Very eloquently put by VC Fred Wilson:

Unlocked phones are the wave of the future. I don’t want my carrier and my phone connected in any way. Carrier is dial tone. Phone is functionlity. That’s the way it should be and will be some day

…and a big nod to Cesium’s business model which I still believe is rock-solid. I hope he bought his Curve from PureMobile

A 17-year old nerd asks the FT’s Tim Harford:

Dear Economist,

I am 17 years old and studying A-level economics. A lot of my friends are getting into serious relationships and I’d like to get a girlfriend myself, but I am also concerned about getting distracted from my studies. How does the cost-benefit analysis work out?

Ben, Buckinghamshire

I am amazed at the question but think it’s hilarious that an academic has researched this. Some golden nuggets:

Sex is fun:

…as the economist Joseph Sabia suggests in a forthcoming article, ”if the realised benefits of sexual intercourse are higher than the ex ante anticipated benefits, adolescents may substitute time and energy away from investments in human capital and towards investments in future obtainment of sex.

Girls are not distracted by sex:

Professor Sabia’s results show that a girl does not seem to be distracted at all by losing her virginity - perhaps because young boyfriends are not competent enough to be terribly distracting.

Boys are:

Be careful, though, because it’s different for boys. Professor Sabia finds that deciding to have sex will knock a few percentage points off your grade. That’s my excuse for doing so badly at maths, and I’m sticking to it.

Great photo of Al-Gore’s workspace:

[via tech.nologi.ca]

From a recruiter’s POV, the interviewing process aims to answer two main questions:

1. Would this person fit with our company’s culture and/or add to it? (i.e., do we like this person?)This is know at the Airport Test: if you were snowed in with this person in Newark/O’Hare/Heathrow for 12 hours, would you be able to tolerate them? It is a very subjective question and mainly based on gut feeling. Sometimes, a recruiter and a candidate hit it off right away and other times they just don’t get along. It’s important to get the opinion of several people who will actually work with this candidate (i.e. his future team) and not simply delegate this step to HR like many companies do.
2. Can this person do the job we are hiring them for?
   
   This is a difficult question to answer if the candidate didn’t previously hold a very similar position. It’s a challenge to ask questions or make the candidates perform tasks that will require them to use the skills required for the real job. Most Consulting firms use case studies, software developers ask technical questions or give coding brain teasers and some Law firms ask candidates to give a legal opinion on a real (but disguised) case.Will Price has a very interesting piece where he briefly describes the last step in the hiring process that led him to join his current VC firm:

   The last step in the hiring process, however, proved to be the most challenging and most rewarding. After having met all the partners, I received a call saying that things were looking good. There was one more step, however, that they wanted to me to pass. I remember thinking, okay…what now?

   The request…come in two days from now and present your thoughts on the future of the software industry to the full partnership. The guidance…don’t mess it up as things were looking good.

   When I was hiring an Account Manager at Cesium about 2.5 years ago I came across a resume that I found really intriguing although the candidate had no directly relevant experience. We were looking for someone to manage relationships with existing dealer accounts, grow their business and acquire new accounts. The position required good technical and industry knowledge and this candidate had none of these but something about his resume still made me bring him in for an interview. He passed the first question with flying colours. I really liked this guy and felt like he would be a great addition to our team. However, he didn’t know anything about mobile or VOIP technology. He was our 2nd salesperson and we had no training program in place. We also thought that we didn’t have the bandwidth to form people from scratch. Note to self: in my next company, I will invest very heavily in training - it’s not just a cliche that people are the most valuable asset.A few minutes after he left our office, I emailed him something along the lines of:

   I really enjoyed our chat and I like you but you need to prove that you can get comfortable with our business quickly and without much training. Please read everything you can find about the industry and latest trends. Come by the office in two days and present your findings to me and my partners.

   He agreed and put together a presentation that impressed us given the short time he had. We hired him on the spot and we never regretted our decision. He’s still with the company and doing a great job as far as I know.

I was very lucky to get invited to the closing cocktail of this year’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) in Geneva. Along with BaselWorld, the SIHH is the watch industry’s keynote event. It’s an exclusive event where the world’s top watchmakers invite their distributors to showcase their product roadmap and fill their orderbooks for the year ahead. It’s estimated that 75% of the watchmakers annual revenue is generated at these fairs and so the level of pampering that the distributors receive is simply amazing.

My favourite timepiece from the show is the Girard-Perregaux Vintage 1945 Jackpot Tourbillon. It combines a tourbillon movement with a slot machine operated by pulling the handle on the right of the case. This very original idea is both technically impressive and fun. I also find it absolutely beautiful.

(pictures from TimeZone.com)

If you live in Cairo, have a sweet tooth and do not have a reliable source for konafa/knafeh, check out konafa.com. Apparently the sweets are homemade in the owner’s kitchen according to her mother-in-law’s secret recipe and delivered anywhere in Cairo within 24hrs. This site must be the coolest eBusiness in Cairo. Will write a review as soon as I try them out.

I hope the Wikipedia article will not bruise any culinary egos

The Washington Post ran a very interesting experiment where it asked award-winning violinist Joshua Bell to play his USD 3.5M Stradivarius in a Washington, DC metro station. Not many people recognized or even acknowledged the genius as they were too busy getting to work. What really made me think is this quote by Mark Leithauser, a senior curator at the National Gallery who “has held in his hands more great works of art than any King or Pope or Medici ever did”:

“Let’s say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It’s a $5 million painting. And it’s one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: ‘Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.’”

Do you think Art has an intrinsic value or is it only Art when it’s framed in context?

Reminds me of a conversation Hady and I had with two random American girls we met at the Mosquito Bar in Rurrenabaque after our 4 day jungle tour in the Madidi National Park. Referring to the original My Humps by the BEP, Girl 1 tells Girl 2:

If you listen to the words, you’ll see that this new song is really grammatically incorrect. Kinda catchy though. The singer is basically saying that all those guys give her money and bling because she has a nice ass.

Hip-hop grammatically incorrect? Crazy talk!

Watched Freedom Writers last night. It’s a good movie that addresses many important issues such as racism, tolerance, gang violence and the role of education in society. Other than these complex topics, there are three very simple lessons that most of us can apply on a daily basis:

1. It’s not just a job. If you don’t love your job and take it to heart, quit it and find another one that is more satisfying.

2. Do what you think is right, irrespective of what people may think or say.

3. Don’t ever let bureaucracy and negative people hold you down.

Nothing new or revolutionary here, right? Right! Now go ahead and do it.

I’m really glad that I am not on the Forbes Richest 400 list. According to Ron Burkle (worth over USD 2 B):

Q: At last count, you were ranked as No. 117 on Forbes magazine’s 400 richest Americans list. Is that a good place to be?
A:You certainly have a higher quality of life when you are not on the Forbes list. It just means that your security changes, and you’re known for the wrong things.

Nothing is easy these days.