"Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things" - Randy Pausch

Around 2 years ago I browsed the google video site for interesting video clips that i could download to my upcoming long flight. A lecture by Randy Pausch was on the top 10 next to some MTV videos and a conspiracy video about how the 9/11-twin towers could collapse the way they did.

The title “Randy Pausch, a dying 47-year-old professor gives last lecture” scared me a bit but in the same time I was very curious about why you want to make that kind of lecture. Actually Mr. Pausch was not talking so much about his problems. He wrapped up the good things from the past with great humor and enthusiasm. As he said in an interview: “If I were a musician , I would have composed music. But I am a lecturer. So I lectured”.

Please tell them about having fun, that’s the way I remember you for.
That’s like letting a fish talk about the importance of water.

I don’t know how to not having fun. . .right. . .I’m dying and I’m having fun.. And I will keep having fun every day I have left…

A wonderful inspiration and tribute to life and to being optimistic. I suggest that you give Mr. Pausch one hour of your time and listen to his very inspirational and touching lecture with the subject: How to achieve your childhood dreams… And help others to achieve theirs.

If you don’t have an hour, i recommend you the ten minutes version he made at Oprah

During this lecture Randy talked about his childhood dreams and how he achieved them. He talked about inspiring people and things that mend a lot to him. He also summarized his lessons learned.

Lessons learned

• Bricked walls let us show our dedication. They let us prove how badly we really want things.
• Don’t bail; The best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap
• Decide if you’re a Tigger or Eeyore
• Never loose the child-like wonder. That’s the thing that drives us
• Help others
• Never Give Up
• Loyalty is a two-way street
• How to get people to help you
  • Tell the truth
  • Be earnest
  • Apologize when you screw up
  • Focus on others, not yourself
• Get a feedback loop and listen to it
• Show Gratitude
• Don’t complain, just work harder
• Be good at something: it makes you valuable
• Work hard…
• Find the best in everybody; no matter how you have to wait for them to show it
• Be prepared: “luck” is where preparation meets opportunity

After the last lecture, Randy made the book “The Last Lecture“. In the book Randy goes through his life and how it changed when he got diagnosed with cancer. It is very clear that this book isn’t about death, a wrap-up or a “hey, look at me” biography. It is a tribute to the hard challenges in life, how to make impossible things or not be limited by low expectations or bricked walls. I strongly recommends this book. It is an inspiring tribute to life. Sad but uplifting in the same time.

Almost all of us have childhood dreams; for example, being an astronaut, or making movies or video games for a living,” said Pausch. “Sadly, most people don’t achieve theirs, and I think that’s a shame.

Have fun, it should never go away!
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

I want to wish you a calm and peaceful christmas!
In the same time I am opening a video blog (see it as a christmas gift if you want ). This is only experimental but through the video blog i will share interesting moments that i can capture when I’m on the run. I will use the excellent swedish service from bambuser that enables live video blogging from a wide range of mobile phones and from any computer. Give it a try. All my video blog posts is available under “video blog” on the sidebar.

Last week i was on a christmas concert with Malmö Musikhögskola. That is my first post in my video blog. Enjoy!

Hi there, long time no see

History:
Actually I have been doing lot of things lately but not blogging. Soon 2010 is here and I have to write something that concludes this decade. I don’t know what this decade has meant to you? I entered this decade/century/millenium as an 18 years old student on high school. For me, 2000 was the entrance to the new world outside of school. I got a part time job at Europolitan, one of the 3 biggest Mobile Operators in Sweden, located in my hometown Karlskrona. Since I did not need to do any military service i started to work there full time when I had graduated from School.

Europolitan:
I worked with phone services at Europolitan. I was working as a phone operator (phone directory assitance and switchboard services) for 1 year. That was interesting itself but the intranet and all mobile devices and services that was all around me was even more inspiring. I got in charge of a phone pool service for our department and started to help my collegues to try the new phones such as: Nokia Communicator and Ericsson T68. I got some comments like: Why do you need a color screen? and What’s the point with MMS and mobile internet? We know that now right?

