I’m back!
Written on 13 March 2009 by Saara Laaksonensaaralaaksonen.com is back! I had to change webhosting from Lycos to DreamHost after Lycos ceased all its activities and that wasn’t an easy process… not a big surprise really because this wasn’t the first time I had some problems with Lycos! Well Lycos webhosting is buried now so let’s not talk about that anymore.. let’s just hope that with DreamHost things will run happily and smoothly! So far so good!
Digital Native @ Work!
Written on 20 January 2009 by Saara Laaksonen
Here’s my 3 year old niece checking hamster videos from†YouTube. I was trying to help her but it turned out that she’s very familiar with using Mac already and can pick the videos she wants to watch by herself! In few years she can use computers better than I do… digital natives!
We love Mac @ iTive
Written on 2 December 2008 by Saara Laaksonen
Just finished a meeting at iTive’s office
Traditional Media Embracing Social Media
Written on 27 August 2008 by Saara LaaksonenI’ve been following for quite a while how big media companies here in Finland are taking care of their online presence and moving in the area of new media. I think they are reacting pretty well on the changing needs of the consumers and they actually have to do it because their competitors are doing it too. These days it’s definitely not enough to broadcast shows and advertisements on television, radio or newspaper anymore, you have to move smartly in the web too in order to keep the consumers interested. The companies have to come up with new ideas and offer new possibilities constantly to stay in the game.
Media companies like MTV Media, Nelonen Media, Yleisradio and the big newspaper companies are already using many social media tools like internet TV’s, podcasts, blogs and discussion forums. Some of them have also created communities around different programs. One great example of this is the reality show Big Brother 2008. The show is broadcasted on Sub which belongs to MTV Media. They have created a community around the show. After joining the community, you can for example discuss about the show, give ideas and opinions about it or make friends with other members. You can also upload your own videos in it. One great thing I noticed in the community site was the “Ask from Sub” -box in which they are encouraging people to send questions about the channel’s programs, web pages or pretty much anything and the staff of Sub will provide the answer to the questions. This is really good thing and will keep people motivated in joining the conversation for sure. Showing to the consumer that you care about them and their problems or ideas is always a smart move!
Another top service I’ve noticed is Nelonen’s “El‰m‰si uutiset” in which anybody can send to Nelonen a short video clip of anything they find interesting. If the video is interesting enough it will be shown in the channel’s television news and Nelonen will even provide the sender a reward of 100-200 euros. I like this idea a lot! Today anybody can create content to the web and it’s really smart from Nelonen to give it’s viewers this kind of possibility to get their voice heard louder!
I’m really anxious to see which will be the next moves made by these big media companies here in Finland! Maybe they will go more mobile? Or they will use the traditional media as a channel to redirect their audience to new media?
WidSets - Cool Mobile Wigdets
Written on 11 August 2008 by Saara LaaksonenI like to search for new and useful apps for my mobile phone and I do it mostly by following the feeds from Wom World. I have found all the apps I have downloaded on my phone by reading the news coming from that page.
My latest discovery is called WidSets. It is a great application which enables me to use cool widgets on my mobile for free! There’s hundreds of widgets to choose from and I can pick the ones I’m interested in. Just with one click the widget appears on my phone. And if I want (and have the skills for it) I can also create new widgets.
The widget categories range from blogs and forums to fun and games and from mail and messaging to travel or weather. Basically there’s something for everyone! At the moment I’m using about 10 widgets. So far the most interesting ones are Push email, a widget that enables me to receive and send email for several different email accounts, Private Chat for chatting with other WidSets users and Foreca Weather. Other useful widgets are for example Wikipedia, YouTube and different news services.
If you are a mobile geek like me, have a look at WidSets and if you know some other interesting apps for mobile phones, let me know about them!
The X-Cell Project
Written on 11 July 2008 by Saara LaaksonenAt the moment I’m working on a project called X-Cell. The work we’re doing includes testing and presenting new social media solutions for the purposes of local and regional organizations, schools and companies. The project is going on pretty well. We have for example agreed to do this pilot case with local schools in which at least two groups of students will be testing the use of a virtual computer as a part of the course they are studying.
I think the possibilities that social media and web 2.0 offer are endless and I’m really excited about this project. In general the companies are really interested in the web 2.0 and social media tools in this region but the biggest problem to get them use these tools is TIME, the lack of time. The thing is that it might be easy and fast to take new tools in use but if you don’t do anything with them or don’t use them right, the tools are pretty much useless and you won’t get any benefit out of using them. BUT, if you put a little bit of time and effort in using them, you might get good results out of those tools.
