Google Street View in DC area & George's good service

Google Maps Street View has finally arrived to Washington DC area (along with the expansion of the Street view to nearly all of the US).

Street View is just fantastic. It enables anyone to take very real-feel virtual walks. Quite convenient for many situations.

To give an example: We have found an excellent car repair shop just a block away from where we live. If you want to check it out see a Google Street View view of George's Foreign Car Service below.


View Larger Map
George's Foreign Car Service (at approx. 1306 Cameron St. - between North Payne Street and North West Street, tel. (703) 684-2002)
Short URL to street view http://snipr.com/georges-car-service

And while at it, our house on the next block:


View Larger Map

Blogien ja muiden syötteiden seuraamisesta

This post is about my recommendation for following blogs/feeds: Check out the Common Craft video below.

Syötteet noin ylipäänsä ovat huisin kätevä tapa seurata päivittyviä nettisivuja. Siis esim. blogeja, uutisia, säätietoja, jne jne.

Jos homma ei ole selvä kuin pläkki, niin tsekkaapa havainnollinen video asiasta.

Tämä dotSub-nimisestä palvelusta löytyvä Common Craft -nimisen firman tekemä video kertoo seikkaperäisesti mitä syötteet ovat ja miten voit seurata niitä kätevästi tämän hetken parhaalla syötelukijalla, Google Readerilla (siis Google lukijalla).



dotSub on mainio palvelu siinä mielessä, että sinne ladatut videot voi tekstittää joko videon palveluun lataava henkilö tai kuka tahansa muu käyttäjä. Ja tämän tekstityksen voi sitten kääntää mille tahansa maailman kielelle.

Tässä videossa on oma ensimmäinen käännökseni: englannista suomeksi, tietty. Suomenkielisen tekstityksen pitäisi näkyä automaattisesti. Jos ei näy, niin valitse pudotusvalikosta kuvan oikeasta alakulmasta.

EDIT: Tekstitys ei näy mun selaimessa ollenkaan. Jos se kiinnostaa, niin videon löydät linki www.snipr.com/dotsub-greader -kautta

Kauneutta - Nocturne

Postataanpa tänne avoimeen Intternjettiinkin oheisen aamukahvihetken inspiraation ja Facebook-"keskustelun"/viestivaihdon aiheesta: mainio tulkinta Wessbergin sävellyksestä Eino Leinon runoon Nocture.

Tämä kiitokseksi Riisisuurimolle viideosta ja mainion tulkinnan jakamiseksi - kun tiedän ainakin yhden ihmisen tätä lukevan :).

Share the love!



Arin kommentti:
"Hieno tulkinta Eino Leinon runosta Nocturne (Wessbergin [sic!] sävellys)." [Wessberg -> Taisto Wesslin]

Joo. On hieno. Nocturne on ollut pitkään yks mun suosikkibiisejä. Vesku Loirin alkuperäisversio ensimmäiseltä Eino Leino -levyltään 70-luvun lopulta on ollut listan kärjessä (joskin myös ainoa, josta mulla on ollut äänite..).

Olen lapsuudesta asti kokenut runossa ja Wessbergin sävellyksessä jotain syvää suomalaista sielunmaisemaa - enkä selvästikään ole fiilisten kanssa yksin.

Kohtuullisen äskettäistä keskustelua runosta Jukka Kemppisen blogissa.

What's in a percentage?

 

The question of the day is:
What is X in X - 68% = 1%?
.. And how is this linked to presidential elections?

I came across this "puzzle" on the side of a milk carton that stated that the 1% fat containing milk has 68% less fat than whole milk. And it reminded me of the numerous times I've tried to help people understand percentage.

One reason this struck me was that I was nearly fooled for a fraction of a second. Reading the text one could think that whole milk has 69% of fat in it - which is obviously not the right answer. Whole milk has about 3% of fat and taking out 68%, about two thirds that is, leaves 1%.

The reason people get confused with percentages is that they are thinking adding and subtracting. And in percentages it's about dividing and multiplying (and some adding or subtracting). That is, unless you'd say: 1% reduced fat milk has two percentage points less fat than full milk.

