Olisiko Mäntyharjuun liityvistä asioista parempi (lyhyempi) #hashtag kuin “#Mäntyharju”?
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Should I subscribe to 38 different YLE feeds, or just one?
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In an attempt to monitor YLE’s coverage of certain topics, I’m collecting YLE’s RSS feeds so that I can run a search query on them.
They are offering 38 different feeds in Finnish. I don’t want to miss anything, but I also want to avoid duplication where possible. Therefore, I’m wondering if the feeds with the format http://yle.fi/uutiset/rss/uutiset.rss?osasto=[category] all provide selected content that is also included in the feed http://yle.fi/uutiset/rss/uutiset.rss.
If that was the case, I could suffice with just http://yle.fi/uutiset/rss/uutiset.rss.
Would be nice to know 
Tule mukaan Futiskerhoon!
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Jalkapallokausi on alkanut! Mäntyharjun Jäntevän Futiskerho kaikille -06 ja sen jälkeen syntyneille tytöille ja pojille. Sunnuntaisin klo 16-17.
TULE ROHKEASTI MUKAAN…ja ota kaverin lisäksi isi tai äiti, tai molemmat mukaan pallopojiksi!
(Ja jakakaa!)
Switching from Google Reader to Feedly, Flipboard and Pulse
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Google pulling the plug on Reader is perhaps a blessing in disguise. It gets us to rethink news consumption in several ways.
It doesn’t feel bad to move away some of the online pie from Google the giant to something smaller. It was about time to re-evaluate RSS tools anyway. Feedly has come a long way. The user experience seems rather similar to Google Reader, so the transition is easy.
The visual presentation – of the Firefox plugin and Android app at least – is quite compelling. Feedly, Flipboard and Pulse are often mentioned together as being some of the most pleasing tools for consumption and sharing of aggregated news and other (social) media streams.
I think I’ll use all three for a while. Too early to tell which will prevail. Maybe all three, for slightly different use cases. Continue reading
We had a nice ride together, Nokia
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It’s done. I switched from Saunalahti to DNA and from Nokia to Samsung.
Saunalahti has been overcharging me for years, failing to advise me on an operator plan that would’ve best fit my actual use. I know, it’s my own fault, I should have done the math earlier. Still, it would serve an operator’s customer satisfaction if they helped their customers pick the best plan…
Then again, to be honest, DNA now offered me a plan that Saunalahti couldn’t match. Had I been a satisfied customer, I probably would have switched anyway. Unless of course Saunalahti had had a customer retention plan in place. I mean, after several years of this relationship they could’ve offered me something competitive to DNA.
I really don’t mean to complain here. It’s a very competitive market and the plans are very similar. Just food for thought.
So the deal I signed up for includes 500 domestic phone call minutes and/or SMS messages for € 9.90 per month, and unlimited 3G data traffic at 1Mbps for € 2.90 per month. There is no lock-in: my old phone number will be transferred from Saunalahti, I can cancel or change the DNA plan any time, or switch to another operator.
For comparison I also checked Sonera. Bad. Their approach is less flexible because you can’t separate your calls and messages from your data speed. With 1Mbps data speed I wouldn’t get enough minutes. If I did buy enough minutes I would have to take 2 Mbps of data. The least expensive package to serve my needs cost € 19.90 per month. Furthermore, unless I’m mistaken, I’d have to commit to at least a two-year deal. (Can this be true? I’m not even sure if that’s legal)
Now my heart is bleeding for Nokia.
Continue reading
How I understand Finnish verb conjugation
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After the year-turn I enrolled in an on-line Finnish language course at Otavan Opisto: ‘s21 – Suomen kielen perusteiden varmentaminen‘.
If I understand it right, it’s a basic Finnish language course, in Finnish, aimed at adults, at secondary school level. Free of charge.
What I like about this learning solution is that it’s completely on-line, so it allows me to learn at my own pace and whenever I have time.
I live in a predominantly Finnish-speaking environment – despite the fact that I speak quite a bit of Dutch and English with family, friends and in business. So I learn new Finnish words on a daily basis. But my challenge has been to actively use Finnish grammar correctly.
The thing is, I feel that I receive too little feedback on my grammar in Finnish conversation with people in order to improve. I’m often uncertain if I use the correct conjugation, but people still understand what I intend to say so they don’t feel inclined to correct me. People are very polite that way. And even when I ask explicitly, not everyone is able to explain Finnish grammar from a foreigner’s point of view.
So that’s why I need a course with an emphasis on grammar. What I like about the Otava course so far is that it’s well-structured, there is a clear emphasis on learning the rules, lots of exercises, and progress is well tracked.
The on-line learning environment features a blog-like “learning diary” for the student. It’s a nice way to report your own progress and development areas, and to give feedback to your teacher. So, yes, there is a human at the other end, in case you get stuck and to rate your performance.
While struggling through the present and perfect tense of the 6 verb groups, I figured I needed to structure and re-produce my learning by building a spreadsheet of verb conjugations as I go forward. And why not share it? So today I’m releasing version 0.2.0. For what it’s worth.
Morning fog in December
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Gotta tell ya, those Kurzweil fantasies are starting to freak me out
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(Today seems as good a day to contemplate immortality as any other )
Problem is, I kinda buy Ray Kurzweil‘s central argument that our technological development is speeding up exponentially.
Remember the tale of the king who was asked for 1 grain of rice on the first position of the chess board, then double the amount for every next square?
“It’s only 64 squares, so how bad can that be?”, the king must have thought. But before half-way the board, the king ran out of rice or the ability to count it.
