Today  The Atlantic announced the full release of The Atlantic Wire, a slick compedium of political news and opinion from around the Web. It’s actually rather brilliant.

Herein lies a problem, however. While I just found a new content site that combines a beautiful interface with a stimulating blend of opinion, I have to access articles from on their site which is a huge problem. This morning I read an article in The Globe and Mail  called ‘Information-Rich, Attention-Poor,’ that sums up the situation very succinctly. The quantity of information I have readily available is almost infinite, however, my attention is scarce. All the multitasking and browser tabs in the world isn’t going to make me more thoughtful or well read when I can only devote a minute or two to any particular news item.

The Atlantic just made this problem even worse by creating a site I want to visit, but probably won’t because I don’t have time. Adding a new content source to my daily routine has zero transaction costs, but takes effort and some repetition to become a habit. What’s needed is a new delivery system that takes any work out of the process.

Earlier this week I had an article published in VentureBeat about Busk, a startup I encountered while I was in São Paulo this July. Busk uses real-time search technology to deliver news content based on tagged keywords and topics. Any mention of the word cricket, for instance, would search a database of 15,000 manually-added news sources and 100,000,000 articles to bring back every mention of the word cricket. Not too bad.

While this solves one problem, it doesn’t fully address the addition of a single source to my daily reading diet. One solution would be to change my home page,  but in doing so, I lose the page that I used to have there. Similarly, with an RSS reader, such as Google Reader or Feedly, I have to check them whenever I want to know about the latest articles posted. As it turns out, Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages are becoming my preferred method of receiving news. I filter most of what I know about the world through these two sites. Anything worth knowing finds its way to me. To put it another way, I’ve become accustomed to the news seeking me out, instead of going to it.

While Facebook and Twitter are good at presenting information in a ‘river of news’ format, it’s far from perfect. For instance, I have to be logged in to either site and separate hard news from social fact. While I don’t have much of a problem with it now, this is due to the scarcity of news sources I receive on Facebook and the sheer volume of duplicated news on Twitter. If I was more serious about it, I would need a more robust solution and so far I’m not aware of one that does the job. I’m sure there is a product out there that stays on top of interesting news sources–preserving the user interface without commodifying the information–and adds new sources without pain. If you’re out there somewhere, I hope we meet soon!

My first story for GigaOm, about advertising solution, boo-box, was recently published. Read the full text here… I’ve got a few more Brazilian startup stories in the offing, for different outlets, so definitely stay tuned.

In case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m relocating to Bangalore, India to take a full-time job with a media startup. Moving to India means uprooting my life and literally restarting halfway across the planet. Such is the life of a TechTrotter.

Although I spent much of the summer months in Brazil it’s nice to know that India was never as far away as it seemed. In particular, a soap opera on the Brazil’s most watched network, Globo, helped to create a common link between the two continents. While I wait for my connecting flight to Mumbai in the Brussels International Airport, allow me to tell you about one of my favorite Brazilian TV shows, Caminho das Indias. (The following contains excerpts from a post original intended for publication on SAJA Forum.)

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India’s impact on the world is felt in myriad ways, but the form it takes can often come as a bit of a surprise. Members of the Indian diaspora are found throughout Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean, but there is one place few would expect; Brazil.

One of Brazil’s most popular television shows is soap opera is called ‘Caminho das Indias‘ or, ‘Way of the Indies.’ The show airs nightly after the 8PM news broadcast on Globo, the largest television network in Brazil. The show has three inter-linked plots that unfold simultaneously in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Dubai and the cast features more than a dozen Portuguese-speaking, Brazilian-born Desis.

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Investing venture capital funds in Brazilian startups is a lot like match-making, which would make Monashee’s Capital partners Eric Acher and Guillerme Decourt  part investor and one part Yenta. Today we sat down at their office to talk about educating the market about the role of a venture firm, taking the long view of investments, how to spot a winner and the importance of saying “no.”

