Lucadg

ok, clear, I did not notice hga was providing a tl;dr which makes sense. Thanks for the edit!

I thought you found a typo but seems fine. Is there some grammatical error? Thanks for pointing it out.

(OP here) yes, my execution was aimed at keeping it alive, not making it big. The idea itself was not enough to make it big. There was a time when growth was actually getting out of hand, but the financial crisis of 2008 stopped that.

or maybe they are simple paying to get our cell phone numbers? Something they tried to get from me for a long time and I always refused to give? Now they have it.

I agree with robotresearcher. The grammar mistake influenced negatively the way I interpreted your words and my perception of you. It happens at an unconscious level. Without errors I would just get the meaning. With the errors, I see them first and get distracted.

The same happened with the article: too well written to be enjoyable. You could feel the effort in finding clever ways to say simple things.

The fact that you didn't thank him for taking the time to help you, makes me think that for you self improvement is less important than looking smart. As he said, <I'm not knocking you down but trying to help you from making trivial mistakes that change people's perception and distract and detract from the important things> That explains it perfectly.

> Quirky, a web company is working on an experiment to shut down operations for four weeks every year

He may want to see how this experiment worked in Italy for the last 50 years. Most companies completely shut down in August for a few weeks. Even those which want to stay open would do so with nobody else to interact with so they close too.

In Prague, just to give you an example I know well, the number of apartments for short term rent is pretty high and it grew pretty quickly too in the 90's. The reason was not Silicon Valley growth but the end of socialism. Internet was not involved but I don't really think the source of bookings or change really matters. What matters is the effect on the rest of the economy and society. As you say some people (owners in this case) profit in this situation while others suffer and are pushed in less desirable areas (that would be 99% of the time out of the center in Europe, and out of nice neighborhoods in US). At the end for "people" aggregate (vs corporations) it may be a neutral change.

What I am saying is that NY may seems pretty special but it may not be. The fact that Hotels are so expensive may be a sign that Airbnb is bringing some needed change in an overly protected business environment.

What if Airbnb forces some hotels to close and they free up residential space? Is this a possible effect?

I've been making tourist apartments available online since 2001, long before Airbnb (a competitor for me) even existed, and I never heard anyone in any city ever complain about tourist apartments, be it Prague, Venice or Paris.

What happens is that a certain, usually small, percentage of residential apartments is made available to the tourists.

Each apartment means about one/two less hotel rooms.

Hotel rooms take space too, they are not floating over the city. They often replace old residential buildings to build hotels effectively taking away space from residents who are pushed out of the city.

So we may say that tourism takes space in the center, not apartments.

I didn't hear much complain about this neither, as tourism brings money and, if anything, they want more of them. It seems to me that NY has a very specific situation so Airbnb may be actually harming the residents, I don't know, but in general Airbnb is not doing anything particularly new in Europe, where apartments for short term rent have been existing for long time.

The hype is all about "rent from another human being" but the reality, and I guess most of their business in Europe, is simply providing a better platform.

Maybe NY regulators could look at Prague or Croatia to solve the problem.

[edit: formatting]

you are right. The local Manager visits most the apartments and meets most owners so he's able to help the guests and guarantees that there are not fakes/bad actors.

great! I sent you an email.

It's funny you label it as social reservations. Did you see this page? http://www.adormo.com because we also launched a test project (italan only for now) http://social.adormo.com/ where it's much more social. I just wonder what site you did visit :)

I'll be in Budapest for a week from the 8th of October with my wife. It would be nice to meet for a coffee and discuss our gypsy lifestyle problems :)

I worked online, run my "little Airbnb" and travelled/lived in more than 50 countries since 2001. The fact that your productivity suffers can be interpreted in a positive way: you CAN'T work too much because you are kept busy with the non-routine stuff. I absolutely love it and wouldn't change this for a 100% productive environment anytime soon. It's my protection against the work-a-lot-buy-stuff-you-don't-need routine. So I am forced to spend money in non trivial things as keeping the flexibility is expensive. When I need to get some serious work done I stay in Italy, Bangkok, Bali or Prague for a few months. It takes me a couple of weeks to settle in Bali, 1 day in Prague (I just need to rent an apartment), 1 day in Bangkok and more or less a week in other places. I also did a lot of backpacking (a few days in each place) and I agree that this greatly reduces the productivity. You have to find the balance which works for you, anytime, anywhere. Not easy, but it's there somewhere.

Orwell in 1984 addresses this subject extensively. People working less or not working are a problem for the government. In the book they invented a perpetual war to burn the surplus which would allow us to work less. In real life consumerism seems to to a pretty good job in keeping us busy instead.

politicians love big money moving around so they can grab a bit for themselves. Many big projects in Italy shows this seems to be the main, if not unique, drive for events like the Olympics.

