Bogdan Gavrila – Core Target

Pieces of history in the PDF published here [Save Target As...] – this is the Investment Incentive Agreement between the Government of the United States and the Government of Romania and it marks the presence of OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) in Romania – 06-30-1992.

OPIC is an independent U.S. government agency whose mission is to mobilize and facilitate the participation of U. S. private capital and skills in the economic and social development of less developed countries and areas, and countries in transition from nonmarket to market economies.

OPIC assists U.S. companies by providing financing (from large structured finance to small business loans), political risk insurance, and investment funds. OPIC complements the private sector in managing risks associated with foreign direct investment and supports U.S. foreign policy.

The primary investment focus in Romania consists of equity investments in consumer products, financial services, and real estate, activities directed by New Century Capital Partners, L.P. In the last years they also focused on new media – during the last election campaign, they supported Traian Basescu who indeed was elected president.

The last OPIC Strategic Plan is for 2003-2008, and new chapter will be written in 2007 as Romania entered the EU on the 1st of Janurary. They already started to sell

LATER EDIT – Related links: Orlando, Business Standard, ZF

The creator of the water commented that “Bling H2O is to bottled water what Rolls Royce is to automobiles; a premium product with premium packaging that merits a premium price. Bling is a stand-alone beverage as well as the perfect compliment to your favorite cocktail.”

Manufacturer: Bling Beverages, LLC;
New Product Trend: Upscale, exclusive packaging design for bottled water;
Packaging Description: Bling H20 is the first ever bottled water that is decorated with genuine Swarovski crystals. The runway model-like thin, tall, frosted glass bottles give the beverage a luxurious appeal. The product successfully demonstrates etched glass, screen print and crystal application;
Glass Container Supplier: Saint-Gobain Containers and Vitro Packaging;
Prices range: from $24.00 to $40.00 (depending on the bottle) but it can reach over $90 in a respected club;
Website: Bling H2O, http://www.blingh2o.com

Next big business to come: premium luxury ice for the Eskimos

This is not a coincidence.
On the 1st of January 1970, the Unix epoch begins at 00:00:00 UTC.

Wiki: Unix time, or POSIX time, is a system for describing points in time: it is the number of seconds elapsed since midnight UTC on the morning of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds. It is widely used not only on Unix-like operating systems but in many other computing systems. It is not a true encoding of UTC time, but is sufficiently similar to a linear representation of the passage of time that it is frequently mistaken for one. The main complication is that UTC accounts for leap seconds, while Unix time does not.

Of course, that there are problems that lay ahead. The greatest one is called “The Unix Time “Apocalypse” .
The end of Unix Time will occur on January 19, 2038 03:14:07 GMT. On January 19, 2038 03:14:08 GMT all computers that still use 32 bit Unix Time will overflow. This is know as the “Year 2038 problem” and I think that trafic.ro is trying to say something: the end is near!!!

Anyway, I’m the first site owner in history to have visitors from 1970’s – even before the Internet was invented (an even before I was born) – and I thank Netbridge for choosing me to see “the light”

The tag is about the 5 vices I have so you can imagine how hard this is for me (because I don’t smoke, I don’t drink coffee, don’t watch TV and so on… although I’m not a Mormon or samfin’). Let’s see:

1. The Internet – my computer always on, always connected – I have to blink very often and sometimes I have red eyes
2. The Telephone – I had to change my ringtone into something more relaxing – now, when I get a phone call is like relaxing in a concert hall – I don’t know how much I speak every month and I hope I’ll never see the bills;
3. Wine drinking since I started vinul.ro and had Cezar, Vali and Catalin in my blogroll;
4. Pike fishing in the Danube Delta – every time I get in a boat, I feel the adventure and I feel my blood pumping: pike fishing is spectacular and I’m usually on the Bogdaproste Lake (btw, Sorin Ovidiu Vantu has the coolest boat around – 2 large Mercury engines + 1 for steering, fishing chair, sonar, etc. – It’s like a tuned race boat made for fishing).
5. Finally, maybe a major vice is that I can’t find other vices (I guess I consider them just a way of life).

