Meanwhile in Finland

Photo source:
Hong Kong - kalastuskauppa
http://www.facebook.com/HongKongKalastuskauppa?sk=wall

Google+ people who post the most interesting content and share the most valuable content

Now all their best posts in one page:
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/bestofgoogle/

Overload of highly quality content and great photos in this page :)

Edit:
Here is the shared circle:
https://plus.google.com/107383157816966336384/posts/6kVCGwJp1q6

+Denis Labelle
+Wil Wheaton
+Peter G McDermott
+Guy Kawasaki
+Colby Brown
+Gabriel Vasile
+Rodney Pike
+Giselle Minoli
+Samantha Villenave
+Johnathan Chung
+Michelle Marie
+Mike Elgan
+Chris Pirillo
+David Bennett
+Alida Brandenburg
+Louis Gray
+byron rempel
+Linda Lawrey
+Dan Gillmor
+Kim Sherrell
+Felicia Day
+Kara Swisher
+Teresa Stover
+Kjetil Greger Pedersen
+Thomas Morffew
+Lynette Young
+Christina Warren
+Charles Dowd
+Alex Koloskov
+Alireza Yavari
+Carter Gibson
+Adam Boenig
+Craig Kanalley
+Mark Rodriguez
+Jaana Nyström
+Ardith Goodwin
+Gerwin Sturm
+Maria Stepanov Sommerfield
+Darren Rowse
+Jessica Pierce
+Mari Smith
+Rehan Ahmad
+Natalie Villalobos
+Robert Scoble
+J.C. Kendall
+Loic Le Meur
+Courtney Boyd Myers
+Derya Unutmaz
+Vic Gundotra
+Philip Plait
+Trey Ratcliff
+Bill Gross
+Terrence Lui
+stephanie wanamaker
+Jay Rosen
+Mohamed Mansour
+Jaime García
+Alex Grossman

+Marilín Gonzalo
+Thomas Hawk
+Ahmed Zeeshan
+Lance Ulanoff
+Andrea Kuszewski
+Dan Leveille
+Chris Brogan
+Kayla McKinney
+Pete Cashmore
+Daria Musk
+Jack C Crawford
+Ryan Crowe
+Amanda Blain
+Ayoub Khote
+M Monica
+Cam Meadows
+Mark Cuban
+Kaylee Goins
+Christina Trapolino
+Brian Rose
+Tom Anderson
+Yifat Cohen
+Jeff Jarvis

Summer.. FINALLY here too  :)

My life's motto is:

Download and use as your Google+ cover:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26005155/googleheader.png

Cheer Up! - 17 reasons it's a great time to be alive

1. We’re better off now
Compared with 50 years ago, when I was just four years old, the average human now earns nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), eats one third more calories, buries two thirds fewer children, and can expect to live one third longer. In fact, it’s hard to find any region of the world that’s worse off now than it was then, even though the global population has more than doubled over that period.

2. Urban living is a good thing
City dwellers take up less space, use less energy, and have less impact on natural ecosystems than country dwellers. The world’s cities now contain over half its people, but they occupy less than 3 percent of its land area. Urban growth may disgust environmentalists, but living in the country is not the best way to care for the earth. The best thing we can do for the planet is build more skyscrapers.

3. Poverty is nose-diving
The rich get richer, but the poor do even better. Between 1980 and 2000, the poor doubled their consumption. The Chinese are ten times richer and live about 25 years longer than they did 50 years ago. Nigerians are twice as rich and live nine more years. The percentage of the world’s people living in absolute poverty has dropped by over half. The United Nations estimates that poverty was reduced more in the past 50 years than in the previous 500.

4. The important stuff costs less
One reason we are richer, healthier, taller, cleverer, longer-lived, and freer than ever before is that the four most basic human needs—food, clothing, fuel, and shelter—have grown markedly cheaper. Take one example: In 1800, a candle providing one hour’s light cost six hours’ work. In the 1880s, the same light from a kerosene lamp took 15 minutes’ work to pay for. In 1950, it was eight seconds. Today, it’s half a second. In these terms, we are 43,200 times better off than in 1800.

5. The environment is better than you think
In the United States, rivers, lakes, seas, and air are getting cleaner all the time. A car today emits less pollution traveling at full speed than a parked car did from leaks in 1970.

6. Shopping fuels innovation
Even allowing for the many people who still live in abject poverty, our own generation has access to more calories, watts, horsepower, gigabytes, megahertz, square feet, air miles, food per acre, miles per gallon, and, of course, money than any who lived before us. This will continue as long as we use these things to make other things. The more we specialize and exchange, the better off we’ll be.

