Laila Escartín-Sorjonen2013-06-18T18:14:06-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=laila-hamarinenCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Laila Escartín-SorjonenGood old fashioned elbow grease.Happy New Year?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26755332013-02-13T04:59:47-05:002013-04-14T05:12:01-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
I still remember when in the last days of 1999 we waited for the new millennium to begin. I know someone who was convinced that as soon as the year changed, it would rain fire from the sky. Only those households that had candles blessed in the Catholic Church would be saved. The rest would burn. Nothing burnt, except for maybe somebody's patience with that silly prophecy.
I also know a guy who flew his wife and baby all the way to Sidney from Europe, so they could be amongst the first on the planet to welcome the new millennium that would make everything better. Their baby got sick, and they had to stay in the hotel instead of going to the streets to celebrate with everyone. That wasn't much of a party, was it?
2012 came and went, and the world did not end, as it didn't burn in 2000. It's 2013 and we're still around. I wouldn't say any better than before, maybe even worse, but still around. I'm not feeling very positive lately, but I don't think you can blame me, with all those awful things happening all over the world! Bad business!
We columnists tend to complain, I find. So I will try to fight my nature and write about something nice. I will write about two artists who haven't made it to the limelight yet, but are nevertheless great. That will make us all feel better.
Music. Music calms the beasts, they say. Music brings joy and improves health. There's this really interesting folky North American musician living and working in Southern Spain. Dan Kaplan and his KRooked TRee Band are about to release their new album The Indescribable Hat. Dan Kaplan plays the guitar and harmonica and sings. It's fun music. Makes you want to dance. Makes you think of the sun and prairies and leaves swinging in the wind.
Visual arts. They don't go to your marrow as music does, but they make you think and dream all the same. Alex Mitchell makes fairy tales and sharp ideas come true with her hands. She uses plastic, wood, cloth and paints to breathe life into the most delicious little creatures and landscapes. She is amazingly skillful and clever. Her art makes you laugh and think. It awakes a fantastic combination of human emotions. Mitchell's art is naïve and funny, and it hides stinging statements of life and the human being.
Both artists should definitely be checked out.
There still are nice good things happening around.]]>Humanity as One Soultag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21438282012-11-16T09:24:09-05:002013-01-16T05:12:01-05:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
The war in Gaza, in which right now Palestinians and Israelis are bombing each other, is a manifestation of the dark side of the soul that humanity is. Just as the heavy metal emissions into the waters from the mines of Talvivaara in Finland. Manifestations of darkness are also the greed that pushes young, pretty reception female workers to try and steal from their foreign guests at a 4-star hotel in Bucharest; the greed of mining executives that threaten to turn Finland into a Swiss cheese; the expanding construction that eats up the forests like a cancer; and the endless covetousness of economical growth that gnaws the entrails of Mother Earth. Cantankerous speech inside families. Mistreating children and animals. Plastic garbage high up in the beautiful mountains of Piatra Craiului in Rumania. The neurotic desire to get faster and faster from one place to another. Oh, is there an end to the list? The dark side of humanity -the soul - seems immense. The news talks about it constantly.
But where and how does the light side manifest itself?
In the kindness of Antonella from Magura towards her guests at Pension Lavinius. In the huge step taken by Australian government in ocean protection. In the Finnish school system that wants to offer all kids the same educational chances. In Uruguayan president Jose Mujica giving 90% of his monthly salary (9500€) to charity. In the intelligent, imaginative, fun art of Alex Mitchell. In the beauty of the poetry of P. Sorjonen. In the smile of children. In the music of Zbigniew Preisner. In all the efforts of people trying to protect nature.
The paragraph listing the manifestations of the generous side of humanity is smaller than the other one.
There is no light without shadows. And maybe goodness and beauty would go unnoticed if there were not evil and ugliness to contrast them with. But still, I can't help wondering, whether things wouldn't be better worldwide if the dark side of each of us manifested itself without greed and a desire to have power and control over others.]]>Jogging in Autumntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19868962012-10-19T10:30:47-04:002012-12-19T05:12:01-05:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
Photo: Autumn road in Koli, by Pekka Sorjonen
It rains. It rains and it rains and it rains. And still it rains. It's autumn and it just keeps raining day in, day out.
Finland is located in a planetary spot where the warm masses of air that flow from the south collide with the cold air masses that blow from the north. This translates into very thick masses of clouds above the ground and lots of rain. It is a fact that does not please everybody, nevertheless there is nothing to do about it, but accept it or move to some sunnier place.
Many Finns complain at the beginning of autumn, and their complaints grow stronger and sorrier as Christmas nears. We call this period of the year the time of darkness. The days grow shorter at a fast pace, but there is no snow on the ground to reflect the little light the sky stingily gives us. November is the worst down in the south; up north they have snow by November. But the south is sad: no colourful leaves on the trees, no pure white snow on the ground, only blackness, greyness and bare skeletons of trees. And of course, the rain.
They estimated in 2011 that 250.000 Finns suffered from depression. It has been proven that the lack of sunlight affects the chemistry of the brain in such a way that it makes a person vulnerable to depression. It is not uncommon for Finns to have at home or at work a very strong lamp that provides some sort of light therapy. This knowledge might explain partly the popularity of trips down to southern Europe and Asia in wintertime amongst the Finns.
But as they say, if you can't beat them, join them.
There is nothing we can do about the weather, but there are small, yet meaningful things to be done in order to not give in to depression. One of them is jogging in autumn. All you need is good technical clothing and some sort of a will to step outside into the damp and run into the woods.
The woods are amazingly beautiful in autumn. So quiet, so gentle. Decay and approaching death have taken hold of the forest, but it is not scary or ugly, on the contrary, it's hypnotically beautiful, it lets the spirit lay at rest. It is the beginning of renovation, of dying in order to be born again, new, clean, full of fresh energy.
