Mika Tuupola

Eturundus! seminars organized by Altex marketing keep getting better and better. Next one will be held 7th of may at Estonian national library. This time all speakers are from UK. Thus the name E!UK.

Participation fee is is 2500 EEK or 160 EUR per person. Discount for groups of four. Since Tallinn is only 80 kilometers from Helsinki it should be easy for Finnish digiprofessionals to pay a visit to E!UK. Hey, it’s only two hours with a boat…

All presentations will be held in English. They will provide live translation for those who speak only Estonian.

Speaker lineup

• Sam Michel, MD of Chinwag “Digital Marketing Opportunities in the UK for Estonians”

• Marcel Udo, European MD of Eyewonder “The Future of Banner Advertising and Rich Media”

• Craig Hanna, Training Director, e-consultancy “The Atomised Web”

• Laura Bambach, Head of Art, Glue London and Co-Founder SheSays “Digital creativity and collaboration”

• Jon Bains, Founder, Lateral “The People vs. The Brand”

• Alastair Cole, Interactive Production Director, Golley Slater Digital “Swimming Against The Tide: Information Architecture and UI Design”

I will definitely be there.

Related entries: Eturundus! 8 – This Time at KUMU, Eturundus! 6 – The Big Picture, Eturundus! 4 by Altex Marketing, Notes from Eturundus! 3 – Rok Hrastnik

Last week Estonian business paper Äripäev made a small research. Their journalist made an online registration to test drive a car. Only three car dealers out of seven replied.

Response from those who failed to answer? “We had some technical problems.”

Before reading further I should mention that Amserv Auto mentioned in this post is our client.

Who answered and who did not?

Out of seven dealers contacted following replied.

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Web application movement is growing in Baltic states. Biggest event in near future will be Barcamp Baltics 2008. It is held 8-10 February in Riga. Barcamp describes itself the following way:

Barcamp is a unique international unconference on new media, blogs, podcasts, social networking, citizen journalism, web 2.0, open source and everything else that is connected with it. Unconference includes open presentations, workshops and workgroups; everything is held by the participants themselves.

Other than Barcamp Jüri Kaljundi has been organizing OpenCoffee Club in Tallinn for a while. I have always had some lame excuse not to attend. Next event will be 6. March. That one I will attend. Now when it is said public I cannot have any excuses…

Estonian business tabloid Äripäev writes about new real estate portal Koduleidja. According to äripäev this newcomer is bringing out fresh concept to real estate market: silent buying and selling.

What Äripäev fails to mention the concept is not new at all. Instead it is a copy of Finnish real estate portal Igglo.

Igglo was first launched in February 2006. Company and the concept it has been successfull. It currently operates also in Norway. One of the key features of Igglo has been the silent buying and selling. Portal has information and photos of every single building in Helsinki and other big cities in Finland. If you are interested in buying a flat from a specific house you can ear mark your interest anonymously. Also if you are interested in selling yours you can mark that there is a flat possibly available in this house.

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Many people have business ideas. Some of them are good. Some of them are bad.

Ajujaht is competition where you can give you idea for peer review. You describe your business plan carefully. It is reviewed by professional people. Jury will choose finalists. Each finalist will receive 5000 EEK (320 EUR) cash price.

Again from finalists jury will choose best business ideas. Winners will receive cash prices to make their dreams come true. Price money totals 500.000 EEK (32.000 EUR). Five best teams will also be arranged meeting with investors. This could mean even more funding.

Competition is sponsored by City of Tallinn, City of Tartu, Tallinn Technologypark TEHNOPOL, Enterprise Estonia and SEB Eesti Ühispank.

Make your office happy buy providing people with fresh water!

Bossa Vesi is a minisite for Estonian supplier of coffee, water and juice machines for offices. It contains some simple jQuery goodness. All Javascript code degrades gracefully.

The nice office in front page is actually our own!

Shocking news! Expired residence permit can cause problems. Even inside European Union.

In previous part I had problems with Tallinn city officials. I tried to register my living address. Landlords signature was not valid because he had taken a home loan from bank. City database says apartment owner was bank.

Bank sent letter of attorney to landlord. This letter gave him permission to sign a paper. This paper gave me permission to fill a form. With this form I was able to register my address in Estonia. After registering living address I could renew my residence permit.

Problem was all this took three weeks. During this time my residence permit ended. Not a biggie.

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There are some small but crucial differences in driving culture between our two small countries. These facts are observed while living most of my life in Finland and 1.5 years in Estonia. My aim is to help Estonians understand Finnish better (and vice versa).

Radio Sucks

Take your own music with you. Finnish radio absolutely sucks. Programs contain mostly semifunny radiohosts with semifunny jokes. Bad, I mean really bad music. Every single station plays the same Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears songs. Not even any fancy remixes. Just the plain radio versions. Sometimes DJ’s go wild and play some Lordi.

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Helsinki – Tallinn line gets new ship. No more looking at weather forecasts. This ship can go out with bad weather. It can go go out even when there is ice!

For people traveling often between Tallinn and Helsinki this is good news. Problem with fast ferries is you never know will they go. If there is storm ferries will be canceled. This happened to me three times last year. Fast ferries also do not go during winters. In winters you can travel only cruise ships. Problem with cruise ships is the time. Travel with cruise ships takes over 3 hours.

This is exactly what M/S Star fixes. It is a big ship which can drive even in storms. Still it has speed of fast ferries. Travel time to Helsinki is only two hours. This combined with onboard wifi makes it perfect for business travelers. How well wifi actually work we will see tomorrow morning.

It is not advertised but M/S Galaxy also has onboard wifi. It only works in some parts of ship. Just check where all the people with laptops are. Internet connection works all the way to Finland. Maybe not the fastest. Still enough to read your mails and hang in IRC or MSN.

Spring brings out the people. People bring out photographers. For four weeks there will be fashion spy’s patrolling streets of Tallinn.

Kevad.ee is Estonia streetstyle photoblog. During four weeks our photographers will make pictures of people in streets of Tallinn. Art directors will then spend several hours browsing this daily photo stream. Result is around ten new images posted online daily. Photoblog will be updated for one month. But this is not the end. All photos published online will be also published in a book. No not an e-book but an real dead-tree book!

Site is part of spring campaign for Kristiine Keskus

UPDATE 20070409: There are also two similar projects online. Femme tänavamood and Just Glitter Lust