Unizon conference streamed

For those of you who are interested in the mobile phone as a tool for co-operation and education, I recommend the virtual part of the conference "Crossborder Networking and Learning - Unizon Conference" that's taking place here in Vasa today and tomorrow. Today, at 14.00 - 15.10 (CET), Gunnar Wranne at Ericsson and Riitta Vänskä at Nokia are talking (in English) about mobility and work. The sessions are streamed here.

TV viewing

Last week I enjoyed Aalborg, Denmark, where the euro itv conference was held. While at the university, I visited VR Media Lab, one of Europe's largest virtual reality installations, and played around in its cave. The cave is a small room where continuous images are projected onto side walls, floor, and ceiling and when experienced through lightweight glasses, it felt like a 3D-world. In this picture, I had a go at basket ball game. It was quite tricky so I only scored 4 points… It was pretty cool but I felt quite sick afterwards so I don’t recommend this as an alternative for dessert.

During the conference, it seemed to me that every discussion at least touched upon two topics: 1) social TV viewing and 2) active vs passive TV viewing. The first issue deals with the question: is the TV viewing mostly a collective action or not? Are the TV programmes mostly watched by groups of people, e.g. families or friends or are there loads of single individuals sitting alone in the TV couch? Because the nuclear family is no longer given and the number of singles living alone is quite high, the old notion of TV being a media product consumed in a group has changed.

The other topic that the debate quite often boiled down to is whether TV viewing is a passive or an active action. And if it is a passive one, is that so bad? We’re active and engaged almost all the time in almost every area of life, then would it be so bad if we relaxed in front of the telly? This makes me think of a Swedish stressresearcher, Aleksander Perski, who says that there’s a new addiction around in the modern Western civilization today, namely time addiction. We are time addicts because we are too active and we don’t allow ourselves to recover from stressful events or a couple of hard days at work. Since he takes up the cudgels for recuperation and rest every once in a while, the new word on my mind (in the sidebar to the right) will be time addiction. I’ll think about it when I’m enjoying my vacation on Malta next week.

Curio: There are only two countries in the world that don’t allow divorces by law: The Philippines and Malta, where I’m spending my holiday in two days.

Written Swedish is not threatened by the web

There are great variations in language and communication in discussion groups on the net, just as is the case offline as well. The variations are contextual, meaning that if the writer wants to chat, the written language might vary from the one used when (s)he for example searches for information. Therefore it's difficult to draw any general conclusions such as a presumed, ongoing decline in the quality and correct use of written Swedish, says a researcher colleague in Åbo, Lotta Collin.

She's not however worried about the written language deteriorating due to discussion groups on the web as she believes that people can tell apart "web language" and more formal language. She defends her doctoral thesis, where she linguistically analyzed 1000 Swedish postings in a discussion forum for diabetes, tomorrow in Åbo.

There's an article in Swedish about her here and here.

Red whortleberry birth and pochard eggs as world origin

Finland celebrates Kalevala Day today, to honour Finnish culture and the old folk poetry recorded in Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot on his collecting journeys in Karelia. The stories these songs tell are swollen with magic. There's the story about Ilmatar (the Virgin of the Air) who descends to the waters. A pochard lays its eggs on her knee and when the eggs break, the world is formed from their pieces.

Also, there's Marjatta who conceives a child from a red whortleberry. Being fatherless, her son is condemned to death, but the child speaks out against the sentence and is christened King of Karelia. And the whereabouts of the miracle mill Sampo are fascinating as well. A national epic truly worthwhile reading. For a resumé of the poems in English, go here.

The paradisegate won the International Ice Sculpture Competition

A duo from Czech Rebublic who has made an incredible peace of art called Paradise gate won the International Ice Scultpure competition in Vaasa.

Even though it's freezing cold outside (although the sun is warming quite a bit already) the interest in the competition and voting for the best sculpture was so great that the organizers ran out of voting ballots. The sculpture with the snake by the gate to paradise was both the audience's and the jury's favorite.

If you want to have a look at the sculptures who came in second and third, and at a selection of the masterpieces in the competition, go here.