Rain is never as harsh in the woods as elsewhere. Rain whispers sweet secret songs in the needles of fir and pine trees. Orange, brown, red, yellow and black rotting leaves spot the ground. There is a charming sacredness to the landscape that makes the jogger happy. Depression? Who said depression? Darkness becomes a friend in the forest. It huddles the jogger in its ancient protecting embrace.
And when you get back home, you realize you feel light, and life seems beautiful. There is no rush to see the days grow long and light again, everything comes in its perfect own time.]]>Check My Level!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19478692012-10-08T09:21:43-04:002012-12-08T05:12:01-05:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
In the past two years I've started exercising quite a lot. I've never been a competing athlete though. As a kid I took my tennis classes and played basketball in the school team and I've always loved to be active, but I've never received any kind of real training so my knowledge of the noble secrets of physical exercising is pretty poor.
As I said, lately I do something almost every single day: I jog; I paddle; I go orienteering; I cross country ski or walk in the woods with snowshoes; I ice-skate on frozen lakes or the sea. It's addictive and great fun!
But but, could I be overdoing it? I mean I'm not an invincible lassie anymore. I once read somewhere a famous Finnish skier saying that what builds an excellent athletic condition is resting the right amount of time. How do I know what is the right amount of rest and the right amount of exercise? One can get too excited about exercise and wreck one's health, I fear.
So, here I go to investigate if there's any way to make sure I am not exercising too much. And I bump into CHECK. Goodness gracious, the Finns have come up once again with an invention that will help us exercise better!
CHECK is a revolutionary service that enables real-time assessment of physical performance. With a little device the size of an iPod and a pad you stick on the palm of your hand, you will discover in only 15 seconds the level of strain your muscles have gone through and their current state. While you drink your morning coffee, you can analyze with CHECK whether you should train hard, a little or not at all today. The info, that is obtained with the device during the amazing 15 seconds, can be transferred into a mobile application, (works with Android and iOS), which will analyze it. Then there is a cloud service for further analysis and information management. And if you want, you can also integrate the info into training diaries and other 3rd party services.
Sounds just cool and perfect for someone like me who knows nothing about the right heart beat rate and such mysterious things, and who hates to wear weird devices whilst exercising.
It gives me peace of mind to read that CHECK has been proven to optimize training, reduce injuries and improve player performance. CHECK method is unique and based on Finnish scientific research on sports and IPR. It has been developed in collaboration with professional athletes and scientists, so CHECK is also a wonderful tool for pros, not just recreational exercisers like me.
Oh, by the way, the company CEO Juha Ruohonen has informed that CHECK is looking for recreational athletes to be part of their beta test. So if you are up to it, give it a try, it might be fun to be a guinea pig for such a cool invention. More info will be announced on their website soon, don't miss it!
Well, now I know I can go on with my passion without hurting my health. Overdoing things is always harmful. Keep in mind the aurea mediocritas.]]>Summer in Northern Kareliatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18217502012-08-22T11:19:22-04:002012-10-22T05:12:07-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
It already smells of autumn. The air is brisk and sharply clear, and the thermometer barely climbs up to a chilly 12º C in the mornings. Summer seems to be over in Finland.
We Finns wait for the summer with strong feelings. The winter is lovely though very long. Summer is sweet and too short. This year we had a cold, rainy and windy summer. Every day we kept thinking maybe tomorrow the heat will come. We had one single day of heat. Oh, well, one must accept humbly the schemes of Mother Nature and this year she was hard on us.
Even then, summer tasted lovely with its overflowing light and its voluptuous greenery.
North Karelia in the East of Finland, close to the Russian border, is a charming place to spend one's summer holidays. Lake Pielinen is the cool, liquid heart of this area that inevitably has made us fall in love with it. The first two weeks we spent on the Eastern shore of this 100 km long lake, in Viensuu, where cosy fields and wooden houses, that look like they popped-out from the 19th century made us feel welcome. A Pinus sylvestris-forest surrounded our tiny cottage with its peace and quiet. The earth we stepped on was covered with moss and small, generous blueberry plants that this summer decided to give us a feast. So many blueberries! We ran around with our hands and mouth tinted blue, tons of delicious tasting antioxidants running in our veins. What a boost of health!
Every morning we swam in the lake, whether it was cold or warm, and we felt the empowering embrace of the waters of Pielinen. We paddled and rowed to lonely islands and we defied the waves when Pielinen was in a stormy mood. Because you can't but love doing sports in these surroundings. The tempting beauty of this big lake is enough to get you on the move, and even the fantastic cheering exercise webpage HeiaHeia is not necessary there: Pielinen takes care of making you exercise!
And in the evenings sauna, ladies and gentlemen: the wood crackling and sparkling in the stove; the heat rising; oh, such heaven! You must live it at least once in your lifetime: Finland in the summer, the woods, the lake and the sauna. It is delightful, despite the mosquitoes. Do not ever let them bother you! They do test your patience, but you can beat them, believe me, with a good mosquito net and mosquito-repellent. Ants crawl all over the place in these beautiful pinewoods, but they're OK if you don't pay too much attention to them. And one night, we had the wind blow the roof of our tent right on top of our sleeping us, all it's structural rods broken (the kids took the cottage, and the parents slept in a tent in a true Davy Crockett-spirit!) Goodness, what summer weather! Still, we loved it!!
And then, a drive of almost 100 km to the Western shore of Pielinen through Nurmes, to Old Koli with its sacred hills, its deep forest heavy with blueberries and its ancient rocks. If there is a magical spot in Eastern Finland, it's here. There is this mysterious place called Pirun Kirkko, the Church of the Devil. The legend tells that they used to have witch hunts there and throw the witches down from the steep hill to a tragic death.
