One week before election 2.0 – new tools

No, I not talking about the upcoming elections in the Czech republic, the Maldives, Lithuania or in Zambia, which are also taking place really soon. I’m talking about “that one”, the American one. I’ve been following the Techpresident for a while, a great read for everyone interested in everything related to politics and technology, and … Continue reading →

Why Andrew Sullivan blogs

“A good blog is your own private Wikipedia”, argues Andrew Sullivan in this excellent essay, ” Why I blog” (via Olav Anders Øvrebø). Read it!

The Atheist Bus and the web campaign behind it

A blogger friend of mine, Jon Worth, has been part in kicking off this fantastic campaign in the UK, the Atheist Bus. What started as a wild idea in a Guardian column written by Ariane Sherine (who also has a blog), became realistic after a photoshop mockup and lots of entusiastic pledges in the pledgebank, … Continue reading →

Chinese activist receives EU’s Sakharov prize

EU dared what the Norwegian Nobel Committee didn’t. AIDS and environmental activist Hu Jia has received the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought. Here are some of the global blogger’s reactions. One of China’s most famous bloggers, Isaac Mao, has written about Hu Jia and his wife Zeng Jinyan’s struggles for freedom earlier. … Continue reading →

Academia: How to loose control of your message and feel fine about it

I recently gave a seminar about blogging basics in Norway for a bunch of academic communication people, organized by forskning.no. They represented all kinds of academic institutions in Norway, such as the University of Oslo, Bergen University College, BI, Bioforsk, Oslo Cancer Cluster, etc . One of the issues several of the participants brought forward … Continue reading →

Blogging basics

I gave a seminar about blogging in an academic context in Norway recently, arranged by Forskning.no and as I promised the participants, I will publish my notes here on my blog. They are in Norwegian, so if you are not able to read Norwegian, use Google translate, it will give you a little clue of … Continue reading →

Super duper calculations – the grids are coming

I wrote an article (in Norwegian) about CERN’s Grid (a super network of computers) for Forskning.no earlier this week. This Grid, which is probably the world largest, was built in order to handle and compute the incredible amounts of data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A short explanation – on the Internet, you can … Continue reading →

Did Iceland receive an ice cold shoulder?

It is chilly in Reykjavik, only 6 degrees right now. And as all of us know, the Icelandic economy has frozen up, badly. It is so bad that even the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso sent out a statement regarding Iceland tonight (I can’t find it online yet, I got it through … Continue reading →

Banking 2.0

As the financial crisis has hit harder and harder, and the possibilities to get loans have evaporated, some people have found possibilities in people-to-people or peer-to-peer banking. For us social network freaks, this is a interesting concept. This is literary social capital, where banks and other middlemen are cut out. The concept is not brand … Continue reading →

Economics 1.0 for journalists

This fall, economics stopped being dry and boring (at least for me), and everyone started paying intense attention. Some even too much.  But what the heck is going on and is still shaking our ground? Why has the financial crisis (which has been called earth quake, monster, train) hit so hard, now? And how come … Continue reading →

Sarkozy’s “three-strikes-and-out” is OUT in EU

Good news for internet users – bad news for content providers (ex. IFPI and the recording industry). The French internet proposal to create a class of digital outcast, also called “three-strikes” (or graduated response) has been turned down by the EU, both the commission (Wednesday this week), and the parliament (September 24th). According to the … Continue reading →

Heading for the Girl Geek Dinner

Tomorrow, I’m going to a very exiting event in Ghent, Brussels Girl Geek Dinner. As you can imagine, this is for geeky girls (or maybe girly geeks, since some men are also coming). The blog was created by this geeky woman, Clo Willaert (who has a really cool blog), and the dinner idea was apparently … Continue reading →

New Norwegian blog portal

A Norwegian version of the Swedish blog portal Knuff is out, in beta version – Bloggurat. I’m curious to see if this site will spark the high interest for blogs that Knuff has managed. I did find at least one very interesting piece when I visited Bloggurat, Hjorten‘s beautiful story about meeting people (and the … Continue reading →

Help me update the list of Norwegian EU bloggers

These last few days, I’ve come across a few interesting Scandinavian EU blogs. Recently, Percy Westerlund (who is Swedish) , ambassador for the European Commission in Norway, started his own blog, which I think is a great idea. He writes in his first blog post (in Norwegian) that the blog is a way for him … Continue reading →

Money, money, money

The financial crisis hit Belgium hard this week, and our local bank Fortis had to go down on it’s knees and beg for money from the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The bank is now partially nationalised. My father took this excellent picture at the National Gallery in Brussels this week. Help your … Continue reading →