7. Global trade enriches our lives
By 9 a.m., I have shaved with an American razor, eaten bread made with French wheat and spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, brewed tea from Sri Lanka, dressed in clothes made from Indian cotton and Australian wool, put on shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber, and read a newspaper printed on Finnish paper with Chinese ink. I have consumed minuscule fractions of the productive labor of hundreds of people. This is the magic of trade and specialization. Self-sufficiency is poverty.

8. More farm production = more wilderness
While world population has increased more than fourfold since 1900, other things have increased, too—the area of crops by 30 percent, harvests by 600 percent. At the same time, more than two billion acres of “secondary” tropical forest are now regrowing since farmers left them to head for cities, and it is already rich in biodiversity. In fact, I will make an outrageous prediction: The world will feed itself to a higher and higher standard throughout this century without plowing any new land.

9. The good old days weren’t
Some people argue that in the past there was a simplicity, tranquillity, sociability, and spirituality that’s now been lost. This rose-tinted nostalgia is generally confined to the wealthy. It’s easier to wax elegiac for the life of a pioneer when you don’t have to use an outhouse. The biggest-ever experiment in back-to-the-land hippie lifestyle is now known as the Dark Ages.

10. Population growth is not a threat
Although the world population is growing, the rate of increase has been falling for 50 years. Across the globe, national birth rates are lower now than in 1960, and in the less developed world, the birth rate has approximately halved. This is happening despite people living longer and infant-mortality rates dropping. According to an estimate from the United Nations, population will start falling once it peaks at 9.2 billion in 2075—so there is every prospect of feeding the world forever. After all, there are already seven billion people on earth, and they are eating better and better every decade.

11. Oil is not running out
In 1970, there were 550 billion barrels of oil reserves in the world, and in the 20 years that followed, the world used 600 billion.
So by 1990, reserves should have been overdrawn by 50 billion barrels. Instead, they amounted to 900 billion—not counting tar sands and oil shale that between them contain about 20 times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. Oil, coal, and gas are finite, but they will last for decades, perhaps centuries, and people will find alternatives long before they run out.

12. We are the luckiest generation
This generation has experienced more peace, freedom, leisure time, education, medicine, and travel than any in history. Yet it laps up gloom at every opportunity. Consumers do not celebrate their wonderful field of choice and, according to psychologists, say they are “overwhelmed.” When I go to my local superstore, I do not see people driven to misery by the impossibility of choice. I see people choosing.

13. Storms are not getting worse
Not at all. While the climate warmed slightly last century, the incidence of hurricanes and cyclones fell. Since the 1920s, the global annual death rate from weather-related natural disasters (that is, the proportion of the world’s population killed rather than simply the overall number) has declined by a staggering 99 percent.
The killing power of hurricanes depends more on wealth than on wind speed. A big hurricane struck the well-prepared Yucatán in Mexico in 2007 and killed nobody. A similar storm struck impoverished Burma the next year and killed 200,000. The best defenses against disaster are prosperity and freedom.

14. Great ideas keep coming
The more we prosper, the more we can prosper. The more we invent, the more inventions become possible. The world of things is often subject to diminishing returns. The world of ideas is not: The ever-increasing exchange of ideas causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world. There isn’t even a theoretical possibility of exhausting our supply of ideas, discoveries, and inventions.

15. We can solve all our problems
If you say the world will go on getting better, you are considered mad. If you say catastrophe is imminent, you may expect the Nobel Peace Prize. Bookshops groan with pessimism; airwaves are crammed with doom. I cannot recall a time when I was not being told by somebody that the world could survive only if it abandoned economic growth. But the world will not continue as it is. The human race has become a problem-solving machine: It solves those problems by changing its ways. The real danger comes from slowing change.

16. This depression is not depressing
The Great Depression of the 1930s was just a dip in the upward slope of human living standards. By 1939, even the worst-affected countries, America and Germany, were richer than they’d been in 1930. All sorts of new products and industries were born during the Depression. So growth will resume unless prevented by wrong policies. Someone, somewhere, is tweaking a piece of software, testing a new material, or transferring the gene that will make life easier or more fun.

17. Optimists are right
For 200 years, pessimists have had all the headlines—even though optimists have far more often been right. There is immense vested interest in pessimism. No charity ever raised money by saying things are getting better. No journalist ever got the front page writing a story about how disaster was now less likely. Pressure groups and their customers in the media search even the most cheerful statistics for glimmers of doom.

