Finland

Leaving Finland

May 29, 2011

Tomorrow I leave Finland, our home for the last two years. It’s always bittersweet packing up, leaving behind an empty apartment, and closing the door on a phase of your life.  Today, on my last night, I am philosophical. To be honest, it was a bit rough and it’s probably best to reserve judgement on this [...]

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Mikael Granlund’s Amazing Hockey Goal

May 14, 2011

Just in case you missed it. 19 year-old Mikael Granlund scored an amazing goal in last night’s hockey game putting Finland over Russia and into the Final. All eyes on Mikael and Finland in Sunday’s match against Sweden. Go Suomi! UPDATE: Finland wins! Helsinki celebrates!

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It’s not that bad

April 27, 2011

The inevitable layoffs announced today at Nokia (where I work) were not as bad as expected. The trick of how to keep the Symbian development teams churning away when you’ve already announced that you’ll be ramping it down was solved by shifting a block of 3,000 employees over to Accenture where they can continue to work [...]

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Eco-friendly module housing from Finland

April 4, 2011

4Nature is a Finnish company that makes modular homes that are easy to construct, giving people in disaster zones long term shelter, getting them out of tents or other short term shelters. A 55-square meter house can be built by three people in 48 hours using simple tools without electricity. I met Mikael Arpiainen, the CEO [...]

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PowerKiss, Wireless Charging from Finland

March 23, 2011

Wireless charging technology has been around since Nikola Tesla came up with the idea. In that sense, Finland startup PowerKiss is no different. Put the receiver (the Ring) into your phone and then place it on top of the power transmitter (the Heart) which is designed to be attached or built into furniture. But unlike Powermat, [...]

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Hakkapeliitta spirit

March 8, 2011

During the Winter in Finland the ocean freezes over. Highways that normally twist around the lakes in the warmer months are re-routed to cut straight across, efficiently. GPS vendors offer Winter Packs to take advantage of these new routes, cutting Winter travel times considerably. But this is Finland. Not only do they keep driving at normal [...]

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More CNN on Helsinki

March 2, 2011

Following on the popular Helsinki Snow How piece, CNN’s Richard Quest went on to make three more short pieces about the city I currently call home. Helsinki’s Underground Master Plan includes a bit about an innovative new server farm I highlighted in Heating by Bytes that uses the excess heat from the computers to heat [...]

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Conan O’Brien updates Nokia Ringtone

March 2, 2011

Conan available online all week in Finland thanks to Team CoCo. Tonight’s segment? A rockin’ update to the Nokia ringtone!

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Helsinki “Snow-How”

February 8, 2011

7-minute video on CNN about how Helsinki handles it’s annual snow removal operations. The last time Helsinki’s Vantaa airport closed because of snow was in 2003 and that was for just 30 minutes.

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200-year old Champagne Preserved by Icy Baltic

December 15, 2010

Earlier this year it was reported that several cases of champagne were discovered in a shipwreck 55 meters under the Baltic Sea, off the small island of Åland near Finland. After tasting it, a local champagne expert suspected that the bottles were from Veuve Cliquot, the famous French maker established in 1772. Out of a [...]

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