Is it pristine and beautiful like this one?

…or polluted and gloomy like this one?

Let’s find out. Let’s find photos of 5 random places around the world.

But how?

Random places

The first challenge is to select 5 random places. This is not as straightforward as one might think. Selecting random latitude and longitude points would disproportionally select places in the polar regions and under represent areas around the equator in very much the same way as the common Mercator projection does.

For a proper mathematical explanation and several different methods to randomly selecting points on a sphere (mathematically the Earth is almost a sphere) see this article. Fortunately I did not have to write the code to actually do this as the good people at Geomidpoint had already done so. I decided to use their tool to select my five points. Here we go:

So far so good. But how will we know what these places look like?

Photos of random places

One way to do this would be to use geotagged images on sites such as Flickr, using their map interface to navigate to the randomly selected points and pick the nearest photo. The downside to this is that this would not be truly random. Most images are taken in or near people’s homes, typically in urban areas, or in places that are in some way of special interest like a lakeshore, a mountaintop or other noticeable geographical feature. This would not give me the result I was looking for.

In the early days of the internet, I learned about the Degree Confluence Project. This is a site with a simple concept: Participants from all over the world gather descriptions and images of every confluence point on the world’s lat-long grid.

As the reference points and grid size of the lat-long grid are assigned somewhat arbitrarily to begin with, these points should not be biased towards any attractions, as the photos on a photo site would be. As the sample we’re aiming for is not big, using the confluence point nearest to each of my randomly selected places will do fine. So, here’s my list, snapped to the nearest confluence points:

Let’s go…!

70% ocean

Here’s a map on Geomidpoint, showing these 5 points:

…and the information about these from the Confluence project web site:

All 5 points are in the ocean. Actually that’s bad luck, but it does hammer in the fact that of the surface area of planet Earth, most of it is ocean. In fact, only 29.2% of the planet’s surface is land, so I should have expected only 1 or 2 of my 5 points to be on land. Point #2 came close, but it managed to hit the Mediterranean, just outside of Malta.

So, point taken. A random place on Earth is at sea. But that’s not what I was going for. Let’s try this until we have 5 points that are on land. I selected another 20 points at random and snapped them to the nearest confluence point. Here we go:

Point #6:

We’ve already struck gold! This point is in a field in France, not far from the small town of Saint-Flovier:

Point #9:

Points #7 and #8 are also in the ocean, but at #9 we strike again. This one is in a remote forest in the Kamchatka peninsula, Russia:

Point #10:

Point #10 is also on land, but now we hit another problem. This confluence point has never been visited by any of the Confluence project-nerds. A satellite image explains why. It is in the middle of the Sahara, belonging to Niger, not far from the border with Libya:

Point #14:

The next place on land is #14. This turns out to be some guy’s shed in rural Minnesota:

Point #16:

#15 is at sea, but #16 is another confluence point on land that has not been visited. This time in a lake area far up in Canada’s Northwest Territories:

Lucky 5

So, 16 random places got us to 5 ones on land. But even with 5 randomly picked places ON land, two of them are so remote that not a single nerd participating in the Confluence project has visited them. Let’s keep going until we have images of 5 random places…

Point #19:

The next point on land is #19. It’s a a patch of ponderosa pine and juniper in a rocky ranch-land in the mountains of New Mexico:

Point #23:
Yet another unvisited confluence point. This one is in the SE part of Iran, not far from the border with Pakistan:

Point #25:
Once again, an unvisited confluence point. This one is in Brazil, in the Amazon, a few hundred kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon river itself:

One to go…

Ok, of 25 randomly chosen places on Earth, we’ve still only found 4 that are on land and urban enough to have been visited by the good people of the Confluence project! Let’s keep going until we find the fifth one:

Point #26:
Lat: -83; Lon -5.

No luck here! This one is in Antarctica, not visited by a Confluence visitor. In fact it is so remote that Google doesn’t even have a satellite image of this place:

Point #27:
Lat: -20; Lon: -138. Ocean.

