Best and Most Popular Posts of Web Wanderer Blog in 2014

Blogging frequency have been going down again from the previous years. One reason has been that I haven't read as many books I would have hoped to. Also I haven't written that many other posts that in previous years. On the other hand, I've written down almost 30 ideas of blog posts that I should write. So blog isn't fading away, I just need to find the time to write it in the future.

Five Most Popular Posts from 2014

1. Separate Testing is Waste
2. Book Review: The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality
3. Disease of Being Busy
4. Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris
5. Book Review: All The Devils are Here by McLean and Nocera

Most of the posts come from earlier this year, so maybe that's the reason those got more reads than the newer ones. This year I didn't have any one post that would have been much more popular that any else, but there were many which were quite popular.

For some reason the most read blog posts of the year were from 2011. These three blog posts suddenly raised to be popular this year. Almost no one had read those before, but now these got lot of attention. It is weird, but it also proves that good content will find its way to be read sooner or later. There are the three posts from 2011 that actually were most read this year:

• What I miss in the internet - real discussions
• One Hundred Posts
• Ideas are seeds, execution are the plants

My Own Five Favorite Posts 2014

• Why "how are you" is so difficult to Finns
• Estimates or #noestimates
• Work Needs to be Fun - Happy people are more Effective
• Disease of Being Busy
• Separate Testing is Waste

This time again, only one of the most popular posts are the same from the ones I think that were my best posts. All of these got attention, but I would have wished those would have got even more attention.

Thanks for everyone who has read my blog during this year. It's been good year and let's wish next one will be even better.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Review of my Web Wanderer Blog Posts from 2013

My blogging frequency have been going down from past years a bit this year. After the first months of 2013, I've been mainly blogging about books. I managed to read around 30 books, so I at least blogged from all of those.

Here's a review of what has happened in my blog this year. Which were the most read blog posts and which were the posts I personally liked the most.

Five most popular blog posts from year 2013

1. The tempting "do not disturb" icon
2. Book Review - This is Service Design Thinking
3. Market Analysis - Cloud storage in ecosystem war?
4. False security of documenting everything
5. Book Review - To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink

I thought the whole "do not disturb"-icon post was so silly, that I almost didn't publish it at all. It shows that the simplest posts sell. I guess from Book Reviews Service Design book got there due to my critical view about the book. If I would be looking for readers, I should be writing critically about books and making half funny posts. I do this blogging for my own fun, so I think I'll keep writing the same stuff than previosly.

My own five favorite posts from year 2013

These are the posts I'm most happy with. I think these posts have a good point and should be valuable to someone. It's hard to put those in order, so they are in random order:

• Divided media is the new media
• Market Analysis - Cloud storage in ecosystem war?
• False security of documenting everything
• Yahoo's work from home ban has a purpose
• Mystery of Subway success

I had bit trouble with my health this year and even though I completed my firsts half-ironman, I still was sick a lot. And when I'm sick, I can't really write. I hope next year will be much better and I'm writing much more about other things than just books. And certainly I will be writing about books.

Thanks for reading!

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Small Is The New Big

I've read couple of Seth Godin books before and always enjoyed those. This Small Is The New Big got to my bookshelf almost by accident, but knowing the author I couldn't leave it unread. I'm so happy I did read it. Even though the book is bit old already the ideas in it are mainly fresh and valuable.

This book is not a real book actually. It's a collection of best blog posts from Seth. For the weirdest reasons it's in alphabetic order, but it still flows quite nicely forward.

It's hard to say anything actual about the book. The only thing I can say is that I felt really energetic reading this book. I was full of ideas and even made some decisions about my future goals reading this book.

I think I'll make it mandatory for myself to read one Seth Godin a year. Even I knew exactly what to expect from the book, still I amazed myself to feel so good reading it. Seth has a brilliant mind and good writing skills which makes the reading experience wonderful.

