Dream and Search Forever

Poem


Hide your face forever
dream and search forever

Open your eyes, open your mind
proud like a god
trapped in yourself, break out instead
beat the machine

The look in the eye of the storm, say what are you afraid?
Smile, your eyes are the ones that meet me half way
The drops, cries, open your eyes and see
We are searching and dreaming forever

Hide your face forever
dream and search forever
night and night you feel nothing
we have to believe in what we feel

Take the first step to the unknown
Freeze the air like you do
Where my words weight a ton
but hardly ever come out right

You are the perfume in the air
I am the utopian craftsman

In that moment I will love you forever
And never search again

Venture Cup Final

Business

CityVice is selected to be one of the 10 finalists in Venture Cup business plan competition. This is great news and actually I don't really care if CityVice wins, the publicity this generates is what I'm after. Be ready, we are preparing to come out strong!

Better Than The Best

Poem

Why oh why are we looking for control?
There is nothing you can do
The chaos theory will prevail!

Why oh why are we looking for love?
There is nothing you can do
The love will find you eventually!

Why oh why we say something is the best?
You can't rank it like that
The best is something given your heart into it!

Young Adults Giving Up TV in Massive Demographic Shift

Business

Reblogging from Beet.tv: Online video is replacing television for consumers 25 years and younger as part of a dramatic demographic shift. Watching video on a personal computer is becoming the principal way young adults consume video.

Adobe business development chief Bill Rusitzky thinks that for many young adults 25 and under, there is a greatly diminished interest in watching television as video consumption is shifting dramatically to the PC, he told me. He says that as this population grows, there will be a big change in media consumption patterns over the next ten years.

While the nascent online video industry is figuring out business models, a big demographic shift is on our side.

Crossover of Senses to Helsinki?

Visuals

I graduaded from LSBU Arts Management course on 2006, which is one of the best arts courses in Europe (officially rated). Arts Management students from London South Bank University (LSBU) have been presenting high quality, innovative events for the last ten years. Featuring a wide and diverse programme and benefiting from a skilful group of tutors, the Art Management events have received high acclaim from artists and audience members, as well as professionals in the industry.

Given this strength of quality and reputation, people are often surprised to learn that the events are an entirely non-profit operation. But it's true. Each member of the group contributes his or her talents entirely out of personal passion and out of the desire to enrich the cultural terrain of the community.

Some videos in my portfolio

Now to continue the heritage and a project that was running 2007-2008 Crossover of Senses, I am thinking of bringing it to Helsinki as well. The idea is simply to mash up two different disciplines together. Do you have any ideas which to mash up?

Sex in High School

Love this quote on a Videoplaza blogpost of their CEO Sorosh Tavakoli. So true!

“Online video advertising is like sex in high school: Everybody talks about it, nobody really does it and the ones doing it are pretty bad at it

Home in 2040

Academic

There was an interesting article in Tekniikka & Talous webzine in Finland about a design vision of a home in 2040. Below is the English translation.



”I wake up in my multiroom box and go from the bedroom to the bathroom. When I return through the same door, bedroom has turned itself into a kitchen, as my home will guess that it will the step in my morning routines.

The breakfast is already made. I spread the table wider with my hands and look around. I'm in a Parisian cafe. With a gesture of my arm the view changes in a safari scene. I pick up a banana, peel it up and throw the rubbish on the table, which instantly drops it into the waste disposal system.

I go to work at a wikibar, which is at the street level of my condominium. At the wikibar, I go to the brainfloor, which stimulates my senses and wakes me up for thinking. At the workconsole I will save the intuitive created thoughts and continue to the team working space. My colleagues are gathering there as well.

Our ideas are displaced on the walls, the space will listen to us and saves all the new thoughts from the brainstorming.

We have a break at the bar, where I get a new idea. I go the information display, which does offer me more info about the subject. After the break, our team goes to simulationroom to have a look at the plan, product or project would look like when completed.

After work I go to the condominiums meeting space. I will meet my family and friends, pick up an apple and sit by the river under a blue sky. In reality the meeting space is part of the series of rooms, but with display systems and mirrors, it looks very realistic outdoor space. In our room its spring, though elsewhere it could winter wonderland or a tropical sunset."

This is a vision of architecture engineering student Juuso Kangas about living in 2040. He is a member of the group which won a Finnish award for future visions.

The core idea around the vision is "metamaterial", in which the material will mold into the needs of the user guided by AI. Bedroom will become living room and the bed becomes a couch. The design sculpture becomes a table.

Metamaterial creates a wealth of opportunities. In the future, shops are not selling pieces of furniture anymore, but codes for materials that creates certain shapes.

Staggering Teenage Online Habits

Business

I repost this info from a great blog site of Flypaper.tv. Go the flypaper post for links to more in depth data of the surveys.

Telegraph.co.uk reported that Teenagers spend an average of 31 hours a week online, according to a study by CyberSentinel. The study interviewed 1000 teenagers, all between the ages of 13 to 19 years. In addition, Paidcontent covers a music-related study around youth, which asks: would you rather go without sex or music?

Below we gather a few key statistics, in the hopes such insight helps us cater to our customers in more profound and effective ways.