Point #28:
Lat: -1; Lon: 134.

Got it! The fifth and final place that meets the (evolving) criteria is in a forest in New Guinea and you can’t really get there without a machete! The confluence visitors settled for this mud road about 80 meters from the point:

It took 28 randomly selected places to find images of 5 random places. Another 5 places were on land, but in remote areas that are not frequently visited – at least not by people that are likely to participate in things like the Confluence project.

Conclusion

This is by no means a scientific experiment, but it shows us that a random place on planet Earth is … most likely in the ocean.

This exercise reminds us that Earth is after all a fairly big place. When flying across continents in a jet or communicating with people on the other side of the world, we may feel that it’s small, but on the ground level it is as big as ever. Enormous in fact.

A random place is neither of stunning beauty nor suffering badly from the doings of mankind. It is most likely to be remote, wild, and relatively green, often with little signs of human activities.

So, I present to you:

Five random places on Earth

]]> http://hjalli.com/2010/07/16/what-does-a-random-place-look-like/feed/ 11 hjalli I've reached the end of the world Floating rag picker First5 p6 p9 p10 p14 p16 p19 p23 p25 p26 p28 p6 p9 p14 p19 p28 http://hjalli.com/2008/11/15/presentation-on-innovation/ http://hjalli.com/2008/11/15/presentation-on-innovation/#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:37:34 +0000 Hjalmar Gislason http://hjalli.wordpress.com/?p=659 ]]> Ever since the banking crisis struck Iceland a few weeks ago, I’ve been running out and about to advocate for innovation as the way to rebuild the economy.

Yesterday, I was privileged to give a presentation on the topic at the IceWeb conference. The title of my talk was “The Innovation Renaissance” and the slides can be found below:

Með því að opna kynninguna á SlideShare er hægt að skoða hana “full screen”.

- – -

P.S. There are a few quirks in the layout as I create my presentations in Keynote, SlideShare only accepts PowerPoint files, and the conversion is not perfect. But they weren’t that pretty anyway

P.P.S. Egill Harðar “two-dot-o-ified” the Icelandic crest for my presentation – thanks!

Eftirfarandi hugleiðingar geta því ekki verið verri en hvað annað. Það getur þá a.m.k. vonandi einhver bent mér á það hvar ég fer útaf sporinu í þessum hugleiðingum.

Skuldbindingar þjóðarinnar vegna innlána bankanna

• Við erum um það bil að taka á okkur þær skuldbindingar sem bankarnir höfðu skrifað okkur fyrir að okkur forspurðum. Þetta eru fjarri því allar skuldbindingar þeirra, “bara” þær sem evrópsk og alþjóðalög kveða á um að séu á ábyrgð heimalands bankaútibúa. Þessi tala virðist vera af stærðargráðunni 1.000 milljarðar króna með skekkjumörk upp á nokkur hundruð milljarða. Endanleg tala ræðst að miklu leiti af því hver túlkun þessarra alþjóðalaga er, enda hefur líklega aldrei fyrr reynt á þau með þessum hætti. Gengið sem miðað er við er augljóslega hin stóra breytan í þessu dæmi.
• Á móti þessum skuldbindingum eru svo verðandi þrotabú gömlu bankanna. Eins og ég skil það eru ofangreindar skuldbindingar forgangskröfur í þau bú, vegna þess að um innistæður er að ræða. M.v. að eignir þeirra námu 14.437 milljörðum um mitt ár og að aðeins um 4.000 milljarðar af þeim voru fluttir yfir í nýju bankana, þá má vera ansi illa komið ef ekki fæst upp í skuldbindingarnar. Engu að síður þurfum við líklega að taka þessa upphæð að láni til að borga innistæðueigendunum á meðan verið er að koma nógu miklu af eignum í verð.

