The frequent readers remember that Nomadig.com has got its own share own spam comments. I used to handle the issue with Kitten’s Spaminator, but recently the sheer number of spam messages forced me to consider new alternatives.

I had read about Akismet now and then, but never had enough energy to give it a try. Then I installed it for a company that I’ve supplied blog, and the results were excellent. It went through the moderation queue and cleaned it up, and then continued sweeping the incoming comments.

I installed Akismet to Nomadig just before our trip to Thailand. After my return, I checked the status and there were over 3,000 comment spams in the Akismet spam queue. Everyone of those would have generated an email to me with Spaminator, so there were considerably less work to do for me.

The current count for the last 15 days (that’s how long Akismet keeps spam messages in the DB) is 4032 comments. I’ve had to check only a handful of spam comments that have slipped through Akismet.

I bought a Mac Mini a few weeks ago, as regular readers may remember… Anyhow, I got the box finally and installed it during the weekend in the living room. My idea is to replace an old Windows HTPC box that is too noisy and takes too long to boot.

The HTPC has our collection of audio and video files that needed to be transferred to the Mac Mini. This seemed to be a simple task, as I have two free FireWire disks, 320GB and 500GB.

The smaller disk was already formatted into Mac format, and I didn’t want to purchase MacDrive, so that option was ruled out immediately.

Thus, I formatted the second disk to NTFS and plugged it in to the HTPC. I moved all files to the disk (a big mistake…), plugget it out and plugget it into the mac. Mac aptly noticed that it cannot read the disk and prompted to initialise it. Of course, I declined and tried again. No luck.

Then I decided to plug the disk into another PC and transfer the files over the network — gigabit ethernet is a really sweet thing…

For some reason, the disk was no longer recognised by the other PC. Cold sweat emerged above my eyebrows… I fought half an hour with the disk and PC, connecting the disk with FireWire and USB to different ports and booting PC once a while.

Finally the disk worked, for a while, using USB, so I could copy one file to the PC’s disk. Then booted and copied a dozen files more. Then booted and copied the rest of the files. Phew! For some reason the mac mangled the disk so that PC could not write it. The disk failed every time some program tried to write something.

Then I copiedthe files to Mac over the network. After spending most of the day, the files had moved half a meter from PC to Mac. Moral of the story: do not connect too big NTFS FireWire drives to Mac and never just move files between computers, copy instead.

I’ve been supporting my parents with their computer for a few years. This Christmas I was planning to have a major changes in the system, as it has been aging.

I purchased a set of stuff as presents and brought a few old items with me, too.

On Friday, I set up a wireless network for me and Sanna to work with our laptops. It also protects the desktop computer with its built-in firewall. That was easy and straightforward, the system was configured in no time and worked like a charm. The second step was to install VNC for remote helping, and that went flawlessly as well.

I also run a few spyware tools, uninstalled an old virus scanner and installed a new one — that promptly told me that there is not enough memory in the system. I had tried to buy memory from Polvijärvi, but as the computer dates back from 1998, there were no DIMM chips available. Fortunately the nice folks of Pekan Kone knew a specialist store in Joensuu, the nearest bigger town.

The store was open on Saturday — to my surprise — and as we had some other stuff to purchase from Joensuu, we got an outrageously expensive DIMM chip and a very cheap used second hard drive for the computer. The rest of the day was spent with the computer, as it failed to find the other half of the 256 MB DIMM and as the disk drive seemed to be corrupt. I was working together with my brother-in-law Juha.

We did everything we could, changed order of memory chips, flashed BIOS and reconfigured Windows. Finally we noticed that the auto-select IDE switch was not working properly and the second IDE channel had two masters. After that the disk drive worked perfectly.

Santa brought my parents an anti-virus program, a web camera with headsets and an USB hub. Juha installed them on Sunday together with Skype. There were no sound from the headset and the video crashed Skype, but otherwise everything was ok.

The audio out was easy, as the volume for WAV was set to zero. Video is not working still this day. We got the video from the camera using Logitech’s own tools, but Skype showed always grey box. While debugging this, I had to reorganise the hard drives, as there were only 20 MB left on C: and the drive was badly fragmented. That speed up the computer, but video problem was still there. I downgraded Skype and upgraded video drivers with no visible difference. This took five hours. At the end I didn’t have too much Christmas spirit left…

Finally the power supply died, as a final insult. We were just leaving, Sanna had dressed Aapo for the trip and I had finished updating Windows. But the computer would not boot. No matter how many times I pushed the switch…

We had to leave with mixed feelings and left my parents to deal with the situation. Fortunately they knew a person skilled with IT hardware and could get the system running again with a borrowed power supply.

The latest Tietokone magazine has a blog review article written by truly yours. I compared four popular blogging software, WordPress, MovableType, TextPattern and Blogger, and tried to find sweet spots for each solution.

The article was written in early summer, so Vox was not available back then. If I’d write the review now, it would be a good contender in the hosted blogging category.

This morning I forgot my trustworthy Palm Tungsten home, and had to endure throughout the day without calendar. I had to hurry to get Aapo to kindergarten, and I just picked up my briefcase without checking that everything was inside… Palm was resting on the cradle, charging.

I found out this on train station (when I checked whether I had forgot my wallet home), and it was too late to go back. Fortunately Sanna was still at home and I could get all my to-dos and events for the day listed in a text file.

This evening, I had to manually sync my notes on laptop to Palm. I decided to overcome the situation by syncing Palm with Mac.

