UNICEF Finland, typography print

"Be a mom for a moment."

www.unicef.fi

Stock market prices = Economy?

It seems to me that when people talk about how good or bad the economy is, they really mean Dow Jones. Stock values. This is like taking blood pressure to measure eye sight.

Haven't people really discovered already that markets can be extremely erratic and volatile? What do they think the stock market bubbles are? Did the 14,165 record Dow in October 2007 really represent the healthiest economy USA ever had?

So why are everyone looking at stock values when they are trying to fix the economy? My guess is that because that is where the recession effects first hit for those in charge; people with enough money to invest in the stock market. This includes politicians. Now they are trying to make stock values go higher again. Why? Shouldn't the markets try to rebalance itself after the bubble? Why should the stock prices be at the same level than during the bubble market conditions?

So what is the right meter to follow? Well, I think that a healthy economy is a sustainable one. One with good immune system. One where markets are forced to follow fundamentals. This would mean balanced government budgets, balanced import/export, high savings rates, low government debt and low inflation.

This would also mean no more crazy stock market booms. But do we really need them? Now that we've seen where they lead?

Change?

Dot-Com Bubble

Bush & Greenspan methods fighting against recession:

- Increased deficit spending

- Loosening of monetary policy, significantly lowering feds funds rates

Housing Bubble

Obama & Bernanke methods fighting against recession:
- Increased deficit spending

- Loosening of monetary policy, significantly lowering feds funds rates

Albert Einstein's famous definition of insanity is as follows: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Jaiku is now open source

Jyri Engeström wrote a blog post about open sourcing Jaiku. This is interesting news, since Twitter is right now the hottest thing going in the web, and Jaiku is the second best microblogging platform available.

Jaiku resides now in Google Cloud. Anyone can now set up and run their own JaikuEngine instance on Google App Engine. Hopefully the developer community takes it as their own and starts to develop Jaiku like crazy. There's certainly a lot of stuff they could do to make it even better and more diverse. And I wouldn't be surprised if some startups find a new way to use microblogging as part of their offering. My own Ghobee could be one of them.

Good stuff.

UNICEF campaign - Guerilla kick off

Let´s wake up those motherly instincts.

Imagine you see blue abandoned baby strollers. You see them on the way to your work, and then you hear some crying coming out of them. Would you take a look that everything is ok?

Watch this video

Inside the strollers is a sign that says (loosely translated):

"Thank you for caring, we hope there is more people like you.
Be a mom for a moment, UNICEF.
www.unicef.fi/aiti"

Campaign: Ole hetken äiti - Be a mom for a moment
Client: UNICEF Finland
Agency: Taivas

Cloud panel

A great panel about Cloud Computing, all the major cloud companies represented:

I am certain at this point that cloud computing is the next great enabler of future internet innovation.