Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MUSEUMS & GALLERIES (90%); TALKS & MEETINGS (90%); ART & ARTISTS (89%); CULTURE DEPARTMENTS (78%); FUNDRAISING (78%); EXHIBITIONS (78%); PAINTING (78%); DESTINATIONS & ATTRACTIONS (78%); WORKPLACE DIVERSITY (77%); CHILDREN (77%); BUDGET (72%)
GEOGRAPHIC: HARTFORD, CT, USA (79%) CONNECTICUT, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: IN CHARGE: Peter C. Sutton, above, in his office at the Bruce Museum, preparing for a meeting. Right, top: Mary Sue Sweeney Price, right, director of the Newark Museum, discussing preparations for an exhibition with Christa Clarke, a curator. Middle: Terrie Sultan, right, director of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y., with her assistant, Carol Powel Smith. Bottom: Michael Botwinick, the director of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, called some of the job's business responsibilities ''pretty boring stuff, but incredibly important.'' (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAXINE HICKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ALEX DI SUVERO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

SUSAN FARLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. CT10)

BUSY: Peter C. Sutton, above, director of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich. Below: Michael Botwinick, left, director of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers and Richard Halevy, its director of community development, after a City Hall meeting on a proposed expansion of the museum. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

SUSAN FARLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. CT1)

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The New York Times
May 25, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Global Dreams for a Wireless Web
BYLINE: By JOHN MARKOFF
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2445 words
DATELINE: Menorca, Spain
SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.

''He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,'' Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests -- many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.

These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers' achievements. No stranger to success -- he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s -- he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.

Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON's gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.

The swaps, in theory, would allow ''Foneros'' to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.

At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it's built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.

And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet's commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web's chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.

The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for ''long-term evolution,'' are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.

But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.

For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground -- deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.

Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.

''The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex -- it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,'' said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. ''In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.''

But others have their doubts.

''I know that the people at Google like this idea,'' said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. ''But we're skeptical.''

Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.

''Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,'' he says. ''We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.''

MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.

During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.

Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.

But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)

At the outset, Mr. Varsavsky recalled, Mr. Jobs asked sharply, ''Who needs your community?'' and ''Why should British Telecom bother to do a deal with you, and why shouldn't people just leave their routers open for sharing?''

Mr. Varsavsky says he responded, ''Why should you bother to do a deal with AT&T? Shouldn't iPhones just be connected freely with any cellphone network?''

Mr. Varsavsky says he left the meeting with the uncomfortable feeling that Apple might end up as a competitor rather than as a partner. But it wasn't only because of Mr. Jobs's legendary stubbornness that the Apple meeting apparently went awry. Mr. Varsavsky's own substantial ego also came into play -- something he freely acknowledges when he talks about how he first got into business.

''My father died and my mother was saying, 'Martin, get a job, get a job,' '' he recalls. ''And I would go to job interviews and they would say, 'How do you see yourself in five years?' And I would say, 'Well, at least as your boss!' ''

That attitude surfaced in other forums as well. In high school in Argentina during the 1970s, he says, he persuaded classmates to open their own office supply store to compete with a store across the street from their school. He also declared his interest in left-leaning politics, which he said attracted the attention of the Argentine military junta that was purging high schools of dissidents. In the ''dirty war'' of 1976-83, the government killed thousands it suspected of being leftists.

An officer told the school to expel him, Mr. Varsavsky says, and he left for Brazil. Around the same time, he believes, his cousin was kidnapped and killed by the military. The Varsavsky family fled to the United States, and Mr. Varsavsky earned his undergraduate degree in economics and philosophy at New York University in 1981. He later attended Columbia University, where he received graduate degrees in international affairs and business administration.

MR. VARSAVSKY says start-ups got into his blood during graduate school, when he made his first million in a real estate foray: renovating and reselling lofts in New York.

After moving to Spain in the 1990s, he had three big telecommunications and Internet successes. He says that a $200,000 investment he made to start a long-distance company, Viatel, in 1990 was worth about $240 million when he cashed in his stake in 1999; that the 5 million euros he used to start Jazztel in 1997 has given him a stake now worth about 150 million euros; and that the 38 million euros he used to start a Spanish Internet service provider, Ya.com, in 1999 had grown to about 149 million euros when he sold the company the next year.

Then, after this first round of success, Mr. Varsavsky was hit with a loss that he describes as a striking, gut-wrenching failure. His German start-up EinsteinNet, founded in 2000 as an effort to sell software over a private fiber optic network, collapsed in 2003, leaving him with a personal loss of $50 million.