For the first time, the advertising/pr agencies were very intrusive in the netoo group (you can imagine the blogging phenomenon and the pressures they go through) – I know at least 3 “nests” planning to recruit bloggers for their clients and netoo is the best place to come for the moment.
But who cares … if you want to find out more more about the last netoo meeting, check out Gramo’s World (they wrote the keywords and keyphrases of the evening), Ionut (he has some 10x rules) and also Ana (the official photographer ).

This is the most expensive castle in the world and it’s also very famous – Bran is also known as Dracula’s castle and these days, is out for sale.
I saw the announcement on a real estate website and the requested price is 100.000.000 euro – quite high but the castle is placed in the middle of Transylvania and some would probably pay in order to discover the truth about the genuine vampires.
The announcement above is also controversial as one of the respondents is Adrian Iorgulescu (Romanian Ministry of Culture) also interested in acquiring BRAN.

As we speak, China has over 137 million Internet users (China Internet Network Information Center).
The Latest Statistics (By June 30, 2006) showed 123,000,000 Internet Users and over 54,500,000 Computer Hosts.
An impressive web community of 788,400 WWW Websites and a 214,175 Mbit/s International Bandwidth is also shaping their community.

I guess these numbers can make Sorin and his company to think of new businesses in China also (not only Russia ). Btw, I hear that the investments in Canada, Spain or New Zealand are not a hit (yet)… Sorin?

I must say that in China they are up to date and there is no outrageous censorship. They don’t talk about politics and that’s a good thing because they can carry on with their business. I don’t speak Chinese but thanks to the language tools I have installed on my laptop, I can easily surf Chinese websites and I read the daily news.

For example, Romania made the front page today in many newspapers:

Chinese workers strike in Romania protect their rights investigation
Xinhuanet Capitol Hill : September 7, 2006 publication of the “workers in Romania” have been prisoners, “to investigate the incident,” a text Romania reported Bacau city “WEAR garment factory” Chinese workers hailed by manufacturers imprisoned; Recently, This Chinese garment factory workers to strike in order to safeguard its own interests. China has again aroused the concern of various parties to import workers from Romania, the first city Bacau Italy (Italy) – WEAR garment factory in the recent labor dispute Chinese factory workers on fixed unilaterally raise expressed dissatisfaction and lowering overtime. The two sides failed to reach agreement in the case declared a strike. At present, both employers and employees are still in a stalemate, the management claims that Chinese workers continue to strike, and will repatriate them all. Chinese Ambassador to Romania attaches great importance to the embassy, through a variety of channels to urge the owners to resolve the dispute as soon as possible.

You can read the whole article here…

The information from Financiarul states that Constantin Ostahie finally sold ALTEX (one of the biggest retailers in Romania). The buyer is “Bomenveld BV” from Amsterdam – Netherlands but the newspaper states that Ostahie is still behind the company as he remained the only administrator.
The transaction was very discreet as it happened on the 28th of December 2006 and I haven’t seen any press release until now.
Many specialists say that the Romanian retailers will not survive on the European market and negotiations have been carried out since 2004-2005. We’ll probably see another transaction in the near future.

While reading the January edition of “Le Monde diplomatique”, I stumbled upon two articles illustrating a new position for the traditional media in relationship with the Internet. The first one, “Menaces sur l’information” (“A threat against the information”) written by Ignacio Ramonet (online version is here) points out the new difficulties for the traditional media in France (Liberation is a given example). Although the masses are migrating online and the “free” newspapers became no.1 on the market, they raise a credibility mark upon the new media and the new evolutions. This article also presents the official position for “Le Monde diplomatique” – they’re not afraid of the new tendencies because the educated public will still look up quality articles and verified stories and even will pay for this.

