That is not how Léo Apotheker, CEO sees things at Hewlett-Packard. In January this year, HP hired a head that was named by Variety Magazine as “one of the top ten talents to watch”: Lucasfilm’s CTO, Richard Kerris.

Not even half a year after the acquisition of Palm, Inc., HP is moving fast to bring webOS to a leading position. Kerris is just one of the all-stars that are going to lead these efforts. From what we’ve seen, it is for real. Still, the industry commentators call this challenge a Biblical task: convincing developers to engage with a platform that won’t have devices in the market until the early summer is like herding cats. Developers today are the hip-hop artists that began to sign up shocking lucrative record deals in the early 1980s. From the ghetto in Jamaica, Queens to the Upper West, the leap to stardom happened almost overnight. Developers in 2010 have become the tech industry’s “Public Enemy” and “Run-D.M.C.”s: Aside from Apple and Google, handsets manufacturers are literally throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at developer events, just to capture their interest. We don’t think money is going to attract development. A rewarding revenue model and a platform that expands one’s work into the world of connected devices is what developers want. And this is what webOS is about.

Richard Kerris decided about three weeks ago – pressed by our stubborn demands, that he had to make an appearance, to come to London and kick-off the webOS CONNECT developer events. He wanted a friendly environment. We chose a bar. He wanted a relaxed atmosphere, the chance to meet developers and influencers personally over an after work drink and hot food. It’s about exchanging views, sharing experiences, syncing efforts. We chose an intimate gathering of around 200 people, not an auditorium. A great line-up of webOS developers will also take the stage and show what it is that webOS brings to developers above and beyond the other platforms.

If you are in London this Wednesday 30th March and want to open your mind and your webOS contacts, drop by Bar Music Hall in Shoreditch for an evening that will give a lot to talk about in the British tech scene.

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The best surprises for me where as follows:
- In spite of the mammoth stand that Samsung fitted with all their flashy toys, across from it, a more modest-sized LG stand got mobbed every single day. I could not even walk through it. LG and its 3D products are the “wow” factor kids in the multimedia section.
- Google owned the place. They even built a massive slide that had at the end a photo-finish camera taking snapshots of your landing. With Android taking 60% of the voice market, you can take this conference with a pinch of salt, considering that last year the didn’t even bother with it. Well done, guys. Eric Schmidt delivered his now “cult” speech a day earlier and then went onto Berlin to deliver an even scarier message. He basically breezed through MWC onto greener and more important fields. As he should, because he can. Jobs is not the only diva in town, in case you didn’t know it.
- HP Tablet is going to make you want to ditch your toy-iPad to the ground. Mark my words.

My luggage never made it to Barcelona, so I went the whole week in 7-inch heels that now have me walking like a Chinese doll. Pain is not a big enough word.

The fact that I was pulling from a stop-motion position allowed me to apply the brakes immediately and not bulldoze this moron. But here is where London and its bicycle lanes and all the Borhysteria turn sour: this 35 year old white male proceeded to attack my car by destroying mirrors and everything on his way. In broad daylight, in front of about 100 people, with me in my car and my dog howling with shock. When I almost managed to unleash myself from the safety belt he decided that enough damage was done and jumped on his bike and did a runner.

Here is the quick sequence of events:
- local shop-keepers approach me offering themselves as witnesses and encouraging me to go and report it to the nearest Metropolitan Police which coincidentally is one block down the road;
- I go and report it.

Here is what I am told:
- CCTV footage is owned by the boroughs, not the police. We know that.
- The footage will be checked and if identification of the subject in question is possible, such footage will be made available to the Metropolitan Police.
- The Met will check if such individual caught on CCTV camera performing an act of violence or crime is already in their books.
- If he or she is not, they will not proceed further on their investigation.

Conclusion:
- A white male attacks a woman alone in her car in broad daylight and he will get away with this because by the look of his bike and his clothes this man is not likely to be a criminal, but most probably he’s an office worker with a good salary rather than a drug dealer or a car thief or a burglar.
- Road rage is rampant whether in cars or bikes or bicycles, but if I was a huge man sitting in my car, this violent cyclist would have thought twice what he was doing. I am sick of being abused by the violence of men. And worse, the fact that English Law has loopholes such as this.
- I can understand that the Metropolitan Police is overworked, underfunded and in urgent need to chase and book murderers, traffickers, ring leaders and crime that puts people in prison but: whatever happened to having morals and fearing the law and being caught in any kind of offense?