And to wrap up this uninteresting windy blabber about percentages I wanna link this to the presidential elections - the reason I was probably open to think about this in the first place.

The thing is that people don't think about the difference between percentages and percentage points when they think about election results, which makes them misunderstand the vote differences between candidates.

See, for example in the Obama-McCain race Obama got some 52.5% of all votes and McCain got got 46.2% (reports Pollster.com my favorite poll site). And while the difference between the two was 6.3 percentage points Obama got 13.2% more votes than McCain [(52.5-46.2)/46.2]*100%.

Ensihiutaleet

Leijailivat taivaalta eilen
aamulla metrolle kävellessä.

Molemmat.
Kirpeä kuulas syysaamu.
Nosti mieleen jouluodotuksen.
Hong Kong - Shanghai - Peking - Phuket.

Perhettä ja ystäviä.
Tuskin maltan odottaa.

Töihin tullessa muistin kääntää uuden sivun mainiosta Taivasalla.net-seinäkalenteristä.

Marraskuun valokuva osui jotenkin erityisen suoraan vanhojen ystävien muistelufiilikseen. Kuvassa sattuu (käsittääkseni) olemaan taustalla hyvän ystäni Mikon kotitalo.

Kuva samasta paikasta alla:

From taivasalla.net - valikoituja otoksia

Kuva: Niklas Sjöblom (Creative Commons -lisensoitu)

Sano mitä sanot, mutta kuvat ovat voimakkaita. Erityisesesti hyvät kuvat. Erityisesti lapsuuden hyviä muistoja mieleen tuovat sellaiset.

The economy and the job market in 2009

Brilliant!



via Minna. Thanks.

A new day for the U.S. of A

Hey - that rimes!

... Which is good because I want to share with you the latest brilliant music video from Will.i.am, "It's A New Day". See for yourself (embedded below):

As you may have heard, will.i.am has earlier released two powerful songs (as online music videos) related to the Obama campaign: Yes We Can and We Are the Ones.

Both music videos were released on DipDive.com, an interesting online video service that promotes promising musicians and that has an interesting political advocacy twist -- at least after these releases.

I feel so profoundly good watching and listening to will.i.am's lates piece. And reflecting on the things that have happened in the last half a year. And regardless of how things will turn out, I think that this country has so deserved this current over "hype", which is not about supremacy but about hope.

... Véase también: Podemos con Obama (un otro vídeo de música brillante ... tjsp).

How this happened

As I just wrote in Finnish the Obama victory is an incredible example of the power of individuals to impact huge issues. Like Obama has said so many times: Ordinary people can do extraordinary things, when they work together. That's what this was and is all about.

The blogosphere and the web are full of excellent analysis on this and so many other related issues so I won't even try to make a thorough analysis in this post.

Actually, I just wanted to share this email from Obama to give those of you who haven't subscribed to his email list one glimpse into how the campaign has been run.

From: Barack Obama
Date: 2008/11/5 2:20 am
Subject: How this happened
To: Jaakko Helleranta


Jaakko --

I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don't want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing...

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack

Wonderful inspiration. And a beautiful example of The Long Tail at work. .. More on that later.

P.S. In case you're interested: My Obama-related bookmarks are tagged Obama in Delicious. I warmly encourage you to start using one of these social bookmarking (excellent short video explaining social bookmarkin by Common Craft) services.

Kuinkas tässä näin kävi?

Obaman voitto on hurja esimerkki yksiloiden mahdollisuuksista vaikuttaa ratkaisevalla tavalla suuriin kokonaisuuksiin. Kampajan ammensi internetin suomia mahdollisuuksia rakentaen ikiaikaisen amerikkalaisen paikallistason osallistuuden päälle.

Voimaistamisen (empowerment) ja myos demokratian ideaalien riemuvoitto.

Kuten Pleksille kirjoitin, on ollut valtavan inspiroivaa nähdä tätä vaalityota ja omalla, varsin pienellä panoksella, osallistua siihen. Erinäisiä hurjia tarinoita kampanjaan osallistumisesta kuunnellessa tekee todella mieli painottaa oman osallistumisen vähäisyyttä. Vaan samalla ymmärtää hyvin sen mitä Kampanja on toitottanut kaiken aikaa: että pienista puroista on tämä suuri virta kasvatettu. Tästä oiva esimerkki seuraavassa lontoonmurteisessa postauksessa.