Nettóniðurstaða af þessu gæti þá verið sú að við þurfum að taka gríðarstórt lán til tiltölulega skamms tíma, en myndum enda á núlli þegar búið væri að selja eignir gömlu bankanna sem því nemur. Ofan á þetta verður þó hatrammur slagur við aðra kröfuhafa í þrotabú gömlu bankanna, enda eru 10.000 milljarðar ekki svo lítil tala. “Menn hafa beygt sig eftir minna” eins og sagt er.

Endurræsing krónunnar
Til að koma gjaldeyrisviðskiptum aftur í gang þarf verulega digran gjaldeyrissjóð. Villi Þorsteins skrifaði mjög áhugaverðan pistil um það hvernig þessi endurræsing er sambland af stærðfræði, sálfræði og leikjafræði. Helstu atriði eru þessi:

• Eftir innstreymi fjármagns til landsins undanfarin ár er gríðarlega mikið af “hræddu fé” í íslenskum krónum. Þetta eru útlendingar sem eiga eignir í krónum og væru til í að skipta þeim út fyrir svo að segja hvað sem er á svo að segja hvaða gengi sem er. Þarna eru sannanlega 300 milljarðar sem eftir standa í jöklabréfum og að auki vafalaust nokkur hundruð milljarðar til viðbótar í öðrum eignum sem erfiðara er að henda reiður á.
• Hræddir Íslendingar bæta ofan á þetta. Þeir sem eiga eignir í íslenskum krónum munu horfa til þess að skipta a.m.k. hluta sinna eigna í gjaldmiðil sem einhversstaðar annarsstaðar er tekinn trúanlegur – svona “just in case” að allt fari í enn meiri steik. Umfang hugsanlegs landflótta bætir enn á þennan þátt. Þessi staða er reyndar efni í heilan pistil útaf fyrir sig þar sem þetta er sennilega fyrsta dæmi sögunnar um 300.000 manna siðklemmu fangans (e. prisoner’s dilemma). Heildin nýtur góðs af því að allir sitji kyrrir, en þeir fyrstu sem fara hagnast á því. Tökum það seinna…

Við þessu virðast vera tvö svör:

• Nægilega stórt gjaldeyrislán til að geta skipt öllum “hræddu krónunum” í erlenda mynt. Það undarlega í þessari stöðu er aftur kennslubókardæmi í leikjafræði: Ef lánið er nógu stórt til að flestallir treysti því að þeir geti skipt krónum í aðra mynt um alla fyrirsjáanlega framtíð, þá verður aðeins brot af því notað. Ef það er of lítið mun það hverfa eins og dögg fyrir sólu og við erum engu bættari! “Nóg” í þessu samhengi gæti aftur verið af stærðargráðunni 1.000 milljarðar. Í báðum tilfellum er ljóst að á meðan þeir hræddu losa sig, verður gengið á krónunni mjöööög lágt. Við erum ekki að tala um Evrur á 130-150 kall, heldur auðveldlega 300 krónur eða meira meðan það versta gengur yfir!
• Samningur við Evrópusambandið og evrópska seðlabankann um einhverskonar vikmörk á gengi krónunnar, svipað og danska krónan er í núna (sjá þriðju málsgrein). Þessi samningur mun þó í ljósi aðstæðna aldrei verða gerður á neinu sem gæti talist “hagstætt” gengi, en myndi koma í veg fyrir fáránlegt yfirskot í genginu eins og í hinni leiðinni. Þetta myndi augljóslega aldrei vera annað en fyrsta skref í inngöngu í Evrópusambandið og upptöku Evru.

Hvorugt hljómar eins og góður kostur. Annað hvort sjáum við fram á óðaverðbólgu af því sem næst Zimbabveskri stærðargráðu á næstu mánuðum, eða við sitjum við uppi með að krónurnar okkar verða að Evrum á ömurlegu gengi. Aðrar leiðir er erfitt að sjá í stöðunni.

Góð ráð reynast sem sagt dýr – ef þau fást þá yfir höfuð.

“Rétt” gengi krónunnar
Með algeru hruni bankageirans er auðveldara en verið hefur í langan tíma að átta sig á því hvert “rétt” gengi krónunnar er.

