One person I spoke here to estimated there are now 5,000 daily Swedish blogs, although it’s in online communities that Swedes have largely collected, somewhat reflecting the left-leaning community spirit of the culture which grew out of its 60s socialist roots. Ericsson is gaining ground on Nokia amongst the Swedes, who often shunned the rather unsexy phones produced by their home-grown firm in favour of Finalnd’s finest. This is in
At some point there’ll be a more detailed report on my findings in Scandinavia, but for now, here’s a smattering of some of the people I’ve been talking to and the information I’ve gathered on the ground in Stockholm, Helsinki and Tallin (Estonia). My ‘Scandinavian Odyssey’ began with a dry sandwich aboard a British Airways flight From London into Stockholm’s super-futuristic Arlanda airport. Sitting next to me were a Swedish
I’m in Stockholm this week (till Friday) researching tech, media and mobile companies here for the The Guardian and New Media Age magazine, among others. Email me if you fall into that category and want to meet up. Likewise if you are in Helsinki – where I’ll be from Friday to Tuesday, or Tallinn (Estonia) on Wednesday… I’ve already had a great meeting tonight with Henrik Torstensson of Torstensson.com.
It’s not said often enough – especially by me – that John Handelaar is one OK bloke. Way back, I met John during the unbelievably bad Internet slump of 2002 when to say you’d been involved in the boom was a little like admitting you’d been rigging UN aid funds to Las Vegas during Live 8. John helped me put mbites.com together, hung around and helped when times were tough
It’s always nice to write about a company that has the potential to genuinely do some good. The Starsight Project is just such a company. It has come up with an ingenious system for providing solar power, Internet access and street-lighting (and potentially a lot more) all from a network of lamp posts in developing cities. The first trial will be in Cameroon. My article for the Financial Times about
I’m up in Manchester covering In The City, the annual UK music business conference(Sat-Mon), for MusicBites.com and Netimperative.com. Tune in for the coverage…… (Please Google the headline if you don’t understand it).
I’ve decided to pull back from a couple of things I’ve been doing lately and make myself more available for new projects. No, that is not a round-about way of saying ‘gizzajob’! And I’ll still be writing for the usual suspects. I’m just saying I’m a ‘gun for hire’. There are a number of interesting things going on right now, so it seems like the right time to be open
I’m at TED.com, the annual uber-conference about the convergence between technology, advertising and design. Although this year it’s very much about the affect technologies can have on global development, social collaboration, media disruption and the like. This one is billed at TED Global, held in Oxford, although it’s very much and American style event – not least because getting press accreditation has been a nightmare! Just heard an amazing chat
Dear terrorists. Think you are going to scare us, huh? Kindly fuck off.
After coming across too many people recently who asked why I don’t post to my blog more often, I have realised that “being too busy” wasn’t really a good enough excuse. In my defense I would like to quote the honourable Jimmy Guterman, a online journalist (and former Industry Standard staffer) who actually knows what he’s talking about: “Words written since May 2001 that have appeared on my weblog: 71,642.