In Russia when they were explaining to me why people didn’t trust banks so much (topic was triggered by the low volumes of deposits in commercial privately owned banks) they said: “there’s been a banking crisis every two years, what would you expect. People are afraid that the bank can come down and take their savings with it”.

(fot. rosendahl@flickr)

I kind of took it in as a valid explanation but never fully internalized the notion – in Poland, when selecting a bank, hardly anyone actually considers whether it’s gonna go bankrupt or not. You never hear banks falling in Poland, except for some obscure “pocket banks” in the distant past of the early days of the market economy.

Even with the lest prestigious and smallest banks, trust used not to be really the major decision factor.

Maybe that is going to change soon. Just in (gazeta.pl):

Investors wondered who would be the next candidates for bankruptcy. Commerzbank, owner of the Polish BRE Group, fell almost 23 percent on the Frankfurt stock exchange. Trading of UniCredit (strategic shareholder of Pekao) was suspended altogether on the Milan stock exchange, after they fell 9%.

In December 2007 I quoted this passage I found in FT:

(…) two giant and interlinked bubbles burst simultaneously – one in property, one in credit – leaving banks and investors on the brink of bankruptcy, some hanging on by their fingertips

That was before the balls started to drop, and the mood was cautiously optimistic then.

It sure feels like something similar with regards to banking situation in Poland right now. Things are falling apart abroad, but at home everything is supposed to be in order, except for the performance of investment funds, which keep looking for the bottom – but this is generally accepted as an isolated and contained phenomenon.

Looking into the future of Polish financial sector in the next 6 to 12 months, maybe it’s time now to calculate in some turbulence.

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I came back from Google Day 2008, organized for the second time in Poland by Google.

The scale of the event was quite impressive, even though there were some organizational deficiencies (like, everything was running late).

Just before event the started, the light-spirited Google’s logos beamed on huge screens accompanied by pompous music, reminding of the strength and confidence of today’s corporation, made peculiar impression on me (like that of seeing a child suddenly grown into a giant but still looking like a child only a very big one).

Anyway setting was nice.

But the content I saw was rather uninspiring. At least from my perspective. Maybe the idea of the event was more community/brand building, than showcasing something truly new.

First there was a video message from Cerf who told us that innovation is important, then Mario Queiroz (Google Labs) presentation from which I remember only that Google will keep on innovating if only for the reason that Internet is growing larger and that there are still some difficult problems in search, like understanding context of the query. And reminder what is the strategic idea of Chrome, for those who missed it.

Then I endured one session structured around screenshots from Google Trends and went back to do some real work today.

Still I think Google didn’t need to satisfy itself with such boilerplate content – certainly there is no lack of opportunities to say something new. Say, display Android phones (instead there were labs of… Google Maps and Youtube). Or provide insight into details of cooperation terms for startup mashups (ok, this is self-interest).

Maybe I missed some good stuff in the other workshop sessions, but judging from the agenda, I do not think so.

The best thing to do was probably networking, but for this purpose I was poorly prepared due to lack of business cards (note to myself: need business cards). But one person turned out so relevant to my current work that meeting her just like that seemed an amazing luck (and a justification for the time spent).

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I neglected to post lately because of my ongoing adventure with Rails (apparently rails 2.0 made the book I have next to obsolete, doesn’t make life easier). Nevertheless there were some interesting things last week:

First – Google News finally launched Polish site. I use the global version all the time (parallel to Techmeme for geek news) and I’m curious if it will change the landscape here in Poland. My feeling was that we have still quite a limited set of web news sources for GN to make serious impact – even though some very rich sources have such a crappy web presence (I mean rzeczpospolita), that having GN figuring their updates instead of us might increase the readership significantly.

Second – go28days opened an English version of their site and even got covered by techcrunch.

I would love to see more companies go global. Given how few of them do, go28days might deserve more praise than they got (was there actually a Polish company covered by techcrunch before…?)

Tomorrow, actually today, Google Day 2008 (if I manage not to oversleep it).

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I attended a conference focused on EU programs for supporting tech innovations (programs 8.1 and 8.2).

The opportunity seems attractive enough to warrant some time to write an application… even though there might be important limitations under the surface, which I haven’t researched yet. For example, I’m not sure if ownership of the company can change during the period it receives subsidies.