Ef allt er eðlilegt og ekki er um stórkostlega fjármagnsflutninga inn og út úr kerfinu að ræða, á gengi gjaldmiðils að stefna nokkurnveginn á það að verðmæti innflutnings og útflutnings sé hið sama – að hinn svokallaði vöruskiptajöfnuður sé u.þ.b. 0.

Hátt gengi krónunnar undanfarin ár hefur stafað af miklu innstreymi fjármagns, bæði í fjárfestingum á borð við Kárahnjúka og Reyðarál og í kaupum á skuldabréfum, “jöklabréfunum” svokölluðu þar sem menn hafa sóst eftir háum vöxtum íslensku krónunnar. Fall krónunnar það sem af er árinu hefur svo stafað af fjármagnsflæði í hina áttina, þegar jöklabréfin hafa verið leyst út – bæði beint og óbeint – og með því að Íslendingar hafa sóst eftir að færa sínar eignir í erlenda gjaldmiðla.

Ef “hrædda fénu” er útrýmt með stóru gjaldeyrisláni (sjá að ofan) er kominn grundvöllur fyrir gengismyndun á grunni vöruskiptajöfnuðar. Hagkerfið verður með öðrum orðum farið að byggja á raunverulegum verðmætum, ekki spákaupmennsku. Aflaverðmæti (verð á fiski * aflamagn), orkuverð, álverð (að stórum hluta til afleitt af orkuverði) og dugnaður, færni og þekking íslensks vinnuafls verða allt í einu það sem skiptir máli.

Þar sem stórlega hefur dregið úr innflutningi (færri Range Roverar og flatskjáir) og útflutningsverðmæti hefur aldrei verið meira (hærra gengi, meiri álframleiðsla, og ál- og fiskverð í sögulegum hæðum þó hvert tveggja fari lækkandi akkúrat þessa mánuði) má gæla við að þetta raungengi íslensku krónunnar sé í kringum gengisvísitöluna 150-160.

Allir fjármagnsflutningar, svo sem er afborganir Íslands af svimandi háum lánum (=lægra gengi) eða fjárfestingar útlendinga hér á landi t.d. í stóriðju, orkufyrirtækjum eða mögulega olíuvinnsluleyfum (=hærra gengi) munu svo raska þessu jafnvægi sem fyrr. Ekki gleyma í þeirri jöfnu að “hærra gengi” er ekki það sama og “betra gengi”.

Niðurstaða greiningardeildar Hjalla
Það virðast vera “tvær mögulegar framtíðir” fyrir okkur núna – að því gefnu að báðar séu opnar. Við ráðum því því miður ekki lengur sjálf. Þessar leiðir eru:

• Fljótandi króna og stórt erlent gjaldeyrislán, sem þýðir svakalegt tímabundið högg í formi óðaverðbólgu í nokkra mánuði. Því tímabili ætti svo að fylgja “óðaverðhjöðnun” þegar hrædda féð er farið og hefðbundin hagfræði tekur við. Verðbólgan og -hjöðnunin myndu reyndar sennilega mælast umtalsvert hærri en raunveruleg hækkun og lækkun útgjalda þar sem verðbólgumælingar taka ekki nærri strax tillit til breytinga eins og samdráttar í neyslu eða staðgöngu ódýrari vara (pylsur í stað piparsteikur, strætó í stað einkabíls eða núðlusúpa í stað fersks ítalsks ravioli).
• Upptaka Evru við neyðarskilyrði á arfaslöku gengi m.v. það sem við höfum átt að venjast. Þetta jafngildir í raun stórfelldri niðurfærslu á eignum Íslendinga núna og um ókomna framtíð.

Grafið hér að neðan sýnir þessar tvær leiðir. Tímakvarðinn er viljandi án skala.