I recommend to read some of Seth Godin books. If you can't really concentrate on reading properly, this is the book for you. Stories are short but full with good insights. If you enjoy reading more take some other of Seth Godin books.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Most popular and my favorite blog posts of the year 2012

As I mentioned in the previous post, I wasn't as active blogger this year that I was hoping to be. This is my 52nd post for the year, so it makes it one per week. Last year I blogged twice per week, so the drop is quite big. Still people kept visiting and reading my blog and the visitor amount raised steadily with the rate of about 100 more readers per month.
  
Five most popular blog posts this year

Here's a list of my most read blog posts for the year 2012. There's one from 2011, but that was read mainly during this year.

1. Book review - Swim Smooth: The Complete Coaching System for Swimmers and Triathletes
2. Good multitasking skills means good single tasking 
3. Book review: Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel
4. Book review: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
5. Cultural differences can make culture's diverge (from 2011)

Book reviews played the big part on my blog attractiveness. That's normal due to the fact that most of the posts were about book reviews. Luckily there's two other blog posts in the top list to prove to myself that people are interested on other things as well.

The blog post, cultural differences can make culture's diverge, was actually written long time ago already in August 2011. At that time, it got the normal interest of less than hundred reads. Just lately, it for some reason got attention again. Within latest couple of months people started to read and share it again. That's the reason it got to the list.

My own favorite blog posts this year

These are posts that I think has a good point and are written quite ok, but they didn't get the attention I would have wanted. That happens quite often, the posts that I think are interesting are not read a lot and then vice versa.  Here are the posts that I appreciate and want to raise from this year for another change.

• Don't trust Future you
• Experience can't be counted in years
• Why there is so much Business Jargon?
• What's the good intention other has in mind?
• Who would pay for the news paywall?

Go check some of these out and leave comments if you think those are important or good ones.

Where does my readers come from?

I haven't opened this up ever before, but I think it's a time to do this also. In the very first year of this blog, my readers came naturally from Finland. Now that I have blogged regularly about three years, situation has changed. There's wide variety of people from many different countries visiting. I really appreciate that one.

Here's the list of countries where visitors come to my blog with percentages of visits

1. USA (about 40%)
2. Finland (15%)
3. Ukraine (< 10%)
4. Russia (< 10%)
5. UK (< 10%)
6. Germany (< 5%)
7. China (< 5%)
8. France (1-2%)
9. Canada (1-2%)
10. India (1-2%)

Thanks for everyone who has visited and read some of my posts this year.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

My web year 2011

Year 2011 is so over. My last years review was so popular, that here's a new one for the year 2011. Here's my favorite blog posts from me and others, most important books I've read, and also something else.

Stuff from others I've enjoyed the most in past year:

Healtland - Site from Time concentrating on healt related issues. There has been introduced lot of interesting studies and stuff ongoing all over the world. I don't know why, but I've enjoyed reading it.

HBR.org - The Management Tip; Good advices to everyone in worklife, not just for managers.

Kinetic Revolution - Coaching blog: Blog with lots of good information for runners and other endurance athletes. Good articles on training and other related subjects.

Jim's Marketing Blog - Even though I'm not really into marketing and Jim can be quite a marketing guy, I've enjoyed this blog a lot. There's been interesting topics around lot other things than just marketing. I recommend to check it out.

Other than these blogs I've still enjoyed a long time favorites Dan Pink, Seth Godin and Jeff Jarvis. All of them are my favorites in their own field.

Best of my own blogging this year

My personal top 3 of my own posts in year 2011:
1. Innovation is all about execution
2. Learnings and tips from crowdsourcing project within company
3. What I miss in internet - real discussions

Top 3 books I reviewed in year 2011
1. 7 Habits of highly effective people
2. The genius in all of us
3. The War of Art

The 3 most popular post of my blog  2011
1. Lying have become big part of social media marketing
2. Is Google+ invite only just a marketing trick?
3. What I miss in internet - real discussions

And the 3 least popular posts of my blog. All of those are in my opinion are from the better half of my posts. For some reason no one just found those.
1. Learning and school, how they connect
2. What a beautiful sculptures lasting only milliseconds
3. Do you need to live you work in order to be good on it?