But Koli offers other things besides these ancient tales: outdoors activities with Koli Activ; the charming Hotel Koli up on Ukko Koli, where you can have a cool beer after picking blueberries on Pikku Koli and admire the view; tough beautiful tracks to jog or mountain bike; enchanting landscapes... one can't but be happy in Koli. Oh, I wish I could be there always! Come and see for yourself what jewels we have in this Northern land!]]>HeiaHeia - Let's Move That Body and Have Fun!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17361162012-08-03T03:41:36-04:002012-10-02T05:12:06-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
According to WHO worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008, more than 1,400 million adults were overweight: out of which 200 million men and nearly 300 million women were obese. 65% of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kill more people than underweight. More than 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010. At least 2.8 million adults die yearly as a result of being overweight or obese. According to WHO a BMI (Body Mass Index) greater or equal to 25 is overweight, and a BMI greater or equal to 30 is obesity.
WHO gives us scary data; nevertheless obesity is preventable but it requires a strong will.
The USA has the highest rates of obesity. In 2010 35.7% of adults and 17% of children were obese. Researchers for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and RTI International estimated that in 2003 obesity-attributable medical expenditures reached $75,000 million. In nine years the ciphers have probably gone up.
In the UK, in 2009, an estimated 60.8% of adults and 31.3% of children were overweight. Out of which 22% of men and 24% of women were classified as obese.
Two out of three Finnish men are overweight, whilst every other woman is overweight. There are more overweight children than ever. In the past 20 years in Finland the sales of sweets has increased 66%, the sales of ice-cream 45% and that of soda pops 30%. Snacking has become more usual than eating proper meals in an orderly way, so without them realising people ingest more calories than they consume. What does this tell us? People ingest more energy than they consume.
OK. Even WHO says that there are ways to prevent and cure overweight: one is improving our eating habits; the other is exercising. Work nowadays is to very few something physical. Most of us just sit for hours in front of the computer or some other electronic device and then take a bus or a car home, where we sink into the sofa to stare at the telly all evening.
But, getting started is so hard, isn't it? If we haven't done any sports for ages, where do we start? If we try to go jogging, after three minutes we're in the verge of suffocation; and going to the gym and having to wear those tight fitness pants and tops is going to make us look so ridiculous. And we feel so lonely in our misery! Is there no darling friend to come to our aid?
HeiaHeia!
Excuse me?
HeiaHeia!
What do you mean?
The darling friend! HeiaHeia!
Oh, goodness, is there something going on I do not know about?
Let me tell you, HeiaHeia is the answer to all of us who lack the will power to get a grip of ourselves to start moving that body. HeiaHeia is some sort of fitness Facebook in which we can keep track of and share everything sporty we do, from extreme adventure sports to weeding or just walking the dog, all levels and intensities are welcome. HeiaHeia is suitable for everybody independently of their fitness condition and seriousness in their sports activities. The service is free, though there is a paid option for wellness programs in companies. It is accessible to everyone; all you need is a Web browser in your computer or your phone.
So, if for example you go jogging 5 km, you write it down in your HeiaHeia profile and your friends will cheer you. Also the day you feel lazy, you might find the impulse to get off that sofa and get into your sports clothes and out of the house to walk or run or roller-skate or whatever you like best, thanks to your HeiaHeia friends' encouragement.
Not only can we encourage and cheer each other, but we can also make a fitness program for ourselves, which will help us exercise. HeiaHeia has actually partnered with fitness experts of a leading European fitness chain to offer an automated, personalized training program generator that creates just the right program based on our preferences and current fitness level.
In 2007 Finnish tech entrepreneur Jussi Räisänen was working in Singapore with his previous startup. His friend Olli Oksanen, who was working in London, asked him to run with him the Berlin Marathon. Both young men felt it would be more fun to train together, but they were far away from each other and there was no useful service in the Internet, which would overcome the physical distance that separated them. So they started thinking up one. In the process, their notion evolved: a social motivation tool could help people exercise more even if they are not marathon runners. They set up a company for prototyping the concept and in January 2010 they launched the product: HeiaHeia.
The name comes from a Scandinavian cheer often heard at sports events, and it perfectly communicates the fun and the social and supportive attitudes the founders wanted to build with the service.
Heaps of men (40%) and women (60%) between the ages of 13 and 80 in over 150 countries enjoy today the services of HeiaHeia. The service is available in nine languages. Scandinavia, the UK, Germany, Spain, the USA and Russia have the biggest user communities at the moment.
What I most like about HeiaHeia is how its spreads positive vibrations into the world. There are so many things giving nasty vibes that this sort of positive thing is just wonderful!
The mission of HeiaHeia is to improve the wellbeing of people by turning exercise into something fun and of an easy approach. The encouragement of our friends and family is very important for us when having to make choices in our lives. And this is what HeiaHeia provides sport-wise in a fun and individualistic way: everybody can decide how to exercise so that it will suit one like a glove. Some people have saved their lives with the help of HeiaHeia! And I am not exaggerating. There are some great stories, like the following one:
A successful Finnish sales manager in his fifties decided to make his dream come true, quit his job in a big company and started his own enterprise. Everything looked great, until one night he had a heart attack, which almost took his life. Lying in the hospital, he decided to change things, make the best out of this second chance he got and start a new life. The first thing was to lose looots of weight and lower his bad cholesterol. Exercise was the magic word, but our lucky hero lacked the will of power to do it regularly. There, HeiaHeia came to his aid. In seven months he lost 30 kg and dropped his bad cholesterol thanks to the cheers of his HeiaHeia friends. Today he is a happy, normalweight man who is living his dream every single day and has never since stopped exercising.
So, what used to be bad tasting medicine, like fish liver oil so healthy but so gross, has become pineapple: sweet and healthy!
