Author Archive for Ivo Spigel

The gathering storm & ICT

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout”

king-lear

King Lear was defiant against the wind, be it light or hurricane. It seems now that a storm is gathering, and that the countries of Centrope will have to think about shouting defiantly to the rampaging economic elements.

Our countries have been hit variously. I haven’t been following all that closely, I must admit, but it seems Hungary has taken a particularly bad hit so far. Slovenia and Croatia, meanwhile, have only started to feel the strength of this storm, and Croatian political leaders (at least) are doing their best to bury their heads in the sand, hoping, like children, that if they only close their eyes the crisis will not see them and will somehow pass by without noticing our little country. Unfortunately, that’s not very likely. The ruling party hopes, at least, that the worst will not come before local elections scheduled for early May. After that – que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.

So what about ICT? What about innovation in this stormy weather?

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Is Europe sleeping through the Twitter revolution?

twitter_logo2We’re all used to the fact that most trends, paradigm shifts and business model disruptions originate in the US, and then, sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly, make there way across the Atlantic, first to Western and then gradually to Central and Eastern Europe. I wonder – is the same thing happening with Twitter?

For those who might not be familiar with it, Twitter is a microblogging tool which allows users to post remarks of 140 characters at a time – clearly meant to be used via SMS as well as “normally” from desktop or mobile Web browsers. I’ve been actively using Twitter for several weeks now and have found it fascinating (note: I’ve completely skipped Facebook until two days ago, but that’s a different story). As a Twitter user I’ve found that the people I follow, as well as those that follow me, fall into two main geographical areas – those very near me (i.e. from Zagreb and some from Croatia) and those exactly one ocean away, in the US.

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