Oscar delay

While getting in the mood for tonight’s glamorous Oscar gala, you might want to check out the blog posts by the producer of the show, Gil Cates. “I think it's wrong to have a tape delay because we run the risk of infringing upon the right to free speech.” is his comment to the fact that there will be a network delay this year as well, as a consequence of “Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl halftime show”.

Be a champ at wife carrying!

The registration for the wife carrying world championships in Sonkajärvi, Finland is now open, although the participation form in English is not yet updated. How cool wouldn’t it be to participate!

The event takes place 1-3 July this summer. For information, go here and choose “Wife carrying” to the left.

Article on the lab

There's an article in Finnish on us and iDTV Lab in the latest issue of Puhelin, an information technology magazine.

Banner ads do catch our attention

In my quest to find some information on news paper reading behaviour, I found something surprising. Researchers at Stanford University found in their study of on-line newspaper readers that 45 % of all banner ads were read and fixated an average of 1 second. That’s a much higher figure than I thought. In my own on-line reading, I would have guessed that 10 % of the banner ads succeed in getting my attention. But perhaps I’m glancing at them for such a short period of time, that I don’t actually perceive and remember it.

Cool weekend

The square in Vasa is a cool place to be nowadays, as it is covered with 2 times 1,2 meter fresh water ice blocks. They’re untreated yet, but not for long as the 5^th International Ice Sculpture Competition is taking place this weekend. With a little help of a chainsaw and a couple of chisels, the ice blocks turn into masterpieces. I heard that competitors from about 10 different countries are participating in this event, and the audience can cast their vote on the most magnificent piece of art on Sunday night. Can't miss that.

The actual competition starts at Friday, which is two days away from now. But there’s no need to worry about the ice melting. The temperature here in Vasa was -17 this morning.

Reactions to strong scenes on TV

I got the hardbound copy of the master’s thesis by two students, who conducted their study for the Master’s degree in our iDTV Lab, yesterday. I read it at a stretch last night as they, Klas Backholm and Sebastian Lindqvist, had chosen a fascinating theme.

The purpose of their study was to see whether there are differences in how people with different characteristics react to strong (violent, emotional and scary for example) film scenes. In order to find out, they showed 20 scenes from movies, documentaries and news features to about 60 persons, who started off the test by filling out the NEO Five-Factor Inventory personality test. While the viewers watched the scenes, psycho-physiological tests were conducted. The skin conductance, i.e. sweating, was measured, as was the viewers’ pulse with the help of a photopletysmograph. Backholm and Lindqvist also used video surveillance, self-reports and questionnaires in the study.

The conclusion that the guys come to, based on the questionnaires, pshycho-physiological results and self-reports on the scenes, is that emotional scenes in a film do invoke physiological effects in human beings, at least in short term. And what’s more, we react differently to programmes on television or to film scenes. One of the findings is that “nice”, caring persons (scoring high on agreeableness) tend to react physiologically stronger to television and film scenes in general. They also tend to react in a more negative manner to unpleasant scenes than persons with other personalities.

Furthermore, extrovert and social persons (scoring high on extroversion in the personality test) liked documentaries and scenes from real situations (such as sports and news) more than the other participants. And intelligent persons (scoring high on openness to experience) got frustrated with romantic and harmonic scenes. Backholm and Lindqvist suggest that these persons have a high degree of imagination and guts, and thus demand more of a film than mere romance and harmony.

Another finding in the study is that women rated romantic scenes higher than men, who tended to like scenes with eroticism, humour and violence more. This comes quite close to traditional, stereotypical roles of the sexes, where women are supposed to be into romance and men supposedly dig violence and action. And naturally, I seem to belong to the standard deviation in this matter. Last weekend, I saw a romantic comedy that my boyfriend picked out, Girl fever, and I fell asleep while watching it. The only romantic movie that has passed my test yet is Love actually.

Passion for TV

I gave TV activists at Malax TV, a small, voluntary community TV-station from the small village I'm from, a tour around our TV-studio and iDTV Lab tonight. And I feel absolutely lyrical, almost high, as the group's enthusiasm and passion for tv-production was so obvious and "contagious". They genuinly seem to love what they do although it's a lot of unpaid work in their sparetime. They posed lots of questions and they brought up many thoughts so I've learned loads tonight.