The future looks good for HeiaHeia and for the people of the world. There is a worldwide trend of people wanting to take care of their health (and the overweight percentages WHO informs are pretty alarming), so the need for functional, flexible tools for the improvement of wellbeing is increasing. The true needs are not complex heart monitoring systems or the optimization of jogging time, but the little easy tricks that will motivate physically passive people to exercise. We need approachable, fun and casual tools to help us get out of the house and move that body!
At the same time, social media in the Internet is gaining importance and space in people's lives and in interpersonal communication at an amazing speed. Including a wellbeing-health tool in this system will certainly turn out a success. People are already so accustomed to using social media in their everyday life, that learning to use a fitness social media will be as easy as breathing. People feel comfortable with what they already know and like.
I think WHO should find out about HeiaHeia. I am positive they would love it and consider it a wonderful asset in the battle against overweight and obesity.]]>Flowing Like Transfluenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16269942012-06-26T09:02:36-04:002012-08-26T05:12:05-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
I absolutely love the beauty, silence and peace Nature provides. I am more of the Walden-type than the High-tech-type. No question about it. But one lives the times one is destined to live and the Zeitgeist is more tinted with High-tech colours than those of Mother Nature. Ignoring it would be sheer foolishness.
So, after this little touchdown with reality I continue building the choo-choo-train of Amazing Internet Enterprises (my own little AIE-train) with my writing device and these humble texts I send to the world via The Huffington Post (what a wonderful post!)
The world is huge and I am small and I like to do things in an orderly way, sort of, so I won't abandon the Finnish scene until I have found out about all the Amazing Internet things going on in here. And I have a new discovery that flows like a clear river and is so adequately called Transfluent.
No one can deny English is the international language par excellence, but let's not forget that there are other languages spoken by heaps of people in the world. Spanish and Chinese are two of these; something Transfluent wisely acknowledges. And anyways, there are so many languages used daily by millions of people. No need to ignore any of them.
Transfluent is a rapid translating service used for Facebook, Twitter, Websites, press releases, blog posts, magazine articles, Web stores and even game dialogues. Humans not machines power Transfluent, which means that it automates the process of translation not the text to be translated; therefore the translations are never clumsy or irrational, as often happens with translations done by most of the automatic translating services. (I once read a hilarious column written by a Finnish journalist in which she had had translated a fragment of the Bible with the Google translator, first from Finnish to some other language, then back to Finnish and then to a third language and so forth. The final translation just made me cry with laughter! But that's another story, let's go back to this fascinating Transfluent). When a client puts forth a commission of translation, it will take Transfluent 15 minutes to publish the translated text in the Web. How is this possible? Crowdsourcing is the answer (so of our Zeitgeist!)
Transfluent has 15,000 professional translators from all around the world working with more than 60 different languages. Day or night one of the 15,000 will be available to perform the translation in the required short minutes. The service offers a wonderfully effortless possibility for anybody to publish its communiqués in various languages. Getting started with Transfluent is as easy as clicking a few times on your computer, tablet or smart phone. No need to be a high-tech genius. Entities as varied as Aalto University in Finland and rock star Michael Monroe (ex-singer of the now historical Hanoi Rocks) are clients of Transfluent. Michael Monroe, for instance, has his facebook translated into Japanese to the highest delight of his Japanese fans. And he can communicate with them thanks to Transfluent, even thought they do not share a common language (as far as I know, Mr. Monroe cannot speak Japanese).
Though created by the mathematically brilliant brains of Finnish Jani Penttinen, Transfluent focuses at the moment its entrepreneurial activity on the US market and has for a mission to bring communication in Spanish and Chinese in the USA.
In 2010 16.3% of the US population was Hispanic. This translates to 50.5 million people. That's a lot of people. The growth rate from July first 2005 to July first 2006 was 3.4%; that is about three and a half times the growth rate of the nation's total population. The projected Hispanic population of the USA for July first 2050 is 132.8 million people, or 30.2% of the nation's total projected population for that date. There are towns in the USA where you hear more Spanish spoken than English, and there are Americans, whose English is not so good. A company -say a store for example - who can offer its services also in Spanish will definitely be more competitive than a company who uses only English. People love to be served in their mother tongue! Nowadays many client services work much better and faster through the twitter than the phone. No store or company wants to see complaints about their services in twitter, too many thousands of people will find out about it (not like on the phone where everything stays between the caller and the receiver of the call). So Transfluent works fantastically with client services that function through twitter. Actually, Transfluent translates President Obama's twitter into Spanish. Impressive!
What comes to the Chinese community in the USA it is not as big as the Hispanic but still important. In the census of 2010 it numbered approximately 3.8 million people. And well, the commerce the US does with China is huge and in China English is not much spoken so all communication needs to be done in Chinese. The use of this mysteriously beautiful language is a must.
So here we are stretching the limits, blowing away barriers imposed by language differences and helping enterprises and rock stars to be more client and fan-friendly. Not bad at all!
I have to admit that it is not only Mother Nature who surprises me, but the Internet-universe seems to have a lot of interesting and impressive surprises too, even for skeptics like me!]]>DealDash - Turning Shopping Into a Gametag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15962692012-06-14T09:03:58-04:002012-08-14T05:12:09-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
There are so many places for shopping today. Little shops downtown, huge stores in the outskirts, glossy malls, flee-markets in the old city centres and in out of use stables out in the countryside. Woo, a choice for all tastes! And then there is the Internet with its regular virtual shops and its more exciting penny auctions.
Never in the history of humanity have people bought so much. Our whole life and even national economies seem to orbit shopping. Here we go round the prickly pear... such a glittering and alluring prickly pear we have us here!
The resourcefulness of people when thinking new ways of doing old things never ceases to surprise me. It's pretty often that we bump into such resourcefulness. Like with DealDash. But, who's DealDash?
