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What Happens When You Win at Elections

Ilkka — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:58:31 +0000

What happens when you’re 27, woman, and get elected to European Parliament?

This:

Riikka Manner - Offline ("Due to high load pages are temporarily unavailable")

Yeah, yeah, I admit, I didn’t know who Riikka Manner is and wanted to see what she looks like and what did she have to say. (Based on the screenshot I wasn’t the only one;).)

Perhaps tomorrow.

Congrats for all elected and for all not elected, too.

Update 1: about minute later, 22.59: now the site works again. Pretty swift action, have to say

Update 2: about minute after the last update, 23.00: site has been diminished into single front page picture. (See below):

And yes, I did find some information about Riikka (Aamulehti).

Update 3: Monday morning and everything works at Riikka’s site.

Riikka Manner's site as it's supposed to be.

Just makes one wonder what did they do at Riikka’s ISP and tehcnical side? It may be that site is based on Joomla, or at least the ad agency behind Riikka’s pages sells solutions based on Joomla (see the site footer for agency address and name, I won’t post them here).

Oh well, it works.

No related posts.

Be Your Own Annoyance (on Facebook Quizzes)

Ilkka — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:14:27 +0000

Facebook has it’s own ups and downs, including sometimes funny and (most of the time) really annoying quizzes.

I don’t know if the quizzes in Finnish are more annoying than the ones in English, still annoying.

And know what?

I take those quizzes. I don’t know why. I hate them.

The Finnish ones are full of spelling mistakes (yhdys sana for example).
Results all either fucked up or just plain stupid.

And know what?

I still take them.

Because it’s so thrilling to see if I’m “a True Finn” or wheter my co-worker does the same things I do this summer. Or is my political view what I believe it to be?

Or the quizz about my military rank? What’s with it? My rank is what my rank is – and I certainly know what it is.

Be Your Own Annoyance

And you know what? I won’t complain more, I’ll just do a quiz of my own.

It seems, according to small empirical test, that the hip app for quizz -making is “Make Your Own Quizz” (link leads to Inside Facebook’s app-page). According to app itself:

“Making a Quiz has never been easier! Making a Facebook app has never been so fast! Make your own quizzes and turn them into your own real Facebook applications!”

Jolly good.

Ok, Iäll just go to app at FB and make a quiz.

Above is a screenshot about the first page, fugly highlights by me. First highlight is the language – I want my quizz to be in Finnish. Second one is picture, it actually says “This is very important! It will make your quiz more popular!“.

So, I have to have a picture.

I chose one about stairs at Pispala and named my quiz to “Kuinka korkealle pääset Pispalan portaissa” (how high can you reach?).

Next page was about the results, screen grab below:

Make A Quiz on Facebook, results page.

Typed some results, put on some images.

My images, however, were too big. The “useful” error message stated “2MThe uploaded file exceeds the maximum file size of %1 bytes.“. Perhaps someone should’ve told about the file size limit earlier?

Anyhoo, downsized the pics manually, tried to upload them.

Kaboom!

Everything gone.

Oh well, another try, luckily not from scratch.

Then the actual questions!

I just basically make something up as everyone does.

Make A Quiz On Facebook - questions page

After setting up the questions, a new app for the quiz:

Setting up the application for my Quiz

And voila, there it is (after just one step – I won’t paste that here).

My own little quiz, whee. (Find it out for yourselves if you fancy).

Conclusions and pondering

Making ones own quiz isn’t that hard. That’s certainly the reason for all the annoying quizzes!
Result (of the quiz) can be something totally different than the maker intended as the answers and outcomes are connected in my opinion in somehow awkward way.
Quizzes can be used to influence people and their opinions
Quizzes can be used as part of marketing

All in all, quizzes are here to stay (although really, really annoying), so why not use them?

Old but Good (Here Comes Another Bubble)

Ilkka — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:09:00 +0000

Although old, hits the bullseye.

links for 2008-08-14

Nokia’s Site Chosen as “Best In Finland”

Ilkka — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:52:32 +0000

[Update: I was contacted by Webmark about the survey. Read Updates at end of post.]