I am told that the Hammersmith and Fulham Borough, the owners of the footage, will not release the footage to me so that I, with my humble means, can try to track down the man that damaged my car and assaulted me. Apparently it is because of Data Protection Laws. So how come last year the CCTV footage of a woman applying lipstick whilst driving in her car was released to the media and she was publicly shamed? What about that other woman that put a kitty inside a dustbin? How the blazes footage such as those get released to the public? Where was Data Protection when they needed to cover their shameful acts?

In 2005 I was attacked, beaten up and robbed in broad view in Notting Hill in front of people on the street, buses passing by and fancy restaurants. All because of an iPod. Several visits to Paddington Police, computer line-ups and driving around in undercover silver BMWs chasing local teenagers got me no where. The police was very fair: all public assaults perpetrated by teenagers are directed to women walking alone on the street, even old ladies. We are the easy prey.

So again, this afternoon, if I would have looked like a mean motherf9875wtr in my car, I may have stood the chance that a violent middle-class son of a gun would have thought twice about coming over to bash my car.

Whatever Happened To Public Name and Shame?
Boroughs have the obligation to instill respect for public and private property, to ensure that people can walk the streets in peace and that THANKS TO CCTV everyone feels the fear of God that their acts will be caught on camera and displayed publicly for everyone to see. WE NEED PUBLIC SHAMING BACK.

So an act like the one this afternoon should be put on YouTube for everyone to see, and hopefully this guy’s boss, and work colleagues, and girlfriend and parents can get to see what he gets up to when he jumps on that bike of his feeling empowered to violently attack others even when out of his own fault he almost causes a traffic accident.

Making Cyclists Part Of Traffic
- Why the heck a moving vehicle such as a bike riding on the public roads is not obliged to be registered displaying a license plate?
- do you want to ride your bikes alongside motorists? Abide by the laws of road traffic;
- London Boroughs: why are you getting me on CCTV 24/7 if you cannot protect me from violent crime??????????????

Help!

Because of such alignment, and the fact that we both work with entrepreneurs and have been entrepreneurs ourselves, several times over, I’d like to bring to you his plea: that the Arab world needs (Entrepreneurial) Heroes.

For someone sitting in Northern Europe, the Arab culture is something they have experienced in the late part of the twentieth century with the arrival to their countries of refugees or members of British ex-colonies. Lucky students in London or Paris get to meet the intelligent and dedicated Arab graduates progressing their education. For me, a born and bread Andalusian, the Christian, the Jewish and the Arab culture is part of who I am and who my forefathers were, because from 711 a.C. until 1492 a.C. these three cultures not only co-existed with one another but they actually flourished, educated Christian kings, built palaces and irrigation systems, and changed us all forever.

The British government is now funding a challenging initiative: Tech City, a hub in East London near the new Olympic stadium and the financial district that has also gotten the support of big Silicon Valley heroes: Facebook, Google, Intel, SVB, as well as other entrepreneur-linked organisations. The purpose: to build a physical environment that mimics the geographical petri dish of Silicon Valley: short distances between startups and large labs, office space that can be shared with others and so multiply resources, connections, playbooks and, if the Mayfair investors schlep their way over there, their chequebooks.

London is a multi-cultural hub ten times older than New York City. Can you dig it? All the good peoples and the not that good ones have traded, lived and passed through it leaving their mark. Guess where Benjamin Franklin lived for a great number of years?

Tech City cannot afford to look West. We need to open the space to Middle-Eastern entrepreneurs because we need their creativity, their take on life, their spirit and their good influence. Indeed in these last centuries of our history the world has gyrated around Northern hemisphere, Western values and influence. It’s time we go back to where we came from: the East. Let the Eastern vibes fill you up. The East is not just China. There is a vast geography in between full of extraordinary human talent. Do your bit, my friend: connect, read their English blogs, follow their startups and get involved. The reason why Israeli startups have become world-wide sensations is because after they spun out of the Israeli military R&D labs, these entrepreneurs went straight to Silicon Valley for funding, for connections, for international expansion.

