The art of motivation as explained by Bob Nelson in BusinessWeek's May 1 edition, should not be surprising to us but still worth mentioning the points so we remember them.

Money isn't the only way to recognize and reward employees, you have to move toward the things that are between the lines, such as how peope are treated:

• Don't just ask for worker input - use it.
• Tell your people you care about them.
• Show employees what they're learning.
• Support people when they make a mistake.
• Set clear goals and celebrate accomplishments.

Skype reports that it has achieved the 100 million user milestone. Congratulations! Assuming that this will translate into about 100million USD revenue the math is that per "free" user they make in average 1 USD revenue with their paid services such as Skype In/OUT, server located voice mail and now ring tones. The ring tone service could of course increase the ARPU.

Skype's business model works, and they can certainly also take credit for waking up the telcos from their beauty sleep. Still surprising to me how the telcos seem to always need someone else to do things first before they invest into new technologies. And a final note: while the debate about the price eBay paid for Skype might go on, what Skype has shown very impressively is that big startup VC-backed exits are possible in Europe too, and it might not have been the last one.

Italy seems ready for the launch of mobile TV. If "soccer-crazy" Italians will have a big enough incentive to buy new handsets will have to be seen though. At least Hutchinson is trying to use this opportunity. As reported in Forbes today:

The 3 Italia network, which uses the DVB-H technology, already reaches 65 pct of Italy's population, although
subscribers will need specific handsets to receive the service. The LG Corp LG U900 handset will be sold by 3
Italia from May 15, while the Samsung P910 will go on sale shortly afterwards, 3 Italia said.

In Germany D-Telecom at first wanted to launch its fibre optic VDSL 50 Mbps triple play offering in time for the soccer world championship, but now the news is that it will only be available in August. No-one seems to be upset about it though - at least could not hear any public statements. This is at least a bit surprising as this mega event is a one-time chance and has -obviously- been missed. According to Heise Online

the end users will get a media box from Cisco's Linksys for an "attractive" price. This will have the following feature list: 80GB HDD, USB, Ethernet, Scart and HTMI interfaces. The HTMI interface allows viewers to see HDTV.

The offering will include 100 TV stations, pay-TV channels, access to a video download site plus the usual extended services. There is still some EU political discussion going on over whether and how much D-Telecom has to open this network to the competition. Lastly, the obtained rights for showing the German soccer league games seems also to be still under discussion, since the 45 million EUR per year that D-Telecom pays is much less than the TV channel rights that sold for 220 million EUR.

When I read that GoogleMaps has now higher satellite resolution I had to try it out. Since I fly from Zurich I thought let's take a look at the Zürich airport terminal. Incredible! I am just surprised that they let them do this after 9/11. You can now download Google Maps onto your mobile phone. Just go to the following site (for German) with your WAP browser: www.google.de/gmm

What do governments do when they don't have the know-how to quantify an important matter? Right first time - they sponsor a report from some experts, often provided by management consultancies. And what do the experts do? Right again - they do a survey that is quantitative, to keep costs to a "minimum" and then deliver some results. Best is to have a number - in this case it is 10bn pounds - that is big, but still not too big (100 bn would have been too much), also not too small (1bn would have been too little). So it was clear it could be closer to 10 bn Pounds. And surprise, it is!

Now everyone is happy. The government to have a number, the security industry to quantify the threat, and of course PricewaterhouseCoopers since they can do that every two years. What a great way to spend tax money and make everyone happy. Oh, and if you want to read it still- here is the link.