Internet Habits Per Week (CyberSentinel):

* 3.5 hours communicating with friends on MSN

* 9 hours spent using Chat rooms, forums, MSN, and social networking sites such as Facebook to communicate with friends

* 1 in 4 teenagers polled admitted to regularly chatting with strangers online - the majority of whom think it is harmless

* 2 hours watching videos on YouTube

* Over 1hr is spent looking at cosmetic surgery procedures

* 1.5hrs are devoted to family planning and pregancy websites

* 1hr 35minutes spent on diet and weigh loss websites

* 14hours per week are spent surfing the net un-chaperoned

* 1hrs and 40 minutes browsing sites for pornography (If you do the math that equals 87 hours per year!)

* 1hr and 40 minutes spent downloading or listening to music

* 33% of teenagers surf the web in the bedroom, while 27% surf in their parent’s study or living room

* Thankfully, its not all fun and games, as these teenagers also admit spending a minimum of 3hrs per week use the internet as a homework and academic resource

SEX or MUSIC?

A recent study by Marrakesh Records and Human Capital shows that:
(Surveyed 1,000 15 to 24-year-olds)

* 60% of young people would rather give up sex than music
* 70% say they don’t feel guilty for illegally downloading music from the internet
* 61% feel they shouldn’t have to pay for music.
* 43 to 49% of the music owned has not been paid for
* The majority think £6.58 is a good price for a CD album
* They also believe downloaded albums should be £3.91, singles 39p

* 75 % have watched a music video online in the past three months
* 70 % bought a CD in the past three months
* 62 % played music on their phone in the past three months
* 52 % have paid for a music download in the past three months
* 45 % have played music on their games console in the past three months

* 67 % think radio is still the best medium for hearing about new bands
* 63 % say they rely on recommendations from friends for hearing about new bands
* 49 % prefer music channels like MTV for hearing about new bands
* 21 % prefer newspapers for hearing about new bands
* 17 % prefer music magazines for hearing about new bands
* 14 % prefer blogs for hearing about new bands

* 38% think YouTube is the best way for exploring new music
* 15% feel MySpace is best for exploring new music
* 8% think Facebook and official band sites are best for exploring new music
* 4% think NME and Last.fm are the least important sites for exploring new music

Brain Hacking

Visuals

I guess these projects in advertising were inevitable. In a blog run by Taneli Tikka, he explains geniously the way to "hack you brain". Or more perhaps way to fuck up the way brain functions and operates the evolved and learned patterns of understanding the world around. Read the blog post for the explanation.

I wonder how many examples of such there is in the arts? What kind of experiments? There are many I know, most well known maybe Dali using this hacking of brains idea.

Web Real Estate vs. Content

Business

Raising funding in the current economical situation is tough. However,Twitter has raised $35 million from Venture Capitalist. Well done for them for the amazing service that I as well use. Thou this raises some questions about the current state of online business and so called real estate.

For me, working on the online's content side, all the technological development and platform systems with API's are like real estate land. Currently everyone is racking up users as fast as they can, still not aiming to make money from the huge amount of users populating their service. Like Facebook, over 200 million regular users and very low income compared to their size. Obviously there are few examples like Finnish Habbo Hotel, which are actually racking up a solid cashflow.

I think all this architecture building should start looking for more opportunities. Like what to build on this land they have acquired? Technology, or kinda infrastructure is important and a base on everything, though the actual service and monetizing that service is very important.

Just relying on user generated content is not enough, because no one is really not interested to pay anything for it. It is low quality, badly designed and it is not regularly generated.

Dream of Forgiveness

Thoughts



What characterises the human race more, cruelty, or the capacity to feel shame for it. I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history.

Without hope, the would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

- Roberts, Gregory David (2003) Shantaram

Diving to turn 30

After a lot of work, me and my dear family took a week of to dive at the Red Sea. This was part of the celebration of my 30th Birthday, which by the way is on the same day as my dad's 57th. I say, diving is just amazing. Can't talk enough of it. Here are a few photos.[gallery]

More Online Video Data

Comscore has announced its latest Online Video findings, with Americans watching 12.7 billion videos in November 2008 (up 34% from last year), watching 87 videos on average per person. Google and YouTube dominated the statistics, accounting for 40% of this online video usage. Fox Interactive Media came second ( 3.5% of video views), then Viacom digital (2.6 % of video views). Hulu topped the charts in terms of duration of video watched (avg. 12 minutes per video, vs. 3 min avg duration of YouTube), but in terms of percentage of video views it placed sixth with 1.8%. We expect this figure to rise exponentially over the year.

CityVice won an award

Business

Last friday, on 12.12.08, CityVice was awarded "Willi Idea 2008" award for the best business idea in the south eastern Finland. The review had 27 teams returning their idea for the judge panel compromising from top public business development and funding agencies representatives. Such as Technopolis, Tekes, Lappeenranta Technological University.

CityVice won the awards with a clear unanimous opinion of the panel. Were were praised for the idea, markets that were well defined and for a team that has resources to make it happen.

CityVice salutes and thanks all who have been part of this so far. It is great to see such interest toward the idea. Much more to come.

Risto Siilasmaa Keynote in Helsinki

Feature

Risto Siilasmaa, the founder and former CEO of F-Secure (among other tricks of trade), kicked off Slush Helsinki last week with his keynote addressing the current economic situation. Mr. Siilasmaa is one of the most famous Finnish entrepreneurs of all time, having IPO’d F-Secure and now directing such companies as Fruugo, Nokia and others as a board member. Few very good points.

Keynote Video

By ArcticStartup