BERLIN (Reuters) — German police are investigating a couple after their 8-month-old son appeared for sale on the auction Web site eBay.
Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach, west of Munich, said Saturday that the boy’s mother, 23, said the auction listing had only been a joke. But he said the baby had been put in state custody while the police were investigating.
A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: “Baby — collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”
The opening bid was one euro, $1.58. There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, the police said.
The mother was quoted in the Bild newspaper as saying: “It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They’ve taken my son to a hospital and I’ve got to take psychiatric tests next week.”
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Global Dreams for a Wireless Web
SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground — deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground — deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)
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