I agree. I am always amazed by, say Swedish's people English (no dubbed) compared to Italian/Spanish/French (dubbed).

Having learned English, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Portoguese I am ready to share my secret to the world: read comics. They are the only written form of the colloquial language, the one you'll need mostly. Literally 100% of what you learn in a comic will be useful in your daily life. Read a novel and this drops to probably 50%, read a newspaper and it's even worse. Nobody speaks like a book or a newspaper. We speak like comics.

P.S. I learned those while living in those countries, so I was exposed to the spoken language too. Plus, comics worked for me, they won't work for everybody. At the end the real trick is to try several methods and find the one which suits you best.

I just googled "one's freedom in inversely proportional to the number of keys in the pocket" and found nothing. You have just written a really powerful sentence. I lived mostly traveling for the last 13 years and I have very little stuff. I constantly write/think/discuss about it and I rarely found such a great sentence. Congratulations.

WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) tweeted at 11:20am - 23 Jun 13:

FLASH: Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors. (https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348732325909102593)

Edit: Oops sorry, somebody posted this already. Anyway, interesting news!

Thanks! I think I will go with Steve's _Four Steps To The Epiphany_ as it seems what I need right now.

Thanks! I had a look and seems interesting.

Italian here :) you're both right and wrong:

Wrong: if you go in a bar and order an Illy espresso you'll pay more or less 1 euro. This price is the same as any other brand, even the cheapest ones. There seem to be no price difference in Italy based on brand (in bars). If you go to Venice St. Marco's square where a coffee at the table will cost you easily 8 euro, and you order it at the bar ans drink it standing (the standard way), it will still cost you 1 euro. It's like a political price, as could be beer in Prague or fried rice in Bangkok. Don't touch those prices or you'll get a revolution :)

Right: at the supermarket Illy is one of the most expensive brands. It's about 5,5 euro for 250 grams, compared to 3 euro for a good Arabica brand or even 2 euro for a cheap brand.

Mind: the bar and the supermarket Illy coffees are different, the bar version being much superior.

I like Illy (if you love it, you may want to go to Trieste and enjoy it there) but I still prefer to get it freshly grinded from somebody who toasts in place. I especially like one in Venice, where it goes from 12 to 25 per Kg, the good one costing as much as the Illy. Nothing compares to a freshly grinded good coffee.

I am in Malaysia and it may be some local issue. thanks!

I've been in about 60 countries. After a while the novelty/new perspective feeling diminishes. I don't really think it's worth the effort to see all countries. What's a country anyway? Mostly borders. People and cultures are a different thing and tend to spread differently over borders.

you've got a Singha beer in Bangkok too :) I worked a lot of time with a great Russian developer until year. Took him to Mexico to work together (no visa requirements) for 3 months. He came from Siberia and I showed him the ocean for the first time then we travelled by car around the country. So far the russians are the best for me, seriously. Would love to meet you.

I was just stating a fact. Most of the people find it easy to follow and hard to take the lead. I did not imply this is wrong (I apologize as actually I was not so clear about it) but if you are someone who likes to start something and share it with others, as I do, the sooner you realize this the better.

You leave the frustrating "let's do this together" phase and go into the "I'm doing this, I'll be happy if you join in!" phase, which is so much better. My theory is that if you give the impression that you won't do it alone, it means you are not so sure about it and the project inspires less confidence. Of course there are things you just can't do alone, but you can start alone and see who joins.

I strongly agree with the OP because it's a major shift in one's life. Very precious.

yes yes yes! I realized this long time ago. Don't ask who joins. Announce you are going. They will follow. If they don't, fine. It makes it all so much easier.

Many people have just followed all their lives and that's what they like to do.

thanks, good ones! It seems I can't edit my first message to add them.

me too. Do you reckon this is enough?

glad to hear there's many like us in the community. I have been managing my business online and travelling for 11 years now. My own RTW: http://www.tripfoto.com/roundtheworld/ (excuse the horrible website, here's better http://www.tripfoto.com). Greetings from Riga.

Thank you for your comment. This blog post is for non technical people. I doubt more than 2% of the users has ever heard about the world kernel or even knows that a server is not something you simply and just works. Actually, the don't even know you need to administer it. I say this because I know them personally. Right now for instance I am in Riga, Latvia, visiting the users. So my concern was to be as clear and simple as possible.

Nevertheless I agree with you on the technical side. It won't harm to add some more details in a "Technical - read at your own risk" section. I'll do this, thank you.