Legal threats and the internet

eirikso2 Comments

And the price for the most stupid legal threat goes to restaurant Lehtovaara in Helsinki.

Herkko Hietanen is a lawyer specialized within IT-law. He had a very bad experience at the Lehtovaara and posted a letter to the restaurant after the unlucky visit. They did not answer, so Herkko posted the letter on his blog. A while later this letter is hit number two on Google if you do a search for the restaurant. So, the owner of the restaurant sends Herkko a legal threat demanding (among other things) that he should remove the letter from the web and pay him around 80 000 euro in damage.

Was that a smart move? I guess not. The case have already reached BoingBoing under the headline “Helsinki’s Lehtovaara: Crappy service and a bullying owner“. And, as Herkko states on his blog:

They apparently hadn’t done any background checks. I have taught law and technology in several universities, I am a founding member of one of the biggest cyber rights organization in Europe and have defended publicly digital freedom of expression. Do they really think that they have a winning strategy? I am sure that many people would have rushed to take down the content. Not me. I will see their bluff.

Lehtovaara bring it on!

If there existed a list of the five worst people to sue for a case like this, Mr. Herkko would be on it. Yes, bring it on! This could lead to some great entertainment!

“It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are fucking morons”
Continue reading “Legal threats and the internet” →

Legal threats and the internet

Gold and satellite dishes

eiriksoLeave a comment

While walking through the eastern part of Oslo I found this interesting shop. The sign says: "Gifts, gold, satellite dishes and lamps". This is a kind of business that don’t comply with the stuff I learned while working for the consulting firm Accenture, nor do it comply with any of the books I have read on the subject of business and marketing. Still, the whole thing is obvious. I had to take a closer look. Just because of the unusual combination. And, that was the extra attention that made this good maketing and a motivation to enter the shop.

bar & lawnmover rental
More of this please! While studying in Stavanger I was involved in making a commercial for a local bar. The thing is, the owner told us that it had to be completely clear in the commercial that this was not only a bar, but a bar and lawnmover rental. Yes, "bar & lawnmover rental". I have never forgotten that business. However, I do not remember the name of the bar, only that somewhere around Stavanger there is an establishment with this unlikely combination.

So, what do you think? If someone opened "Prada designer clothes & DeWalt power tools" along fifth avenue in New York. Would you enter?

Gold and satellite dishes

Utilizing feedburner

eiriksoLeave a comment

I have just started utilizing Feedburner for my site. It is a great tool that let you add functionallity to your RSS feed. Get statistics for your RSS feed and in general help you with your syndication.

One example is the fact that it can make your feed look nice in any browser. Have a look at my feed here. Another is a bunch of predefined buttons for people to use when they want to subscribe. Look at the Yahoo, myMSN, NewsGator etc… in my sidebar to the right.

But, to make use of all the functionallity it is important that all your subscribers use the feed from feedburner.

So, here’s a wish:
All of you out there subscribing to my old feed:
http://www.eirikso.com/wp/index.php?feed=rss2

Could you please change your subscription to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/eirikso

The old one will not stop working, and at some point I will make an automatic redirect to my new feed. But, for those of you that have a minute, please change to the new feed.

For those of you that is wondering what this RSS thing really is, have a look at my introduction to RSS.

Continue reading “Utilizing feedburner” →

Utilizing feedburner

Hackers predicted the future of Apple back in 1999

eirikso2 Comments

While browsing the very entertaining archives of 2600.com i stumbeled upon a very interesting hack.

Back in 1999 some Swedish hackers changed the front page of both MacWeek and MacWorld. It seems like they actually did a remarkable piece of prediction. I have tried to recreate a possible conversation between two of the hackers:

January 4. 1999

This is a quote from the front page they made:

APPLE MERGES WITH INTEL !
Today, Apple and Intel released the shocking news that they now have merged into APTEL Inc., starting a new line of Computer Systems featuring the Intel Pentium II processor and Linux Slackware Operating System.

So, it is 2005. Apple’s operating system is based on unix and in the beginning of June all front pages where full of this.

Hackers predicted the future of Apple back in 1999

Eirikso on the Mediacenter Show

eiriksoLeave a comment

Ian Dixon’s brilliant Media Center Show has reached episode #14. And this time he’s had a chat with the admin of eirikso.com. That happens to be… me… As a modest geek that spent years of education to make sure he always could stay behind the camera I am honoured to guest the show.