Palaan paremmalla ajalla niin fiiliksiin kuin eri näkokulmiin. Nyt sorvin ääreen, kun (tunnustaa täytyy, että) duunit jäivät eilen aika vähälle.

Pitkä häntä rulettaa.

Uuden ajan alku

Huojentunut, hyvä fiilis.

Siihen on helppo tiivistää tuntemukset tässä vaiheessa (klo 22.55 EST - "itäistä talviaikaa") kisakatsomossamme Washington DC:n Capitol Hill kaupunginosassa kolmisentoista korttelia Capitolista suoraan itään.

Oma ennustukseni Obaman n. 344 valitsijamiesäänestä reilun viikon takaa vaatinee hieman justeerausta ylöspäin. Florida näyttää paremmalta kuin osasin toivoa.

Fox News on juuri ennustanut Virginian valitsijamiesäänien menevän Obamalle ja hetkeä aikaisemmin New Mexicon. Floridassa tilanne Obamalla on kaulaa liki 300 tuhatta ääntä, kun kaikista äänistä on laskettu liki 90 prosenttia.

... klo 22.59 myös CNN julisti Virginian Obamalle ... Tämä on historiallinen voitto, joka nosti aikamoisen kiljunnan katsomossa. Ensimmäistä kertaa sitten 60-luvun alun punaniskakotiosavaltiomme on päätynyt demokraateille.

... klo 23.01: CNN julistaa Obamasta presidentin!

Nyt täytyy käydä korkkaamaan skumppaa - tai ainakin uusi kalja -- päivityksiä myöhemmin.

--- EDIT: klo 23.52 EST ---

Vau. Mielentöntä. Fiilis on todella katossa ja tapahtuman historiallisuus alkaa vasta pikkuhiljaa hamottua, vaikka skenaariota on maisteltu jo viikkoja.

Tulosten ensianalyysi näyttää vahvasti silä, mitä eniten toivoin; että vaalien tulos antaisi vahvan mandaatin uudelle suunnalle. Että sen syvin ydin nousisi niiltä väestön osilta, jotka ovat olleet joko historiallisesti polliittisessa varjossa tai jotka edustavat maan tulevaisuutta. Ja näin siinä näyttää käyvän:

96% mustien äänistä
65-68% nuorten, latinojen JA ensiäänestäjien äänistä (ei siis vain nuoret, vaan vastikään rekisteröityneet)

Nyt alkaa Obaman puhe. Lisää päivityksiä myöhemmin.

Don't vote...

... unless you care.


Video embedded: 5 Friends Uncensored

The last few months have really brought to the surface some of the best things about this big country.

But more on those l8ter. Now to the election nite watch!

Excitement in the air

I have to say that I'm still quite surprised that the U.S. presidential elections have affected me so much. To many it may not seem like a surprise -- after all, I've lived here for five and a half years already and lived through the grim times that America has seen under the Bush administration. If that get's all the rest of the world excited then why not me?

But I'm still surprised. Five years back I "promised" myself that I'd consider me a visitor in this wonderful country of great diversity (-- something that I have to say that I really, really value). That whatever would happen I'd view it as "their thing" and remember that my status is officially a non-resident alien.

Maybe the reason is just the same that has gotten the rest of the world so interested about these elections. Maybe it's because five years is almost half of my adulthood years. Maybe it's because I have to admit that in the phases of cultural adaptation I've gone over the ups and downs enough many times that I think I have to admit that I've adapted quite well. .. I have to add that in the scene that I live in five years makes me practically a native here.

I also have to add and admit/confess that I've learned to profoundly like this country in a number of ways. Yes, it surely has its annoyances. No doubt about that. And there surely are a number of things that I flat out don't like about this country. But I could say the same for my dear Finland.