Sjálfum hugnast mér betur fyrri kosturinn, jafnvel þó hann líti út fyrir að vera sársaukafullur – að því gefnu að enginn bendi mér á alvarlega ágalla á ofangreindu. Náist þetta jafnvægi hlýtur samt sem áður að vera forgangsatriði að skapa þar eftir stöðugleika í gjaldeyrismálum. Sá stöðugleiki fæst ekki nema með kjölfestu í stærra myntkerfi. Það er orðið svo augljóst að það þarf ekki að ræða það frekar.

Síðustu tvo daga hef ég aftur á móti orðið þess var að þetta er mjög að snúast við. Fólk er farið að sjá tækifærin sem opnast við svona endaskipti á samfélaginu.

Ég bý svo vel að þekkja og vera tengdur stórum hópi af mjög frjóu og skapandi fólki á ótal sviðum þjóðlífsins og í kjölfar bloggfærslna (1 | 2) og “Tvitta” um ástandið hefur mikið af þessu fólki haft samband með einum eða öðrum hætti.

Það er ótrúlegur kraftur sem nú er að leysast úr læðingi og áhrifa hans mun verða vart í pólitík, listum og skapandi iðnaði á næstunni og um langa hríð.

Nýja Ísland verður bæði kraftmeira, skemmtilegra og ríkara en það gamla. Búið ykkur undir breytingar!

Bara núna síðustu tvær vikur hafa íslenskir fjárfestar og eignamenn víst tapað eignum af stærðargráðunni 500 1.000 milljarðar bara í markaðsvirði bankanna þriggja. Manni skilst að allmörg hundruð milljarðar til viðbótar séu tapaðir eða muni tapast á næstu dögum og vikum. Nú ætla ég ekki að gera lítið úr þessum atburðum eða þeim afleiðingum sem þær þeir munu hafa í för með sér – sem eiga eftir að verða gríðarlegar. En eitthvað segir mér þó að ef “raunveruleg” verðmæti af þessari stærðargráðu hefðu tapast væri það mun alvarlegra mál.

Setjum þessar tölur í samhengi. Ef við gefum okkur að íbúðarhúsnæði meðalheimilis á landinu kosti 20-25 milljónir, þá samsvarar 1.000 milljarða króna tap því að 40-50 þúsund heimili hefðu eyðilagst fullkomlega, t.d. í jarðskjálfta! Fjöldi heimila á landinu er rétt um 110 þúsund, þannig að þetta væru um 40% íslenskra heimila.

Við getum sett þetta í annað samhengi og horft á útflutningsverðmæti fiskaflans okkar. Það var á síðasta ári tæplega 128 milljarðar króna. Þannig að 1.000 milljarðar samsvara 8 ára útflutningsverðmæti á fiski!

Ég held að við getum verið sammála um að íbúðarhúsnæði og fiskur eru “raunveruleg” verðmæti.

Ímyndum okkur svo að á fimmtudaginn hefðum við vaknað upp við þær fréttir að meira en þriðjungur íslensks íbúðarhúsnæðis væri ónýtur eða að allur fiskur væri horfinn af Íslandsmiðum næstu 8 árin. Er hrun bankanna sambærilegt? Eða getur kannski verið að eitthvað af þessum 1.000 milljörðum séu ekki og hafi aldrei verið “raunveruleg” verðmæti? Að það hafi ekki verið hægt að rekja öll þessi verðmæti niður eftir hagkerfinu á “fast”, þ.e. til vinnuframlags, orku, auðlinda eða annarra óumdeilanlega raunverulegra verðmæta?

Á mælikvarða raunverulegra verðmæta höfum við ef til vill varla tapað neinu. Bankakerfið, líkt og mörg önnur stoðþjónusta er vissulega mikilvægur þáttur í því að halda raunverulegri verðmætasköpun gangandi. Því gangverki er mikilvægt að koma af stað aftur, en við eigum næstum því, ef ekki alveg jafnmikið af raunverulegum verðmætum núna eins og við áttum fyrir 2 vikum síðan. Verst ef það þarf að nota eitthvað af þessum raunverulegum verðmætum til að borga fyrir skuldirnar sem urðu til við að kaupa allar þessar óraunverulegu eignir.

