I haven´t used Skype for a while so did not know all the new features. After seeing this video:
I just need to start Skype-ing again. It´s not only phone calls and web cams but screen & file sharing. :)
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
LinkedIn spam
Last week I got a LinkedIn invitation from a genius who was a fan of Michael Jackson. At the same time he holds several amazing positions:
-Owner of Global LINK SERVE
-C.E.O of FORD
-C.E.O of Toshiba Japan
-Director in Nokia
-Director in sharp Electronics
-Director in Sony Electronics Company
-Director in Lexus
-Director in colgate Palmolive usa
He must be a busy guy...
What is really amazing is that he has got 15 new contacts after yesterday and there´s now only 2 people between him and me.
Why isn´t this account already closed? I would think LinkedIn notices if someone sents thousands of invitations in a short period and starts suspecting something weird. And if someone is CEO for several companies at the same time, doesn´t it ring a warning bell somewhere?
And what does the people think when they accept invitations from a stranger?
There is an option to report about spam in LinkedIn too but in this case I chose the option of I don´t know this person and after that there´s no way to report about the spammers. :P
-Owner of Global LINK SERVE
-C.E.O of FORD
-C.E.O of Toshiba Japan
-Director in Nokia
-Director in sharp Electronics
-Director in Sony Electronics Company
-Director in Lexus
-Director in colgate Palmolive usa
He must be a busy guy...
What is really amazing is that he has got 15 new contacts after yesterday and there´s now only 2 people between him and me.
Why isn´t this account already closed? I would think LinkedIn notices if someone sents thousands of invitations in a short period and starts suspecting something weird. And if someone is CEO for several companies at the same time, doesn´t it ring a warning bell somewhere?
And what does the people think when they accept invitations from a stranger?
There is an option to report about spam in LinkedIn too but in this case I chose the option of I don´t know this person and after that there´s no way to report about the spammers. :P
Monday, 29 June 2009
Adding RSS feed to any web page
First you have learnt to use RSS feeds and then you realize that not all your favorite pages provide one. :P
No worries, there is helping solution for you: Feed43 . I tried adding a page but to be honest the service was not that easy to use - before adding a feed I need to study more, e.g. the step-by-step tutorial which I will do later.
Thanks Mikko for sharing this tip :).
No worries, there is helping solution for you: Feed43 . I tried adding a page but to be honest the service was not that easy to use - before adding a feed I need to study more, e.g. the step-by-step tutorial which I will do later.
Thanks Mikko for sharing this tip :).
Sunday, 21 June 2009
3 reasons for choosing feeds instead of emails @ work
Some weeks ago I listed 22 problems with emails and said that some of them can be solved with RSS feeds. How?
Freedom: You can choose which feeds you subscribe while you can only choose some of your email delivery lists, others are given and some of them you can never leave because they are based on your organization not based your interest. So while emails are sometimes spam feeds should not be. Keeping the delivery lists up-to-date is taking a lot of time (can you add me to your list? and my team too? please remove me from the list! just add me back after my holidays) while with feeds the receivers do the same work.
Openness: When you receive an email that is sent to hundreads of people you can´t know what the other receivers think about it. It is not acceptable to use reply all feature but one replies only to the sender and then the sender might get the same question over and over again. If the same message is e.g. blogged receivers can see the comments posted by other readers and they don´t need to ask something that is already answered. And it´s not only comments - readers can sometimes contribute by voting or giving points to good entry.
Saved disk space: People are archiving their emails (and it might be difficult to find them again depending on the folder structures) - the same 1 MB email might be saved by thousands of people. The feeds from wiki pages or blogs are saved in one place (and if the writers are using categories and tags they can be also easily found afterwards).
PS. The summer vacation period has started in Finland so I wish you nice&relaxing vacation and when you go back to the office think about your communication. Could you do it better?
Freedom: You can choose which feeds you subscribe while you can only choose some of your email delivery lists, others are given and some of them you can never leave because they are based on your organization not based your interest. So while emails are sometimes spam feeds should not be. Keeping the delivery lists up-to-date is taking a lot of time (can you add me to your list? and my team too? please remove me from the list! just add me back after my holidays) while with feeds the receivers do the same work.
Openness: When you receive an email that is sent to hundreads of people you can´t know what the other receivers think about it. It is not acceptable to use reply all feature but one replies only to the sender and then the sender might get the same question over and over again. If the same message is e.g. blogged receivers can see the comments posted by other readers and they don´t need to ask something that is already answered. And it´s not only comments - readers can sometimes contribute by voting or giving points to good entry.
Saved disk space: People are archiving their emails (and it might be difficult to find them again depending on the folder structures) - the same 1 MB email might be saved by thousands of people. The feeds from wiki pages or blogs are saved in one place (and if the writers are using categories and tags they can be also easily found afterwards).
PS. The summer vacation period has started in Finland so I wish you nice&relaxing vacation and when you go back to the office think about your communication. Could you do it better?
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Usernames @ Facebook
A lot of people were excited when they got their "own" username in Facebook yesterday/today. There are so many services in the net these days and quite many of them require registering. Lately I have been using "jjanhone" and now my Facebook page is using the same id. :)
Check the Mashable interview about the event:
Check the Mashable interview about the event:
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
More Waves to Google
If the earlier video was too long for you, check these
Cut & simplified version:
Translator Rosy:
Google Wave team interviewed by Techcrunch:
Review report by ApFaqTech/Cnet:
Cut & simplified version:
Translator Rosy:
Google Wave team interviewed by Techcrunch:
Review report by ApFaqTech/Cnet:
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Thursday, 4 June 2009
22 problems with emails
Back in April I was giving a training in Lahti for Lappeenranta Technical University. I asked the students (people from middle management from several companies doing their MBA or Information Management studies) to share their email problems with me. The reason for asking is that quite many of the problems can be solved by using web2.0 tools - or just by using the emails with a proper style.