Let’s make London the springboard for Arab entrepreneurs. After all, we were one people many years ago.

I heard about Stuxnet about 4 or 5 months ago. After having studied a minor in political sciences, and worked at U.N. and at a think-tank associated with (spun off) the World Bank, in addition to my times in the financial services industry covering emerging markets, my spooks detector and the sniffing of their crafty work do not fail me. Time and time again, life goes on untouched because of the work of intelligence agencies. A good example was the uncovering of the freight packages at Dubai airport this past October, a last minute whistle-blowing that probably involved the intel personnel of embassies and ground personnel of God knows who, but my guess would be CIA and Israel. Well done boys.

When the goons and the spooks do their thing with faxes, mobile phones, aeroplanes and guns, 007-style, I have no say in their comings or goings. But when they tinker with software, my industry, your industry, it just pisses me off to the ninth degree because for every possible evil that they manage to deter, they unleash such Leviathan of dominoesque destruction that governments are unable to bring charges and the perpetrators remain unaccountable.

Where were the Pentagon scenario planners at the last hour before Stuxnet was unleashed against Iran? From a counter-espionage perspective, it was an initial success when the virus managed to halt and mess with Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, an officially recognised fact by Iran’s president Ahmadinejad. But, according to Symantec, it also managed to struck other countries such as India and Indonesia and now, officially in the hands of terrorists, the rest of us and our power plants have become the target.

Heads should roll right now from Tel Aviv to Langley. God I wished Winston Churchill was alive. How much longer are we all to suffer the consequences of the descerebrated US agencies and their pals?

Here are several articles that will illustrate further the enormous urgency of this cause and why with your signature you will be demonstrating to the “Da Men In Suits” that our planet deserves to be treated with utmost respect.

The Guardian – “Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains”

Soilassociation.org – “Bee briefing”

Business Insider – $15 Billion Bee Murder Mystery Deepens

Treehugger.com – “Nicotine Bees” Population Restored With Neonicotinoids Ban

San Francisco Gate – EPA memo reveals concern that pesticide causes bee deaths

Palm Beach Post – Beekeepers want government to pull pesticide

The Guardian – Bees in freefall as study shows sharp US decline

Corporate Europe – Pesticide industry involvement in EU risk assessment puts survival of bees at stake

As Jay-Z always says: “Let’s go get’em, Little Robot!” Yee-pee!

If you are a mobile startup wishing to get on stage to share whatever amazing services or product you have to offer to the increasingly dominating mobile industry, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona always kicks off with perhaps the best event: the Mobile Peer Awards, the largest open and global cross-platform app competition in the mobile industry.

I will be a judge again this year so come and show us why you rock! And if you arrive on Sunday night, why not come and say hello to everyone at the classic Mobile Sunday drinks!

In 2002 I joined the greatest bunch of people: Jeremy Brown, Tom Savigar and Raj Panjwani. Together, the network of experts that they had managed to form in 2001, the Senseworldwide Network, was enlarged, the site revamped, and I got them to blog. The Sensers – the members of the network, became the most cohesive and yet diverse focus group that our clients could dream of. And our work, predicting “the future of people and things”, as Jeremy coined at the time, became our trade. As with GBN, our approach was the same: that only the do-ers, those who actually create and perform specific skills are the best experts. In a world where consultants spend their lives re-hashing information digested from their clients, our standpoint was to demonstrate that the most creative ideas emerge when vibrant minds come together. And one of the GBN members, the super-nice Napier Collyns became a member of our board of advisors, because, in his words, the Sense network was a young GBN of the 2000s.

Fast-forward to now: Quora. I signed up 48 hours ago and my friends in the industry are connecting to me and others that I’ve never met but that I can see why they want to follow me or I should follow them. Quora: the Q&A network. The answers are qualified if the respondents work in places and within roles that entitle them to provide such answers with a level of accuracy that others can trust. How will this scale? It does not need to. The more generic the question, the more answers it will attract. It is like search terms. The success of an answer will be its capacity to narrow down the specific of its corresponding question. The relief is that it will force people to provide straightforward answers, Twitter answers, as opposed of lengthy show-offs. Quora is a great example of netocracy: you are what you put out to the world when you work so your knowledge comes from your empirical practice rather than the books you’ve read or your consulting. I look forward to that.