Mobitrends

The worst pre-flight ever : stuck 3hrs in the lane (2:30 hrs for boarding, 30mins for security check), 3hrs delay, and stuck in Houston tonight instead of enjoying a first night of Vegas – rough start. I wanted to fly low cost, took Continental Airlines and it turned out to be the worse choice EVER… anyway hopefully I have Rodrigo to share my burden with.
No real explanation for the delay – I guess it’s because of snow and de-frosting procedures, but anyway quoting the airplane company representative “under 3hrs delay, company is not bound to offer any compensation – we will pay for the night in Houston and that will be it”… nice …

That’s my new flight plan … obviously thursday is going to be harsh.

While I was shaving this morning, I just realized something really fun, I have the exact same social patterns in World of Warcraft as I have in the real life.
Let me explain:
in WoW I’m not really part of any guild, mostly because those are really time consuming if you want to take fully advantage of what a guild can bring to your game experience. Thus I’m mostly a lonely player, yet I still go for high goals and heavy instances by gathering people from my contact list the moment I need help. And I never hesitate to help someone in need for my tauren DK/warrior two handed mace and spells.

So somehow this make me a independent guy with a network of partners / subcontractors that I can book for a few hours of their time to help me reach my goals and with whom I share my know-how and rewards as they come… sounds a lot like the way I’m behaving in real life business actually!

Tell me how you play and I’ll tell you who you are.

As I was booking a Taxi (yeah in France you do that, there’s no way to go on the street and just happen to find one…) just realized that taxisG7 (the leader in Paris) is now providing a cool iPhone webapp to book a Taxi. Can defintly be useful, too bad though it doesn’t take advantage of the built-in GPS. If you already have an account on their service, then go directly with your iPhone to www.taxisg7.fr/mobile. It’s really amusing to see non-tech industries getting into mobile apps (although Taxis have become pretty high tech over those years…). Can’t wait to be able to reserve a good baguette from the nearby bakery and be warned when it is just getting out of the oven – just baked baguettes are the best!

Note: The picture was taken this morning in Strasbourg, snow time ! – The economy is like a Flamingo, standing on one foot, freezing to death but not dead yet and still showing off a bit with a pretty nice plumage (when you look from the bright side)!

Just received this email from Google’s Eric Chu as an Android Marketplace member:

Android Market will become available to users to download apps in additional European countries starting early Q1 2009. Some of the countries we will initially support are Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands. As we add support for additional countries in Europe and Asia, we will send out subsequent notifications to you. (…)

Additionally, I would like to confirm that Android Market will support priced applications starting early Q1 2009, as we’d originally stated last fall. Given the country-by-country work required to set up payment support for developers in different countries, we will enable priced app support in Q1 for developers operating in these countries in the following order: (1) United States and UK; (2) Germany, Austria and Netherlands; (3) France, Italy and Spain.

Two excellent news opening a new direction for business opportunities and that should energize the entrepreneurs reading this blog !

Btw, so excited, I’m getting y development G1 phone next week to try out this field (2009 starts geeky!)