If you use your terminal to execute the code, see to that you allow international characters. In OS X you can do that in the settings of the terminal.

Then what you have to do is to unicode the string and then encode it again. So lets say I have a string as follows that I want to encode:

Sås är gått, därför måste jag ha så mycket som möjligt på min mat

Then I would do it this way:

s = “Sås är gått, därför måste jag ha så mycket som möjligt på min mat”

s = unicode(s, ‘utf-8′).encode(’utf-8′)

Looks kind of weird, but it has been working beautifully for me. Hope it works for you too!

So anyway I was going through my feeds and came across this article from techcrunchit, and I can’t but agree with Steve Gillmor. The RSS is dead, it’s just not fast enough, I keep having to go through all this fluff to get to the real meat, the thing that I want to read about.

When I use Twitter I know what kind of people I’m following, and I know what they are about, so I know just by who is sending the tweet that it’s good or bad info. And not just that, I know that it’s good or bad info about that particular subject that that person is interested in.

Let me explain

So if you look back in time, about 5 month ago, when I still used my gReader extensively, I had to go through all this fluff of information to get to the things that I really cared and wanted to know more about. This was time consuming, of course I probably missed less, but the time that it meant to get to the really important stuff wasn’t worth it.

So what happened? As more and more people in my social and professional network started to move to Twitter, it just started to make sense to start using it more extensively. And what happened? All the people that I care, and trust started feeding me with the information that I wanted to know more about. I got everything served to me in 140 letters, and I could just out of that choose weather to read/see it or not.

So from spending this huge amount of time on reading to get to the good stuff, I was now spending less time and getting straight to the point more often.

Sounds great doesn’t it?

Back to the old days?

So as always, there is a drawback, but most often it’s just not worth caring about, but I wanted to illustrate it in this post anyway.

Lets say that everybody starts using Twitter as their main source of information, that’s where you go mainly to get new data, and get to know cool new stuff. Except for maybe some websites that you visit regularly. What will this end up meaning? All my research, that time I spent earlier, is now up to my network to serve me with, but the data has to come from somewhere, and since I’m not any longer getting the new input, I’m only visiting “regular” sites and hence just forwarding those to other people, and they are doing the same thing back.

Will this not end up in the same old media world that we lived in a couple of years back? Some sites has all the power, and the smaller ones wont get any publicity?

I’m probably painting scenario that’s not going to happen, since I trust the natural curiosity of people to prevent it, but what if?

What’s next?

I don’t know! What do you think?

Are we going to evolve even more? Into what? There has been talk about nanoblogging (just one word!) is that the future? I would say no, but hey, I thought Twitter wasn’t enough info to start with.

Nu är det rågade måttet rågat, och jag har bestämt mig för att rösta Lila under EU-valet.

För att visa mitt stöd, så går jag med och visar detta genom http://piratpartister.se/.

Detta gör jag tillsammans med en hel del av de skarpaste inom svenska webvärlden, bl.a. Jocke och Nikke, och jag hoppas verkligen att det här ska visa sitt uttryck i större ansvarstagande och seriositet i frågor som är piratpartiets kärnfrågor.

You can make a profit
One thing that I’ve come to realize is that the general consensus is that “you can’t make money while helping others, that’s bad!”.

I strongly disagree with this, as I said I’ve been working quite a lot recently with non-profit organisations (one in particular INUG-Linköping), and we work our asses off, and what do we get back from that hard work? Generally nothing, we might have helped someone, given them some new knowledge, but nothing withstanding.

Recently I heard a  podcast from the Sanford Universities iTunes U libraries, by Geoff Davis, founder of Unitus.

“Geoff Davis, founder and CEO of Unitus, talks about microfinance at the
Entrepreneurial Thought Leader lecture series emphasizing the relevance
and potential of this field.”

And it was great! It’s about how he actually has been working with helping people, and also making some money out of it. This is how the market works, you have to make money to spend money. That’s just how our economy works, and if you think about it why shouldn’t it work the same way for poor people?

Geoff Davis also talks about micro-credit in his speech, basically they are loans over a short period of time, and quite a small amount of money. There is a return on this money too, and he calls them 10-11 and 5-6 and the like. Meaning that you give, lets say 10 in the morning, and then require 11 back in the evening, or 5 in the morning and then requiring 6 back in the evening. I told you, short loans. As long as you are straight about it and give them the terms straight up, you don’t need to feel bad about it.

