Today I was recording a BBC Culture Shock show at YLE (Finnish radio station) facilities at Helsinki. I am happy to have been a trusted person for two programs to spot weak signals from Finland. In the recording studio there was a interesting button. It was called a cough button.( sorry the blurry image and my poor mobile camera resolution) I did not quite get it that if by pressing it you can add cough effects to your talk

or will you just press it when you start to cough and want to mute the microphone. Anyway the name of the button just got my attention.

..as did the sign in the door when coming out from the studios (Warning: dropping items and danger of ice!!)-and there were no ice or snow nearby-nor did I get any dropping items in my head…

It seems that you do not have to be a genius to fly an airoplane. Actually you do not have to be at all: it is enought just to take a pieces of rat brain, turn them to neurons and plug it into the computer. After a while this system learns to fly a jet, when taught so. If you do not believe, check this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jeV77dSyMI

via paras chorpa’s blog

Today I have visited British Telecom facilities in Ipswich, England and I had a wonderful opportunity to interview futurist Dave Brown about anticipation of futures in BT. Dave told me BT’s ways to look at to the future and their tasks inside the company. This information is very valuable for me, because currently I am working on a book about anticipating customers’ needs. So thank you Dave for the interview and your hospitality!

While being in England I have used my extra time for spotting weak signals. Here are some images about things that I found extraordinary to me. From these images you can see, that things that are new to me are probably every-day life for Englishman.

a couple of ways to increase your mass (Tesco)

A sign in a Taxi

The original SPAM

Liquieise for sale in the health section in Tesco

Well packed suitcase, Heathrow Express

Today I visited Tapiola, a Finnish insuarance company. I spotted an interesting “weak signal” : in a presentation session a computer of the company started to show screen saver images. In this case the images were cartoons about strategy of the company. A big boss of Tapiola told that by this way employees can remember the strategy of the company. Convinient and fun!

In Finland we have a famous and “branded” poem writer, Tommy Taberman (who is also a member of our parlament). He is famous for his love poetry- and nowadays his poems are used for various products: wine glasses, sheets and even advent calender! From the housing fair I spotted a door with a poem of Tommy Taberman (manufactured by Kaskipuu). These are now for sale here in Finland.

Images: the poem door (I do not even try to translate the poem to English!!)

While visiting the housing fair last weekend I spotted interesting version of saunas. As we all may know Finns are grazy people when it comes to sauna. In the good old times women gave birth to babies in saunas. In the modern times we jus enjoy the 100 degrees of centigrate and then jump into an icy lake and roll in the snow… This new concept of sauna really got my interest. This rock looking sauna is totally movable and in the stove you can also make food like barbecue sausages. Next time when go to ice fishing why not to take your sauna with you? Also, I think that there is a big similarity of this sauna to Stonehedge. Maybe Stonehedge is a goup of Finnish saunas after all

Image: This chair locates in the lobby of Fujitsu.

This fabulous Ball Chair was spotted for a lobby of Fujitsu, Helsinki. This chair has something extra in it: a computer installed in it. By pressing a button you can get a display in front of you whan you are sitting in the chair. The chair is designed by famous Finnish designer Eero Aarnio but the installation of computer is done afterwards.

The chair appeared to be very comfortable and gave a little silent room for surfing…

I visited last week Glitnir, a bank that which offers universal banking and financial services. In the front desk, where visitors signs in, there were some small gifts for visitors. They had for example pens, and chewing gum. Surprisingly they also had simple sledgers for sledding (sorry, I do not know the word in English, and did not have much help from my dictionary). Unfortunately, there were not snow at Finland then…
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Image: Matching colors and patterns. Picture from housing fair, Helsinki

I like to walk in cities with my camera or cameraphone with me. What I specially look for is small stickers in walls, escalators, streetlights, or where-ever. These stickers have usually some story to tell. Speccially interesting stickers are the ones that speak out for some important issue. Here are some examples of stickers that I managed to spot last week in Helsinki.

Image: Sticker with text: Your drugs can be from somebody’s butt (Youth Against Drugs)

images: stickers talking about animal rights:

chicken: So people would think about the origin of food.

The dog: There is no difference if the fur is made from fox or a dog