I had a look at Malax TV's website and I found a great collection of links. Among many other interesting things, I found a database of Swedish newsreels and short films from way back. I've had a look at something similar in the UK but I didn't know about the Swedish one. I loved the commersials, especially the animated one about the bank dating back to the 1920's. Definitely worth a look!

Science transparency and the origins of aids

Yesterday at Göteborg Film Festival, I saw an interesting and controversial documentary suggesting that someone else than God or homosexuals is the originator of aids, namely the West. The movie "The origins of AIDS" pictures the 1950's, when there was a race going on in the laboratories in Western countries. Many doctors and researchers wanted to find a cure for the disease that affected millions of people at the time, the polio. With the purpose to develop medicine with the help of tissues from chimpanzee kidneys, a laboratory is built in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo. The vaccine against polio that is developed here, 10A11, was distributed to hundreds of thousands of people in the region. Shortly after this, in 1959, the first cases of HIV and aids are found in these exact regions. This could imply that HIV and aids is the result of the human being's fight against another disease, the polio.

As I'm no virologist, I can't say whether this hypothesis – that the origin of aids is mass vaccination - is likely to be true or not. But being fond of conspiracy theories, I like the message in the movie. The idea that it was Western doctors that transplanted HIV from monkeys to human beings is not new though. Journalists have written about it before, for instance in the Rolling Stone. But their findings and hypothesises were dismissed by scientists. They didn't take the theories very seriously and thus, the Rolling Stone was made to publish an excuse for including the article in one of their issues.

This troubles one of the directors of the documentary, Catherine Peix, who stopped by for a short Q & A session after the film. According to her, the science society dismissed the book containing this theory and upon which the documentary lies (The River by Ed Hooper) in 3 minutes. Researchers didn't even bother to look at it, let alone to challenge the notion that the polio vaccine that was given to people in large scale had its origin in chimpanzee tissues, and thus being a possible carrier of HIV. Neither did the minister of public health in France when the documentary was about to be broadcast on national television. 2 hours before the documentary was to be aired, the minister called the head of the broadcasting channel to stop it, according to Peix.

The obvious ”backing each other up” among researchers bothers Peix. So does the hush-hush around the research for a polio vaccine and the insufficient procedures. An obvious way of testing the hypothesis of the film would be to analyze the vaccine, 10A11, to see if there are traces of SIV and S40 that chimpanzees carry. But, according to Peix, there were no notes taken at all at the laboratory in Leopoldville. Nor are there any samples left of the oral polio vaccine. What is left however is the testimony of villagers that worked in the lab. In the documentary, several former employees say that the vaccine was made out of monkey kidney tissues and thus being a possible carrier of SIV and HIV. But the doctors and researchers from the West who worked there deny this. That's why the director Peix states "Science needs to be transparent. We need to think for our selves, and be careful." She's worried that these same non-transparent procedures, with risk taking, no note-taking and sneaking around, may be employed again, when it comes to organ transplantation to human beings from pigs, for example.

Unfortunately, I missed the debate with Ed Hooper, Catherine Peix and a professor in virology yesterday. I heard that it was far from a dull one.

Off to Gothenburg

I'm off to Göteborg Film Festival now. If you're around, do come and listen to and discuss with us. We're talking at the seminar series Cinemix 2005 about audience research and filmmaking, tomorrow Friday at noon.

Menstrual cramps? Have a paeonia

As I've updated the description of the blog and my presentation etc., I contemplated the name of the blog I once chose. I still think the peony reflects who I am but I got curious about the role of it so I decided to look into it. And it turns out that - as is often the case with flowers - the function of the paeonia has not been restricted to being a fair decoration, hair accessory or perfume. In Japan, peony root was used as a treatment for menstrual cramps, asthma and convulsions.

A bit of googling lets me know that peony root also releaves: jaundice, kidney & bladder problems, gout, asthma with cramps, and epilepsy. Furthermore, The Peony Formula which includes peony is believed to be one of the classic psychospiritual formulas first mentioned in the Imperial Grace Formulary of the Tai Ping Era. This formula "releases constraints and encourages the free-flow of Liver qi, allowing for open-mindedness and a free or rambling spirit." I like that!

Also: it is commonly used for irregular menstruation, PMS, breast distention and lumps, leukorrhea, menopausal disorders, uterine bleeding and chronic hepatitis.