Mr Davis gives a great example where he helped a lady double her income by giving her a loan of $35. May not sound a lot to us that actually got an income, have a computer, and can sit reading stuff like this on the net. But for this lady $35 is a fortune, since she herself lives and feeds her family on a mere $2 a day! Imagine doubling that income by investing $35? He got all the money back + a fee, and she now has twice as much as before. Wounderful!

Do your thing!

Go out there, help the world and earn some money!

And if you can’t get out there yourself, let other people help you help others, there are loads of nice organizations out there, I in particular like

kiva.org

And except for the people that obviously are happy about the decision, RIAA, IFPI and the lot, there is a great majority against.

davideggleton

Also heard about #spectrial is there anyway to donate towards their fine? www.nme.com

Is just one of the examples of the resistance showing up.

Even Swedish ISPs are joining the ranks in their own way by deleting logs that register IP-adresses. This due to the new law called IPRED that just has been passed.

A flow of resistence in other ways are showing up too.

Thomas just sued a Swedish national radio station for copyright infringement (totally worth reading! hilarious), on the same basis as the TPB guys just has been sentenced.

And the list can go on.

So what’s so fundamentally wrong?
If you search for specitrial, I bet that not even if you try you’ll be able to read 10% of what’s been said, and what’s being added every minute. Now that particular “word” – spectrial – is the word that the people against the sentence is using, so read with care, and some objectivity.

So what is making so many people rise against what’s happening? Something has to be fundamentally wrong.

Wrong point of view
I think that we are seeing this from the wrong point of view, humans have a natural way of seeing problems where there should be possibilities, seeing wrongdoers where good is being done.

What if the industry could sit down with their consumers and actually listen to their needs, the people that actually give them revenue? Sit down, I don’t care what the medium is, the Internet och a board room. But sit down and talk, try to find a new model that both can agree on! Spotify has made it, they listened to the consumers and the media companies and found a business model that works.

Why can’t other companies to the same?

A bit of my unruly thoughts about the situation right now.

Bara rubriken i sig borde få en att tänka till lite om man är något så när insatt i situationen.

Men är inte det här helt rätt? Jag har själv stött piraterna under lång tid. Men i och med mitt startskott som entreprenör, så har jag börjat se allt i form av affärsmodeller och intäcktsmodeller.

IPRED gör ett alternativ till ett måste
I och med att IPRED har införts så har viljan att ladda ner från tjänster som t.ex. TPB gått ner markant, ganska förståeligt med tanke på represalierna. Min direkta reaktion har ju varit negativ, och förmodligen ganska självisk, nu kan jag inte ladda ner längre. Men ju mer jag tänker på det så kommer detta ju göra att alternativ kommer tvingas fram, annars kommer hela marknaden att dö ut på ett eller annat sätt. För folk är uppenbarligen inte beredda att betala så mycket för produkterna som bolagen vill att konsumenterna ska betala.

Spotify visar vägen
I dagsläget så har vi faktiskt en tjänst som redan har sätt framtiden och insett detta problem. Spotify har under tre års tid jobbat med ett BRA alternativ till fildelning. Något som skivbolagen tror på och något som konsumenterna tror på.

Nu är det upp till oss att hitta liknande tjänster!
Men det finns fortfarande mycket att göra där ute, vi behöver något liknande för filmer, serier (Hulu.com finns men fungerar bara i USA), e-böcker, undervisning, ja listan kan bli oändlig och din fantasi sätter begränsningarna!

Avslutning – IPRED inte bara bra
Det sagt så vill jag fortfarande understryka att IPRED i sin helhet är något dåligt, och i mångt och mycket farlig för en demokrati. Att lyfta rätsansvar till privata aktörer är något som inte får förekomma, för där finns särintressen som inte kommer att dömma lika inför lagen och som inte har samma förutsättningar till försvar heller.

I have been thinking about buying one for ages, but then I got to the point where I thought “what the heck I’ve got the money and I really want it”, so I bought it! Two days later I realized that the WLAN reception was crap, when comparing to friends. After two days of usage you kind of want to have a decent product, especially when you pay as much for it as I did (5845 SEK). So I went to the store and wanted to get it changed or at least get a decent explanation for why I needed to send it to repairs after such a short time.