''I used the most money of my own in a company where I lost it all, and I consider it my business black eye,'' he recalls, saying that he also drew a valuable lesson from the misadventure: ''I don't invest on my own. If other people don't want to back me, it's a sanity check.''

TO that end, Mr. Varsavsky has become a tireless networker, traveling the world to participate in a continuous parade of technology conferences and cultivating a global retinue of friends and contacts. He has also been active on the philanthropic front, earning kudos from a onetime resident of the White House.

''Martin represents the future of entrepreneurial culture and is helping to transform the way people give,'' former President Bill Clinton says. ''He has found different ways to use his acute business sense and creativity to improve our world and the lives of others.''

This month, Mr. Varsavsky brought together more than 70 Internet business people and technologists from Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States for a conclave on his Menorca farm. Some guests represented the more than 20 digital enterprises in which he has a stake; others were ''friends of Martin,'' a loose-knit group that comprises his informal business network around the world.

The four-day conclave featured several unscripted ''tech talks'' in which entrepreneurs described problems they faced building their businesses. Participants included Lukasz Wejchert, the chief executive of Onet, Poland's dominant Internet portal.

Deals with companies like Onet will be crucial if Mr. Varsavsky is to make good on his goal of having a million FON customers on each of three continents by 2010. The two companies recently came close to a deal, Mr. Wejchert says, but Onet decided that it was still to early for it to become an Internet service provider in Poland because the regulatory environment worked against new entrants.

That major players like Onet are beginning to find FON a potentially profitable partner is promising, and Mr. Varsavsky's formidable networking abilities with politicians and entrepreneurs are also a plus. Ultimately, however, FON's success will hinge on its strategic soundness and operational prowess -- not on Mr. Varsavsky's skills at working the cocktail circuit.

He likes to refer to FON as a ''revolution,'' but so far his crusade has had difficulty gathering momentum because formal corporate alliances have been slow to jell.

In Mr. Varsavsky's approach, FON's business is subsidized by non-Foneros -- passing Web surfers who buy time for access to the network -- which he can then share with FON's customers. The approach is different from that of Boingo, a Wi-Fi aggregator based in Los Angeles that charges users a monthly fee for using hotspots while they are traveling.

Yet both FON and Boingo have faced significant resistance from Internet service providers that carefully restrict access to their customers, leaving the idea of a seamless wireless Internet based on Wi-Fi technology an unfulfilled dream so far.

Mr. Varsavsky said he initially hoped that selling $30 Wi-Fi routers embedded with FON software would be all he needed to expand the ranks of Foneros around the globe. But this approach failed to gain traction fast enough, and he shifted gears. Now he is trying to steadily stack up distribution deals with I.S.P.'s.

While some I.S.P.'s have ignored his company, Mr. Varsavsky says FON has gained ground among I.S.P.'s that are looking for a way to attract new customers in competitive markets as well as to compete with high-speed wireless cellular networks.

FON now has a growing range of alliances, including ones with the BT Group, Neuf Cegetel in France, Livedoor (a Japanese I.S.P.), and Time Warner in the United States, as well as a recent agreement with the city of Geneva, which is distributing hundreds of FON routers to residents. Now strongest in Britain, France and Japan, FON has recently made progress with new agreements with two major Japanese retailers and a Taiwanese I.S.P. And Mr. Varsavsky said he is close to major agreements in India and Russia.

FON's losses have shrunk from more than a million euros a month to less than 500,000, Mr. Varsavsky says. He also hasn't given up his belief that a coming generation of wireless Internet technology will eventually give FON an even bigger boost.

The first generation of Wi-Fi technology was limited in range, making it impractical for Foneros to share their routers widely. But a new wireless technology, known as 802.16, which should be more widely available to consumers over the next two years, will offer far greater ranges.

This next generation of wireless communication, called WiMax by Intel and others, may allow him to complete his dream -- in effect making it possible to weave together a wireless digital network in an urban area with nothing more than an army of Foneros willing to let their routers be used as micro cell towers.

''Why should anyone have to build their own towers?'' he asks.

FON's future, he argues, will revolve around universal access to the wireless Internet. In the meantime, he faces a big obstacle in one of the world's most lucrative communications markets: the United States, where newer cellular networks with flat-rate pricing may prove a challenge because they will provide universal high-speed coverage.

