For some reason Leo had come across a bug in his Google Buzz stream that failed his profile to post updates to his followers. These updates should have also been posted to Twitter from his Buzz stream. Except that they weren’t – for about 16 days. Leo has 17 000 people following him, he’s one of the most well known tech podcasters out there and no one noticed.

I’ve become something of a passive follower of Twitter as fell. Tonight I realised I hadn’t kept Tweetie (app for Mac I use to follow Twitter) open all day – and I didn’t miss it at all.

All these small issues have yet again told me that blogging is one of the biggest and best ways to pass your thoughts along. People still read blogs. Each month about 20 000 people read ArcticStartup. I’ve long, no let me correct that, far too long neglected my blog that I’ve kept active for about 8-9 years now. It’s time I got back to blogging a bit more.

If it’s worth sitting down and taking the time to write about it – it’s usually worth the read as well.

Photo by antigone78

However, I’ve been looking at the stock today and found out that it is going through a major battering due to the Consumer Reports analysis on the new iPhone4 – where they ended up saying that they can’t recommend the phone due to it’s signal strength issue with the new antenna design. Due to this, Apple lost a few billion dollars from its market cap.

Something that did not go out with the report though is the fact that Consumer Reports still rate the iPhone4 the best smart phone out there (via Digital Daily).

Something that you also can’t find in any reports is the fact that when I looked at ordering a new iPhone unlocked from the UK (no point in buying it from Finland), there’s a three week queue for the device. Now this is a very long wait for something that consumers “according to press” shouldn’t buy. It’s a clear sign that Apple aficionados aren’t caring a single bit about the Consumer Reports article.

On top of this, Apple has reported in June that they have sold 3 million iPads in 80 days. The iPhone4 phenomenon has also been out of this world – on June 24th they reported 1.7 million phones sold in the first three days.

I’m with the aficionados and at 250 dollars a share, before the earnings call, I say it’s a definite buy. Analysts have a target price on the share at 330 dollars – that’s 32% higher where it is today.

ps. I got in at $249.40.

However, having read an interesting point of view in an afternoon tabloid (absurd in itself, but true) I have to agree that the system of responsibility is heavily broken in today’s financial system. The problem is isn’t all that easy though, however there are parts of the ideology that might be worthwhile exploring.

The article I read was from Iltalehti where Risto Kalliorinne, the 1st vice chairman of the Finnish lefties has said that Europe should implement the Brazilian system where bank executives are responsible for the mistakes and harm they cause with their personal wealth. This of course is aimed at reducing the collateral damage banks cause with their overly ambitious risk taking.

This is a drastic change from the legal responsibilities of the regular Limited Liability Companies out there, but definitely an interesting point of view. At the moment the responsibilities are totally off meaning that basically there is an endless upside for the executives with very little downside in the form of personal financial responsibilities. Take this to national level and it is usually the taxpayers that have come to the rescue of the bankers. You can’t claim the downfall of the world economies on single bankers, but it is the system that has failed to some degree and it needs repair immediately.

Like I said in the beginning, this isn’t all that straightforward, but there’s definitely a lot to think about in this scenario.

Therefore, I do agree we should take necessary steps to ensure Greece is able to pull its self out of debt and ensure financial, and thus social stability. The IMF and EU syndicated loans are probably the best choice out there. This however is, where my understanding for the issue ends.

I read the Finnish Finance Ministry’s proposal (in Finnish) for the money we need to allocate for the Greek loan. It’s a whopping 1.6 billion euros. It’s a lot of money for us Finns, about 300 euros roughly per each and every one. The size isn’t the problem here – in my opinion it should be looked at from the business as well as the political perspective.

The political perspective is fine – we need to agree on it to stabilise the Euro zone. However, the business side of it has not even been thought of. I’m glad there’s a 2.5 %-point margin on the money we loan and lend onwards to Greece, but it doesn’t justify giving the loan without any collateral what-so-ever. You heard me right, there is no collateral for the loan. This is said loud and clear in the Ministry’s proposal.

I’m not supporting the fact that our politicians aren’t able to demand better terms for the loans when a whole nation digs deep into our pockets. It’s not about anything else than proper business sense. No wonder the Euro zone is constantly trailing the US in economic growth. Our politicians are unable to think in proper business terms.

I mean let’s look at it from another point of view; how are we able to negotiate with Greece if they miss to meet their spending cut -targets? Ask them nicely and not give anymore money? Doesn’t really matter, they’ve received the money we’ve already given them and they can always resort to pulling out of the Euro and going back to a hugely devalued Drakhma. And we? Without any collateral, we citizens are left with nothing.

Very few companies are able to pull off blog posts like these. To go ahead and state you were wrong at some stage is incredibly powerful and very human. Yet, very few of us are able to do so.

I love working with these guys. Their honesty and openness in projects is a great builder of loyalty – one of the reasons why I joined them in Kisko Ventures and furthermore one of the reasons why we continue to work with them in ArcticStartup.