Ég trúi enn einart á markaðshagkerfið, en mér sýnist á öllu að það þurfi að spóla ansi duglega til baka og vinda ofan af allri flækjunni sem er búið að spinna ofan á grunngildi hagfræðinnar, gildin sem virðast minna á það á ca. 10 ára fresti – og í þetta sinna af óvenju miklum krafti – að eru ófrávíkjanleg. Það sem skiptir máli er að skapa eitthvað, framleiða og búa til – nokkuð sem hefur þótt allt að því hallærislegt undanfarin ár.

Vinnuframlag, orka og aðrar auðlindir – þetta eru raunverulegu verðmætin. Öll önnur starfsemi – þar með talin bankastarfsemi – snýst svo um að þessi verðmæti nýtist sem best, séu unnin sem hagkvæmast og skili sem mestu til þeirra sem að verðmætasköpuninni standa.

Þegar þetta er orðið klárt geta peningar kannski aftur orðið mælikvarði á raunveruleg verðmæti.

P.S. Þessar pælingar eru aðeins heimspekilegar vangaveltur enda er ég í besta falli amatör í hagfræði. Ef þið viljið lesa eitthvað um þessi mál frá fólki sem veit í alvöru um hvað það er að tala, þá bendi ég annars vegar á Villa Þorsteins sem skrifar þessa dagana bestu greiningarnar á stöðunni og atburðunum öllum hér heima og hins vegar á greinina The End of Prosperity? í TIME magazine (ekki missa af samhangandi 10 skrefa útlistun Time á því hvernig þetta allt byrjaði og hvert það gæti leitt).

The whole incident – however – reinforced ideas I’ve been contemplating the last few months about the future of global finance, once the current economic hurricane subsides. I’ve been coming to the conclusion that the only thing that can restore the confidence in the financial markets is total transparency.

The reinforcement came as I spoke with my contact at the bank after learning about my loss. He said that what the bank was doing to gain confidence in the money market fund (and the bank in general) was to open the books completely. Meaning – as I understood it – that they’d publish the composition of the fund in detail online and update it “live” if and when there were any changes in that composition. Something that they’ve ’till now only done once a year in an annual report.

To me, this sounded like a small-scale version of my vision for the future of finance. Total transparency, where anybody can at any time dig through any details on his or her investments.

First, some history… When financial markets – as we know them now – were forming, one of the fundamental ideas was that all players in the market should have equal access to the best possible information on any bond, security and share available. For that reason, strict rules were put in place about how and when companies filed their data. Remember that this is about a century ago – in a very different age in terms of technology and communication. Quarterly filings were pretty much “real time” and very demanding on the companies’ financial operations.

Today we live in a very different world. Real time communication and crunching of terabytes of data is within the reach of pretty much anybody. “Quarterly”, let alone “annually” is not something we settle for when it comes to news, communication or even entertainment. “On-demand” and “real time” is the name of the game. Why should we settle for anything less in our investments?

My prediction is that we’ll see the rise of exchanges were real time access to EVERYTHING is going to be a prerequisite for listing. That investors will be able to dig through the portfolio of the funds they’ve invested in, into the fundamentals of the portfolio companies, all the way down to the smallest details of their financials; their current cash flow situation, bank account balances, write-offs and salary costs – to name a few examples.

Obviously, no single person would dig through all this data, but the very possibility and the combined power of the crowd, would put all actions under scrutiny making stupendous bonuses, hiding of Bermuda straw huts as mortgage in supposedly A-rated securities funds and golden parachute executive agreements visible to the famous “hand of the market”.

Quarterly filings of creatively accounted fundamentals is soooo “twentieth century”. Total real-time transparency is the way of the future.

For a couple of years I’ve worked on and off on a simple web based system for maintaining and presenting a database of inflections of Icelandic words: Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls or “BÍN” for short. The data is available online, but the maintenance system is used by an employee of the official Icelandic language institute: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum. She has been gathering this data, and deriving the underlying structure for years, during a period spanning up to or over a decade. As you can imagine, BÍN is an invaluable source for a variety of things, ranging from foreigners learning Icelandic to the implementation of various language technology projects.

