argentina

We had only been in Buenos Aires for a few hours last month when my wife and I realized that our Spanish-English dictionary and Latin America phrasebook were still sitting on a bookshelf back at home. "Not cool," my wife said simply.

So I made a trip to El Ateneo, one of the biggest and certainly most beautiful bookstores south of the Panama Canal and picked up the only paperback dictionary in the house--a thick, clunky volume with a neon orange cover meant for speakers of Mexican Spanish, which is quite different from the Argentine dialect.

After a few times stopping in the middle of a crowd to pull out the big, glowing book, I became worried that I might inadvertently start directing traffic; I quickly retired the dead-tree translation method and started looking for a less conspicuous, digital solution. I found three top contenders, each with their own pros and cons. Here's the rundown. … Read more

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina--Last week, I touched down in Buenos Aires with my Ubuntu-powered Netbook in tow and started making calls and sending e-mails to get a handle on the tech scene in this New York-size Metropolis. That is, of course, a difficult thing to pin down, but through sweet serendipity, one phrase did seem to come up over and over again--"open source."

A few years back, Argentina's government looked at mandating the use of all open-source software in its offices, largely to save on software costs.

But the open-source gestalt also fits well with Argentina's independent streak--whether it's the lasting legend of the altruistic gaucho cowboy, rough and rugged while looking out for his fellow man, or the smell of fresh croissants in the air and certain continental flair that make Buenos Aires share more in common with Paris than Caracas, Venezuela.

In fairness, it should be noted that Venezuela actually followed through with mandating open-source software for its government, but Argentina's love of software libre may go even deeper. By mid-decade surveys indicated nearly half of businesses here were using Linux.

With more than a third of Argentina's population centered in Greater Buenos Aires, the city is today home to a thriving open-source community that appears to make the country a leader of open source in Latin America. A quick supporting metric: Firefox 4 has been downloaded in Argentina close to a million times already, according to Mozilla figures, which is several times more per capita than the adoption rate in neighboring Brazil, with its much-lauded emerging economy.

I contacted Guillermo Movia, who works with Mozilla Argentina, and he pointed me to the University of Buenos Aires, one of nearly three dozen sites in Argentina--and many more across Latin America--where Flisol, or the Festival of Latin American Free Software Installation, took place last Saturday, April 9, or 9 de Abril.

The daylong open-source geek-out took place upstairs in part of the university's business school not far from the center of Buenos Aires. The building's heavy wooden doors and ancient stone floors presented the same dignified facade as one might find within the gates of Columbia or Yale. But the energy of the Flisol event was a better match to the buzz outside, across Avenida Cordoba, where a stream of students, tourists, and commuters flowed out of stores and subway stations into a crowded park speckled with the pink autumn flowers of ceiba trees. … Read more

My honeymoon with Verizon is finally over. I knew this would happen when we entered that sacred bond--the two-year-contract. I knew I was locking myself into CDMA, but I was vulnerable. I'd just broken off a rocky relationship with AT&T three weeks before our two-year anniversary. OK, OK, the truth is I cheated. I'd been flirting with Verizon for a few months before I finally ordered a Droid 2--when I should have been spending time reviewing my contract with AT&T, and thinking of the good times with my HTC Tilt.

But I was having a hard time conjuring those memories--too many dropped calls, spotty coverage, no 3G within a hundred miles of my house... I knew in my heart it was over, so why draw it out any further?

So I welcomed Verizon into my life. AT&T was not happy. She sent me a cold, heartless letter asking for $60 and hired a third-party survey company to call and ask, essentially, "Was it you? Or was it me?" I told the scripted voice on the other end of the line about the lack of broadband in our relationship, the coverage problems, and the rest, but I also found myself reminiscing about the good times I had long since buried.

There was an especially delightful trip to Mexico, a romantic month spent driving through Sonora and Baja--the sunsets and 3G coverage were truly beautiful. As we drove together through barren deserts, AT&T stayed with me, and with a stronger signal than we had in more populated areas of New Mexico. … Read more

Google and Yahoo have been cleared in the case of an Argentine performer who alleged that she was defamed by search results that pointed to sexual and pornographic Web sites bearing her name and image, according to a Friday report in The New York Times.

The appeals court in Argentina overturned the 2008 ruling of a lower court that had found the companies liable for defamation in the case of Virginia Da Cunha. The Argentine entertainer is one of many celebrities in the country who have been trying to force the search engines to block any sexual-oriented Web sites that … Read more

As we are in the middle of the 2009 World Rally Championship series, today I present you with footage from the most recent WRC series, Rally Argentina, which took place in April 2009. The video begins with footage taken from a higher elevation, and about halfway through the vid you get a front row view from roadside as the cars whizz by and the dust flies from the gravel. Oh, and in case you're wondering...the winner of this series was Sebastian Loeb. Woo hoo!

Two days of meetings with Red Hat and system integrator partners in Argentina, capped off by a shockingly good steak at Cabana Las Lilas, perhaps the best steak I've ever had. (Try the T-bone, as my son Isaac did.)

Thanks for reading the blog throughout the year. I've loved blogging for CNET, and hope you like reading it. At least, occasionally. Now and again. When you're in a good mood. On Fridays.

Many people have barely recovered from the recent revelation that the alleged Bigfoot was really BigRubberfoot.

However, one is duty-bound to report that there has been another sighting of an equally disturbing meta-human phenomenon- the Creepy Gnome.

The Creepy Gnome first materialized in March. Teenagers who were hanging out in General Guemes, in the Argentinian province of Salta, used their cellphones to capture a peculiar short creature with a pointed head and a strange sideways gait. (Haunting for Preparation H users, at least.)

At the time, Jose Alvarez, who shot the film, said: "We looked to one side and … Read more

On today's show, we're joined by two of the girls from NewYork.com! Wilson's sick, but he misses out on an insane show filled with the girls drooling over Michael Phelps, even more slanted eye pictures, Nintendo bikinis, Apple store nightmares, and a possible NewYork.com/404 meetup!? Listen for more details!

Wilson can't make it to the show today so we replace him with two of the fantastic ladies from NewYork.com! "Broadway Baby" Hillary and "Soho Hot" Amanda are a real treat to have in the studio, especially for the … Read more

In reminiscing of old Open Road posts, this one about how open source returns dignity to developers struck home.

...I'm impressed by how open source returns power and dignity to the developers who write software. Many work for companies and assign copyright to those corporations, and for good reason.

But it's impressive, I think, that we rightly recognize individuals within the open source community. No one contributes to Apache as an IBM employee, even though IBM employs many Apache contributors....And yet they stand or fall on their individual coding merits, not on their corporate laurels.

I don't want to wax Marxist here (being a very devout capitalist), but I like to think that open source improves the lot of developers. Not that developers are in the habit of starving - the pizza truck is generally just a call away. In open source, it's not a question of life or death, but rather a question of personal dignity.

As my parents and I drove past the villas miserias ("neighborhoods of misery," also known as "slums") and around the outskirts of Buenos Aires today, I couldn't help but think of how life would change for the inhabitants if they knew how to code, and were enabled by code that they could write rather than simply buy/license.… Read more