DealDash is a next generation penny auction company that has a site in which saving money when you buy is fun. DealDash is based out of New York, NY and Helsinki, Finland. Bicultural NB. The Finnish half focuses on building the software and creating the experience known as dealdash.com. Because please note, that shopping on the Internet is not necessarily only shopping -a simple act of purchasing something - but an experience, holistic I guess? The American half concentrates on markets, selling and customer services in the US market. That sounds like an intelligent division of labour, Americans definitely know how to sell and treat clients nicely, whilst Finland seems to have some sort of overgrowth in talented computer specialists.
The history is interesting. Really young William Wolfram tried a penny auction and did not win. He found penny-auctioning fun, but felt it was unfair to pay for each bid and then lose all the money each bid had cost. So his inventive brain said: 'We can do this better'. And they did.
Over time, DealDash became known as the fair and honest, risk-free alternative to penny auctions. It is the 4th largest company in its field in the world. 21 servers are currently operating the site. DealDash ships more than 20,000 products a month (holy mackerel!) all of it outsourced to trusted partners and retailers like Amazon. DealDash eliminates the risk of bidding by offering a fair and honest Buy it Now -option. So, if you don't win the auction, you have the option to buy the desired item at its normal retail price and get a full refund on all the bids back to your account for free. So you can go on auctioning. The shipping is free inside the US and Canada and every day there are new items (that's manna for all shopping-crazies!) There are 305,000 registered US based shoppers; 200,000 bids placed a day; 40,000 active unique users. 92% of the sales transactions come from repeat buyers, which proves DealDash is liked.
Shopping is certainly changing its nature; DealDash has stayed in business longer than any other similar auction site. So that means there must be something more attractive to it than in the other auction sites. And after a thorough analysis of this new social phenomenon I deduce it is because DealDash makes shopping a game.
If you want to get the best out of DealDash, you have to play. That means: spending enough time on DealDash (the average session lasts 49 min); observing other auctioneers (find out their strategy! This is like planning a battle!), and then getting on to the auctioning in a smart way. So if you have the time and patience to spare you could save up to 99% on DealDash. If you don't win, it's fine; you're safe because you won't lose! So shopping on DealDash is like playing a computer game.
Shopping was never a game before; it was just shopping. But times are a change; and so is shopping.]]>Unhappy Shooting Young Mentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15587112012-05-31T08:44:07-04:002012-07-31T05:12:17-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
There has been lots of discussion in the media about what is wrong in Finnish society for these awful things to be happening, and many theories have been presented. One of them holds responsible of the shooting the increasing number of young men being left out in society: they do not study or work, they drift into a state of passive nothingness. A friend child and youth psychiatrist told me recently that there are shockingly more psychologically troubled young men still in their teens than there were 20 years ago. She said something has happened to provoke this change, but she doesn't know what.
I've heard a few times from cosmopolitan Finnish thinkers that Finnish society is really sick, much sicker than others, and the proof is this sort of shootings going on. Shootings do happen elsewhere too, but it's true that maybe less in Southern European countries than in Finland (OK, I am not taking in account Italian mafia shootings, that's a case apart). The USA is probably the most famous shooting-randomly-at-strangers-or-schoolmates country in the world, but maybe Finland is quite famous for this too, sadly.
The statistics of 2007 state that Finland has about 1.6 million registered guns. 60% of them are for hunting purposes, the rest I suppose are for sports purposes, army- and police-owned as it is prohibited in Finland to have guns for self-defence motives. 12% of Finns have guns, and the police estimate that there are somewhat more than 10.000 illegal guns. These are 5 year-old statistics, so add a few and we will be close to current facts (I couldn't find any fresher info in the Web). Does the amount of guns explain the shooting? Would a tighter gun-law avoid shootings? These are questions that the head of the police is asking himself.
In 1999 about 200 men died as victims of violence in Finland, this includes suicide. Finland has the highest levels of violent deaths amongst men in so called wealthy Europe. In Finland there is more violence done to strangers, and less to friends or family. In Southern Europe, on the contrary, there is more violence amongst family members and friends, especially inside couples, (more passion murders, I suppose), and less murders happening between people who do not know each other.
So, what does all this tell us? Is Finland a sicker society than say Spanish society (the other one I know closely)? I doubt it. I am afraid all societies are just as sick, but they manifest their sickness in slightly different ways, some murder their wives, others strangers. Not nice in neither case. Men tend to be more violent than women, could this be because women talk more or are motherly? I don't know. The roots of violence are too deep and complicated, and the factors pushing a person to shoot randomly at strangers or to assassin a girlfriend or a wife are so multiple that we will probably never be able to pin them down, so it is not an easy task for decision makers to create new laws which could diminish murders.
Human beings have always murdered. In the olden days the news did not reach everybody fast like today. Till very recently it was total taboo in Spain, for example, to talk publicly of incest, nobody spoke of it, so it didn't happen, right? Is society sicker today than 50 years ago? Maybe these horrifying shootings were very rare 50 years ago, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same amount of murders happened then too (oh, I haven't checked the statistics!) It's a sad business.
In the midst of my uncertainty, I am certain that the media should not give so much space and protagonism to these murderers. The limelight might be an inciter to some murderers still in larva-state. Let's not encourage them.]]>Amazing Scoopshottag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14989162012-05-08T04:58:08-04:002012-07-07T05:12:01-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
One such invention I bumped into recently and made me investigate it deeper comes from the beautiful, mellow city of Helsinki. And it is called Scoopshot.
Basically Scoopshot is an application for your iPhone or Android you download for free from the App Store or Android Market and ta-daa! You can become a moneymaking mobile newsphotographer just like that! As long as you keep your eyes open and you happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Scoopshot is also a source of innumerable fresh photos for the media to use in a very easy, immediate and moderately priced way.
I must say Scoopshot is something of a revolution. And let me please explain you in more detail how it works, just as a means to ease my awe.
