Book I read: Who moved my cheese

Easy reading book about dealing with change. It talks about change with 4 fictional characters chasing the cheese in a maze. Basic message is the same than in other stuff which talks about dealing with change, change is inevitable, select how you deal with it.

I admit, I have a tendency to sometimes overanalyse things, so it was good reminder to me that just go with it could be an options also.

What I will remember from this book for a longer time is question "What would you do if you were not afraid?" That's a good question, I guess any of us could ask once in a while when dealing with changes. Still admitting or even noticing that you are scared of something might not be that easy.

As it is such an easy and short one to read, I definitely recommend to read it.  

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.

Facebook posts I hate

I bet there's hundreds of these types of lists already existing, but still here's mine. There are certain type of facebook updates i really hate.

1. Ridlles
These updates which doesn't really tell anything, but are there to tease and make people ask questions. Those are just annoying way to try to people interested about someone. If you have something to say, just say it!

2. Repeatition
You know these updates, Again goint to work.. going to work.. going to work. Week after week same update. OK, maybe that's the only thing happening in someone's life, but it's just so boring..

3 Gooooaalll.....
Someone is watching some games or sports in TV and then have urgent need to tell about every fucking goal and happening to all friends in FB.

Anything else come to your mind?

How looks of a brand was changed in a day - Old spice guy

Month ago, when word Old spice would have come up, I would immediately think of older men, who have put bit too too much fragrance in morning. No offense to Old spice users, but that's just how I did see the brand still month ago.
Then end of last month they pulled a trick from their pocket and gathered group of social media and advertising experts together and launched new "campaign" in YouTube and Twitter etc. First ads were funny and got lot of views on the web, but when they started to answer with video commercials to tweets almost real time, then they really hit the spot.

Here's one for example:


These ads worked at least for me. Next time I'm searching for new fragrance, I at least will check Old Spice out.

If you wanna know more how they worked it out, there's and article in ReadWriteWeb on it: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Worst decicion of Fifa 2010 - Fifa stopped showing replays of unclear situations

There came couple of referee errors in the early phase of the games and Fifa reacted to those immediately. They made ridiculous decision of not to show replays for unclear situations. So what actually happened was, that when something interesting happened, you couldn't see a replay if TV.

When there was a tackle and it looked liked someone might have faked and dived, replay didn't come. When it actually hit someone, then there was a replay showing that. Same happened with offsides. If there was an offside which wasn't blown, there wasn't a replay. For correct calls replay was always shown. And this list extends to playing with hand, tearing and corner and free kick hassles.

Someone in Fifa might have had the idea, that people are so stupid, that if we don't show the replay they don't notice there was an error. They hugely underestimate capabilities of football fans. Referee errors are part of the game and all possible replays should be shown. That's part of the excitement.

Biggest problem with this decision is that now the Oscar nominees of football will not be exposed to viewers. Fifa decided to reward the guys who can trick the referees the most. Only real way forward would be to show all the acted stuff happening in the field and let people to judge those. No one really likes those actors and if football fans would really properly see who are the worst actors in the field, they would start to hate those. That would eventually start to affect to the game. Take Premier league as an example, there those guys who fall too easily are not appreciated at all and there you don't see that much acted falls.

Best what Fifa could now do would be that they would make statistics with videos of referee errors and faked falls and let the people to learn and judge themselves. Organisation as flexible as Fifa, I don't really believe this happening.