I published 103 posts in year 2011. Lots of those got much more readers than I was expecting. Thanks for everyone who visited the site and enjoyed it. I hope I will be as active in 2012 also. I do this, because I like it. Thanks.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

New ways to view this blog (blogger dynamic views in action)

Blogger rolled out fully their new ways to view blogger blogs. These new dynamic views are more modern way to read blogs. These remind me of templates available in  Posterous or Tumblr.

Even though some of the new views look quite neat, I'm not going to give up on my traditional blog lookalike. If you hate it or just want to read my blog in some other ways, please check from here all the other views available to read my blog. If you like some of those, just bookmark that one. Those will be always available.

Here's all the different dynamic views of www.henrihamalainen.com

• Classic: A modern twist on a traditional template
• Flipcard: Photos tiled across the page
• Magazine: A clean, elegant editorial style layout
• Mosaic: A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar: An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot: An interactive pinboard of your posts
• Timeslide: A horizontal view of your posts by time period 

I think only option that makes sense for this type of blog I have is this Magazine view. All the others look more or less bit childish tries to be cool. This Magazine view I could really get used to, if it only would have the options to get some of the items from my current blog template to it. Then I could consider taking it to be the default one. And at the same time I would like to disable the other possibilities.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Follow my Agile SW, Social Media or Book review posts separately!

I tend to blog about wide variety of subjects. I just can't stick with one subject. Also I don't see the point on having own blog for all of those, so I tend to lose some followers for that (more about that here). I've even blogged couple of times about one subject blogs being boring and then revisiting my thought about it for some blogs. Now I have updated my blog so that, if you are only interested in Agile SW development, Social Media or interesting books, you will be able to get RSS feeds from only those!

So if one of those was at your interest, please order RSS feed from here:

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

Old blog, new blog, this blog

I've done some changes in my blogging. I've quit my blogging project Lost in UX, which was focusing on customer experience, user experience and software development. I didn't have the capacity to blog regularly enough, so it's better to call it off, than do it halfway. I'm going to still sometimes blog about those subjects (customer experience, user experience and software), but I'm going to do it under this blog.

Most probably most of you didn't ever visit that blog, so I'm going to re-post couple of my best and most popular posts from there to here. There's going to be clear mention which of those are re-posts.

Also I've had for long time a need to blog about stuff considering Finland. Most of those are things that don't interest any of non-Finns, so I started a new blog in Finnish for that. Blog is called Toisaalta (toisaalta.wordpress.com), which means "on the other hand". If you are Finnish speaker, please check it out.

Thanks for checking these out.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Isn't it ironic

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face 
Alanis Morrissette - Ironic

Just when I got to my hundred posts and started to brag about such a meaningless achievement, I had to keep two week break of my blogging. I turned quite sick and I just can't blog when I'm sick. I actually didn't have the energy to even visit my blog once while I was laying on the bed and sofa.

I really love the lyrics of Alanis Morrissette Ironic. It really gathers the way life teaches you. When you're playing it real safe, then it hits you much more certainly than if you wouldn't. If everything goes really well, life reminds you also on the worse side of it. If everything is going wrong, life will help you to feel bit better. It's ironic, but that what makes live so interesting.
 
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

One Hundred Posts

I promised myself that if I ever get to hundred blog posts, I'm going to blog about my blogging. My blogging started March 2010 and after first half year I started to blog much more often and I got to hundred in in year and two months.

I can't exactly remember why I started blogging. I've been following blogs for years and years, but never really felt like blogging. I first tried with sports related blogging about two years ago, but it never really got off. No one read it and I didn't really like it. So I changed my language to English and started to blog first about books and then gradually moved to anything interesting.

