R.E.M. in Tallinn - tag your pictures and take part in the crowd

This Thursday we went to the R.E.M. concert in Tallinn (see also Ängelmedhorn, navelfluff, DN.se and Kulturbloggen), a really great event. The girlfriend is undecisive about whether sound quality at Saku Suurhall was actually much better than usual this time, or if it is that she knew all the lyrics by heart so could sit around even though sound was crap. I made sure to get a fitting T-shirt from the support band We are scientists which made a quite decent warm-up act. This time I didn't make money from my last.fm participation though. :-)


One fun thing with the event (except for the nice music and the fancy stage line of course) was that they on TV screens encouraged visitors to "tag your flickr pictures with #remestonia and they will show up at tour.remhq.com". Not that very many seem to have followed their suggestion, but in a place like London with a bigger audience and a few more nerds even recording video, it creates an amazing base for letting the crowd document events and mash it all up in a spectacular video later. Just think of putting craptastic cell phone videos through a photosynth of sorts, use the professionally recorded sound and replay the event from a hundred angles at once. People, please, start your tagging! Together, at any event, tag, share, and mashup!

Let's end this post with the beautiful song Man on the Moon about the sad clown Andy Kaufman:

Gnosjö-spirit now also for digital nomads

Me and Christian et al have been posting some about digital nomads. Today I realized my tiny old home village Gnosjö will be one of the first in Sweden to free of charge provide WiFi coverage to it's residents. Respect for Gnosjö I say!

As is common with smaller places in the countryside, you sometimes get the feeling that progress is running slowly, but I've actually noticed such a modern thing as that the head of the municipality Lars-Åke Magnusson sporadically writes a blog at blogg.gnosjo.eu. Also there are some connections between Gnosjö and Estonia, such as that the husband of my cousin (I know I got that mixed up when I ran into them once!) works for IMA Norscan which have an office in Tallinn and Estonian Windrox seems to have some work in Gnosjö.

It may appear strange that I am writing about "Gnosjö spirit", but I don't come from just any old village - Gnosjö is legendary in Sweden for it's age-old spirit of cooperation and industriousness, achieving excellent integration and record-low unemployement. Christian writes more about that here.