Sunday, July 25, 2010

Devilishly good album

Okay, okay, "Get behind me Satan" isn't the newest album, hell it isn't even the newest album by White Stripes, but it is the one that I am listening at the moment.

Previously I had almost ignored The White Stripes and did think that they weren't even that good.Somehow this summer I really started digging "Blue Orchid" and it's great guitar sounds. I was quite surprised how much there is variation on this album. There great rock sounds. The drumming is awesome. The strange country wibe in some of the songs is incredible. You won't get bored listeninh to this album.

I definitely want to recommend that you go listen to in Spotify.

The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan


Saturday, July 24, 2010

New type of living

Maybe a month ago I saw a document about Michael Reynolds.Garbage Warrior made in UK in 2007 is document about Micheal and his life.

I think I have heard about Mr.Reynolds and his "Earthships" at least once before. These earthships are experimental houses that Mr. Reynolds has been building already for many decades. His goal is to make houses that are made out things that people throw away (e.g. car tyres, bottles etc.). The houses are designed so that they would leave the smallest possible impact on nature and that the houses would be as far as possible self-sufficient when it comes to heating, electricity and water.

The documentary showed that sometimes the rules that we have made to protect ourselves inhibit truly innovative people to try new things. This really bothered me since here is no question about it that we need to develop housing that uses less electricity and natural resources. 

In my home country industrial production of low-energy and so-called passive houses is about  to start in larger scale and that is quite positive sign. Even though these houses consume significantly less or even no energy the downside is that they rely heavily on technology provided by the society. There is nothing wrong with organised society, but sometimes things go wrong you cannot rely on society to provide utilities. That's why I think Reynolds gets it right. Let's make our housing self-sufficient and ecological.

I think what Michael and his team are trying to do is achievable.  At the moment he is building his houses in New Mexico (and I guess also in Georgia) what know about the climate in New Mexico is that it is not the most hospitable. So it should possible to develop these houses so that they work also in places were conditions are less harsh. I just wonder if these houses work in places like Finland where temperature difference during the year can be 70 degrees celsius?

Anyways I was really impressed and inspired by the documentary and if I ever get possibility to visit one of these Earthships I will definately do it. Check earthship.com for more details. The houses look really cool.

Friday, July 2, 2010

My thoughts on social media

This week I participated to a training course that gave an overview on how to use social media in marketing. The course was reasonably interesting and I must say that I now know a bit more about how to utilize tools like Facebook and LinkedIn in marketing.

One lecture on the course handled the future. The lecturer presented a vision where social media and networks will penetrate to every field of our life. Let?s say that you are walking in the city center and would like to find a restaurant. You take your mobile phone from your pocket and it can recommend to you restaurants based on the places you have visited before, what your friends have recommended and so. The phone could give you the menu an how to get to the restaurant, maybe even make a table reservation and if your friends happen to be in near the phone may suggest that you ask them to join for dinner. This sort of services would apply everywhere and to everything. Computing would be ubiquitous.

For me this kind of vision sounds a bit pointless is the problem that is being solved with computing being everywhere all the time really that big. What is wrong with not knowing where you are, why don?t you want to explore new cities. What this ubiquitous computing becomes a straight jacket that instead of making us explore and try new things keeps us always in our comfort zone. I think that the best part of living is not knowing what becomes happens next, trying new things and challenging yourself every day. If people become so accustomed to being surrounded by technology that advises them in every situation, we might soon be living in world that Isaac Asimov drew up in his book ?Caves Of Steel?.

One crucial point of network is that it brings benefit to the participants. How does the situation change if network becomes too large and it is difficult to assess if someone is getting things without contributing anything. I also wonder that is it possible that the actual first signs no longer are seen in social media, but instead the first signs of trends will be seen in the IRL social networks of early adopters of new trends. What I mean that if when some new trend appears in social media it is already everywhere and known by everybody it becomes quite impossible to try and benefit from this emerging trend.

What happens when people do not want to share or wish to limit the network among which they wish to share information? Will we see new barriers and borders being raised so that people will able to protect their networks? Last week I read that the World Economic Forum has started an social media service for its participants. The service is called WELCOM and the participants of the service are 5000 of the most influential people in the world. Of course these people can not (but should they?) talk openly about what they think about where the world is going, so it is quite understandable that a service like WELCOM has been created.

Social media undoubtedly brings with it also good things. It will be easier to tell about new ideas and opportunities to the right people straight away. The rippling effect of your message may reach a lot more people than a normal marketing message and it will also be more accurate. There is also a great possibility to react to customer responses more efficiently and to develop your goods and services according what customers think.

I predict that the next phase in the evolution of social media will have something to do with assessing if this matters to you personally. The professionals, I believe, speak of semantic web.