Eric, Thanks for the additional info on budget and how you proceeded. Starting with just the concept on a Friday and having a working prototype of this level of quality is simply amazing. Again congratulations to you and to the team who worked with you to accomplish this. See you around. alex

It would be much better if you knew what you are writing about. When was your last trip to Europe? We have completely free economy, only... - we don't believe that competition alone can take care of the public interest, if only because there is no business model for lighting our streets or repairing our sidewalks - we are not happy with 20% of our people being without insurance at all - we don't think it's a good idea for good education to be provided exclusively to people who are well endowed - culture, creation, the conservation of our vast cultural heritage are important investments of public interest in our opinion - we don't believe in the death penalty as a means for a civilized society to deal with crime. Besides our crime rates are far below what the US have - we do think that public infrastructure is essential not only to the well being of the people but also to the welfare of our economy. Is there a single fast train in the US that allows you to travel 311 km in 1h 15min(that would put Boston just 1h 30min away from New York City by train)? - our public funding of elementary and secondary education (much better than your system by all accounts, especially when it comes to Finland, Sweden or Denmark) is partly benefiting the US since many of our university grads go to the US for PhD and research, where America is much much better than Europe - we have a health system that is vastly better and less costly than the current US one and we do not need to spend nearly a trillion dollars to give that to our people - we do think that state and church need to be distinct and that it's perfectly OK for people to be agnostic or atheists if they so wish, because that too is part of individual liberties The point here is just to tell you that such differences in approach should be more subtle than the position you are taking. This is not about America being a democracy and Europe being some sort of tyranny reminiscent of the former Soviet Union. And it is certainly not about us European forgetting what we owe to America or taking an anti-American position. The vast majority of people around here love America and its great way of bringing innovation and positive energy to the world. We just believe that the same results could be achieved in a more humane manner and we do feel that Scandinavia is a much better inspiration in terms of where we should take our civilization.

Peter, Your analysis is brilliant as usual and I very much agree with you not only because all the technical ingredients are now available, but, perhaps even more importantly, because there has been a major shift in patterns of usage and in the mental model of users over the past couple of years. Much of that is to be credited to Apple and the iPhone, who may not be the winner in the end because it does not have the backbone of infrastructure that is needed to reap all the benefits of this wave. Once we see the actual rise and adoption of mobile, there is going to be an avalanche of consequences starting with fundamental transformation of in-store behaviors and the start of a relentless convergence between online and offline. That convergence is going to be so strong and so massive that in a few years the very notion of online vs offline will not make sense. Exciting times! Happy 2010 to you and to your loved ones. Many thanks for sharing such excellent content and giving your reader fantastic food for thought! alex