New personal blog

I'm moving all my personal blogging to one centralized blog at www.valtoloikkanen.com

Nokia 6208 Classic with touchscreen and keypad

What's interesting in this new Nokia Phone, is that having both, the traditional keys and touchscreen. This way it may be easier to get new users more comfortable with the touch features.

Also this could be the first touch-Nokia with Series 40 software.

Nokia 6208 Classic has a touchscreen and an alphanumeric keypad » Unwired View

As Cash Stops Flowing, Venture Capitalists Get Creative - WSJ.com

As Cash Stops Flowing, Venture Capitalists Get Creative - WSJ.com: "As venture-capital funds face a cash crunch driven by the financial downturn, they are taking extreme measures to ensure they can fund their investments.

Some venture capitalists are selling their equity stakes in start-up companies at fire-sale valuations so they don't have to keep funding those businesses, allowing them to husband their remaining cash for other investments."

--- I'm so glad we will be launching the www.growvc.com solution

two finger scroll not working in new macbook?

On the weekend I got myself a brand new Aluminium MacBook 13" 2,4 GHz. After moving everything from my old mac using the migration tools provided almost everything were working. Some tweaks here and there with some applications, but all and all, it was pretty easy.

One thing was not working with the multi-touch track pad and that was two finger scrolling. Luckily with Google's help I find the fix quite easily from this threat.

If you are having same problems with your new MacBook, this is the simple fix:

1. Open Terminal application
2. Type: defaults write -g com.apple.trackpad.scrollBehavior 2
3. Log out (from apple menu)
4. Log back in

Done.

Working with one new venture

I have been busy working with one new business venture Grow VC and just wanted to share that.

Grow VC is a new international Venture Capital business model and Internet service to help early stage start-up's to secure initial funding for their business idea. At the moment, we are fine tuning the business model details and setting up this service.

We are also looking for interested parties to get involved and help this concept get some visibility, to help increase curiosity towards this new service and for that purpose we have also setup a "Grow VC - Supporter Group" to LinkedIn.

If you like the idea that next Google, Facebook or Apple, would become a reality because of you, then we would like to invite you to join our group.

At this time we are not yet sharing the actual service or business model. That will be done later when the service will launch and for our supporters a bit earlier (under NDA).

Website: www.growvc.com

Google Chrome - the web browser as Google envisions it!

Yesterday the word was out that google will be launching a new web browser today, called Chrome. It will also be open source, like Firefox.

Why are they doing it? the official explanation is:

Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web. All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

If being google, I can imagine that they would have tons of ideas that they would like to see in a browser. While you are supporting other browsers, you may as well put your own browser out as well.

Here's how it will look by default

Leaning on open source model with such a huge userbase combined with kazilillions of developers and companies that already rely on Google as their "host" for ads, email, document, images, videos, etc. etc. It will take no time to get this thing flying.

Whos's to loose?

This will be specially hard for Microsoft, that I expect to be the biggest looser in browser world (among other things). They are the only one from the "main players" where their business model for market share is not based on "pure choise". What I mean with this, is that their browser is "default" in majority of computers today (sure Apple does that as well, but with much smaller marketshare in computers).

So if we look at the choice options today, that sector is been dominated by Firefox. Now there will be one notable new player in the cloud (if you will).

If we look at the "Mobile and Internet" scene as a whole, we can clearly see that the battle is heating between Apple, Microsoft, Google and Nokia. (See what the app store has started...)

I think that the biggest losers overall in this joint M&I (Mobile and Internet) game, will be Microsoft & Nokia, since they both (as organizations as a whole) lack innovation and speed of implementation. Google and Apple have both and they also have genuine loyalty from their users (based on choice). Nokia and Microsoft are playing the "big market share" game, trying to bully around.

How would you split their market shares in M&I sector, 5 years from now?

UPDATE: Google Chrome will be available to download noon PST today.

Xobni - makes me wish I would still be using Outlook for email

It's a shame that I have moved all my emailing to Gmail. If I would be using Outlook, this would be my tool for sure.

I hope Google will just buy them and implement to gmail.

clipped from www.xobni.com It's a whole new look at your email: Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that saves you time finding email conversations, contacts and attachments. After a quick install, you'll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook - and suddenly information will become much easier to find. When a new email arrives, the sender's full communication history appears in the Xobni sidebar, including past conversations, attachments and contact details. Xobni also includes a blazing fast email search tool. Download Now Xobni is free and available for immediate download. Share it on YouTube