The second article is more complex and presents another side of the Internet (the article is available only in the printed edition). The original title “Les bénéficiaires inattendus du miracle Internet” (“The unexpected beneficiaries of the internet miracle”) – by Eric Klinenberg is an article presenting the manipulators, the cheats, the impostors and the swindlers as the core winners in this game. Examples like the 602p law presented in the last US election campaign or the usage of DHMO (actually H20) made the politicians and the journalists to pay more attention on the Internet.
Meanwhile, the traditional media has the advantage of credibility transfer from the printed edition to the online edition, meaning that people will still look up their daily news on their trusted websites.
The second idea presented by Eric Klinenberg is regarding the social role of the Internet. According to the specialists at the University of California, in the United States, over 21% of the general population never used the Internet in 2005 and 33% don’t have a home Internet connection. The most important fact is that less that 50% of the connected people use the full multimedia features of their broadband connections and they are limited in their surfing habits to the websites indicating a major TV station or a major newspaper. The blogging and the independent media is in fact a concept that is not applicable for the masses.
The social role of the Internet is also pointed out by the Gothamist blog example – educated people who have access to the Internet can discuss online and pressure the local authorities in order to influence the decision making. On the other hand, the poor communities are not making it easy for the “governing over the Internet” policies and are underprivileged.
The final conclusion of the article states that new media will not be as free as we think as a small number of giant-companies will control the market and will favor only a part of the population.

It’s a camera, movie player, remote, bottle opener, electric razor, blow drier, mouse trap, lip gloss, dispenser, thermometer, sonogram, treadmill, portable shower, hand grenade, bookmark, pan flute and much more
The mobile companies respond to the new iPhone in their own way – the first viral movies are aired in the U.S. and below is such an example:

Indeed, for the average joe this device will be very hard to use (the average joe has issues in using all new hi-tech gadgets). Because the product is not yet on the market, we’ll probably see more viral movies like this one.
Now, try to think who’s behind the spot?

First to confirm – on 14th of July in Sibiu – My Dying Bride. I assure that even more surprises are on the way: the main attraction will be another band (only one clue: they already received a World Music Award).

I’ve seen talks about Artmania ‘07 on several websites: Zoso wrote about it and Dies Irae also. I have good news for the art lovers: the tickets will be available soon and the prices are quite the same like last year. The new website is under heavy construction and will host a blog for the fans. Hope to tell you more quite soon

This is the new Russian roulette on the blogoshpere. From Cristian Mezei to Dragos Dehelean – Marius Balaci – Sorin Tudor and now it’s my turn…

First of all, you must know that I don’t have secrets but here are some things about me that you probably don’t find online:

1. I ran away from home after high school and I’ve studied philosophy in Iassy for a full year. That year I was hungry, I was alone, I made friends and I was happy for every meal and for every feeling. After finding out my “powers” and proving myself that I can make it own, I quit college, went to Bucharest and started a brand new life.

2. I was the mastermind behind the student strike in 2004.

It was before the elections and we managed to send some signals (It was my first major PR campaign). Our route was also passing the mayor’s office (the actual president Traian Basescu) and I recall him staying on the balcony in order to salute the strikers. At that time, I also created some of the underground political sketches that filled the net.

3. I love to collect miniature cars. Right now, next to my laptop I have a Ferrari F50, a Murcielago, some Porsches a G-Class and a Pontiac. When I was younger, my collection had over 200 miniature cars. My favorites are made by Burago.

4. All the good stuff that happened in my life till now was “caused” by being in the right place and meeting the right people at the right time. No school can teach you the things I had the chance to learn from the people I met in the last 5 years.

5. Close to death – I once saved a man from drowning but everything was so “on the edge”. As I was pulling him, a few meters from the shore, I had doubts that I would make it. Indeed I saw my entire life scrolling in front of my eyes. I was shocked for a week and probably it was the most profound and extreme experience in my life.