My Phones:
All my phones the last decade has been collected in the image on top of this post. I have been studied each and every feature in all of my phones. Buying a new phone is all about finding new functionality, hidden treasures and customizing the phone so it’s taylor made for your everyday needs. My T68 is by far my most tailored phone. I had special ringtones for almost every close friend and family member. It was the first phone with color screen and that ment that I could have fun pictures for each and every person in my phonebook. Customizing small gifs and jpegs took much time. Was the time worth spending? Actually .. .no. . .but it was fun! I have also been writing a lot of custom made ringtones for all my ericsson phones. It is cool to see all these phones side by side.

University:
When I started studying Mathematics Engineering a new world opened up. Now I could understand each and every feature i was amazed over as a user. Speech recognition/Voice compression technology/Jpeg/MP3/MMS/GSM/UMTS was even more inspiring from a technical perspective.

Did you know that the person you hear through your mobile earphone is not the true voice? It’s just a synthetic simluation of the true voice.

Scalado:
I’m glad I have the opportunity to work at Scalado in the mobile area. Every workday counts and it is important to be open minded and think outside of the box. With Scalado, I reached my goal to work and be a part of this mobile revolution. This industry is changing how people communicate and it helps people to make their everyday life better.

Industry:
The mobile industry is the most dynamic industry in the world right now. Think about other areas and the transition during the last decade. They are not even close… Now the mobile industry have started the new era.. I find my phone more modern than my computer. . It has an app store, it is fun to use and it’s always with me!

The Wired CD was shipped together with the newspaper in november 2004 with the sloagan: “Rip. Sample. Mash. Share”.

These musicians are saying that true creativity needs to be open, fluid, and alive. When it comes to copyright, they are pro-choice. Here are 16 songs that encourage people to play with their tunes, not just play them. — WIRED magazine, November 2004 issue (CD was included with magazine.)

Wired highlighted a license form that is very common when it comes to photos and videos thanks to sites like Flickr.com. However, it haven’t succeeded in the music world. Maybe piracy can be one reason?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration. You can Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally.

During one cold night in August i decided to try to find all the creative commons music i could.

I found a site Jamendo.com that was pretty good. A lot of music gathered. I downloaded about 10 albums that I liked but that was pretty much it.

The amount of music available with creative commons license is still very small. I don’t think it will be a hit. We will get free music anyway with services payed by commercial or monthly fixed fees (Spotify/Pandora/last.fm). Creative commons will still be a niche.

But the 10 albums i found was great!

The number of people that is online can only move in one direction, _up_. The way people will use internet will differ every year.

Example 1: newsmap.jp – News, Now!

With newsmap you can see the news that are big at the moment. Bigger news means larger space on the newsmap. Great example of the reality web. Big news is not decided by any specific news-source, it’s decided by a big number of sources.

Example 2: TwitScoop

A snapshot of Twitter, now! (Image to the right) Come back in 5 minutes and you will see a different set of scoops. I would request a twitscoop that takes snapshots for the latest minute/hour/day/week/month. If you could base your scoop on location/interests/age/subject it would be even more amazing. That will probably be available tomorrow. Otherwise I have to make it myself!

Example 4: Aardvark
Ask anything and get the answer within a couple of minutes. Aardvark is a real-time information community where you can ask anything for free. They call it social-search and it is exactly where I want the internet to become. When you register you insert your interests and some topics that you know about. Aardvark will tag a question and suggest it to a person that fits. You can get questions by email/IM or directly on your iPhone.
I am aardvarking a lot and since they also have an iPhone app i use it when I’m on the run. The other day I got a question when I was on the trainstation. It was about online Address-books. I had the answer and within minutes the man from Florida got his answer. Luckily he knew a couple of swedish words and was very happy to get in touch with a swede since his grandmother was from northen sweden. He made my evening and hopefully I made his. For free and I is surely worth the time spent.

Besides all those examples, communities are a big part of reality web.

