Mika Tuupola

Finalists of Grand One ‘08 were announced few days ago. Comparing to finalists of 2006 code quality is getting better but there is still lot of room for improvement.

Table below lists finalists from Best B2C service, Best B2B service and Best infodesign categories. Flash sites were left out. Two interesting numbers are listed.

• Number of validation errors on frontpage.
• Percentage calculated by dividing number of lines of html code with number of validation errors.

Lines of code for each site was calculated by executing the following on commandline:

>lynx -source http://www.example.com/ | wc

Most validation errors in one page

This years winner has amazing 301 validation errors. Award goes to Valve and Plenware produced kauppalehti.fi. Shared second place goes to TietoEnator, Avarko, QBrick produced ClassicLive. and Elisa Verkkokauppa by Mainostoimisto Ego (hey guys, what happen!?). Both sites have 113 validation errors. Second place goes to TietoEnator, Avarko, QBrick produced ClassicLive with 113 validation errors. YLE’s inhouse production yle.fi receives third place with 100 errors.

Elisa Verkkokauppa was fixed few hours after publishing this. Apparently backend coder had forgot to close <img> tags. It fully validates so I am taking away the second prize. (Yes, I used to work in EGO. Yes, I still work in Taivas Group.)

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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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Finalists of Grand One ‘06 were announced. Small research reveals that in almost every case code is crap.

In the table below are the finalists from four categories: Best B2C service, Best B2B service, Best public/govermental service and Best infodesign. I left out all Flash sites. The validation is made against the frontpage of the url address given in Grand One ‘06 entry page.

Winner of producing the worst code category is Tietotalo with 127 validation errors. The first place is debatable though. Ocaco’s entry uses funky CMS which renders the content using JavaScript. This output containts 142 errors.

What really surprised me is how many companies still do HTML 4.0x Transitional: Tietotalo, Sininen Meteoriitti, Nitro, Ocaco, Grip Studios Interactive. We are not living in the 90’s anymore.

Paperjam uses HTML 4.01 Strict due to W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Among the finalists were only two entries which fully validate. Paperjams Näkövammaisten keskusliitto and Taivas Ego / Adell Taevas joint project Ford Henry.

Other companies having only 10 or less errors are: Ambientia, A4 Media and Aisti Medialab. Most of the errors are unescaped ampersands.

Here are all the validation results:

Related entries: Igglo Beta Out Now!, Ford Henry Cars, The Grand One 2004 – The Finnish New Media Oscars.

Entering Finland driving a car with Estonian licence plates resulted different attitude at customs than car with Finnish plates ever did.

Last friday was the first time I visited Helsinki driving a car with Estonian licence plates. Until then the car has always had Finnish plates and going through customs was a breeze. This time, however, after passport control I was instantly surrounded by six or seven policemen who signed me to pull over and open the window. I said hello in Finish and asked how could I help. They started to ask me question in fast pace. They asked same questions again and again trying to make me make a mistake.

What is your business here? Do you have anything to declare? Where are you going? What address is that? Do you have anything illegal with you? What was the address where you are going? Do you have anything to declare?

I though about telling them not everyone from Estonia is a smuggler. Then I realized they probably would not have any sense of humor and strip and/or cavity search might not be fun at all. I decided to shut up.

After couple of minutes I told them: Look guys. I am originally from Helsinki but I now live in Tallinn. I will open the trunk and you can search the car to see I only have couple of cases of beer with me.

The answer was: Oh, can I see your passport again… Ah yes. You can go. Have a nice day.

EDIT 20060620: Additional note because there is lots of people coming from trip.ee. This really happened. But it only happened once. I have been back in Finland several times without any problems. Maybe they just had training. Maybe it was because I came first out of the ship. Maybe they were just bored.

Last wednesday media agency Happi Mindshare released the first issue of their Happi Magazine. The release party was held at Korjaamo. Mikael Jiffer of Mindshare Performance raised some interesting points in his talk on sponshorship and media content.

People are consuming more and more different media but at the same time they are consuming less and less time with one particular media. Younger people tend to be engaged with several media at the same time. Traditional tv ads are also considered more annoying than they used to be before. Media is fragmented.

Hasan & Partners – one of Finlands top advertising agencies – recently appointed Alex Nieminen to work as their CEO. Hasan & Partners has had history of not being interested in “this Internet thing” but instead creating award winning tradititional advertising for their clients. But even Hasan has not stayed fully devoted to doing traditional only campaigns. Together with Valve the two companies have won several awards for their Flash based campaigns such as Nylanderi (WARNING! fullscreen Flash content ahead) ONE.

When the value of interactive advertising has constantly been rising even the most pessimistic advertising guy has to concur that interactive advertising just can’t be ignored anymore. This is what makes appointing Alex – who is one of the most respected veterans in interactive industry – so interesting.

My bet is that in six months Hasan & Partners will buy Valve to get a jumpstart for their new “Hasan & Partners Interactive”.

Joi Ito will be visiting Helsinki 14th of October. The event will be at Korjaamo which is almost next door to my apartment. I will definetily be there.

Aula klubi, discussions with shapers of contemporary lifestyle, continues with Joichi Ito on ‘The Future of the Music Business’ on 14 Oct 2004 at Korjaamo in Helsinki. The event will be held in English and is free and open to the public.

You are invited to an open discussion with Joichi Ito on Thursday 14.10. at 17.30 at Korjaamo, Töölönkatu 51 b in Helsinki. Joichi “Joi” Ito will speak on “The Future of the Music Business” followed by a discussion with the audience. The event will be held in English and is free and open to the public.

The event is organized by Aula (http://www.aula.cc). Aula is an open network that promotes the exchange of ideas across boundaries.

Korkeasaari has announced it will kill all of the baboons currently living in the zoo. The “baboon castle” where the animals live needs restoration and the zoo does not have alternative place for the animals to go. To add to the the What The Fuck factor the second reason given to the killing of the animals is that they don’t like cold weather. Since Finland is pretty damn cold in winter the baboons will be spending the snowy season indoors and people won’t be seeing them. The zoo feels people won’t be having as much value for their 5€ tickets during wintertime and will replace the baboons with monkeys who can withstand cold weather.

This has caused a bit of an outrage in Helsinki. Advertising agency Bob Helsinki has taken the most visible stand for saving the baboons. They announced they will hire a project manager whose sole mission will be to find a plan and financing to rescue the animals.

Nokia has launced an N-Gage guerilla campaign. Two amateur webpages by KalleVee and TumppiKoo claim they have found a cd-rom from train which was labeled UNFINISHED MATERIAL. FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY. The cd-rom contained seven Nokia N-Gage adverts. The two boys decided to “put them into internet” even though their father said they should not.

The Grand One 2004 gala is tonight. We have nine entries nominated in the finals. With that amount of nominations I would be surprised if do not get any trophies to bring back to the office. Last year (when the awards where still called The Big One) my personal loot was three Bronze pixels from categories: Best Infodesign, Best Campaign and Best Self Promotion. I would be disappointed if this year my favourite project – Tour de France campaign made for Polar Electro - does not win anything.