So I have more paperwork to do. There is also a question if there will be time for it, because 55% of the budget was already applied for at the time of the conference (Monday).

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At last I got concerned about possibility of losing access to my primary Gmail account – and with it to all my mail – sufficient enough that I decided to make an effort and learn how to make an offline copy of my mailbox.

First I found this tutorial on how to setup a daily backup routine from the command line.

The solution is fancy enough, but I thought, why not simply use Apple’s Mail app to get all the mail on the desktop?

Here we go.

I was following instructions from here and here.

Synchronization seems to work all right, so aside from backup, now I can use Mail app to work on email offline.

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I’m not exactly in a stage of getting into technical details, but I already kind of decided that I will switch to Ruby on Rails for development of the current project.

Reasons: learning rails would probably be no harder than staying with PHP and learning framework like Zend, which is where I stopped last time.

And RoR promises much improvement with time-to-market.

Having sort of decision on rails, I wanted to have an initial idea of available hosting options, also for the needs of a “back of an envelope” business case.

I’m very happy with my current provider, progreso, but sadly they don’t support rails on shared servers, yet. If I wanted to host with them, I would have to buy a dedicated server anyway.

But as far as dedicated servers are concerned, Amazon’s EC2 looks much more attractive (at least at a first glance).

As for pricing, basic virtual servers are cheaper than in case of progreso (like, $70 a month excluding bandwidth and additional storage).

Additionally, path to hosting Rails applications on EC2 seems already well-beaten. For example here: Deploy a Ruby on Rails app on EC2 in five minutes. There are even Polish startups (shoptrix) who chose this solution.

And of course the most advertised benefit of using EC2 is the ability to increase capacity on pay-as-you-go basis, by easily launching new virtual servers when necessary.

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Today I ticked tax office off the list, so the only thing remaining is visiting social insurance administration.

I registered for e-accounting solution (iFirma), which looks trendy, but whether they can provide enough expert support online is another topic. There is certain risk to it, but I wanted to give it a try.

I’m also finalizing desk research phase of Ogito and moving to actually talking to the people in the industry, which should be much more fun. Especially taking into account that the industry is fun in itself, by definition.

From technical side, I’m fascinated with Rails and waiting for the shipment of books from the UK.

I’m getting into ever friendlier terms with my Mac:

I discovered that I can use my legacy LCD as an extended desktop, which should be helpful later on.

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I wanted to renew credit for skype calling, but in the process I discovered that I can set up a fixed phone number as well.

This is really cool, and just in time when I thought that it would be nice to have some kind of a fixed line number. But a fixed number without having to get actual fixed line is even better.

Unlimited local calls don’t hurt either.

If I figure how to set up a fax on this number, then it would really satisfy all my phone related needs.

Update: unfortunately it seems faxing is not really something you can do on voip.

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About a week ago I made the first step to formally become an entrepreneur – I went to the municipal authority of Warsaw (my district, actually) and applied for registration.

This was the first and only place that got the tip of this development, but I already received an unsolicited (but personalized with the data I gave to the office) offer from ING SME banking, and another from an accounting office.

Authority apparently has quite a liberal policy of sharing official information.

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Gemius is preparing for this year’s Internet CEE conference. It will take place in October.

(picture above of work on a promotional clip for the conference)

I did not participate in the last year’s event personally, so I cannot say anything about networking opportunities during the conference.

But I browsed the materials, and found them really interesting. Presentations from every nearby country, lots of data. I could get an overview of the whole region (from the point of view of web activities) based on this one conference.

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Latest ad with Gates and Seinfeld (they paid Seinfeld $10m to participate… I try to imagine how much they would pay to air an ad that long):

I’m quite alone in being positive about the ad.

Techcrunch: “I’m starting to feel bad for Microsoft PR, who’ve been tasked with defending these Microsoft ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.”

Wired: “feels a bit like an aimless sitcom pilot at 4.5 minutes with little mention of Microsoft”, “It’s hard to see how this set up is going to portray Microsoft’s products in a positive light”

All about Microsoft: “the latest Microsoft consumer-focused ad does little, if anything, to endear Microsoft or Windows to consumers”

Everyone complains that clips make no mention of Microsoft products. And that they even create self-inflicted damage by portraying Microsoft (personified by Gates) as out of touch with real people.