If you want to expand your life activities and decide to make some extra money and have fun (and you own a smartphone, of course) you go and download the app Scoopshot. It's all very simple to use. Wow, really!
So, you are walking about the city and you see something cool, exciting or shocking. You take your phone; you whip out Scoopshot, tap the lens logo and you shoot. Next, you set a price to your photo (something not too costly, keep it real!) and write down what makes your photo special. Then, you send by phone your photo to Scoopshot Store. For the next 48 hours, your photo will be available to any magazine or newspaper or television that uses Scoopshot as a provider of images. Once someone purchases your photo, you get a notification to your phone. When you download the app, you get a Scoopshot account from where it is simple to transfer to your bank account the money your photos have earned.
With one free download and a heap of curiosity and a playful mind, you become an amateur newsphotographer who can make money with his shots. That's pretty cool! There are people who have already made more than ten thousand euros!
Scoopshot sells your photo and gets a 30% commission. After 48 hours, the photo leaves the Scoopshot Store and is again your intellectual property, so no one can use it without your consent.
What comes to the media, Scoopshot offers a vibrant, fresh and inexhaustible mine of photographs and videos (you can also send videos!!), which up till Scoopshot's coming to life, was unthinkable. No newspaper has enough photographers to be in each of the places where something newsworthy is happening. And a newsphotographer, no matter how efficient and fast he is, has his human limits. He can't be in a thousand places at the same time! And things are going on non-stop all over the place!
So Scoopshot supplies the media with a flow of constant, unique and hyper local content for very low prices and at incredible speed. Scoopshot enables readers to participate in the making of the news, and thus to make a difference in their own community. The media can create Tasks to get local scoopshooters to the scene of the action, thus inviting the readers (most Scoopshot photographers are readers of papers obviously) to get involved. This is an unheard way to cover instant location-specific news, and to energize the community in the long run. How does this work? It's pretty simple.
Imagine you are a journalist in some paper and you are to do a thing on the terrible blizzard that is coming down right now somewhere up north and that is causing big traffic trouble. Well, you write down a task in Scoopshot saying you need a photo of the blizzard and the traffic jam happening in that certain place and you need it as fast as possible. Then you send the task. And all scoopshooters located nearby the place of the blizzard receive the message and can get into action. This is a true revolution!
Scoopshot was launched in Finland in February 2011. There are already (buckle up an hold tight to your armrests!): 71,000 registered 'scoopshooters' from 160 countries; 140,000 photos uploaded; 81,000 photos sold; 46 media partners. Scoopshot is live in Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Hong Kong, Mexico and Chile. Scoopshot won the GrandOne Best Mobile App, and earned a place at the Top 20 App by Flurry at SXSW. A lot of achievements in such a short time!
What leaves me breathless, is how the structures we have known for at least a hundred years are crumbling around us at astonishing speed. Things are not what they used to be, and lest you keep a most flexible mind, you will feel far too dizzy to handle what's going on around you and you will have to hide in your home, close your eyes, and pretend nothing's really happening.
Scoopshot uses crowdsourcing for expanding the possibilities of supplying the world with news. It blurs the frontiers between pros and amateurs, which at first sight can seem harmful to pros, but which better analyzed will probably just cause new vibrancy in the media and meaningful change in communities. There's room for us all and we all matter, even if small and unimportant. And things that used to be costly and complicated, even impossible, have become easy, low cost and possible with inventions like Scoopshot. The Internet has its scary side, but the quantity of never-before-dreamt doors it is opening is absolutely astonishing!
Ready to conquer new territories?]]>The Pleasure of Solitude and Naturetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14340002012-04-18T09:07:59-04:002012-06-18T05:12:02-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
There are so many people living in this planet; far too many for our poor amazing Earth!
Spain has 46 million inhabitants. More than 60 million live in the UK. France has surpassed the scary number of 65 million inhabitants. Germany is even more crowded with almost 82 million Germans. The USA has around 313 million people living there. Tiny Japan carries on its soil 127 million and the number of inhabitants of India and China is just too obscene to even mention.
But Finland has five and a half million people living in a territory that boasts being the fifth largest in the European Community. This certainly means a lot of land for few people! And when one loves solitude, Finland is heaven on Earth.
Finnish people have a bad tendency to underestimate and dislike their homeland. This is something I have not encountered anywhere else.
I had somebody ask me recently in a most astonished voice why I had moved back to Finland after almost 20 years abroad. It made me laugh. That a Finn should ask such a question, how typical! A Spaniard would've asked me how come I managed to survive so long away from Spain, the best country in the world!
Well, I have quite a few good reasons why I chose to come back to my mother's homeland. But there are two reasons weighty enough to make me want to stay here for the rest of my life (oh, this does not mean I couldn't spend a few years somewhere else if a good opportunity came by, just for the heck of it!):
Solitude and nature.
Do you have an idea of the luxury of spending three days snow shoeing in the forest without seeing anybody but your own loved one? Or paddling for four days in a row on a beautiful lake in the summer, sleeping on little islands and not seeing a single human being except for your adored one? This happens in Finland all the time.
There is this law in Finland called 'Everyman's Right' which entitles us all to walk about in privately owned fields and woods. Even picking berries and mushrooms is allowed; everybody has a right to the fruit that the land gives wildly. This means that anybody can enjoy the woods close to their home or far away from their home .
So when you paddle in a lake or in the sea and you see a little island with no cottage on it, you can just paddle to it, leave your kayak tied to a tree and even camp on the island. Nobody is going to shoot you or take you to jail because you are on somebody's private property; actually you don't even know or care to know who owns the place, because it makes no difference.
This is perfectly lovely! And the loveliness is crowned by the fact that the chance of meeting somebody is very small. 17.70 people per km2 makes it hard for you to bump into someone in the countryside.