Instead I got the explanation “Appel policy is to get the product to their own store and fix it themselves”. Obviously I’m a lucky person so I happen to fit this right into the Easter holidays, meaning that it wont take just 2 weeks as they have promised, but at least 3.

So now I’m sitting here, watching the status on the repair, even though it’s holidays and nothing (obviously) is happening!

Anyway, I guess that this kind of stuff happen, but I want my phone back! I don’t know weather to complain or just kind of go with it.

Kind of a pointless post, but I just wanted to complain

Other than that the hollidays have been wounderful! Hope you guys had a good time too!

Guess what! At the moment I’m typing QWERTY, but it’s nog because I got lazy. I actually got quite fast in my typing, I even started having trouble writing in QWERTY.

But what made me not keep with the idea of typing qwerty was that it was making my work go slower. Generall typing would increase in speed, but what I figured out was that all the commands that I use everyday were located for QWERTY.

E.g. the terminal when you want to list the directory you type “ls” (and you do this alot) on QWERTY it’s quick you use both hands, on Svorak you use your right pinky finger for both keys, and then you need to use the same finger to hit enter. That was probably the most extreem one, but you kind of get the point.

So after a, what I would call, qualified test I decided to stay with QWERTY!

And I would suggest you people thinking about changing to think about what you do, do you type a lot or do you use programs alot, and then decide with that knowledge in mind.

But man have I been through a lot. I started off with a meeting with my colleagues Niklas and Johan. And then off to a meeting with my coach, and I got some homework that I need to finish badly, and that’s sales!

Lately we have been really off the charts in development, but when it comes to market we have been really awful, which means that we have a lot to do in that department.

As well that I did have the whole afternoon dedicated to a sales course, really good info and loads of new tips on how to work with sales. I think it really should be something that any startup should do!

I also got this tip about a good blog for new entreprenours you should give it a try.

Now back to business!

After that a bit of regrouping and now I’m off the hook with development, which is sad, since I like it, but I can spend all my time on sales and meeting new people and getting in contact with the  media. This is obviously great for me and the company, so I’m going to pursue it whole heatedly.

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to lunch with Daniel Ek, and as a first time entrepreneur, it was really exciting to hear his story and what he has done, and how he is now working with Spotify. We met at a restaurant in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, to grab a lunch and a casual talk. Everything started with the basics, as you would have been talking to any person and not someone who just got one of the biggest VC deals in quite some time.

Daniel together with two friends came up, and financed the idea of Spotify (until the recent investment). This on its own incredible for a 26 year old, but to listen to his story and the attitude that he promotes and lives after was great in an whole other way.

I’m an early entrepreneur and listening to someone that has made it, just makes me understand how much I want to do the same thing! There is a lot of hard work, it’s not a life in the easy lane, but still that is what I want to do! But since I haven’t had the opportunity to try this line of work before, I try to suck every little scrap of knowledge from them that has, and learn from them.

Openness & Clarity

This meeting came to be alot about attitude, towards clients, co-workers and life in generall as an entrepreneur. And the conclusion has to be openness and clarity. And most of it was probably textbook examples, but still you need to hear them, and you need to hear them from someone that you look up to. They just kind of make more sence then.

He took the example from the security leak, as a company that blog post was probably against all company standards, but in a consumer perspective it was beautiful. I could read from their own site what had happened, and by reading the comments you can see that I’m not that partial in the matter.

Taking Care of your Co-Workers

This was another thing that I really thought was great of hearing from him. He told me to always see to that I take care of my co-workers. Make them feel good, make them feel like a part of what I’m doing, and make them feel like they learn something new every day. Without your co-workers you are nothing, they are the company, and without them your idea is nothing. That’s the pure truth, and you should never ever forget it.

New Spotify Features

Since Daniel spoke openly to me about this I hope that I’m not doing anything wrong about telling you about this. I’m really excited about their new features, and soon I bet that it’s going to be worth paying for the premium version. Spotify is now working on a way to keep all your spotify playlists on your computer, meaning that even when offline you can listen to your music. The whole idea is to make this avaible on the computer, iPhone, iPod, mobile phone or any other music device! Imagine that! The music from the whole world in the palm of  your hand!