Norwegian tweets @osol, tweets in English @oyvind.

Mine norske nettsider er nå oppe: oyvindsolstad.no. Alle nye artikler på norsk blir postet der, og alle norske fra denne oyvindsolstad.com blir flyttet over (og redirectes). Sjekk også @osol på Twitter.

Crappy Weather – Johnny Myreng Henriksen with a Creative Commons license

It makes me so happy to see lots of humans doing something like this together, even if it’s organized by NRK for the Eurovision finals.

A Norwegian friend said on Facebook (my translation):

TV-moment of the year. This is just beautiful. We need beautiful things in the world. Thanks, NRK!

Watch in HD by clicking through to YouTube and select 1080p.

Highlights: The live dance crowd from Germany at 6:23 – and when all the lights in the venue are turned on at 4:55, and almost everybody goes “hands high hands high”. Love it.

Amazing tune by Madcon (for sale in iTunes now).

Madcon is interviewed at NRK (in Norwegian) – they cried themselves when they watched it on Youtube.

Lars K. Flem har postet et veldig bra norsk referat med lenker på IAllenkelhet.

I never invite people to social networks!

But – at the very bottom – a small checkbox saying “invite all other friends”. I clicked “ok” and suddenly realized what that button meant!

Aaaaaaargh!

The worst part – I’ve done this once before. Luckily hi5 is a “normal” social network, not like Badoo where it seems most users are girls in Ukraina wanting to marry someone.

So sorry people! Feel free to smack me in the head the next time you see me…

If you happen to like social networks, hi5 is just as good as the other ones. I prefer Facebook but hi5 is ok. If you know me, and still want to add me, here’s Oyvind at hi5.

The rest of the post is in Norwegian.

Da er presentasjonen ute. Jeg skal legge til mere bakgrunnsinformasjon under etterhvert!

Here’s a preview – with the books I’m currently reading:

Nike reports that Apple and Nike teams up with health clubs and gym equipment manufacturers:

Nike and Apple are working with major gym equipment manufacturers such as Life Fitness, Precor, Star Trac and Technogym to make their cardio equipment Nike + iPod compatible so health club members can easily track workouts on cardio equipment like treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes and stair climbers. Nike + iPod users will simply plug in their iPod nano into the equipment at the start of their workout to automatically record their progress. Users can then connect their iPod with their computer to upload the workout to www.nikeplus.com.

This is great news, and something I predicted three years ago (March 2005), in a post called “Running and training online” on my Mac-site brilliantdays.com:

It defines what kind of training I’m doing (weight loss, muscles etc.), what kind of the body the exercise is for (lifting weights trains the biceps etc.), how many repetitions or how far (12,4 kms on the bicycle), and with what “weigth” (which gear on the bicycle, how many kilos lifted etc). It’s like MIDI for exercise. This way, different producers of training equipment could hook up to the same standard, and people could move their data with them. Software makers could make software that reads the data from the digital IDs or the websites, so people could use their data at home, analyze them, publish them.

A good start – but still work to do!

The Nike/Apple project does not go all the way. They still lock your data to iPod and Nike’s training website nikeplus.com. But it’s a huge step in the right direction, and I can’t wait to see how this is implemented.

The next steps for Nike and Apple should be:

1) Open the format for other manufacturers of small gadgets. I want GPS with my running data. And heart rate.

2) Make the data exportable from nikeplus or iTunes to other training sites, like gymnee and traineo.

3) Make the format a real-time format: Training equipment should be able to send the data to other “gadgets”, both the iPod, game consoles and other equipment.

4) Contact game developers for Xbox360, PS3 and Wii to make them compatible with the format. Running the treadmill is boooooring…

Who is in?

The list of manufacturers is impressive, with both Life Fitness, Precor, Star Trac and Technogym on the project. If you live in Norway, both S.A.T.S and Elixia, the two biggest groups of health clubs, use Technogym.

Mye i livet er viktig, men mon tro om vi ikke trenger å ta oss mer tid til å snakke sammen? I gamle dager hadde de butikken og kirkebakken, – møtesteder for den gode pratens skyld. I dag har vi mobiltelefonen, “Facebook” og “chatte-rom”. Det er det samme hva det kalles, men vi trenger dialogen. Vi trenger den gode samtalen. Ja, vi trenger hele spekteret av samtaler, fra den store samfunnsdebatten – til den lille, lavmælte hverdagspraten. Det er gjerne slik at først når vi har snakket sammen, ser vi hverandre.

My English translation:

There are many things in life that’s important, but I wonder if we may have to spend more time to talk to each other? In the “old days” they had the shop and the church, meeting places for the good conversation. Today we have the mobile phone, Facebook and chatrooms. It’s the same what we call it, but we need the dialog. We need the good conversation. Yes, we need the whole spectre of conversations, from the big important issues in society to the little quiet everyday talk. When we have spoken together, we see each other.

Feel free to comment and improve on my translation!

The conversation society

I do admire our king for talking about this. He seems to understand the shift that has happened. We do not just talk “in real life”, but use internet as a communication tool. We have switched from the “information superhighway” to the social web. It’s an important change, and it will make our society better in the long run.

Have a happy new year and see you both in real life and on the web. You’ll find me on Facebook, Twitter and most other social networks – just see the sidebar to the right.

Video

Watch the king’s speech on NRKs web-tv here.

Oldest Twitter accounts from Norway
http://twitter.com/Elisabethicp – Elisabeth – first message on 30/08/2006
http://twitter.com/asgeirn – Asgeir S. Nilsen – first message on 3/09/2006
http://twitter.com/larskflem – larskflem – first message on 7/11/2006
http://twitter.com/einar – Benjamin Jacobsen – first message on 9/11/2006
http://twitter.com/oyvind – Oyvind Solstad – first message on 17/11/2006

The post is from July, but I didn’t see until now. Funny.

Add

If you use Twitter, just add me. And I’ll add you back if you Twitter interesting stuff (which would be almost everyone twittering other things than just “sleep”, “work”, “sleep”…)

A bridge at Solsiden – a newly developed part of the harbour in Trondheim, Norway.