And the quietness... oh, the sweetness of silence! And the beauty of untouched nature so close by to one's normal everyday life! It is so easy to get into the car, drive an hour and then you are in the middle of nowhere with nobody in sight, and nature is generously open to give you her most adorable gifts! This is luxury and wealth in today's world! This is a present from Mother Earth, that Big Mother whom we should all revere and adore and protect humbly!
And it's a present also from this Northern country so empty of people. Oh, may it stay like this forever!]]>Skating on the Seatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13691082012-03-21T05:36:37-04:002012-05-21T05:12:01-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/retkiluistelu.)
Close your eyes and visualise this:
A blinding sun shines from a clear blue sky. No clouds. There is hardly any wind blowing. The air stands still. The thermometer reads 15 below zero Celsius. And there you are, flying, racing on a limitless frozen sea. Alone... well, with friends rather, why not, to make it less dangerous. Under your speeding feet the deep mysterious sea. The ice is quite smooth and a myriad of ice flowers of the strangest patterns are scattered all over it. The blades of your excursion ice skates cut them with a swoosh that sounds like music from a far away galaxy. You are not sure anymore if you are on Earth or on some planet out there. Kilometres and kilometres of vast emptiness broken every once in a while by the dark shape of a small island. And you don't feel cold. The exercise, the lack of wind and the sun keep you warm. You feel an incredible thrill when you remember you are skating on the sea. What hides under your blades?
Excursion skating is not as popular in Finland as skiing, but many excursion skating lovers stay vigilant at the beginning and the end of the winter when one can find the best conditions for skating on the ice of the sea and the lakes. Clear, cold weather is the best for the ice to become perfect. The ice grows 2,5 mm per Celsius degree below zero during a day. So in 4 clear days of 5º C below zero, the ice will be thick enough to carry the weight of people, that is 5 cm thick. Clouds hinder the evaporation of warmth from the surface of the Earth and wind moves the water making it hard for it to freeze. So a still, starry night is the perfect mother to give birth to smooth, thick ice. If the lake or sea is already frozen, the wind will be an ally as it helps speed the evaporation of warmth. Thus perfect excursion skating ice is not guaranteed every winter, one needs luck. And the season can shrink into only five days at the end of autumn or beginning of winter, and the same can happen in early spring. The skater must be always ready to put on hold his life to make it on time to the perfect ice.
The skates are blades of about 50 cm long that are used either with regular winter shoes or with ski boots; ski boots are much better, they steady the ankles. Ski sticks make the skating more efficient and a long ice pick must always come along as it is used to verify the safety of the ice. The skater needs to carry a backpack as a lifesaver in case that the ice breaks and the skater falls in the water; it'll help the skater to float. Inside the backpack should be a waterproof bag packed with a change of clothes. On the neck hang a whistle and a pair of ice awls that will help the skater to climb out of the water if he falls in. The thing is to strike the ice awls into the edge of the ice and then haul oneself out of the water. A long rope is a must also, so you can help save your friend if he falls in.
Excursion skating is amazing fun, a mystical experience really. Imagine flying on skates on a white, quiet extension that reaches the very horizon. Nobody but you and your friends. Perfect stillness for kilometres and kilometres. And then, a stop to eat sandwiches and drink hot tea or coffee. It's heavenly! But it has its risks. One must be adequately prepared. If you lack experience it is necessary to start in the company of an expert. One should not fool around with the frozen sea and lakes; they could end as your tomb.
]]>WOT, The Guardian Angel of the Internettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13527692012-03-16T06:48:54-04:002012-05-16T05:12:01-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/ Symantec Finland estimates that 60,000 new malicious websites and online scams are created daily, and a million cybercrimes generate a worldwide expense of c.275 billion euros. Who protects the websurfer from the invisible threats that lurk in the formless corners of a Universe that has no body and no volume?
In medieval and baroque cities everybody knew that going out at night into the non-illuminated streets was a lethal risk. Bandits of all sorts lied in ambush in the dark corners of the tortuous city. The citizens knew which neighbourhoods where the most dangerous, so they avoided them. The threat had a face and a breath that stank.
But, what about these amorphous and amazing 21st century cities, that float somewhere in the fathomless universe called Internet? Who is our enemy? Where does he hide? The miracles of the Web bring along unwonted problems. Our time of reaction is dangerously long and mostly we don't even know what to do!
Automated security systems are not enough any more. Their basic function is to watch out for technical security threats. But scams have become a much bigger threat than technical dangers and are not so easy to detect -at least alone.
But worry not, I'm not spoiling your week because I have good news. Some six years ago in Tampere Finland, these two young engineers came up with a cool idea that has developed into a company called WOT Services Ltd.
Web of Trust, aka WOT, is the name of the programme that Sami Tolvanen and Timo Ala-Kleemola created.
WOT gathers the ratings and commentaries given by users -the WOT Community, around 34 million people ever growing - on the Websites they visit. The ratings are valued by their merit: the more consistently you keep rating sites, the more reliable your ratings will be considered over time. To avoid manipulation, WOT uses some of the principles of Bayesian Inference. Combining these user-given ratings and the information provided by trusted sources specialized in security issues, WOT reorganizes and updates the info on the reputation of more than 30 something million Websites every half an hour with the aid of an algorithm. Then WOT shoots back the fresh info into Cyberspace. The number of evaluated Websites grows daily.
WOT is our reputation authority, concerned not only about technical issues, but also moral issues.
As a private user, once you download for free WOT in WOT's webpage www.mywot.com (these engineer guys are philanthropists!) you will start benefiting from WOT's security service. From then on, every time you search with Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari a donut in the colours of the traffic lights, that appears by the name of the Websites, will inform you if the Website is reliable, if it respects your privacy, if it is safe for kids and if you can trust their sales services. Green is safe; yellow is so and so; red is unsafe. Simple. WOT does not block any page, it just informs you of the reputation it enjoys.
