Toluu : everwas

everwas

you may ask yourself, how do I work this?

It’s a different experience when you’re a world away. I watched the commercials on the special YouTube channel but the spot for the Late Show featuring Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey, and Dave Letterman was my favorite.

Backstory on how it all came together was written up in the New York Times.

- via Laughing Squid

Stamp Rally for Grown-UpsFebruary 7

On our last trip to Japan, we decided to take our dog, Mimi, along to meet the rest of the family. We moved to Finland from the United States so we knew that travelling with pets involves a lot of paperwork. Avoiding a lengthy quarantine for Mimi coming to Finland required the signature and stamp from a man in a windowless office next to San Francisco Airport with a poster that said, and I’m not making this up, “1,000 reasons to say No.” We knew there was some paperwork so shortly after arriving in Finland, started to research what it would take to get little Mimi through customs without a hitch. I’m glad we did because, next to buying a home and getting married, this was one of the more stressful things I’ve ever done.

First stop was the

Loosely ConnectedFebruary 4

Mike Manos has joined Nokia as VP of Service Operations and has been tasked to build the cloud infrastructure for our Ovi services. The New York Times calls him a “data-center celebrity” and reading his blog certainly shows the knowledge and experience he brings to the table. His initial post gives a hint of his methodology which I really like.

I recently spent a good part of a weekend putting together deck furniture for my home. It was good quality stuff, it had the required parts and hardware and not unlike other do-it-yourself furniture it had directions that left a lot to be desired. In many ways its like IT Infrastructure or running any IT shop. You have all the tools, you have all the raw components, but how you put it all together is where the real magic happens, and the directions are usually just as vague on how to do it.

One of the common themes across all steps of the deck furniture pieces was

The iPad is a Digital Coffee Table BookFebruary 3

After looking at the video below, which shows off the signature Apple User Interface, it’s very clear to me what Apple is doing here. The iPad is not a computer, it’s not a replacement for your netbook, notebook, or desktop. The iPad is a $500 entry into book publisher’s most lucrative category, the coffee table book.

Pay particular attention to the UI gestures that drive the photo album app. Forget those old photo albums you have lying around. We’ve all gone digital anyway and it was always awkward to hand a visiting relative a laptop to look at photos of their grand-kids. Projecting them onto the TV, despite the good intentions, always felt like the 21st century equivalent of the dreaded carousel projector slideshows that neighbors used to inflict on each other to back in the Sixties.

Early media tech media coverage panned it and I don’t blame them, the iPad is no replacement for your computer. This device, as the iPod before it, was not designed for the tech

Nordics Bathed in BroadbandFebruary 3

More pretty infographics via Focus.com’s 2009 State of the Internet report. What is it about the internets up here in the Nordics. Norway, Sweden, Finland are the top three for internet penetration (I believe that’s number of households). In terms of speed Finland is quite a bit shy of Japan and Korea but still pulls in at a respectful 22 mbps average broadband speed with Sweden next at 18.2.