In Europe, the Internet landscape looks more promising. The European Commission's decision last summer to place a price cap on voice calls -- to make cellphones more affordable for residents traveling within the European Union -- didn't include mobile data. Recent high-speed wireless networks introduced in Europe also use per-megabyte pricing, discouraging the streaming of large files like video.

That leaves a potentially big opportunity for a widely accessible sharing solution for travelers. Yet even in Europe, there are potential roadblocks, not the least of which has been a historically inhospitable atmosphere for entrepreneurial gambits.

''Europe has a larger market than the U.S.A., but it is culturally fragmented and risk-averse,'' Mr. Varsavsky says. ''But the differences are narrowing, and now there are European venture capitalists and a local entrepreneurial culture.''

Yet he remains undaunted when he discusses his unfinished revolution and FON's prospects.

''FON,'' he said, ''is like a telephone company built by the people,'' he said.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET & WWW (92%); WIRELESS INDUSTRY (91%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS (90%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS (89%); VENTURE CAPITAL (72%); COMPUTER PROGRAMMING (50%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (89%)
COMPANY: GOOGLE INC (54%); MICROSOFT CORP (50%)
ORGANIZATION: FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (59%)
TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (54%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (50%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (50%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (50%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: MADRID, SPAIN (87%) BALEARIC ISLANDS, SPAIN (79%) SPAIN (87%); MEDITERRANEAN (73%); ARGENTINA (71%)
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Martin Varsavsky, in his Madrid home, started FON to let members piggyback on the wireless access of other members worldwide. But his big idea is encountering some obstacles.(PHOTOGRAPH BY MATIAS COSTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. BU1)

Martin Varsavsky has become a constant networker, gathering support for his wireless project.(PHOTOGRAPH BY MATIAS COSTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. BU8) CHARTS: Networks of the Future?: In Martin Varsavsky's FON network, members can tap into the wireless Internet, via Wi-Fi hotspots, shared by other FON members. Chart details the radio spectrum. (pg. BU8)(Sources: Federal Communications Commission

FON)
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738 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
May 25, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

On Shore, a Week to Release Stress but Also a Chance to Address It
BYLINE: By COREY KILGANNON
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 29
LENGTH: 1340 words
For many service members, Fleet Week is a fun time to get some shore leave, explore New York and have a few -- maybe free -- drinks.

But for Dan McSweeney, a former Marine Corps captain who is now a reservist who handles publicity for the corps, it is an opportune time for a more serious task: approaching sailors and marines while in port, in a more leisurely setting, to broach the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Although he now lives in Manhattan, Mr. McSweeney does not forget the mortar blasts from his time in Iraq. He still cringes when he hears random rumblings in the city, or sounds resembling air raid sirens.

On Saturday, standing on Pier 88 in Manhattan, where two of the five Navy ships in town for Fleet Week were docked, Mr. McSweeney greeted sailors and marines as they departed their ships. He handed them leaflets and cards with information about the Department of Defense's Mental Health Self-Assessment Program, which allows service members and their families to take an anonymous test online, over the phone or at special events. The assessments are intended to help identify symptoms and provide help for post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

''Here's a couple of young jarheads,'' he said, stepping up to two wiry marines in their blue and gray dress uniforms. They politely took the cards, thanked Mr. McSweeney and kept walking.

''They won't stop to talk about it,'' he said. ''Even though PTSD bears much less of a stigma today in the military than years past, it's still pretty private. The message is just, if you've been deployed and have seen some pretty bad stuff, it's better to face it than not to face it.''

Fleet Week, a Memorial Day staple for more than 20 years, began on Wednesday as five United States Navy ships, a United States Coast Guard cutter and three Canadian ships sailed into New York Harbor with thousands of sailors and marines aboard. The Navy has docked the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge and the guided missile cruiser Leyte Gulf at Pier 88 at 48th Street, and the cruiser Monterey and the destroyers The Sullivans and Nitze at Stapleton Pier on Staten Island.

Generally, the ships are open for public viewing from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Tuesday, with lines capped at 4 and some exceptions on Sunday.

A Rara Avis: The Osprey

On the deck of the Kearsarge is an exotic-looking aircraft that looks like a cross between a propeller plane and a Black Hawk helicopter. It is the much-heralded and controversial V-22 Osprey, known as a tilt-rotor aircraft because its rotors can shift from vertical to horizontal, enabling it to fly like a plane but take off and land like a helicopter. It is capable of the long-range, high-speed cruise performance of a turboprop plane.