The Twitter movement combined with facebook have in one way been more revolutionary than the IM revolution (IM = Instant messaging like MSN, ICQ and Skype) since it is more about information sharing, realtime! IM is more a free alternative to something we already had in SMS and Phone Calls, with a big twist of course. Services like last.fm that is all about music is one example of communities more focused on some special interests. You can get recommended new music, discuss music with other people and also check what your friends are listening to right now. Why don’t we have that kind of communities for movies/books/location and other interests. Tomorrow maybe?

Internet have turned from an information source into an information stream powered by the users. The large amount of users means that each and everyone only has to contribute with their presence/interests and thoughts.

Where in the stream are you today? Where in the stream are you in 2 years?

The new mobile trend is Facebook/Twitter etc. integrated in the Phone. With a phone with Facebook included you can easily check the facebook status before you call someone. The pictures of your phone contacts will be in sync with the latest ones on Facebook and you never need to worry about out-dated phone-numbers since they will be upgraded when people change them on the net.

The future is now and now is history in 5 minutes. Internet is going faster and faster and the potential is what we want it to be.

This was my version. Want to know more? Check New York Times article: Hey, Just a Minute (or Why Google Isn’t Twitter)

Once the quick-and-simple design is deployed,
it can then evolve as needed,
driven by user requirements

I think good enough market segments are kind of new but they are easy to find if you look for them. When it comes to technology during the 90’s, the market was mainly focused on 2 segments: good or cheap.

For every “good enough” product there will always be a small group that wants a high fidelity version. All the big volumes will be in the good enough segments and the high fidelity versions will be expensive and targeted for small groups. In the same time it will be a big market for “a bit better than good enough” targeted for people that wants a little extra. This means that you will create 3 markets from just one! This fragmentation will go on and on and on. Then you have a market that is more fragmented than ever with: cheap, cheap but a bit better, good enough, good enough but a bit better, cheap almost high fidelity and high fidelity. At some point you will have too many “small segments” between good and high end and finally some markets segments will disappear.

What if the high fidelity buyers will find benefits in the lower price segments?
When reading the wired-article “The good enough revolution, when cheap and simple is just fine” I noticed that sometimes you can create other values in the good enough segments that you cannot in the high fidelity range. A couple of examples:

Mobile cameras – always with you.
TheFlip video camcorder – cheap and easy to use.
Youtube – Free with lots of content.
Netbooks – Cheap and small.
IKEA – Why pay more?
Skype – Free and border-less.

When it comes to music you can store more compressed music in one device. Compressed formats also allow streaming and infinite music for a monthly fee. That kind of services and possibilities is not available for lossless formats for the moment..

Music, one market where good enough probably will out compete high end.
Let’s compare the music industry from the 90’s with today’s “good enough” music market. On the 90’s we had CDs. The industry was focusing on quality and Digital Remastered versions of the old LP-versions. Quality and convenience was the sales arguments for the CD.

When the mp3-format arrived during the mid 90-s it was a revolution. It had a good quality compared to the other digital formats and was possible to download even with a 56k modem. With services like Kazaa and Napster people started to download music (mp3 files with 128kbit). People got used to and accepted the quality decrease since they got the music for free and it was more convenient than buying a cd. The noticable quality decrease that you got with 128kbit mp3 was ok, since it was… yeah… good enough…

With Itunes Music Store the digital music went legal, but the sound quality was only 128kbit/s AAC. That was quite far from CD quality. Even if people where paying money for the music, they still recieved quite bad sound quality. Why did we accept to pay for bad sound quality? Probably because it was good enough for some. Around 2 years ago Apple increased the quality to 256kbit/s AAC VBR that sounds alot better. For the most of us, it is good enough.

The Spotify music streaming service uses OGG 160kbit/s compression in their music archive. Their OGG settings has some really disturbing differences compared to uncompressed music when it comes to cymbals and intensive parts that starts suddenly directly after a silent part, but for many people it is good enough. For premium users Spotify gives the possibility to listen to the music with a 320kbit/s compression mode that sounds very good. It is hard to tell the difference compared to the uncompressed original, it is good enough to even more people.

I think it is a big difference between compressed and lossless audio. A cd or FLAC (lossless audio) file sounds a bit more natural and not so “tense” as compressed music. For me the difference is worth paying for. I think I’m heading closer to the high fidelity group when it comes to music.