Don’t be browbeaten—dare to be an optimist!

By Matt Ridley -http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/reader%27s-digest.aspx 

It´s getting colder and that means stars at the sky :)

Flying away

Winter is coming :)

Google+ Help to your Kindle

Created an ebook from +Google+ Help (Unofficial) posts.

Download it here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26005155/GoogleHelp.mobi

You can read it in Kindle for Android, Mac , iOs , PC
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

Marriage IS a fairy tale

+Anne Huomo 

Steve Jobs is not dead. He's living in Lohja, Finland's "Apple City".

Breaking news :)

Source:http://imgur.com/G1Y1W

Happy Birthday Google+

I rarely post GIF animations, but since it´s birthday day I wanted to do something fun to celebrate Google+!

Based on a true story by +Yonatan Zunger , in comments here +CircleCount http://goo.gl/jit2d

Happy Birthday to +Vic Gundotra and Google+ team :)

Read old posts from the first days of Google+:
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/googlehistory.php

Through the lens, it looked like this yesterday. 

And behind the lens.. well.. lot´s of mosquitoes again

I had lots of followers today when I was walking and running in forest. Mosquitos wanted something from me :) Here is one photo taken today and soon after this I had enough of this sudden popularity

Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow I would still plant a tree today - Martin Luther

Had a lot of fun with this shot. Only lonely tree I could find, so much snow it was hard to get there, found one ditch and shot most of the photos accidentally with ISO 6400 :)

#Zensunday +Charlotte Therese Björnström +Simon Kitcher
#bwfineartle +Joel Tjintjelaar
#squaresunday +Matt Soave
#monochromemonday +Charles Lupica +Hans Berendsen

Super Finns Circle

50 active Finnish Google+ users (public posts in last 14 days) + 50 people that other Googlers like (shares,+1´s,comments) = 67 Super Finns Circle

Posts in English and in Finnish.

People in random order:
+Karri Anttila
+Harri Kivistö
+Tiina Niskanen
+Rami Saarikorpi
+Matti Partonen
+Heikki Leskinen
+Marita Kaatrala
+Lauri Kutinlahti
+Janne Saarikko
+Timo Nurmi
+Cristina Andersson
+Jaana Nyström
+Elisa Tammela
+Jari Juslin
+Annika Ruohonen
+Tuija Aalto
+Janos Honkonen
+Pasi Ääpälä
+Jussi Alanko
+Risto Linturi
+Petri Pusa
+Ulla M. Saikku
+Jaakko Paarvala
+Jaakko Wallenius
+Timo Kantola
+Jukka Niiranen
+Tarja Ollas
+Tanja Tulonen
+Mikko Tyllinen
+Sami Haahtinen
+Risto Talman
+Vesa Linja-aho
+Mikko Piippo
+Pia Leppänen
+Jarmo Lahti
+Anne Rongas
+Jussi Silvonen
+Markus Översti
+Jani Lilja
+Christian Utter
+Suvi Korhonen
+Antti Lindström
+Aki Antman
+Jari Knuutila
+Mia Leijonstedt
+Jussi Virtanen
+Freja Wagner
+Niina Sauvolainen
+Helge V. Keitel
+Jari Huomo
+Teppo Saari
+Pekka Pekkala
+Tom Nuorivaara
+Markus Kartano
+Tommi Himberg
+Petri Mertanen
+Veijo Vilva
+Jari Salo
+Late järvinen
+Pasi Heinonen
+Tarmo Pekola
+Keijo Savolainen
+Mikko Hakkarainen
+Daniel Schildt
+Marketta Aaltonen
+Joonas Grönlund
+Miku Puustineviz

Oletko suomalainen ja haluat mukaan listalle:
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/lisaa/henkilo

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

If you have not yet seen the Jobs speech Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address , here it is in text format for you to read :)

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Source: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

The Most Cunning Trap of All

via +Santtu Määttänen 

Source: buttersafe.com

Thoughts for the New Year 2013

“While many are wringing their hands, I recall the 1970s when we were suffering from an oil shock causing long lines at gas stations, rationing, and 55 MPH speed limits on Federal highways, a recession, very little venture capital ($50 million per year into VC firms), and, what President Jimmy Carter (wearing a sweater while addressing the Nation on TV because he had turned down the heat in the White House) called a “malaise”. It was during those times that two kids without any real college education, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, started companies that did pretty well. Opportunities abound in bad times as well as good times. In fact, the opportunities are often greater when the conventional wisdom is that everything is going into the toilet.