Now before I go any further I think it’s important to say that I’m a big supporter of open data. In fact, one of the few things I’ve ever gotten involved in actively lobbying for is open access to data in the public sector (article unfortunately in Icelandic).

Back to the story. A couple of days ago I got a call from the aforementioned BÍN administrator. She’d gotten a tip that someone was systematically copying data from BÍN into the Icelandic Wiktionary and asked me to look into it.

I started going through the web server log files – and sure enough – comparing the log files to the new entries page on Wiktionary, the pattern was obvious: A search for a word in BÍN and 2-3 minutes later a new entry in Wiktionary with that same word. A pattern consistent with someone copying the data by hand. This pattern went back a few days at least. Probably a lot longer.

In light of this I blocked access from the IP addresses that these search requests originated from and redirected them to a page that – in no uncertain terms – stated our suspicion of abuse and listed our email addresses in order for them to contact us for discussion.

Now – BÍN is clearly stated as copyrighted material – and as the right holder of the content, the institute has the full right to control the access to and usage of their data. Inflections of a word are obviously not intellectual property, but any significant part of a collection of nearly 260.000 such words definitely is.

As said before, I’ve personally been advocating for open access to all public sector data, but I also know that this is a complicated issue – far beyond the opinion of the people working with individual data sets. This institute – for example – must obey the rules set to them by the Ministry of Education, and changing those rules is something that must be taken up on an entirely different level.

The Wiktionary users in question have since contacted us and stated that they were not copying the content, merely referencing it when proofreading their own information. I have no reason to doubt that, but the usage pattern was indistinguishable from a manual copying process, leading to the suspicion and the blocking of their addresses.

We’ve since then exchanged several emails and hopefully we’ll find a way for all parties to work together. It would be fantastic if the enthusiasm and great work that is being put into building the Wiktionary could be joined with the professional experience and scientific approach exercised by the language institute to build a common source with clear and open access.

In the end of the day, open access to fundamental data like this will spur innovation and general prosperity, but as this story shows this is not something that will happen without mutual respect and consensus on the right way to move forward.

Updated Apr. 24: Discussion about this incident is also taking place here and here (both are at least partly in Icelandic).

As stated before: I live in a small country, nobody wants my money.

In the couple of years since I wrote that post, I’ve been watching in awe as my fellow Icelanders – and in fact a lot of people all over the world – have been going to great lengths to pay Apple money for products that are not supported here.

The two main products in question are iTunes credits and the iPhone.

• iTunes: Iceland is not an iTunes country, and after the ongoing row with the Norwegians, I’ve heard that Apple is even more reluctant than before in entering more markets. This comes down to licenses and slight variations in the way laws are structured and the way the RIAA counterparts in each country interprets them and acts on the behalf of rightholders. With the wealth of illegal alternatives out there, one would assume that people would just ignore iTunes and use some of the P2P programs.

  But – no – Apple has done so well in the marketing and implementation of the iTunes / iPod ecosystem that Icelanders are going to great lengths to buy songs in the iTunes store anyway. The two most used methods are:

  1. registering a secondary address for your credit card in the US, then sign up for a PayPal account with that same address and use that PayPal account as a payment method in iTunes
  2. buying prepaid iTunes credit from online stores such as iTuneShop or even eBay.

  The interesting thing is that a song that you buy this way is just as illegal under Icelandic law as the one you’d download using a P2P program. Apple has no right to sell songs in Iceland and the song you bought is at best licensed to you in the markets were iTunes operates. Strictly, it might even only be licensed for you to listen to it in the US!

• iPhone: This is the same story as elsewhere in the world. People here are buying the phones abroad, bringing them in and then finding various ways to make them work. An educated guesstimate would be that there are somewhere north of 500 1400 iPhones already in the Icelandic market. That could be as much as 1% is around 2% of the entire handset market here in the 7 months since the phone was launched in the US! All of these phones are bought full price, but obviously Apple is not getting their share in the mobile subscriptions and data revenues.