I'll spare my sporadic reader(s?) from details for now. I'll just make this an election day blog opener. That is, a post to get things started. I've "promised" myself way too many times before that I'd start blogging about my experiences here. It's about time now. "Kuparinen rikki" as one could say in Finnish.

To close the post off, I'd like to share two excellent video clips and some links. The videos are embedded below and the links are pointers to my link collection in the social bookmarking service Delicious, which I warmly recommend to everybody. Don't be a beggar - share your stuff!
* A video interview about me and the elections in the main newspaper of Finland, the Helsingin Sanomat a week and a half ago
* My links on the presidential elections including pretty much all related links that I've bookmarked, and those related to Obama.

An excellent 30 minute Obama "infomercial" that I think concludes Obama's campaign very nicely


and a good 4 minute "Analysis of Barack Obama's 30 Minute Commercial" by The Young Turks.

And finally, a brilliant, brilliant humorist speech by Obama at the traditional Alfred E. Smith Foundation dinner gala in New York from a couple of weeks back.



See the second part of the speech, too. And consider McCain's speech as well.

P.S. My favorite poll tracker is Pollster.com and I was just recommended to check out the real-time electoral map of the Daily Kos.

Self-sufficient energy products

A pointer to links about LED lanterns & other self-sufficient energy products (mostly lighting aka. illumination):

- My Delicious links tagged "self-sufficient energy products"

The list is not long but will grow over time. If interested, subscribe to the feed on the page or with get additions to your inbox with RSS FWD.

Free, Libre, Open Content and Culture - and Communities

I was supposed to send a friend some "pointer" links on the possibilities that the Internet provides for community creation/collaboration and about Creative Commons (a component of free - libre - open content,  libre knowledge and altogether the free culture movement, together with other copyleft licences).

I was about to simply send her a stack of links as I have to a number of others before. But as an enthusiast on the issues of free-libre-open content/culture/knowledge/access/every thing I finally realized that sending yet another email to any single person or a group of people for that matter on the issue is just plain dumb. After all, knowledge wants to be free and experiences should be shared. So it really doesn't make sense to post these anywhere else than a blog (or a wiki). So, here we go.

On Creative Commons. I'll let a (3 min) video speak about CC in general.

The video above is hosted at dotSub, which is an excellent example of how creative commons licensing empowers users refine the work - in this case users can help subtitle and translate the subtitles of any video to any language. Simply choose your preferred (available) language from the dropdown menu and see for yourself! .. With normal copyrights this wouldn't be possible.

You might also want to check out a number of excellent presentations by Lawrence "Larry" Lessig, the grand ol' man of Creative Commons. YouTube's your best friend but I'll point you to my two other top recommendations on CC:

1) a four part series on free culture (8 min each) and

2) Lessig's presentation: How Creativity is being strangled by the law at the TEDtalks

These give more back ground to the idea of free culture and creative commons. ... If you prefer to digest things in a written format then check out Lessig's book:  Free Culture (CC-licensed = $0 to download ~$12 to buy a hardcopy)

As a side note:

TEDtalks (in YouTube) has a huge amount of videos on very interesting talks/presenations, not just technology. Another very interesting similar pointer is AtGoogleTalks.  

Related to all this is the issue of communities, collaboration and user-generated content or crowdsourcing. A sociological perspective. I'll embed another YouTube video, a excellent presentation by Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, which he delivered at the World Bank in the spring (commentary on the presentation). To justify the 33min chunk a comment from my dear M (not as enthousiasted as me about these things as I am): "This should really be a must see for anyone working with (international) development." I'd add: to anyone who wishes to understand this century.

Again. See the YouTube's "related videos" on the right. My other Shirky favorite is his TEDtalks speech: Institutions vs. Collaboration (20min). 

Maybe that's enough for this time. I'll save some for another post and conclude by emphasizing that I think that the idea and possibilities of free-libre-open content/knowledge/etc are a huge thing! We're talking about not just serious but fundamental empowerment of individuals. And in this, the licencing issue is one of the very key components as that's what - at the end of the day - defines how content can be used and reused; or not. As a quote borrowed from an excellent presentation "Mass Digitization of Scholarly Resources: Google Book Searc and the Open Content Alliance" (in PDF) states:

“Beware any corporation that pretends to speak for the public interest. That’s usually a contingent pledge based on convenience and temporary market conditions.” — Siva Vaidhyanathan

What do you think?