Well…we’re nearing the end of another great year, and, despite what we read about the outlook for 2013, we can look forward to a New Year filled with opportunities as well as stimulating challenges.”

I wish you all the best of success and happiness in 2013

(Original text posted at year 2008: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/12/31/things-ive-learned-and-loved-in-2008/)

(photo source: http://hdwallpaper2013.com/new-year/happy-new-year-pictures-2013-hd-wallpaper.html)

Things Your Pets Do While You're Away

Have you ever wondered what your pets get up to while you're at work?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/things-your-pets-do-while-youre-away

Then back to work.

Google+ Directory Ebook

+Shamil Weerakoon has done a great job in collecting a big list of Google+ tips & guides & tutorials to his Google+ Directory spreadsheets
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag0ysqpT1gQUdE8tcnhwbjVyTmVQUHc1NW54MXcxT1E

Used that data to create a new ebook full of wisdom from Google+ users :)

First version available for download here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26005155/GoogleCookbook.mobi

I call it Google+ cookbook :)

Have a check, here is the online version:
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/bestofgoogle/html/shamil/index.html

Here are some writers from the book:
+Creative Web Design,+Erik Goldhar,+Kristin Isler,+Tracy Raiteri,+Don Burke,+Peter G McDermott,+Yifat Cohen,+Akasha Tsang,+Debbie Ohi,+Johnathan Chung,+Max Huijgen,+Moritz Tolxdorff,+Jens Graikowski,+Chris Robinson,+Emilie Eggleston,+Michelle Marie,+Gilles-Philippe Morin,+Ryan Crowe,+Jari Huomo,+Robert Scoble,+Jon Cilley,+Making Google Plus Work,+Paul Spoerry,+Trey Ratcliff,+Ahmed Zeeshan,+martin shervington,+Gideon Rosenblatt,+Sarah King,+Saidur Hossain,+Chris Pirillo,+Jessica Safir,+Up Your Plus,+Google Ads,+Sean Lumly,+Jesse Wojdylo,+Gregg Sakauye,+PJ Rosenberg,+Ray Hiltz,+Rod Dunne,+Anthony Russo,+Mike Downes,+Alida Brandenburg,+Jay Patel,+GPlusTuts,+Cora Triton,+Damon Meredith,+Google+,+Rahul Roy,+Google Engage for Agencies,+Melody Lynn,+Gregory Allan,+Dejan SEM,+G+Decoded: Google+ Marketing Made Easy,+Kristoffer Howes,+P E Sharpe,+Leah Davies,+Amanda Blain,+Al Jazeera English,+Anthony Fox,+Mike Shaw

Have a nice weekend and #caturday ;)

Have a nice weekend

And #caturday

My life

Original source unknown.

Being a parent is like being a rockstar

1. Endless hours on the road with too many people in the vehicle.

2. Your job is to entertain a room full of loud, writhing maniacs.

3. If you do your job well, people ask when you’ll produce more.

4. You ask yourself daily: ”Am I tripping? Or did I really just see that?”

5. Your name is always shouted, never spoken.

6. Someone is always pulling at your clothes.

7. Groupies follow you to the bathroom.

8. There’s a different person in your bed every night. Sometimes even two.

9. At the end of your work day, you’re sweaty and your hair is a mess.

10. Screaming is just part of the job.

Text from:http://letmestartbysayingblog.com/2011/06/30/how-being-a-parent-is-like-being-a-rock-star/

10 ways how to succeed on Google+

My favorite is number 10: Be yourself!

Thank you +Jaana Nyström & +Google+ Help (Unofficial) for this list.

Google+ Terms of Service updated

#googleplusupdate  #gplusupdate #caturday
Modified from: http://horseecomics.tumblr.com/image/37310985421

A new work day at the office

Luckily office in this photo is not my office :)

Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate

Thanks +Amanda Blain for reminding us about this :)

Brace yourself , dogsunday is coming

If there is some hashtag you would like to mute , for example #caturday ,
I highly recommend to try G+ hashtags extension for Chrome made by +Siegfried Hirsch 

Get it here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/g%20-hashtags/elpbjkmmckiobkfmdboeldkbijddkfgc

#gplustip

Edited photo found here:
http://www.gamerorlamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BF3-tank-cat.jpg

Macro shooting - Day 2

Things learned:
Tripod and wireless remote control are my friends.
Time to stop using auto focus & learn to use manual focus.
Light! How to get quality light for my targets?