I was invited to talk about the little roundup I did of different media center softwares. We had a nice chat about that, and a lot of other digital media related issues.

Pick up your player or listen directly on your computer
This is dedicated content for the people that are interested in HTPCs in general and Windows Media Center Edition in detail. It is time to pick up whatever audio player you have and start subscribing. My favourite is to use my Nokia 6630 cellular to listen to podcasts. Have a look at my guide here.

The simplicity of the technology behind a show like this is interesting.
Ian calls me up through Skype. I’m in Norway, he’s in the UK. He records the conversation, edits it and posts it on his web page. People out there subscibe to the feed and get the show as soon as he has published it. The audio quality of the Skype conversation is far better than any regular phone line.

Related posts:
Everything under my HTPC category and Windows MCE category.

Eirikso on the Mediacenter Show

Kermit the frog meets BMW

eirikso18 Comments

The very talented cinematographer John Andreas Andersen has posted a cool making of from his work on a BMW commercial starring Kermit The Frog, directed by Mr. Stevan Treshow.

The location is Calvinia in South Africa. The area is covered by a desert, but the day the crew arrived it started raining heavily. Yes, when an expensive film crew arrives in a desert where it never rains… It starts raining! After one day of waiting, the rain stopped and the desert dried in a couple of hours.

Here is a link to the movie (Apple QuickTime required):
www.john-andreas.com/makingkermit.mov

Edit:
“The making of” on YouTube

Head over to www.john-andreas.com for more details. The commercial itself is currently aired at German television.

Update:
More info and movie clips over here.

Kermit the frog meets BMW

Placeshifting – your media everywhere

eirikso20 Comments

Placeshifting, the art of making your media available where you want it.
Okay, you have a computer at home with some music, some pictures and some video files. Maybe you also have connected a TV-card and a web cam. Now, how cool would it be if you could access all of this whenever you where connected to the net with a device that was able to play your media?

This has been possible for quite a while, but as much of the stuff that is possible with computers, it has been too difficult to set up. To make streaming of media out of your home happen doing advanced firewall configuration and setting up a DynDNS service was necessary.

Content owners – watch out!
I said was. I have written about ORB and SlimServer here before, and I am still amazed over how well ORB works. What makes it especially interesting for content producers and copyright lawyers is the fact that it makes your own media inependent of borders and regulations regarding protection of content within countries.

I have all my Norwegian television channels available no matter where I am. At the same time the content producers work hard on their business model that depends on dividing the world in regions.

Availability
MP3 is a technology that forced its way through despite the fact that it was not marketed and actually heavily worked against by the music industry. People wanted availability. Actually people was willing to sacrifice quality on behalf of availability. (While the music industry was working hard making Super Audio CD because they thought that people wanted better quality).

Placeshifting is all about availability. After using ORB for a while I have been quite addicted to having my music available on all my computers. At work. At a friends house. On my mobile.

So what do I do?
Continue reading “Placeshifting – your media everywhere” →

Placeshifting – your media everywhere

The fastest rising chart ever on Trendmapper?

eiriksoLeave a comment

A company called IPDrum did a press release recently. IPdrum has developed patent-pending technology to connect traditional mobile telephony systems with peer-to-peer (P2P) telephony. IPdrum Mobile Cable enables the user to Skype from his/her mobile no matter where he/she is.

Going from 18 hits in Google on the 16th of june to 47 000 hits on the 21st. That is what I call a successful press release! Link to the full trendmap.

The fastest rising chart ever on Trendmapper?

Blogging directly from a paraglider

eirikso9 Comments

Blogging just reached a new height. Gunhild Sørensen of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation just did a spectacular ride in a paraglider. All the way she posted directly to the blog at the Norwegian Broadcasting Coropration’s web site. The site is in Norwegian, but the pictures speak for themselves…

From the blog:
“Now we are going to do some 360s. Øyvind (the instructor) asks me to hold tight to my mobile. This involves some serious G-forces”

Technical:
She is using a Nokia 6630 mobile and sends her messages and pictures to a blog powered by Easy Moblog.

Blogging directly from a paraglider