chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

The video above (via alt1040) explains Chatroulette better than I would.  My experience with it has been mixed, but it reminds me a lot of the old BBS/ICQ free-for-all 10 years ago.  I’ve read metaphors comparing it to TV zapping with people, but I think it’s more akin a people player in shuffle mode.  Some of the nice people I’ve found (after nexting all the flying male body parts) included:

• A bored Filipina (at 3 a.m. her time) asking what music was I playing (Nortec Collective, of course).
• A Dutch law student with a great sense of humour.
• A German dude interested in banking for development (we were chatting about Muhammad Yunus)
• Random male stranger asking questions on existential philosophy (my conclusion is he had watched The Matrix too many times).
• A Texan in his 50’s very interested to know my views on the Mexican drug violence situation.
• A French literature student just interested in a chat, also with a really nice sense of humour.
• A young Indian female doctor waiting for her night shift to start who gave me a couple of nice suggestions of Indian indie after I mentioned I collect “local rock” from all over the place.

Serendipituous, yes. Extreme, sometimes (but you can also next them or even better report them, jerks!). An interesting study of the human condition, absolutely.

TEDx Helsinki was organised this year as a local mirror for the wonderful, famous TED talks.  The event was quite good overall, even if the level of the talks was a little uneven.  The only problem they had was with misleading marketing in one important aspect: while their website and the registration process was in English, 80% of the event was in Finnish with no translations, which meant those attendants who didn’t master the language of Aleksis Kivi (and there were quite a few), were given a cold shoulder from the get go.

This was one of those situations where I was really glad to have learned the local lingo. If you are interested to know more about the event, you can check twitter or Anssi Kela’s post (in Finnish).

Mexican public finances are not in the best of shapes given the economic crisis and the extremely difficult year so far for the country, so in their budget proposal for the next year Congress has proposed to raise taxes on pretty much everything instead of trimming down public spending further and closing useless ministries and bureaucratic institutions.

One “small detail” that has gotten pretty much every Mexican netizen riled up is a raise of 3% on telecommunications, including the use of internet, as Congress considers it a “luxury good”.  Great way of stifle the development of the nation even further, especially when comparing it to what is going in in places like Finland where brodband access is a right (which doesn’t mean it’s subsidised by the state).  Here in Finland it is understood that connectivity brings economic advantages and growth, unlike our prehistoric Mexican politicians.

Good people, interesting conversations, beer and live videoblogging of the event.  All for a good cause: saving the Baltic sea.

Full disclaimer: this is related closely to my work.  Don’t expect me to be fully impartial.

It is still a beta and currently only works with N97, but I’ve been using it for the past week and it’s not only nice but useful.  I can’t wait to have this available for Twitter as well, but don’t expect me to divulge publicly where I or anybody else I care for exactly reside.

My colleagues and friends Arto and Dan have been talking about their very own PESH model (participant, enabler, supplier, helper) which helps brands map their usage, presence and possible/required measurements in their social media activities.

If you do social media marketing, it would definitely help you out to check those two posts.  Definitely helps to get your ideas in order, as any good model should.

I grew up playing SimCity, as I’m sure some of you did.  The appeal of simulating how a city would grow and try to create something that would reflect my own choices was definitely very strong.  The last version of the franchise SimCity 4 was released in 2004, and its publisher (EA) has pretty much discontinued support for the game and stopped any sequels.

Imagine my surprise when I found Simtropolis.com, an online community of SimCity players.  Not only do they have City blogs and chat, but a huge archive or user-generated content to improve your experience of the game.  Over the years, the users have created maps (so that you can build your city in the site of Helsinki, for example), landmarks (like the Angel of Independence from Mexico City or the Atomium from Brussels) that you can use in the city you build and other general improvements to the game that the designers hadn’t originally thought of, an example of which you can find below.

It is amazing how much people can do, when you give them means to do it.  A community of devoted fans is all you need.

Because microblogging is turning into a 6th sense of social awareness. And scores of people are joining every day.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt laughing about it every once in a while.

This week was my birthday, and as every year I was planning to take it really, really easy since it was during a working day.

What was different this year was that I was more than a little surprised to have received over 80 congratulations messages over Twitter & Facebook besides a couple of text messages.  Of course it is much easier because social networks remind you of your contacts’ birthdays, but I have to say it was quite moving to be on the receiving end, and that’s added value