According to various (finnish) sources (Tietoviikko, Digitoday, Tietokone etc), Nokia.fi was chosen as “best web site in Finland, 2008“.

I don’t even want to begin to conversate about Nokia.fi’s pros or cons – I’ll just focus on how this achievement was published in the news.

Well yeah.

I spotted the news at Digitoday. It states that Webmark, “a company that measures quality of web sites”, found Nokia’s website the best in Finland (according to their evaluation/survey).
Then Digitoday, as well as all other publishers, continues jabbering about survey/evaluation done, which sites made it to Top-10 and so on.

Nice.

Except that:

I didn’t find a single link to survey/evaluation made
I didn’t find a single line mentioning tools used in the evaluation
I didn’t find a single line mentioning source for this bit of news
(Where did it come from (Heaven?)? Was there a press conference (where? when? who was invited?)? Did the company post a press release?)

Jolly good.

Now, as I’m by nature mean, nasty and curious, I googled Webmark first. Found eventually their finnish site. And yes! There it was, the press release about “Best Site in Finland, 2007″.

Wait, what?

2007? It should be 2008 now, shouldn’t it?

No press release about year 2008, just 2007.

Nice.

Well, back to Google.
Tried “webmark suomen paras verkkosivu“. No source, no press releases from original source, just different posts with (virtually) same content. (Other queries returned same results, too.)

Back to original post at Digitoday. CEO’s of Webmark and Accenture are mentioned, as well as that “at the same time published research done by Accenture” – hey, I’ll just see Accenture.fi for origins!

Nothing at all about these things at “press” -part of their pages.

Makes one wonder.

Hey guys at Webmark, Accenture, Digitoday and so on, if you read this, please post (all or at least one of the following):

original press release
origin of this news (if it was published at conference or something, where and when?)
actual evaluation data
methods used at evaluation

.. and then I’m willing to believe Nokia.fi is “the best web site in Finland, 2008″.

Update 25.3.2009

I was contacted by Webmark about this post and spent interesting times discussing the survey and methods. I also received some additional material, which made some points mentioned above quite clear.

Original press release was published at the given date at Webmark’s site, only in the afternoon (read it here, pdf)
Announcement was made at “Vuoden verkkosivut 2008″ -conference, 19.3.2009. (See the program here.)
Why didn’t I find the link nor the page? Only mention at Webmark’s front page about the announcement and conference (symposium?) was a flash -based banner, which got caught in my Adblock (it’s not a good idea to name banners “banner”, you know.). And when it comes to no origin at news about survey, thank our beloved and overworked reporters!
Evaluation data is not available, but is based on methodology by Mr. Harri Oinas-Kukkonen from University of Oulu.
See point 3 and press release.

(Bit more later…)

Gefilus (Valio revisited)

Ilkka — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:50:58 +0000

I wrote a short post about Valio.fi some time ago. In the aftermath I got distracted and Googled Valio (people do strange thing when trying to work).

When going through the results something caught my eye, Gefilus. Google result looks like this:

Valio

Sivusto vaatii toimiakseen selaimen joka tukee freimejä. Ole hyvä ja päivitä selaimesi.
www.gefilus.fi/ – 2k – Välimuistissa – Samankaltaisia sivuja

Yes, you say, and then what, you continue.

Well yes. Gefilus is a Valio product line in which all dairy products include Lactobacillus GG Bacteria and should be healhty for each and every one of us.

Now, that’s not the point.
The point is the Google result for Gefilus which looks exactly like above. (They even have bought a Google Sponsored link to tell what the hell this is all about!)

Why all this?

Finnish text at Google result says (in english):
“This site requires a browser that supports frames to work. Please upgrade your browser.”

My browser? Oh yes, newest Firefox.

Google’s browser? Why that’s a whole different matter – and believe me or not, it’s not Chrome.

Google has no eyes or ears. It doesn’t support Flash or frames properly (and it’s not even supposed to, IMHO). (See Wikipedia on Web Crawlers for more information.)

And as Googlebot, Google’s search robot (or web crawler), doesn’t support frames, the only content Gefilus.fi shows to Bot is the (in principle properly used, mind you)