Brin, who shared the stage with a guitar-playing headless robot built by the geeks for fun, fielded a barrage of questions such as "Do you still write code?" and "Will you become Bill Gates when you grow up?"

The Holon warehouse is funded by two Israeli venture capital firms, Giza Venture Capital and Carmel Ventures, to give some of Israel's best tech entrepreneurs a place to build non-commercial projects that might otherwise never come to life. Vardi, who has partnered in founding more than 50 Israeli high-tech companies, including ICQ, which was sold to AOL for over $400 million, brought Brin there for a purpose: to convince him that there is so much creativity and entrepreneurship in Israel that Google (GOOG) needs to to do even more business there.

Members of the audience included the current presidents of Albania, Angola, Burkino Faso, Croatia, Latvia, Poland, Rwanda, Slovania, Uganda, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, the 10th and last president of Czechoslovakia, and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Wiesel acknowledged in his talk that Israel is not perfect, alluding to its many problems. But, he stressed, Israel does not want its dream to become anyone else's nightmare. "If Israel could make peace with Germany who is to say it could not do the same with the Palestinians?" he asked.

On May 12, Vodafone, which already owns 50% of South Africa's leading cell phone player, ruled out such a bid. But a potential new contender has emerged: the United Arab Emirates' Emirates Telecommunications Corp., Etisalat.

Reuters reports that at a telecoms conference in Cairo Etisalat Chairman Mohammad Omran admitted his company is looking at MTN to expand in Africa.

The attraction of Africa is obvious. With markets in the U.S. and Europe saturated, the world's biggest cellular players are turning to Africa, the fastest growing mobile phone market worldwide.

With fixed line phone service expensive in many parts of Africa, many Africans use cell phones instead. Increasingly, cell phones are used to provide mobile payment and other types of services, which are increasingly popular in rural parts of Africa where access to services such as banking is limited.

Back in 2004, a report published by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report estimated it would take until 2010 at the earliest for cellphone subscribers in Africa to exceed 200 million. Today, two years earlier than anticipated Africa boasts more than 250 million mobile phone customers.

If Bharti wins the battle for MTN, it will create a cellular colossus with a sizeable presence in two of the world's fastest growing mobile markets: India and Africa.

It will also up the pressure on Vodafone. For the last few years, Vodafone has realized that its future growth depends on building up a better presence in these countries. Acquiring MTN isn't possible for antitrust reasons; unless Vodafone sells its stake in Vodacom. That, according to the company, is a nonstarter.

Instead, Vodafone's aim is to gain full control from Vodacom's other shareholder, Telkom South Africa Ltd. If the British cell phone giant intends to keep its leadership position, it will need to move fast to secure its place in Africa.

Varsavsky made his fortune by being a master at all kinds of networking. He built tech companies in the U.S. and Europe, including Viatel, Jazztel, and FON, and is an expert schmoozer. About ten of the guests were people that Varsavsky met while he attended the World Economic Forum as a young global leader. He also has connections with Skype, Google, and Silicon Valley techies.

The idea behind the gathering was for people from China, Japan, Europe, the U.S., and Latin America to brainstorm about net neutrality, carbon footprints, and business model issues. Attendees included lots of start-ups plus Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito, Megan Smith, director of Google’s new business development and strategy, Technorati CEO Dave Sifry, French blogger and entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, and LastMinute.com co-founder Brent Hobermann.

Varsavsky, who was born in Argentina but is now based in Madrid, entertained guests with the story of how he came to buy the farm. Seems he was surfing the Internet on his laptop, looking at real estate listings, while sailing off the coast of Menorca, when he realized that that he was passing a property for sale. He phoned the real estate agents, met them on the beach, and took a quick tour. The place was in ruins and overrun by squatters. He persisted anyway and did what lots of other potential buyers could not: convinced the owner, an elderly Spanish general, finally to part with the land.

It has taken six years of the work but the effort was worth it. The landscaping and homes are stunning. Many of the conference attendees were looking forward to mountain biking, sailing and swimming but cold, rainy weather kept everyone huddled indoors. With so many geeks gathering in one place it is unsurprising that the WiMax signal--which was converted into Wi-Fi--was quickly overloaded by laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries. Those who weren’t feverishly blogging, e-mailing and dealmaking amused themselves playing Wii.

The Siemens scandal has been career death for dozens of top managers at the Munich-based company. Even those not accused of wrongdoing face criticism that they didn't have adequate controls in place to prevent misdeeds. But Kleinfeld, hired by Alcoa as COO last August, has obviously convinced Alcoa's board of director that their faith in him was well placed. Makes you wonder what he could have accomplished at Siemens if he had been allowed to stay.

Up to now Apple has insisted on exclusive agreements with carriers, striking deals with AT&T in the U.S., O2 in Britain, Orange in France, and Deutsche Telekom in Germany. In exchange for exclusivity Apple takes a cut of the revenue that wireless operators collect for voice and data services each month, something no other phone maker is believed to get. But analysts have been raising concerns that the iPhone may not translate as well overseas, with sales sluggish in Europe because of the device’s high price and strong competition from Nokia and others. With the May 5 announcement Apple seems to have acknowledged that it needs to change its strategy.

