Andy Abramson Le Ferme Auberge is part of the winery and vineyard complex operated by Les Clos de Paulilles, one of the more interesting locations to see wine grown and made in Southern France. With the vineyards jutting out close to the sea, a backdrop of the Collioure wine growing hillsides even a rainy day couldn't ruin … Read more
Back in the 60's when I was in elementary school we had Mr. Petro. Mr. Petro was the school's "maintanence man." His job, dirty, smelly, trashy and all was to keep the then 40 something year old brick and masonary school up and running. He fixed toilets, changed lightbulbs, moved desks, arranged for new chairs, … Read more
Okay, so I get to work from some of the most interesting places in the world. As long as I can connect to the 'Net I'm usually good to go and last night over dinner in Perpignan France I just had to dial into a client conference call with Shango, a very cool company you'll … Read more
For many years I've been a fan of wines from Banyuls, the wine growing region at the bottom of France's Roussillion region. The Rousillion is a wine region that produces a lot of wine, especially red, and many of the grapes end up in bulk wine, or blended into other wines that are strictly for … Read more
It wasn't too many years ago when many of us in the blogosphere descended on Barcelona and found we loved a carrier called Yoigo. It offered pre-paid SIM's, cheap daily usage rates for data and worked well with services like Truphone and Mobivox to keep costs down. Over time the iPhone arrived, SIM's got smaller, … Read more
Yesterday at Google I/O a lot of new devices and concepts came forward from Google and GigaOm carried it blow by blow. In thinking overnight about what Google is doing, it became obvious to me that unlike Microsoft and Apple, they're no friend to the cable guys, the hardware manufacturers or the telcos/mobile operators. Why? It's … Read more
I'm going to out on a limb and say that hotels, over time simply can't give away Wi-Fi, unless the raise room rates. I say this because as USA Today points out, there's an "insatiable" demand for connectivity while traveling, and hotels can't keep treating it like air. I say this because the cost of … Read more
Recently I took a flight on US Air that was supposed to have Wi-Fi. It didn’t. For me, and my team member who also was on the same flight, that meant a cross country trip during the day, a short connection, and very little time to get things done before an early dinner with a … Read more
Friends and colleagues often ask me how I choose my flights so I thought I would share my thinking in an era of connected, community and communication. Brand loyalty isn’t always tied to the name on the door, but the name on the door is what inspires trust. As a frequent flier, I fly on … Read more
Over the next few years I think we'll begin to see the following: 1. Brand erosion in VoIP-Less brands selling to business, consumers 2. Greater consolidation-It's already started with Smoothstone and M5 getting purchased 3. More services from bigger suppliers-Companies like SalesForce, CA, SAP, Oracle will begin pushing out more services that support VoIP providers, … Read more