Etikkatesti

Hauska nähdä, että YLE:n etiikkatesti on taas vielä hengissä. Nimim. törmäsin testiin joskus 1999 hujakkeilla - muistaakseni Sakun viittelöimänä. Silloin palvelu oli kuitenkin varmaan vuoden verran nurin, kun yritin sitä tehdä.

Tällä erää Jussin innoittamana:

Mielipiteitäsi lähimpänä oleva filosofi on Väinö Linna (1920-1992).
[ Lisätietoja filosofista ]

Alla 3 lähintä filosofia ja osumisprosentit:

1. Väinö Linna 78.0%
2. David Hume 77.0%
3. Anthony Giddens 77.0%

Ajatuksiasi eniten vieroksuu Carl Schmitt 45.0%

Myös seuraavat 3 mielipidevaikuttajaa olivat lähinnä omaa vastaustasi:

1. Kirjailija Matti Mäkelä 86.0%
2. Kansantaiteilija, yht.maist. Simo Frangen 80.0%
3. Näyttelijä Mari Rantasila 78.0%

Noh, parei myöhään kuin ei silloinkaan...

Your online identity. Your digital history. Make sure you own them.

If I had to name my pet peeve in the domain of digital life I'd most probably point to the issue that so many - if not most - people don't seem to have given much thought to their digital identity and their digital archives. Looking at email this means choosing your email address and email provider wisely. Yes, I know, many probably think that I'm a fool thinking about this elaborately, or that "Hey, who cares!? It's just email." Well. Think again. What follows is a note that I wrote to one bunch of friends. It's not very finely formulated (I may well choose to edit it later). But the points are hopefully clear. ... the comment became a bit long but I recommend you to think about: Your identity - your emails ...

You should consider very, very, very carefully if you really want to use your work email for any personal communication -- or a Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Comcast, luukku.com, etc providers' free emails even for personal communication for that matter.

So, in brief, there are two issues related that are growingly important: Your email and your online identity.

• Your email: Your employer may well own your email (in the US at least -- it reads on my contract!) -- or at least keep it hostage (as do almost all of the personal email service providers (listed above). In practice just about all companies keep their employees emails hostage -- even in Finland, the promised land of the equal rights and fair game ;)
• ... For all situations: think -- and find out -- if you can get your own emails with you in a standard digital format that some standard email system can import if you have to -- or want to change you company / your ISP.

• Your online identity: You may want to be affiliated with your company in a number of situations or it maybe convenient to send and receive emails from-to your company BlackBerry but think further. What happens to your 'identity' when you switch jobs? And in any case email addresses (as well as mobile phone numbers, and not just in developing countries) are becoming increasingly important part of your identity. Online, they often are your identity.
  

The simple choices to both of the issues are:

• Reasonably priced "E-mail and WWW forwarding services [...] This allows our members to keep the same personal identity should the actual location or ISP of their e-mail or www homepages change." (from www.iki.fi) or

• Using a truly free (as in free speech) email service provider. One that let's you forward and/or POP/IMAP your emails for free or for a very low fee.
  

• Controlling your domain

In practice, if you are bothered by the above, your corresponding three choices are:

1. Get a reasonably priced permanent email address from a reputable forwarding service (IKI.fi for those in Finland - ~30€/life; for others e.g. www.name - ~$10/year) .. BTW. I have a few domains reserved for this purpose and can offer you this through Google Apps (see #3 below) - shoot me an email if you're interested.
   
2. Get a Gmail account (free free - out of pocket and portability)
3. Get your own domain: $9/year and register it with Google Apps service ($0) or use any other service ($0 - few dollars a month ... ~$40-80/year)
   

As you can do the easy math "freeing" your email with a typical service provider is a ripoff. The paid for service from Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc (that gives you free forwarding of email address and retrieval of your email physically to your computer) costs some $15-20/month. Cost per decade becomes ~$2000 where the recommended options are around $10-100, $0, and $90 per decade, respectively. Are you letting them rob you? ;)

In addition to the $ part. There's one positive issue worth mentioning in regards to getting your own domain ... the open 'address space' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space) associated with it. For an example you can reach me at j(ÄT)viestin.net or jaakko(ÄT)viestin.net - Many providers don't even allow 2-3 even 5 character addresses.