I shall pass the course to Dan Petre, Doru Panaitescu, Ionut Bratu, Catalin Paduraru and Zsolt Nagy (maybe he has something to say about the espionage scandal he’s involved in )

A short look into my Google Analytics account:

1. My post about the adevarul.ro domain transaction (some consider it to be illegal) was quite a hit at RNC (Romanian National R&D Computer Network) – the post was viewed on several computers so I wonder if they’ll start an investigation (this would be for the first time in their history).

2. The post about President Bush meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was read by someone at the United Nations (congratulations guys, very good press monitoring).

3. All my frenetic US readers seem to come from Los Angeles although most of the US visitors are from the west coast.

I’ve noticed that HP invests more and more in their human resources. As I know, they plan to open this year a new headquarters in Romania with over 1.500 empleyees while in India they already have an army of engineers working. The news below comes from India where this January HP implemented a new job portal in Himachal Pradesh (part of a strategic programme). This is a very interesting move for HP as they usally use the global website for recruiting:

Shri Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister, Himachal Pradesh, dedicated Job Portal of the Labour and Employment Department to the employers and job seekers in the State. The software for the Job Portal has been developed by the NIC Himachal Pradesh State Centre.

Under this unique initiative, the employers in Himachal Pradesh will no longer have to wait for weeks together for getting names of eligible candidates sponsored by the Central Employment Cell of the Department of Labour and Employment. They can select candidates with requisite qualifications and experience through the Job Portal. The job-seekers too will get information from the Internet about vacancies available in various companies and organizations in Himachal Pradesh. The process of compulsory notification under the Employment Exchange (CNV) Act has thus been made web enabled. Now, the entire database of all the semi-skilled, skilled and highly skilled job-seekers throughout the State is being made available on this portal irrespective of the preference exercised by a candidate. This will give a much wider selection field to all the employers. In addition to this, unemployed youth will also be provided a web interface to register themselves for being picked up by the employers directly for a selection process. Candidates can also apply directly after seeing availability of vacancies on the Job Portal.

The Chief Minister lauded the efforts of the National Informatics Centre and HP Information Technology Department and in bringing about IT revolution in a large number of departments and organisations. He honoured the officers and IT professionals from the National Informatics Centres, HP Labour & Employment Department and HP IT Department, who have been involved in the mammoth task of system study, process re-engineering, software development, hardware procurement & installation, training, data entry and implementation.

HP is one of our partners and If you’re interested in a career, click here and here.

The software is just great but the NSA involvement in the project makes it quite a hoax for the real terrorists. The software is more like bait while certain areas of the globe are under electronic surveillance. Google Earth is an efficient tool in the war against terror because you can find out in real time what are the terrorists downloading. This combined with the intelligence gathered in the field, makes it a great gizmo.

Of course, the press around the world has the best promoting campaign: titles like “terrorists can use Google Earth in order to plan attacks” are just pure advertising and very fun to read. Imagine the Google Earth campaigns as electronic mouse traps and my opinion is that we should encourage them. In the old days, the agents were risking their lives in order to provide “good” maps to terrorists. It’s better to do this online – the great feature of Google Earth is that you can only use it online making it very easy to track.

Next on the news: “Terrorists all over the world bid on eBay for the best mass destruction equipment. Free shipment in 24h.”

“We tend to think about things like attraction as reflecting a private decision or a personal choice, but our work shows that people’s attractiveness judgments can be influenced in pronounced ways by what other people appear to think of those individuals,” said University of Aberdeen psychologist Ben Jones.

Te psycho-sociological test presented pictures and videos of males alone and of males being glanced by other women. Ben Jones noticed that a man is more attractive when another woman is checking him out. The funny thing is that when the same test was carried on with males, the results were quite the opposite: those males that received the approving female glances were less appealing and Jones explained that “this shows that people are using cues to the attitudes of others toward individuals to shape their own attractiveness judgments of those individuals.”

So guys, you now know an important tip in order to become more desired.
My personal tip: “wear a funny hat”.