The instruction seemed quite straightforward. I downloaded all required software and installed them without hickups. I also configured them, but somehow iSync and HotSync didn’t talk too well, as HotSync missed iSync conduit and iSync missed Palm. After jumping between these programs for an anxious 30 minutes, I finally got Palm on iSync.

However, syncing was not possible. First, the travel cable between Palm and Mac didn’t have syncing capabilities and the next cradle just didn’t work for some reason. Enter bluetooth. Fiddling both devices for a good 15 minutes, they found each other and shaked hands.

Syncing would not still work. I again frantically clicked all kinds of options in iSync and HotSync, and miraculously the HotSync picked up Palm and started syncing. The sync went on, on, on and on. It took more than half an hour to make the initial sync, as there is so many programs with huge data banks in Palm.

After this initial sync, the next syncs were much faster — I also turned off most syncing options, as I’m backing up Palm with my Windows box. I just need the calendaring with Mac, as Mac nowadays follows me wherever I go.

I clicked and clicked the HotSync button in Palm, and Mac never started iSync. I don’t know why. Then I started iSync syncing from Mac, clicked HotSync button in Palm, watched HotSync in Mac work through its chores and then clicked HotSync button again. Now iSync finally got it and synced my stuff to iCal.

This worked twice in row. Then I shut Mac and Palm to end in a positive note. Tomorrow will be an interesting syncing day, it seems.

Sometimes I’d love to get good or even obscure error messages from Mac, as they are searchable with Google. Silent computer that refuses to sync with silent PDA doesn’t give too many options for understating the issue and trying to correct it.

The Web 2.0 project that I’ve mentioned here a few times has entered into public beta phase, and Jaiku.com is now open for everyone to register.

The Jaiku service has a bit different and very interesting twist compared to the bulk of Web 2.0 services floating around: the whole concept is based on your mobile phone usage that is studied to create an online rich presence about you.

Now, you can tell the world whether you are readily available on the phone, or do you prefer people not to call to you. Your contacts can further see your location, and you can write an one-liner about your current activity or mood.

All this stuff is also available on the web. When you register to Jaiku, you get your personal rich presence page on the web. Mine is janne.jaiku.com. On the page you can see the basic availability of the person.

If you register, you can download a specific Jaiku client to Series 60 smart phone that follows your actions and posts updates to the site, so that people can see your availability. You can invite people as contacts, and then based on the trust relationship you’ll get to see more of your presence data.

The integration goes beyond the web. In your mobile phone, you have a Jaiku enriched phonebook that contains presence information of your Jaiku contacts. Now you see immediately whether you should call someone or not.

Jaiku provides also badges for showing your presence on your blog or site.

Check out also Jaiku’s blog, Jaikido, for more information and updates.

Update June 15: added images and captions, some minor text changes.

I’m writing this in Bio Rex, enjoying the talks and the performances in Aula Movement meeting. And of course meeting a lot of friends and acquitances.

Marko Ahtisaari opening the event

If you are not familiar with Aula, it is an organisation that promotes use and development of the latest global social and technological trends, such as Web 2.0, in Finland. Their objective is to help Finland not just to follow but also to lead in this area.

Clay Shirky and “Failure for Free”

The first presentation was held by Clay Shirky from New York University. He talked about being free to fail in the context of social networks, such as open source development organisation or newly introduced social networking services (think Flickr and the gang).

Jukka Perkko playing

Two prominent Finnish artists performed in between the speaks. First, Jukka Perko played saxophone and later Nina Hyvärinen performed a dancing piece.

Nina Hyvärinen dancing

The second speaker Alastair Curtis leads Nokia design and he talked about how Nokia embraces the social networks with design, how to understand customers better, and how to be able to create products that are more meaningful to them as individuals.

Alastair Curtis speaking about design embracing users’ needs

After a short break, Martin Varsavsky had a hilarious speak about Fon and its benefits — infrastructure built by the people. The idea behind the company is worthwhile checking for anyone roaming the world.

Martin Varsavsky and the benefits of free Wi-Fi

Mr. Perkko visited the stage again with his saxophone between the speaks. A really nice idea from the organisers, mixing performances and speaks to structure the flow of the event.

Jyri Engeström introducing Joichi Ito

The last speaker for the night was Joichi Ito, who has been awfully active in shaping the Internet to the network that we know now. Once again he has moved forward, and now focus on 3d communities, such as World of Warcraft or Second Life, and polychronic time — knowing people’s presence and availability, you are able get things done asynchronously.

Joichi Ito answering to the questions of the audience

For the uninitiated, Bio Rex is an old movie theater located in very central spot in Helsinki — in an 30’s Bauhaus style building. Really nice surroundings for having a mixed high-tech, business and social happening.

Check out also 3quarksdaily coverage on the subject.

I haven’t had time to inform my dear international readers that recently ITviikko, one of the IT newspapers published in Finland, devoted a whole page to my thoughts on how Internet services are developed around and with communities.

The article is now available on Exove blog, but only in Finnish.

In a nutshell, the article discusses the following topics:

• A lot of recent successful Internet services are based on community features, such as flickr.com or Wikipedia.
• The community provides almost all content.
• The community may also manage the service.
• The biggest challenge in community services is to bootstrap the community and feed the growth.
• The community cannot be controlled; you may try to steer it to the desired direction.
• The community probably develops to a suprising direction, and the end result may be much better for everyone.
• Community services fit also to b2b business; the stakeholders of corporations form communities.