“We’re not techy guys, we’re strategy-oriented,” Acher told me. As such, marrying the right idea with the right team is a strategy that Monashees views as central to their long term success. “An idea is a commodity,” Acher said. “The name of the game is compatibility.” And, just a like a  couple who saying their vows, Monashees is committed to the long-haul.

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One of the best things about traveling is the ability to reinvent oneself on the fly. In New York, I’ve become somewhat of a curmudgeon. After four years in town I’m not as filled with wide-eyed wonderment, or as willing to experiment. One consequence has been my declining intake of live music, a significant departure from the days when I would trek to the Bronx or Brooklyn to see African Hip Hop or grime rappers at a moment’s notice. Expensive drinks, snobby fans and long, late commutes home were just some of the reasons that come to mind.

Not so in Brazil. Last night I attended my third concert in two weekends; a pretty good streak. Last weekend I saw Seu Chico, a group from the city of Pernambuco who cover songs by Brazilian legend, Chico Buarqe.  The venue, Studio SP,  which bills itself as an urban art space and performance hall on Rua Augusta, had a nice blend of grit and posh, with an upbeat crowd.  Even better were the cheap drinks, such as the “busca vida,” which was a mix of cachaça, extra cane sugar and lemon juice.

Of course, the highlight was the band itself. In spite of the fact they played covers, or perhaps because of it, they had the crowd enraptured, singing along loudly with every tune. While the lead singer looked a bit bereft, the group’s 19-year-old pianist, Vitor Araújo, stole the show.

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Yesterday I got to demo a revolution in the offing when I met with boo-box founder, Marco Gomes, and company CEO, Marcos Tanaka, at their headquarters in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of  Pinheros

By creating a tool that is “non-intrussive, yet elegant,” in the words of Tanaka, boo-box allows publishers to target ads based on images and content that appear within a post, leveraging the relationship they have with their audience to add value for all parties involved.

One cool feature I saw was a full-page ad for Marvel comics that expanded to inlcude old comic book covers and a video trailer for the movie ‘Iron Man.’ Those same slots could easily be used to show previous, related posts if a drag and drop feature were to be rolled out some day.

Image via CrunchBase

In 2007, boo-box was the first Brazilian startup to be mentioned in the American press while the company was still in a “pre-alpha” stage, Tanaka said. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch speculated, “this may be quick acquisition bait for Amazon or eBay.” Two years later, the company has partnered with Brazilian e-commerce heavyweights such as Buscape and Mercardo Livre, with shows no signs of slowing down. Twenty two-year-old Gomes wears the hat of CIO, which in American might stand for chief innovation officer. At boo-box, his job is to be constantly on the lookout for ways the company can reinvent itself through innovation.

The full rundown of our lengthy discussion is destined for another venue, so to avoid the risk of plagiarizing myself I won’t say much else. I will however share with you a remarkable lesson I learned. At one point during the afternoon, Tanaka told me his image of an American is a boy with a lemonade stand, or a girlscout selling cookies door-to-door. Brazil does not have an equivalent.

So simple and yet so poignant, that statement helped me to see how as Americans, entrepreneurship is practically part of our DNA.

Click to play

Fabio Akita wants Brazilian businesses to fail. Really.

The Ruby on Rails evangelist and apostle of agile management also thinks that while nine out of 10 Brazilian startups will probably fail, this is good for business overall.  The quicker flaws are exposed, the sooner people can go about fixing them. “Having no problems is a problem,” Akita said. “You can’t improve if you assume you are not making mistakes.”

On a blissful evening in the depths of *cough* winter, we met at a lively cafe on Paulista Ave, to discuss the language and lifestyle of Ruby on Rails programming, as well as what barriers must be broken for Brazilian companies to take their place on the world stage. Besides the typical culprit, stifling bureaucracy and its attendant cronyism, inefficiency and top-down management, Akita said Brazilians have been programmed not to take risks. In spite of the pitfalls, entrepreneurs just think differently. “If they are entrepreneurs, they will try anything to make their dreams come true,” said Akita.

Fabio Akita is the author of the first book on Rails created for a Brazilian audience and a product manager at Locaweb – the largest web hosting company in Brazil, with the mission to make Rails ubiquitous in the Latin American open source community, according to his profile on Working With Rails.