President Bush met with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and it’s very important to notice the last paragraph of the press release and a few keywords:

PRESIDENT BUSH said: “Mr. Secretary General […] I want to thank you very much, as well, for our discussions about Iran and North Korea. I wish you all the best in this important job […]”

SECRETARY GENERAL KI-MOON said “[…] As I start my new administration as Secretary General, I get to have strong commitment and support from U.S. government, and I’m committed to devote all my time and energy to the address — to address all these important issues — Middle East, and Darfur, Lebanon, and Somalia, North Korea […]”
Note that North Korea is present in both their speeches as a sensitive issue while Iran is only mentioned by President Bush (KI-MOON refers to “Middle East”).
My primary conclusion is that the next target on the war on terror will be Iran and the U.N. will fail to conduct the peace talks.

I wonder what Mahmood Ahmadinejad will write about this on his blog…

Vinul.ro will embrace a new strategy in 2007. Due to the carefully selected audience on the website, the stakeholders decided to change the rate card for this year and also pay special attention to their visitor’s needs. The advertising formats on Vinul.ro are sold by ARBOmedia and the 2007 CPM price for the leaderboard (728×90 px) is 50 EUR, making it the most expensive website around. Also, for the first time in Romania, the advertisers will be carefully selected in order to fulfill the high demands of the visitors.

Vinul.ro is the first online wine’s magazine in Romania, and a leader of its niche – with an average of 20.000 readers every month, the website reaches all the key players of the wine industry and a large number of the elite wine lovers.

This is the first open course (8th of February 2007) organized by intellCompetitiv. The course will be presented by Conf. Dr. Vasile Paun (Senior Partner and founder at intellCompetitiv).
The course is free and I think this is part of a strategy (another one is planned later this year). Vasile Paun is very enthusiastic about promoting the IC practices in Romania and at some level we identified some keywords for our PR strategy last year. JOBfest, for example, aimed for intelligent young urban professionals as we knew that they will turn Romania into a competitive nation.
If you want to register, click here and rest assured that they’ll get back to you

Many users considered Top100.ro a “dead” project – this is a very old website and it seems that nothing is new there since 1998 (same design, same news, same stuff). Although nothing happens inside, the website still has a good traffic (30.000 unique users/day average) and among the little ugly banners, we had the chance to see CocaCola ads since 2005. This week is a great one for top100.ro as they introduce the leaderboard format and of course, they have the traditional Sprite commercial running crazy on it.
Please note that they still don’t have an ad server and all the ads are served from a virtual “bucket” (no targeting, no tracking, no nothing). Over 60% of their traffic is coming from outside Romania so I wonder how this contract is explained in Romanian Coca Cola financial books?
Is it money well spent?:)

First, let’s start with the dislikes:
- Apple iPhone (because everybody writes about it)
- Apple iPod (because everybody loves it)
- Grammatical mistakes (because they make you think)
- Posts written in foreign languages (everybody speaks English)
- Blogs (people should have something to say)
- Blog spam (we all know what this is)
- Internet Explorer (DIGG users love Firefox)
- Microsoft (You should have seen this one coming)
- Microsoft ZUNE (because it’s not iPod)
- Muslims (since the war on terror started, this was a banned subject)
- Religion (not only Muslims, also scientologists and all other battles between good and evil)
- Governmental issues (from Blair, Bush or Basescu, everyone blames the conspiracy around our governments)
- Fake Britney Spears videos (on Youtube or Metacafe)
- Dumb comments (because are dumb)
- Ted Stevens (no comment)
- Gay advertising (too explicit and sometimes bad targeted)
- Success stories (they don’t want to know who made it in the Fortune Top50)
- Arnold Schwartzenegger (because he has muscles)