The subject in question

One thing I used to think a lot was a subject for my blog. What would be the key thing to blog about. Most of the blogging tips where saying that concentrate on niche subject to get more readers. Also most of the blogs I followed was one subject blogs. I tried and tried to come up with an specific subject for my blogging, but never did. Finally I thought that I rather constantly lose many of my followers because I blog about so many different things, than try to stick with one thing and then lose my interest to this all together. I've noticed many many times that I lose readers due to wide variety of subjects I blog, but that's true me. I rather be myself with fewer people than try to please everyone.

Why I blog

At first it started with this personal branding type of an idea to get more visibility if I ever would decide to change job or start my own business or something like that. Soon I found out that I like it and blogging came a true hobby for me. For me it's like hanging out with my thoughts. It's so nice to be able just concentrate on things I feel interesting and just be totally me. Actually I haven't even told most of my friends about my blogging, just because I want to write to web, not to some guys I know already. It makes me more to be me, because I'm not writing for any known audience. Again I could get quite many more readers from my friends if only they would know I'm blogging, but that's not my point at all, so I haven't done so.

Tips - or how I blog regularly

There's couple of small things that makes possible that I get a blog post that regularly. I tend to try to get at least 2 posts out in a week, hopefully 1-2 more. I do work for living, I have two small daughters with whom I try to spend all their wake up time with, I try to exercise 5-6 times a week and I use too much time watching sports from TV. Still I tend to achieve my blogging goals. I'm not going in details of my priority management, but my main points related to blogging are:

• Write when you  have time and energy for it. When I get to the mood, I tend to write multiple blog posts at once. Then I publish those later. I normally have at least one blog post ready for publishing. Lean experts might say that this inventory is waste, but I don't see any other alternative to publish regularly, since interval to find time for blogging varies so much.
• Always write your thoughts down. I currently have 18 blog posts with some texts or ideas written down in blogger. Then I have couple more on my mobile's notebook to be transferred to blogger. This way even when I'm not right away inspired to blog about something specific, I check my drafts and most often I find some post to complete from those.
• Follow inspiring blogs and web sites. I really often get ideas for new posts when I'm checking some videos or reading something. I do follow twitter streams also, but I'm not sure if I've ever got any ideas to blog about from twitter. Good old Google reader and RSS feeds, with proper longer blog posts with images and videos work much better to inspire me.

Thanks

It's been fun to notice that there have been more and more people checking my blog out and hopefully there's some people who really enjoy it. Either way, I'm not gonna stop because of too few readers or anything, since I really like this. Thanks for you too, if you really read this post this far and have been reading my posts some other time also.

I wanna say special thanks to Vasco Duarte, who is a colleague of mine, he's been (most probably he don't know this) a kind of a role model for blogging to me. In the beginning I was checking his blogging a lot and got some good ideas from there. I know he's been reading and commenting on my posts once in a while too, so thanks Vasco for that.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Disappointed to notice amount of copycats in the web

When I was doing the investigation for my previous blog post about this one site which had suspiciosly similar content from other sites, I noticed that similar things is ongoing in much larger scale than I expected. It seems that it is really common that same article is shown in many places with minor differences. For example all of the following websites had the exactly the same article, only differences where the title, pictures within the text and whether the writer and source was mentioned or not.

http://lovelyra.com
http://greenpitchmusic.com
http://advancedguitarlessons.org
http://www.syncrat.com
http://teddmusic.com
http://countryguitarlessoninfo.com
http://www.positivearticles.com
http://www.musicinfo4all.co.uk
http://www.freebie-articles.com
http://www.darulz.com
http://netview.blogsome.com

Here's the exact links to those article's and you can see that those really are the same article.

