having just witnessed a humiliating attack on a defenceless elderly gentleman at La Guardia airport, it’s time to create an enforceable charter of human rights for passengers and a tough set of standards that airports, airlines and affiliated businesses must abide by.”

. . .

“As the gentleman tried to collect his things and bundle them in his arms the security guard moved in closer. ‘Sir, this is a federal inspection area and you must move on. You must do so in the fastest manner possible sir!’ The man gently nodded but dropped a shoe in his haste and the barrage of passive-aggressive security-speak started over again. I motioned to go and help the man but he pulled himself together and then shuffled away to find a place to put on his shoes.”

“I immediately told the security man that terrorising people was not part of his job description. ‘Sir, you’re in a federal inspection area . . . “‘ he began. ‘. . . and as a result you’re a representative of the federal government and you’re not putting on the best face for Washington by abusing a man in his 80s,’ I retaliated.”

“Unfortunately, this scene isn’t limited to just the airports of the Port Authority but plays itself out all over North America, pockets of Europe, Australia and beyond. Passengers recognise the need for stricter security measures but with them have come a culture of belligerent behaviour that’s going unchecked by the security companies who win contracts, the airports that award them and the governments that are supposed to police the system.”

Finally good news on the football side. The Netherlands beat Albania and one of the goals was scored by Robin van Persie (Arsenal). With 10 points in 4 matches, the Netherlands leads Group G. There will be a brief winter break and then the Euro 2008 qualifying matches begin again in Spring 2007.

But the surprises of the day are: Poland defeated Portugal 2-1 and England lost to Croatia 2-0.

For a complete roundup of the day’s Euro 2008 qualifying matches, click here.

The Dutch national football team is not doing well at all. They played in Sofia, Bulgaria this weekend and earned a draw (1-1) against Bulgaria, not exactly the most incredible team in the universe. A key Dutch player, Dirk Kuit, was injured. They’re trying to blame it on the weather. Apparently it rained and the pitch was soggy and muddy. Nice try guys, but the Netherlands is one giant mudflat and it rains all the time.

Over the past few weeks, the same sort of behaviour we’ve come to expect from Dutch players - criticizing the trainer - reared its ugly head, this time from Ruud van Nistelrooy saying nasty things about Marco van Basten (the trainer). I expect the Dutch team to self-destruct as they normally do, only this time, perhaps they’ll self-destruct earlier and not even make it to the Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. Attention Ruud! Please save your nasty anti-trainer comments till the end, then and only then can you all sabotage yourselves in true “Oranje” style.

But the shocker of the weekend is . . . Scotland defeated les Bleus (France) 1-0. Another shock: Sweden defeated Spain 2-0 and Israel held Russia to a draw 1-1.

For a roundup of the Euro 2008 qualifying matches this weekend, click here.

Time to down my sorrows in beer … very good Belgian beer.

You love him or you hate him. Fabien Barthez, one of the best goalkeepers in the world and a fixture on the French national team, has decided to retire.

When he’s good, he’s amazing, unbeatable, the best goalie you’ve ever seen.

But when he’s having an off day, it’s painful to watch because he lets in the most ridiculous goals and just seems to fall apart altogether in a very short period of time.

They’re not beaming people to other planets yet, but scientists are making a lot of progress with teleportation. CNN reports:

Beaming people in “Star Trek” fashion is still in the realms of science fiction, but physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality. Until now scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second. But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter. “It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium,” Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday.

The research done by Polzik’s group has been published: Quantum teleportation between light and matter (Jacob F. Sherson, Hanna Krauter, Rasmus K. Olsson, Brian Julsgaard, Klemens Hammerer, Ignacio Cirac, Eugene S. Polzik), Nature 443, 557 - 560 (05 Oct 2006).