Problems with emails:
1. Emails are sent without a proper purpose and for too wide audience
->everybody has their inbox full of emails and they need clean it all the time
2. It is slow
3. It takes a lot of disk space
4. Paper wasted (! some people are still printing their emails)
5. The important emails are not noticed (e.g. everybody is now using the importance High)
6. Emails are hidden by spam filters (or rules)
7. Updating the delivery lists is a hard (and never ending) task
8. You need to wait for the answer (How long should you wait? A week, a day, an hour, 5 minutes?)
9. People are using emails with different styles, others are very formal and others chatty
10. Emails are not always protected and people feel too secured when using emails
11. People are "washing hands" by forwarding the emails (but I told you...)
12. Overuse of forwarding/cc'ing (your boss is not interested of everything you do)
13. Cc field: there are people who are ignoring all emails sent them as cc
14. Email may be sent to wrong people (e.g. there are a couple of Johannas in my office and we keep getting each others emails from time to time)
15. Someone may forward your message to people whom it is not meant
16. Long threads
-> it takes time to go it through to figure out why it was sent to you in the first place
->there might be something confidential in the message that you are forwarding
17. Answers to sender only - the others don't know what has been discussed
18. You can get rid of some delivery lists
19. Managing filters is painful
20. Attachments are clumsy when the emails are read from a mobile
21. Syncing the phone crashes if you have big attachments
22. Email titles are misleading (or missing)
Anything you'd like to add?
Problems with emails:
1. Emails are sent without a proper purpose and for too wide audience
->everybody has their inbox full of emails and they need clean it all the time
2. It is slow
3. It takes a lot of disk space
4. Paper wasted (! some people are still printing their emails)
5. The important emails are not noticed (e.g. everybody is now using the importance High)
6. Emails are hidden by spam filters (or rules)
7. Updating the delivery lists is a hard (and never ending) task
8. You need to wait for the answer (How long should you wait? A week, a day, an hour, 5 minutes?)
9. People are using emails with different styles, others are very formal and others chatty
10. Emails are not always protected and people feel too secured when using emails
11. People are "washing hands" by forwarding the emails (but I told you...)
12. Overuse of forwarding/cc'ing (your boss is not interested of everything you do)
13. Cc field: there are people who are ignoring all emails sent them as cc
14. Email may be sent to wrong people (e.g. there are a couple of Johannas in my office and we keep getting each others emails from time to time)
15. Someone may forward your message to people whom it is not meant
16. Long threads
-> it takes time to go it through to figure out why it was sent to you in the first place
->there might be something confidential in the message that you are forwarding
17. Answers to sender only - the others don't know what has been discussed
18. You can get rid of some delivery lists
19. Managing filters is painful
20. Attachments are clumsy when the emails are read from a mobile
21. Syncing the phone crashes if you have big attachments
22. Email titles are misleading (or missing)
Anything you'd like to add?
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Symbian Foundation Developer pages opened
This is exciting! Last fall I participated to several working groups where we specified the tools and content for Symbian Foundation's (um, somebody should check the SF Wikipedia page) web. I voted for Mediawiki, trained the SF people to use it and am I proud now - the wiki looks so beautiful! Congrats! I also helped in gathering the content to the pages. Of course it is not finished yet (a wiki is never finished since things keep changing) but this is definitely a good start.
Want to see what I'm talking about? Read more from SF blog and register.
PS. I LOVE the graphics - they look so fresh and cheery. :)
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
What are mash-ups?
I found out Google is bringing me readers who are interested about mashups.
Here's one SlideShare presentation about MashUps
You can see the Wikipedia's definition but if you want mine...
Mashups are web pages that collect information from other web pages with help of RSS feeds. They might be some sort of RSS feed readers optimized for some people but they can contain also completely new content (like where crimes happen in your neighbourhood).
One famous example in Finland is Ampparit showing news. Another example showing popular things in Twitter Twopular.
Here's one SlideShare presentation about MashUps
Intro To Mashups
View more OpenOffice presentations from tristan.woo.
You can see the Wikipedia's definition but if you want mine...
Mashups are web pages that collect information from other web pages with help of RSS feeds. They might be some sort of RSS feed readers optimized for some people but they can contain also completely new content (like where crimes happen in your neighbourhood).
One famous example in Finland is Ampparit showing news. Another example showing popular things in Twitter Twopular.
360 is ending - where to go?
Yahoo has finally closing its blogging service 360 after 2 years of the first warning. It is suggesting to use the blog in Yahoo's Profile service instead. Oh my. I haven't seen anyone using that blog publicly but my friend moved her posts there and the user experience was very poor (e.g. no tags, no monthly archives, no themes, hard to navigate, hard to follow). The profile page seemed to me like a Facebook undressed. All in all this makes my really sad - I have been a Yahoo fan for a long time and now they keep pushing me away. First they closed the photo service, then Geocities and now 360.
Another option Yahoo is offering is taking your content and moving it to a new service. That's what I have been trying to do today but it seems that Blogger is not capable of importing the stuff (a txt file and a lot of pictures were what was exported from 360). Would WordPress work better as that is what is recommended there?
Feel free to comment!
Another option Yahoo is offering is taking your content and moving it to a new service. That's what I have been trying to do today but it seems that Blogger is not capable of importing the stuff (a txt file and a lot of pictures were what was exported from 360). Would WordPress work better as that is what is recommended there?
Feel free to comment!
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