Acoustic Guitars – Picking Out Your First One
A Guide to Buying an Acoustic Guitar
A Guide to Buying an Acoustic Guitar
Buying an acoustic guitar
Music Guide - A Guide to Buying an Acoustic Guitar
A Guide to Buying an Acoustic Guitar
A Guide to Buying an Acoustic Guitar
Advice on Buying A Guitar
The Secrets and techniques To Owning A New Acoustic Guitar
How To Buy An Acoustic Guitar
Acoustic Guitar - Picking Out Your First One

Here's citation how they all start:

Knowing how to choose the right guitar and how to identify a bad one, will save you from countless headaches, not to mention finger aches.

Acoustic guitar bodies come in basically the same hourglass shape, with some variations, but they do vary in size, color, wood-type, style, and extra features. You can even buy an acoustic guitar so small that fits into a hiking backpack.

Guitars ( Acoustic Guitar, Bass Guitar and Electric Guitars) come in a very wide range of prices, but when it comes to instruments, in general, you get what you pay for, especially ...

Couple of these articles mentions that article was written by Ian Williamson. Most of those doesn't. In most of those you have no way to realize that article is originally from another source. I'm not accusing these sites for anything, but I'm just disappointed. Disappointed for the guys who really create unique content. That content will get less and less visibility if articles which are seen popular are copied to multiple web sites over and over. The different unique content might be pushed down in search results because the ones copying their content can release so much more often than the ones who really need to write something to publish it.

For the internet is almost the same if there is 100 times the same content or not. Main thing is that people will find what they are looking for or find things that are interesting for them. Main disadvantage there is that this type of activity might lead to people actually producing less and less content unique content and internet will get much poorer.

Maybe all of us bloggers, who create our own content and do remember to mention the source if some content is borrowed, should have a unique badge on our blogs. Here's challenge for someone to create snippet that could be added to these unique content blogs.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Duplicating the texts in different blogs - is it acceptable?

Someone from mytravelspots.info send me a mail asking if I would like to link my site with her's (signed with woman name). First I thought it was nice idea, but I wanted to check the site out before linking to it. At first sight the site looked fine, I was only wondering that topics were not in line with site looks and name and topics varied a lot. For some reason I wanted to investigate bit more.

What I found out was that this all posts in this site had really many similarities with other posts from other sites. Most of those were not exact matches, but there was so much similarity that I decided to share it with you. Here's my results of that study:

I've marked with red the differences in between two text's from two different sources. I've only take a snap of the text, but if you see the full article's it's always the same paragraph division and same amount of sentences.

Example 1 - article about directional speakers

Here's snap from mytravelspots.info article Most Convenient Directional Speakers.

Directional speakers are ideal for specific applications in a certain environment. Much to the difference of loud or regular speakers, directional devices have all the features necessary to target the perimeter right in front of them. A large number of applications, tasks and processes are thus suitable for the combined use of directional speakers. You can enjoy the best audio environment if you know how to use directional speakers, because whithout proper installation and positioning, much of the effect will be altered or impaired.

Here's snap from article www.danclaude.com The Proper Installation Of Directional Speakers

Directional speakers are ideal for specific applications in a certain environment. Much to the difference of loud or regular speakers, directional devices are designed so as to target the perimeter right in front of them. This means that for specific tasks and processes, directional speakers function for a large number of applications. You can enjoy the best audio environment if you know how to use directional speakers, because whithout proper installation and positioning, much of the effect will be altered or impaired.

Example 2 article about folding knives

Here snap from mytravelspots.info article Why can I get a discount buck knives

 The most popular knife, the Buck Folding Hunter Model 110, was first produced in 1963. With a four-inch blade, high-tension lock, and low-pressure release, the Buck Folding Hunter is truly one of the most well-known knives ever produced. Often imitated by other manufacturers, this Buck knife was the first profitable folding lock-blade knife ever. In fact, “Buck knife” is sometimes used to mean any folding lock-blade knife, though of course Buck Knife is a unique company, generating many more styles than just this well-liked model.