Imatrankoski rapids

"The Imatrankoski Rapids are Imatra's most famous attraction, and travelers have been drawn to the rapids for hundreds of years. At the turn of the century the rapids - with Imatra's famous hotel, the Valtionhotelli, standing on its banks - was the most popular tourist attraction in Finland."

Usually rapids are allowed to run everyday at 18.00 but because of high level of water really rare thing is happening this year and rapids are running now 24/7 at least few months! 

Baby portrait

#monochomemonday  

+Hans Berendsen +Jerry Nguyen +Steve Barge +Nurcan Azaz +Manuel Votta 

And here I stood for three minutes in silence waiting for my camera to capture this view.

My ancestors

Something totally different this time for #monochromemonday  

This photo is really a #blastfromthepast  . The young girl , third from the left is my mom´s grandma. So this photo has been taken 18XX , have to verify the correct year. Scanned it today so I could save it before it fade away and deteriorate.

+Charles Lupica +Jerry Johnson +Hans Berendsen +Manuel Votta 

For a long time it had seemed 
to me that life was about to begin -real life. 
But there was always some obstacle in the way, 
something to be gotten through first, 
some unfinished business, 
time still to be served, 
a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. 
At last it dawned on me that these 
obstacles were my life.

By: Alfred D Souza
Image: http://goo.gl/NhAJN

Thoughts for year 2013

He was going to be all that a mortal should be Tomorrow
No one should be kinder or braver than he Tomorrow
A friend who was troubled and weary he knew,
Who'd be glad of a lift and who needed it, too;
On him he would call and see what he could do Tomorrow

Each morning he stacked up the letters he'd write Tomorrow
And thought of the folks he would fill with delight Tomorrow
It was too bad, indeed, he was busy today,
And hadn't a minute to stop on his way;
More time he would have to give others, he'd say Tomorrow

The greatest of workers this man would have been Tomorrow
The world would have known him, had he ever seen Tomorrow

But the fact is he died and he faded from view,
And all that he left here when living was through
Was a mountain of things he intended to do

Tomorrow

Tomorrow by Edgar Albert Guest

Building a web

#spidersunday +Kjetil Greger Pedersen +Kimberly Hosey +Chris Mallory 

Less compressed version here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26005155/spider.jpg

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” - Oscar Wilde

Photo source: My Nikon D7000

Have a funny saturday &  #caturday  ;)

No wise quotes today - Jari Huomo

Technically challenging  shot, put my memory card to iMac superdrive slot instead of memory card slot and it took some time to get it out there.

What´s hot around the Google+ Ghost world

Just open this page and you will see:
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/hotaroundtheworld.php

First page photo posts from What´s Hot lists around the world.
Page is updated every 30 minutes.

Archive of What´s hot posts:
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/hotaroundtheworldarchive.php

+Google+ Help (Unofficial) 

How to take shots like this

Walk forest paths until you found a lake.
Use ND110 filter or similar.
ISO100 , f/10 , bulb mode and remote control.
Walk to the water & launch the camera with remote.
Hold your breath for 139 seconds.
Walk back home.

Lightroom: Cold Tone preset & straighten the horizon.

500000 litres / second

#longexposurethursday  

Launch date Part II

+Jaana Nyström profile photo elephant jumping even faster than last time :)

After a long wait last night Finnish version of my storybook was finally accepted to Apple store http://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/kultakutri-ja-kolme-karhua/id514914146

Small world

Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Italy, United Kingdom, United States, Mexico, Denmark, France, Australia, Singapore, India, Canada, Japan, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Lebanon, Bolivia, Botswana, China

My times tables app for iKids has been bought&played so far in those countries thanks to Amazing Digital World :)

Lego's cute reply to lad who lost toy goes viral

A seven year old boy has become a web sensation after his heart-warming letter to Lego went viral.

Luka Apps was so upset when he lost his toy character Jay ZX on a shopping trip – despite his dad telling him to leave it at home – that he wrote to Lego.

He wrote: “Daddy said to send you an email to see if you will send me another one. I promise I won’t take him to the shop again if you can.”
Stunned Luka, from Highworth, Wilts, then received a reply from the company, who replaced the toy and gave him extra gifts in return for his earnest letter.

Richard from LEGO wrote back to the youngster after speaking to Sensei Wu - a Ninjago Master:

"We are very sorry to hear about you losing your Jay minifigure but it sounds like your dad might have been right about leaving it at home. It sounds like you a very sad about it too.

Normally we would ask that you pay for a new one if you lose one of your minifigures and need to have it replaced.