And now, the Likes:
- The idiot who tried to sell XP License on eBay but showed it in the picture
- The man who creates real-world halo suit for military use (darn cool)
- Saddam hanging video (because it’s just cruel and cold blooded)
- George Bush (they say they hate him but according to Freud they all must have a secret crush on him)
- The real Britney Spears videos
- Paris Hilton (because she owns Hilton)
- Random love poem generator (in case they meet Paris Hilton)
- What would celebrities look like if they had their faces transplanted (because It’s always fun to make fun of the stars)
- 9/11 stories
- Conspiracy
- Sex stories and scandals
- Pictures of sex stories and scandals
- Funny bumper stickers (for tagging the police cars)
- Anti-corporate articles
- Linux (because is not Windows)
- Cheap Viagra, Cialis and Phentermine (we all have it in our inboxes)

Of course, I’m a DIGG user so I guess you can blame me for some of the stuff I wrote. Some of them I can’t get because I’m European and I have nothing to do with George Bush, Ted Stevens and 9/11
Another list, similar to this one but written by Honda Wang is available here. Enjoy reading!

Adevarul is one of the main newspapers in Romania (no.11, 22.847 copies). They were very attached to the printed edition so the transition to the www was not very fast and the domain adevarul.ro was registered by Catalin Braescu. For some years the newspaper was hosted at www.adevarulonline.ro.

In december 2006 the new team at Adevarul managed to negociate and obtain the shorter and more relevant domain from Catalin Braescu. The price? I won’t say it but it was quite a business for a .ro domain (I think It’s the highest price till now so you can imagine). Catalin Braescu also negociated for a link on the front page of Adevarul and you can now see the red ad in the right corner pointing to the former blog.
Of course, this transaction was Illegal as the Romanian National Authority for Internet Domains doesn’t allow these types of sales but I’m sure that the layers at Adevarul have everything under control.

Iulian Comanescu also writes about this here and you can see the old adevarul.ro here.

Margot Wallstrom was with her family and spend the New Year‘s Eve in Romania. She says that she has romanian friends in Transylvania (who once fled the Ceauscescu regime to Sweden) and had a great time with romanian home made sausages and palinka-schnaps.
You can read the whole story here (on her blog) and I must say that she is in my blogroll as a valid example of a great european politician blogger.

It seems that Steve Jobs will stay for another round at Apple. The fact that the iPhone 2.0 is already on the drawing board makes me think that this is a great financial strategy for the CEO.

What’s ahead?
Apple continues to expand toward new media markets and new technologies. While surfing the new, rumors show that the new iPhone will have 2 batteries: one for the iPod music and one for the phone. As we speak the iPhone 1.0 is a phone, an iPod and an Internet device. We don’t know the power of the OS but when you have such a device it’s a pity not to listen your favorite tunes while playing a 3d game.

I think that the new versions of iPhone (2.0 +) will probably focus on several aspects:
- Improved phone technology – 3G implementation
- improved handsfree usability both for music and making calls
- More memory up to 20 gigs
- A more powerful graphic processor in order to run the latest games
- The possibility of playing games over a small wireless network
- Bar code reader – for shopping tips (integrated with google blog searchengine)
- Better photo/video camera up to 5 megapixels and real-time editing software

NOTE that as we speak it seems that the new iPhone has NO GAMES available and no customized software – the smart phones have a serious advantage: the fact that Windows Mobile and active sync allow users to install all kind of software and even install it from the Internet. Imagine the stocks dropping if the new iPhone will have an outdated antivirus – we all know that surfing the web and receiving e-mails is not a walk in the park anymore.

If the 3G is there on the market and if some phone already have 5 megapixel cameras, we all wondered why Apple didn’t used all the new tech for this first model. NOKIA laughed about this but in fact, this is part of their strategy. First of all, iPhone 1.0 has an affordable price because it lacks the latest mobile tech trends. Then again, few people use the 3G services and few people need as we speak a 5mb camera on their phones. This is why the iPhone 2.0 will bring the right upgrades at the right time, at the right price.

Meanwhile, the website iphone.com is registered by other folks and the iPhone device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the FCC and the brand “iPhone” is a registered mark for Cisco.

First time we met I thought he was just a journalist who seen it all in his life. He thought I was a guy in a bubble, in a totally different world
At that time (2005) I was managing Festivinum (the national wines’ festival) and he was one of the guys writing about wines on monthly basis in ZIUA and in Connaisseur (print).