Here's snap from an article from jacknife.net Buck Knives and Wet Sharpener

The most popular knife, the Buck Folding Hunter Model 110, was first produced in 1963. With a four-inch blade, high-tension lock, and low-pressure release, the Buck Folding Hunter is actually one of the most popular knives ever produced. Often imitated by other manufacturers, this Buck knife was the first successful folding lock-blade knife ever. In fact, "Buck knife" is sometimes used to mean any folding lock-blade knife, though of course Buck Knife is a specific company, making many more styles than just this popular model.

Here's an example number 3 Flat stomach

Here snap from mytravelspots.info article Is a Flat Stomach What You Want? 

Sprinting, martial arts, swimming, bicycle riding, playing volleyball, skating or perhaps other sports activities may help to reduce fat and tone muscles all over your entire body. I’m not saying you can’t work your mid-section but you have to understand that many workouts work the muscle and still have nothing to do with eliminating fat. When you’ve got a layer of fat covering your stomach muscles, tell me precisely what sense would it make to obliterate yourself trying to create washboard abs when all you want is actually visible abs or simply just a flat stomach.

Here snap from waisthipsandthighs.com article How to Get a Flat Stomach

Sprinting, martial arts, swimming, bicycle riding, playing volleyball, dancing or other sports will help to burn fat and tone muscles all over your body. I’m not saying you can’t work your abs but you have to remember that most exercises work the muscle and have nothing to do with getting rid of fat.  When you have a layer of fat covering your stomach muscles, tell me what sense will it make to kill yourself trying to build abs when all you want is visible abs or just a flat stomach.

Here's more examples if you want to find more similarities

Article from mytravelspots.info: Derelict Houses For Sale Free State Mooi River
Very similar article from articlesnewsreviews.com: Derelict Houses For Sale KwaZulu-Natal St Lucia

Article from mytravelspots.info: Chore Work Boots For Those Dirty Chores
Very similar article from professionalnametags.com Muck Boots Chore Makes Your Tough Days Easier

For most of the article's I did comparison with Beyond Compare and as you see with this item, those are exactly the same ones:

Article from mytravelspots.info Murcia Airport Parking
Article from crescentheightsreview.info Murcia Airport Parking

So what's my summary

There seems to be blogs around there who have really similar texts than other sites. Maybe that's intentional and someone is just spreading their own text with many different sites with small twist on it. This will for sure increase the possibility to get hits from search engines and then increase the visibility of ads used in the site. If they are the actual producers of their content, I don't see there being anything illegal. It's just lame trick to get more money from ads from getting more visibility to the same content.

I feel bit disappointed for all of those whose blog posts are not getting traffic due to same almost duplicated article is getting hits in search engines instead of some unique content. But if there's nothing illegal, I can only cry for Google and Bing to eliminate these results.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Being sick kills creativity

I was sick for some days, quite common spring flu and I just laid down in bed and sofa most of the time. I had all the time in the world to blog, but I couldn't. Not feeling well and not being able to exercise outdoors seemed to put my writing skills to zero. I even had some subject I had thought before hand I could blog about, but still I just couldn't arrange my thoughts in any meaningful way.

I've noticed that I often arrange my thoughts when I'm on move. If I'm jogging or doing something else or I'm out with the kids, I notice myself thinking on something I'm going to blog about. I even sometimes make the first sketch in my mind during being out. I always forget that one, but still it's easier to start writing when you have once gone through your thoughts that.

I found even scientific proof that exercising enhances productivity and creativity. Here's one study about creativity being increased because of exercising. The main finding there seems to be that exercising affect your mood and creativity separately.

I'm finally feeling better and I'm going to start finishing the ideas I had to blog about. I just need my time outdoors to get my thinking together.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Digital identity, many views to single person. Is it about to change?