From Wikipedia:
According to legend, vizier Sissa Ben Dahir presented an Indian King Sharim with a beautiful, hand-made chessboard. The king asked what he would like in return for his gift and the courtier surprised the king by asking for one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second, four grains on the third etc. The king readily agreed and asked for the rice to be brought. All went well at first, but the requirement for 2 n − 1 grains on the nth square demanded over a million grains on the 21st square, more than a million million (aka trillion) on the 41st and there simply was not enough rice in the whole world for the final squares. (from Swirski, 2006)
Just a couple of links in my stream this week: mosquito-shaped drones, police-anti-surveillance software in people’s smart phones, the God Particle, immortality within 20 years… It’s starting to sound like reality will overtake anything SciFi literature has been able to dream up. Continue reading
After the Great Unbundling comes the News Club
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Clay Shirky has said it before and recently said it again, this time in response to news of Warren Buffet‘s investment in news organizations:
“(…) good local coverage isn’t enough, because ordinary citizens don’t pay for news. What we paid for, when we used to buy the paper, was a bundle of news and sports and coupons and job listings, printed together and delivered to our doorstep.
People are still happy to pay for reproduction and delivery, of course. We just pay our ISPs now. And we still care about news and sports and coupons and job listings — we just get them from different places, and, critically, money that goes to Groupon or Hot Jobs [correction] no longer subsidizes the newsroom. Ad dollars lost to competing content creators can be fought for; ad dollars that no longer subsidize content at all are never coming back. (…)”
To draw a picture of where I’m coming from (which, according to Jay Rosen, is “easier to trust than the View from Nowhere”): Continue reading
But *how*, @jeffjarvis, do your students apply those for-profit business models?
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This was supposed to be my sauna evening, but soi.
Sustainable journalism, that’s what we’re all looking for. Quality journalism that will survive and thrive despite and thanks to the Internet.
Jeff Jarvis today explained his insistence on having his journalism students develop for-profit businesses. Apparently, this raised some eyebrows among an audience of teachers of entrepreneurial journalism.
In his piece, Jeff asserts that “there is not enough charity in the nation for the journalism it needs.”
First off, this begs the question: “How much journalism does the nation need?” Free market advocates will argue that the nation needs as much journalism as there is market demand for. Charity curmudgeons and other journalism idealists may argue that there is no end to how much quality jourmalism the nation needs.
My point is, how much (quality) journalism a society needs is a subjective matter.
This is what I replied to Jeff on Twitter, and what Jeff replied to me: Continue reading
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What is the best way to create #RSS feeds for categories and tags in #WordPress?
1.0 km jog
Just jogged 1 kilometer in-between jumps on the trampoline in our back yard. Jumping feels like a good warm-up.
I’m collecting my jogging stats on this page.
Jogged 2.0 km with universal inlays. A new beginning?
I got universal inlays from my physio-therapist after telling her about my knee and ankle problems. Today I felt like going for an easy jog on the Asics Gel Nimbus 13 with the inlays. They felt really supportive, as if the shoes would have had (anti-)pronation support. I ran only 2 kilometres, but without pain. Let’s see how it feels tomorrow morning, though…
I’m collecting my jogging stats on this page.
Joomla! or WordPress? It depends ;-)
I’ve been looking into the pros and cons of Joomla! and WordPress as possible publishing platforms for a customer’s new project website.
Unfortunately I cannot be fully transparent and specific about the requirements, but I think you’ll get the gist if you read between the lines.
Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org) and WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org) are two of the most used content management systems (CMS’s) on the Internet today. Both systems can be tailored to enable all the functionalities needed for the project we are talking about. Both are mature, scalable, user-friendly.
Beer, speech and pop
Both are open source projects: “free as in beer and free as in speech.” Both are based on open PHP and MySQL technologies. Anyone can download and install either system on their own or rented (cloud) server.
(Additionally, unlike Joomla!, WordPress has a hosted version at wordpress.com, but that is not a requirement for this project)
WordPress is arguably somewhat more mature as it started in 2003, two years before Joomla! WordPress has a higher install base and is more popular. Google trends would suggest that interest in WordPress is growing (http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=wordpress) while interest in Joomla! seems to have peaked in 2010 (http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=joomla).
On Alexa’s global website traffic ranking, wordpress.com is listed at position number 22, wordpress.org at number 105 and joomla.org at number 432.
Versatility and extensibility
With a flair for generalization and simplification, one might say that WordPress is optimized for blogs and content-driven websites, while Joomla! is arguably more versatile, optimized for large websites as well as non-content driven concepts, e.g. ecommerce, and (large) intranets. Continue reading
Hyvä WordPress demo-video suomeksi
Kiitos tästä, Jari Sarja!
Joomla! or WordPress: how to compare?
[UPDATE, February 27, 2013: I've written up some of my findings here.]
A public-sector prospect of my company and me are running their website on Joomla but are considering WordPress as the CMS for a new project.
Their staff are used to creating and updating content on the Joomla back-end and their IT dept is used to supporting it. Therefore, adopting WordPress would involve some switching cost and a small learning curve.
Are there any compelling reasons why they should take the plunge? Or why they shouldn’t?
Let me disclose that personally I’m more familiar with WordPress and I’m a fan. I love the fact that it’s free as in beer as well as free as in speech. I admire the wordpress.org / wordpress.com business model. I sense that WordPress is developing very rapidly and I admire the energy with which so many developers around the world are pushing the envelope. I kinda believe that WordPress is on such a roll that – if it doesn’t already – it will soon outperform any other CMS out there.
Having said that, I want to keep an open mind and try to pull together an honest comparison of the two. What is it that Joomla has and WordPress doesn’t? And vice versa.