The strange war bird looked even stranger in its habitat this week, with the Midtown skyscrapers as a backdrop. It rested on the bow deck of the nearly 900-foot-long Kearsarge, which carries helicopters and surface boats and nearly 3,200 crew members.

The Ospreys cost about $100 million each and have had a long and contentious development process over more than 25 years, including the deaths of numerous pilots during test runs.

Its reputation and history make the Osprey all the more fascinating to civilians and service members alike, said Capt. John Sax of the Marines, who oversees the crew operating the Osprey aboard the Kearsarge. Actually, he said, the Osprey was such a curiosity in Iraq that troops kept taking pictures of it as they climbed aboard.

''They were taking pictures, and they were just awe-struck that, you know: 'What is that?' '' he said. ''And if they did know what it was: 'I can't believe it's here.' ''

Hot-Rodding the Harbor

On the other side of Pier 88, the Navy was showing its Mark V special operations craft, one of the more recent additions to its special warfare units, which include the Seals and the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (also known as Swccs).

The Mark V can drop a 16-member Seals team behind enemy lines for stealth operations, and can be used for coastal patrol. It can move at 47 knots (about 54 miles an hour) and can leap from the crest of one wave to another in high seas, its crew members said. On Friday, its twin diesels and sleek V-hull made light work of the chop in the Hudson River. It blew past a Circle Line tour boat and several ferries. The crew displayed the boat's nimble high-performance maneuvers, cutting a tight bank-turn and stopping the craft in a split second by stuffing its bow into the water, nearly causing it to pitchpole.

The craft has heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers, and the sight of it prompted excited waving from passengers on the Staten Island ferry, when the Mark V zipped around New York Harbor near the Statue of Liberty.

Buy Me a Drink, Sailor?

On Wednesday, it was mostly family and friends waiting for the sailors and marines pouring off the ships at Pier 88. But a few knowledgeable entrepreneurs also positioned themselves at the gate to hand out business cards to service members heading for shore leave in the big city. A car service reminded sailors that they might need a ride back to make their 2 a.m. curfew. But the biggest presence was the staff of a nearby bar: Whistlin' Dixie's Texas Tavern, on 11th Avenue and 51st Street.

Its owner, Aidan Kiernan, told the uniformed men that his was the closest bar to the pier's entrance, and along with several of his female bartenders pushed ''free drink'' cards into eager hands.

He said the bar was offering specials, including the first drink free, and had adopted a ''ladies drink free'' policy the entire week, to attract a female clientele, which in turn would attract more servicemen.

''We're pretty much the only bar within a four-block radius here, so with all the ships docking here, this is kind of our St. Patrick's Day or New Year's,'' Mr. Kiernan said. ''Location, location, location -- this is our week,'' he said. Many of the sailors and marines who came off the Kearsarge on Thursday had Whistlin' Dixie's drink passes in their hands.

Indeed, things were hopping at the bar, which was flooded with sailors in white uniforms and marines in tan shirts. White caps and sailor hats covered tables, along with glasses and beer cans, as Mr. Kiernan's staff entertained the service members, since not too many women had come to take advantage of the free drinks.

The Human Canvas

Maritime tattoos have long been a tradition for sailors. And although the Navy now discourages sailors from getting tattoos that it deems offensive or sexually explicit, body art is still quite common. On Friday, several sailors at Pier 88 displayed the work that they had had done in foreign ports. There were the traditional anchors and American flags and pinup girls and the familiar initials of the United States Navy, but some were done in decidedly new styles.

Frank Montano, a senior chief special warfare operator in the Navy Seals , had a black ink rendering of a frog skeleton crawling up his large right bicep. He said he had had the tattoo done in the Philippines, and chose the frog image because Seals are also called frogmen. On his left thigh he had a more familiar anchor with the anchor line wrapping around it and the letters U.S.N. across the front. Another Seals officer, Art Castiglia, walked up and pulled off his shirt to reveal a similar frog image on his right shoulder.

''It's a symbol,'' Chief Montano said. ''Everyone's proud of what they do. Whether you're a sailor, a cook, a corpsman or a Seal, everyone's got their pride.''

As he spoke, a former Navy man, Mike Smith of Bay Shore, on Long Island, walked up and took off his shirt to show his 40 tattoos, many of them done while he served in the Navy from 1974 to 1977. One on his back showed a female devil with angel wings and bared breasts, with the words: ''Looks like an angel -- devil in disguise.''

''I'm not done yet,'' Mr. Smith said. ''I'm still getting more.''