I noticed that Jeff Jarvis had blogged about identity (One identity or more) bit before I blogged about social media making people specialists. It's bit lame to say, but that post from Jeff is exactly the things I have been thinking and also I tried to come across on my post. Jeff is talking about inner self and outer self as the ones that you know you are and what you want people to see you as. I don't believe anyone can argue that there are different side of ourselves depending in a context.  Is social media now changing this?

Facebook comments is an example where your different outer selves would start to mix. If you start to you extensively FB comments on everything you comment about, you start to reveal much wider picture of yourself and your interests than you would only using FB like and status updates. For example most of my FB friends don't know (and or don't really care) about my blogging and also about the issues I follow and which I comment to. If I would start using FB comments it would mix my FB me with blogging me or twitter me.

There's nothing secret in these different sides of me, but those are mainly my own interpretation of the people I interact with in those media's. So I tend to think most of the FB friends don't really care about my interests towards high tech or innovations or having conversations like this one. And on the other hand I tend to think that readers of this blog don't care about huge amounts of sports I follow, so I don't blog about those here. That's the reason I've decided to have so many different ways to interact with me in the web.

Now I think this might slowly start to change. People will start to use more and more the same point of view (outer self) to all things they are interested. So with one look you would be able to see all from humiliating photos to the specialized interests and knowledge of a one person. This will make all of us more human, but it also will make it harder to find information based on source. There is a need to have still much better ways to get specialized updates based on subjects and not only by sources

I would be really happy if one day I could have all of my friends, coworkers and those who want to follow me for specific reasons under one tool. I could use the same tool to share and write about kids, sports, exercising, high tech, humorous, photography, UX and everything else that interests me. Currently I'm still too afraid that most of these subjects wouldn't suit most of you in this media, so I've decided to use different tools for different subjects.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

What I miss in the internet - real discussions

One reason I'm active in the web are different point of views. I love discussions on many topics. I have the luxury of having co-workers and some friends who are not afraid to discuss and disagree. With them I can argue so that it's not going to insults, but stays almost always on intelligent level. Still often those discussions are really tense and I can really feel the adrenaline level raising while having those. It's just a pity that I don't get those in the internet.

In the web I tend to follow the people I agree. I tend to comment to posts I somewhat agree. And the times when I or someone else disagree's on some subject, discussion almost always ends really shortly. Either one of the discussion partners just disappears or then it goes to meaningles "I'm right and you're wrong" type of discussions.

One problem is that in the web you don't really need to listen. You don't really need to try to understand the point, you can just jump to shouting mode and state your point. One doesn't have the possibility to explain the point thoroughly and to make sure the opposite site undestands the point so that he or she could adjust their comments accordingly.

In the web it's so easy to turn the other cheek or run away. If you disagree with someone, you can just ignore the message totally and find something else.

Web is full of happy happy, joy joy type of comments. Comments start often like this: that was a good post, here's an another point to support your point. It's much easier to go and support a post than disagree with someone you don't really know.

I'm not saying that everyone should be hostile and fighting with each other in the web, but I tend to believe, that new always start from disagreement. The only way to change and develop is to challenge. Challenge the existing knowledge and challenge the common believes.

I love good discussions where different point of views are appreciated and arguing enriches discussions. So far, web hasn't been able to bring that to me. That's why I still need real life.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Elevator speech of the web

As you might know elevator speech or pitch is short marketing speech of your product or service. I just realized that there is often elevator speech for web content also. It's is this part, the first 3-4 sentences where you either get the reader or lose it.

Sure elevator speech has much other meanings in business world than just attract the person to continue with the subject, but I think the basic idea is the same. You try to in short time period convince the other to either stick with it or not.

In the web this stand most when you are using RSS, Twitter or some of news services. I notice that I usually give every article about 10 to 15 seconds. So normally bit over the first chapter. If it doesn't seem interesting I usually jump to next one. So if you were me, now I would be either sold or lost already.