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My time in Sao Paulo is winding down quickly and I’m starting to feel like a local. Well, that’s almost a complete exaggeration, except that I can walk home to my place Jardins from over a mile inn three of four cardinal directions. I know the subway system (though I sometimes get on a train going the wrong direction) and communicating in Spanish is proving to be more useful than I could have imagined

I went to the Museu de Futbol today, a world class tribute to the world’s game. I also had an awesome meeting with Marco Vanossi, at the headquarters of Buscape in Vila Olimpia, Sao Paulo’s answer Silicon Valley. In the course of our conversation, I learned a great deal more about the difficulty startups have in getting government money. It seems that the people in charge of giving out the money want extensives guarantees that the companies will be successful based on past performance. One problem however is that a startup business may be testing an unproven technology that, if it works, can create astronomical profits, but it may also fail. I hope to get some time with someone who can speak from the government’s perspective in the near future, so both sides of the story are heard.

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During my visit to The Hub Sao Paulo, I spoke with Gilberto Jr., co-founder of Amanaie,  about the role of the Brazilian government in fostering innovation. He said that although the government has committed significant resources to hi tech investments, the money isn’t getting where it is supposed to go. Jr also challenged the notion that there are no startups in Brazil. Along with a small group of partners, Jr. launched a Web site called Startupi, which he said is like a Brazilian TechCrunch. Each week, Startupi profiles 5-10 homegrown startups.

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Brilliance lives in the mind, but ideas need a place to grow. One of the great things about creative people is that they have no shortage of ideas, but as is often the case, hard currency can be in short supply. Before leaving the States, my friend, David, mentioned an organization called The Hub that builds multi-purpose work spaces, and plans to build one in New York. However,  since I was leaving town, it didn’t register at the time how helpful it could be. Looking back at how casually I leaped into the unknown, I realize now that I too needed a hub of some kind to connect me to the people I was hoping to meet in Brazil. After a week of furtive cold calls, I was over the moon when my efforts finally materialized into on-site interviews and a visit to The Hub Sao Paulo. My gracious guide was Paulo, a programmer and blogger whom I met through an Aardvark query. Just goes to show how creative applications of technology can deliver unexpected results. The Hub is a flexible, membership-based work space where creative types from all disciplines can come to socialize and cross-pollinate ideas that lead to exciting and unexpected new projects. “It’s a mixture between a Starbucks, a traditional office and an incubator,” said Barbara Stutz, one of the co-founders and a  partner in The Hub Sao Paulo. Opened in August of 2008, The Hub Sao Paulo was still in “soft launch,” Stutz said, with about 120 members paying 440-600 Reais (approx. USD 220-300) for an allotment of hours in the workspace. Members can book space for meetings, tackle personal projects or just hang out and be inspired if they like. Said Stutz, “It’s just an excuse to have all these people here linked and doing something.”

Paulo @ The Hub Sao Paulo

From the outside, The Hub was one of a dozen unassuming doors lining Rua Bela Cintra, a busy thoroughfare that crosses Paulista Ave., Sao Paulo’s most notable drag. Inside, however, the building had the unmistakable feel of a creative agency, such as a tony architect’s studio or a graphic design firm. The high ceilings, exposed brick and minimalist art pieces gave me a sense that experimentation and reinvention were happening constantly inside. The rear wall had a row of huge, circular windows looking out onto a handful of Sao Paulo’s innumerable office towers, a jumble of while bathing the room with natural light. On a central island, a group of people worked quietly on desktop computers, while in another corner, two women chatted excitedly with a camcorder. The first Hub location was built in London in 2005, said Stutz, and it has expanded its operation throughout Western Europe, India and South Africa, as well as three North American venues: Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montreal in Canada and Berkeley, CA. Hub Sao Paulo co-founder, Pablo Handl, confirmed that a Hub location in New York City is expected to open in 2010. He also said that walking into a Hub anywhere in the world, a certain look and feel is maintained. Tell me more …