39 beautiful, brave, bruised and battered women

I'm going to Åbo, the city where I studied and lived for 6 years, tomorrow. I'm returning my key to the local office of National Women's Line in Finland. I used to do volunteer work there, supporting women facing domestic violence who called our help-line. Numerous are the nights I've thought about the stories I've been told and the women telling them. Sometimes I've wondered how I can help them getting away from a life with an ultra fine line between love and pure rage, from limited life space, control and violence way, way beond my comprehension. I often realized though that once she, often all battered and bruised, finally dared make the phone call to the hot line (four out of ten women never ever tell anybody what they're exposed to), a non-judging, caring and listening human being did wonders.

Numerous are also the nights I've thought about what's inside the head of someone, who feels that a woman is something you own and is to be controlled. Where would someone get the idea that it's ok to hit her or hurt her verbally? To rob her her freedom, her selfesteem and individuality, and completely disempower someone?

As I've moved away from Åbo, and thus not working for the Women's Line anymore, I'm turning in my key. And in Vasa where I live today, there are no such voluntary movement or organization helping and supporting women experiencing violence. It's truly itching inside as I still want to contribute to this enormous global social problem, but my channels are quite limited! I've noticed that I talk about domestic violence a lot more nowadays, perhaps that's my unconscious way of doing my share.

The government is also trying to do something about the profound problem. A proposition (in Finnish here) for a national program for reducing violence in Finland was just put forward. According to the report, the Finns are not more violent than others but significantly more die due to violence here than elsewhere in Europe. Between the years 1999-2003 134 Finns died due to violence, which equates 2,6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The average in EU is 1,3 per 100,000.

As for violence directed at women, 39 women were killed every year 1999-2003 as a direct consequence of violence. Often by their boyfriends, husbands or exes. This equates 1,4 deceased per 100,000 women in Finland, where as the same figure for the EU is 0,75. Sad, so sad, figures. We have such a long way to go. Such a long way.

Tar and feathers

A one of a kind law suit has been filed in Finland and the outcome of it will be interesting. Five seriously ill Finns are suing the two tobacco giants Philip Morris and BAT for misleading consumers over so-called light cigarettes. They feel that the tobacco companies lied and didn't acknowledge the potential health hazards of these cigarettes. According to the Cancer Society in Finland, even health experts recommended the light cigarettes to the Finnish smokers in the 1970's.

So far, 20482 persons thank Poland

So far, 20482 persons have decided to thank Poland, and especially Wlodzimierz Marcinski who is Poland's undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Science and Information Technology, for withdrawing the The EU's controversial directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (COM 2002/0047 (COD)). About two and a half weeks ago, the directive was due to be formally adopted without discussion (as a so called A-item) at the meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Commission but Marcinski put a stop to this fishy way of decision making.

You can still submit your signature to the thank you letter.

plain language please

I've plunged into an assortment of goodies lately: ambient intelligence, usability testing and interactive digital tv. I'm lying in our raspberry red couch in the lab, reading articles and papers, and thinking that ICQ inc could use a copy of the ten rules for user interface design by the web page usability guru Jakob Nielsen. In particular, I'm thinking of number 9:

"Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors: Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes)".

I'm using icq v 4.1 and increasingly more often while instant messaging; I'm suddenly unable to send off messages. The error message that appears explains the problem only by a code. That’s not what I want, I want a brief, easy to understand message that explains what happened. Therefore, the word on my mind right now is heuristics.

According to Nielsens website, new findings on usability guidelines for websites is to be presented at the Usability 2005 conference, in Stockholm among other places.

Blog readership explodes but not all know what a blog is

According to the latest (January 2005) Pew Internet & American Life project report, 7 % of the Americans say they have created a blog or a web-based diary. In springtime 2002, the figure was 3 %. Furthermore, 57 % of these more than 8 million bloggers are male. This surprises me as according to the figures I've seen (here and here), the majority of bloggers are women. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Pew Internet report only looks at adult Americans, and therefore overlooking the numerous teenage female bloggers.

Another interesting finding is that though blog readership increases (growth in 2004 alone: 58 %), not many know what a blog is (62 % don't).