My bosses told me I could not send you one out for free because you lost it but, I decided that I would put a call into Sensei Wu to see if he could help me.

Luka, I told Sensei Wu that losing your Jay minifigure was purely an accident and that you would never ever ever let it happen ever again.

He told me to tell you, "Luka, your father seems like a very wise man. You must always protect your Ninjago minifigures like the dragons protect the Weapons of Spinjitzu!"

Sensei Wu also told me it was okay if I sent you a new Jay and told me it would be okay if I included something extra for you because anyone that saves their Christmas money to buy the Ultrasonic Raider must be a really big Ninjago fan.

So, I hope you enjoy your Jay minifigure with all his weapons. You will actually have the only Jay minifigure that combines 3 different Jays into one! I am also going to send you a bad guy for him to fight!

Just remember, what Sensei Wu said: keep your minifigures protected like the Weapons of Spinjitzu! And of course, always listen to your dad.

You will see an envelope from LEGO within the next two weeks with your new minifigures. Please take good care of them, Luka.

Remember that you promised to always leave them at home."


Read more at: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4733041/lego-letter-luka-apps.html
http://www.itv.com/news/2013-01-07/boys-letter-to-lego-after-losing-christmas-present/
https://twitter.com/lukaapps

Found via +Pasi Ääpälä 

Merry Christmas to Me!

Santa Claus was little late this year :)

Have a wonderful Christmas

I try to stay away from working & social networks as much as possible next two weeks :)

Photo taken a year ago.

Lego Rivendell

Stunning work! Absolutely fabulous!

Stats about Rivendell

-Consisting of 15 32x32 baseplates in a 3x5 layout
-Dimensions of 40" x 30"
-Approximately 120 pounds in total
-80+ hours of build time by both builders(not to mention work at Brickfair and the 20+ hours put in by me for photography and editing)
-More than 50,000 pieces involving 1 Bricklink order, 1 LEGO payment, 2 PaB boxes of 1x1 and 1x2 trans clear plates, 2 combined collections, and various other sources were needed in the creation of Rivendell.

Due to both of our unique interests in Lord of the Rings and our supreme passion for the LEGO brick, we decided to combine them into a creation for Brickfair 2012. This was our second time collaborating on a creation (our first collaborative being Amon Hen), and this was definitely the largest, hardest, and most fun project that either of us have worked on. Because of our unique building styles, we complemented each other well and used the best of both our talents to great effect. We chose Rivendell because of its beautiful landscape, its iconic nature, and the fact that it will be in the upcoming Hobbit movie trilogy. It is our hope that you will enjoy the natural beauty and our creative gifts as expressed in this artistic representation of Rivendell, from the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Signed,
Blake Baer, 16, and Jack Bittner, 16

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/338321

My alternative setup

I like this one more than the last one, but this place is quite often populated by some loud swimmers & tourists.

Google+ photo posts Pinterest style

Visual eye candy for your Monday with my latest Google+ tool.

+Melody Lynn 
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/thumbs.php?id=114326903094745477264

+Amanda Blain 
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/thumbs.php?id=107982618909749811163

+Jaana Nyström 
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/thumbs.php?id=107742059751171695340

+Michelle Marie 
http://www.googleplussuomi.com/thumbs.php?id=114618043230336563405

Check your own posts by replacing the 21-digit GoogleID to the link.

#monochromemonday  so busy day again for 

+Charles Lupica 
+Hans Berendsen 
+Jerry Johnson 
+Manuel Votta 
+Steve Barge 
+Nurcan Azaz 

Big team, did I forget anyone?

How are you and how many submissions this week :)

Have a great week

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special." - Jim Valvano

#dofmonday  +Helena Martins +Mara Acoma +Lynda Bowyer 
#naturemonday  +Rolf Hicker +Kate Church +Jen Baptist 

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” 
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Finland four months ago.
-25 Celsius / -13 degrees Fahrenheit

Tiny toes
 
"A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for" 

Perspective

Now let’s think about what’s important.

At any given moment, whatever is in front of us is important. That assignment has to be done right away! That’s because we’re looking closely, at the details.

But if we pulled back, took a step away from our lives, those details become less important.

Soon we can start to see the forest. Unless we pull back some more — and now we can see a continent.

Pull back further, and we see the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy — and now nothing in our lives are important.

Obviously, you need to get the right amount of perspective.

I’d like you to imagine that you are about to attend one of the most important occasions of your life.

It will be held in a room sufficiently large to seat all your friends, your family, your business associates and anyone and everyone to whom you are important and who is important to you.