But it was electric cars, not sportscars, that Ghosn seemed most excited about during the meeting in the town of Cascais on May 1 and 2. By 2010, Nissan expects to roll out the first in a new line of all-electric cars. Unlike past electric vehicles, with their clunky batteries and under-powered engines, Ghosn promises that these cars will not only be 100% emissions-free, but also easy and fun to drive. “We’re going to make a sexy car, [with] attractive design and good driving performance,” he says.

In the not so distant past, the end game of design for Nokia was the phone, Curtis says. Now the phone is a springboard to all sorts of services, he says. Developing relevant services, he believes, means creating an open platform. Then consumers can eventually bolt on applications as needed.

By far the most interesting discussion of the day was led by Nokia's human behavioral researcher Jan Chipchase and Younghee Jung, who will head up a new services and user interface design group in London. They spoke of the Future Urban project Nokia conducted over the last year looking at the mega-trend of urbanization. According to the United Nations, this year for the first time more people in the world will live in urban areas than rural. Nokia went to three cities, Rio de Janeiro, Accra, and Mumbai to get a better sense of what new services and new applications might emerge 15 years out based on this growing trend of urbanization.

One research method used was what Nokia calls "open studio." Working with local experts such as NGOs or even students, Nokia designers went into each city and set up a community based competition asking people to design their dream phone. The results were unusual and led to some interesting insights such as a star shaped phone designed by someone in Ghana that could house up to four different SIM cards, reflecting the local preference for using more than one operator in order to get better prices and coverage. For a look at 15 of the designs, check out this slide show that we put up today.

Chipchase and Jung have traveled all over the world for Nokia as design anthropologists and their inisghts can be found on their personal blogs at http://younghee.com and www.janchipchase.com

Their latest: Slapping higher taxes on Britain's lowest paid workers by abolishing the 10% bracket. A rebellion by Labour Party MPs forced them to agree to compensate those affected--with much loss of face for the Labour brass.

Darling also has hit expats with tax hikes and bungled a change in Britain's capital gains regime. Now, following the announcement that two companies, Swire, a pharma outfit, and publisher United Business Media, would move their headquarters to Ireland for tax reasons, Darling is suddenly worried.

It seems to have dawned at last on Darling and Brown that tax hikes and other meddling might not be wise in the face of what may well be a credit crunch induced recession. Labour Party leaders are scrambling because they face the prospect of big losses in local elections being held across the country, including in London on Thursday. A major defeat this week will be seen as a precursor to an end to Labour's three-term hold on parliament in the next national elections.

First, Nokia clearly retained its No. 1 position (there was never any doubt about that) selling more than 115 million units for about 40% share. Nokia sales still remain greater than those of its next three rivals combined. Samsung grabbed a strong No. 2, Motorola sank further, LG gained ground, and Sony Ericsson shed a few points.

The difference in the market share numbers from the three researchers turns out to revolve entirely around their estimates of the size of the "other" category, which ranged from a low of 46.1 million units according to Strategy Analytics to a high of 55.7 million units per IDC. ABI Research pegged it in the middle, at 53.5 million.

In the past, Germany overreacted to global economic cycles because of its over-regulated labor market, and because too many companies had too little profits and too much debt. However, Jacques Cailloux, Chief Euro Area Economist of The Royal Bank of Scotland, points out that Germany is a different country than it was during the last slowdown early in the decade. The labor market is more flexible, and German companies are leaner, more innovative and have healthier balance sheets.

While Germany and the rest of the world may still have to absorb some unforeseen shocks, there’s a good chance that Europe’s largest economy will bounce back quickly once the rest of the globe stabilizes.

The initial ruling marks the first phase in a lengthy battle begun by the OFT. The regulator has long argued that the fees, which they estimate generate $7 billion a year in revenue for the banks, are much greater than the real cost of administering the accounts. After Britain's top five banks refunded $810 million to customers in the first half of 2007, the lenders and the OFT agreed to take the issue to court to clarify the law.

The issue though, is far from being settled. The big banks are considering appealing and the OFT has yet to figure out what is a fair charge for so-called unauthorized borrowing. What the banks fear is that they could face compensation claims from customers dating back six years that could lead to payouts running in the tens of billions. Given the current shakiness in Britain's banking sector, that could be an enormous blow at the worst possible time.

The Russian state and Gazprom may be manuevering to soften the company up for future negotiations on price and control. BP wouldn't mind if its partners sell out to Gazprom. In the current nationalist atmosphere in Russia, a strong local partner is needed, and Gazprom certainly fits the bill. BP is also thought to assume that Gazprom will eventually take control of TNK-BP, not just 50%. (My colleague Jason Bush in Moscow touched on this in his interesting Mar. 20 story on a spy raid at the Moscow headquarters of TNK-BP.) Local control is now considered hard to avoid because Russian law now bars non-Russian controlled companies from developing large oil and gas fields, which are deemed strategic.