In fact that’s why I like the ads. I don’t see how Microsoft could win direct confrontation with “mac vs pc” campaign. Pushing Vista marketing would be like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s hard to imagine convincing people that it’s an inspiring product – through an ad.

I think what they can achieve with the ads is humanizing Microsoft’s image. It can only be done with a real person in the spotlight, and they selected Gates for the role, which seems a good (only?) choice. Gates symbolizes the evil empire, is not known for being entertaining or social (which adds element of surprise and creates buzz around ads) and making him likable will affect image of all Microsoft.

How to make Gates likable?

“We like people who are not perfect and make mistakes”. I thought it was out of Cialdini’s persuasion handbook, but I can’t find the exact quote.

In the end, Apple’s marketing might start to seem arrogant and snobbish, now that people begin to sympathize with awkward – but human – Gates.

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Microsoft believes that search is still far from maturity. Steve Ballmer emphasized how much search sucks currently at recent analyst day presentation. “It’s still 10 blue links on a white page”. “50% of searches don’t solve the problem”. And so on.

It’s important for Microsoft to believe that search is still a space for radical innovation, because to say otherwise would be to admit that the game is over and that Google won it. Customers are unlikely to switch from Google, unless other vendor presents a serious advantage over Google’s search.

On the other hand, Marissa Mayer just described a slightly different view on future of search, a future of incremental (and laborious) improvements rather than disruptive innovations:

(afterward she softens this point somehow – guess the original message might have not resonated well with Google’s investors)

Search is a 90-10 problem. Today, we have a 90% solution: I could answer all of my unanswered Saturday questions, not ideally or easily, but I could get it done with today?s search tool. (If you?re curious, the answers are below.) However, that remaining 10% of the problem really represents 90% (in fact, more than 90%) of the work.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it is Google who is best positioned to use its critical mass to slowly but surely improve search.

Google might be actually right in its view of the market, but search (information retrieval) is not the end of the story, right…

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Whoa, my backpack, lost on the way from Cuba, got found. Apparently instead of being held by Cuban communists, German customs was the real culprit.

90% of the things inside were dirty laundry.

I noticed that all things in the backpack were shifted. And on top there was a paper sheet which listed all backpack contents with German scrupulosity:

Amazing, now Germans count my dirty laundry. Never had that before.

The rum, cigars and the vital ipod connector were there, but they seem to have confiscated Cuban coffee… and the batteries, for some reason.

Anyway, hopefully it’s the last time I flew with Condor Sheisselinie. 26h hour delay and lost luggage, for which they didn’t even do home delivery.

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I spent a good part of my day configuring a stupid HP printer.

Other highlights of the day included handling a visit of Ikea workers, who arrived with faulty furniture and now require another follow-up for replacement, scheduling another driving exam (last two attempts: one overslept, one missed due to calendar mistake), and watching the apartment being cleaned.

Not that productive day really. But these things need to be done to move forward so it’s not a complete waste of time either.

At least unpacking and assembling the printer (HP L7780 all-in-one) was kind of fun:

But then it turned that the best I could get from device’s wifi connection was scanning, but unfortunately not printing.

Files sent to the printer were like signals dispatched to alien civilizations, sent and gone met in a silence with no outcome whatsoever.

Maybe it’s the problem of HP’s lousy drivers for Mac.

Since printer is next to the router, lack of wifi is no big deal. But still frustrating to pay premium for functions which end up not working anyway.

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Ok so I’m not really great in cost saving, but at least I’m trying and that’s why I went to Ikea on Sunday.

Surprisingly the visit was a great success!

I covered almost all the gaps in my apartment (with a goal of making it a perfect SOHO office): sofa table, large book shelf, CD/DVD shelf, sofa lamp, paper trays, folders etc. Now sofa will become a secondary full-fledged work space. Or a chill-out space.

I’m still missing bathroom door, but this cannot be helped with Ikea.

By the way, isn’t it absurd that even though Ikea has: online directory, paper directory, transport facility – I cannot simply order stuff online? I think it is. I sent them feedback, and they replied that they are still developing.

Sadly, I cannot make myself try to familiarize with state health insurance… so I decided to prolong my corporate medicover coverage. Now I have to pay for it myself. But at least I will not have to worry about falling sick and not knowing whom to call.

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