Can you see it?

The walls are draped with deep golden tapestries.  The lighting is subdued, soft, casting a warm glow on the faces of your expectant guests.  Their chairs are handsomely upholstered in a golden fabric that matches the tapestries.  The golden carpeting is deeply piled.

At the front of the room is a dais, and on the dais a large, beautifully decorated table, with candles burning at either end.

On the table, in the center, is the object of everyone’s attention: a large, shining, ornate box.  And in the box is YOU!  Stiff as the proverbial board.

Do you see yourself lying in the box, not a dry eye in the room?

Now listen.

From the four corners of the room comes a tape recording of your voice.  Can you hear it?  You’re addressing your guests.  You’re telling them the story of your life.

How would you like that story to go?

That’s your Primary Aim.

What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it?

That’s your Primary Aim.

If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read?

That’s your Primary Aim.

And once you’ve created the script, all you need to do is to make it come true.

All you need to do is begin living your life as if it were important.

All you need to do is take your life seriously.

To create it intentionally.

To actively make your life into the life you wish it to be.

Simple?  Yes.

Easy?  No.

But absolutely essential if your business is to have any meaning beyond work.

I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they are going.

Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day.

They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.

Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present.  They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do.  And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.

They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.

I believe it’s true that the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.

The difference between the two is between living fully and just existing.

The difference between the two is living intentionally and living by accident.

-----------------------------------------------------
Side notes: I did not write those lines, I wish I had the skills to write but I don´t . But I read a lot and wanted to share something from the books.

The funeral story is from book The The E-Myth Revisited © by- Michael E. Gerber . Photo is for #monochromemonday  curated by my favorite curators +Jerry Johnson +Charles Lupica +Manuel Votta .

Photo is from Imatra, Mellonmäki. K-53 ski jump hill. Many years ago when I was still young .. I mean younger and I just had started dating with my current wife we spend a quite a lot of time there chatting and enjoying the great view & sunsets. 

Chilly saturday

#iphonephotography  

RESHARE:
Feels so alive just by watching

It is much more than swimsuits, trust me. :)

//title and share via +Anja Molan 

Best of Amanda Blain e-book

2,000,000 followers , congratulations +Amanda Blain !

Here is an e-book created from her Google+ posts:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26005155/AmandaBlain.mobi (about 15mb)

Funny photos , inspirational , geek stuff , entrepreneurial posts  and Google+ tips. And since it is a book filtered video posts & circle shares & posts with less than 25 words :)

Readable also in PC:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

Photo from this post (my future office & home)
https://plus.google.com/+AmandaBlain/posts/SvSSLgNPY2a

BookBook for iPhone - Beautiful design

The BookBook for iPhone is a genuine leather case that not only protects your iPhone, but serves as a wallet too. With sections for credit cards, a clear window for your photo ID, and space to hold notes it has everything you need when you’re out and about. 

Video:
Introducing BookBook For iPhone from Twelve South

An Unexpected Ass Kicking

That’s the problem with a lot of people”, he continued, “they don’t try to do stuff that’s never been done before, so they never do anything, but if they try to do it, they find out there’s lots of things they can do that have never been done before.”

I nodded my head in agreement and laughed to myself – thinking that would be something that I would say and the coincidence that out of all the people in the coffee shop I ended up talking to, it was this guy. What a way to open a conversation.

The old man turned back at his coffee, took a sip, and then looked back at me.

“In fact, I’ve done lots of things that haven’t been done before”, he said half-smiling.

Not sure if he was simply toying with me or not, my curiousity got the better of me.

Oh really? Like what types of things?, All the while, half-thinking he was going to make up something fairly non-impressive.

I invented the first computer.

Um, Excuse me?

http://joelrunyon.com/two3/an-unexpected-ass-kicking

A must read story.

This one is for #womenwednesday +Women Wednesday

Curated by +Niki Aguirre +Athena Carey +Lee Daniels +Teresa Stover +Kerry Murphy +Christina Lawrie

My favorite portrait subject , my lovely wife.

Lesson learned:
Check your Background Before Hitting the Shutter Release

Trash cans do not look pretty.

Learn some Finnish words :)

Here is my short TV interview at YLE TV2 yesterday.

Be nice to other Google+ users

+Markus Laumann quote.

I will now un-plug myself from this Google+ world , have a nice weekend :)

Sad but true

Not absolutely true. Yet! I will be doing this reading thing today, maybe reading +Guy Kawasaki Google+ book :) Good night everyone and thanks for making me a Google+ addict!