The great thing about X-Cell is that the team working on the project will help the companies and organizations in understanding what they can do with web 2.0 & social media and more importantly, what they should or shouldn’t do. If a company starts from zero to use some tools without understanding the big picture behind those tools, they will probably end up losing a lot of time in taking wrong steps, steps that are useless for their company and the benefit they will get might be close to ZERO.
So I think that the lack of time is one of the biggest reasons why companies are not embracing social media as much as they should. Then there’s lack of knowledge or interest, budget… etc. But I would really like to know, what’s your take on this so drop me a comment!
And if you’re interested in knowing more about X-Cell project or in the work I do in general, visit† www.itive.net.
Going Mobile
Written on 18 June 2008 by Saara Laaksonen†These days we are definately going more and more mobile… and so am I! The first application I downloaded on my Nokia N95 was†Fring. I like it! I can chat through†Skype†and†Messenger†and update or keep an eye on what’s happening on†Twitter†from where ever I am. That’s handy! The only problem with Fring is that it tends to get stuck sometimes. There are also days when it keeps shutting down and turning on by itself but that doesn’t happen all the time so it’s ok. After Fring came video-streaming service†Qik†which is also pretty cool service.†
Now I’ve taken the next step with my N95 by downloading†ShoZu†and†Google Maps. By using ShoZu I can interact directly from my phone with many sites and communities like Facebook, YouTube, flickr… and the list goes on. So far I have linked it with my blog and flickr account. This means that I can for example send photos or videos really easily from my phone directly to my blog or flickr account. That’s pretty cool!†
And then there is Google Maps. I absolutely love it! I mean, I’m one of those people who always gets lost. Even if I’m going to a place where I’ve been many times before, I can (and probably will) still get a little bit lost on my way there… There was some kind of map function in my N95 when I got it but that was nothing special, unlike Google Maps! I mean it gives me directions how to get from place A to place B, I can search services etc. with key words and I can even check the map with satellite view in case the neighborhood I’m in looks more familiar to me that way.†
I bet there’s many more interesting apps I could download on my N95 but I’m taking it easy. There is always one thing that keeps bothering me when using these services and that is my N95’s battery life which goes down almost faster than light! If I leave from home for more than one day and I don’t have my phone charger with me I’m in big trouble!†
Is it cool or fool to use Twitter and Jaiku?
Written on 22 May 2008 by Saara LaaksonenMicroblogging services like Twitter and Jaiku give us an easy and fast way to communicate with other people around the world. You can use Twitter and Jaiku in many ways. You can for example promote your blog or your company, exchange thoughts and ideas, ask for advise when you have problems with something, get the latest news almost in real time… there’s so many things you can do!
I keep wondering that if we have a possibility to communicate in this kind of easy and fast way that Twitter and Jaiku provide us, why aren’t we using more services like these? Almost none of my friends have ever even heard about Twitter or Jaiku and considering the fact that Jaiku was even established in Finland and then sold to Google last year that is pretty interesting.
Personally I’m really into these kind of services but the opinions about Twitter varies a lot. Some people think it’s just waste of time and that’s normal, but I think that they should at least test it out before judging it. And if they still think it stinks it’s ok, Twitter is not for everybody!
Check out what I’m doing now on Twitter
Testing Out Mahalo
Written on 12 May 2008 by Saara LaaksonenMahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. The idea behind Mahalo sounds curious: searching information without getting links to irrelevant or spam pages.
I had to test it out! Results? Well, when I searched for big cities or famous names the results were excellent! Great links and good suggestions of other things related to what I was searching for. I also liked a lot about the fact that when I searched for restaurants in some city, I could also see the locations of the restaurants in Google Maps directly from the result page. An other thing which was cool about Mahalo was the way the results were listed. If I compare it with Google, for example, I would say that Mahalo is easy to read and it gives results in a clear and well ordered way. Google just gives million links in a random order which makes it difficult to find the most relevant links.
The biggest weakness of Mahalo is that at the moment it’s still a bit limited. It didn’t give any results for many things that I tried to search for (some pretty big cities in Europe for example). It is understandable that when a real person is going through all the links that will appear as results on Mahalo, it is going to take a lot of time to make it work. Actually the job is probably never finished because new content keeps appearing to the internet every day. But in general I was positively surprised about Mahalo’s functionality and I believe that with a little bit of time it will be really strong service.
I will definitely keep my eyes on what’s happening with Mahalo!
Real Life Facebook
Written on 6 May 2008 by Saara LaaksonenIt’s kind of funny that we can be Facebook friends with people we haven’t seen for years - or even with people we have never seen in our lives, and it’s not weird at all. But if those “friends” would appear behind your door asking “Do you want to be my friend?” that would be a bit ackward right? I came across this funny video called “Facebook is now reality” and because I think it’s pretty hilarious I wanted to share it here in my blog. Check it out!