Twitter is a perfect example of how to attract users fast. I think that part of Twitters popularity bases on that it makes people to really shortly introduce what their content (or the content they share) is all about. It makes people to shorten the key message of the link they are sharing to bit over 100 characters. Some are much better than the others in twitter. It would be nice to see if actually some people get more hits for their shared links than others for the same content with different introduction. I bet they do, but I haven't seen any data on that one.

I think this is relevant for this type of services. You only have small amount of time to get someone to read your content. In blogging and many news services, pictures, videos and overall UX of the site also help. These give some more time to attract person to check what the content is all about.

Maybe there's something to learn for all bloggers in elevator speeches.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Will new micropayment system Flattr work?

I love the idea of micropayments in the web. World has been going towards free, freemium and donate based models on good quality content on the web. There's lot of cartoonist, photographers, bloggers, guys making videos and music, etc who really would deserve a dime on their efforts. For that purpose there has been invented Flattr.

It works in a way that you give monthly fee to Flattr and then using Flattr button (similar to FB like) you donate piece of your monthly fee to anyone who has this button. Then Flattr gathers amounts together and pays to the content provider. Here's a video from them to explain it better.

Even though I would like to easily donate some small amounts to content I like, how Flattr operates raised couple of questions.

First, monthly payment. I would basically pay some amount in advance for the great content that I will see during this month. That's like monthly fee of internet. And what if in some months I only find 3 great contents I want to donate and next month I find 13. The guys in first month got much more from me than guys next month got. That feels strange to me.

Second thing is actually the money. Money changes everything. I believe lot of guys who are creating content for web are motivated due to their desire to create. When you start getting money out of it, it turns for more work like. People might lose their real drive to create and start thinking too much on the monetizing side of creation. With Flattr it has been done so visually, that you can actually see how many have shared their cake to you, it even makes it more to work like.

Third thing, related to previous one is, that when you add this Flattr button to your content, you are actually asking for money. Even though in the very beginning it might sound like an good idea to ask for some money from your doings, I think it will turn out other way around. If you've read Dan Pink's Drive, you know there's scientific prove on this one.

I think these are the challenges that this system will face: monthly fee, spreading your cake, money as motivation and that you must admit that you are actually selling your services.

Still I hope for the best for these guys. Whole system is really innovative and first of it's kind. Would be nice to see it succeed, but I see these couple of challenges in wider adoption than just with the early ones.
 
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

My own domain

Just couple day ago I decided to get my own domain. I checked and noticed that henrihamalainen.com was free. Then I just went for it. So this blog can be now found with that url. Old one will work also.

The only reasons basically were that it was free (no one had took it), it cost only ~9€/year and there are many other Henri Hämäläinen's in Finland and one of those would have taken it some point for sure. So I decided to be an early bird.

I thought in the beginnign that it's bit egoistic to have your own url, but so what. At the end no one really cares. If having your own url connects you even to one more inspring individual, it was worth it.

Most popular and my favorite blog post from me in year 2010

Year is over and like everyone else, I'll do a short recap on my blogging. I got in to blogging this year and it's been lot of fun. It's been nice to see that there has been also increasing number of people coming to read my posts.

Here's recap which posts people have liked and which I like the most.

Quoted content

 Amazing stuff with using existing images in social 
By far most popular post in my blog.

The machine is changing us: YouTube and the politics of authenticity  
Personal favorite, this video really affected what I think about me (I mean anyone as themselves) in web when they write or communicate in anyways. If you haven't seen go and watch: 

My own content
Personal cloud services
Second most popular post of my blog.

Day my dad joined Facebook
Personal favorite, it was on that time shocking. Now I've got used to situation, but I have to admit I haven't really noticed my dad there. Maybe I got over it, but it was funny to read what I thought on that time.

Short book reviews of mine:

Who moved my cheese 
Most popular of these book reviews.

What Would Google Do
Personal favorite, not because what I wrote about it, but how refreshingly good the book itself was. I had expectations towards it, but it exceeded those by a mile.

Have a good new year!

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen