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Finnish citizens have had to cope with a tremendeous amount of low quality journalism this past week. Our foreign minister, Mr. Ilkka Kanerva, had sent some text messages to a female dancer who then ran off to the yellow press to release them to public scrutiny. Even the (normally) highly respected Helsingin Sanomat fell in and wrote numerous articles on this matter (then again they are the unofficial horn of the Social Democratic Party - Kanerva is from the National Coalition Party).

The down side of all this is, in my opinion, that this kind of journalism is here to stay. Why? Because of the internet and the media companies’ inability to renew their old, unsustainable business models. Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat are usually competing head to head for the highest ranking website in terms of online visitors and visits on the weekly TNS Metrix ranking.

They are constantly losing ground in the offline world as people are reading news online. Once online, you have to be quick and react immediately to the latest events to be the site that people pass around through e-mail and IM. If you’re slow you’re gone. Well, no you’re not - if you decide to compete on something more sustainable where people actually spend time and enjoy the content. Have you had a look at the Finnish yellow press websites? Their front pages are long as hell - that’s because you need as much coverage on as many items to grasp the interest of a wide, very fragmented audience.

The problem of losing advertising money is not something only the Finnish press is battling with. US saw the biggest plunge in advertising revenue in 50 years. Media companies’ business models are heavily outdated and if they cannot renew their way of thinking and creating value for the customer - we will see many more scandals covered in the hope of a few more eyes grabbed for attention.

Photo by diver227, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

I had the pleasure of having lunch with the former supreme administrative court justice Lauri Tarasti last week. He is writing a suggestion on the governance of the Finnish copyright law to the government of Finland and he wanted to hear my opinions on the law based on my work during the renewal of the law in 2005.

What I found interesting about him was the casual manner in which he went about, but he could afford it due to the massive understanding of the governance of issues in the Finnish judicial system. We went about discussing the backgrounds of the law, as one needs to understand the law to some degree before you can suggest who should be in charge of it. I told him about Lessig’s work in the US and how this has affected my thinking of the law and the matter in total. To my surprise when we discussed about the lenght of the current copyright law, he already knew of the Mickey Mouse theory.

However, I must say that our work during the autumn of 2005 was not in vain. A group consisting of four ministers, MO Justice, MO Education, MO Communications, MO Trade and Industry, has been formed to broaden the base on which these important decisions are made. Before, in 2005 more precisely, the sole decision of the law was made by the minister of education, Tanja Karpela - which we can all remember was very one sided and poorly prepared. Therefore I could conclude that we did manage to get something done!

It was a very interesting lunch with Mr Tarasti and he promised me to send the results of his work in May once he gets them ready. I’ll try and post the results as soon as I can.

I wrote a column for Talouselämä, a finnish magazine read by thousands of people each week. In the column I argued that companies still do not realise the potential of the internet. They also lack understanding of the new medium and vision to see it as a viable place to do business. I will upload the story scanned tomorrow, but here is the column on their website. Feedback is always appreciated.

Today I realised my dust bag was full in my vacuum cleaner (or actually had been quite some time, but let’s not get into that). Since it was an old vacuum cleaner, I doubted anyone made the dust bags for it anymore. I did a simple Google query in Finnish and came up with Findust.com.

Findust.com is a simple website where you can order dust bags on a per bag basis or through a subscription model. I took the sample order of one bag for 0,99€ incl. delivery. Not bad. Businesses exactly in these sort of product categories should really reap into the subscription based ordering. I’d order my toothbrush from a website and get it delivered to me every 3 months. It’s one of those things you always realise you should have renewed some time ago already.

I’m sure there are other better examples as well, but I thought I’d share this with you. I really found it quite interesting that a Finnish company had ventured into this business. Then again, I believe the whole entrepreneurial scene is slowly changing, even in Finland :)

Last night I talked with a guy who had driven one of the saddle sore rides with the Iron Butt Association of Finland. Today I decided to dig in a little bit more to these rides. I had heard of them earlier and even thought about riding one of them. However, after watching these two videos - I’m pretty sure I will have to challenge myself to the SS1000 ride next summer. Mad fun!

I wrote an article on social media to HETKY’s (Helsingin tietojenkäsittely-yhdistys) magazine. The article in itself is quite light and doesn’t dig that much into the possibilities, but shines light on some possibilities and ways how companies have used internet in creating competitive advantage. The image is available in real size scan over here.

My friend and partner, Hannu Ripatti, has been writing a blog for sometime now, called Garbage is an analog concept. He has a lot of good entries there already, but I especially like the “Dinner in the cave“.

He writes about his blog (which I agree with 100%):

I believe that the ongoing digital revolution is going to be one of the landmark moments in history. It will not only change the way we do business and communicate. It will change every aspect of society from education to privacy and beyond. There will be many challenges, both technical and intellectual, but in the end I truly believe that we will all benefit from the revolution.

I made a small video to wish you all a happy new year. The video is available in slightly better format at Vimeo.com.

I’ve been playing with Vimeo, the site the video is hosted on, and so far I can say it’s an incredible resource of amateur and professional video, with a different positioning compared to YouTube, but it rocks. If you’re into video, do check it out.

I’ve been writing a blog with a friend, Miikka Kukkosuo, for a while now called Arctic Startup. We review Finnish startups and blog about various events and issues around them. To my suprise, I realised alarm:clock euro had done a nice review on our site. Just to let you know; we do have some cards up the sleeve for next year! :) We’ll definitely have a lot more blog posts coming up, a new design to some degree and possibly even video to spice things up a bit.

Thanks for the review!

That’s Hans Rosling going on about how we destroy our planet. He’s one of my new heroes :) The other two are definitely Kevin Rose and Evan Williams - two guys who have done incredible things online in terms of social web.

It’s 3.19 am, been awake for almost 24 hours, it’s time to get a few hours sleep and go conferencing again tomorrow. Like my friend said, or almost accused me of - I do actually do feel being here a bit like being in a candy store.