The giants Facebook and Mail.ru Group trust WOT and work hand in hand with it.
Companies can buy wider security services from WOT. This Finnish innovator is starting to shake the world with its good news.
Internet surfing is safer than ever. Spread your wings and fear not, for you have WOT! ]]>The Greek Tragedytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12886402012-02-20T08:42:00-05:002012-04-21T05:12:02-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
It's all a terrible mess of financial politics and economics and banks and international interests and whatnot that a regular citizen like me just cannot fathom. But, I can fathom the anxiety and fear of normal people who lose their jobs, or are not getting paid (like the workers of the TV company Alter) or whose pensions are being lowered again. How are these poor people going to pay their bills and their food?
Who is responsible for this huge mess? The people? The politicians? Multinational banks? I have no idea, so I don't know the answer. But it reminds me of the fairy tales I love so much, and of history.
In the middle age the Black Death, the Thirty Years' War and other wars and a bad summer for the crop would just wipe out people like ants. In one of those awful plagues in the 14th century Europe lost possibly 60 percent of its population, just like that, wham! That's a lot of people! In those times everyone lived with Death very close by. I guess it wasn't as shocking as it is today. Kids died of malnourishment and disease all the time. And a simple infection could end up in the grave. Then there were wars that drove people away from their homes and in no time, they were marching a somber march to the Realms of the Dark Lady.
We can't even imagine what it must have been like to live such an insecure life: a time when life wasn't worth much in Europe. Incredible! Or can we?
What's going to happen to these families in Greece? Are they going to starve? Are they going to be driven away from their homes because they can't pay their loans or their rent? Do the decision makers even care?
I have a feeling, which might be wrong and please correct me if I'm wrong, that these big fish sitting comfortably on their worldly thrones of material power lack empathy. I have a feeling that they are so blinded and bewitched by their wealth and influence that they are becoming less and less human with every sunset and sunrise that they experiment (if they ever even pay attention to such a banal and unattractive thing as a sunset or a sunrise). Do they understand what their little important games are causing to millions of normal people?
I just cannot conceive how this world functions. Call me innocent. Call me a sucker. I don't care. I just cannot comprehend why the rulers of the world are so greedy that they will do just anything and step on any one in order to get their rain of dollar and euro bills fall on them non-stop. Gross! Why do they want so much? Isn't enough enough?
I just feel awfully sorry for those Kostas and Akrivis and Doras who are terrified of what's going to happen to them and their kids. One lady was about to jump out of the window in her despair. She has two kids. How is she going to give them food and a home when she loses her job? But Mr. Big Fish doesn't give a damn, does he?
Well, the world is certainly a dark place. This is going on in Europe. I won't even think about other continents at the moment. And it is not the middle age, but there is something similar. Maybe history is repeating itself.]]>Being Hyper Guggenheimtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12187152012-01-20T09:29:13-05:002012-03-21T05:12:01-04:00Laila Escartín-Sorjonenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-hamarinen/
The Guggenheim group has connections in Finland through the director of Helsinki Art Museum, Mr. Gallén-Kallela-Sirén (heir to two powerful art and design families) and Mr. Ehrnroot the Finnish member of the board of the Guggenheim Foundation and art collector. Helsinki came up as the next and last European city to house a Guggenheim Museum.
The G-team came over to this charming Northern small capital, collected big money and did their survey to decide whether Helsinki is worth a Guggenheim Museum or not. The verdict was: Yes, you can have us!
The pro-G league was ecstatic. The anti-G league frowned and growled.
Then came the estimate costs of such a Gigantic, Grandiose, and Gargantuan G-Museum project.
The pro-G league sees euro-bills just pouring down over the Guggenheim Museum, which of course will be designed by Frank Gehry or Jean Nouvelle or one of those other wow-architecture superguys. You know, everybody will just fly into Helsinki to see the new amazing G-Museum with its curves and antennae and inclined walls and metallic UFO-likeness and whatnot! And of course, the wonderful contemporary art exposed in there.
The expenses? Oh well, a few hundred million euros here and there. But hey! What's that against the unending flow of tourists and money and what even better, honor and glory and fame that the G-Museum will bring to Helsinki!
According to the anti-G league, the 315 million euros that the pro-G league says the museum will have cost the city of Helsinki by 2032, is too low an estimate. The anti-G league says the cost will be of 399 million euros. Whilst the 107,8 million that the defenders of the museum say it will produce benefit, is the estimation of a crazy hyper optimist, and in their estimation it will make only 42 million.
Besides, just for using the brand name, the city of Helsinki has to pay 24,6 million euros. Wow, that's a lotta money for just hype! Constructing the museum will cost around 130-140 million.
Big, big money!
Is any brand worth that much money? Plus, all the yearly payments for using ventures shown in other Guggenheim museums, which will amount to 70 million in 18 years and 65,8 million for all sorts of organizational jobs done by the G-Foundation.
I wonder if Mr. Solomon Guggenheim ever dreamt of his name becoming so expensive and waking up so many passions and being so utterly surrounded by hype? What a business, my, my!!! The G-Foundation risks nothing and makes millionaire gains, just for lending its brand! It's capitalism at its highest!
I guess the Guggenheim has entered through the big door of the club of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks and McDonald's. No matter what they sell, they will just drown in dollars!
Because hey, don't try to make me believe that the art shown at the Guggenheim is anyhow more magnificent or heart shaking than the art shown at Kiasma, the Contemporary Art Museum of Helsinki. Kiasma just doesn't sound so glamorous.
I just don't believe art sells in the end as well as hamburgers, soda pop or coffee. So I think the city of Helsinki should really think twice if they want to spend so much money in this hype museum and then find out in 50 years they are still not making any profit. But, on the other hand, maybe at that point, the Guggenheim can start selling hotdogs and salmon sandwiches, and maybe it'll do better! ]]>