Do you have one?

+Lars Fosdal have :)

The Minimalistic Gmail Cheat Sheet

"Did you know that you can browse through gmail without using the mouse much? This is a cheat sheet that provides you with an in depth view of gmail shortcuts, the description of what they do, and a illustration of where the results appear in your monitor."

Full Cheat sheet at http://visual.ly/minimalistic-gmail-cheat-sheet

Sports balls replaced by cats

http://www.sportballsreplacedwithcats.com/
Best site on the internet? :)

Busy time for three little pigs

Illustration from my upcoming storybook app for kids.

Family portrait

Devices ready for 2013 app testings.

My plan for 2013 is to make apps.
If nobody buys my apps, then I make better apps.
Simple :)

We live in the future.

From a 1980 kids computer book. 

Source: http://minimalmac.com/post/37375355017/from-a-1980-kids-computer-book-takeaway-we-live

Spider

Today I learned that it's not very easy to take macro shots , it´s actually very challenging.

But I will learn .. someday.

And I will post you a good macro photo .. someday .. but not today :)

15 reasons why you should not listen to "experts"

1. "Children just aren't interested in Witches and Wizards anymore."
—Anonymous publishing executive to J.K. Rowling, 1996.

2. "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
—Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

3. "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
—Decca Records executives rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

4. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
—Western Union internal memo, 1876

5. "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."
—Henry Morton, President of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.

6. "You better get secretarial work or get married."
—Emmeline Snively, Director – Blue Book Modelling Modelling Agency, to Marilyn Monroe in 1944.

7. "The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad."
—The President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

8. "Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."
—Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later

9. "I would say that this does not belong to the art which I am in the habit of considering music."
—Alexandre Oulibicheff, reviewing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

10. "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
—Associates of Edwin L. Drake mocking his idea to drill for oil, 1859.

11. "How, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense."
—Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton's steamboat plans, 1800s.

12. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."
—The San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling in 1889.

13. "Very interesting Whittle, my boy, but it will never work."
—Cambridge Aeronautics Professor, when shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine.

14. "Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan."
—Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.

15. "To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances."
—Lee DeForest, Inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

Original source: http://goo.gl/WiYmx

I was on the road today. Met some old high school friends in football tournament we arrange every year. It was fun & my legs are broken now. Getting older every year :) 

#selfportraitsaturday

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.

 #self-portrait-saturday by +Marcin Pękalski 

I made you a reminder, so please remember this in Google+ too :)!

Swimming time?

Not this time yet, too cold for swimming still but sunset and lake Saimaa was very beautiful that day. And had fun time playing&learning with ND110 filter and still trying to learn good exposure times. 30 seconds this time with f/9 and iso 160.

Hope you like it, my submission for #thirstythursdaypics   #longexposurethursday   +Giuseppe Basile & +Mark Esguerra & +Francesco Gola 

Nothing is worth more than this day. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Time to get focused, old post from my Google+ archives

Here is a great mind map "How to Focus in the age of distraction."
http://www.mindmapart.com/how-to-focus-mind-map-jane-genovese/

There are many things that I use personally.

StayFocusd

StayFocusd is an extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work/other stuffs by restricting the amount of time you can spend on sites that might be time-wasting. Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji

First, connect

In the connection economy, there's a dividing line between two kinds of projects: those that exist to create connections, and those that don't.

The internet is a connection machine. Virtually every single popular web project (eBay, Google+, chat, email, forums, etc.) exists to create connections between humans that were difficult or impossible to do before the web.

When you tell us about your business or non-profit or public works project, tell us first how it's going to help us connect. The rest will take care of itself.

Text:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/08/first-connect.html

Lost gold ring

Via +Matti Ali-Löytty :)

Doctor I don’t feel well.

Via +Santtu Määttänen 

Added photos to Photo Processing Challenge 4/2012.

Good night

Irish proverb +Dirk Talamasca +Eileen O'Duffy :)

Photo source:
http://www.ryseup.com/wallpaper/

Piece of Cake

My first ever submission for #macromonday  . Sub-theme is food.

Last piece of my birthday cake made by +Anne Huomo .
After taking this photo I ate it :)

Have a fun curation day:
+Kelli Seeger Kim +Kerry Murphy +Jennifer Eden 

Kiss

Long time no photos for #portraittuesday  +Laura Balc . Fixed :)

My Google+ Best Friends

Based on my last 100 public posts:

http://www.googleplussuomi.com/mybestfriends/

You can see your own best friends soon too :)