Cezar was born in Buzau and studied in Bucharest – since 1994 he worked for Mediafax, Ziua, Ziarul de Cluj and GSP. As he had a passion for wines, he was the editor of the first monthly publication about wines (2002-2005) and at ZIUA he managed the weekly bonus magazines. In 2005 he was a member of the jury at the Concorso Enologico Internazionale, Verona (Italy) and as we speak he is a founder of the only Wine Press Club in Romania. In the last year he had to fly all over the world to taste all the good wines and fine foods (cool job ).

He is also famous because he is the first to bring in Bucharest the “Plescoi” sausages (unique in Romania) and started the movement called “The Plescoi Revolution” similar to the slow food protests. Last year, he sat with his friends in front of McDonalds and ate traditional food.

Cezar is also an incredible guy as he is a fast learner and very open-minded. He was the first publisher in Romania to close the printed edition of magazine and move it on the Internet. One year ago we started to work together on vinul.ro and since then the website became the no.1 resource for the wine lovers and for the people working in the industry.

In May 2006 he started to write his first blog and the reason I wrote this post is because today two important things happened: Cezar was included in the Who’s who Encyclopedia of the famous Romanians (printed edition) and Bradut Ulmanu awarded him with the “Blog of the month” special prize.

This is a nice way to start the new year and as I already know, Cezar has big plans for 2007. I’m sure that I’ll be one of his readers…

The screen size is 3.5 inches – nothing new here. The screen resolution 320 by 480 at 160 ppi is acceptable while the Input method is Multi-touch (they lost the stick).
The operating system OS X (I wonder if is compatible with Windows Mobile ) while the storage is 4GB or 8GB. Again, this is not mind blowing. Two years ago I had 1GB on my smartphone so I expected more space in 2007. The GSM Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900) is not what I expected: imagine THAT THIS PHONE IS NOT a 3G and this means that they target only several areas of the world!!!

The iPhone also has a wireless data Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0 (standard on most new phones) and JUST a 2.0 megapixels camera… this is average and in a few weeks probably below average
The battery is up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing and up to 16 hours Audio playback. Battery life is based on H.264 1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps audio. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings.

Dimensions 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm – weight 4.8 ounces / 135 grams – again average.

The estimated price 300-600 USD… not very cheap but acceptable as you can watch TV or surf the web in some areas.
Steve JOBS said that this product is 5 year ahead of its time. I would say 5 months… more or less

Something funny on the website:

This device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained

LATER EDIT: Orlando, Zoso, Alex, Andrei, Vivi, Dragos, Ana and Manafu (great Apple fan) also wrote interesting stuff about the iPhone.

A few days ago I wrote here that the Romanian version of europa.eu will soon be available. Romanian joined the EU on the 1st of January 2007 but on the first days of 2007, the Romanian citizens could not access the European portal in their own language.

Today is the big day and I’m the first Romanian to blog about this – everything is so fresh that you can still feel the paint: http://europa.eu/index_ro.htm
The page was published a few minutes ago and please note that the website is still under heavy construction – I wonder how come the programmers missed the deadline with a few days

The first news:

Presidency statement on the intended executions in Iraq

“The Iraqi Government intends to execute Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, formerly head of one of the intelligence services, and Awad Hamed Al-Bandar, formerly president of the Revolutionary Court. The Presidency recalls the longstanding position of the EU with regard to the death penalty. The EU opposes capital punishment under all circumstances.

Both, Mr Al-Tikriti and Mr Al-Bandar, were high-ranking representatives of Saddam Hussein´s regime, which had brutally oppressed its own population for decades. Thousands of innocent people were killed and tortured, many disappeared.

Iraqis deserve a better future. To this end, it will be crucial to bring together all parts of Iraqi society irrespective of ethnicity or religious affiliation. Ensuring accountability for the crimes committed during the former regime can assist in furthering national reconciliation and dialogue in Iraq. The Presidency recalls that in order to achieve this important aim the prosecution of those crimes must adhere to the requirements of a fair process. “

I strongly support this statement.

