Amazing footage of Northern lights

I run into amazing footage of Northern Lights from Finland. Finnish production company Flatlight Films have produced the most beautiful footage of Northern Lights I've ever seen.

According to their site, they have shoot the video early this year in North of Finland.

Check their video out: 

Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland 2011 from Flatlight Films on Vimeo.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Blogging in Summer vs Winter in Finland

Here's an explanation to all why it's so hard to stay in and blog during summer in Finland. And also why it is so easy to stay home and sit with computer during winter time.

Check this video out comparing Finnish Summer and Finnish Winter.




Thanks for jpakkane1 for this really cool video.
 
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Safe the world with robots

Cool way to use robots for good cause. Finnish company having a robot for picking recyclable items from waste.

They have one of the coolest product videos I've seen a while. You could easily make really boring video out of robot picking stuff from waste, but these guys made it really cool.



Company: Zenrobotics
 
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Cool way of using games for electrifying our Finnish heritage

Kudos to National Library of Finland. They came up with cool way to use crowdsourcing in electrification of old Finnish newspapers. They are using games in making sure some of the words are correctly documented. Also people will correct words when they are playing.

Here's introductions to two games that can be played:





I tried both of those games and those words are tricky. It's not easy to actually know what 19th century letters and words actually are meaning and saying. I twice out of 9 tries got all words correct. So it's not too easy, but maybe it makes it bit more interesting to play.

It's fun to see if they really get players and if this really works. These games do have this bit nerdish feeling and I'm not sure if people really like to play these, but let's see. At least it's a fresh way to try to use the help of everyone in documenting our journalistic heritage to be in more easily findable and readable form. Thumbs up already from trying this one.

More information about the project can be found from Digitalkoot website also in English.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Talking about privacy violations, how rude is this one?

I was using Pipl and accidentally found out that almost all street addresses of Finnish people are searchable openly to everyone. From http://en.fonecta.fi/white-pages/ you can without even signing in to see exact street addresses of most of the people in Finland!. I checked couple of my friends and I found all of their addresses. That's damn scary and miserable failure from Fonecta.

This connected to all social media around there, is a scary combination. This gives everyone possibility to basically stalk you. Anyone can know where you live and can go to your home when you are not there or the other way around when you are there. Perfect for stalkers and thieves.

I would think this would need to be another way around in the world we live in. People would need to have a right to decide their privacy so that they can share their exact address to the world if they want to. Not that it is somehow automatically shared with rest of the world and needs to be asked to taken away.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for openness. But also I'm all for privacy. You have the right to decide what is shared. Your personal information like where you live shouldn't be revealed to everyone by default.

I send them a mail and asked about it and I'm waiting for answer. I will try to raise this up, for everyone's who is living in Finland, sake and safety.

They might not be violating any law, though. Maybe somewhere there is small text in some contract saying that they can do this. I just think this is against overall understanding of fair handling of users private data.
 
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Couple of reasons you might not want to move Finland after all

Newsweek listed Finland to be the number one country in the world (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html) and I know there are many people packing their stuff and moving to Finland right away. I wanted to give you couple of insights which might make you change your mind still.

First and most important, if you are enthusiastic sportsman, you should know this in advance. There will be lot of last minute disappointments for Finnish athletes and teams. Maybe the most famous one is losing to Sweden 2003 in hockey WC in quarter finals after leading 5-1. You can check the pain from here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ckaCuFfBzA.

There are other good examples. Like Finnish ski jumping national team losing Olympics gold metal with 0,1 points (smallest possible gap) in Salt Lake city. One good one is when Hungary tied in last minute with one of the funniest goals ever made. Win would have taken Finland to WC qualifying. Here's video about that one also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT-q65Qjy1M.

And there are lot more. Just last week my birth town team lost their continuation in Europa league after leading 3-0 after first period. (http://fin.worldfootball.net/spielbericht/europa-league-qual-2010-2011-3-runde-fc-timisoara-mypa-kouvola/liveticker/#redirect)

So to put it short, if you are sports fanatic and don't have good nerves, just don't come.

Second thing is, if you don't like people complaining about the weather, don't come. That's utmost the most important topic to discuss. There are about 10 days in a year when people think weather is fine.

Couple of those are in April-May when there's around 15-20 and spring has started. Then there might be some good days around Juhannus (mid-summer festival) and then in August when there's again some 25 celsius and it's not too hot or cold. Final ones are Feb-March when there's some snow in the ground, days are getting longer and there's only -5 celcius.

All the other time it's either too cold, windy, rainy, snowy, dark, hot, sunny or something else. You will see how good we are finding reasons to complain about the weather. It's kinda of a hobby to all Finns.

These two are the most important ones I would say.