According to Wikipeida, good enough is an adapting process.. . It will be improved when it needs to (when it’s not good enough any more)… For every improvement it will be a bigger threat to high fidelity (or better quality). It will attract more and more customers. At some point the number of high fidelity customers will be too low. What will happen? It will become a very expensive niche or the product will disappear. I am wondering what will happen with the CD in a couple of years?

This is a post regarding the subject that has been discussed widely here in Sweden since the Pirate Bay Trial. We also recently got a new anti piracy law, IPRED (After the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive proposed by the European Union). IPRED made it easier to aquire persional information about users that are suspected pirates.

This law change was not popular. Weeks of debates helped the Swedish Pirate Party to get one of Sweden’s seats in the European Parliament. We also could se decreasing internet traffic and fewer pirates. People got scared and maybe didn’t want to take the risk.

“It’s obvious that those who are using file-sharing have been scared and moved somewhere else, like streaming music sites,” said Daniel Johansson, a researcher at KTH Institute of Technology in Stockholm. (source)

They recently have proposed similar laws in Great Britain. It will be very interesting to follow if the result will be the same there.

This is my opinion: Music … could … be free! But let the authors/artists or the music industry decide the details!

We have a society that is based on intellectual property like patents and copyright laws. We also have licence models like creative commons and GPL that make it possible for the creator to choose which license model the product should be released with. The Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil have released music under the Creative Commons license form.

Gil means that Creative Commons is good when you want to “democratizing the distribution of intellectual property rights”
(source).

Everyone cannot do like Gilberto Gil and give away their music but I think that with free distribution channels like Spotify, MySpace and Last.fm you have everything you need to release your own music as artist or listen to music free of charge as consumer. Don’t forget that music artists need to make a living as well. Since consumers are not willing to pay the price, maybe the future income will be more dependent on concerts and ad-supported radio and streaming solutions than before, but piracy is not generating any money itself, it is generating attention.

Is piracy really profitable for the record labels (and how to measure)?
I don’t think so. . .You don’t pay for the content. Attention is profitable and i think that software like Spotify or last.fm can be more attention-generating than piracy since they can use more social-network-connections (it is a white industry after all). Several years ago when Napster and Kazaa was spreading free music as never before we didn’t have any iTunes music store or free music services at all.. Downloading was more fast and convienient than the legal way of getting music. At that time I think that piracy was good for the music industry overall, since it was generating much attention to the artists and music industry. It also showed the way to the new market. I also think that the percentage of download-and-then-buy users was quite high.

It is our human right to be able to listen to music?
Today, when we have free legal music in every corner I cannot understand why you need to pirate any music…

It is more convenient to download music since i don’t need to bother about copy protection (DRM) and compatibility between mp3-players.
DRM has no future. iTunes has skipped their copy protection and music stores like amazon, 7digital and emusic already has pure mp3-files on their music-stores. iTunes music can be played in most of the mp3-players and phones on the market. Even RIAA says that DRM is dead.

The legal alternatives are not good enough…
Great, then you can make millions by creating it.. . Take a look at Spotify/iMeem/SimplifyMedia/iLike/Last.fm/Pandora…

What about the future?
The free-music-sharing race has already started. I expect that companies like Apple will release something similar quite soon. Gerd Leonhard has written a great post about what he calls Music 2.0 that is a music industry with less income in the distribution but more revenues based on the attention. I don’t think that artists will start to give away their music. . .why should they do that? Free streaming music is here to stay and that is pretty enough for most of us. . . For ownership or commercial-free alternatives you will need to pay…

What is mine is mine, what is yours is yours… In the real world that is perfectly clear. . .

File formats come and go. Harddrives does not last as long as we want to. New software means new formats. Formats that can be unreadable if they don’t get big enough. Are you sure that you still can open your old Ms Works 3.0-documents or your Kodak Photo CD’s…

15 years ago i had an Atari 1040. I used it to write essays and other schoolwork. This data will only be readable with that old Atari-software that I used to create it with. Since the disks are formatted with some old file-system I will need an Atari (or some compatible OS) to be able to get the files. Kind of tricky!