The second video (unofficial footage) hit the net a few days ago.
All the media covered one side of the story – probably a soldier was the author, and the movie was probably made with a mobile phone.

Technical facts about the footage:
- the camera had a motion sensor
- the camera had a very good zoom (I estimate at least 5 meters – in the first screen)
- the poor lightening seemed not to be a problem for the phone camera
- the resolution seems to be quite high
- the microphone (supposed to be on a phone) was again very good so the sound is quite clear

Are cell phones common in Iraq?
The media provided us the movie filmed with the phone camera as a natural a probable fact. The penetration of GSM/mobile telephony in the western world is very high. Large percent of the population has a mobile phone.

In Iraq, the situation is quite different. Imagine a population of 26,783,383 (July 2006 est.) with only 574,000 (2004) having mobile cellular devices.
Via CIA factbook: the 2003 war severely disrupted telecommunications throughout Iraq including international connections; USAID is overseeing the repair of switching capability and the construction of mobile and satellite communication facilities.
Repairs to switches and lines destroyed during the 2003 war continue, but sabotage remains a problem; additional switching capacity is improving access; cellular service is available and centered on three regional GSM networks, improving country-wide connectivity.

Must know:
- In Iraq, the mobile phones are quite rare;
- After the war begun, the gsm networks were severely affected (still are) – impossible to communicate;
- The military use only satellite/radio telecommunications;
- During the war the mobile shops were closed and there is no market for mobile phones (it’s quite hard to buy a modern cell in Iraq).

Who is the author?
- For sure it’s not a soldier as the Iraqi guards are not allowed to carry GSM/mobile devices other than the standard equipment;
- It’s not easy to own such a device and not being noticed (a cell is rare in Iraq, a modern cell is an eye catcher);

The author’s profile (as presented to the press):
- soldier
- hi-tech user
- Internet user
- Youtuber (one of the few Iraqi to use the tube)

Another fact to know, Is that there are only 5 internet hosts in Iraq and only 36,000 users (far less than mobile users). In order to use youtube, a broadband connection is necessary in order to see the video streaming. You can imagine how many broadband users are in Iraq.

What happened after the movies were released:
- the violent protests and the attacks were more intense – after the official video (this was not what the US/Iraqi wants)
- everybody saw that Saddam is dead (the US wanted the iraqi insurgents to see this and to acknowledge their leader is dead – this is why the first footage was released)
- everybody saw how Saddam was killed – internet users and western media coverage – this means that the second footage is not popular in Iraq where the government controlls the mass-media and few people have internet acces (the movie was released for the non-iraqi citizens – again, both Iraqi/US had to loose PR points because of this)

So… the million dollar question: who did it?
…I have no idea but it’s interesting to watch that in the United States, some governmental/secret service/army officials are already changed because of this.
Meanwhile, Bush welcomes Chancellor Merkel of Germany to the White House and they make jokes – of course the laughters („No back rubs”) circle the world while their hidden enemies are still there.

A new plan for Iraq will soon begin.

I was in a contest at Galaciuc when Vivi and other jackals (teachers) gave me a hard time evaluating my website (this was in 1999). The website was an educational page buit offline as I had limited acces to the internet (dial-up, 28.8). At some moment Vivi asked me about the purpose of my project and the explanation came spontaneous: “I want to create an online school“.

The rest is history and 7 years of my life

In 2000, after the project was online, I received the first invitation to Bruxelles (TAIEX programme) and since then we prepared for the 1st of January 2007. The picture above was taken in my last visit (more recent ) and it shows a responsable european citizen – beginning with this year eScoala will share its european values with the Romanian youngsters.

To celebrate Romania joining the EU, ScoalaOnline becomes eScoala (same name as the domain) in 2007. “E” stands for “european”, “education” and “enthusiasm”!
[check it out here...]