In a few hours from now, I’ll be flying over the Pyrennées back to France. My internship is (almost) over. I’ve spent a wonderful time here in Cataluña (on the picture, one of the magic fountains next to Plaza de España), learning a lot at work and meeting great people all around.

I’d like to thank, and I mean it, those who particularly brought me something special:

- at “work”, if I may call this work because, although we were definitely extremely busy, it’s always been a pleasure to try to build up things with you guys: Eloy (also known as “boss”), for his guidance, drive, willingness to teach me insights from his – financial management, amongst others – experience, and..ability to enjoy all sorts of situations and just have fun whatever distressed the situation may be; Xavier, although we haven’t had time to interact together as much as I would’ve liked, for your hands-on approach of business, focusing on and only on adding value to the end-user experience.

I have to say I couldn’t find a more complementary pair in you two guys. Last but not least, many thanks to Susana for bringing some stability and patience at the office, not an easy task when surrounded by the crazy folks we all were. Both consulting (what I call “the Gxllos galaxy”) and entrepreneurial ventures are making your business group, all and only made of friends, everyday more efficient, effective, and skilled. Good luck and stamina for the future. Of course we’ll keep in touch, this is a no-brainer.

- outside “work”, many thanks to my all-times friend Pierre for introducing me to his group of international exchange students and his explanations about computer networks. Mathias and Lukasz, thanks for the great fun and the nice conversations we had on, respectively, computer science and telecommunications. I guess that now that we’re all four of us leaving the city, jazz clubs will see their turnover plummet…And of course, thank you Alberto for teaching me some bits of the Art of Bullfighting (la corrida) – I’ve spent very unique moments with you.

I’m not sure you all read this blog, but if you do, don’t forget to start (and keep, Xavier?) blogging! Send me an e-mail for blog-bootstrapping advice.

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The underground war between potential successors of DVD discs is raging. Two main competitors have been identified, Toshiba’s HD DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray. However, my bet is that those solutions are already obsolete. An Israeli start-up named Matteris, incubated at the incubator of Haïfa’s Institute of Technology (known in Israel as Technion), is going the extra mile…

Toshiba had closed in July 2006 a 150 m$ financing round with partners such as Microsoft, Universal Studios, Intel, Warner Home Video, Paramount Home Entertainment, just to promote the qualities of its HD DVD, a sort of 15 Gbytes DVD. The HD DVD is supposed to be easier to manufacture than its main competitor: Sony’s Blu-ray. However, the Blu-ray’s capacity goes up to 27 Gbytes. The HD DVD’s theoretical capacity should approach the 90 Gbytes, against 200 Gbytes for the Blu-ray. Which of these will be the standard storage media in five years from now? Only God knows…

Yet, God might well know about the issue of the race, the exists a third way we ought to consider.

Matteris, a start-up incubated at the Israeli Institute of Technology and funded by the public Proseed Venture Capital Fund (see portfolio webpage reporting the stake in Matteris), will start very soon to manufacture – through a yet-to-be-signed joint-venture agreement, likely to occur with a Japanese player – a 500 Gbytes DVD devised on a disruptive technology using holographics. Additional industrialization costs are marginal when compared to Sony’s ones, despite a capacity multipled by 20 (27 Gbytes vs. 500 Gbytes). Though 500 Gbytes are already not so bad, the maximum storage capacity (already successfully tested) should reach a Terabyte (Tbyte), that is to say 1000 Gbytes. No comment. Or maybe just one: what’s going on in the Israeli cluster of innovation at the moment is big, very big. Matteris is just one example amongst many others, but I still don’t see European multinational companies starting to think about trying to match US MNCs in terms of investments in the Israeli technology innovation potential. Well, too bad for Europe.

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