9 weeks of internship

My internship at Apt is continuing to be fun, challenging and very educating. I really ended up at the right place and it feels like my head are full of new knowledge. I learn new things all the time and I’m starting to ask myself if it’s room for more information. What I first noticed as new project manager at Apt was my lack of knowledge regarding technology but I’m doing my best to increase by asking thousands of questions. I’m proud to announce that I know more about stuff like CMS, backend, W3C and the process of building a website.

I just started a new project were we are going to make an online advertising film. Just when I began to understand project management of websites and other thing online I get thrown into something totally new for me. This is what I love about my internship!

(For those who validate my site just because I was talking about W3C: Yes, I know there are some errors. But if Apple has 10 of them I guess it’s ok with my three. And who knows, I might just end up fixing them myself some day.)

Help, my brain is turning digital

No, it’s not the grass beginning to grow in the park or the birds returning from wherever they go during cold winter that’s giving me feelings of spring. It’s the automatic background on my Nintendo DS R4 Revolution card. During the past months it’s been a snowy background but now it has changed to a green leaf, which I discovered this morning. For me this was the first sign of spring. Seems as my R4 card is thinking for me.

Work is a four letter word

I know the secret behind living a well balanced life. I also know it’s almost impossible to achieve it. It sounds very simple. Divide your day into three. You get eight hours sleep, eight hours to work and eight hours for free time.

Great! Except that it is a lot of boring things to do that is eating time from your eight hours of leisure. Transport between home and work, buy food, cleaning and doing other chores. Those things might are not be your hobbies but still they are stealing time from your eight hours of fun.

So could the person who invented this key to happiness please explain how it’s suppose to work? Or does anyone have a better idea?

Playing around with Google Analytics

I spent my last days teaching myself Google Analytics. Once you get started it’s really fun to discover how visitors get to your site, what they do, how long time they spend and so on. I just keep discovering more and more ways to find new information. It’s a useful tool to understand what visitors do on your site.

Since I just finished my first project I made an experiment by tracking the banners by unique URLs. That way I can see exactly which banner, divided into size and ad place that brings most visits.

I’m not going to spend time on explaining how to use Analytics, instead I’m just sharing the links that I used to get started. Have fun!

Measure online advertising with Google Analytics
Google Analytics Goals
Ad Tracking with Google Analytics

A small step for mankind, one giant leap for me

I did my first gif animation today, 24 years old and soon to be 25. I always thought it was hard but after finishing my first one today I felt so good about it. I thought myself by reading a guide that I found on Google. It is fun to learn new things!

There are always new things to learn but not always as easy to find them. To see what you can learn you have to ask yourself what you don’t understand yet. About things in you daily life, technique, hobbies or what ever comes you way. I bet you will find a lot of new thing to learn that you didn’t knew about. Basically, find out what is left to learn to fully understand something.

Go horsie, go!

Working long vs. Working hard

Ever since I read Seth Godin’s book “Small Is the New Big” I’ve been thinking a lot of the difference between working long and working hard. For me working long is just a way to get your pay check. Working hard means you accomplish new things, make brave decisions and take steps forward instead of standing on the same spot. Every day I keep thinking of this and try to work hard as much as possible. I tend to valuate my day on the way home to find out what’s been long work and what’s been hard work.

Is this an obsession?

This is not a blog

I may not write as often as a blogger should, but I do not see myself as a blogger either. This is more like a glimpse of my thoughts, opinions and ideas. I write when something cross my mind, I see or hear something that gets me thinking or when it has been far too long since my last post here.

I don’t want to earn money by this blog. I don’t feel like reading another “10 ways to get more readers to your blog” post. I don’t always feel like be on top of myself and spend hours of writing posts and thinking of new ones. Apparently this thinking stuff doesn’t happen to me as often as other bloggers who blogs three times a day?

Sometimes what you think about and what you write isn’t as important as what you do.

Oh shit, this is a blog? Isn’t it?

A fan is a fan

I haven’t bought a record for years. Many of my friends don’t own a CD player. When I listen to music it’s on my iPod or my iTunes. Young people today are growing up with downloading music from day one. And we see it as our right to download music. It is going to be tough for the music industry to change our point of view and what has become a part of our life. Today record companies are an analog fossil in I digital world.

Since music can be downloaded from anonymous users it doesn’t feels like steeling directly from the artist. It’s more like spreading music. And the music is going to spread even if the artist doesn’t want to. Musicians should take advantage of this instead. A good example is Radiohead who released their album on their website for free downloading and if you liked it you could donate money. Today they made good money this way and I read that the average price each downloader paid was 6 $. Thom Yorke says:
In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

So why pick a fight with your fans and listeners? Why just don’t see them as consumers who want music in a new way? And an unsatisfied costumer will please their needs elsewhere if you can’t please them. A fan is a fan no matter how they get the music.

Payment today isn’t just money, it is also attention.

First day of my internship

I packed all my things and moved to Oslo two days ago. A little bit nervous and very excited I walked along Oslo’s pedestrian street this morning. I got a very warm welcome from my new workplace and now I have 17 weeks of adventure ahead of me. My first day was all about trying to understand as much as possible about the company, their routines and introduce myself to my new co-workers. But I also managed to do some research and tag along on a brief about a digital agency competition. I can’t wait for tomorrow, that must be a good sign?

If I worked at Apple

I would make iPods that would upload their own batteries by body heat. We can generate electric energy from heat and this is nothing new. I’ve read that scientists are working hard to develop a good working system on how to make body heat to energy. And these scientists have made a good progress in their research. When reading a couple of articles about it I started to think on combine this function with an iPod. Wouldn’t it be great to walk around with your iPod in your pocket and always have fully uploaded batteries?