As note above I've reserved a few domains with the idea of being able to provide friends an easy to remember email address that they can keep forever. Nothings certain in this world but I'd be surprised if Google would suddenly not be able to provide the Google Apps basic package for free - the price of technology and basic services is going down rather than up.

So. The following domains have nearly 100% free address spaces. Let me know if you want an email address from one of them. My promise is that I'll keep the domains as long as there's a single user on them and won't charge anything for the accounts

- viestin.net
- opend.cc (~ open development)
- opens.cc (~ open society)
- dcfinns.net, usfinns.net, suomalaisu.us
- dcnordics.net, usnordics.net, nordics.us

Why reserve all these domains? Why any? People have odd hobbies. Being annoyed about peoples' email addresses can probably be listed as my hobby. Maybe pet peeve is a good term for that. How can I know, an ESL fool. Whatever the reason(s) reserving domains has always seemed like a difficult or at least a tedious task. But things have changed. For me (a semi(?)-geek) Google Apps was the thing. They made it super super easy to get all of the basic services (email, etc) working -- for free free (Cheers to NSA! ;) -- and you can even book a domain through them even though I recommend getting more flexibility by reserving your domain through some dedicated domain provider (I use GoDaddy). This gives you free hands and full control with your domain.

What ever your choice is. Don't let them take you or your emails hostage!

Things in Perspective

Quite stunning, eih?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Markkinoiden tempoilun jeesustelusta

Nokia lopetti tehtaan Saksassa. Saksa kapinoi. Alex Stubb hutaisi jälleen osuvasti.

Mielenkiintoinen keskusteluketju, vaikka vähän jeesustelulta tuntuiskin. Musta asia ei ole helppo kumpaankaan suuntaan ja tavallansa sillä siisti. Olennaista on mielestäni olla sortumatta kummankaan suunnan populismiin. Kyetä ajattelemaan jollain järkevällä tasolla omien, kehittyneiden ja kehittymättömien markkinoiden etua. Hankala juttu.

Ikävä tosiasia tuntuu olevan, että ihmiset -- varmasti tähänkin keskusteluketjuun osallistuneet -- pakenevat vastuutaan lähes poikkeuksetta sysäämällä pahat asiata "markkinoiden" niskoille. Tai vetäytymällä niiden taakse turvaan.

Markkinoiden kritisoinnin ongelma on siinä, että olemme kaikki osasyyllisiä: jokainen, joka on koskaan ostanut mitään tarjouksesta, miettinyt ostospäätöstä tehdessään hintaa muiden ylevien asioiden yli (asioinut vaikka Ikeassa, H&M:ssä, ostanut Ladan, käyttänyt
hintavertailupalveluita, käynyt Virossa nauttimassa edullisemmasta hintatasosta, jne.) -- ja tietysti myös net jotka mitään omistavat ja vaativat sijoituksilleen tuottoa.

"Syyllisyys"asteemme vaihtelee, mutta lähes kaikki ovat tervassa pyöritettyjä. Osa myös höyhenissä.

Mutta asia ei ole tosiaan helppo. Tehdäkö kaikki itse ja antaa kiinalaisten, afrikkalaisten ja muiden köyhien kärsiä köyhyyden ja matalan kasvun loukusta? Vai avata ovet sepposen selälleen ja (osittain) kusta omaan pakkiin?

Loppukevennykseksi:

Talouselämän päivän piikki 23.1. pistää saksalaiseen marinaan osuvasti:
"Saksalaisia harmittaa, että suomalainen Nokia on saanut Saksassa lähes 100 miljoonan euron tukiaisrahat. Nopeastipa on Saksanmaalla unohdettu se, että tämän vuosituhannen alussa Sonera maksoi Saksaan 4 miljardin tukirahat ostamalla umts-huutokaupassa saksalaista ilmaa."