Some formats will live longer than others. If you have Word Documents, Mp3 files, Wav and PDF-files, they will probably be readable in the future (but we don’t know how long). If you have documents made by software that is not so common, I recommend you to keep the program or convert the data to a more common format.

Wired have written an article about this subject. It is available here.

Ok, so now we have gone through the file formats… But the format does not matter if you loose the file, right? Do you backup your data? I would recommend the following:

1. Use Dropbox or some other file sharing for the files you use daily. (And that is not too private to share on internet servers in “the cloud”). If your harddrives will fail they will be easily restore
2. Keep your important files such as photos and music on at least 2 physical disks. The propability that both will break at the same time is not that high. That will keep you safe.
3. Backup your burned DVD’s and CD’s at least every fifth year. Actually one DVD of mine broke in just 3 years without using it.
4. Place a harddrive at another place (a relative or a friend) to prevent data loss caused by theft or fire.

I have spent a big portion of my vacation backing up my CD archive to FLAC (lossless audio files). The music archive will be stored on 2 harddrives.

So… If you, like me, don’t know what to do during your vacation: Back it up!

First of all I must point out that i am not organized when it comes to personal appointments and such but I’m really working on it. I think it is more interesting to find out solutions that make it impossible for me to not organize. These posts are the result from my investigation in some tech that will make it easier for you to organize your life…

Today we have lots of devices around us. Mobile phone and at least one computer. It should be able to control your calendar items in all of them. I think that the web-page-calender-solution is not good enough and want to use calendar applications and sync them all together.

This is possible by using one mother calendar that all your devices sync from. My choice is Google Calendar or Yahoo! Calendar because of their syncing abilities. There is a standard called CalDav that is supported right out of the box in many calendar software and mobile phones . Both Yahoo and Google calendar supports CalDav.

Mac OsX: iCal sync out of the box with CalDav. guide

Windows and Linux: Mozilla thunderbird or Sunbird (calendar only). They support CalDav.

Mobile device: I use goosync and it works great with my SonyEricsson G900! Another solution to use googles own google sync that should work with many different mobile phones.  Iphone supports CalDav right out of the box.

Widgets: Many widgets are available for google calendar or yahoo calendar. I use an Opera Widget at work to check the upcoming activities.

All the calendars will be in sync. If you change in one device, all will change the next time you sync them with your online calendar. Hope this was helpful for you.

By the way .. this solution does not require any cables.

Some services have changed their business models from completely free to “cheap”. Last.fm is one example. They changed to a freemium-model recently. I hope that they will survive. It’s a huge difference between free and “cheap”. Last.fm is competing between a big number of music services with free content (iMeem, iLike, Spotify…) and of course they are loosing visitors by charging them… Loosing visitors means loosing buzz.. .Less posts on twitter, blogs and so on…

We shall not forget that people are willing to share!
Compare the number of professional photographers with the number of amateurs with “good enough” cameras (or camera equipped mobile phones). The professional photographers wants to get paid for their images and the amateurs are sharing them for free on flickr… Who is getting the money? Yahoo (they own flickr).

But free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just because products are free doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere, isn’t making huge gobs of money – Chris Andersson, Wired

When it comes to newspaper industry, and the never ending discussion about blogging vs. newspapers, I stumbled upon this site discussing the “free meals” in news industry. Actually the industry have already lost a couple of battles agaist the free content on the webb. I agree with the article and think that they are far from loosing the war. Newspaper industry vs. blogging is almost like paid software vs. open source.

The Buzz, trends and Twittering is growing as never before and nobody knows where we are heading. It’s a goldmine for trend-searchers and it´s totally free.

I am a bit worried that the big giant companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will buy a lot of companies during the financial crisis… I guess that time will tell… Maybe Google will start by buying Twitter tomorrow.

The free vs. non free discussion is exciting

If you have 5 minutes over, I recommend the following video:
About why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

Chris Anderson has published the book, “Free, The Future of A Radical Price” that is very interesting. It is about this subject and can be downloaded for free (as audiobook or ebook) here