Dan Senor and Saul Singer have managed to write the book in an extremely interesting manner. Despite the story going through various grapevines of Israel’s history it all comes together nicely in the end to create a complete, holistic story and a good understanding of the issues behind Israel’s current economic state.

I won’t spoil it for the rest of you, but strongly invite you to read the book. This is something I honestly hope was made a compulsory read for the Finnish people working with our so called “innovation system”. We have a lot of issues Israel is looking forward to, for example the high living standards among all of our population. However, despite the high number of patents and innovations created in our society – we have utterly failed to capitalise on them.

The unfortunate answer from the politicians seem to usually be the easy way out – increase funding for innovation activities, ie. throw more money on a system that clearly isn’t working. Dan Senor and Saul Singer have done an extraordinaire job in writing the book and giving a relatively detailed and complete view into the Israeli way of startups.

Five out of five stars (and I’d given that without my interview too – easily).

There are a lot of upsides to listening to audiobooks. I’ve become so busy in the last few years that I seldom have any energy to read books anymore. It’s a real pity and something that I want to change when it becomes possible.

However with audiobooks, I’m able to listen to books when I’m in between meetings for example or simply walking to catch the bus. It’s great for this and I’ve realised I can devour quite a bit of them in this format.

Not all is sparkly and well however. While I very much like the concept and would like to keep subscribing, I find it hard mainly for two reasons: catalogue size and DRM.

Audible is probably the largest audiobook store online, but it still lacks a lot of choice. I read mostly, if not only, business books and having looked at their recent listings of business books I could not go on for paying something “just in case” they happened to come up with good content. I could have gone on for a month or two more to listen to the books they had in their catalogue that I’d want to read, but I couldn’t justify paying for it.

Secondly is the issue of DRM. Having launched OlenRikollinen – the largest anti-DRM (and copyright legislation renewal) movement in Finland during the previous decade I thought the problem of DRM would have gotten less annoying as years went on.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the case. I’m very much in love with the Nokia N900. It’s a kick ass phone, built on open source standards that enables developers to build cool stuff on it. Equally unfortunate is that Audible does not support the device with their native application, thus cutting out the usage of the device unless you work your way round the DRM.

I’ve listened to audiobooks and podcasts on the device with the great Panucci app. It runs an array of formats, but does not support the Audible format. This means I’ve literally had to strip the DRM from the files, as a paying customer, to be able to listen to my purchases the way I want. How did I do this? I listened to the audiobook in iTunes over night with the Mac muted, while Audio Hijack recorded the audio into an mp3-file.

So all in all, there’s a lot of good to like in Audible, but for the above mentioned issues of catalogue size and DRM – it’s not for me. At least for now.

Thanks Audible, it was fun while it lasted.

While I followed this piece of advice on setting up your sync, I found it a bit difficult and thought of writing my own simpler way.

The requirements

• N900 – please update it to the latest Maemo version
• Macintosh with iCal, synced to your Google account (get instructions for this from Google Calendar help)

Step 1

Go to your settings and find the “Mail for exchange” -button under Connectivity.

Step 2

You should see a view like this. Click Next to continue setup.

Step 3

Enter your e-mail address to the top field (I have tested this with Google accounts and thus I can’t guarantee this works with Google Apps accounts). Enter your password and check the username is correct. Leave the domain part blank. Press next to continue to the next step.

Step 4

For the server, enter m.google.com and make sure the port is 443 and secure connection is checked. Once you’ve entered these – press next.

Step 5

When you get to the step where you need to choose what to synchronise – only check to sync calendar and tasks. Press next to move forward.

It might give you a warning, click the screen to “ok” it and move forward.

Step 6

You get to this page, and you’re almost set. I strongly suggest you add the synchronised content to a new calendar, so click Advanced settings.

Step 7

Scroll down to the part where you see Calendar and tasks. In there, click Calendar and choose New. Once set – click Save. (Note: you won’t be able to name the calendar or anything in this step – you’ll have to do this from the Calendar settings)

Step 8

Once you’ve move forward from the Advanced settings, your N900 starts syncing with Google. This might take some time so give it a minute or so at least (depending on how much there is to sync).

Step 9

This is where you end up after setting up the Sync between N900 and Google. You can set the automatic syncs from the system settings under Mail for exchange if you want to set sync intervals during weekdays for example.

Now, when you add something to iCal it should automatically now sync it to Google and when your N900 has reached its sync interval (or you wish to sync it manually) – it will update itself with the new material.

All done!
If you’ve followed the steps above, you should have successfully setup your sync between Nokia N900 and Google Calendar (and iCal – if you have it synced, like I have). I’m not an expert in this, but let me know how this works for you!

Enjoy!

ArcticStartup won an innovation journalism prize yesterday in the award ceremony organised by the Finnish Society for Innovation Journalism. Good week!