Of course, the sales of these two products in this tiny market alone doesn’t matter at all to Apple’s bottom line. The lesson here is that when people are going to great lengths to overcome your obstacles and pay you money, you must be doing something right.

On the other hand when you’re making obstacles for people that would happily pay you in the first place, you must be doing something wrong.

So: Dear Apple – may we pay?

When I read Bill Bryson’s fantastic book “A Short History of Nearly Everything“, one of the things that stood out, was a reminder that the world is still a really big place.

Even though we feel that we can – with a credit card, and a solid visa – get pretty much anywhere in the world within 72 hours, the world is still HUGE on the ground level. There are large areas where – to our best knowledge – no man has ever set foot; it still takes days or even weeks of trekking to get to much of Earth’s surface; and humans are still to explore even 1% of world’s oceans.

This made me think of Douwe‘s Visited Countries project. You surely know this one – everybody and their grandma’s have been posting these maps on their blogs in the last 3 years, coloring the countries they’ve been to. But that’s not really fair – is it? I’ve been to Hong Kong, so I color China. I’ve been to a dozen cities or so in the US, that gives me half a continent. Looking at the colored map, it really feels like I’ve pretty much covered it – only some minor continents to go .

Well, think again!

Above is a typical Visited Countries map of the countries I’ve visited (click it if you miss New Zealand). But roll the mouse over the image, and you’ll see where I’ve REALLY been. The yellow dots are (roughly) the dots I’ve set foot in. I’m even pretty generous, I colored dots that I’ve only zoomed through in a train or on the motorway, (but skipped those I’ve seen out the plane window). And each dot is actually huge. Roughly estimated, a single dot on this map is about 3,000 square kilometers on average!

It now looks like I’ve still got some planes to catch!

P.S. I wonder if anyone will come up with a tool to make this type of map, as easily as Douwe’s original?

One of the issues addressed in the proposal are the access privileges to our memories. Who should be allowed to access our memories and how do we control the access. Some memories we want to share. Let’s use photo albums as an example. Some of our photos we want to (or at least are ok with) sharing with everybody, others we might want to allow the family to access and others might be even more private.

I just realized that there is already a tool that allows us to manage our public memories: Personal blogs. With additions to the basic blog functionality, notably mobile blogging, it is actually quite good as such a tool.

Interestingly enough, personal blogs not only include bits and pieces of the blogger’s digital memories such as photos, interesting links from the blogger’s browsing history and occasionally a snip from email or instant messaging conversations with others. They also include accounts of various activities and the blogger’s ideas and thoughts about various things, something that is otherwise usually not recorded in a digital form.

So recording the memories is not a passive thing, but an act, a decision: this is a memory I want to record and share (although most people are maybe a little less philosophical in their decision making). Mobile blogging allows people to do this in real time from anywhere. I guess that when mobile text input improves, text entries from mobile users will become more common, but with the cumbersome text input today, photo blogging is by far the most popular mobile blogging activity: Snap a picture, post it to the blog, done.

The blog then gives family and friends an opportunity to get a glimpse of the blogger’s life unlike any they would ever get otherwise. What you put on your blog, is probably just about the level of memories that you want to allow public access to. It will always be an active decision to make a part of your information beam public, and blogging makes that decision relatively simple.

Some people have taken this even further and closer to the information beam thinking. I know bloggers that have put their blogs or parts of their blogs behind a login that they only give to a certain group of people as they don’t want everybody to be able to access their memories. Personally I even tried at one point to use a blog for my notes, but found it too limiting to be useful for that. I guess that one day blogging systems might become powerful enough to be the index we actively make for our information beam, but I’m not sure if that is where the blog system makers see themselves going.

So while some people find personal blogs stupid and “hate them”, I think they are a part of the evolution towards systems where we better document our lives publicly and privately.